by John Glynn | Jul 20, 2014 | Porsche Cayenne, Project Cars
If I ever recover from our last family holiday in the Cayenne (to Ireland last Easter) enough to want another one, and we take Ted the Jack Russell Terrier, he will get half the boot space. With four women ready to fill up the other half, I’ve been looking for a roof box as a just-in-case measure.
New Porsche roof boxes are silly money, so a used box is the obvious solution. eBay is usually the best place to find used Porsche accessories, and I’ve had a saved search for Porsche roof boxes running for a while. A quick flick on the search one lunchtime last week found a black Porsche roofbox out in Suffolk. Looking at the seller’s other items, he also had a set of 19″ Cayenne wheels with winter tyres.
eBay Porsche Wheels and Tyres
Having finally killed off the part-worn winters from last year, I needed replacement winter tyres and I wanted a roofbox, so one quick email offer later, both items were mine. I arranged collection for the following morning and duly set off after dropping the kids to school. It’s a 200-mile round trip from here to Suffolk on the east coast of England. Sat nav said a couple of hours with a few country short cuts, some of which turned out to be excellent roads. Noted for future 911 drives.
One great thing about Porsche ownership is the variety of interesting people who run around in these cars. Having met undertakers, dentists, truck drivers and more through buying and selling Porsches and parts, this latest deal was with Sean: an obviously talented property developer.
Sean’s place (above) was an amazing manor house. Seemingly 150 years old, it turned out to be a new build using carefully chosen materials. As someone who is still buying reclaimed building supplies for an ongoing Victorian house rebuild, the house appeared to have stood since the 1850s or earlier. It was absolutely beautiful: the pics are from the architect’s website.
We fitted the roof box on its Porsche roof rails and threw the wheels in the Cayenne. Ted approved of the boot space (below): now all we need is a boot divider for him. And some space to store this massive bit of luggage. Shouldn’t be a problem when the garage is built.
Modern Cayenne not as Well Built as Original
Sean was selling the roof box, as he had recently bought his third Cayenne, but the new Porsche Cayenne doesn’t come with the roof channels required to fit these boxes. A previous owner of a V8 like mine, a Turbo and now a new Turbodiesel, he felt that newer Cayennes had been lessened by removing items found on early cars, to make new cars easier to manufacture. This included the roof channel system and raised windscreen edges: the lack of which allowed water to run straight in through open front windows. Wet shirt sleeves are not appreciated when you’ve shelled out sixty grand or more on a car.
A similar thing happened to early BMW Minis. BMW couldn’t make money retaining the substantial build quality of the first production examples, so the cars got cheaper to build over time. It’s also said that lowering production costs was one motivation for the transition from air-cooled to water-cooled 911s, but let’s not go there.
Porsche Roof Box is a Thule Product
Having since spent an hour refining the fit, sliding it forward a bit to clear the DAB aerial and allow the boot to open fully, the roofbox – which is a Thule product, painted in black and rebadged as Porsche – fits the Cayenne really well.
Screwed to the genuine roof rails/cross bars using custom fittings, it opens from both sides and is rattle-free over bumps. There’s a bit of wind noise at 90mph and a minor impact on fuel economy, but no more than 10% lost. I’ve run with it for five days now and been impressed. A good buy for £200!
by John Glynn | Apr 23, 2014 | Porsche Cayenne, Project Cars
Back from a week of tearing around seeing family in Ireland with our LPG-powered Porsche Cayenne (below at Bunratty with daughter 2 and nephew 1), I came out the back gate yesterday to find it had made a new friend.
Connected to the rear of the Cayenne was a Zafira. By the jaunty angle of approach, I could tell the friendship was accidental. The Zafira had slipped the tethers of its handbrake and rolled down the hill to say hello at speed.
Porsche Cayenne Crash Damage
I was heading off to a meeting, so located the owner, got it uncoupled and discovered a reasonable dent in the Big Pig’s backside. My damage was not as bad as the other car, but the bumper has softened and localised paint is cracked. Parking sensors seem to have given up too, so it will take some work to sort this one.
Love my Cayenne but one of us must be cursed! I’d like to be optimistic but seems the pre-cat oxygen sensors are also playing up, causing shunting at low revs in high gears. Probably original so wear and tear: my Porsche specialist will be having a look.
Edit: First Porsche Crash Estimate
The first estimate for the repair of this damage is back. Parts £530, labour £360, paint £230. About £1500 all told. Let this be a lesson to all of you: Cayennes are not cheap to run around in! No doubt I will find better estimates. As this could have been me paying for the damage if I had not found it like this, I am going to sort some sort of accident camera recording system for inside the car also as too many fraudulent accident claims in the UK now.
A friend is dealing with complete insurance fraud against his company at the minute. So far the insurers have paid out £25k on courtesy car hire and he is now battling a £75k personal injury claim for a car pulling straight out in front of him, then braking hard as it exited a roundabout. Fraudsters everywhere.
by John Glynn | Apr 6, 2014 | Porsche Cayenne, Project Cars
Now that the Cayenne is home with its gearbox problems sorted, I took a few hours off yesterday morning to get the DAB digital radio install finished. I use the car on a twenty-mile countryside school run every morning and only the 6 Music breakfast show will do for that task.
I’ve tried a few glass mount antennas for DAB since buying my Kenwood 4210 head unit. I’m in a patchy DAB area at the best of times but glass mount was totally useless. No signal anywhere! I had a look at the DAB on Wheels recommendations and bought the Kinetic DRA-6001 amplified roof mount aerial with a 5m extension lead.
I will probably use a roof platform on my car now and then, so no way was this going in the middle. The fitting instructions say mount at least 25 cms from the roof edge for best performance. I was not putting it above the front, so had to be in the rear. I decided to drop the headlining to get a better view of the rear roof section.
Dropping the Cayenne’s roof lining is right fun and games, as it looks like it’s the first part to go in. I’d stripped some of this before so knew the form. Took a while but I got it down enough to see what was what. The roof has a huge amount of stiffening, especially at the rear where the massive tailgate is hung. I could go in front of that and still look sensible: a bit ‘bee sting’ but whatever, long as the DAB works. I marked a centre point 20 cm in from the rear edge and drilled a pilot hole: no changing my mind now.
The Kinetic needs a 14mm mounting hole, which I drilled with a cone cutter. I primed the roof and test fitted the antenna. The supplied base gasket is an O-ring which kept the aerial base a good 7mm or so off the roof and meant I could not get the bottom nut on. After a bit of experimentation, I modifed the gasket arrangement to drop the aerial closer to the roof. Not easy but it worked and would keep the water out.
Now the nut would just go on. Refitting the base over a lot of grease as specified, I tightened it to where I was happy but the leading edge was still slightly proud of the roof. It needed a little more tightening. I gave it one tiny squeeze and the brass nut slipped on the cast threads. The base was not going to sit flush on the roof. Fitting the aerial mast, that would not tighten in the base either. The whole thing was a let down.
I was pretty cross so took a break and came back to it later. It looked a bit rough outside but I managed to get it tight, so why not give it a try. I rigged up a 12v supply and took the antenna lead to the head unit: instant success. The DAB reception was perfect.
I’ve put it all back together, but am 99% sure I will swap this for the Hirschmann Auta DAB antenna in a few weeks time, when I take the roof out again to sort the reverse camera. If you’ve bought and are fitting this one, my advice is to bin the base gasket and just use Sikaflex to seal it up and get it tight to the roof. If you’ve not bought it yet, save your money and buy the budget Hirschmann.
by John Glynn | Mar 24, 2014 | Porsche Cayenne, Project Cars
Spent a very interesting lunch hour today with the gearbox technician currently rebuilding the Aisin Warner 09D transmission from my 2004 Porsche Cayenne S (V8 model with 6-speed Tiptronic/automatic).
I got the call at 11.30 that the transmission was out and coming apart. Ninety minutes later I was there with my camera. It was educational to say the least! Even had a demo of the valve body in action: quite fascinating.
The strip revealed no jammed clutch plates as was first suspected. One clutch pack has completely melted with some damage obvious on another. Other than that, it looks lovely in bits and I have every confidence that it will be mega to drive once repaired.
The technician reported that it would not change from first on his test drive. I didn’t have that problem when I drove it around the car park before the recovery truck arrived: it was flicking through 1,2 and 3 fine. My issue was all in the high gears: no drive in 4, 5 or 6.
No matter now as it is in pieces and will be fully rebuilt. The torque converter has gone off to be reconditioned and that is unlikely to be back until Friday. So it will be next week for a pickup. I don’t mind, as we are taking the M3 on our annual pilgrimage to Essen. Cayenne back next week – awesome.
by John Glynn | Mar 17, 2014 | Porsche Cayenne, Project Cars
I’ve bowed to defeat in the Porsche Cayenne transmission failure saga and am sending the car for a gearbox rebuild. What should have been a simple Cayenne valve body rebuild and refit is now a transmission-out overhaul costing thousands of pounds.
The last straw came on Saturday, when I spent all day checking through the metres of copper linking my Cayenne ECUs with the gearbox internals. All I found was a soaking wet floor, courtesy of the leaky rear washer jet pipe that pours screenwash into the car when it works its way loose. The leaking water then floods wiring looms and everything else it can find, including the Cayenne’s main ECU. Some of the damage it does:
Pulling all the transmission wiring back into the Cayenne, I could find no broken cables and no obvious problems. I’ve already double checked everything the boys have done on installing a genuine Porsche valve body/valve block costing over £1,000. The automatic transmission shop will run a diagnostic on the transmission when it gets to them tomorrow, but there is some form for these Porsche Cayenne Aisin gearboxes to jam their clutch packs, so I’m not mega optimistic.
As an experiment in running a Porche Cayenne daily driver, the last six months have taught me not to recommend these cars. I enjoy driving my Cayenne V8 and it is just about affordable on LPG, so I will stick with it as a means to recoup some of the money I’ve poured into it, but I would not advise others to follow my lead. I’m not saying don’t buy a Cayenne, just don’t ask me to tell you it makes sense.
I almost bought a Volvo XC90, but ended up in the Cayenne. Even as a Porsche enthusiast, it’s a difficult decision to defend when you look at the full cost of ownership over my six months to date compared to something more reliable. The recent bills are a bit raw at the minute: some fresh V8 burble will ease that pain.
by John Glynn | Feb 22, 2014 | Project Cars, Porsche Cayenne
The original Volkswagen Touareg and Porsche Cayenne may not share an engine, but earlier models do share a transmission: the Aisin AW TR-60SN/09D.
This six-speed transmission is generally reliable, but develops problems with the valve body: the hydraulic fluid control assembly that regulates gear and clutch engagements. The classic valve body symptom is a hard shift from fourth to fifth. “It feels like you’re going through the windscreen,” is how one Porsche tech friend described his first experience of the problem.
I’ve been having gearbox problems with my Cayenne for a while now, with the valve body the prime suspect. My 2004 Cayenne S never had a huge problem changing gear: it was much more a clutch control issue, where the car would drop out of gear while waiting to pull out of a T-junction or onto a roundabout and leave you stranded at first, but suddenly find second, tearing off with a highly undignified bang. Cue eyeliner streaks on back-seat teenage cheeks.
The experience was most unbecoming, so I decided to fix it. The Internet provided two firms in the UK known to repair Cayenne valve bodies (mine shown above) by reaming the worn valve passages out and inserting bigger valves, and refurbishing solenoids where required. The cost was less than half that of a remanufactured Porsche part, said to solve the problems discovered in the earlier Cayennes.
I emailed the first firm. The owner answered a couple of my messages but stopped when I asked for a few more details on the process for a magazine article. The other firm’s contact was more amenable and sounded like he knew his stuff. We stripped the valve body out of the car and sent it away. It came back refurbished, we refitted it and the car hasn’t worked since.
We’ve tried two different valve bodies, both supposedly testing fine on the bench but not working in the car. I can get gears 1, 2 and 3 ok, but when it hits the shift to fourth, the display says it has shifted but the car drops out of gear, as if you’ve stepped on the clutch. It will rev away doing nothing, then it throws a gearbox fault and limp mode follows.
I’ve bitten the bullet and ordered the Porsche replacement valve body at £1030 plus 20% VAT. Plus another round of trans fluid changes and work time lost, and whatever bill I get for these unsuccessful valve bodies (one my original, the other going back). You can be sure of small claims repercussions there.
Learn from my mistakes. If you’ve got a reliable Subaru, stick with it. Do not buy a used Porsche Cayenne! Add this to the classic Cayenne problems of coil failures, coolant pipe failures, control arm fails, screenwash leaks and ECU destruction and so on and it gets very expensive to run a used Cayenne. Not to mention what happens when your engine fails – as many V8s and Turbos do.
Anyone well versed in auto gearboxes with some thoughts on the 4-5-6 issue, kindly drop me a line. We have triple-checked wiring connections, fluid levels, filters, pressures, gearbox operating temps and it works fine in first through third, if not as smooth as original. Very disappointing not to have the car outside the door, but we will sort it out eventually.
Update to this post – I sorted the problem by rebuilding the transmission. The 4/5/6 clutch pack was gone. The specialist I was using at the time did not diagnose the issue correctly, but a transmission expert sorted it in a couple of days. Cost was £1500, including removal and refitting of the transmission (that price included a discount of their normal valve body refurb cost as mine was done). Moral of the story: not all Porsche specialists are equal – I didn’t need to buy the Porsche valve body as the original refurb was done by the guys the transmission specialists usually used!
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