ron.in.irvine

1997 Boxster, auto transmission, 116K miles. Drove perfectly running Boxster to the hardware store, spent a couple of bucks, and returned to find that it wouldn't start. Starter motor turned and engine turned but wouldn't fire. Instrument panel worked, headlights worked, etc. Took a couple of hours to get it transported home and found that it then started immediately. Left it alone until the next day and started it again on first key turn. Discovered that it would run for a few minutes and then stop without showing any warning lights or showing codes on my standard OBD2 tester. Just stopped running and wouldn't restart until cool. Appears to run at idle for roughly 15 minutes before stopping, a lesser time if being driven, or apparently until nearing operating temperature. Various forums suggested fuel pump, or ignition switch, or various fuses or relays. Changed fuses indicated as being part of fuel or ignition systems. Same symptoms. Changed some relays. Same symptoms. Changed electrical part of ignition switch. Same symptoms. Changed fuel pump. Same symptoms. Problem appears to be related to some component warming - but which component? Thoughts any one?

I've got the same problem on my '97 Boxster. The airbag light came on while driving a few days ago and my Durametric can't see anything but the engine, tiptronic, and alarm system status. Airbags, ABS, air conditioning, etc return a communications error message instead of status. Durametric says that the visible modules are on the K-Line 1 bus while those that don't respond are on the K-Line 2 bus. As I've never had reason to look at things on the K-Line 2 bus, I have no way of knowing if the problem is a bus or module failure or if some module or wiring issue is simply blocking bus communications. I've read that corrosion on various connectors can cause problems with airbag lights but I'm not sure where to start pulling things apart and cleaning them. Does anybody who's had this experience (airbag light on, K-Line 2 bus non-responsive) have any guidance?

Yes, I do mean that I replaced the headlight switch and relay #12. When the front foglights don't come on, the rear foglight doesn't come on either. Which sort of suggests not a ground issue as they don't share a common grounding point (so far as I can tell in the wiring diagrams). Here's how I understand the flow of electricity to the front foglights: Current distributor (80A fuse) --> Relay Term XE (off at start) --> A7 fuse --> headlight switch --> Relay Fog Light (off when high beams on) --> front fog lights. Flow to the rear foglight is exactly the same up to the headlight switch after which point it flows back to the tail light assembly (bypassing the fog light relay). Note that I've now also changed the XE relay (#9). As the foglights and the cigar lighter both come off the XE relay and the cigar lighter works, I'm guessing that the relay was fine but I changed it anyway. Which I think leaves only something between relay #9 and the A7 fuse as the failure point - and all of that stuff would seem to be within the fuse panel and/or relay panel. I do see that there is a Bridge Plug (#24) which says it has something to do with fog lights, but I don't see any mention of it on the actual wiring diagrams - and I don't know what bridge plugs are anyway. Jumpers? Fusible links? While I hesitate to think that a wire broke or a connector failed, I don't have many alternatives left to consider. Ideas?

1997 Boxster 107K miles Sometimes I can switch on my fog lights and other times I can't - that includes both the front fog lights and rear fog light. This is a recent problem and all of the other lights and electrics seem to work fine. I've replaced the fuse (#A7), relay (#12), and lightswitch and things haven't improved. I've noticed that they seem more likely to come on if the car has been sitting in the cold and less likely to come on if its been sitting in a warm place. Sometimes if they haven't come on but I've left the switch knob pulled out I'll notice that they've come on while I've been driving but they won't necessarily come on again after a re-start. After replacing the switch and discovering the lights still wouldn't come on reliably, I finally got around to looking closer and I've discovered that with the ignition switch on there is 0 voltage at the A7 fuse. Looking at the wiring diagram for the car it would seem that there's really nothing much upstream of the fuse that could cause that without also effecting other systems. Anybody know what I should be looking for?

At 80K miles my '97 Boxster is leaking ATF from the Tiptronic front seal or torque converter (or possibly both and elsewhere), is slipping/shuddering under load in 2nd and 3rd gears, and is over-revving on the 2-3 shift even under light load. The slipping, shuddering, and over-revving have been going on for a 5 or 6 thousand miles but the leakage is new. Anybody have any experience with a vendor of rebuilt Tiptronics? Specifically, a good experience? I see that Vertex Automotive in Miami (www.vertexauto.com) offers a rebuilt Tip with torque converter for $3K (plus $1K refundable core deposit). Anybody know about them? Got any other recommendations?

No, the wiring isn't as waterproof as I thought it would be and, yes, it all turned out OK. Unplugging the connector of the wiring harness (running from the control unit in the rear trunk down to the transmission) allowed a slug of water to gush out. Turns out that a good portion of the harness inside the sheathing was filled with water - apparently the waterproofing was keeping water in rather than out. Where it entered the harness I have no idea but draining it, drying everything, and cleaning the connectors restored the transmission to smooth operation.

Just as a note to those who are trying to help me, there were no problems and apparently nothing wrong before hosing the engine bay and underside of the car. I really do not believe in a coincidence strong enough to allow a transmission problem to show at the very instant the car was restarted after I washed things and jiggled an armored cable. And I'd like to think that water in no greater volume than might be splashed up into the engine bay by driving through a puddle at speed isn't to blame. Otherwise I can never trust driving this thing on a rainy day ;) Anybody know if the armored cable (rubber coated and roughly 5/8" in diameter) which runs from the passenger compartment, over the top of the engine (and I mean over the top of the intake plumbing and throttle body), and then down toward the transmission is actually the shift cable? My Bentley Service Manual does show (section 37-11) some sort of clip/retainer on the selector cable at the transmission end - could I have dislodged the clip by moving the cable back and forth? Bentley also indicates (section 37-16) that the transmission range switch (aka gear position switch aka multi-function switch) - which gives gear selection info to the Tiptronic control module is attached to the selector cable or at least to a Bowden cable which the selector cable clearly is. Here's what I'm thinking: I either diddled the adjustment/positioning/attachment of the cable by moving it around in the engine bay and/or wetting the switch has caused it to short and give wrong data to the control module. Anybody have any other thoughts?

OK, so maybe I got a bit ambitious when washing my '97 Boxster when I was changing the engine air filter. After driving 20 or so miles on a very dusty dirt road a few weeks ago, this morning I decided to check (and probably change) the engine air filter. When I pulled the engine cover there was a thick layer of very fine dust on everything. Seeing no harm in doing so, I hosed off the engine until everything looked clean and went ahead and changed the air filter. I hosed off the underside of the car to wash away whatever dust was hiding there, put everything back together, raised the top and washed the car. When I went to take it for a drive the automatic transmission didn't want to engage, finally did, and then started flashing the "4th gear" and "D" lights. Looks like limp home mode. Checking the OBD code, I see a P0735 which says that the transmission has selected the wrong gear. Not believing in coincidence, I'm thinking that I've done something wrong and can't quite figure out what because I hate to believe that a transmission can starting tossing out fault codes just from getting damp. Other than splashing around a bit of low pressure water, the only other thing I did was to move a fat rubber-coated armored cable that runs fore-and-aft over the top of the engine to one side and then back as I was cleaning things and checking the tightness of clamps on the intake system. So that armored cable was the gear selector cable? Is there some adjustment I could have screwed up but can go back and fix? Is the water a contributing factor? Anybody else have this experience and recover from it easily?

The display (LCD?) below the tach has gone dark. That's the display in the center of the instrument panel that shows MPH and air temp. And by dark, I mean that there's no orange-colored light shining through to illuminate the numbers. The other displays are fine. As the display contents are visible under bright lighting, it seems that the backlight has failed. Anybody know how to replace/repair that light? Thanks in advance.