Greetings all!
A couple of weeks ago I purchased my first Porsche, a 2006
Boxster S
in Midnight Blue with 60K miles.
A family friend finally decided to part with her, but not before letting the car sit under a tree for 3 years. Towards the beginning of the pandemic the previous owner stopped driving it and after the battery completely died, it remained untouched.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. We towed it without being able to open it. After removing the wheel arch liner and pulling the front compartment manual release, I was able to swap the battery and finally open the car.
Potentially a mistake I made was trying to run the car before I drained all the old gas. The car ran 10-15 minutes from the driveway to the garage, while being detailed and all that.
After I drained all but the last one forth of the gas tank I filled her up with
Chevron
gas and a bottle of injector cleaner. Other maintenance I completed was changing the oil and
spark plugs
.
Since the battery was dead, it wasn't until the monitors finally reset that I got a CEL.
The dreaded P0421 code. After looking at many threads on this forum, I changed both pre and post cat oxygen sensors from bank 1 to bank 2. After clearing the code and driving around, the code came back, still on the bank 1.
Additional information, the car doesn't idle roughly and it even goes into closed loop after idling for a couple of minutes.
Further reading about the potential cause of this CEL code has given me a couple of options on what I should do next.
As soon as weather allows I will try to drive the car further and for longer than before. I believe in total I've only driven 150 miles, all highway at moderate speeds. Perhaps pushing the car harder will lead to a positive change with the
catalytic converter
and other components.
One thing I wanted to ask about was what temperature the catalytic converters on these cars should be. My neighbor who has been helping me diagnose was saying that catalytic converters should be somewhere in the 600F range when operating correctly. Is that accurate for these cars? I used an inferred thermometer and was only able to get reading of 400F. The bank 2 pre-
catalytic converter
temperate was anywhere between 370-380F and after the cat it would read 400F while on the bank 1 side, the temperate was actually dropping, making me concerned about the health of the bank 1
catalytic converter
. Bank 1 pre cat was 400F and post was 390F. Should I be concerned about the pre-cat temperate difference between bank 1 and bank 2? What of the temperate drop after bank 1 cat?
One theory my neighbor has is that one of the injectors in bank 1 is sticking open for too long and the extra richness is not allowing the bank 1 converter to get as hot as it should. Is that likely?
Do you all think spirited driving might shake things up for the better? How damaging could the old gas have been for the
catalytic converter
, injectors?
Thanks! Any help would be greatly appreciated. I want to get this puppy smogged and have this all behind me!
