Rawhide

Hi guys, I have an 03 cayenne s which is fantastic. It was bought from a dealer and has a six month warranty.

I am going in eyes open on the running costs but the car was collected from the dealer by my wife and we found it was reporting air suspension fault.

The dealer said it was likely a glitch and wanted us to bring it back to him to clear the fault. The dealer is about 2 hour drive away so this was not ideal. They then contacted the warranty company but the warranty would not cover any local dealers labour rate to clear the fault code.

I manAged to find a cheap Porche independent who was local who cleared the code and the bill was picked up by the dealer. However it quickly came back.

After a lot of hastle I had the dealer collect the car and they had it for 10 days whilst I was on holiday. They said they had replaced some valve and the fault was fixed. The returned it but the next day it returned again.

I'm getting quite frustrated with the situation. The dealer is a 4x4 specialist and says they have porsche techs there but I need the car fixed ASAP as my wife is heavily pregnant and uses the car.

I'm considering trying to fix myself with another Indy garage and the warranty but feel that this would make their problem my problem.

This is the second car I have ever bought from a dealer and I wonder why I bothered.

Can anyone advise on some common issues with the air suspension? There are no visual issues, no leaks etc.

Many thanks

Neil

bigbuzuki

A low capacity main battery can cause this fault, especially if the warning appears just after start up.

Rawhide

That's interesting. The battery was flat when I inspected the car. It was also very cold here and the car was iced up. I will check to see if they replaced the battery

User 4221

+1 on the battery..... It makes the car do weird things like throw faults on the 4 wheel drive system and won't let the radio function.....

Rawhide

I did get one other error once which was '4x4 system' fault. The radio seems fine but to be honest I've not done a lot of miles in the car.

I've just loaned it to a friend who has taken it to France so the battery should be healthy by now.

The air suspension fault generally comes on about 5 mins into driving, but sometimes immediately.

User 4221

Driving and charging may not fix it. My battery died about a month ago and it steadily produced faults upon startup even after charging externally.

You are a generous friend by letting your friend take it to France. Hopefully none of the hooligans will be into burning cars where your Cayenne is going

Rawhide

If I was to replace the battery will the fault clear itself after a number of restarts?

The car has proven the perfect choice as he has just been snowed in with freak snow storms and the car performed faultlessly

Dennis C

After my last battery replacement, I had to have the dealer reset several systems to get the car working properly. I don't know if this is unusual or if this was the norm.

ltc

It depends on the type of fault logged...some will clear after a certain number of cycles and/or time, others need to be cleared via PIWIS...

medtech

Cayenne's do have known issues w/ the compressors. Some need to be re-built. Mine has been giving me the error occasionally for almost a year. Compressor hasn't gone yet.

rbaron

I've been getting extremely intermittent and irregular air suspension fault warnings since last September and the local Porsche dealer's service dept. (a good one IMO) hasn't found a fault so I'm just soldiering on. I can go a month without a warning and then have two in one day, then go several weeks without another one. I hadn't considered the possibility of a weakening battery but then on the other hand this is the only fault warning I've been getting and it seems pretty random in that I can't tie or relate it to any one type of event (cold air, high altitude, pot hole, what have you).

--Bob '04 CS 34K Miles Original Owner I Don't Drive Far