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tomnash

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Everything posted by tomnash

  1. I am about to change to a set of snow/ATR tires (P255/55R-18 Pirelli Scorpion ATR XL) on my 2011 Cayenne S before heading into snow and red rock off-road country for a few weeks. The rears are worn a bit more than the fronts. So I am inclined to to rotate the rears to the fronts keeping them on the same sides. Is there any obvious reason not to do this? (These tires have been great on previous long trips.)
  2. There really isn't room for a real spare and, as noted, a donut is useless in remote areas. Even a spare front tire won't fit in the trunk, maybe behind the passenger seat, or instead of the passenger... It is a fundamental design impossibility with large tires and a small car. Or you could have a service car follow you with a full set of spares ...
  3. Even if it fits, you will have the problem that you cannot safely drive more than 50 miles on the donut. So I find that precludes use in remote areas since it won't in most cases get you to where you would want to replace a tire. Best to use Porsche or AAA trucks to carry you to a Porsche dealer or some place TireRack can drop ship. I carry a sat phone largely for this purpose, since the cell service is likely to be thin. Also, even a donut will eat up much of your cargo capacity.
  4. Many of us in the US use Tirerack.com, which has essentially all options in stock at prices far lower than Porsche dealers. For Mexican customers they suggest Llantas: http://www.llantastires.com/ You can check to see whether Llantas will deliver to Honduras. Looks like they have a full choice. At least they could ship to someplace in far south Mexico or the Yucatan which is closer to you? I have been very happy with a set of P255/55R-18 Pirelli Scorpion ATR XL, which I use as an alternate set for rough off road situations that you might be encountering. I think the only reason they are not on Porsche's recommended list is that the top speed rating is "only" 130 MPH. Probably that is not an issue for you.
  5. Loren, where can we find those tips? If this was to be a link, it is missing. I tried a search...
  6. There is usually a second sticker that indicates a lower PSI is acceptable (desirable?) for half loaded conditions (as defined in the manual). I suspect this improves handling marginally, as suggested in PAULSPEED's post where PSIs are reduced on the track.
  7. Thinking about this some more, I believe it is correct that if you really corner hard consistently and frequently, as on a track, your tire wear will be more even than for normal street driving. The whole point of the negative camber, if I understand correctly, is to get more rubber flat onto the pavement during hard cornering. The camber compensates for the roll of the car. On the street dominated by straight ahead driving the negative camber puts more force on the insides, wearing them faster. If used for continuous cornering on a track, the tires may wear quicker but the wear will be more even. Correct me if I have this wrong.
  8. Not in California!!! I sold a Honda (not a Porsche) via Craig's List with very good experience. I talked with the buyer over the phone for long enough to see what kind of person he was. We went down to a branch of his bank and got a certified check. Everyone was happy (and the cash helped out on a new Cayenne S).
  9. Given the gazillion useless warnings in the Porsche (and other car) manuals, one very useful warning that Porsche should give to new owners is exactly about this issue. The camber is set up negative for good handling, but this results in much more rapid wear on the inside. This is not intuitively obvious to a new owner! So, an innocent owner who conscientiously checks the tread on the outside and center where it is easily visible, can have severe wear on the inside and a surprise blow out. Exactly this happened to me at a particularly remote (cellphone dead) location in central California, a 3 hour tow to Bakersfield, on my first set of tires 4 years ago. Check the wear on the inside of the rears!
  10. No issue detected on a 2011 Cayenne S. Lift the break and smoothly press the accelerator. I don't think I would try to drag race someone with the engine off...
  11. An ordinary spade plug works just fine. I never found a ground in the fuse box, but there are plenty of screws on grounded metal in the vicinity which you can use to stick a connector or wire under.
  12. I had a chance to look at a 2011 manual. It does not explicitly address the "crawling" issue but it discusses off-road for several pages, including discussions of situations where very low speed crossing of obstacles is required. It would seem that pretty much anything I might want to do is possible. (No, I am not planning on taking a Cayenne on the Rubicon trail). But there is no explicit statement and I still am curious how the new Cayennes compare to previous models with a low range transfer case. On a related topic, rather interesting in the manual was the first bullet under "Rules for off-road driving": "Ensure vehicle is equipped with approved all-terrain tires." This would be hard to do since Porsche has not made available nor approved any all-terrain tires. In the US all-season tires come standard -- that's not the same as all-terrain. As has been discussed on earlier threads, it is virtually impossible to find all-terrain tires for Cayennes. The issue on the rather rocky roads one might find out here in the western US is punctures. I guess the solution is to carry a second real spare in addition to the inflatable. Also interesting, if I am reading the German Cayenne brochure correctly, in Germany the standard tire is a summer performance tire and an all season tire is available as a no cost option. Just the reverse of the US. Priority goes to over 150 mph autobahn driving... The flip side of these cars being so broadly excellent, from high performance track to rather extreme over-road, is that the manufacturer seems to be a bit schizophrenic about marketing them and about how to instruct its customers.
  13. I am not holding out much hope if the Canadian dealers are as well informed (ahem!) as in the US. I doubt the lowering of the ratio of the lowest gear is more than 20% or so and that can't compensate directly for not having a 1:2 transfer case. On the other hand the new Tiptronics seems to be addressing low speed with a special pump to make sure the fluid pressure is high enough at low RPMs. One might hope that the viscous coupling could allow a very low speed crawl with enough torque to get over rocks or whatever. So, i guess my real question is what does the new 2011 manual have to say about this. BTW, it is really a shame that these very off-road capable machines are mostly used to shuffle around the suburbs.
  14. Considering a 2011 Cayenne purchase. I am trying to understand how the new lower gear (Tip 8 speed) in the 2011 Cayenne (and S) compensates for the elimination of a low range transfer case. Are the low gear ratios (and transfer ratios) available anywhere for the 2010 and 2011 models so I can compare. A related question: when might the 2011 Cayenne user manual become available here? We are not planning on using the Cayenne like a Wrangler --- on the other hand we do go out in the desert and there are times when being able to crawl can really help (and not beat up tires, etc.) So I am trying to understand what the changes imply. Thanks for any info.
  15. ...and maybe prices will drop 10% in the USA since the € is so low. ;) When might we expect the 2011 documents available on this site?
  16. It provides the time (in terms of engine-hours) of the latest incident for each ignition range. It also provides the present time in engine-hours so you can get a pretty good idea for the latest incident(s) of how long ago the problem occurred. This is what I get for Durametric readouts and the dealers can also give you this information.
  17. No, I am afraid this is not correct. The mapping company (Navteq) provides just the map data. Control over what roads are displayed (and what options the driver has) is entirely the responsibility of the Porsche software, which is not developed my Navteq. I don't know who Porsche has contracted to develop this (lousy) software, but Navteq assured me it is not them.
  18. The most serious flaw in the navigation system, at least in the USA, is the inability to select the level of roads that are made invisible to avoid clutter at any given scale. In rural and remote situations (deserts, mountains, coastal California, etc.) there are many wonderful Porsche class roads that are only visible on extremely small scales so you can only see only a mile or so of them. In these situations, there are no other (or few) roads for many miles around and there would be no clutter if these roads were possible to make visible on larger scales. It is extremely frustrating not to be able to look ahead to see where bends and possible turn-offs will be coming. The most egregious example of this is the Pacific Coastal road (rte 1) which become invisible at scales larger than 0.3 mi (if my memory is correct). I am sure the internals of the software has a parameter that controls what level of road is visible at any scale. It would not take a huge effort to make this available for driver adjustment, either via a knob or or a menu choice. I have brought this up with Porsche and I don't think they get it. Maybe your letter could address this issue also. I had a few minutes playing with the nav system in the new 997-2 and I believe it is somewhat better in that some of these roads are visible at slightly larger scales, but I could find no control of the level of road made visible available to the driver. Perhaps this problem is not so serious in Europe where small roads are in cities and villages and well defined, but here we have small roads that go on for 100s of miles. I love my 997 C4Cab and can seriously find no other flaws in its engineering, but this issue (and the clunkiness of the whole PCM interface) is a real embarrassment for Porsche in my book.
  19. Not too fearlessly, I hope. Even with PSM your stopping distance in the snow when hitting the brakes hard will be much much longer than on the dry. So watch those spin-outs of cars right in front of you who don't have PSM...
  20. I would think snow is exactly where you want PSM to be there to save your a**. Unless you drive on public roads like you are on a track you will have a very hard time getting the PSM to fire on a dry road. I've never been able to do it on a dry road -- or (I may be embarrassed to admit) even in an autocross. Partly that's because I have a C4 and it just doesn't want to let go. Maybe once my PSM actually did fire on some wet leaves on a winding narrow road in the coastal mountains, but I was thinking recovery and didn't have time to look at the instruments to see if the PSM light went on. We don't have snow around here-- I would love to try the PSM on snow. You might find some big snow covered parking lot when it is empty on a Sunday morning and see what happens with and without PSM. Now that would be fun...
  21. The issue (at least in California and I believe in other states also) is whether the front of your car had crossed the line defining the intersection when the light was yellow. If there is any doubt about this you should win as it has to be established beyond a reasonable doubt that you entered the intersection on the red. If the cop was not present when you entered the intersection his testimony as to this fact is hearsay (obtained from the "witness" and other driver) and not relevant toward establishing your guilt. So then the question is whether the "witness" is credible and/or biased and whether (s)he is absolutely sure you had crossed the line on the red -- and is in fact present to testify. Unless they are lying, I do not see how they could claim under oath that they are absolutely sure you crossed the line on the red. Does the passenger make a habit of watching other cars and the state of the light when someone else is driving? Was the driver looking at the light or at you? Were they chatting? Since he hit you, it suggests he wasn't looking at you ... and so forth. Your clean record is also a big help. I would go for it and contest. Winning this case will also impact the question of fault in the accident claims and affect your insurance costs in the future. PS: I ain't no lawyer... and so this is not legal advice.... and usable at your own risk, etc...
  22. A partial answer to the question I raised in the original post: I checked the Bi-Xenon lights on my 2007 C4Cab and see that the low beams stay on when the high beams are turned on. So I would guess that is the same on the new cars with Dynamic Cornering Lights and while the high beams may remain fixed straight forward the low beams would swivel on a turn. It would take a test drive to learn how effective this is on the kind of roads for which I think this would be useful. Hopefully, someone will test this and report here someday soon.
  23. The type of road I was talking about was remote, dark, and very lightly travelled on the Northern California coast, some of it on cliffs. I am always able to see that traffic is coming by their lights on the trees or hillside and dim in time. (No powerlines...) As far as I can recollect I have never failed to dim, even on a curve. I suspect you are right about the reasoning why the Dynamic Cornering Lights only working on dims, but I think it is a shame because when dimmed I don't see this option as helping much -- and it could be really useful for spotting deer, cows, rocks or other obstructions - in time - on a curve with brights on. On a lighted street in an urban area, I can't see this feature as having much value.
  24. Porsche literature seems to suggest that the dynamic cornering lights option only moves the low beam. Is this correct? Driving my 2007 C4Cab tonight on a narrow twisty dark road, I was really wanting the bright line to swivel. If in fact the new option only applies to the low beam, why was this done?
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