Can this really be the case...& so it continues...

Okay, so I received my car back late on Monday last week from the OPC after 8 1/2 weeks away. Less than 5 days later my car is once again needing to be recovered back to the OPC. My plan over the past weekend and this comming weekend was to take the car for a couple of away weekends with my girlfriend... as such I thought it prudent to try and rack up a few km's during the week around home before taking it away. So on Saturday my girlfriend and I headed out of town to our detination and for all intents and purposes the car seemed to behave fine. As I arrived at our destination (3 hours away) and traveling down the main dual carriage way in the centre of town I needed to stop at the lights. I stoped in D with the foot brake applied and after about 20 seconds or so put the car in N while still waiting. A few seconds later the ABS & PSM lights came on with a warning to drive to service. I drove off parked up, turned the ignition off, restarted the car and the lights remained off. My hotel was only 500m further down the road so having arrived I called the OPC who did the work. Soon after I took the car for a short drive perhaps less than 6km and funnily stopped at the same set of lights and sure enough after about 25 seconds or so and the car in Neutral the ABS and PSM lights came on and the same warning about driving to service. Unable to contact the OPC anymore, I called the Porsche Roadside Assist service for their advice. They organized to send a Roadside assist person around who arrived within 30 min. He did the basic checks he could, brake fluid level, etc. I then took the chap out for a short slow drive of about 6km trying to replicate the fault. I was unable to replicate the fault while driving although to be fair given the traffic I didn't have much opportunity to stop. So upon arriving back at the hotel I stopped with the foot brake on and after about 20 seconds put it into neutral and this time a few seconds later the Check Engine light came on with a warning to drive to service. At this point in time I kinda just put my hands up in frustration and indicated I was no longer happy to drive the car. The Roadside Assist chap came to the same conclusion and indicated he wouldn't be happy to drive it either, at which point in time in talking to Porsche Roadside Assist it was agreed the vehicle would be recovered. The car (996 Turbo) will be arriving back at the OPC later this week, but was just wondering if anyone had some thoughts what this might be. Remembering that on the recent repair the Engine was out and the front suspension removed to replace the Top Hats. Cheers Kiwi

No thoughts on the cause I'm afraid. I'm merely posting to offfer you my sympathy FWIW. Really frustrating - I feel for you.

Sorry to hear your woes. You must be really tearing your hair out. Did the roadside assistance man read out any fault codes?

Can't help but can only offer condolences for all the issues you have had lately. I know you are a few miles away (11,500ish) but if ever passing this way a Chavley Tapas would put a smile on your face. :thumbs:

Although a really nice and helpful chap and organised by the Porsche Roadside Assist service, he wasn't a porsche man and didn't/wasn't able to read any codes.

I feel your pain :sad: I went though a whole series of breakdowns costing in excess of £10000 in <3000miles.. Hopefully if your car is telling you something is wrong, then it will also know what the problem is :dont know: Have you thought about investing in a durametirc cable? What did you do in the end (about the water leaks), did you replace all the glued in bits?

Yes took the conservative approach and replaced all the remaining 3 coolant housings (so 4 in total)... haven't seen the bill yet as I only had the car back less than 5 days.

You have to be suspicious about what your OPC has done, If the front suspension has been off, maybe they knocked an ABS sensor. I'm feeling positive about this one.... It's a simple fix and your OPC will do it as a good will gesture

My immediate thought was this... but would it create the Check Engine fault aswell? They are eluding to a fault in the area of the engine air flow sensor or intake system... apparantly something about air ingestion calculations vs torque... but until they get the car back this can't be confirmed.

Well it's been an interesting past few days. At first the OPC thought it was just an anomaly as they couldn't recreate the fault. Thinking it might relate around the MAF they cleaned it and the service manager took it home for the night to give it a long run. About 50km. It drove perfectly but sitting in his driveway foot on brake in neutral for 2 min it thru up the PSM and ABS fault again. He was able to create it the following day after driving back to the workshop and then at will once he knew how. Although the MAF tested out okay he did say it faulted once while connected to the computer which led strongly to the MAF. Now the only thing was that they grabbed another MAF off a 997 which was identical, swapped the around and neither car faulted. As I said to him the PSM, ABS and CEL was never present prior to the work they just carried out. Oh and now just to make things more exciting while they had both my Turbo and the 997 idling on test, my car split a coolant pipe and again dumped all it's coolant over the ground. This time it was a small flexible pipe, apparently one of the only ones they didn't replace. I'm a little frustrated as I did tell them to replace all the coolant pipes around the engine that were unreachable or at all suspect, especially given it's only a cheap 25 pound pipe and in the context of the repair it was minimal. On the brightside however it hasn't damped our spirits to much as I managed to find my parents a lovely seal grey 02 turbo with full carbon interior. Painted front spoiler and those aftermarket techart side air intake splitters. It's a gorgous car, drives like a dream, not a rattle and more importantly when I feel lonely without mine I can skip over to their garage and get a smile from theirs...

...you deserve a medal for sticking with this man! Hope you get your car back soon and enjoy the up and coming summer months down under without faults.

Agree entirley, then you will have to build up your "trusting " the car before you can relax and enjoy it. :thumb: