We recently finished construction on a nice big new garage (finally) and I've been relocating cars up to the house. The 991 and 997 vehicles have been easy since they have HomeLink Garage Door openers built in, but no dice with the 996 GT3. I recall seeing a thread or video back in the early 2000s where someone repurposed the Targa sunshade rocker switch (that has an icon that looks a bit like a garage door) (Porsche part number: 996-613-119-10-A05) and wired it up to activate a garage door remote. At the time, I installed one in my 996 Turbo and it worked perfectly.

I thought I'd revisit that solution for the GT3. Picked up two Targa switches, 1 for gate and 1 for garage doors. I wired the gate switch, to activate regardless of which side of the rocker is pushed. The garage door switch is wired so pushing the left side of the rocker opens the left garage door, and the right does the opposite. I used small keychain sized garage door openers, removed the case, soldered leads directly to the board and epoxied over the solder joints for extra precaution.

I wrapped everything in fabric tape to keep it quiet. Popped out the blanks in the horseshoe shaped trim and installed the new buttons. I wired up the button lights to the green plug on the other side, which meant fishing a wire behind the head unit to the other side of the horse shoe. In my research, most folks mentioned that they button lights don't require specific polarity -- I didn't find that to be true, at least not with the green plug.

Buttoned everything up and it works like a charm. I could have earned myself some extra credit by wiring the garage door opens to switched power to avoid ever having to replace the coin cell batteries in them. I'll see how long they last and maybe make that modification in the future.

 

Yes, did the exact same thing years ago. Works perfectly. Nice job!

 

Noticed that your image of the side-sill (part # 996-551-019-28-A03) has the release switches attached. Do you recall if the side-sill came with new switches or did you attach your old ones?

Thank you...

The last couple factory fresh parts to install were the side sill switch panel (p/n: 996-551-019-28-A03) and the drivers side leather door pull (p/n: 996-555-591-00-A11).

 

@R-GT3 it comes with new switched attached.

 

Thank you Ryan.

So just to confirm, the side-sill part # 996-551-019-28-A03 comes with the switches and for anyone interested in ordering the side-sill without the switches it is part # 996-551-119-04-A03

 

What do you think about having a unique switch for your front gate to help differentiate it from the garage door switch?
It's the rear wiper switch part # 99661313610A05