awwalker1
PCGB Member
Gen 1 991 owners may not be aware (I certainly wasn't until it went wrong!) that the rear light clusters on their cars are held in place by a single screw. Forgive me if I'm writing about a well-known issue with the 991, but I haven't come across this before. My car is a 2012 62-plate 3.4 Carrera, a two-wheel drive variant, in Guards Red. Here's what happened:
Driving south with my brother as passenger on the A1 last Friday, he happened to glance in the passenger wing mirror and saw something protruding from the rear of the car. Whatever it was, neither of us could identify it but I knew it a) wasn't there when I set off earlier and b) shouldn't be there now. All we could really tell was that it appeared to be red in colour and possible triangular in shape. Regardless, we knew we had to stop to investigate. Everything on the car appeared to be working as normal, and I had no warning lights on the dash of any sort, but in any case I pulled into Blyth services near Doncaster and parked up. We then walked to the rear of the car and were staggered to see that the entire passenger side light cluster was hanging off the back of the car, held in place only by the electrical wire. It had just fallen out. It was possible to put the assembly straight back in its aperture, but it immediately came loose again. At first it was not easy to see why this was happening, or what locating device had somehow failed. On close inspection though, we saw that on the RH internal surface of the light cluster (i.e. the side furthest away from the rear wing), there is a small circular plastic lug into which a single small screw should locate vertically from above. This rather insubstantial plastic lug had cracked in half, meaning that the screw no longer held the light assembly in place. On the LH internal surface (next to the rear wing), the light assembly has a simple locating tab that rests behind a protruding body section. While that lug could be easily located, the failure of the one on the other side meant that the light assembly could not be secured back. (All of this is of course absolutely invisible from outside the car). The slightest bump would simply cause it to fall out again. Our solution on the spot was to purchase some insulating tape from the petrol station and tape the light assembly all around, a fix that thankfully worked securely enough to enable safe and legal onward travel. As I write this the car is awaiting a visit to Porsche for a repair.
My thoughts on this incident are that it is disappointing to discover that an (arguably) safety-critical piece of equipment on the 991 incorporates what could be a serious design weakness. It may be very rare for this failure to happen (first one maybe!), but I think we were lucky on this occasion. Had the light assembly fallen free of the car, we probably would not have noticed. Even if we had spotted it, there would be no chance of recovering it while travelling at speed on a dual carriageway. We would then have been driving a car with no nearside rear lights - for an unknown distance. We were very fortunate that the lighting wire held. Not what I really expect on a car like this.
I'll be interested in the thoughts of readers - and clearly it will come to the attention of Porsche via the Porsche Centre where it goes for the repair.
Driving south with my brother as passenger on the A1 last Friday, he happened to glance in the passenger wing mirror and saw something protruding from the rear of the car. Whatever it was, neither of us could identify it but I knew it a) wasn't there when I set off earlier and b) shouldn't be there now. All we could really tell was that it appeared to be red in colour and possible triangular in shape. Regardless, we knew we had to stop to investigate. Everything on the car appeared to be working as normal, and I had no warning lights on the dash of any sort, but in any case I pulled into Blyth services near Doncaster and parked up. We then walked to the rear of the car and were staggered to see that the entire passenger side light cluster was hanging off the back of the car, held in place only by the electrical wire. It had just fallen out. It was possible to put the assembly straight back in its aperture, but it immediately came loose again. At first it was not easy to see why this was happening, or what locating device had somehow failed. On close inspection though, we saw that on the RH internal surface of the light cluster (i.e. the side furthest away from the rear wing), there is a small circular plastic lug into which a single small screw should locate vertically from above. This rather insubstantial plastic lug had cracked in half, meaning that the screw no longer held the light assembly in place. On the LH internal surface (next to the rear wing), the light assembly has a simple locating tab that rests behind a protruding body section. While that lug could be easily located, the failure of the one on the other side meant that the light assembly could not be secured back. (All of this is of course absolutely invisible from outside the car). The slightest bump would simply cause it to fall out again. Our solution on the spot was to purchase some insulating tape from the petrol station and tape the light assembly all around, a fix that thankfully worked securely enough to enable safe and legal onward travel. As I write this the car is awaiting a visit to Porsche for a repair.
My thoughts on this incident are that it is disappointing to discover that an (arguably) safety-critical piece of equipment on the 991 incorporates what could be a serious design weakness. It may be very rare for this failure to happen (first one maybe!), but I think we were lucky on this occasion. Had the light assembly fallen free of the car, we probably would not have noticed. Even if we had spotted it, there would be no chance of recovering it while travelling at speed on a dual carriageway. We would then have been driving a car with no nearside rear lights - for an unknown distance. We were very fortunate that the lighting wire held. Not what I really expect on a car like this.
I'll be interested in the thoughts of readers - and clearly it will come to the attention of Porsche via the Porsche Centre where it goes for the repair.