I have a 2002 911 Turbo that I acquired 60 days ago and on Monday the check engine light came on. The car passed smog when purchased and now has 50k miles. I was near a Dealer and they read the code but since it was closing time they did not really go over the print out they gave me. The Service person at the Dealer noticed that the inside of the exhaust tips were white, both of them, indicating lean combustion.
I have a 13 page listing and there are 5 Faults. However, these Faults occurred at Operating Hour 1450 and the car is now at Hour 1650 (given in the POSIP (?) section of the listing).
The Faults are: P0300 Misfire detection [P0306 cylinder 6; P0304 cylinder 4; P0305 cylinder 5] and P0040 Oxygen sensors in front of cat. conv. switched.
So are these are old Faults which happened 200 hours ago (~6,000 miles ago) and are no longer a problem?
The first four Faults listed above give the "last state:" Operating Hours as 0.1 larger than in the "1st state".
The Fault P0040 has the same 1st state Operating Hour of 1450 but only blanks for the last state entries. Is this still a problem?
The output reads:
P0040 Oxygen sensors in front of cat.
conv. switched
intermittent
not present
Lamp off
1st state: last state:
Signal implausible Signal implausible
Frequency: 1
Clear Counter 10
Fault time: 0 s
Check Engine on: Driving Cycle 001
Check Engine off: Driving Cycle 003
Lambda value is 0.01 and 0.00 for bank 1 and 2.
ECTS: 83 in 1st state
Operat. hours counter: 1455.0
OBD II code P0040
Under the Freeze Frame information: O2 sensing is control active, both banks.
Load: 9.4 %
ECTS: 82 deg C
Oxygen sensing: 22.6 %
O2 sensing adaption: -1.6 % (negative % ok ?)
O2 sensing, bank 2: -20.4 %
O2 sen. adap., bank2 -3.2 %
RPM: 3080
Speed: 75 km/h
Fault entered by: On-board diagnosis
My wild guess is that if it is running lean then there could be a problem with the fuel supply: fuel pump, fuel filter and/or ?
Should that have thrown a Fault?
From the renntech Forum there was: motor cuts out after gas fill-up: there was a check valve on the vapor recovery line that was getting stuck open because a carbon canister on the fuel recovery system started to disintegrate (the carbon particles sat in the seats of the check valve and would not let it seat (close) properly) - reasonably easy fix.
Currently, my choices are:
1) take it back to the Dealer and let them try at it,
2) take it to an independent shop which does have cheaper labor rates and a history of racing Porsches in the 1990's, or
3) start replacing things at home.
UPDATE (May 14): I did Option 2, took it to an independent shop.
The spring connecting the dual-mass flywheel is allowing too much flex. This affects the timing and the confused computer sets the timing to zero (and this leads to a misfire?). Will post again after flywheel is replaced.
UPDATE (May 23): Replacing the Dual-Mass flywheel cured the problem. Check Engine light only came on when driving as the spring in the flywheel only affected the timing when under the load of moving on the road. Installed a single mass flywheel and had to also replace the O2 sensor before the cat on the right side in order to get the computer to reset for the light weight flywheel.
The exhaust tips are no longer the white color, they are now black and so it may have been running lean due to the timing confusion.
(The engine operating hours are at 1450 and we do not know why the POSIP (Porsche Side Impact Protection) has 200 more operating hours.)