Last Saturday was spent in the Ferdinand Cayenne, doing some eBay pickups and drop offs in London and the wilds of Essex before heading to a client to catch up on what’s been happening there. I found this big shed in a field (above).
It was a boiling hot day, with temps on the dash display showing a stunning 42 degrees when I got into my lovingly-nicknamed ‘Big Pig’ to come home. Before that, the delights of Palmers Green and Cockfosters in London on a typical Saturday, with meandering seniors parking anywhere and everywhere, and stopping their cars mid-street to talk to neighbours. Can’t wait for my turn.
Once I’d sorted the PCM sat nav by sticking my Garmin to the front of it, the Cayenne made light work of the morning’s challenges. That boot (trunk) showed its limits when I arrived at a breakers to collect a set of 20-inch wheels I had won. Four wheels that would fit flat in the Subaru had to be stacked in the Pepper: not a great tribute to luggage space.
One weak point of the Cayenne since pickup has been the air con. I had it apart last week for a quick visual check, but the fan was still screaming when run at full tilt and struggling to cool the car down in these temps. I’m happy to knock Porsche a bit for selling shoddy engines in 996s and Boxsters (latest thing now affecting engines is stretched timing chains), but even I know they can make working air con, and much of the system in mine is brand new.
Mike had a think before suggesting pollen filter as a likely culprit. Apparently the filters get greasy, sucking up air from right above the exhaust manifold. Sure enough, when he took it out it was choked with a greasy film of dust. A new one cost all of £8.60 – who said Cayennes were expensive to run?! Problem solved in less than a minute: palatial cabin restored.
Next was a code read on the just-updated Porsche PIWIS system, so all the very latest diagnostic codes. A few things came up, including a camshaft position sensor which is known to be an issue on some of these. First logged many miles ago but ‘not present’ on code read. This means it is popping up but not stuck on all the time. It was pretty cool to watch real-time cam timing coming off the engine: very interesting.
We’ll watch this cam timing sensor and change if it it keeps on. Also had a play with setting rear park sensor proximity live on PIWIS to no avail – I’m going to have to change a few. My gear selector on manual is not working – some issues with dashboard gear display also. It locked in neutral on me once while in London traffic: more nosey poking required.
Ferdinand’s Porsche V8 is holding steady at 20 miles per UK gallon with mainly B-road and school run use. Rises swiftly towards the mid-20s when on the open road and the sometimes maligned six-speed auto is more than enough for UK motorway speeds: even 90-ish is not too loud. That nose might look a bit off when parked, but it does the trick for slipperyness and wind noise at speed on the highways.
A full tank will do about 400 miles if you run it scary dry. I’m filling up at 350 and running ordinary 95RON at the minute with no issues. I’ll try a few tanks of 99 soon and see what that does for it. Still loving the Cayenne, its ample strengths and its interesting foibles.
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