Reset check engine light
 

My 2000 2.7 Boxster will throw a 1341 CEL after 30-50miles. Cam adjustment below limit. It’s been an issue for 5 years. The car runs great tho.

I’ve been taking the car to a shop that uses the Porsche diagnostic tool to do a full CEL reset and they then take the car to have it smogged. $200. I’ve done it twice.

Now the twist. I had the car in storage for the winter and the battery died. The car’s been been without power for a few months. I installed a new battery today and the car started fine. With NO CEL! It was on when I parked it last fall.

Question: does disconnecting the battery completely clear the diagnostic codes?

If you disconnect the battery long enough the DME/ECU looses all memory and then resets to factory defaults when you reconnect a battery.

And it also triggers an internal I/M Readiness protocol that pulls several emissions related sensors offline until the car has been drive a certain distance after reconnecting the battery. Because of this, the car will not pass emissions testing until the sensor registers reset to active or "ready". The EPA requires this protocol be in all internal combustion vehicles to prevent someone from disconnecting the battery just prior to going in for emissions........................

and.........BUT once the system "resets" after the battery is reconnected and you drive the car to allow all of the sensors to come back on line.....you'll quickly wind up with those same engine codes AGAIN......it becomes a "vicious circle".

BEST ADVICE: Bite the bullet and get the car fixed

Thank you JFP, yeah it seemed to good to be true. So the question is, how is the shop doing it? Is this something that can be be done with a high end Durametric tool where they can clear specific codes in a way undetectable by smog testing equipment?

Repairing the car would be a ‘best advice’ if my car was a low mileage 986. But it’s not. The value of the car without a CEL would likely be around $10k. Every shop that has seen the car has estimated the repair north of $7k, and that was pre-Covid estimates. Naw, am better off paying the $200 every two years to get the car smogged. I was just hoping there was an easier way.

Posche diagnostic tools, the PIWIS, can "force" an I/M Readiness reset, which by-the-by is illegal as it subverts both state and federal emission protocols. Sooner or later the shop doing this is going to be told by their legal advisors that they can be fined, and in some states even imprisoned, for doing exactly that as it constitutes a felony nor unlike the one VW got nailed for some time back over emissions system defeat.

If you brought the car into my shop and told me what you wanted, I would tell you to take it elsewhere; no shop worth its salt is going to continue put itself into legal jeopardy just to get you back on the road. And no, the Durametric cannot do the I/M Readiness forced reset, and neither can most other systems priced below about $10-12K.

When you bought the car, you knew it was a complex performance vehicle, which was not inexpensive to buy, own, or maintain. Either get the vehicle properly repaired or sell it at a loss to someone willing to make the proper repairs.

If you have a durametric, Foxwell tool or similar, you can constantly monitor the readiness monitors while driving. This way you can make sure they are done when you go for the test and it`ll pass. It takes like 15-30 miles until all the readiness monitors pass, with the exception of the SAI. Here, in Caliornia, the EVAP system readiness is not a requirement, the rest is. For me the longest was the SAI system to get done, because it requires 3 start cycles if I remember correctly and the engine has to cool down between the cycles, so it took 3 days to get that ready.

Your assumption is that the I/M Readiness will clear because all the necessary sensors are online and reading acceptable data; but in this case, he is trying NOT to do the camshaft related repair, and still getting by. If the repairs are not made, the system will never clear, even if you drive it to the moon and back.

He says `s been doing this for 5 years. If I remember correctly from his earlier posts he took the car to local shops for diagnostics and even some repair was attempted to fix this with no result but he got a couple thousands shorter. If it was me, I would fix it myself, but that`s me. For someone who can`t fix it on their own I can understand that he wants to keep using the car as long as it runs instead of keep taking the car from one shop to another. What I don`t see is whether this is a permanent problem or it just occurs every once in a while. If it`s permanent what I suggested won`t work. But if the issue does not trigger a code right after the readiness cycle is done it can be smogged.

If this has been going on for five years, I would say the problem is probably permanent, even if intermittent. Even force clearing it will not prevent it from registering as a "pending code" which would probably be enough to fail the car, as this code can lead to misfire events.

P1341 Camshaft Adjustment, Bank 1 – Below Limit

Potential causes:

– Short to ground

– Actuator faulty

– Open circuit in triggering wire

– Open circuit in B+ supply

None of these look like $7K repairs, even if the actuator needs to be replaced, and quite often we find dirt in the actuator assembly that is causing the problem.

If the actuator needs replacement the part alone is around $1000, plus typically they pull the engine for the job (although it`s doable without doing that). This is the Bay area, so I wouldn`t be surprised if it cost around 7k. What would it cost to replace the actuator in your shop? Just wondering. For the Poster perhaps it`s worth a trip to PA ;)

I’ve done everything but tear down the top end. Which is what 3 of the top Bay Area Porsche shops concluded after checking out the car.

I guess I wasn’t clear tho. I am not looking to permanently clear the 1341. Just clear it long enough to pass smog. This is what the shop has been doing for me since 2019. I was even talked into an expensive oil additive, that’s how desperate I was. Frankly, I think they feel guilty for diagnosing the issue as ground wires, etc. which I spent in the neighborhood of $2000+ for with no improvement. So I am just thankful they have hung in there with me at all.

If there was a Durametric tool that could do this for me, I would buy one. Guessing they must be horrendously expensive tho.

The car really runs great and the CO2 and other smog numbers are great. So I have no reservations about driving the car.

thanks again JPF. This is what I was talking about, tho I thought it was a Durametric tool that cleared the computer.
I have no doubt clearing CEL for the purpose of getting a clear smog test is illegal. But from what I was told, the car is by no means running dirty. The results of the smog tests I’ve had are excellent and have nothing to do with the cleared CEL.

Spending $7k to clear a CEL on a $10-12k 23yr old car is silly. I’ve owned many Porsches over the last 30 years and I do not like getting $$ buried in them. I usually dump them before they begin to cost a lot. I’ll keep paying $200 every 2 years to smog it, until something majors goes wrong.

What kind of shop do you own? Have you done actuators on a 2.7 motor?

COAS! $200 to smog? I paid $65 yesterday morning, and I'm in facking Californium.

Why $200? .

I`m not sure what you mean by "this", but any generic tool ($30 on Amazon) that is able to clear the codes and show the readiness monitors can be used to pass the smog test, IF the error code does not come back right away. Of course you need to know what to look for. Probably that`s what the shop did. They didn`t fix anything but they cleared the codes, drove the car until the readiness monitors finished but the error code did not re-occur (yet), and took the car to smog. If you know what to look for you can be sure the car will pass. If the code had come back immediately they would not have taken the car to smog. That`s my understanding.

It isn't always necessary to drop the engine to do one of these actuators. Realistically, it should probably come in as a $2500 - $3000 job IF the actuator needs to be replaced, which is not always the case. More commonly, this is a wiring issue, which is why the OBD II manual describes it in the manner noted.

For years, a well-equipped one that has done actuator's both engine in and engine out on several types of Porsche engines. If you have the correct tools, and know what you are doing, this is not as ugly a job as many people make it out to be. We have also seen cars that had an engine out actuator replacement at another shop that then continued to throw the same code, and turned out to only need at $150 wiring repair rather than a new actuator because the previous shop did not do the appropriate electrical tests first, they just threw very expensive parts and labor at the car.

And correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it considered illegal to sell a car in CA knowing that it has such a fault and not disclosing it to the buyer, and that it could only be sold as a parts car if it was unable to correctly pass smog?

That`s not too bad. I wonder what would a shop here charge for this job. Here everything is awfully expensive. A lot of cars end up in the junkyard because they don`t pass the smog test and it`s too expensive to get it fixed.

Theoretically it`s illegal but there`s no way to prove that. I wouldn`t sell a car like that because it`s just not cool but I`m pretty sure there are a lot of cars out there with CEL coming up intermittently which the seller forgets to mention. Actually there is nothing illegal in just erasing the codes then get the car smogged. When the CEL is on, many shops just erase the codes first and see if it re-occurs. As the owner, you can even naively think they solved the problem, and you are not aware that the same issue comes back, say, 200 miles later after you sold the car.