Hi all! I’m having a problem with my 2007
Boxster Base
’s convertible top and was hoping someone who might’ve had this same issue could help me out. The sides on my convertible top were not fitting in correctly so my dad and I put some new elastic on the passenger side to help the rubber sides fit in. The first time it still didn’t fit in all the way so we tightened the elastic a little bit and tried it again. This time it worked and so we closed and opened the top a few times to make sure it was all good before moving to the driver side. When testing the top while opening it sometimes the opening process would stop for a few seconds and then continue on only to stop again a few seconds later and then continue again. Once it was fully closed I was still getting a message “Convertible top not in limit posit.” After opening and closing it a few times with this issue it just completely stopped a few inches from being closed. the top would no longer move at all when the switch was pressed in either direction. When pressing the switch the only sound I hear is a clicking coming from the fuse box. The top doesn’t make any movement or sound. After doing some research we checked the ball joints beneath the top and found that the passenger side ball joint was disconnected but not broken we reattached it and went to test the top but nothing changed. A big problem is the top is a few inches from being closed and there’s too much resistance when pulling it closed to close it fully and the windows won’t go all the way up because the top isn’t fully down or up and so I can’t really drive the car. If anyone has any suggestions on what we should check or do please let me know. Thanks.
Quick question - the end fittings (ball-joint) receiver - on the lift mechanism - plastic or metal?
The reason I asking - it shouldn't pop off. That would take a lot of force for that to happen, and is probably the reason the original ones are plastic. Sacrificial to protect the gearbox that's driving it. If metal ones were used there is a chance the gears in the gearboxes are now stripped. Replacements are available on eBay.
I believe the owners manual has instructions on how to disconnect the motorized mechanism so you can manually close it by hand - or look for the same on Google:
Good luck - let us know how it works out..
Thanks for the help! This evening we got it fixed Al’s I’ll explain everything in case anyone in the future with a similar problem is reading this.
After we found the ball socket arm detached we thought that was the whole issue but while we were fixing it things didn’t really add up. If the problem was the ball joint coming loose why were not hearing any sound or seeing any movement at all when pushing the button to open or close the top? After fixing the ball joint it did nothing and so we realized for sure that was not the problem.
Our
next
thought was that possibly one of the convertible top transmissions was broken so we detached the transmission cables from the top’s electric motor and used a cordless drill to spin the cable and the top started raising slowly. It worked on both sides and so we knew the transmissions were probably fine. When pressing the button to open or close the top the gauge cluster should show the message closing top or opening top so the switch for sure worked and the car knew that you were trying to open the top but it wasn’t actually doing it for some reason. That meant that somewhere between the switch and the transmission something was going wrong and the first logical thought would be the electric motor that drives the transmission.
We tested this by having one person in the car operating the switch and one person leaning
next
to the electric motor and when the switch was pressed there would be no reaction from the motor. We decided to go ahead and buy a new motor and see if that fixed the problem. I was a little wary as a new one is $230 and I had not found a single thing online about a
Porsche Boxster
motor failing so I was definitely skeptical that the motor had failed but we ordered one anyway. Best case scenario it was the motor that was broken and the car is fixed or worst case scenario the motor wasn’t the thing that’s broken but I have a new convertible top motor.
I ended up ordering this motor a new motor from partsgeek for $232 and payed an extra about $35 for two day shipping. The motor arrived today and we installed it.
The installation process was pretty easy. First we used the cordless drill to raise the back clamshell piece high enough to remove the electric motor. We measured with a tape measurer on each side of the car to make sure that the clamshell was level. We then removed the motor which was fairly straightforward, just removing some nuts and screws and unplugging some wires. The only hiccup we had when installing the new motor was we were not able to remove the old electric motor wire from a plastic
plug
piece. You can still
plug
the wires in without the piece but it’d be nice to have the piece on there like
Porsche
designed.
I found the
plug
was a
BMW
part and used the part number on the piece to find one from a wrecked
BMW
and just ordered a new one and I’ll install it when it gets here.
As soon as we plugged the the motor and transmission wires back in I turned the car an and hit the switch and it worked perfectly. The windows went back up and there were absolutely no warning lights on the gauge cluster. The top is completely silent now as opposed to the pretty loud whirring from before and the top opens and closes faster.
I am still not sure why the ball joint popped out of its socket and if that had to do with the electric motor failure, it had the original plastic pieces and it wasn’t broken so I’m not sure how or why it happened. That aside the car works great and I can finally drive it again, I had to go to the store after fixing it so I made sure to go the long way!!
