Wasabisushi128kb

Hello all! I'm brand new here, so apologies in advance for any mistakes.

I have a 2006 Cayenne S, 4.5V8 non-turbo, the air suspension isn't responding to any of the interior controls and the ride in the rear is as if the suspension was blown. Very bouncy over everything. I live in a small town and the shops around here don't have a ton of experience with Porsche. They hooked the vehicle to a computer and they came back with "The ECU isn't responding so we believe it may be the cause". I have purchased new rear air suspension for it and they are currently still sitting in the box as the shop believes correcting the ECU would possibly right the air suspension in the rear.

Would anyone know things that I can try before I bite the bullet on this and drive into a bigger city to have a specialized shop or a dealership take a crack at this?

Thank you all in advance for any help and advice!
-Sushi

tomhartzell

How long have you owned the car, and how old is the battery? A battery that is failing can result in all sorts of seemingly unrelated problems; Porsches are very sensitive to voltage fluctuations. If there is any doubt, you may want to have the battery tested; most auto supply stores will do it at no cost.

Wasabisushi128kb

Purchased used very recently. The voltage meter on the dash reads just below 16.

tomhartzell

The voltage reading on my '09 Cayenne S was similar, but it was also failing due to mostly local driving which wasn't keeping the battery charged. I now place my new battery on a CTEK battery maintainer twice a month to ensure the charging is maintained.

If your local shop can check the battery's health, I would recommend requesting they do so. I'm not a mechanic and only do basic maintenance on my Cayenne, but was starting to see trouble codes that you wouldn't think were related to a bad battery. A new battery fixed all of those.

Wasabisushi128kb

Alright. Thank you so much, Tom. I will get that looked at and checked out. I hope it is that simple, because as it stands the flopping around in the back is so aggressive it's shaken a couple of lugs off.
I appreciate the reply.

also, if anyone else has any ideas or thoughts on the matter I would still love to hear them.
Thank you in advance!

tomhartzell

One other thing I forgot to mention in my previous posts... One easy way to test your battery's health is to raise-and-lower the rear liftgate three times without the engine running. If it can't do that, your battery is probably headed south. Mine failed the test the last time I ended up needing a new battery.

I ended up buying an AGM battery, which offers a little more starting power as well as doing better in very cold weather.

Wasabisushi128kb

OH! that is great to know I will go test that now. Thank you so much!