996 Ignition Problem
Discussion
Sitting here pulling my hair out, hope someone can help! I have a 2001 996 had the car just over a year, love it. However a few months ago I had trouble starting the car, turn key all boots up then final turn nothing. Was towed to garage and gave me a new battery. All well for a few days then I been away and the car was left standing. Tried last week to start her, same happens, thinking it might be battery I took it off and charged her. Back on, it starts but then cut out now wont start at all. Plenty of life in battery but again final turn nothing???? Phoned Porsche, Cardiff and as expected they need to see it. Bring it in they said????? Yeh right!
Any ideas?
Ceri
Any ideas?
Ceri
Highly likely it's an ignition switch.
It's one of those things that fails at some stage on nearly every car.
It's not expensive. You can get the part from Eurocarparts its the same as a VW AUDI one.
Part number part number 4A0-905-849B. Just for the electrical part. No need to change whole barrel etc. If it isn't the cause of the fault (although it likely is) it's worth changing anyway if it hasn't been done before.
Do a web search you'll see videos and lots of 'walkthroughs' of how to do it yourself or get an Indy to do it in an hour.
It's one of those things that fails at some stage on nearly every car.
It's not expensive. You can get the part from Eurocarparts its the same as a VW AUDI one.
Part number part number 4A0-905-849B. Just for the electrical part. No need to change whole barrel etc. If it isn't the cause of the fault (although it likely is) it's worth changing anyway if it hasn't been done before.
Do a web search you'll see videos and lots of 'walkthroughs' of how to do it yourself or get an Indy to do it in an hour.
Edited by Storm996 on Monday 18th August 12:04
This only happened to me a couple of times, and then only last year, but I wonder whether this is related.
Driving along on the motorway, all the dash lights illuminate (as they do when you turn the ignition on) for a fraction of a second and quite possibly there may or may not have been a loss of power but since the instances were so brief I could not really be sure.
Any ideas?
Driving along on the motorway, all the dash lights illuminate (as they do when you turn the ignition on) for a fraction of a second and quite possibly there may or may not have been a loss of power but since the instances were so brief I could not really be sure.
Any ideas?
Spoke to Chris Denning, highly unlikely it is switch as key returns to run when let go from cranck position. I think I have the problem sussed! I took battery off to charge, put it on following day, it started then cut out after a few minutes. Since then it wont start. I'm convinced now it is immobiliser related. Knew I should have got a ford.....lol
911Celt said:
Spoke to Chris Denning, highly unlikely it is switch as key returns to run when let go from cranck position. I think I have the problem sussed! I took battery off to charge, put it on following day, it started then cut out after a few minutes. Since then it wont start. I'm convinced now it is immobiliser related. Knew I should have got a ford.....lol
The key returning isn't connected with the ignition switch problems. It's not a simple 3 or 4 battery / starter etc thing inside that switch. There are 'lots' of little connections in that rotary switch that wear over time. As they wear a combination of some connecting and some not make a wide variation of faults appear as starting problems or dash light problems or intermittent problems.911Celt said:
Spoke to Chris Denning, highly unlikely it is switch as key returns to run when let go from cranck position. I think I have the problem sussed! I took battery off to charge, put it on following day, it started then cut out after a few minutes. Since then it wont start. I'm convinced now it is immobiliser related. Knew I should have got a ford.....lol
Storm996 makes some good points and I would not discount the ignition switch.But it may not be the switch. If you turn the key to on then to start and the dash lights look normal, the gages behave normally, everything looks normal, but the engine does not crank, and there are no other symptoms, no noises like a click click click, this is probably immobilizer related.
When the key is inserted in the ignition and turned the security module/controller causes an RF signal to be transmitted from the antenna behind the ring that surrounds the ignition switch. This RF signal is received by the RFID pill in the key head and this energizes the electronics pill and in turn the pill RF circuit then responds with an RF signal with its RFID embedded in the signal. This signal is received by that same antenna and routed to the security module where it is decoded and if the ID is found in the security module's list of ID's, the starter is allowed to engage and crank the engine.
If this is not working properly a Porsche tech with a diagnostics computer can capture the security module's error reporting or query for errors after the failed start operation and probably diagnose what is going on.
Now if the car is equipped with a manual transmission a flaky clutch safety interlock switch can have the car acting the same way. Everything is normal except the engine does not crank and there are no other symptoms. I have experienced this until it got so bad I had the interlock switch replaced. The behavior came back and I had the ignition switch replaced, even though the tech checked it out beforehand and offered his opinion the switch was not at fault. Later we found the new interlock switch was not positioned correctly so even the new switch was not be acted up properly.
While I have not experienced this in a Tip equipped car I suspect that if the Tip Park switch or neutral switch was bad a Tip could act the same way.
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