After PM's to you Jon, I want to thank you for all the advise you gave to me and others. It was a big help. Still couldnt do the job myself, but it helped in understanding and when speaking with the Porsche folks.

I'am new to Porsches and must tell you all that I like it better than any of the Vipers I have or had.

Thanks again for the help

Tony Chris

 

Thanks, Tony, and welcome. The group here is really great when it comes to sharing what they know and trying to help. Glad that I got a chance to give some back.

Jon

 

Great write up. This seems to be a common problem.

 

I removed everything as directed, no problem. I got to the last step where the metal plate is removed to expose the flat screwdriver like portion of the motor. Each of the 3 screws broke in half. I was able to remove these and will get new ones. However, I hooked a voltmeter to the electrical connectors and upon pushing the up button there was not reading. When the motor was hooked to a power source the motor turns fine. There is no sign of leaking hydraulic fluid. What to do now?

 

Now that's bad luck breaking all 3 screws. Thinking out loud now...

I thought that you said that you could hear the motor turning when you pushed the up button with the assembly in place? The way you describe it now sounds like an electrical issue. Did you check the fuse?

I assume that you meant that the motor turns fine when you put an external 12V on it? If that's true, when you reassemble it does it drive the spoiler? As I recall, reversing polarity reverses the motor. You should be able to drive the spoiler up and down just by putting 12V on the motor leads. There must be limit switches somewhere to control the travel, but I don't recall where they are.

Jon

 

My uncle has a 2002 tt and I noticed today he had the same problem with his rear spoiler. The driver's side stayed down and the passenger side raised. I continued to wash the car and when I got to the back and sprayed the decklid with water I noticed a rainbow color film coming fromt the middle of the decklid. So after drying the car I opened up the lid and checked it out. First I noticed that the seal/weather stripping was coming off in one place. After touching it to try and stick it back my fingers had brownish/goldish fluid on them. I followed the fluid up to what I believe is the pump/motor assembly underneath the plastic cover. I was thinking of trying the wd-40 but that probably won't work and leaking fluid means there is a bigger problem elsewhere. I'm thinking maybe the system is leaking on the driver's side since that side stays down like it's getting no pressure at all. There is no fluid on the bottoms of the hydraulic shafts. I am pretty good with taking things apart and putting them back together. Before I take anything apart could someone suggest what they think is wrong first?

Thanks

 

Sounds like a leak in the hydraulic line on the driver's side. If you follow the thread above, I explained how the system works. The two sides are separate.

I have the original one from my car in a box, picture above. It includes the motor, hydraulic lines and the pistons that attach to the spoiler. The only thing wrong with it was the loose set screw on the motor coupler - now fixed. PM me if you want it.

Jon

 

Wow, thanks. Do you have any pics of said screw?

 

See posts #11 and #12 in this thread...

Jon

 

From reading these posts it sounds like there are a pair of hydraulic cylinders being driven by a single electric hydraulic pump with the cylinders connected in parallel. In this setup, if one cylinder (side) has more drag than the other, then it will rise slower until the other side dead ends full up. At this point the dragging side will rise. Is there any sort of proportioning valve in the circuit?

 

Jon,
It took a couple of hours, a bit more than you (kind of a long party last night so this morning the thoughts were not so clear ) ... I reached the same point as you... but everything looked normal, the screw was still strongly tightened... so I put everything back and I think now the culprit may be the upper potentiometer switch (it is actually not a pot. but a system with 2 switches 1 lower and 1 upper)... on the picture everything look fine but there is a wire exposed, so it may not make good contact at the switch anymore.. I'll try to by-pass it now with an extra wire and see if it fixes the problem...

 

If the motor is running and the wing does not go up and down symmetrically, then the probable culprit is uneven (or insufficient) hydraulic fluid servicing in the two cylinders in the pump / motor assembly. That was the problem I had. Each cylinder has it's own fluid - - - there is no sharing or ability to "equalize" fluid between the cylinders and rams. If one of your cylinders has developed a slight leak over the years and now has a slightly lower amount of fluid than the other cylinder, the result will probably be a spoiler malfunction light. Tell tell signs of a fluid leak is fluid leaking out of the bottom weep holes of the rounded black plastic caps that snap on the bottom of the rams.

Here's how I "refilled" both of my cylinders. My disclaimer is that your results may vary, but this is a pretty simple closed hydraulic system so in reality there's not too much that can be screwed up.

Take the entire motor and ram assemblies out of the car. Yes, you have to remove the wing and lots of stuff from the deck lid to get this stuff off the car. You will need a relatively strong battery charger or other 12 VDC source to run the pump electric motor. Jumper cables from a batter will work if you can manage not to short the cables together.

Once everything's off the car and on the workbench, connect your power source to the electric motor leads to check the polarity. Depending on which way you connect the power, the rams will either go up or down. You want to start with the rams all the way down. With the rams all the way down and with the pump assembly held in a vertical position, carefully disconnect both of the hydraulic lines (one for each ram) on the end of the pump assembly. Make sure the lines are at the TOP of the pump assembly, and also note the proper orientation of the lines. Once you have the lines off, keep the disconnected lines held high so as not to let any fluid spill from the lines or rams. Now, while still holding the pump assembly vertically, in each of the holes of the pump assembly where you removed the banjo bolts from each ram hydraulic line, carefully fill each "hole" with suitable hydraulic fluid. I say "suitable" because in reality I don't have any idea what the Porsche spec hydraulic fluid actually is. I used hydraulic jack oil which is available at most automotive parts stores. I'm sure it's not Porsche spec, but it has worked well over the past year with no problems what-so-ever. If your hydraulic cylinders are low, each one will probably take several ounces. Fill each hole until fluid spills out.

Now carefully reattach each ram hydraulic line banjo bolt. If you've got each cylinder full, some fluid should weep out as you tighten up the banjo bolts. You'll find you either need an extra set of hands, or some type of a vice or clamp to hold everything vertically if you're working alone. Again, you don't want to let any fluid spill from the removed ram hydraulic line.

Now with everything back together, use your electrical power source and run the rams up and down several times. At first, one ram will probably slightly lag the other. If after a dozen times or so of running the rams up and down they are still uneven in their travel, the ram that is lagging is probably not quite full. This is what happened to me. I had to undo the banjo bolt of the ram that started to move just slightly after the other ram had moved, and add just a tad more fluid to it's cylinder. After I did so, everything started moving symmetrically.

There is another DIY that talks about "bleeding" the system by slightly loosening each of the banjo bolts and then applying power to the motor. My guess is that if you have air in the system, and you keep everything in a vertical orientation such that the banjo bolts are the highest points in the system, and if you keep everything held in this position long enough so that any air in the system can rise to the top (where the banjo bolts are), that this method may in fact work. However, I didn't have to do it so can't comment on its validity. However, if you have trapped air in the system, you'll need to find a way to get it out as air will surly cause problems in a hydraulic system.

Once I was satisfied that everything was moving up and down properly & symmetrically , I cleaned everything up and bolted everything back in the deck lid. Since doing this, I have not had a single spoiler fail warning light. If you've got everything in had to do the job (including the ability to remove the rear wing), it's no more than a couple hour job.

Bill

 

I used the same method as delta and it worked for me, but I used half pentosin chf11s hydralic fluid (porsche recommends, same fluid used in power steering pump) and half lucas power steering stop leak (lost fluid through leaky ram). But at first the ram still leaked but within a couple of weeks it stopped and been going strong ever since.

 

Thanks for sharing !

 

guys, thanks for sharing this experience. So far, I could verify that the upper and lower sensors are OK, so root cause is probably the quantity of oil in the system (or lack thereof...) if there is not enough oil, then the upper switch is never activated because the piston does not move high enough. that mean back to square 1 and dismounting everything again as per your method... unless there is a way to refill via the pistons connections (removing the little plastic insert) with a T type connection and injecting oil from there?