Coil pack failure questions - 987.1 S
Discussion
Have owned my Boxster since May this year and have noticed that sometimes when cold it tends to 'kangaroo' (ie is jerky) in 1st and second gear - its more noticeable when leaving work to come home as I trundle along in the car park in 1st gear because we have lots of speedbumps and on little or no throttle it really kangaroos badly for a few seconds. Not so noticeable when setting off from home as normally I drive off and quickly move up through the gearbox and get up to speed, however I sometimes detect it isn't pulling cleanly when accelerating. Once the car is up to temperature this kangarooing never seems to happen however.
From reading on here I'm starting to suspect it might be a coil failure - any thoughts? Prior to purchasing the car a 111 point check was carried out - would this have detected a coil pack failure? Incidentally I purchased the car with a 12 month warranty, albeit not a Porsche warranty (but think I may add a 2yr Porsche warranty next year) so hopefully if there is an issue it will be covered.
From reading on here I'm starting to suspect it might be a coil failure - any thoughts? Prior to purchasing the car a 111 point check was carried out - would this have detected a coil pack failure? Incidentally I purchased the car with a 12 month warranty, albeit not a Porsche warranty (but think I may add a 2yr Porsche warranty next year) so hopefully if there is an issue it will be covered.
cslwannabe said:
Have owned my Boxster since May this year and have noticed that sometimes when cold it tends to 'kangaroo' (ie is jerky) in 1st and second gear - its more noticeable when leaving work to come home as I trundle along in the car park in 1st gear because we have lots of speedbumps and on little or no throttle it really kangaroos badly for a few seconds. Not so noticeable when setting off from home as normally I drive off and quickly move up through the gearbox and get up to speed, however I sometimes detect it isn't pulling cleanly when accelerating. Once the car is up to temperature this kangarooing never seems to happen however.
From reading on here I'm starting to suspect it might be a coil failure - any thoughts? Prior to purchasing the car a 111 point check was carried out - would this have detected a coil pack failure? Incidentally I purchased the car with a 12 month warranty, albeit not a Porsche warranty (but think I may add a 2yr Porsche warranty next year) so hopefully if there is an issue it will be covered.
cslwannabe - did you ever find out what this was? From reading on here I'm starting to suspect it might be a coil failure - any thoughts? Prior to purchasing the car a 111 point check was carried out - would this have detected a coil pack failure? Incidentally I purchased the car with a 12 month warranty, albeit not a Porsche warranty (but think I may add a 2yr Porsche warranty next year) so hopefully if there is an issue it will be covered.
Nope! Has done it since we bought the car 6 months ago - not been out of the garage since 2 weeks ago today however owing to cold/miserable weather. It's less of an issue when setting off from home as generally pootle round the estate in 2nd and then quickly up through the gears, although you can sense it's not pulling cleanly. It's much more noticeable driving slowly over the speed bumps in the car park at work however.
MadMark911 said:
As BrewsterBear says - normally you'd see a warning light for something like this or a MAF sensor ...
I had 5 out of 8 coil packs 'fail' on my Cayenne and never got any warning lights or events on the computer log. Would only 'misfire' when up to temp.Mechanic said it was the worst he'd experienced on a test drive, couldn't believe there were no lights or events.
According to Reading I had four coil packs logging "pre-ignition failures" or something to that effect. Car had two characters - sometimes it went beautifully, other times it felt lumpy in some parts of the rev range. Not kangarooing, but perhaps we're just sensitive to different degrees.
Apparently no "actual faults" were being recorded, but replacing the coil packs fixed it. Car went beautifully after that.
"Pre-faults" being logged sounded weird to me. Still does.
Apparently no "actual faults" were being recorded, but replacing the coil packs fixed it. Car went beautifully after that.
"Pre-faults" being logged sounded weird to me. Still does.
Still not got to the bottom of this - only seems to do it when first accelerating when car is stone cold - will contact warranty provider (non OPC) and see what they say about getting it checked out (has been to 2 different OPCs in last 9 months for full 111 point check plus mileage investigation checks and nothing mentioned about fault codes or any issues).
My bet would be coil packs if the car is over 5 years old. If they have hairline cracks in the insulation there is no reason this would shown up on an inspection because they would have warmed up and be dry by the time they get looked at.
Mine misbehaved in the mornings when there was dampness in the air which could condense on the coil making it "track" high voltage around the outside. Soon as they dry out with a bit of warmth this stops happening.
I had no warning lights but once the coils were removed it was just possible to see the cracks. In all 3 out of six were faulty.
Mine misbehaved in the mornings when there was dampness in the air which could condense on the coil making it "track" high voltage around the outside. Soon as they dry out with a bit of warmth this stops happening.
I had no warning lights but once the coils were removed it was just possible to see the cracks. In all 3 out of six were faulty.
Thanks Pope and pugley for the suggestions.
Regarding startup, I've always started my cars with the clutch fully down and no throttle and similarly always switch off with no throttle applied. In the morning I reverse a few yards out of the garage and then get out of the car to go and close/ lock the garage door (no fancy automatic garage door for me!) so I guess it's normally been running for a minute or so in total from startup before I properly set off driving.
As I mentioned previously, on part throttle say when driving over speedhumps, the jerkiness is very noticeable - same as when leaving work last week and I slowly approached the car park barriers. My housing estate has a couple of hundred yards of speedhumps so I normally drive out of the estate in 2nd gear on little or no throttle in the morning. Then I gently accelerate up through the gearbox as within a minute of leaving the housing estate I'm joining a NSL dual carriageway and whilst accelerating, even though I'm quickly through the gears (changing up below 3k rpm as engine still cold) you can still notice that it's not pulling cleanly. Once sat at steady speed on the dual carriageway everything is fine and by the time I've exitted the dual carriageway the car is pulling cleanly in every gear.
I'll go out tomorrow and do a bit more low speed urban driving while it's still cold to try and measure how long it's like this for before it starts running normally.
Regarding startup, I've always started my cars with the clutch fully down and no throttle and similarly always switch off with no throttle applied. In the morning I reverse a few yards out of the garage and then get out of the car to go and close/ lock the garage door (no fancy automatic garage door for me!) so I guess it's normally been running for a minute or so in total from startup before I properly set off driving.
As I mentioned previously, on part throttle say when driving over speedhumps, the jerkiness is very noticeable - same as when leaving work last week and I slowly approached the car park barriers. My housing estate has a couple of hundred yards of speedhumps so I normally drive out of the estate in 2nd gear on little or no throttle in the morning. Then I gently accelerate up through the gearbox as within a minute of leaving the housing estate I'm joining a NSL dual carriageway and whilst accelerating, even though I'm quickly through the gears (changing up below 3k rpm as engine still cold) you can still notice that it's not pulling cleanly. Once sat at steady speed on the dual carriageway everything is fine and by the time I've exitted the dual carriageway the car is pulling cleanly in every gear.
I'll go out tomorrow and do a bit more low speed urban driving while it's still cold to try and measure how long it's like this for before it starts running normally.
Just have 5 of my 6 replaced under warranty, car is coming up to 6 years old, I used to have the same sort of irregular running and jerkiness when cold and a bit of damp in the air, fine when warmed up after a few miles.
Since they replaced the coil packs it's perfect, so my guess points to this as the issue
Since they replaced the coil packs it's perfect, so my guess points to this as the issue
cslwannabe said:
Fitted a new battery last week after my OEM one gave up the ghost and this issue now appears to have gone away (hope I've not spoken too soon), so possibly was just as a result of weak battery.
Or disconnecting the old battery & reconnecting the new has done an ECU reset & it has relearnt its way out of the problem.
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