Boxster cold start problem - lots already tried

[ajclarkey]

Hello, I'm a fairly new Porsche Boxster owner having purchased one in August 2012 and having problems now which has cost me over £1000 in the last few weeks and still not fixed. looking for some advice please, I'd be really grateful!!
I have a start up issue has been going on for a month and been in the garage 3 times and still can't fix the problem.
Its a 2000 registration 2.7 litre Boxster with 49000 miles.
Everything was running fine until I took it into have a service and MOT by a non specialist garage.
He changed the oil filter and air filter and changed oil with Mobil1 5/40 fully synth (although when I picked it up I noticed he had filled it over the max mark, not sure if this makes much difference, he stated it was 8 litres).
The next day it took around 20-30 seconds to start the car and really struggled to ignite but was turning over fine. It wouldn't start unless you pushed on the gas pedal. When it does start there are huge white smoke clouds from the exhaust for about 30 seconds which smells strongly of fuel. After that initial drive it then starts fine first time for the rest of the day. When left overnight the problem returned on the first start up.
Took it back to mechanic and he couldn't work out the problem was (no check engine light) and changed the fuel filter. This made no difference.
Took the car to a specialist (by now the check engine light had come on) who told me it was the pre cat Lambda / 02 sensors had both seized and need replacing and so he did.
Got car back, problem exactly the same and check engine light returned the next day. Took it back and specialist, now state it's the Mass Air Flow filter and so changed that, before picking up the car he told me it was still a little slow and so changed the spark plugs also.
Got car back problem exactly the same - first thing in morning doesn't want to fire up and eventually have to press the gas pedal to get it going.
From research I thought initially it might be the AOS but doing the oil cap test when engine is running proves that it probably isn't as the cap comes off without any vacuum.
As these repairs have cost me over £1000 now and problem still remains I'm losing all patience and trust with the garage, what do you suspect? I've put a video on Youtube Boxster 986 cold start problem - YouTube you can hear when it starts struggling I press on the gas which fires it up but if I don't do that it will continue to struggle for 30-40 seconds or longer before starting!

[Neil_Broadhurst]

Hello Essex ! I'm originally from Surrey but now living in North Carolina, Hope you've not got too much snow !

This problem sounds a lot like one of my many problems that I had last year when I bought my 98. Mine would take a few turns to start and sometimes kick out smoke and was generally very rough and idle and revs were drifting up and down.

I found that I had a cracked Oil Filler Tube and a completely stuffed AOS. This resulted in loss of vacuum and a ton of oil getting into the inlet manifolds.

A fairly quick check would be to remove your Throttle body and see if you have oil in the inlet manifolds. Mine was coated in about a millimeter of fresh oil !

The Oil filler Tube is a sod to replace but the AOS isn't too bad.

Cheers .. Neil.

[thstone]

Big white clouds of smoke that look like a 007 smokescreen = AOS.

[Jager]

I'm thinking along the lines as thstone, over-fill with oil and the AOS will fail soon. Bad AOS will have a vacuum leak which could be causing your startup problems. What trouble code do you have?

[srad34]

As others have said, the AOS sounds like the culprit. Mine failed and the vacuum was not abnormal either.
The easiest test as said is the disconnect the pipe from the top of the AOS to the inlet manifold, if this has oil in it, the AOS is failing and getting into the inlet, oiling plugs etc = starting issues.

Too much oil will eventually end up back in the inlet when the AOS fails.

It will still smoke for a few miles after AOS replacement due to burning oil residue in the rest of the system.

Regarding the garage you use, I would strongly recommend you finding an independent specialist or teach yourself as some folk think we all have blank cheque books and although an not overly complex engine, they do have a fair few issues and can be easy to mis-diagnose!

[ajclarkey]

Thanks for all your replies. Yeah we've got a fair bit of snow that came down a couple of days ago so I've left the car sitting in the garage, don't fancy risking taking it out in the conditions! The 'specialist' I took it to didn't ever tell me the codes but upon first taking it in and they told me it was the 02 sensors and the second time when they replaced the MAF they said the error code was 'rich mixture' and that it would probably be the MAF causing this. Since my initial post when they changed the MAF I started it up and with the same initial start up issue and driving to work started to get a misfire and the CEL started flashing! I called for breakdown assistance, they read the error codes at the roadside which were P1126, P1133 which he told me were both 02 sensor errors and the other code was P0302 which is a cyclinder 2 misfire and that problem would be causing the other 2 to flag up. This is the first time I've ever had a misfire and it concerns me that the 02 sensor problems probably came up before and that's when they simply changed them without looking any deeper. I got the car recovered on a flat back and took it to the same garage as they had the full knowledge of it and explained the issues. Amazingly after keeping the car a couple of days they told me they swapped cyclinder 2 with 1 to see if it reported a misfire on that but it didn't and that the car is starting fine for them first time with no issues so can't find anything wrong with it!
I picked it up from them and have now been driving it 2 days. Again I think the garage are clearly lying to me as it still struggles to start in the cold mornings and the CEL has returned on (although not flashing and no misfires). I'm now 100% taking it to a new garage but considering the official porsche centre even though this will cost a fortune they should be able to sort this.

[srad34]

Its a shame you are down south as I would recommend Revolution in Huddersfield as they are ex-Porsche engineers and know their stuff.
If you register on 'Boxa.net', this is the UK Boxster website and despite a fair few folk who only use dealers, there are a few recommendations for indie's that you could call.

Good luck pal

[The Radium King]

leaking injectors? a leaky injector will drip into the cyl when the car is off and make for a tough start. mixture will initially be very rich and will eventually foul o2 sensors. exhaust on start-up will smell of gas. if gas is sitting in the cyl then some will leak past the rings (flat 6) and foul the oil - give your oil a sniff - does it smell strongly of gas?

[ajclarkey]

Thanks again for your suggestions. Sadly I'm a complete novice when it comes to car maintainance and especially with a Porsche I'm scared to touch anything so after taking it to 2 different mechanics who just threw parts at it and taking the advice of a 3rd independant mechanic i took it to the official Porsche service centre.
They carried out various diagnostic checks and checked for leaks using an air leak tool on the inlet manifold and traced a leak to a breather pipe hose. This was replaced and re-checked and system came back leak free. Now finally after a month and a half and 6 visits to be repaired the car is back to its old self! The relief and stress from my head is immense. It seemed to take minutes for Porsche to fix the problem and charge just over £200 for it. It just annoys me a bit that the other 2 garages messed about with it for so long and put all those parts on it for it to be the same. Like they said I would've saved a fortune had I just taken to them in the first place so I think I've learnt a valuable lesson and won't be taking it anywhere else in future.
Thanks for you time in reading and replying.

[ajclarkey]

Amazingly enough what I thought was the end of the problem was not. The next day it still struggled to start taking a long time and so had to call Porsche again to report they hadn't fixed the start problem. They booked me in for a few days later whilst I continued to drive it around and the check engine light never returned (I guess that must have been the hose issue they repaired) so it drives perfectly with no issues or warning lights / errors but just takes a long time to start when engine is stone cold and when it gets going the exhaust fumes smell very strongly of fuel and quite smokey.
Porsche came and picked it up from me this occasion so I could show them how it starts cold on a morning and agreed it wasn't right, they've taken it away and now had it 3 days. The only update they've given me is that they don't know what they problem is as its not showing up any errors. They noticed the spark plugs weren't the official Porsche make and so have changed them to further test it then! I can't see how this will make any difference what so ever, those spark plugs were 2 weeks old and the ones before were the same it only has the issue when the car is cold, if it's been driven in the past 5 hours or less the car starts up straight away with no issues. I just can't believe I've now taken the car to be repaired 6 times for this minor issue that nobody can seem to work out. It seems that there are no mechanics these days but simply computer readers. Why are they relying so heavily on error codes and seem stumped when there are none?!

[vannoodle]

Awesome Info! Have just started getting exactly the same problems/symptoms with mine and this could save me a lot of time and money! Thanks!