My PCM as others failed to recognize the SAT radio frequently. I dropped it at the dealer Tuesday and they have put in a new PCM - which was defective, broke my center vents in the process - ordered new ones and now will put in another PCM on Monday.

I am losing sleep over hoping nothing else happened to my car but hopefully all will be well when I pick it up Monday.....

 

How frequently did it fail to recognize Sat radio? Mine has done it twice in the past week. Also, do you hear any spring-like noise from the steering wheel column when you turn the wheel? (radio must be off)

 

It failed to see the SAT radio about 1/4 of the time when I started the car. I have read on other forums that it is a well documented issue and they replaced my PCM without question. I think they have a bunch of faulty SAT radio modules.

As for the sterring sound - I have not heard that noise at all.

 

7 days later and 3 failed PCM's the car is complete and I'm getting it back tomorrow. Seems like Porsche must have sub-contracted to Jaguar for their electronics on this one...hopefully I won't have to do that again.

 

This really must suck! you bought the car to enjoy driving it not for letting the dealer drive it or store it in their garage... I hear you on the jaguar subcontracting thing, I always thought Porsche built solid cars but these problems surfacing in the forum about the pana are making me more nervous every day

 

OK - got the car. All is good but they forgot to activate my XM and code the PCM to see the parking sensors and rear camera....back to the dealer tomorrow but they said 20 minute fix.

After 30 minutes with XM phone support I gave up and will have the dealer activate it again.

At least the week in the 6 cyl Cayenne loaner solidified my choice that I will never own a 6cyl Cayenne....

 

The damn saga continues - today everything disappears on the PCM but am/fm. The delaer says all programmed codes have disappeared and that there is no waythey can get the rear view camera to work..

So this will be 4 PCM's and 8 days at dealer. At least I had it home last night - was like a conjugal visit.

They have said Porsche knows they have serious issues with PCM reliability.

Getting cranky now - and very disappointed in quality of car. I had my S63 for 3 years and had zero unscheduled dealr visits.

 

There is a solution, but Porsche refuses to really do anything about it. It is the enabling codes. I have a viable solution for satellite right now.. today... for every vehicle in the line up, but since the vehicle did not come with satellite, they won't generate a code for it. How long do they plan on ticking off their customers?

anyways, the fix, is to find a fully loaded vehicle, get the VIN, have the dealership run the codes, add a CANBUS filter to the radio telling it is in the fully loaded vehicle, enable all codes... presto! and yes it does work like that, 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months later... but, when an update software shows up, you are back to square one, and then you have to go through all the info on the update to see what they screwed up trying to fix problems...

anyways, it is quite sad, the option is there to add Satellite controls, NAV, etc...

oh well....

sorry to get off topic, I hope you get it fixed. if it happens about 3 days later, after they fixed it supposedly, then they have the wrong code entered for the whole PCM

good luck

 

I have had some serious QC issues with my car. Some of them were could have been detected by the dealer and addressed PRIOR to me taking delivery. Very annoying. Personally, I would mention lemon law. Guaranteed that will get them moving, fast.

 

My PCM about once an hour will turn the radio on (with no driver action).

Not a huge deal but annoying.

JohnnyB

 

does this happen with the vehicle off? or have you just noticed it when driving? I know the older PCM2.1's when you get a call or sometimes a text, when paired with the phone it would switch on...

 

Well - here is the conclusion to the 12 days of my car being at the dealer.

Original PCM was defective

The 2 or 3 replacement units which all failed were due to human error during their initial programming.

It appears the dealer did not input the VIN # as mentioned above and then enabled all the codes - unfortunately without a VIN # the unit erases all the codes after an hour or two.

Ultimately things quickly moved along today when a close friend, a chairman of one of the US automakers, introduced me to the president of Harman Becker NA and they pushed the issue pretty effectively with Porsche and the dealer.

The dealer also reimbursed me for the 12 days that I didn't have use of my car by prorating my payment.


Overall a simple problem that was missed by the dealer.

Also there is a firmware upgrade for the PCM that they are doing in two weeks because it is only on a disk that the regional manager has - it is not available yet to the dealer.

Lastly - I would all suggest you push the dealer to fix the PCM issues - it is nonsense to have these issues with this car.

Time will tell about the quality of the car but I fear it is substandard and presently wouldn't recommend the car to anyone. I love driving it but fear that it doesn't like be driven as a daily driver.

 

dhh.. I would love to have that contact at H/B

I heard that they built these kazillion dollar PCM's for Porsche but Porsche didn't want to pay for them at top dollar so they did the enabling code thing which some money goes back to H/B

I don't know the validity of it, but could be true...

I would love to see if H/B would supply the enabling codes so I can start adding Sat radios to the PCM's... yes i worry about the issues already then a tech seeing an external sat box which shows up on the PCM... but I am stubborn

Or I wish they would supply the hard drive navs and the snap in oem sat modules... and codes

I am glad it worked out for you