lex_gs

A good place to pick up switched power under the hood is to tie in to the heated washer outlets up by the battery. They work fine for low current loads like the LED driving lights.

Richard,

Thanks for your help. I took the CD changer out and the glass fuse checked good. So I re-installed the CD changer and tried the radio again and still got the same message. Then I removed the Bose amplifier in the spare wheel well to see if it had a fuse. I disassembled the unit to look for a fuse but found none so I reassembled it, installed it and suddenly the radio works. So I am not sure what fixed the problem. Possibly a power reset to the amp when it was disconnected and reconnected?

Last night I left the parking lights on and killed the battery in my 2003 996. This morning I did the jumper to the fuse panel, unlocked the hood and jump started the car and it runs fine. The only problem I see is now the radio does not work. It is a PCM2 with navigation, Bose amp and CD changer. The display says "System Error, Amplifier and CD changer not available" and there is no sound but the display and navigation functions work. Any idea what happened?

This is one of the common P car failures. Same problem with my panel lights. Replaced light switch and problem solved. As soon as they started acting up I replaced it since the next failure is intermittent headlights and I did not want to get stuck somewhere in the middle of the night.

I would leave it loose inside the window pillar and but away from the metal frame. Position it towards the inside of the car since the inside trim will allow the signal to pass through whereas the metal frame will not.

The length is not as important as getting the white wire out of the bundle. Once it's out of the bundle and not tightly laced in with the other wires you will see a big jump in the range. Mine went from about 4 feet at best to more than 30 feet.

Today I found an easy way to refurbish your sticky radio knobs. Remove them and wash them down with acetone. Acetone dissolves the sticky gunk and does not damage the plastic knob. You may need to use an old toothbrush to get in the grooves around the perimeter. The knobs look like new after this process.

Replace your headlight switch. A very complex and poor design that is prone to failure in many different ways. Mine went bad and the panel lights would take minutes to come on after the headlights came on.

Just wanted everyone to know it was the light switch causing delay to turn on panel lights. In many cases these threads end up with no resolution on how the problem got fixed. Everyone, please let us know how you got your problem fixed.

I have already done a search on this topic and found a few hits but can't find a solution. I have an 03 C4 cab and a few weeks ago the dash lights started to have a 15 second delay before they would turn on after the headlights were turned on. After they are on, if I turn the headlights off then back on I get a 15 second delay again. I can live with this but I am wondering if there is some other problem in the background that will get more serious.

Looks like rusty water to me. There is a lot of condensation inside your mufflers and not unusual to blow out some water when you first start the car. If the water was standing around for a few days it may start to turn rusty (orange/brown) color. I hope thats all it is.

I always let my car warm up to 180 before going above 3K RPM or going WOT. This is true with any car I drive, not only Porsche. I believe that some of the engine failures due to cracked heads and cylinder liners are due to rapid thermal expansion of a cold engine,

I agree with Loren, drop the mufflers. In fact I went a step further and removed the bumper cover and heat shields first. Then removing the mufflers is easy and with the mufflers out of the way the plugs are easy. No need to bust knuckles and raise your blood pressure to stroke level. The whole procedure is in the DIY section called "Muffler bypass pipes". My 03 C4 with the the X51 engine looks to be impossible to change plugs without dropping the mufflers. I think the X51 headers are not the same as a standard engine. If anyone has done a plug change on an X51 I'd like to hear how they did it.

Thanks for the reply. No codes yet but you may be on to something with the bad gas. It seems like the engine is running way too lean what with the hesitation and incresed mpg. I'll post again after I refill with new gas,

I have an 03 C4 cab with the X51 engine. Normally runs very smooth with no problems until I filled up with a tank of Sunoco 93 the other day. I usally run Shell premium. Now I have a hesitation when accelerating in any gear and also a very sharp surge around the 3200 mark. I understand that this is normal to get a small surge but this has become much worse. Then to add to the mystery I checked the computer mpg which is normally around 23.5 mpg and now it has jumped to 25.6 mpg. I hate to complain about good gas mileage but something is not right.

Does anyone know how the 997 OEM shifter compares to the B+M short shifter?

This is normal operation for the PSE to cut out at certain speeds. Look in the DIY articles - Mods section for a procedure to disable the cut out. It is called "Remove PSE cutout in 2 minutes". I did it to my car and it works great.

Possibly hydraulic oil from your convertible top mechanism?

I'm going to be the odd man out here and recommend the NGKs. I just installed a set from Pelican and the car runs much better. No CEL, no problems. Years ago on another car I discovered that the Bosch +4 is just a marketing gimmick and actually hurts your cars performance when switching from NGK. Since then I have never installed them again in any car I have owned. P cars will run just fine with Bosch and you can't go wrong but there is a noticeable improvement with the NGKs.

I also have the K40 on my '03 C4. Has saved me a couple of times. It has radar detectors mounted in the front under the bumper cover and in the rear in back of the left brake light module. It also has the laser jammer in the front which is a small box mounted under the front license plate with a row of LEDs facing forward. If you get a laser hit it turns on the LEDs to swamp the return signal to the laser gun. Overall a very nice system.

I finally ran the wire under the dash and then picked up switched 12 at the 4 pin telephone connector below the radio. Then later I found out that I could have picked it up in the trunck compartment at the heaters for the winshield washer nozzles which seems to be the only place you can get switched 12 in the trunk.

The DIY section has some info on changing the plugs but does not tell you that the easiest way to do this job is to remove the rear bumper cover and mufflers. See the DIY tuorial on "Muffler Bypass Pipes" for the removal procedure. Once the bumper cover and mufflers are off its a fairly routine job. Have an assortment of extensions and universals to get at the two plugs that are behind the muffler brackets. The other 4 are easy. I have a C4 with the X51 engine which I think is the same as the C4S and I don't see how it is possible to change plugs without removing bumper cover and mufflers.

I haven't actually done this but one of the other members told me you can pick up low current switched 12v at the window washer nozzle heaters. Other than that there is no switched 12V in tte front compartment that I know of.

Over the years I have tried Bosch +4 plugs in other cars and found that in every case they had lower performance than the original plugs. I just did the plugs in my 03 C4 and decided to get rid of Bosch and go with NGK. The car only has 30K miles but still had the original factory plugs so I knew it was due. I was not suprised to see the engine run much smoother, more power and especially more low speed torque. Pelican Porsche carries both the Bosch and NGK. NGKs are half the price but twice the performance.

I'm with you on buying from a private seller rather than a dealer. There are some great deals out there because of the economic problems. I found my '03 C4 cab on cars.com. Do a search and you will find 100's of cars within a 100 mile radius.