dphil66

Porsche ARE designed to be driven year-round. They truly are the "everyday supercar". I drive my '99 996 Carrera 4 all year, and my girlfriend drives her 944 all year. Definitely get snow tires. Not 'all-season' tires, but SNOW tires.

Here are some things to consider with driving any car in the winter:

- Beware of hidden potholes that can bend your wheels

- If you have not purchased snow tires on separate wheels (yet), I would recommend (for the 996) getting the 17x7 and 17x9 wheels instead of the 18s. The wider 18-inch rims make the rears more like snowshoes that stay up on top of the snow instead of digging down deep into it. Our 944 with narrow snow wheels/tires does better in the snow than the AWD, PSM C4 because of this.

- Start driving right after you start the car. This lets the entire drivetrain warm up at the same time. If you start the car and let it idle, you're putting excess wear on your catalytic converters and the transmission and everything else are still cold.

- Your LCD screen will not come up to full illumination until the car is a little warmer. The PCM manual for my nav system says the same thing, it is normal.

- Don't force it into gear, just apply gentle pressure until it goes into gear. Ripping on a cold transmission can wear out your synchros

- Be cautious of how much throttle you apply. This is not much of a concern if your car has PSM, but if not, be careful. Even the right tires can let you do a 180 in a heartbeat on icy roads

- The body of your Porsche is galvanized steel and aluminum. It is virtually impervious to rust.

- Take it out to a big open parking lot and spend a half hour doing donuts. If for nothing other than the fun factor...

Best wishes,

Dan

Dude! You must get one of these. I can barely live without my Model 26:

https://www.ladders.com/index.asp

Samir,

I used to have an Audi A6 with HomeLink, and a "rolling-code" type garage door opener. The procedure is the same as for what you're describing.

"Rolling code" means that every time you push the button on the remote a different coded signal is sent out to the opener. This is a higher security design of garage door openers than the old dip-switch type, where your neighbor's opener might have the same code and your door would open whenever he opened his. I've actually experienced that with an older opener.

With the "rolling code" type, the garage door opener mechanism / controller actually has a "learning" mode, so that if you lose your remote control, you can buy a new one, and then "train" your garage door opener to recognize the new remote.

This is exactly what you need to do with HomeLink. When you program the HomeLink in the car, all you're really doing is telling your HomeLink what signal to shoot out at the garage door opener. You're basically teaching HomeLink in your car to act just like your remote control.

But once you've done that, your garage door opener mechanism in the garage sees HomeLink as a new and different remote control. Thus, you have to "teach" your garage door opener to recognize the signal coming from your car's HomeLink transmitter.

So, first program your car's HomeLink as you've done. Then, get up on a ladder in your garage, unscrew the light cover if you need to, and there should be a button that you push that puts your garage door opener in "learning" mode. (On mine, all I have to do is push the button once, and it stays in learning mode for like 120 seconds or something. This give me time to get back into the car, and press the HomeLink buttons until the opener works. Check with your opener's manual to be sure.)

Once you've pushed the button on the opener, come down off the ladder, get into your car, and push the HomeLink button (and maybe hold it for a second or two.) If your opener still doesn't operate, push the HomeLink button again. If still nothing, try it a third time. Maybe a fourth. My opener would always recognize my Audi's HomeLink signal and start rolling the door up and down on the second or third push of the programmed HomeLink button once the opener itself was in learning mode.

Hope this helps,

Dan

Poppycock! Pish posh! Nonsense! A car running better when it's warmed up? Never heard of such a thing...

Seriously though...what exactly do you mean by 'not running well'? If you mean the transmission is hard to get in gear, the idle is lumpier than usual, you hear extra helpings of creaks, groans, and rattles...then that's perfectly normal for any car. Especially my girlfriend's early '85 944. That car REALLY hates the cold weather by comparison, but when she's warmed up, she behaves like a good girl.

I have a '99 Carrera 4, and we both drive our cars in the winter. We both have second sets of wheels with snow tires mounted to them. She adds 120 lbs of kitty litter to her cargo area, my car is left as it. And how cold is cold? Today on my way to my folks' house, the outside temp reading was 12 degrees F. Since we just had several inches of snow, I can't say whether the engine really feels much peppier with the super-cold air because I can't really open it up in these conditions. But definitely, the car works better once it's warmed up.

On the other hand, neither of our cars seem to run any different engine-wise in the super-cold weather. The idle kicks up like the computer tells it to for a longer period of time, and the idle may be slightly bumpier (barely perceptible, really), but otherwise, they work like they're supposed to.

I don't know how long it takes for the 911's idle to drop down to 'normal' after first starting it in the cold, because I always start driving almost immediately after starting the car. This way, the entire engine/transmission/chassis warms up together, and this also places less wear/stress on the catalytic converters.

By the way, despite all-wheel-drive, PSM, and the engine in the back, ye olde low-tech (not even ABS!) 944 is the better-handling winter car, mainly because of the skinnier tires and high polar moment of inertia. It's really quite the snowmobile.

I just had an alignment done on my '99 C4 at the dealership, and they give me a nice little spec sheet showing what all the alignment measurements were before and after the alignment procedure.

One thing I noticed is the spec on the rear wheel camber is -55 minutes to -1 deg 25 min. So the nominal is -1 deg 10 min. Before the alignment mine was -1 deg 38 min. This was definitely causing my rear tires to wear out on the inside. But the spec is still negative camber. Anybody know why Porsche specifies this? Is this unique to the 996 Carrera 4?

They told me they would make it whatever I wanted (like, zero degrees!), but would have to charge me for the entire alignment again because they have to set the whole car up on the equipment again to change the rear camber.

No wonder they told me that 911 owners go through tires every 10-12k miles. I smell burning rubber every time I get out of the car no matter how delicately I drive it, because this alignment is causing my rear tires to literally get chewed up every time they rotate. The rear inside edges of the tires are warm (and not just from the engine heat) even if I just I drive a mile down the road to the video store. Is this the same on a C2? Does anybody have any experience with setting it to zero degrees?

Last weekend, I grew weary of my Porsche Communication Management system not working. I have a '99 C4, so it has the first-generation 8-bit PCM 1 system. It kept acting like it could not read the CD, and after cleaning the disc helped, I decided to get ambitious.

I figured the CD-ROM drive was toasted anyway, so...I removed the CD drive from the dash. I unplugged the connectors at the back, and proceeded to open the unit up in an attempt to access the laser lens assembly in order to clean it. I managed to do it, and (on the second try) was able to reassemble the unit properly and have it reading the disc slightly better than before. I'm sure this is..."frowned upon"...by Porsche and by your local dealership, but from a technically-oriented customer's point of view, why would I buy a brand-new unit for $1500 (or a rebuilt one from my dealer for $1150) when I can spend a grand total of 30 minutes and $0 to get my old one working once again? Why indeed...for $1500, I can buy a Pioneer single-DIN in-dash unit with a slide out LCD screen, DVD-based GPS navigation, and it plays CDs and DVDs right from the dash slot...The whole Porsche system is not a very compelling bargain considering the wealth of FAR-superior aftermarket products out there. They just don't have gloss-black oval-shaped buttons.

Sp anyway...this effort was born out of frustration with the potential expense at the dealer. Why on earth would a $20 CD-ROM drive and maybe $100 worth of GPS electronics cost $1500? To add insult to injury, they wanted to charge me an hour's worth of labor ($79/hour at my western Michigan dealership) just to swap out the new unit for the old. I mean, even if you include entering the code, the entire process of swapping out the CD drive unit can be done (and I'm dead serious) in less than 3 minutes.

I did find two things that I could do to restore performance of the unit. First, cleaning of the lens with a dry Q-tip (or with some tape head cleaning solution) can help the drive read the disc better by not having to look through a dirty lens. Second, there is a rubber-coated roller that acts to take in and also eject the disc. If this roller gets dirty it can slip on the disc and you may have a hard time getting the disc out. This roller can be cleaned once the unit is taken apart.

I found that there was really no dust inside the unit and that my roller was in near-new condition. But the unit seems to work better/read the discs better after doing this. Did it really help that much? I don't honestly know. I don't believe the flap covering the disc opening allows much dust in if any, it's very well protected. Thus, I think a dirty lens causing problems...is a longshot. Thus, I don't think disassembling the unit is really a good idea if this is all you're trying to do. It's very difficult to access and clean the lens without taking the whole thing apart, but since it's going to be pretty clean in there to begin with, you may be wasting your time. The disassembly process is only for the mechanically-inclined. It's a complex and delicate mechanism with many very small parts, and is not for the faint of heart.

That said, I had a lot of fun doing it. I figured it was broken anyway, so I just dove right into it. Turns out I put it back together properly, and it actually works a little better than it did. Now I just need to calibrate the system (see Loren's reply to the Calibrate PCM 1 post), then it should really work well. I took a load of digital photos of the disassembly process if anybody would like to see them. At the very least I can maybe post a DIY on how to swap the unit out of the dash. Any interest in this?

Lastly...I found it odd that I removed the unit from the dash and unplugged it (with the car battery still connected), took it apart, reassembled it, re-installed into the dash, found it wasn't working right, removed it/disassembled it/reinstalled it again, and...never once did I have to enter the code. Hmmm...how peculiar...

I'm driving my '99 Carrera 4 all year, and I'm looking for a set of winter floormats for the car. I'd like them to be a perfect/custom fit for the car, something like Husky floormats that can catch a lot of snow/ice/water/debris. Any suggestions?

Last year I was driving an Audi A6 Quattro in the winter, and Audi made a beautiful set of all-weather mats with the A6 logo, complimentary colors, and of course a perfect fit for the A6 floor area and mat hold-down system. Porsche does not make such a thing, but is there an aftermarket company that does?

Here is the best I've found so far:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAP...item=8014535778

They are made by QAS, and are called the Daytona mat. The come in black, grey, or tan.

Hello...

I'm new to these forums but the wealth of information here is just incredible. Makes me want to smack that smug little punk at the dealership with a laptop. He just loves it when he can sneer and tell me there's nothing he can do to help me, as if customers are nothing more than a pain in the ***...

So anyway, I also have PCM 1, 8-bit, and I just got the proper map disc. Same deal as others have mentioned, it can't keep track of the satellites and know my proper position for more than a few minutes.

I'd love to know how to calibrate this system and make it work. Can anybody send me some information? Or better yet...post it in the DIY section for everybody to see? Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Dan Phillips

Grand Rapids, Michigan

'99 Carrera 4, Midnight Blue Metallic

dphil66@hotmail.com

I just pulled mine out of the car last night, it was very easy.

There are two small plastic pieces on the front faceplace of the CD drive, oriented vertically, one on each side. These are separate pieces from the rest of hte faceplate. Simply get a grip on each piece and pull it straight out. They are really not much more than a small flat piece of plastic with two pins on the backside that fit into two holes in the unit. There are no barbs or anything to break, just be sure to grip them in a way that does not cause damage.

One you have those off, you'll see two holes at each side of the unit. You can use a standard Blaupunkt stereo removal tool to get it out - which is a pair of U-shaped metal things. Insert the tips into the holes, and you basically have two little loop handles to pull the unit out. I'm sure you could get it out by inserting a small-diameter round punch or coat hanger into each hole. One inserted into the hole, the tips of the tool hit on little spring-barbs that have to move inward toward the unit. Once these are moved inward, the barbs clear the frame of the opening and the unit can slide out.

My car is a '99 Carrera 4 with the first-generation PCM. Mine is the ".00" part number. I have a problem with it, and wonder if anybody else has had the same issue. The drive appears to be faulty because it has yet to boot up for me. It always says "initializing navigation" and it never comes on line. The discs I have are genuine Porsche discs. It did come on line once in the 37 days I've owned the car, and never again. It knows when there is and is not a disc in the drive, it just won't cooperate with it. Has anybody else had this problem? Was it the CD-ROM drive that was bad?

Being a gearhead (and a degreed mechanical engineer) I disassembled the unit to clean the lens of the CD drive. To my dismay, the lens was almost perfectly clean once I got to it, and when I put it all back together I missed a minor point of reassembly and the thing won't take the disc back in. Whatever. It was a fun little dissection, and it was busted anyway.

Anybody want to see some pictures of the guts of a PCM CD-ROM drive? I'll take some and post them if you'd like.

A replacement CD-ROM drive from the dealer is US $1500. They also sell a rebuilt unit for about US $1150.