981 - Indy Woes

[Gruff500]

Hello all,

Following on from a recent experience with a well known indy, I just wanted to glean some thoughts from other owners. Car is standard 2014 with 42k and FSH.

- Took in for service 3 months ago, a couple of minor advisories but nothing needing urgent attention.
- Aircon then died and had a sensor error come up 2 weeks later.
- Took back and had sensor replaced but aircon not touched.
- Came back and regassed aircon, acknowledging they missed this.
- 1 day later, aircon dies and sensor error comes up.
- Take back and told the Aircon condensors need replacing, plus the O2 sensor. O2 sensor has melted into the catyltic converter and this now needs replacing too. Total bill £3.5k.
- Total bill for the last 3 visits including service around £5k.

Car has been rock solid previously.

Is this just (really) bad luck or has the time with the Indy contributed to this very expensive myriad of issues? They have invited me to check the condition of the cat etc so I don't doubt the failures but it seems fault after fault with this indy, with a tad of negligence thrown in.

Welcome thoughts - thanks!

[Gruff500]

It was eventually confirmed as a solenoid failure/ issue on one of the banks that was replaced.

So effectively a different issue to the second O2 sensor if that helps.

[testdrive]

I don't think the garage is at fault based on what you've said above, I've read about a few cars with similar symptoms which were caused by the valve lift solenoid and then one of the cats falling apart, not always easy to diagnose. I've also heard of a couple that have destroyed their engines as the cat debris is sucked in so count yourself lucky.

The air con fault is typical, the condensers sometimes look like they are holding ok but a few days or even weeks later it can fail again. You need to have mesh over the condensers to ensure they don't get hit with rocks.

Edited by testdrive on Wednesday 20th July 00:17

[Gruff500]

Much appreciated and yep sounds like one of those things! The solenoid did go immediately after the Indy service but I would hope that’s just coincidence rather than something exacerbated by the service action.
And thats interesting about the misfire and the cat debris ingestion - have read about that on cars with a primary cat next to the engine with the clear option a primary cat delete and possible ECU remap as required.

Thanks again 👍

[testdrive]

Maybe it would have been picked up with some data logging or something but I've seen this happen with cars in the care of the OPC too.

[Chubbyross]

This sounds like bad luck rather than negligence. It should also act as a cautionary tale to prove there’s no such thing as a cheap Porsche. Sometimes a service can be a few hundred, sometimes many thousands. But we still love the damned things!