Mark Fletcher

So I drive into town to check on a house we're renovating, park the 968 (1993, 6-speed) in front of the house (1st gear, P-brake on) and have a conversation on the front yard with an electrician. After about two minutes he looks over my shoulder and says "Hey, where's your car going?". It was proceeding forward slowly under the power of the starter motor, and before I could get to it to take it out of gear it bumped into the back of the electrician's van (no damage to his trailer hitch, two deep scratches to the front of my car). To stop the starter from turning over we had to pull the negative cable off the battery. It turns out the cable to the starter had shorted with a cable that runs to the alternator. I had no warning prior that there was any problem with the starter. Which all sucks.

The only two things that made this situation better than it could have been is that it happened while I was standing nearby, and that the car pushed itself into the back of an old one-ton van. If this had happened at home in my basement garage I probably wouldn't have heard it, and it would have squished a nice motorbike against the garage wall. If it had happened in the parkade at my office (where I always back into my stall) then directly across from me is a guy who drives either a Carrera 4 convertible, or an M5, neither of which want to get humped by a 968.

It could have been worse.

JDS968

Holy ****...maybe I should reconsider leaving it in gear every time I park it...

Also you should be careful, your starter may be on its way out, now. They're never supposed to run for more than 30 seconds, and that's enormously more load than they're supposed to handle.

PorscheG96

That happened to my previous 968 and I had to replace the alternator cable that was disintegrating.

Mark Fletcher

I replaced the starter in mid-March, the old one wasn't turning over like it should and it was drawing more current than it was supposed too. Since then I put 4,000 miles on the car, but the heat damage to the wiring harness from the old starter must have been there waiting to happen. Just waiting for the new harness to arrive at the Porsche dealer, then back on the road, hopefuly there's still lots of life left in the starter.

It's weird when something bad happens, but you count yourself lucky because it could have been a lot worse.

JDS968

That's what I'm saying, it's unlikely. Running the starter motor for a couple of minutes straight, AND under the load of the entire car instead of just the motor, is like missing a shift and overreving your engine, hard, so I'd just make sure you have a backup car to get to work, if you don't replace it preemptively

FRporscheman

Starters let you know when they're failing. I say use it until it starts to not catch or turn too slowly. Do you have AAA?

notthd

HS is right!!!!! WOW! be glad no-one was between the car and the van, that could have been really bad. Mark I have a harness and starter just sitting in the garage if you need to borrow one until your new one comes in - Just a thought. Sorry to hear about this. Maybe I need to check my cars this week, thanks for sharing..

Cheers Mike

Mark Fletcher

I picked up the car this morning at the local Porsche dealer after the repair was done, Porsche had a replacement harness in stock in Atlanta (which seemed a little weird at first).

The mechanic showed me the old harness. When he pulled back the harness sheath the insulation around the cable that goes to the starter solenoid was completely crumbling - lots of it had fallen away exposing the copper wire and all of the rest was cracked and very brittle. The insulation around the cable that provides power to the starter motor was a bit better, but it was also cracked and crumbling and that's how the short happened.

At the starter the solenoid cable has a rubber-like cover over the first 8 inches that hides the condition of cable inside (that's why this problem wasn't apparent when the starter was replaced by the dealer in March '10), but if you pull away the sheath from the harness the condition of the cable insulation is readily apparent. If you can get at it, I would urge that you check the condition of the insulation around those two cables.

Notthd - thanks for the mentioning the parts you have available, for now the starter I put in in March seems to be no worse for wear from this incident, but I'm knocking on wood as I type this.

Mark