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I hit a 10" deep pothole hard. The wheel was ok but the steering rack leaked at boots.
Insurance covered it after some haggling. (Geico) They said it was not an accident, no body damage. They eventually covered Porsche of Huntington to tow my bleeding P!G, and do a new steering rack and one tie rod. Back to normal and holding the road well for an 11 year old car with 110K miles on GTS 21" wheels.
Just did a wonderful trouble free trip to R.I. and this car still impresses me.
After a long period with heavy steering I got to the bottom of the issue yesterday and I am very disappointed with the local Porsche service options
When it first got heavy it was intermittent, then it was consistently heavy. I initially had my local Porsche independent specialist look into it when they were replacing the front brakes. They ran some tests and concluded that all signals were present/correct and the pressure was good (pump was good). He advised me to replace the rack so thats what we did. When I picked the car up the owner was on holiday so I dealt with his son. When paying I asked if the steering was as light as new and I was assured it was. I instantly knew when I fired it up this wasn't the case. Suffice to say I was pretty pissed.
I waited for the owner to return and while he apologized profusely he admitted he was stumped and pretty much washed his hands of it. One interesting piece of information he did mention was that the new rack didn't come with a servotronic transducer/relay so they had fitted the original from old rack. He advised that I take it to the fancy new Porsche dealership nearby and went on to say that he had already spoken with the service manager who was up to speed on the issue. When I contacted the service manager this was definitely not the case - he was totally oblivious.
Anyways I dropped the car off and they had a look while doing some other work (belt replacement, wheel alignment etc) and all their tests couldn't pinpoint the issue. They tried replacing the servotronic controller under the dash but no improvement. They were now saying the next step was to price up a replacement rack as they suspected the issue might be with the transducer which wasn't replaced with the previous swap and couldn't be purchased separately according to Porsche (only as part of the rack - ridiculous)
Anyways I never did hear back from that service manager (my guess is that figures were astronomical and he knew it was a huge leap of faith as they could not be sure it would cure the issue) so I looked into finding a replacement transducer myself. I am almost sure these can be purchased new from Audi/VW for ~$250 but in the end I found one from a guy in Poland who seems to specialize in these
It arrived on Friday and I swapped it out (pretty easy - 2 screws/1 plug and can be accessed from below by removing one cover) - steering was still heavy. At this point we had pretty much ruled out all the components (rack, pump, controller, transducer) and all the tests the dealers had ran didn't highlight any issues
I had a look online and found this document (clicky), specifically "Repair Instructions" on page 38 - there it states:
As it has already been replaced I checked for power - no issues
I then tested the wiring from the controller to the transducer and found one of the cores was broken so I pulled the front wheel and started there - this is what I found:
So I spliced in a new piece and soldered it all up, tested everything to double check and when I fired it up we had light steering again so this was the issue all along
I find it hard to believe that two Porsche specialists (one of which is an official dealership) would overlook something so basic. Pretty disappointing.
Anyways hope this helps someone else at some point who is having a similar issue. Biggest thing I learned from all this is not to believe everything you are told at a dealership.
After a long period with heavy steering I got to the bottom of the issue yesterday and I am very disappointed with the local Porsche service options
When it first got heavy it was intermittent, then it was consistently heavy. I initially had my local Porsche independent specialist look into it when they were replacing the front brakes. They ran some tests and concluded that all signals were present/correct and the pressure was good (pump was good). He advised me to replace the rack so thats what we did. When I picked the car up the owner was on holiday so I dealt with his son. When paying I asked if the steering was as light as new and I was assured it was. I instantly knew when I fired it up this wasn't the case. Suffice to say I was pretty pissed.
I waited for the owner to return and while he apologized profusely he admitted he was stumped and pretty much washed his hands of it. One interesting piece of information he did mention was that the new rack didn't come with a servotronic transducer/relay so they had fitted the original from old rack. He advised that I take it to the fancy new Porsche dealership nearby and went on to say that he had already spoken with the service manager who was up to speed on the issue. When I contacted the service manager this was definitely not the case - he was totally oblivious.
Anyways I dropped the car off and they had a look while doing some other work (belt replacement, wheel alignment etc) and all their tests couldn't pinpoint the issue. They tried replacing the servotronic controller under the dash but no improvement. They were now saying the next step was to price up a replacement rack as they suspected the issue might be with the transducer which wasn't replaced with the previous swap and couldn't be purchased separately according to Porsche (only as part of the rack - ridiculous)
Anyways I never did hear back from that service manager (my guess is that figures were astronomical and he knew it was a huge leap of faith as they could not be sure it would cure the issue) so I looked into finding a replacement transducer myself. I am almost sure these can be purchased new from Audi/VW for ~$250 but in the end I found one from a guy in Poland who seems to specialize in these
It arrived on Friday and I swapped it out (pretty easy - 2 screws/1 plug and can be accessed from below by removing one cover) - steering was still heavy. At this point we had pretty much ruled out all the components (rack, pump, controller, transducer) and all the tests the dealers had ran didn't highlight any issues
I had a look online and found this document (clicky), specifically "Repair Instructions" on page 38 - there it states:
As it has already been replaced I checked for power - no issues
I then tested the wiring from the controller to the transducer and found one of the cores was broken so I pulled the front wheel and started there - this is what I found:
So I spliced in a new piece and soldered it all up, tested everything to double check and when I fired it up we had light steering again so this was the issue all along
I find it hard to believe that two Porsche specialists (one of which is an official dealership) would overlook something so basic. Pretty disappointing.
Anyways hope this helps someone else at some point who is having a similar issue. Biggest thing I learned from all this is not to believe everything you are told at a dealership.
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience, it is really great to bear in mind this kind of issues for us DIYers.
07-07-2017, 09:25 AM
