rowlands57

Does anyone else notice that the venting to the front footwells is weak? When it's cold out I have to manually direct the heat to the footwells to keep them even remotely warm. When you look in the footwells there are barely any vents other than small 'slits' in the covers.

Just curious if everyone else sees similar behavior.

Julian Thompson

YES!!

I thought I was going mad but you're right. Cold feet here, too

Dennis C

I haven't noticed that issue, even during the coldest days here...

sigs

Common "feature" of every Cayenne I've ever driven in the cold. Was much worse in every ML I've ever driven (not including current generation). Complained about it in my ML and the service writer just shrugged, with the usual "they're all like that" explanation. The loaners were the same way. Could barely get enough heat even when set manually. It didn't even HAVE a setting to direct pretty much all air to the floor vents. You had to set it to split air between the floor and the dash, and then manually close each of the dash vents - and put up with the resultant noise. Don't recall driving an X5 in cold weather. Maybe it's just one of those "interesting" facets of German SUV engineering.

mudman2

The lower vent servos have failed. I had that and the fixed it, under warranty at the time.

stealthn

Mine seems the same. I will check the vents but I'm usually baking and my feet are freezing. The heating system is really weird in my opinion, I can never get the temp set just right.

MadFox

You will never get Porsche to admit there is an issue unless you hear weird clicking noises from the servos. The noise sounds like it is coming from behind the PCM. In older models 03,04, and 05 this is a typical issue and usually difficult to get resolved. Welcome to winter in a alpha/beta Cayenne.

Your only recourse is to position the heat on bottom only and force more air out that way.. however often it would be cold air even when doing this in my Beta. Non-issue in the Tit.S and later model years.

sigs

Are we talking about different degrees of "foot frost" here? I postulate that just having weak air flow in the footwells unless the flow is manually directed there is simply a characteristic of the design, at least through the '07s that I've driven during winter. The sequelae of the common servo failure issue, which I haven't experienced in my Cayenne (yet), but have had happen in other vehicles, seems like a whole different level of foot refrigeration from the baseline "weak flow."

ltc

Now THAT's a Scrabble word of the day.

sigs

NOTHING slips by Lewis. Guess I was subconsciously using terminology that I thought would befit the likely astronomical dealer charge for repairing said issue out of warranty. Even so, must not have been fully awake, since I should have used the singular "sequela." I'll have to find a ruler and slap my own wrist, in honor of my high-school English teachers.

medtech

I could sit in 5 cayennes of the same year and get 5 different air flows from the lesser vents. One of the easiest to notice is the rear center console. Of course the dealer tells me all 5 are "normal". Guess it must be a feature like custom colors?

stealthn

No problem, now that I know more people have this issue I can get the dealer to fix it, they are quite nice to me (so far)

rowlands57

No clicks and no sequelae (sic) from the dash. I think this is the poor design issue as there are pretty much no vents at all in the footwells to begin with.

Thanks all for the validation that I am not completely cracking up on this one

cab&coupe

GL however, I wouldn't bet on it... this is a very labor intensive issue for the dealer = money out of dealer pocket

stealthn

Never hurts to try...

I checked mine again yesterday when it got up to a balmy 30 F and sure enough it was blowing hot air (that's a first), but it's only coming out three (or 4?) little holes the size of pencils (bad design).

I've sure found that when it gets REALLY cold most of the Cayenne systems do not want to work, pretty stupid for a vehicle that a lot of us bought for the winter....


Bob