Phoenix from the flames - Porsche Boxster with an Audi 2.7T
Discussion
Thanks, I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. I enjoy messing about and I had a bit of an enthusiasm boost when I bought the 987. I doubt a car like this is every truly finished but I feel it's close to where I want it to be. I don't have a list of things I want/need to do now the brakes and suspension are done.
The electric coolant pump I added works well, the heaters get hot quickly but the negative is the engine takes longer to get up to temperature, I've run out of outputs on my ECU so think I'll get a relay that works on a timer so the water pump only kicks in after 5 minutes of the engine running.
I took it out today for it's first drive after the last round of work, the alignment is all over the place so it was only a quick one around the block to make sure it's all good. I've got an alignment booked for Wednesday so after that I'll be able to find out what it's like now. As far as looks, I'm happy with how it sits, I feel it looks purposeful. I've not lowered it loads, just enough to make a visual improvement, it get in and out of my garage fine, unlike the red one. Top picture is a before for comparison.
The electric coolant pump I added works well, the heaters get hot quickly but the negative is the engine takes longer to get up to temperature, I've run out of outputs on my ECU so think I'll get a relay that works on a timer so the water pump only kicks in after 5 minutes of the engine running.
I took it out today for it's first drive after the last round of work, the alignment is all over the place so it was only a quick one around the block to make sure it's all good. I've got an alignment booked for Wednesday so after that I'll be able to find out what it's like now. As far as looks, I'm happy with how it sits, I feel it looks purposeful. I've not lowered it loads, just enough to make a visual improvement, it get in and out of my garage fine, unlike the red one. Top picture is a before for comparison.
Thanks guys, I'm really happy with how it's coming together.
I took it to Indigo GT for an alignment today. I'm running -1.5 camber up front which should remove some understeer. On the rear there was an issue, they couldn't get the camber adjusted where I wanted it, -1. I've ended up with -2.5, normally this is down to the rear toe arms not having enough adjustment but mine are adjustable, it's just there isn't enough adjustment in the lower arm. I haven't lowered it that much so wasn't expecting any issues. Having read around, the solution others do is to slot the top mount holes where the strut bolts to so you can pull the strut outwards and take some camber off.
I'm not sure if I leave it how it is and see how I get on or make the changes and get another alignment done. It's not like I'm doing loads of mileage in it so I'm not bothered about tyre wear, I more concerned about a detrimental effect on the grip available. Any feedback is welcome, especially if you've run similar camber on a Boxster/Cayman.
Once the alignment was done I felt it was safe to stamp on the brakes and see what I've got. My ABS isn't working, I jumped on them at about 50mph, the passenger seat folded forward as it wasn't locked in the upright position and the front's locked up at about 40mph. The road was damp so it's to be expected. It braked straight and the front's locking up first it what I wanted so that's all good. I might need some fancy tyres to keep up (got some Continental Sport Contact on the front)
They are floating discs which mean they aren't bolted solid to the disc bell, they have room to move, this movement means noise. Floating discs designed for road cars have ways to reduce/stops the noise, mine don't as they are from a race car.
The front's are quiet, I think with there being 8 pistons and lots of pad surface area, they don't back off that much when you release the brakes, they don't bind but they are snug. The disc has still got movement in it, I can move it by hand but it's not enough that it's rattling around.
The rears however are another story, they are making a racket and I think my LSD which is pretty tight when cold is amplifying the problem around corners. It sounds like I've got 10 nails in each rear tyre. Once you are doing some speed they are fine but I can't live with it, PFC who make the discs have a solution, they use a belleville washer (which is slightly cupped) that fits in between the mounting ring and the disc and puts some pressure onto the disc to cure the problem but still allow some movement.
I took it to Indigo GT for an alignment today. I'm running -1.5 camber up front which should remove some understeer. On the rear there was an issue, they couldn't get the camber adjusted where I wanted it, -1. I've ended up with -2.5, normally this is down to the rear toe arms not having enough adjustment but mine are adjustable, it's just there isn't enough adjustment in the lower arm. I haven't lowered it that much so wasn't expecting any issues. Having read around, the solution others do is to slot the top mount holes where the strut bolts to so you can pull the strut outwards and take some camber off.
I'm not sure if I leave it how it is and see how I get on or make the changes and get another alignment done. It's not like I'm doing loads of mileage in it so I'm not bothered about tyre wear, I more concerned about a detrimental effect on the grip available. Any feedback is welcome, especially if you've run similar camber on a Boxster/Cayman.
Once the alignment was done I felt it was safe to stamp on the brakes and see what I've got. My ABS isn't working, I jumped on them at about 50mph, the passenger seat folded forward as it wasn't locked in the upright position and the front's locked up at about 40mph. The road was damp so it's to be expected. It braked straight and the front's locking up first it what I wanted so that's all good. I might need some fancy tyres to keep up (got some Continental Sport Contact on the front)
They are floating discs which mean they aren't bolted solid to the disc bell, they have room to move, this movement means noise. Floating discs designed for road cars have ways to reduce/stops the noise, mine don't as they are from a race car.
The front's are quiet, I think with there being 8 pistons and lots of pad surface area, they don't back off that much when you release the brakes, they don't bind but they are snug. The disc has still got movement in it, I can move it by hand but it's not enough that it's rattling around.
The rears however are another story, they are making a racket and I think my LSD which is pretty tight when cold is amplifying the problem around corners. It sounds like I've got 10 nails in each rear tyre. Once you are doing some speed they are fine but I can't live with it, PFC who make the discs have a solution, they use a belleville washer (which is slightly cupped) that fits in between the mounting ring and the disc and puts some pressure onto the disc to cure the problem but still allow some movement.
I couldn't live with the sound of the brake discs rattling. The solution PFC have is to use belleville washers which are slightly dished and stop the movement between the disc and bell, it looks a bit odd but that's how they do it. If I do any track days I'll be wanting them fully floating, I've got another set of discs so I'll swap them over rather than have to take the discs apart to remove the washers. They are now silent so I'm happy, it wasn't just the rears making all the noise, the fronts were also so all 4 discs have this addition.
This photo doesn't look like much but it represents plenty of effort. The warning lights are off, my CANbus is all sorted. I needed to send a sequence which my ECU wasn't capable of doing. The developer of the ECU wrote an update to allow this, it still took a bit of figuring out on my end to get it working. My mate came around with an Arduino which we used to sniff the data my ECU was sending, it wasn't sending things I thought I was so it came down to settings being wrong. It's such a relief to get the ABS and PSM warning lights off, the MOT ran out the day I got this fixed. It's going on Wednesday for an MOT test, it should pass.
The ignition switch was a bit iffy, when I first started using the car occasionally it wouldn't turn the ignition (and therefore the engine) off. With use this stopped happening but recently it's got a bit inconsistent again, not with turning off but occasionally needing a couple of tries for it to crank the engine over. I felt like it's only a matter of time before I get stranded. I'd bought a spare a while back so swapped it over. Nice and easy job, requires no coding just a straight forward replacement.
Or so I thought. The new ignition switch will turn the ignition on one time only. After that I need to disconnect the battery and re-connect it. I opened up my original switch, the contacts were really dirty, I cleaned it up and put it back on. This switch was doing the same now also. My mate came up to look at it with me, after plenty of head scratching between us we've worked a few things out. The switches are both fine, the wiring is fine. If the transponder pill in the key stays near the antenna in the switch you can turn the ignition on and off as many times as you want, once it's out of range it won't work again. The dash says key 2 when you unlock the car and key 1 when you turn the ignition on, looks like someone has swapped the remote part from one key to another. I'm not sure if this has now become an issue, it's always done it. It seems like unplugging the ignition switch (battery disconnected) has upset something else in the car. I've got no diagnostics for the immobiliser or body computer so I'm stuck here. I've only got one key so think it's probably worth buying another key from Porsche and seeing what happens when they try to code it. I'm not sure if the engine control unit not being on the CANbus will give problems when trying to code it. Really wish I'd not bothered swapping the ignition switch now. Porsche are probably going to pull my pants down.
After just having an alignment done, while working on the brakes I noticed there was some play on the drivers side inner tie rod end, can't believe I missed this before. Fitted a new inner and outer tie rod. It will need another alignment but before I go back I will do something to sort having too much rear camber.
I've got a bit of a head scratcher. Took the car out after doing the firmware upgrade (for CANbus sequencing) on the ECU and it had a bad misfire on boost. Looking at my logs, it's cylinders 1 and 5 (the cylcontrib numbers don't match up, 1 is white, 5 is red). Since the dyno day I've barely driven it, I have used about £40 of fuel in nearly 3 months. I didn't expect this. I pulled the plugs, they looked perfect but I changed them anyway, swapped the coil packs around, swapped the injector plugs around, run it on only wastegate pressure. The misfire stays on the same cylinders. I would look for physical issues like a blown head gasket but it's unlikely with it being on 2 separate banks. I'm holding out hope that the firmware update has changed something as I'm out of ideas otherwise. Once it's passed the MOT I'm going to go back to the old firmware to rule that out.
This photo doesn't look like much but it represents plenty of effort. The warning lights are off, my CANbus is all sorted. I needed to send a sequence which my ECU wasn't capable of doing. The developer of the ECU wrote an update to allow this, it still took a bit of figuring out on my end to get it working. My mate came around with an Arduino which we used to sniff the data my ECU was sending, it wasn't sending things I thought I was so it came down to settings being wrong. It's such a relief to get the ABS and PSM warning lights off, the MOT ran out the day I got this fixed. It's going on Wednesday for an MOT test, it should pass.
The ignition switch was a bit iffy, when I first started using the car occasionally it wouldn't turn the ignition (and therefore the engine) off. With use this stopped happening but recently it's got a bit inconsistent again, not with turning off but occasionally needing a couple of tries for it to crank the engine over. I felt like it's only a matter of time before I get stranded. I'd bought a spare a while back so swapped it over. Nice and easy job, requires no coding just a straight forward replacement.
Or so I thought. The new ignition switch will turn the ignition on one time only. After that I need to disconnect the battery and re-connect it. I opened up my original switch, the contacts were really dirty, I cleaned it up and put it back on. This switch was doing the same now also. My mate came up to look at it with me, after plenty of head scratching between us we've worked a few things out. The switches are both fine, the wiring is fine. If the transponder pill in the key stays near the antenna in the switch you can turn the ignition on and off as many times as you want, once it's out of range it won't work again. The dash says key 2 when you unlock the car and key 1 when you turn the ignition on, looks like someone has swapped the remote part from one key to another. I'm not sure if this has now become an issue, it's always done it. It seems like unplugging the ignition switch (battery disconnected) has upset something else in the car. I've got no diagnostics for the immobiliser or body computer so I'm stuck here. I've only got one key so think it's probably worth buying another key from Porsche and seeing what happens when they try to code it. I'm not sure if the engine control unit not being on the CANbus will give problems when trying to code it. Really wish I'd not bothered swapping the ignition switch now. Porsche are probably going to pull my pants down.
After just having an alignment done, while working on the brakes I noticed there was some play on the drivers side inner tie rod end, can't believe I missed this before. Fitted a new inner and outer tie rod. It will need another alignment but before I go back I will do something to sort having too much rear camber.
I've got a bit of a head scratcher. Took the car out after doing the firmware upgrade (for CANbus sequencing) on the ECU and it had a bad misfire on boost. Looking at my logs, it's cylinders 1 and 5 (the cylcontrib numbers don't match up, 1 is white, 5 is red). Since the dyno day I've barely driven it, I have used about £40 of fuel in nearly 3 months. I didn't expect this. I pulled the plugs, they looked perfect but I changed them anyway, swapped the coil packs around, swapped the injector plugs around, run it on only wastegate pressure. The misfire stays on the same cylinders. I would look for physical issues like a blown head gasket but it's unlikely with it being on 2 separate banks. I'm holding out hope that the firmware update has changed something as I'm out of ideas otherwise. Once it's passed the MOT I'm going to go back to the old firmware to rule that out.
Have you got the on/off load/boost data from the previous version? (ie - anything unusual on those cylinders?)
You've done the basics and checked the earths...? (I learnt that one from bitter experience....everything was fine until under load - then misfire city)
Check the earths for the ECU itself too - that's where I found the solution to similar problem. (it could be you have distrurbed something and it's not related to the firmware at all)
You've done the basics and checked the earths...? (I learnt that one from bitter experience....everything was fine until under load - then misfire city)
Check the earths for the ECU itself too - that's where I found the solution to similar problem. (it could be you have distrurbed something and it's not related to the firmware at all)
Edited by BrettMRC on Monday 18th January 17:07
Thanks for the suggestion. I've checked each coil pack plug is grounded correctly, I've checked the 2 grounds for the ECU. After your suggestion I checked the main earth strap. When I added the electric water pump I did remove the ground strap to run the hoses so thought it was likely, I got my hopes up but it's secured tightly.
BrettMRC said:
That's a shame 
Have you had a chance to look at the old logs?
The old logs are fine, it doesn't look like an issue that's slowly developed over time. Have you had a chance to look at the old logs?
mwstewart said:
Great work resolving the CAN problem.
On the ECU side of things I would start with the known change. Can you regress to the previous firmware to rule out introduction of an unintented problem in the new version?
That's the plan, I'll go back to the old firmware and see if it fixes the issue. I will wait until after it's got through the MOT with all the CAN working first. On the ECU side of things I would start with the known change. Can you regress to the previous firmware to rule out introduction of an unintented problem in the new version?
I passed the MOT this morning. Once that was out of the way I went back to an older firmware on the ECU to see if the misfire would clear, I wasn't holding my breath but it's perfect now. It's a weight off my mind. There has been another new firmware released so I'll give that a try tomorrow.
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