Camshaft timing advance solenoid
 

Hi has anyone changed one of these on a 2.5 986. If so can you tell me what is involved. I am guessing it's not just a case of swapping the part.

Walshie you are right, as you first have to lock the crank at TDC and lock the cams as well before removing the solenoid.

It cost me around $3k locally to have a shop replace the passenger side solenoid. There isn't much room in there to want to do it myself.

$3000! YIKES!:eek:

I've replaced mine. Once on a dropped engine and another time with the engine in the car. It's very tight but can be done with the engine in the car. Not a project I would recommend a casual mechanic take on as you can easily screw up the engine timing.

Depending on which bank you do you should lock the engine at cylinder 1 intake stroke or cylinder 4 intake stroke. This will set the cams as such to not be loaded on any valves and make it easier to reinstall.

And there's a lot of "while you're in there" items that would be good to take care of. Spark plug tubes, chain guides, chain tensioners.

I replaced my left side solenoid and cam guide with the engine in the car. As others have said, this is not very easy, but for a 20 year old car spending $2.5k - 3k to have it done doesn't make sense. It did work out for me and the engine runs like new now, but I would not want to try it again.

Here's that thread: http://986forum.com/forums/general-discussions/60995-vario-cam-adjuster-plunger-question-re-p1324-code.html

My biggest hurdle was reassembling the cam shaft under the cam cover, which contains the bearing caps as part of the casting. From what I could see with the placement tools that I bought from Pelican to hold the cam in place and hold TDC timing, it seemed nearly an impossible feat, but I took my time and figured a way to use the car's frame and push against the cam cover to seat the camshaft and get the bolts into place.

I posted about this last year with photos, but in a nutshell, used a turnbuckle and ground grooves in the ends of them so they could be used to push the cam cover against the block. During the entire process that took me a couple of weeks head scratching and looking a various how-to's, I kept my hopes up that I wouldn't be parting out my car on ebay to recover what little I could.

Others more skilled and experienced than me might have methods of dropping the engine partly to get better access to the cam covers. I toyed with that, but got lucky with my home made pressing turnbuckle and dodged an expensive bullet.

I'm assuming your codes are aiming at a bad solenoid, though you might find that the error code is coming from the plastic cam runners that wear out. In my case, it was the latter, but I bought a new $200 solenoid as insurance.

If nothing else, if you try and fail, you can pull the engine and fix the solenoid(s) and a host of other parts, like the AOS and clutch while you have it dropped from the car. It's just not worth $3k to have a shop do this in my opinion.

The cost is $3K ++ depending on diagnosis and while you are in there items.
It is a horrid job in the car Bank 1 is worst for access.If there are any pending engine-out jobs, now is the time !
A bigger problem is accurate diagnosis.
First tell us the codes/deviation/Actual values/Activations and your complete test procedure. Without all this info we are just keyboard-speculating.
This job is often misdiagnosed - as the many Threads on these Codes/Parts indicate.

Having read all the posts and replies I feel that this is job that far beyond my capabilities.
What I have found out from my investigation is that the cable going into the solenoid starts burning and smoking as soon the the ignition is turned and without the engine running. This then blows the DME fuse ( row C no 1) As the solenoid only operates from 1500 rpm, I am sure it is just a bad connection.
With the cable disconnected, she starts and runs sweetly at low revs. I do not want to rev hard through fear of an imbalance between the 2 banks.
Long story short, she is booked in at the local porsche main dealer for the end of may.