After the week just finished, it was a relief to snatch a few hours off this morning and point our Porsche Cayenne’s nose towards Warwickshire, to collect another load of bricks for next year’s garage build. The way this thing hauls a trailer full of reclaim bricks is incredible, making century-old bricks my latest eBay obsession.
So far in November we’ve had a painful VAT return, slow going on the building front and a ton of catching up on copywriting, but Wednesday night took the biscuit, with a call from Mrs G to say someone had crashed into her sweet little CR-V. I drove to the scene to find a head-on smash between CR-V and builder’s van: CR-V destroyed and wife in some discomfort. The CR-V had done its job well, deploying ample airbags and absorbing a pretty big hit, but an ambulance ride and a long night in the emergency department followed.
She’s off work for a few days while aches and pains subside. We freelancers can’t stay home forever, so the next problem was what car to stick her in when she’s feeling up to it. The Cayenne has proved so good that I’ve sold my ‘spare’ cars: Subaru, MX5, M3 about to go and Landcruiser will be next. Obvious write-offs like this usually settle fast, so there seems little point in a courtesy car. Off to eBay I went, looking at alternatives.
Nothing good on eBay, so I decided to stick her in the M3 for a few days and buy another SUV when the insurance cheque arrives. That decision made, I spent Thursday evening in college a little burnt out, emerging back into the winter chill at 10pm to drive home. Sliding into the Cayenne, it started with a misfire. Not too unusual when damp, a slight misfire from cold usually clears. Ten miles later, the miss was just the same. I texted a Cayenne mate “Misfire. Coil packs?” Consensus this was likely culprit. I’d order a new one next day, as I couldn’t have another car go down.
Next morning was just as cold, and the miss was just as wrong. I ordered eight coil packs and a set of plugs. Dropped the kids at school and drove the fifty miles on seven cylinders. Still managed to top the ton, though. No limp-home mode on Cayenne. I stuck the Cayenne on a friend’s Porsche PIWIS, which showed cylinder number three was misfiring. Time to take some bits off.
Getting to Cayenne coil packs is not too tricky. Top engine plastics come off when the engine support is removed: it’s a bit of simple spannering. Number three coil pack had quite a long crack, and more than one other had the same. The plugs were not over tight and looked a bit worn, so new ones would give it a boost. I also ordered wiper blades – been meaning to for weeks.
The plugs and packs didn’t arrive until late afternoon, so it was dark by the time I was finished. My cross-country drive to avoid the Friday night motorway traffic was a revelation – transformed the Cayenne from an impressive 4×4 needing Tiptronic downflicks to press on, into a rev-loving mega beast, attacking all comers.
We ripped up more Tarmac than a truckload of road protesters and I’ve been looking for cane-it opportunities ever since. Pizza run last night, brick run today, failed brick run yesterday: all good fun. Tickover is now smoother than the aforementioned prom queen’s anatomy: everyone needs a Cayenne!
Apart from my wife that is, as I just bought her a bargain Skoda Fabia TDI estate to run around in while we’re waiting for the next thing. Turned out the seller also owned a 993 and was considering adding a Cayenne. It’s a small Porsche world, you know.
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I’ve had a good week of car sales, with my MX5 and Subaru Outback going to new homes quickly on eBay. I’m selling as too many cars and two home extensions eating cash! The MX5 needed a decent polish before departure, and I’d set today aside to get stuck into it. The weather was excellent, so I did it outside the back gates.
My M3 (above in MOT last weekend by Rob at Racing Restorations) was hurriedly polished after its respray last year and it looks crap. I had a few run-ins with the paint shop we used during and after the work, so I decided to sort it myself. I’m no stranger to polishers, having started my career as a valeter. I have an air-powered CP dual action sander/polisher, but air is a pain to polish with, so I went hunting for an electric machine.
I eventually nabbed an almost unused DAS Pro 6 dual-action polisher kit with Mezerna polishes on eBay and stashed it with a bunch of pads and other compounds in the garage. Not paint corrected the M3 as yet, but I dragged the DAS 6 Pro out for the Mazda this morning.
Our Miata is solid Mazda Red, so had oxidised quite a bit over the summer. It took about two hours to compound it using the dual action machine polisher, a foam pad and Meguiars Ultimate Compound, before finishing with hand-applied Zymol glaze. It came up an absolute treat: so good I felt like keeping it! The new owner will adore it for sure.
The MX is not leaving until next week, so I put that away under cover. The sun was still lovely, so I dragged out the hosepipe and washed the Cayenne, which has been doing sterling service shifting all sorts of building materials, with the trailer and without.
It’s the first time I’ve washed the Big Pig myself and it came up OK, but I was reminded of numerous marks in the paint. In its previous life, my V8 had vinyl signwriting over it, and there was still some vinyl adhesive and a lot of rub marks where solvent was used to shift glue. I’ve been meaning to sort this since buying it. It was time to hit the Cayenne.
I dried it with compressed air, a Meguiars water magnet drying cloth and some microfibre towels. I decided not to clay the paint, just wiped the panels down with Autoglym Intensive Tar Remover, which also removed the last bits of vinyl adhesive. It’s good stuff.
I had forgotten what a relief it is to abandon the phone and Internet and just escape into cleaning a car, so the job was quite enjoyable. I tried a few different polishes on the Basalt Black metallic paint, eventually settling on Menzerna Fast Gloss FG500 with a hard foam polishing pad as the best combination.
I used Farecla G3 scratch remover on a separate hard pad for the longer scratches down the NS (from hedges down our country lanes), and also for fingernail scratches around the tailgate release and driver’s door handle. The tar remover did a good job taking wax off where the DA caught the edge of plastic trim: no need to mask off the edges etc as I wasn’t going too hard and the dual action polisher is quite safe.
I didn’t go all-out for a perfect finish – I was working outside with just an afternoon’s worth of light and no clay treatment, so not much point – but the Fast Gloss on a moderate polisher speed gave a great finish quite easily. Once buffed with some microfibres, I topped it off with hand-applied Dodo Juice Blue Velvet hard wax, specially made for dark paint. Just put it on with your hands and wax off with a soft terry cloth.
I’m not going to turn this into a Detailer’s World anorak photo fest: you’ll have to gauge the shine from my iPhone pics. I’m really delighted with the result: thumbs up for the DAS 6 Pro Dual Action polisher and having a load of different polishes to try. Excellent!
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“Oh John, it’s not a real one”, called 911 rally mechanic Adam as I ran off for the Cayenne on a recent Tuthill Porsche shoot. I needed something to stand on and, in the absence of a stepladder, an SUV roof would do.
More than ten years after the Cayenne’s debut, Adam’s teasing is typical of many Porsche fans, but for sure this car is a real Porsche. It might share a platform with the Volkswagen Touareg, but then most modern cars are built using shared platforms.
Is a Golf less Volkswagen for sharing platforms with Audi and Skoda? Cheaper cars share more components than Touareg and Cayenne, but no one gives the Golf a hard time, or knocks the A3 for costing three to five grand more. Bits shared between Volks and Porsche on the big SUV platform are inconsequential. Air con ducts, ABS sensors, some airbags, seat belts, door latches. Who cares about this stuff? The heart and soul of this Big Pig is what matters, and V8 Cayenne has got it going on.
I recently picked up a copy of the book “Porsche Cayenne” by Clauspeter Becker and Stefan Warter. Dating back to 2002, it’s a glorified brochure, telling the story of Cayenne development using previously unseen pictures from the Porsche library. Some of the text reads straight from press release, but the pictures are really excellent: well worth my £8 on Amazon versus £45 on eBay.
The book zooms in on Porsche engineering and pre-release testing for the shared platform, of which there was plenty. Engine development gets its very own chapter. The Cayenne V8 was developed from scratch by Porsche to suit SUV purposes, so it’s compact – less than 600mm long for a 4.5-litre V8 – and powerful, with a mega-flat torque curve running maximum torque of 420 Nm all the way from 2,200 rpm to 5,500 rpm.
Count me impressed by the three-pump oil system, which is designed to work on inclines of 100 percent. Sit the car on the tailgate and the engine will keep running: try that in lesser machines. The closed-deck engine block features additional cast iron bottom-end bearing seats as developed for the 928, which also make the engine smoother and quieter. Lots of quiet engineering in this car.
The Cayenne’s cylinder heads follow classic 911 design. The heads are two-part: lower is the water-cooled combustion chamber and intake/exhaust ports, while the top houses the camshaft and tappet guides. The camshafts run with variable timing: hydraulic controllers shift the inlet cams by up to 50 degrees versus crankshaft rotation.
Timing chain diagrams are pretty amazing: a huge duplex chain running four overhead cams, with a second single-row chain driving those three oil pumps. It would be interesting to see timing chain ramp wear after 150,000 miles or so. I’ll be watching for that opportunity, but have already driven a 250,000-mile Cayenne with a silent V8 engine, so not holding my breath.
The Cayenne V8 engines are built in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen before shipping to Leipzig for installation. Cayenne not a real Porsche? Makes me laugh!
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Life as a Cayenne driver continues. Still loads of people asking what they are like to own, so time for another Porsche Cayenne running report.
I’m about 2,500 miles or so in now and fuel economy is bearable versus my Subarus: roughly 18-20 mpg over a mix of jobs and terrains. It’s about £107 to fill up on 95 RON, then you will get roughly 320-360 miles from a tank, which is just over 20 mpg at best. If you know a Cayenne tank is 90 litres then my maths includes leaving 10 litres in there as a constant.
I’ve been looking at later Cayennes: maybe 2008 GTS. Later cars have slightly different trim and are said to be more sorted (debatable) but the downside is probably £12-13k current cost to change. Really don’t want to spend that while there is no roof on the house (builders are in), and all I am really missing right now is heated seats, so will keep my 2004 for a while. Reliability is looking good, although this starter issue I have had since buying it is bugging me now, so I am going to change that part.
Keeping it means I really want to fit my fuel of choice: LPG (propane). A conversion is circa £1600 using proper gear, tank fits in the wheel well and gives quite a nice price advantage at around 52p a litre plus VAT, but it would take me 18 months at current mileage (1200 monthly) to earn the cost back. Not sure I will keep this for two years so up in the air at the minute. If I get another client further away and my miles climb past 1500 monthly, then I will start thinking about it seriously.
DIY jobs are ongoing. I took it to Rob Campbell at Racing Restorations in Pershore last weekend to work on my 924 Turbo rebuild, but of course we started messing with the Cayenne. The car is Cat D salvage: accident repaired following a tap on the front right corner, so we had a look at the panel gaps on that and adjusted the front wing and bonnet. Turned out my NSF headlamp was rattling around so that was fixed (I could write a feature on how these are fitted to the car). We also straightened the driver’s door, which was slightly twisted. Rob is great at this sort of stuff so took less than an hour.
The wing is still a bit bent where it was repaired, and I could be fussy about the paint, so I may fit a new one. I know if I get into that then I have grown attached and LPG will be next. I’ve also fitted a replacement towbar with Rob’s help and bought some winter wheels and tyres. These were CHEAP so I am chuffed. In fact, everything so far has been very affordable.
Running costs to date on Porsche Cayenne S:
Pollen Filter £8
2 x sets wheel Centre Caps (originals nicked) £14 (ebay)
Wireless DVD headphones new foam £3 (ebay)
Used Detachable Towbar plus Ball inc carriage £60 (ebay)
New footbrake return damper £23 (Porsche Silverstone)
Set 18″ wheels for Winter £102 (ebay)
Set part-worn winter tyres £30 (ebay)
Total spent to date: £240
The wheels and tyres were excellent bargains. Tyres have enough for this winter and I will buy another set with more of a mud profile, so good for thick snow. Don’t give me any grief about buying part worns – I’ve run good part worns on my own cars for most of my driving career and never had a problem on them. New tyres for the Cayenne are £800 to £1000 a set and no way am I paying that with nine other cars in the fleet. Your own car is on part-worns right now: check and inspect them properly and err on the side of safety is my philosophy. That said, I put new tyres on the wife’s CRV, as I don’t get to check it that often.
Anyway, I can see my Big Pig is enjoying its tyres, so am already watching out for good road rubber. Brakes are cheap enough, with Mintex discs and pads costing about £120 for front axle set, £110 for the rear. This starter will cost about £100 to be reconditioned, plus the cost to pull the manifold off and back on. Apart from that, it will be due a service soon to get ready for winter. I plan to change the brake fluid, drop the coolant and make sure that rear screen washer system is all tip top. Last thing I want is a floor full of screenwash in the middle of winter.
Just re-reading what I am writing, I think we know I am eventually doing LPG on this car. Must start tracking down the history.
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I’ve had this irritating wiring problem with the gearshift on the Cayenne since I bought it. The manual shift on the Tiptronic shifter/gear lever doesn’t work, but the steering wheel buttons are fine. After a few miles driving, the gear display in the gauge cluster will default to ‘D’ and no gear is shown when using manual shift.
You want to see the gears and shift a Cayenne manually, as driving along in D is the least rewarding way to go. Porsche Tiptronic is all about performance with convenience and when it’s working, it does well with the V8 engine. Shifting on the buttons or the stick as you exit a corner or approach an ascent is the way to keep these things cooking: waiting for the ECU to decide to shift down or kicking down and burning needless fuel is hopeless.
I found this thread on Rennlist where two pointers were raised: magnets on the shift cover or water in the footwell. I stripped the entire centre console out and had a look. Turned out my problem was neither: the wiring to the shifter was chewed up, for some reason. I spliced in some new stuff, heatshrunk over it and put it all back together, giving the centre console gubbins a good clean at the same time.
Starting the Cayenne up, the display worked and shift looked good. Manual was now appearing in the cluster and the stick was working well. I call that a win: maybe it will solve some other stuff too.
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
Needed a break from writing today, so took a hour off to chase some mechanical niggles and do some DIY maintenance on my 2004 Porsche Cayenne S.
I’ve not been super impressed with the audio quality from the PCM 2.1 system so far. It’s hard to believe Porsche could ship such bad sounds. Radio reception is absolutely tragic, and playback from CD not much to write home about.
As a long-term car hi-fi geek, I’ve got a lot of quality audio components in the garage, so thought I’d strip a door card off and look at what the Cayenne packs into those massive enclosures. Getting the card off was easily done thanks to Renntech – membership there is the best money I’ve spent on this car so far. It seems like every Porsche tech question you could ask is covered on Renntech or the Rennlist Cayenne Forum: I would be stuffed without them.
I found the PDF for the door card removal and off it came. Look at that woofer! Should definitely sound better than it did. I checked all the connections and fixed a dislocated rubber speaker ring that was rattling. Then sat in the truck and played with some audition discs. Turning the loudness off was a big step up. It sounds a lot better now, though I may still do something with the front end and get more bass in the trunk.
As I’m not selling the PCM this week, I left it playing and did a few more bits. I had been warned me about the rear washer pipe which can become disconnected behind the driver’s A-pillar, so I had a look at that. Apparently that can pour water into the ECU – which has already been replaced on this Cayenne.
Taking the A-pillar trim off was easy thanks to Rennlist. Getting it back on was a pig but let’s gloss over that. I found the pipe and also a kink in the line – no doubt a cause of the thing popping off. I used a cable tie to stop the kink, and put it all back together.
Turning on the squirt was an experience, as it streamed down the width of the screen. I got one of the kids to work the switch and it was coming out from around the third brake light. Obviously a pipe was disconnected.
Rennlist told me how to get that light out – you split the spoiler from inside the tailgate. There’s a lot of gear underneath that roof spoiler! I reckon one of my aerials might be U/S so will have that checked out.
Anyway, I got the brake light out and shot some compressed air though the jet, put it all back together and it works, although there is still a bit coming from the light. I’m sure the connecting pipe has gone hard, so will get a new bend to replace it.
Got a few more jobs to do but am on some deadlines for tomorrow. Back to work!
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
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