A 996 Died And It Wasn’t The IMS For Once!

Get it? Hehe.

Had this little C4 come in on the hook earlier this week after refusing to start. I think some hot chicks were hitting on the owner of the car (“Tee hee we like your car, it’s so cute!” or something similar was probably said, because after all, cool cars are “cute” to girls), then he got in the car in the parking lot and of course it wouldn’t start. Well that’s embarrassing. This stuff always happens when hot chicks and rednecks with beat up Camaros are watching. Hey nice Porch dude! Since we always have to drive the cars that have intermittent stalling issues and other oddball problems, we encounter these situations often, lol…..”but it’s not my car I swear!”

A few quick checks with the computer plugged in and it was obvious the fuel pump was not kicking on. On occasion Porsches have been known to have bad relays, but that can be ruled out pretty easily with the diagnostic computer.

Fuel pump location is easy to get to in the 996. The boxster is a similar procedure, but involves pulling the battery as the pump sits under the battery tray.

Skipping ahead a few steps and the fuel sending unit is disconnected and out of the car. If you want to do a quick check of the pump before pulling the sending unit, you can disconnect the electrical connector on top of the sending unit, and put ground to the connector where the brown wire attaches, and 12v to the pin on the opposite end of the connector where IIRC the big green wire connects. If it kicks on strongly, your pump is probably good. This one was severely jammed up and would barely turn.

Sending unit out of the tank.

Then you need to drain the tank unless you like fishing around in gasoline. I for one do not. Nor does my wife when I come home at night. So we use our transfer pump to drain the fuel.

And then the actual fuel pump can be pulled out of the tank after rotating it counter clockwise.

The fuel hoses are all quick connects, so pretty self explanatory getting them undone and reconnected. After that, the new pump goes in and out the door it goes!