ogmacore

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Charlie C

Congrats on the new Boxster. Once these issues are dealt with I'm sure you'll have a blast! Enjoy!

dallison28

congrats on the new purchase. I would assume either it's a bad horn or something in the steering wheel. The high and low horns are avail. from pelican for about $14 each

ogmacore

Thank you for the comments. Im hoping its the contacts in the steering wheel. Going to be pulling the air bag one night this week and checking.
Then onto the MAF for the engine light, noticed the airfilter is a mess, prefilter mostly, in fact the part that holds the filter was put into the housing upside down and jammed into the box - scary. Was going to pop in a K&N but from what i'm reading it seems not a good idea for the boxster due to the filter oil.

Coochas

Congrats on your new 986.

For learning how to work on the car, I would recommend:
1) Buying a Bentley workshop manual (available on Amazon). It is wonderful.
2) Check out www.pedrosgarage.com for great DIY projects.
ENJOY

ogmacore

Thanks Coochas - added PedrosGarage to my favorites - excellent site - the DIY section is very well done. Added the TechnoTorque to my list of upcoming upgrades

bwoodry

I have heard great things about the Techno Torque and as soon as I add a Boxster to my stable will order one from Pedros Garage,, also the Techno brace is good as well if you want to stiffen up the rear suspension,,,

ogmacore

Yes, adding the brace to my list as well. Just have to finish sorting out the initial issues with the car before i can start having real fun with upgrades.
1 step closer - had time to pull codes for the chk eng light - p1123 and p1125 - both oxygen sensor related but for both to fail at the same time i am thinking the MAF is sending bad data, going to try cleaning MAF tomorrow (maybe i'll get lucky) if not i'll have to pu a new MAF before i start replacing the O2 sensors.
Going to try to get the horn issue sorted out tomorrow as well.

bwoodry

Send a not to Pedro at pedros Garage, he may be able to assist in trouble shooting

Macster

A symptom common to both banks strongly suggests a single point failure and MAF certainly comes to mind.

Be careful though. Some have replaced a very expensive MAF when the single point failure was some other much cheaper part.

Check oil filler tube cap tight and not leaking. Check with engine idling to see if you can hear any leaking past cap as you wiggle it. I know error codes indicate engine running too rich but what can happen is air leaking past cap at idle causes Engine controller to go rich. Then the car gets driven at higher engine speeds and the air leaking past the cap drops to insignificance compared to the air coming in past the MAF. The engine controller unrolls the enrichen settings and it can reach the lean threshold and thus trigger the error codes you got.

Another possible cause of the error is the fuel pressure is too high. The fuel pressure regulator, vacuum lines and fuel return lines need to be checked.

And of course there's always the MAF... Dirty? Well, I've driven 225K miles and cleaned the MAF once when something odd going on and it made no difference. (Turned out to be a falling AOS.) But clean it if you want. If you're careful it can't hurt it.

If error codes show up regular you can try disconnecting the MAF at the wiring harness and driving car and seeing if error codes reappear or if engine exhibiting any driveability problems if these go away with MAF disconnected.

Sincerely,

Macster.

ogmacore

Thanks again everyone for the info.
Horn Issue fixed: was the airbag frame grommets
MAF: Checked oil filler cap and all seems to be ok. cleaned maf, cleared errors and checked data - is giving a temp reading of -40C. Hoping that was bc it just was cleared and hadn't had a chance to pull more data. Drove 60 miles and no CEL yet. Going to drive a bit more and check again, maybe i got lucky, if not i will test the fuel pressure, etc as per Macster's suggestions.

If all goes well with the CEL then the last remaining item is the sensor on the passenger side, near the rear of engine that is sweating oil (i say sweating since it is such a minute leak).

Macster

If MAF plugged in correctly and you're getting an air temperature reading of -40C that's a pretty good sign MAF is bad.

Every sampling of the air intake temperature should be right.

Now I've seen a very very high coolant temperature reading with my 02 Boxster. However, this is very very rare. Out of hundreds of trips the reading only shows up maybe 1 time and this is reading coolant temperature every 5 seconds during the trip, each and every trip.

Reading at max (215C) for just one sample. This doesn't seem to cause the engine controller any grief and AFAIK I've never seen the in-dash coolant temperature gage react, not the needle and not even the coolant over temperature warning light.

If MAF delivering a too cold air temperature the engine controller will want to dump in a lot of fuel but O2 sensor readings will signal not enough oxygen in the exhaust gas stream and the engine controller will lean the mixture out until it hits the lean threshold.

Sincerely,

Macster.

ogmacore

Thanks again Macster for the input. I didn't have time today to check data again. I've driven over 180 miles since cleaning the MAF and no CEL yet. The flat spot i had at around 4k is gone too. I will update as soon as i have a chance to check data again, should be in the next day or 2. I'm a happy camper though as it seems MAF replacement would be worse case scenario... I probably shouldn't say that, the Porsche gods will send me a wake up call just to keep me in line.

ogmacore

Final update on the CEL saga. Everything checked out ok. All data was as it should be, temp reading is now ok too. :-). Whether or not it was coincidence or just luck, cleaning the MAF fixed my issue. Its been a number of cycles and over 500 miles and car is running perfectly. Chalk 1 up to low cost, low tech solutions (for once).

Coochas

I'm glad it was your MAF and not the O2 sensors. I had 2 of my O2 sensors damaged when I had my exhaust installed. They were about 500 for the pair!