Planet 9

I took my 2008 Cayman S to Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham two weeks ago for my first DE with this car, after many DE's with 911 based Porsches. During only the second track session, I experienced a breakdown due to the "roller" and serpentine belt breaking, which powers the power steering pump amongst other things (located on front of engine behind rear seats). Has anyone else experienced this kind of failure? Does anyone think it is related to track-related stresses? Alternatively, I would appreciate hearing also from Cayman owners who have multiple track days under their "belt" (pun intended) with no failures. I have never had a failure like this on any of my prior (4) 911's, so it is disturbing. Thanks for any feedback.

In my opinion it is an anomaly caused by either a defective belt from the factory, defective installation at the factory, or something that damaged the belt like a sharp rock or object being thrown up into it. Since you didn't report anything like the latter, I would assume it was a bad belt from the factory that was simply weak and gave way under some increased stressed. I don't know of anyone else who has broken a belt at the track or even on the street up to now as I have not seen any reports of that happening here before, yours is the first I am aware of. Given that your car is newer than most Caymans, again I would put it down to defective belt from the factory.

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K-Man S

Thanks so much for the reply, I am much relieved to hear from you that this does not appear to be a common or chronic problem with Caymans. Given your very wide visibility into all things Cayman, I am sure you would have heard of it by now! I will let you know how things go over the next few months, I have an autocross coming up on April 5, and a DE at Road Atlanta on April 25-6. Thanks again!

Hi
I just bought my new Cayman S a month ago, and last weekend went to the track for a quick 10 lap race.
After finishing the race, and just while I was parking the car I noticed the typical "power steering noise" I thought this was caused by over heating the pump so decided to run 2 laps for cooling down the engine... noise did not disapeared. Now after a week the noise level increased to a level that im worried is so high.... im planning to take the car to service by tomorrow, but would like to know if some one dealed with something semilar before, and if it is a common problem with the caymans
thanks for your comments

Juan
by the way, im writing you from Bogotá in Colombia where Porsche is gaining more adepts day by day, but we dont have so much sources of information regarding this kind of problems

No Reports of Defective Belts Logged on the CaymanClub - Where there are Extreme Users.......... Maybe you were Just Unfortunate.................. Things Like This Happen...............

Looking Forward to Your - 'Good Performance' on Your Next Autocross.....
Let Us Know Our Results/News/Car Performance................

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Cheers Karel



'Power is Nothing - Without Control..........'

Welcome to the Cayman Club, Juan - Taking it to the dealer is the best thing you can do at this point - the problem could be any number of things - a failed pump, if the ambient temperatures were high, it could have damaged the system as we've seen before with the melted lines, and leaking steering racks, or the car may have come from the factory with a low level in the power steering reservoir...

Good luck, and please report back to us what they say.

brad

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22-year PCA Member
PCA DE Instructor

Thanks folks for your answers...
I forgot to mention that I am under a breakdown period after a complete engine change (factory warranty.... thanks to God)
Will let you know the report from local dealer
Just to let you know about Porsche activity in Bogota, here you will find some pictures of last race
Juan
Flickr: jacded's Photostream