Actually - that VIN decoder didn't give the date... but I have it somewhere.. let me look..

04/2011.

 

As I mentioned - a dental mirror is needed to actually see the bolt heads. A dental mirror is on a handle with a ~45 degree bend in it.

Using one - open the oil filler, put the mirror to the rear of the chain assembly, with the mirror surface pointing at the back of the chain/sprocket assembly. You can then view the back of the assembly by standing in front of the oil filler looking toward the rear of the car/engine. Shine a flashlight into the mirror from near your head - it will reflect the light on the back of the cam-sprocket lighting it enough so you can see what's in there.

The head of the bolt is recessed into the rear of the cam-sprocket.

My bolts heads are black, with a machined recess around the outer periphery of the bolt head. When I tried using a small pick-up magnet - it didn't seem to stick to the bolt head, but would stick to the actual cam-sprocket (which is steel.)

My understanding is - the black bolts/non-magnetic are aluminum bolts with a steel core - and these are the "bad" ones.

I also have followed a lot of these threads, and it appears that Porsche-US is covering repairs when these fail - using the emissions warranty to justify the repair coverage. It also wouldn't surprise me that they won't tell you this until there is a failure. Not all of them do fail, I suspect it's actually a quite small percentage (or we would have class-action lawsuits starting up just like the exploding cooling pipes on the 955 series Cayenne) so they're taking care of it on a vehicle by vehicle basis - making the owner "whole" (covering the repair) without triggering a recall for all the vehicles.

I did read that in China - this was put through as a recall. I'm guessing since the people buying Cayennes in China are probably government related somehow (I can only imagine what a Cayenne costs in China..) they don't want to trigger a government action.

One thing I've also notice from owning German cars for a few decades. I've owned scads of BMWs - which have as many or more serious problems than the Cayenne. On BMWs they never redesign defective parts - they just replace a defective part with a new one with the same design flaw that caused the first one to fail. Porsche at least makes an attempt to fix the design and provide a path (albeit expensive sometimes) for the owner to "fix" the actual design problem. Different corporate philosophy I guess.

I was finding the discussions referring to this as a "recall" interesting - since it isn't a "recall" in the US - it's a service campaign. If the vehicle were still under warranty (I can't imagine any are at this point) then an owner might be able to coerce a dealership into performing WC-23 even if there hasn't been a failure.

The only way to force a recall in the US is to (and I've lead campaigns for BMW owners to do this) - is to report accurately the failures and what the potential dangers (and/or accidents caused by the failures) to the NHTSA database. If enough failures that have the risk of causing injury (or have caused injury) start popping up in their database - they sometimes will slowly pay attention and take action. The problem is - the variability of data entered by owners. The database is not particularly user friendly to enter failures, and many people have no idea of what "system" should be selected when entering failure information. Thing is - reporting that you worry that you'll have a problem has no impact at all on NHTSA.

If all the problem vehicles are reported accurately, and there are enough of them, and a big enough risk of danger caused by the problem, and someone in NHTSA happens to notice this - then the NHTSA will issue a request for "Investigation" - which goes back to the manufacturer looking for information on what they know about the problem. At that point reputable manufacturers will issue a recall on their own to avoid the black-eye that being forced into issuing one results in. Less reputable (can we say Chevy and ignition switches?) just ignore it and actually fight NHTSA to try to avoid spending the money to do the right thing.

It's a long tedious process with no guarantee of success.

And that's why I bought an extended warranty for my CTT.. like I said before - it lets me sleep at night.

BTW - they are not replacing the camshafts - that would be WAY more $$ then you've been quoted. They are replacing the sprockets and bolts. It isn't clear to me why they simply can't replace the bolts with steel ones and call it a day, but some other engineering change must have taken place on the sprocket requiring it's replacement also. Just doing the bolts would not be a huge job.

 

my Vin wp1zzz92zbla49745

 

Here

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Well got married on Saturday and haven't had a chance to take the car to the dealer.

Stopped by AutoZone last night and got a little mirror and magnet, pretty sure I have the bad bolts. Didn't get a chance to test it with the magnet yet.




You can see thr bolt in the mirror reflection

 

A lot of people showing with this problem lately. Another guy on rennlist just made a post on this as well. Hopefully Porsche takes care of you guys. Porsche should issue a recall as I'm sure this costing them a heck of a lot more after the fact.

 

Could you post the link? Thanks!

 

http://rennlist.com/forums/porsche-c...l#post13373661

There is also another thread in the regular Cayenne forum this board regarding this problem.

 

Any early signs of this problem ?
2010 PTT here, but not affected according to dealer.. still scared.

 

I'll be curious what your magnet tells you. The ones you have don't look black, and it was my understanding that the black ones are the "bad" ones. Let us know what the magnet says after your honeymoon..

 

Whattttt? They may not be bad? I'm coming back on the 28th and will be checking.

Car is going in the shop soon to get the brakes done but I'm also planning on taking it to the dealer to have them check. The SA wasn't the most helpful. He mentioned they will charge me for about an hour of work because they will be taking some parts off to see which bolts I have.

 

Maybe not; see below...

I was re-reading the thread in the parent forum and noticed where Rostamon stated "if your bolts are dark and magnetic you have the updated parts" and he posted a photo of a sheared bolt that is not dark but light-colored. I think you have the failure-prone part, sterz, due to the indicators:
1) your production date was September 2011, and the affected dates were March 2010 - September 2011
2) you can see the part number on the adjuster, and it is in the set of affected part numbers
3) your bolts are light-colored rather than dark-colored

Please let us know what your SA says. It appears you might have gotten one of the last of the bad batch. Rostamon goes on to state the parts are right at $1k; hopefully labor won't be too outrageous if you choose to replace them.

 

Would this issue effect my 957 DFI '09 Turbo S as well or is it only certain 958 models?

 

uhhhhh... was the production date of your '09 between "March 2010 - September 2011"? If so it's a miracle car and you should consider donating it to the Porsche museum... a back in time car - must have a flux-capacitor..

 

just got back from greece today, already called fidelity to find local deals that i can purchase their warranty.

i got a quote from the dealer about replacing the bolts, they said 3,400-3,500. if the fidelity warranty costs around that much, i'll just get the warranty so i don't have to worry about it or deal with other stuff breaking.

i'm going to be pretty busy at work now with the 10Q but will try to take the car in for them to inspect the bolts and follow up with Porsche North America about the dealer's findings and if they can tell me the production dates which were affected by WC22.