SGPioso

Hey All - after half a year of research and test drives I finally pulled the trigger and bought my first Porsche, a 2021 Cayman GTS 4.0 in Chalk. I purchased the car from Porsche of Livermore roughly three weeks ago and have had an absolute blast, though still breaking the engine in, so not pushed it to much.

As the title indicates, there is more to this story than simply taking ownership of the new car and I plan to create a longer post detailing the purchasing experience hiccups and more serious twists in full. Here is a quick synopsis of my first 2 weeks with the car.

2021 Cayman GTS Driving Experience - simply incredible! Sticks to the road like nothing I’ve driven before. While I’m not looking for attention, I’ve got quite a bit of compliments on the color / spec, which is always nice when you’ve just spent a material amount of money. The flat 6 sounds awesome, though still keeping it fairly low revs given its still in break in. Overall, extremely happy with the driving experience.

Porsche Cayman GTS 4.0 Clock Not Keeping Time - Since I took delivery of the car 2 weeks ago, the car has run flawlessly with one exception, the clock. The internal clock, both on the main cener screen and sports chrono can be set, but stops incrementing once you turn the car off e.g. I set the time at 8:30am, turn it off, start the car at 12pm and the internal clock says its 8:30am. I lived with it for a week then decided to schedule a service appointment at Porsche of Steven’s Creek as I wanted to make sure there were not more serious electrical issues. Long story short, after a week in the service department, they determined that my wiring harness needs to be replaced, mind you the entire dash has been disassembled in already. This is where the plot thickens.

Porsche Cayman GTS Connecting Rod Upgrade Recall (safety recall) - The same day I had dropped off the car at Steven’s Creek to troubleshoot the clock issue noted above, I got a call from a representative from Porsche North America, Jason. He told me that he had some “bad news about my car” and I was initially confused as I thought this was regarding the clock issue...how bad can a clock issue really be? Turns out he was calling to inform me that there was a safety concern related to the connecting rod within the engine. He said there was concern that the bolt that holds the connecting rod in place may fail for a small number of Cayman’s, including mine. I later heard from a sales rep that the issue was known to impact 19 total cars, though that has not been confirmed by PNA yet. This issue seems nearly identical to the connecting rod safety recall for 2014-2015 Porsche GT3 models. I appreciate that Porsche was proactive and reached out to me directly, but there was no clear resolution outlined in our conversation.

Current State of Affairs - Yesterday, five days after dropping my GTS off at Steven’s Creek, I was informed that they believe the clock issue can only be resolved by replacing the wiring harness. They asked if they had my permission to complete the work and I said 100% no. First off, the my understanding is that the wiring harness is custom built for each car and replacing it is a substantial repair. Second, I don’t yet know if the car is safe to drive nor what the recall resolution will be.

The weather is fantastic at the moment and I would like mother more than to be carving up the incredible roads in the Santa Cruz mountains, but I have no car and no clear next steps. Not the experience I had expected from my first Porsche.

There is actually more to this story than just the above and there is more to come. I plan to post a longer description of my experience along with updates on the Cayman GTS connecting rod recall and resolution soon.

I’d love to hear from any of you who many have been impacted by the GT3 recall or are impacted with the current Cayman recall. There are a few other reports of Cayman 718 GT4’s being recalled.


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Landshark92

Wow, that is a horror story. I was about to congratulate you on a very special car for your first Porsche but it's more like my condolences.

I bought a brand new BMW that needed a new rebuilt transmission the very first day I took it home. It was a horror story how it went from a bad transmission to an incorrectly installed starter to then a malfunctioning clutch, all related to the original issue. I disliked every part of the 19 months that I had it until I sold it and only then was happy with the overall cost of ownership. A really bittersweet end to my first new car ever. It was still a great car to drive and didn't keep me from buying more BMW's in the future.

I hope that fate doesn't befall you and wish you luck with your current situation.

Edit: I guess the only tangible thing you can get from my situation was that looking back on it after it all happened, I would have really liked to invoke the lemon law and just had them buy back my car at the beginning. But I didn't pursue it because if I tried to get rid of the car like that, and it didn't work, I would have been psychologically very messed up, clearly having a car that I didn't want but forced to still pay for it. And I don't think it would have worked anyway. They need to have the car so many days, for so many different issues, blah blah blah. So I went along with it.

Only you can decide if it is worth the trouble. Maybe you have a better relationship with Porsche or the dealer. I was just some random relatively young kid that walked into a dealership so I didn't have much going for me on my side.

SGPioso

Many thanks for the condolences and encouragement to not fully write off the brand. They can earn a repeat customer or an active detractor, the ball is in Porsche North America and Porsche of Livermore’s court now.

Dyim

I am guessing you will have a new engine dropped in at the dealer for the connecting rod issue. Less work at the dealer level than engine disassembly.

Obviously you are not the only one with the engine issue.

My car is held at port pending repair. I am guessing people like me potentially can have the engine torn apart at port to replace the defective part. I won’t be surprised PAG will fly in some engine assemblers from Germany to do this.

The real question is whether you want the car after the harness repair. Sounds like they have to tear apart the cockpit quite a bit? If that is not your thing, just dump this car and negotiate for a new allocation.

My 0.02.

Larry Cable

In general I think that PAG/PCNA will make the engine issue good, most likely by installing a brand new engine, (and in the case of the GT3 issue extended warranties etc were provided) however replacing the wiring harness is a much bigger deal and very intrusive over the entire car! you may want to look into Ca Lemon laws to understand your options ...

good luck!

LZRD GRN

So sorry to hear!

FWIW, I grew up working part time in a garage, electrical problems rarely ended well!

More recently I had wiring harness/relay/xenon module issues (not sure that ever knew what) on a BMW X5, and also wiring harness issues with a Ducati Multistrada.

Both of these issues were disasters, it seemed the dealers really had no clue, I eventually traded both but took a bath on each one!

Unless you can get some major assurance on the wiring issue, I would not keep that car!

Easy for me to say, picked up my GT4 a few weeks ago, it has been great...

Again, Good Luck!

Cheers!

Makers

I'm incredibly skeptical that "the wiring harness" is the culprit. There should never be a need to replace a single wire, much less the/an entire harness unless a conductor is broken, and the fact that the clock powers and keeps time (in two independent locations!) as long as the key is turned convinces me this isn't a wiring issue. Time is undoubtedly kept by the computer and under normal circumstances would be updated as long as the computer has power. This sounds like a software issue to me, though I can't explain how or why it's not impacting others, unless it is. I'm looking forward to your updates. Meantime I'm solidly in your camp, no harness changes, at least not until someone could explain their diagnosis of the failure exactly!

Zhao

Fixing the engine issue doesn't bother me a ton because if there is a problem it'll show up within the warranty period, but changing out a harness does. I could look it up tomorrow but most likely the main harness snakes throughout the entire car, possibly even throughout the engine. That means the entire interior is going to be disassembled, and that means broken tabs and clips. stressed plastic. tool marks on trim, plus a number of things you can't see behind the scene (likely they won't route it the same way, and there likely will be missing hardware).

A couple years I had bmw warranty a minor electrical problem in my car, and this winter I had some meth head smashed my window looking to steal something from a car that only has insurance papers and the owners manual in it. Thx to the meth head and needing repairs from his handwork I got to see what bmw did behind my trim panels... What a Fing disaster. Stripped wires, duct tape. didn't connect a puddle light on the passenger side probably because its very difficult so the harness was just dangling there, side mirror 10mm bolts were loose, and they didn't actually change what the work order stated.

Plus no tech likes changing a wiring harness and it pays too little for the time it takes so the tech is going to be pissed off the entire time hes doing the job, which always makes someone do their best work.....

Zhao

I also think it's extremely unlikely the wiring harness will solve the issue.

sanderabernathy

Quick! Name something harder to replace than 6 connecting rods that’s not a wiring harness. Bet you can’t do it!

Aronis

The wire harness thing requires someone with the care only found in a rare mechanic or the owner of the car. Every step needs to be done perfectly.

If you turn that thing back in PLEASE post the VIN so all can be warned. I would bet they would try to resell the car without changing the wire harness.

To you it's your dream car, to them 'it's only a car.'

Mike

fueledbymetal

In older cars I would agree, but modern cars are composed of so many subassemblies I wouldn't at all be surprised if the harnesses come from some supplier as a complete sub-assembly, so the entire sub-assembly would be treated as a single part. In that case I'd much rather the entire subassembly be swapped rather than expect a regular dealership mechanic to try to troubleshoot a single bad connection within it (especially since it's on Porsche's dime).

Makers

I agree completely! In fact, if the issue can be traced to a faulty electrical connection, it's just as likely if not more so that the problem is with the connector and not the cabling (ie, wire) itself. But all that misses my point. My point is I'll be terribly surprised to find out that OP's clock issue has anything to do with wiring or electrical connections at all.

CaymanMatt

I agree. There is something else amiss here. I wonder if there is a bit in a configuration register somewhere that can be toggled on/off to stop the clock. It's not a removal of power because the clock retains it's time. Since it just stops counting there is a "count" trigger somewhere that is set incorrectly. FWIW, that could point to the wiring harness if a physical wire was wired directly to that pin. I highly doubt it though as I expect all this stuff to be way inboard on the IC somewhere.

Is there anyone here who might have a register description for the MCU (or whatever it's called in Porsche world)?

MOO & FWIW

Makers

This issue still has me scratching my head, so I took a look in my own car. Time is displayed in four places: on the MFD, on the PCM screen, and in digital and analog formats on the SportChrono timer/clock. Since this is whether or not the key is turned, the OP's description has me further confused. Do these four readouts go blank, or do they remain on but frozen in time??? If the analog timer is configured to be "sweep second hand", does it run or stand still when the car is off. It should run if everything is working properly.