Unpredictable window behavior

[cmattax]

Hi all,

I have a 2002 C2 Cabriolet with a detachable hard top. It is a CPO car with 33,000 miles and all services completed. It has been an “eccentric” (I’m being as generous as I can here) car from the moment I bought it but the problems have been confined to the soft-top operation and the numerous constant rattles. The new “trick” this little beauty has come up is this. Approximately 2/3 of the time that I close the driver’s side door with the window up, it waits about 8 seconds and then rolls down the window just short of half way. It will do this even if I lock the door in that 8 second period. When it first started to happen, I thought that I must certainly be accidentally activating some obscure feature. So I started to be very careful about how I closed and locked the door. It continued to happen at random. I could find no real pattern to when it would happen except the following. It only happens if the soft-top is up or the hard top is attached. It happens about twice as often if the hard top is on versus the soft-top up. It happens much more often when I get out of the car versus when I get in. When it happens, it rolls down the same distance every time. No CEL has ever appeared. I took it to the dealer one day when it was doing it fairly frequently, fully confident that I could demonstrate the problem. We must has opened and closed that door 50 times before we called it a day and it didn’t happen once. While it is mostly an annoying problem, there have been times when I forgot to wait to see if it would happen and went into a movie or restaurant for 2 hours only to return to a car that had been left open the whole time. I am fairly mechanically inclined and not sheepish about taking things apart. Hopefully someone here can get me looking in the right area. Thanks,

Charlie Mattax

P.S. And please take this as meant in the kindest way to all here who do actually enjoy their cars. The managers of this site and its contributors are such a colossally under-rated resource for such an over-rated car. Without this site I am sure I would have ditched this car months ago. I have owned BMW M series cars in the past but I have wanted a 911 for more years than I can remember. Now that I have one I can’t for the life of me see why anyone would pay so much for so little. I couldn’t be more disappointed with the performance of the car, the dealer/mechanic support or the “fit and finish” of the car. I had an 18 year old Honda Accord that had fewer rattles and squeaks than this thing (no exaggeration). About the most positive thing that I can say about it is that it looks great sitting in my garage - which is where it spends most of its time. “Be careful what you want, for surely you will get it” was never truer than in my case. The last thing that I wanted was a garage queen. My wife (who has never actually HAD Porsche lust) has the simple solution – “Why don’t you just sell it?”. My answer lies somewhere between “I’m just not ready to admit that I was THAT stupid?” and “Maybe the next time I get in it will be the time I really get what all this Porsche stuff is all about.” But about the only thing I can be sure that will happen the next time I get in it is that something new will come off in my hand. Thanks for letting me vent.

[JeTexas]

Approximately 2/3 of the time that I close the driver’s side door with the window up, it waits about 8 seconds and then rolls down the window just short of half way. It will do this even if I lock the door in that 8 second period.

This sounds like the "ghost window" problem that was experienced on 99 models. There's a TSB for it, and it's discussed quite a bit all over the Internet. However, I don't know why your 2002 would have this problem unless it was serviced and somebody used an NOS window motor from 99 to repair it.

If the motor has part number 996 624 101 02, then that's probably your problem. However, if it's the newer 996 624 101 04, it's probably something else.

[cmattax]

Approximately 2/3 of the time that I close the driver’s side door with the window up, it waits about 8 seconds and then rolls down the window just short of half way. It will do this even if I lock the door in that 8 second period.

This sounds like the "ghost window" problem that was experienced on 99 models. There's a TSB for it, and it's discussed quite a bit all over the Internet. However, I don't know why your 2002 would have this problem unless it was serviced and somebody used an NOS window motor from 99 to repair it.

If the motor has part number 996 624 101 02, then that's probably your problem. However, if it's the newer 996 624 101 04, it's probably something else.

Thanks for the tip! I will look at the motor part numbers over the weekend. If what you suspect is true (that an older model window motor was used) then this would be consistent with a similar problem found with the soft-top motor installed before I bought the car. It also was from a different year car. All this in a CPO car. As I said in the above post, dealer support has been underwhelming to say the least.

Charlie

[JeTexas]

Ironically, I'm now having the exact same issue on my 99 Cab. I think it may be the microswitch. I'm not sure.