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More wife damage, any ideas what get messed up here . . .
Wife left the top down on her car over the weekend while I was in St. Thomas. It rained in it on Saturday and then she had it detailed on Monday, but now the sport, sport plus and tail/spoiler buttons do not work. PSM button does, but nothing else on that row does. Any ideas? She has no idea if it worked prior to the detail on Saturday.
My concern as water potentially leaked down into pdk shift handle area and shorted something. AC controls and everything else works. Could water have shorted out those 3 switches or if the box or fuse I should check somewhere. Thanks.
Check fusses, also if you have a dehumidifier, you might want to place it in the car a few days followed by ozone machine just to be safe. In the future I'd try to run the car as little as possible until you know it is completly dried out. Best of luck.
Wife left the top down on her car over the weekend while I was in St. Thomas. It rained in it on Saturday and then she had it detailed on Monday, but now the sport, sport plus and tail/spoiler buttons do not work. PSM button does, but nothing else on that row does. Any ideas? She has no idea if it worked prior to the detail on Saturday.
My concern as water potentially leaked down into pdk shift handle area and shorted something. AC controls and everything else works. Could water have shorted out those 3 switches or if the box or fuse I should check somewhere. Thanks.
Probably not what you want to hear but my first and least expensive attempt to fix this would be to get your wife's most powerful hairdryer along with an extension cord and just blast the suspected areas. Slim chance of success perhaps but worth a try. Long story but I actually had something similar happen to another car and it worked.
There's some modules under the front seats, it's lowest part in the cabin. Top down, water will head there. Also I heard if the frunk drains are plugged, sometimes water would move into the cabin and flood those modules, but they were immobilizer if I remember correctly? Not sure what else is down there though.
Whatever the case, go to home depot and pick up some desiccants. Mold may be impending, or hiding. Eva dry is great stuff
Good luck, hopefully it'll just dry out and go back to functioning normally.
Check fusses, also if you have a dehumidifier, you might want to place it in the car a few days followed by ozone machine just to be safe. In the future I'd try to run the car as little as possible until you know it is completly dried out. Best of luck.
Regarding the Ozone Machine ... be careful using that in your car/garage.
When I had a house fire, the remediation company discussed placing one in my basement to reduce the smoke odor. My colleague at work does fire claims (he’s a casualty loss attorney). He recommended that I take any valuable items out of the basement that were made from expensive materials. Apparently the Ozone Machine can accelerate the degradation of rubber, upholster, paints, materials, and electronics. So I’d definitely consult someone before placing one of those in my 911.
Seal up the car. Turn on the engine, put AC ON, Fan up high, Heat up high, only low vent on. Let car sit in driveway idling for a few hours. The AC is an amazing dehumidifier. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Non-Porsche electrical expert here. But electrons are electrons. You can waste a ton of gas trying the A/C method, but if the switches are properly sealed (more tight than not) it won't do anything but waste gas. Do NOT use an ozone machine EVER. That will destroy repairable electrical more than anything else.
Most LIKELY your problem is water infiltration into the switch assembly though - even if the fuses show bad - but it's not a huge expense. Just annoying. You're going to need to take the entire switch panel out first. It's one whole assembly, and I'm guessing the cab has two connectors instead of one. Box looks like this on the 997:
Got the box out? Great. Now what you need to do is VERY CAREFULLY separate the shell. Those little rectangles are the anchoring tabs. I don't THINK it's glued, but seriously, don't force it and go real slow. You don't want to break the plastic. Once you have it apart, that should expose the PCB and contacts for each switch. Simply do a continuity test on each switch to verify the switch itself still works. If anyone has the pinout diagram for the connector, it would be better to test there first. If the switch itself still works, inspect the PCB for any obvious damage. If no damage is found, use 90% or higher isopropyl alcohol to clean it off as much as possible. It's completely safe to dunk the PCB in it (but don't dunk the switches themselves.) Allow a MINIMUM of 12 hours to dry. Isopropyl alcohol evaporates fully, unlike water, so it's safe (and higher percentage means less chance of water residue. Plus it's water absorbent, so any excess water under surface mount components will get picked up and also evaporate.)
If that's still no go, DO NOT use an ozone machine or anything like that. Get fresh silica gel packets and place SEVERAL of them in a Tupperware container with the entire box as disassembled as you can get it. Silica gel is an actual water absorbent and very good at handling this sort of problem. However, you'll probably need to give it several days to get all the water out with that method. I've recovered and repaired a LOT of water "damaged" electronics like this over the years, so believe me, it works. It's all just a time consuming and tedious process.
Oh man! This is perfect! And shows EXACTLY where I'd expect to find water - right on the contact points! The pairs of three gold fingers. Probably some shorts between the resistors as well. But mostly the water and residue would be between the gold fingers probably, meaning, easy cleanup with isopropyl.
Big ziploc and lots of rice. Pictures and report back.
It's not the first convertible to get wet. Garage? Big fan.
If wife had it detailed, carpets should be dry.
I'd say compressed air, but the stupid soft touch black plastic, blow the finish off.
I know......
I bet it will start working after a few days.
You didn't mention how much water got it. My wife's Audi had a leak in the convertible top and a significant amount of water got in a flooded the footwells. There is a control module under the driver's seat that was totally shorted out. Affected a lot of different systems.
BTW - this is covered by your insurance under the comprehensive coverage.
07-17-2018, 07:54 PM
More wife damage, any ideas what get messed up here . . .
