WilliamsF1

Mine is a TipTronic, but I am curious to the clutch problem. I do hear a pretty loud click every single time I turn the key. Now it works, but I am taking Lorens advice and having the battery tested, if there is the slightest doubt about the battery I will change it in a instant it's easily a few years old and with winter coming along I guess its one of those things you might as well fix. But I still doubt its the battery... when I started the car after having unhooked the battery it just started without any problems at all no dimming lights! And I dont think it's the ignition switch either because before I unhooked the battery I wiggled the key to the extent I was afraid I might break something ;) I read about a fuel pump sensor problem that caused the car not to start and it involved unhooking the battery to reset it ?

Hi' Yesterday when I wanted to start my Boxster 98' TipTronic I experienced a pretty wierd problem. The car didnt even try to start, no engine sound or nothing. Just a small click sound from under the car. I let it relax over night and tried again this morning, nothing had changed. I tried jump-starting the car without luck. I thought it might be the ignition switch so I wiggled the car a lot, again no luck. Then in the end I tried unhooking the battery and immediately the car just started without any problems. What sort of problem could this be ? The battery has a status indicator lamp on the actual battery which is green, but my guess so far is a sick battery or some alarm/anti-theft mechanism that locked the car. Please - any help here is very welcome. INFO: I had a cracked coolant tank where a lot of coolant splashed onto the wires in the back compartment, but it was cleaned up pretty good and it is now 3-4 months ago.

I recently had this damage aswell - and the mechanic only changed the plastic tube part. Should I have replaced the whole AOS ?

You are very right but... but within 2 months I have however had a cracked compression container, broken water pump, oil problem and right now I have a servo-motor that is somehow causing problems if I drive the car for more than a few hours - the steering begins to feel like there is sand in the steering wheel! Most of these problems would have been pretty big if I had not noticed them and had them solved. This has made me expect the next problem to be around the next corner. This is of course stupid because it makes me enjoy the car a lot less. It is my first car and therefore also my first Porsche. Maybe I should have owned some oooold cars first. But I will take your advice, thanks Glyn!

what is a 'bad ballast' ? I would like to try to change the bulbs, but I have never opened up this xenon type lamp and when I bought the lamps from new there was no instructions so I wouldn't know how to 'do this' :( I guess I have to take it to a mechanic and he can try to change the bulb.

I noticed today when I turn on the car it 'tries' to light up for a short while (less than a second) in a much darker yellowish color and then the light goes out. Could it be a fuse, the right headlamp works just fine? Any tips or suggestions to where I can get a replacement bulb for this ? I have searched the forum without luck. I am not sure is the upper part the xenon or the halogen part ? What part is this:

Hi, A little update for anybody interrested. I took out a little coolant in a very scientific solution including a straw, a glas and me tasting a bit of Coolant. Here is how it looks in the glas: And here is how it looks when I add the flashlight to the top of the glas: So I guess the conclusion is that PINK coolant is actually green when you put light to it. The green color in my coolant tank is however much darker and that is what got me worried in the first place. Thank you for your help and suggestions !

Thank you for the thorough answer !! I recently Exchanged both water pump and coolant reservoir so it is almost new and looks like clear plastic to me ! If I put the flashlight on top of the tank it looks like it is CLEAR pink color from the measure bar. but if I look from the top the place where the coolant is 'deepest' it looks Green. and this is what confused me a lot and got me fearing that it had mixed with oil or another dirty substance somehow. However when I try to sample the coolant all I get is the pink color and I dont have any oily mixture in the water. So my theory is that pink coolant has a dark green shade in the tank - could someone please check theirs, I only have one car :) Secondly maybe its the dark light in the parking garage and the fact that I used a flash light. Really I am just a amateur but the color just looked wrong from what I was expecting from a completely pink substance.

Thank you for your response - I know I might be overreacting but for a short while I was sure my boxster was dead. Do you know if pink coolant has a greenish color when you look down the tank ? I must say my theory is the same as yours and even when I stirred the coolant I could not get these circular globs, but then again I know nothing about coolant and oil so maybe there was too much oil. I would really appreciate if anyone know more about this :)

Argh... It has been nothing but trouble for me :) FYI: I am a super-newbie when it comes to cars. I have just had so many problems with my Boxster within a short period of time I am beginning to expect the worst everytime I notice a new thing. Today I checked my coolant - the levels were fine but I was a bit scared because the coolant looked like it had a darkgreenlayer on top of the coolant :o - Well I checked again, maybe not exactly on top of the coolant but more like the pink coolant had a deep-greenish color in the depth of the tank. near the edges of the tank the color appeared more pink. Is this the normal color of pink coolant when you look from the top of the container to the bottom or have my coolant mixed with something ?? I carefully with a 100% clean white polish cloth dipped just the tip of it 1-2 cm of the cloth and the color was 1000% pink, no brow/greenish colors at all. I tried to stir it carefully with a clean plastic 'stick' to see if it was oil and water if they would somehow mix or make a oily pattern on top of the water. that did not happen there was no gunk or oil stains or anything. BTW the car was not 1000% cold when I checked this, it was perhaps 40-50 celcious at least the coolant felt a bit hot. Am I overreacting or have I got the dreaded intermix ? Please help :)

Hi forum, I noticed today my left headlamp was not working like it should. I upgraded to xenon headlamps about 1 month ago so it is pretty 'new' headlamps. The right lamp is working just fine :) My left xenon headlamp only has light in half the headlamp. The upper oval lamp part is out and doesn't come on regardless of how I adjust my light settings (fog, long light ect.). What could cause this ? A fuse or do I need a complete lamp replacement to fix this ? Kind regards Morten

It is great - before I the PCM16bit I got a Garmin 350 unit because I thought I might need that to help the PCM, but after the upgrade I am now selling the Garmin. I think for a 'old unit' it is pretty fast at recalculating routes and even though it is not touch screen it is still pretty fast to use. Worst part compared to Garmin is that you cannot search a street unless you have written a City first. Follow this link: http://www.navicd24.de/shop/catalog/index....Path/91_118_588 You are in the Porsche section for PCM1 16Bit. I bought the Europe package and you get it in a nice little leather package and it is very professionally packaged. If you want to find the section yourself. Please go to the fronpage: http://www.navicd24.de/ Choose Navigations CDs (right side) -> Porsche (right side) -> PCM 1 (middle) -> choose maps ! Let me know how it goes ... also if you have a PDF version of the 16Bit manual in English I would like that, I only have german manuals for the 8Bit version.

please post some before and after pictures :)

Hi Forum, I have spend quite a lot time investigating different navigation upgrades for my 986. I noticed there was not a lot information about this online. I have both looked into aftermarket navigation units like the beautiful Pioneer but also a Porsche upgrade. PCM2 is not an option because it requires that the car is MOST optic cabled. I wanted to keep both my integrated phone system, my aircon, cd-changer and car-computer. Also I didn't want to mess too much with the interior design, I have seen some pretty cool Pioneer integrations but also quite a few where I though it looked 'out of its element'. I choose to get a PCM1 16Bit Navigation reader and supplied it with the 2007 / 2008 NAVTEQ (for Opel cars) CDs for Europe. The result is pretty fantastic. The unit is faster than my old 8-Bit (zooming and calculating) and the map coverage of the smallest roads in these 2007 / 2008 maps is great, its all I hoped for, at least as detailed as my new 2007 Garmin (Navteq) unit as far as I have been able to tell. I calculated a route from Copenhagen to Milano in less than a minute. My only complaint is the actual startup time of the navigation unit. It takes a minute or two to get it started, and the menus are not at all very Mac OS X intuitive, but simple - I guess you get used to it... The install of the new unit is very easy - you only change the navigation cd reader - it's 2 plugs on the back of the unit. I got a used 16 Bit reader from Porsch Apart (very friendly) and I bought the maps from NaviShop24.de (friendly aswell but a bit slow and they hardly speak english). Total cost was about 700 £ which is more expensive than a stand-a-lone Garmin unit but cheaper than what Porsche asks for their 16Bit package with 2004 maps which I have heard should be pretty useless and I asked both in Germany in Denmark and Porsche would not sell the 16Bit reader as a stand alone unit but they said it was a package. Posting pictures is useless but if anyone would like for me to check out a address somewhere in Europe to see if it is included I can do that :) Just for info any 16Bit reader can use the 2007 / 2008 cd's. It only requires a 2002 Porsche CD, this will have the required software update and after that you can use the Opel CD's. The way to tell if you have a 16Bit unit is to look on the back of the navigation cd reader if you serial ends with .03 to .12 it's a 16bit. .00, .01 and .02 is 8Bit.

regarding power steering fluid - is there a specific term ? I called Porsche in Milano and they did NOT speak english... 5. times they reached the conclusion that I had to change oil and when I in sounds tried to describe the sound the steering wheel made they became VERY quite in the phone... I think they were laughing pretty hard ! Is it normal that it uses some power steering fluid over time or is there a leak I should find ? I have to get it pressure tested... I hope it's just another leak and not a crack in the engine. Thanks Rodger, I am leaving for the Porsche mechanic tomorrow so your advice came just in time!! You wouldnt happen to speak Italian, now that would be helpful ;) ?