deilenberger

Never heard of this one before. I've had a tiny persistent leak on my S since the day I got it. Until last week it had no symptom aside from a slight coolant smell in the port (drivers side in the US) front wheel well, and a very very slow loss of coolant (I went 8,000 miles from NJ to CA up the west coast and back to NJ - and never had to top it off.) It typically took a few ounces of coolant every few months. I had it into the dealer under CPO many times usually for other things, but asking them to check for it didn't turn up anything. At one point they thought it might be the heater hoses that come off the three aluminum pipes (I'd replaced the exploding plastic pipes proactively before failure, thinking this was a GOOD THING TO DO, and it might be those leaking - it wasn't), but that had no good effect. Finally - just as I was leaving for a trip to the airport 60 miles away to pick up family for the holidays - I spotted a tiny puddle of coolant as I backed out the driveway. I put it up on a friend's lift and spotted some drips from the rear corner of the belly-pan (which I marked with red-marker.) This was two days before Christmas. The dealership was closed the next day, but I emailed the service manager, who called me back on Christmas eve from his home. He arranged for me to get a new Cayenne loaner to use for my airport runs, and get the car in the day after Christmas. After lots of pressure testing and disassembly - they found a threaded plug on the back of the cooling cross-over manifold between the rear of the two cylinder heads had a drip coming off it. They ordered a new seal for it and the next day replaced it. They pressure tested it before reassembling the intake system, and found it now was sending a nice stream of coolant out instead of the weep it had before. Apparently the manifold aluminum casting had a crack in it where the plug screwed in. So - they ordered a new manifold and all the seals for the aluminum coolant pipes (since they had to be removed and replaced to install it) and all the other necessary seals - and got it back to me today (it was done last night a bit too late for me to pick it up.) Kudos to Princeton Porsche (in NJ, USA) service department for persisting in chasing down this failure, and for accommodating me during the holiday season. It wasn't easy giving the new Cayenne back, but I told them to keep an eye out for next year for one coming in off lease for me. The new one is quite a seductive vehicle and my experience with Princeton means I have a dealership I can trust and am happy with. Happy New Year all!

Tom, Tire sealants normally distribute themselves around the inside circumference of the tire opposite the tread.. centrifugal force causes that. I doubt if any would reach the bead area. You might try a real performance tire shop. I have one down here at the shore who does all my wheel/tire work, when I had a similar problem with a BMW M-Coupe rim they cleaned up the sealing surface on the rim, then used some sealant as they reinstalled the tire. Problem ended. If you want to use them - it's "The Front End Shop" in Farmingdale NJ. Good guys, good attitude and honest.

I don't understand the question. Is this replacing another headlight? Did you lose a headlight? It slides in position, then the locking mechanism locks it in. The locking mechanism can be reached using the special wrench in the trunk after removing the little roundish rubber cover in the beauty panel in the front of the engine compartment.

Dunno if the Cayenne is different from every other vehicle I've owned, I assume not. The warning light is telling you the battery isn't being charged. Why? Could be bad connections somewhere, could be the alternator is failing. Take a look at what your voltmeter says when this happens (nice that they include it!).. you want it to be near 14V when the system is charging.

You may want to check under your front carpets, and check your AC drain tube.. sounds as if there is excess moisture in your truck, and when the humidity is up it's condensing on the cold windshield. Quick way to remove it - hit the defogger button (which turns heat full up and fan full up with AC compressor on, directing the output at the windshield.)

Just curious if anyone has found any documentation on what format the data files used for the PCM 2.1 are.. Reason I'm asking - I have POI databases that I subscribe to for speed cameras and red-light cameras, plus speed traps. These are quite useful on my Garmin GPS's (they beep and flash a warning for the POIs), and it would be nice to have this capability on the built in PCM. Right now I've had to end up using my Garmin on the dash when travelling places like Washington DC (probably the greediest local for speed cameras - apparently they're funding their entire city budget using them..) and this seems rather silly when I have a built in GPS. So - anyone know the format used? There are lots of tools out there to convert from one format to another, and adding or modifying the POI data on a legitimately owned Navigation data disk does not violate copyright provisions as long as you paid for and are the owner of the original disk. (I know and totally agree with the provisions on this forum - and others - against illegal copies of intellectual property, but in this case - that isn't what's being asked.. this is to add info to a legally owned copy.) I figure probably someone in Europe or the UK has already figured this out.. so any clues would be a wonderful thing. Or perhaps they've found a way to upload them to the GPS personal location entry database..

Probably (BTDT) you're tapping the Tiptronic buttons on the steering wheel. I kept wondering why this sort of thing would happen.. until I spotted what I was doing. Don't use the spokes of the wheel to turn it..

I can report that the carpet/padding stayed dry right through hurricane Sandy. I'll be clearing out these drains again once the trees stop throwing leaves at the truck..

Is this a new truck for you? I'm also wondering why the fuse was out.. You might check under the carpeting for water. On the right side (starboard) there are some large bundles of wires that pass through the floor area. That may also be the case on the left side. And if you have access to a PIWIS it's certainly worth doing the procedure outlined above before throwing more parts at it.

I think you'll find parts of the PDF manual semi-useless. In place of photos of the parts being worked on, somehow photos from other parts of the manuals were substituted. Don't ask me how I know this.. BTW - one ebay vendor sold it as a single huge file, another ebay vendor at least split it up into sections based on the actual manual layout. Both contain the flawed phoitos.

Turn the PSM off and drive it hard for a bit..

Julian, Have you bought this manual? Their writeups on all the manuals they offer are identical, right down to the badly structured English. Is this simply a compilation of the PDFs of the factory paper manuals that float around the web - or is it actually something new and useful?

And the outcome was? (I hate it when people pose a problem, get answers, say they're going to do something to fix it and then are never seen again until the next thing breaks. It's by sharing the FIX that these forums are valuable..)

Dunno if it would apply, but on BMWs when I hear the same story - it usually means the center mounted brake light is out. On a BMW that light doesn't have it's own warning, so it borrows the side warning.. and many people don't notice if it isn't working.

Yup. Thanks for the info. Guess I've gotta look again before winter sets in. No electrical problems yet (knocking on oak-grain-formica). but it won't hurt to look. Shame that car/bike manufacturers don't spend the extra $5/vehicle it would cost them to use marine grade wiring in vulnerable spots like this. Marine grade wiring has fully tinned conductors - so the water being pulled up into the wire by capillary action can't corrode the copper conductors. I always use it when doing wiring on a car or motorcycle..

One suggestion - BEFORE removing the drain plug, make sure you can get the fill plug out. More then one person has ended up having to tow a car to a professional to get the fill plug removed after draining the differential (or transmission) and finding the fill plug was not coming out..

Ah - you posted that as I was replying..

Is it possible when you snipped the wires that they shorted together. The brown is ground (standard color on German vehicles..) I'd assume one of the other wires is switched power, and one is constant power (so you can eject a CD cartridge without having to power up everything.) If I had to guess - one of those circuits has a blown fuse. Do you know how to use a voltmeter? That's where I'd start.. see what voltages under what conditions are on those two wires - measuring to ground.

I think you might have better luck holding your cell phone so the camera lens points where the mirror is pointing, and take a series of photos tilting the phone a bit with each photo. I was able to see mine doing that. Before I replaced them I also confirmed that I still had the explody-pipes with a fiber-optic video viewer I bought from Harbor Freight. Thought that tool would get little use - but it's actually been VERY handy for a number of jobs on a number of my vehicles. Was well worth the $80 that it cost me..

Where did you get the required constant power for the GW-500? If you're using switched power for it - that is likely the cause of your problems. It takes a moment for the MOST receiver/transmitter to wake up and pass the fiber signal on, so it initially thinks there is no signal downstream from the GW500, so you'll see items error out. Having the GW-500 on continuous power keeps the MOST receiver/transmitter part powered on continuously, so there is no delay on passing the signal on. IIRC there are notes on Denison's website somewhere which also talk about what order the MOST units have to be in. I seem to recall them wanting you to put the GW500 before the amplifier in the fiber loop (but I could have that backwards..) Mine is mounted up front under the dash, and is the first MOST device in the fiber loop... works fine each and every time.

I can't say for certain, but... I'm betting that you'll need an extension microphone cable to reach to the front windshield area from the CD changer location (I mounted my GW500/BTA1500 behind the dash).. I'd be inclined to run it under the carpeting along the outside edge on the passengers side rather then risk breaking any of the clips holding the headliner in place. You can run it up the interior of the A pillar to get it up to the front/top of the windshield. If you see my thread on fixing water leaks in the interior, there are some photos showing how it might be routed (the photos are of the sunroof drain, but if you look closely, you'll see my microphone cable tie-wrapped and routed up near the drain plumbing.) You also should exercise care in not routing it over the airbags, since if one is triggered, you don't want it restrained by a piece of wire over it.

Great joy! After the P!G sitting through several torrential downpours, the under-carpet area has stayed DRY! In one lighter rain I took a look under the truck, and I can see water running out of what I assume is the sunroof drain.. in a nice stream (just about where the AC drain is..) So lesson is - 1st check the AC drain, 2nd clean and check the sunroof drains, 3rd - make the drain hole in the body plug anyway, it makes it easier to mop up (and less chance of the wiring getting soaked.) :D

I'll have to take a photo of it.. the color match to the interior gray color is perfect, so it looks as if it belongs there. Plus it's very comfy for me..

With a water cooled alternator, there are lots of extra hoses and fittings around that could be leaking. Look for the tell-tale white deposits around fittings and hose ends. A liter of coolant every 4 days is leaving evidence somewhere..

Well, we had another round of rain of biblical proportions last night (inches in an hour sort of rain..) so this AM I checked the P!G. I found the floor wet again. Not as wet as prior wetness, but for sure wet. I pried up the carpet and the foam was again wet, but it appeared my drain had worked, the wet wasn't up as high, and not as much got wet. Spent some quality time with towels wringing out the foam and drying it off again. So - it appears that heavy rain causes the leak (and perhaps the HVAC contributed..) So I started tearing things apart looking for the source. I first popped off the fuse cover and the trim next to it on the starboard side, to find: Hmm.. drips. Then I looked further and saw: More drips. They're appearing from behind the A-pillar trim piece (at the top of the photo..) The drips appeared to be travelling down the inside surface of the A-pillar inside trim. The path followed down past the fuse box and behind the right side kickpanel under the dash, right into the foam backing of the carpeting. I decided to look further upstream. To do so - I had to remove the A-pillar trim. This is actually rather easy. I had already popped off the little trim piece near the fuse box cover, and I went looking for what holds the A-pillar trim in place. Found it - one long T25 screw under the "AIRBAG" logo on the trim: After removing this screw, you can easily pull the trim out from the top down - pull it toward the center of the windshield to release some stab-clips on the back, and it then slides up and out from next to the dash. Quite easy actually (and a good time to tidy up any wiring that had been tucked behind it.) There is a side-curtain airbag there, so use a bit of caution (don't jam screwdrivers willy-nilly in behind it.) This is what's found once that trim is removed: You can see the path the drain hose takes. It's quite well protected, and there was no sign of leakage on the outside of the hose, so I suspected that up higher in the hose wasn't a problem (but decided to look anyway.) I next took the trim piece off the sunvisor mounting and two T20 screws behind it, which allows pulling the headliner corner down a bit. The actual mount stays attached to the headliner and no wiring has to be disconnected. If I could have figured out how to remove the passenger assist handle in the roof I could have pulled the headliner down even further, but as was, it came down far enough that with a Maglite LED flashlight I could see the hose all the way into the drain fitting for the sunroof drain: All looked good on the drain hose. No tears, no sign of wetness. I went up top, opening the sunroof and looking around, and found there was leaf-munge in the drain area and on the tracks of the sunroof mechanism. I used my high-pressure air-gun to clean the crap out (after using my fingers to get the big stuff out - and there was some crap blocking the drain.) It turns out, if the drain is plugged and enough water gets into the area (I did an experiment with a pitcher of water), it will overflow around the edge of the sunroof, and the headliner happily routes it right down the A pillar trim with the plastic backing of the trim keeping it flowing nicely down past the fusebox and out eventually to soak the floor. Lesson - clean sunroof drains. I blew them out, then checked again with a pitcher of water, and the water happily ran out the bottom of the truck, and none appeared along the drain line, or dribbling down the headliner. Here is the rough location of the drain as seen from up top. It's actually almost (not quite, but almost, you'll need a good Maglite to see it) impossible to see due to the wind-dam popup in the sunroof housing. While I was in the area, I cleaned up the fuzzy edge of the sunroof gasket (it had hardened munge on it) and where it meets the body (which also had hardened munge on it) in the hope that the gasket seals better. I'm awaiting the next rainstorm (doesn't look like it will be a real long wait - probably tomorrow) to see if this actually helped anything. Thanks to RFM for suggesting I check the sunroof drain. Biggest trick is getting so you can see it.