gota911

Maybe he got it open, climed in the trunk to work on the latch, and the bonnet closed again, locking him in the trunk, so he can't reply!

Chuck Jones

Tim: You mihght be right......Hey Dream Carrera....bang three times on the inside of the trunklid if you're stuck in there....

gota911

DreamCarrera

Thanks for the concern guys. With friends like you who needs enemys.

Don't worry about me, I've heard that you have a much better chance of being struck by lightning than getting locked in your P-Car trunk. ...OR was that having an RMS leak....

BTW, I am too smart to climb in the truck to work on the latch. If my wife were to see me doing this she would probably slam the hood on me and later act dumb when being questioned by the authorities.


Chuck, I used your advice and pulled the bumper loose from the screws holding it on underneath the hood. I was surprised at how easy it was to pull off. I still cannot see the latch mechanism well enough to pop it open so I need to remove the plastic trim piece which is in front of the latch. Hopefully I will have time later today to work on it.

Chuck - Thanks again for the info.

Tim - Thanks for your concern.

gota911

You're welcome!

Well, you getting locked in the trunk COULD have happened! OK, OK.... possible, but not probable! But it did make for good fodder here.
Oh, one other thing. If you have bought a Blue 996, you would not be having a trunk latch problem.

Chuck Jones

Once you get to the latch, take a screw driver or I have a little mini pry bar, and insert the flat edge of the pry bar or screw driver into the latch on the left side of the machanism....you'll see the latch rotated over in the closed position....pry it away from the side of the housing and it will function well enough to get it open. Then pull the whole mechanism out by taking out the three 10mm nuts, disengage the emergency braided cable from the slot on the bottom left and the cabin release cable from the top right, and you can take the whole thing out. Make sure to disconnect the electronic plug that you'll find behind the fibreboard trunk insert, and you can then push the rubber grommet holding the wiring thru the hole. I used the new synthetic silicone grease on the mechanism including the spring....and reinstalled it. Everything works EXCEPT I still get the little beep upon locking....tells me the micro switch isn't working, and I havne't seen fit to replace it...but haven't had any more trouble with the actual latch.

When you reinstall the bumper...make sure you push the top part that you had to tear the tabs on...push them in snug, otherwise you'll get a slight circular gap under the passenger's side headlight. Nothing drastic, but looks tacky.

DreamCarrera

For the sake of reference purposes I am posting a conclusion to this thread. It should be used in conjunction to the great write-up about the trunk latch mechanism that can be found at renntech.org.

My trunk hood was jammed to the point that nothing I tried would open it. Even after removing the front bumper cover, which allowed me to see the latch mechanism, I still was unable to un-jamb the latch mechanism or even see how the latch was jammed to begin with.

Finally, I got the idea to remove the bolts which hold the latch catch to the hood. Once the front bumper cover was removed I was able to fit an open ended wrench in under the hood to loosen the two screws holding the catch to the hood. How is that for thinking out of the box?

I was able to look down into the latch once I raised the hood and I could then see that it was simply jammed. I grabbed the catch with both hands and pulled up with a lot of force to finally pull the catch free. This is the same thing that I was doing while pulling up on the hood(by wrapping a kitchen spatula in a micro-fiber cloth and slipping it under the hood) only I was afraid of bending the hood as I was using a lot of force without the hood even budging.

The cause of my problem was the main culprit with these latches. The end of the spring, which is supposed to be bent at a 90 degree angle and inserted in a hole on one of the latch arms, slipped out of the hole and then pushed on the latch arm binding up the entire latch. Unfortunately, the metal that Porsche used to make the spring is weak and sometimes looses the 90 bend which allows it to slip out of the hole.

I tried to repair my latch by re-bending the end of the spring and re-inserting it into the hole but after a few test runs the spring popped out of the hole again. I ended up replacing the latch mechanism with a new one that I purchased from my local dealer. The cost of the new latch was about $140.

I also rerouted the emergengy release cable to the tow hook hole as seen in the picture.


Hopefully my ordeal can help someone in the future with the same problem. Here’s a pic. of my shiny new latch.

Chuck Jones

DC: Glad you finally got it fixed.....although I fixed my latch by inserting a screw driver between the latch and the housing and bent the latch away from the side of the housing....I'm not that confident that it might not happen again....but at least now I know how to get in there...and I've re-routed the emergency cable too.....you may want to re-route the cable in the back too...it's on the driver's side in the rear. No sense having to tear everything apart just because you can't get to the emrgency cable.