987.2 Reduced Engine Power Mode

Howdy Folks, Pulled the car out of the garage recently for a mid-winter drive on a cold (30F) sunny day. After about 20 mins of normal gentle driving, I got hard on the throttle for about 20 seconds. As soon as I lifted off the throttle, the car went into reduced power mode with nearly every warning lamp on the dash lighting up. I pulled over, shut off the engine said a prayer in German (bitte starten) and cranked her back up. All seemed normal and she drove home just fine, although I refrained from any further hard accelerations. The car, 2011 Cayman S PDK . plenum, GT3TB, fabspeed headers and cats, and Cobb protune from Fabspeed . It's mostly a track car with ~80K miles and 15-20 track days. Last year I had to replace the PDK transmission and its only been driven about a 1000 miles since. See the Durametric error codes below. While the camshaft sensor seems to be an obvious potential failure, I wonder with all the other codes if what I experienced was a momentary CAN bus communications problem or a sign of a ECU going bad. I can clear the codes no problem nothing comes back, but I haven't taken it back on the road yet. My worry is I have a track event in 6 weeks and have no desire to be on the track and experience this. I'll have my mechanic check it also but has anyone seen anything like this issue before? Engine Controller P0010 Intake Camshaft Driver P0010 No signal/communication P0010 Value below lower limit P0015 Implausible signal Transmission- PDK C401:U401 CAN Fault, engine C418: U0418 CAN fault, brake (this code has been in the unit since I've owned the car) PSM C200 Control module fault engine electronics (drive) Airbag -P0SIP C152: Communication PSM control unit (drive) C150 Control unit communications engine electronics (drive) Cornering Lights C203 Fault steering wheel electronics 8022 Compression angle sensor

That many error codes is almost a sure sign of a failing battery . Porsche 's in general tend to do this when the battery drops below 11V on engine-cranking. Replace the battery and reset the codes. Chances are they won't come back. Hope it wasn't the battery causing your PDK problems - that's an expensive repair if unnecessary.

Hi, 2010 PDK BS (10 to 15K miles) with pretty much the exact same "enhancements." ... especially the Fabspeed Protune. I had the same issues with mine; if the temp drops below 30-40 F, I likely will have the limp-mode issue. At first, it was random and somewhat sparse; as time went on it became very predictable and frequent. The folks at the indy shop where I take the car (and who did all the enhancements) tried very hard to get it back into shape. To no avail. They pressed on Fabspeed who said "the base unit is from Cobb , so it's a Cobb problem, talk to them" and pressed on Cobb who said "the Protune is from Fabspeed , so it's a Fabspeed problem, talk to them." And I was stuck in the middle. Neither Cobb nor Fabspeed stepped up. We (the indy and I) agreed to pull the whole thing out and go with a GIAC module and tune. Fabspeed finally coughed up a full refund (thanks only to the indy folks). The GIAC doesn't have the fancy hand controler, but the performance is excellent. I don't have dyno data to back it up, but I'd say the GIAC tune is a smidge better than the Fabspeed / Cobb unit. And I'm on my second winter with NO PROBLEMS. Let me know if I can help you with the issues; and good luck. Joe Henley

Hello I have a Cayman 987 2011 with 58K miles on it, newly purchased from dealer RSJ Sports Cars in Slough, UK, and still on full warranty. I've been driving it hard ever since and on Saturday I experienced clutch slipping + warning flashed up 'reduced engine power'. I just dropped off at RSJ now and talked to Chris there. Contrary to my fears, he assured me 'the pdk gearbox is bulletproof' and they'd never had to send a pdk away (back to Porsche for repair/replacement) ever. He was totally confident what went wrong on Sat - though scary at time - was minor - recalibration of something, replacement of something else . . . I'm not technical so didn't really take in details. I will update when I hear from RSJ. Having read up online about slipping clutches yesterday, I was beginning to imagine I'd been very foolish to buy a 10-year-old Porsche with 58K miles on it and 5 previous owners, or assume I could drive such a vehicle hard and go on track days in it. I also put these fears to Chris. He assured me I could do both, that this is what the car is made for. It is not too old. Several owners are tracking Porsches must older than mine. Right now I am very happy at this statement 'PDKs are bulletproof.'

The battery is worth double-checking. I'd had it on the trickle charge all winter, but that doesn't mean much, I've experienced issues with low voltage on other P cars. Sadly I wish my PDK issue was the battery , in fact at the time I pulled the battery out and put in one from my truck just to test. My PDK problem was a failed shift rod sensor. Porsche will not sell most internal PDK parts to the general public. So had to replace the unit. Thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks for the info! My indy told me last year he was not a fan of Cobb and suggested GIAC also. It may be time to pull the plug on Cobb . I think I'll have the battery load tested and pull the Cobb tune and see if I can duplicate the issue. Thanks!

I'd say the PDK is bulletproof in normal use. But it is not immune to heat issues found on the track. My PDK failed likely because the shift rod sensor found in the gear oil side of the transmission failed due to thermal load. I've been told to put a cooler and pump on the gear side to prevent this from happening again. Your issue however sounds like something on the valve body side of the transmission. Porsche does sell the valve body and some of the sensors in the hydraulic side of the transmission. But you could simply need to have the fluid changed. I'd bet on it if it has never been changed (recommended at 40K). K

Porsche will not sell most internal PDK parts to the general public. This should be illegal. When my 986 had fatal problems Porsche didn't want to know anything. I love my car but the way the company and their dealer network treat customers is completely wrong. Before it cracks 50K it will be someone else's that a given.

Once you're satisfied with how it runs as stock - you might consider doing the SPORT/SPORT-PLUS option installation. In the US this comes in at around $2k installed. Worth every penny. You'll find "sport" mode addicting. BTW - the PDK uses two fluids - one is the control circuit/clutch fluid made by Pensotin, the other is standard gear oil. The control circuit oil change is called for at every 60k miles, the gear oil at 120k intervals. It certainly won't hurt to do them a bit early, but most dealers will insist on replacing the filter for the control circuit/clutch oil - which is in the oil pan for the transmission control circuit housing. That is only called for by Porsche at 120k intervals (when you do the other oil.) You do need a tool like a PIWIS or Foxwell NT530 / Porsche to "fill" the control circuit unless you go the route one chap did of putting the filler side of the vehicle high and then replacing the amount of oil that drained out with the same amount of new oil. Lets see if I can find a pic of the two fluids..

Nice pic. Thanks for info. I talked to them about sports pack you mentioned. Am certainly considering for next year. I have a track day at a place called Donnington Park here in UK next month. Will see how car does there. Yup, they only changed one of the clutch/gear oils - not the PDK oil the other one, I think he said.

Thought I'd update on my original problem. I pulled the battery tender off and put my trusty fluke meter on it, 12.4V. Not good and whats worse with just the hood open and the frunk light on it drained to 12.3v in like 30 seconds. I let it sit overnight and 11.5v. Definitely a failing battery . I've replaced it and it holds 12.8 continuous and at idle I see 13.6v so I'm charging. BTW I bought a Duralast from Autozone after research. A lot of the parts places say the Cayman uses an H8 battery (it will fit and there is a slot in the battery compartment to hold it down), but the H7 is factory, plus it weighs 8lb less than the H8. Codes cleared, drove the same route and engaged full throttle, no problem. It is however much warmer now 55-60 degrees. This all with the Cobb tune loaded BTW. So, I'll monitor it and see what happnes from here. Thanks for the suggestion @ deilenberger

My (off-the-shelf) Cobb tune would **** the bed below ~50F and put the car into limp mode. I could go out and reflash to the stock tune and all would be fine again. I repeated that process back and forth 2-3 times to confirm it was the tune. Cobb 's response was to do "log runs and send them the data," which is kinda hard when the car is stuck in limp mode. I ditched the Cobb and went with a Softronic tune . Zero problems since. Since yours is custom, it might not be applicable, but maybe there's something in the baseline Cobb tunes that do that. Their 911 tunes may be great and all, but everything I've seen from their 987 products leaves a lot to be desired.

my cayman keeps going into limp mode 2010 pdk 2.9 l I had it tuned from soft tonic and went back to stock file.. was going into limp mode and throwing emergency transmission run and reduced engine power and car will get locked on the gear selector I leave the car for a few hours and it will start

It isn't clear to me - did the misbehavior stop after going back to the stock file? If so that rather obviously points to a bad "tune" - and I'd be interested in what the vendor has to say about that.

file was put back to stock at dealer and problem still persists... I’m neeeding to jump the car now as I have up on the thing so I’m going to go grab a brand new agm h8 battery to throw in it and see if that changes anything but I doubt it I’ve spent 7k at Bbi trying to have them fix it but I think the tune file I uploaded may have actually damaged the ecu to a point of needing a replacement

They are like your car is fixed come get it and I drive it 30 miles away and same issue and left me on the highway

Where and what is "Bbi"? FWIW - jump starting a car, if not done super carefully can cause damage to the expensive electronic modules. Sparking when connecting the jumpers is the worst - it causes high-voltage impulses to go through the electrical system, and that can really cause trouble. Safe way to do it - use a charger to charge the battery. Or use one of the portable electronic jumper boxes that has a switch on it to turn power on to the connector once it's attached to the battery. If you must jump from car to car - it sounds counter intuitive - but turn on things like the rear-window defroster and the heated seats. These provide resistance in the circuitry that hopefully will damp out the high-voltage pulse caused by sparking. And I doubt if replacing the battery will change things, but it's a good idea since no battery is ever 100% again after being discharged enough that it won't spin the engine over. I'd suggest hooking the new battery to a charger overnight BEFORE installing it. They do have a bit of memory once put into use - and you might never get it to 100% charge again unless you do it before installing it. Good luck!

BTW - a question - do you have a Porsche diagnostics tool? (Durametric, POR2, Foxwell NT530 )? Replacing things blindly is going to become expensive fast when it's Porsche parts. I'm sure there are some codes stored in the ECU and probably the TCU that might give some direction to troubleshooting. Since any of these tools costs less than a few hours of dealer time it's actually cost-effective to simply buy one. I'd suggest the Foxwell (I have others, but the Foxwell goes on trips with me now.. it's the tool of choice for the 987 series IMHO.)

I have a 2011 BS with PDK and 280,000 miles. I called the Porsche dealer near Finksburg, Maryland where the car was from asking if they had service records for the car. They said "no, you need to bring it in" I said BS (not Boxster S either). With the VIN they should have service records. I changed the PDK oil and filter, carefully putting the exact measured amount of oil back in and it came to the specified level in the check hole. Seemed to be running ok. Week or so later, I noticed when driving, the engine temp didn't come up as it normally had. Then the CEL light came on and emergency trans run message. I replaced the temp sensor on the engine and the thermostat and it warms up properly now but I still get the trans emergency code and Durametric shows all the P0010, C418 and C401 . No known modifications to the engine, I've replaced the battery , but the codes keep coming up (back).

Your first code: P0010 Diagnostic information Solenoid hydraulic valve driver, open circuit Diagnostic conditions - Battery positive voltage 10 V ... 16 V . - Time after engine starts > 10 seconds Possible fault causes - Solenoid hydraulic valve faulty (open circuit) - Open circuit in the activation line to the solenoid hydraulic valve - Open circuit in the power supply line to the solenoid hydraulic valve - DME control module faulty Certainly will cause a loss of engine power since the variocam or variocam+ isn't going to work.. ---------------------------------- U0418 (I'm assuming this is what you read as C0418 since there is no P code 418, or 0418) Fault entry in specified control module NOTE: Internal function test completed. Diagnostic conditions The control module initially tests internal function sequences after wake-up. If they are OK, all diagnosable outputs are then tested and any faults are stored. Control module wake-up through: - event-induced CAN message - wake-up signal via wake-up line - key contact (terminal S) - "Ignition on" Possible fault causes - Control module is incorrectly coded - Periphery connected to specified control module is incorrect - Control module faulty (in most cases the cause is not the control module but incorrect coding.) Fault effects - The specified control module sends only substitute values via the CAN. - Other control modules detect these substitute values and set this fault code. Seems there is an error in the coding of some module. Did your code reader (which is?) tell you what module threw this code? And your last code C401? Can't find any 401 in the factory manual. Again - the question is - what code reader are you using, and does it define what these errors indicate?