Oil Pressure Gauge And Outside Temp Problem

[rkirshner]

New to forum but i have read all the posts on the 2004 gt3 . my car has about 24k miles .

i managed to scrape the front bumper on passenger side and wanted it fixed . the shop i took it to removed the bumper and the headlight and then of course replaced them.

When picked the car up none of the dash insrument cluster gauges or lights worked (tach,speedometer oil pressure ,etc). i checked all the fuses by removing and replacing each one

right after i did this all the gauges worked and the illumination came back on except the oil pressure gauge and outside temp sensor didnt work and i had a message on the front didplay to that effect

so now as i drive the oil pressure gauge reads zero and there is no outside temp . but then all of a sudden the oil pressure gauge will work for like a second or two and then fail

one more curious thing happened. i was sort of experimenting and pushed in the cruise control button. the little green symbol appeared and immediatly the oil pressure gauge went to 5 and the correct ouside temp appeared . then i turned off the cruise control switc. Thelittle green symbol went away ,oil pressure fell to zero and the outside temp went away . i repeated this a couple of times and when the cruise control switch was on the oil pressure and temp displayed fine but when off oil preesure went to zero and temp did not read .. a couple of other intersting points. with CC on the gauges worked but i was not able to actually use the CC it just wouldnt work .IN addition, even when the gauges were functioning the OBC still gave me the error message . finally ,i found that the CCswich only works intermittantly ie, sometime when i push it in it works and then sometimes it doesnt

sorry for the long post i thought that with more info the diagnosis would be more exact thank you very much

[cg962]

Funny that my car has the exact same two problems

my outside oil temp sensor is working intermittently and my oil pressure guage jumps from zero to 5 and back sometimes.

Outside temp sensor don't seem to effect my cars performance nor the a/c in my car

hope this helps : )

[rkirshner]

thanks

as i read the other forums some version of this is not uncommon

i also think that overall it does not affect function but i would like to fix it

in addition the story i relate above is not meant to imply causation but rather just a sequence

[clord]

Some, or all of the intermittent functions that you describe are managed by the ECU and options set in it. For example, the cruise control is an option in our cars and it won't work unless it is 'turned on' in the ECU programming. Have you tried disconnecting the battery (with the negative terminal) for a few minutes and reconnecting it to reset the ECU?

Let us know what happens.

[rkirshner]

i have not thought of that but now i cant wait to give it a try

will it mess up other things like the radio

is this something i can try myself sorry for sounding like a baby but i have not done this before

[rkirshner]

one other thing

i dont know if they are related but the car was perfect when i took it to the body shop to have a scrape in the front bumper touched up

the shop removed the bumper and the headlight to do the work

directly after that is when the trouble started in fact the moment i got the car back the entire instrument cluster was "off" and then as i played around with things it came back on except for the temp outside and the oil pressure gauge

is there an area in the right front area that has a wire that could have been dislodged

i very much appreciate your help

[cg962]

Outside temp problem likely to have been caused by front bumper removal. Mine gave up the ghost when my car had a full respray after an accident

Cg

[rkirshner]

i wish it were that simple

i had it changed but this did not solve problem

there just has to be some point in the system where the outside temp,oil gauge ,and cruise control converge

i think i will try the battery disconnect to "reset" the ecu

[rkirshner]

ok disconnected neg terminal on battery then reconnected

no change

is there another way to reset the ecu

again thanks

[clord]

How long did you leave it disconnected? Give 3-4 minutes.

[rkirshner]

ok so finally took it to dealer with good mechanic

they say the gauge cluster itself is bad and needs to be replaced

kind of makes sense but i am not totally convinced

any way the problem is that i have red gauge cluster and for some reason a red cluster cant be purchased from porsche

does any body know where i can get one

thanks

[clord]

It is quite a coincidence that the guage cluster went bad just as you had the front bumper work done. Did the mechanic read and show you the failure codes indicating the cluster failure? Did you re-try the ECU/computer reset with a 4-5 minute disconnection time?

Let us know what you find out.