997_rich

if you can move it with your fingertips it's likely upstream stuff.. not as likely tie rod ends as much as steering wheel mount or steering shaft stuff.

utkinpol

again, it may be anything after car was transported. if shocks were moved away from their position (as upper mounts could got shifted) - it will be an alignment. if anything got bended - warranty. it`s just, well, it is quite difficult to destruct 997 car steering. but who knows. be polite but persistent with SR.

USMC_DS1

Gentlemen, thank you for the insight and advice... will keep you posted on outcome. Semper Fi.

jakes dad

walk out to the lot and ask to start up a new car and play with the steering wheel.

gpjli2

I have zero play engine off, car stopped with wheel unsecured. Stopped and locked however it is possible to generate a clunk against what I suppose is the locking mechanism. Takes more effort than you show however and is a solid sound. What you show is not "normal". Sounds/looks to me like the problem is in the steering wheel assembly itself. Nothing appears to be moving except the wheel. How you get a loose fitting steering wheel idk but should be an easy fix. (Not necessarily the same as a cheap fix)

USMC_DS1

I just dropped off my pcar for service this morning... I test drove it with the technician this time so there was no debate about whether there was an issue or not. Also showed him the issue while it was parked as well. The same tech that test drove it last week now conceded that the steering wheel did have too much free play so I'm now in a Porsche owned Subaru Legacy loaner car. Wow, times must be hard for these dealerships.

Minok

Good to hear. Update us all on what the diagnosis and treatment end up being.

For the car, not for you having to drive a Subaru for a week or two.

USMC_DS1

THE GOOD: my p-dealer repaired the issue within the day. It ended up just being a loose u-joint on the steering column. They re torqued it under warranty and now the C2S and I are back together. BTW, no alignment required. hmmm....

THE BAD: I'm not confident about my local p-dealer and their ability to find root cause without some prodding from yours truly. If you recall I already had my 997.1 by the dealership last week for them to do an impromptu test drive of the issue. Their feedback was that nothing was wrong with the steering, however, I needed an alignment. I did not agree with them but had to get back to work so I made an appt to revisit the issue a week later when the loaner car was available. So there I was this morning for the same issue... the SR looked up my record and indicated that I had already been in last week and that they had already addressed(written off) the issue, the tech who looked at it had 12 years of experience and so the SR gave me that look of "who was I to question the mech's judgment". This is always the hard part for me... keep my cool or threaten to bring the wrath of something unholy down on their ignorant souls. Instead I asked to speak to the tech/mech so that I may illustrate the issue to him... plus I'd like to see what kind of steering wheel play the other 997s on the lot had... for comparison. The mech meet me at my car where I illustrated how excessive the steering wheel play was at park and while driving with him I played with the steering left to right about a 1/2 inch with no affect to the car's direction... finally I convinced him to move it back and forth himself. When we got back from the test drive he told the SR to write it up for excessive play in the steering wheel.

My initial assessment after this repair is that they tend to ignore the customer's input, miss diagnose the real issue, thus jump to the wrong conclusion, and send you home without a timely solution... unless you're persistent and "lead the horse to water" as we say in Texas. Not exactly the type of service I've been looking for from my local p-dealer... but they're the only p-game in town. I may have to try the p-dealer in San Antonio next.

THE UGLY: hope I don't offend anyone but my Subi was ugly... compared to my red on black p-car. The 4 hours apart was 4 hours too many. Semper Fi.

997_rich

Great! glad you got to the root cause. It's a bummer that it took a few tries to get through the closed-ear solutions. I'm not sure that you'd get different treatment from other dealers. Most of the time I self-diagnose my problems beforehand and hand them off if i think it's a CPO item.

Sometimes it's going to take a while to get to the root cause... I'm much more forgiving when the dealer is working on thier own warranty dollar. If it's my dollar, I'll either do the work myself or ask a lot of questions to make sure they're doing the diagnosing to my satisfaction.

I also tend to write out my request with a detailed description before I drop the car off. Also, I like to force someone at the dealer to feel the problem before I leave the first time.

USMC_DS1

Hey 997_rich, thanks... that an approach I have not tried in the pass. I'll try writing out the symptoms next time for the p-dealer SR. Similar to what I did here on RL. To a certain extent this was my limpness test of my local p-dealer. They didn't fail completely since the issue was fixed at the end but I would give them no better than a C- average. Perhaps time, additional service visits, and learning how to deal with them properly will improve my perspective of this p-dealer.

Minok

Yeah, I can buy that. I've had the same experience with other factory repair work. The starting position of factory techs (and maybe mechanics in general) seem to be that the customer doesn't really know what they are talking about and they should just diagnose the issue themselves. This may be informed by a great number of customers they deal with who really do not know what they are talking about. Those of us that really do just have to fight that hard fight to get them to listen.

In any tricky issue, I've come to realize the importance of being able to reproduce the issue for the service adviser on the car when I drop it off. Otherwise, its likely that unless a part snapped in half or is leaking, you won't get it fixed.

USMC_DS1

Plus I've been spoiled over the years with the treatment I've enjoyed at my local BMW indy here in Austin - Blackforest Werkshop. My sons and I have built a long standing rapport with the owner, Lee and his crew, over the pass 12 years with many a DIY mod projects for our M3. We've learnt to leverage their sage advice and guidiance to help us install a supercharger, upgrade the brake system and suspension, replace the alternator, water pump, and general maintenance items. So when I take the M3 in it's normally something serious which we can't figure out ourselves and they take our issue at face value.

I plan on asking for the same p=dealer tech/mech next time I go in for service... some rapport is better then none and hopefully he'll take me a little more seriously.

BTW, Lee and I remain friends even though I've moved on from bimmers but I wish he'd start working on Porsche again... especially in 3 years when my warranty and CPO runs out.

Spoddle

Thanks for posting the fix for this issue.

I've run into the same problem with my steering column having play. I narrowed down the play in the wheel to the U joint at the base of the steering column which I'm guessing is the same place your's was loose at.

Larry Cable

did you check the tie rod ends? just curious?

USMC_DS1

FYI... as an aside I've been building that rapport with my SR/former mech at the local p-dealer and things are working out much smoother. I've had zero up sell issues since. In fact, he has test driven the car with me recently... no alignment was deemed required almost 1.5 yrs after this original posting.