Hello fellow 981 owners!
I have a 2013 Boxster S and have noticed for the past couple of years that I no longer hear my engine compartment purge fans running when the car is parked after any drive where the engine comes to full operating temperature. What about your car? Do you hear them?
To be clear, these are the two small fans nestled inside the side intake vents that bring in fresh air to the engine compartment. Since our engines are basically in an upside-down bathtub as far as natural ventilation, they can use the fresh, cooler air to keep the hoses and plastics on the engine from prematurely baking.
Thinking the fans were blown / worn out, I bought one new one to test. Once I wrangled out the old fans (replaced one and just tested the other), I tested their operation against the new fan, and they all powered up and spun the same when connected to a battery directly. I have no CEL, my local Porsche independent mechanic was able to manually trigger the fan operation with the PIWIS, and he also found no stored error codes. My battery is fairly new (auto stop-start function still works), so I have ruled out an old battery being the cause. There are no obstructions to the fan blades turning, either.
The purge fan’s operating conditions are explained on page 48 in the “Service Information - 2013 Technik Introduction - Boxster/Boxster S (981)” (download it from my dropbox here: 981 BOXSTER SIT.pdf).
For brevity’s sake, I won’t copy paste all the info from page 48 here, though in a nutshell the fans have a low and a high-speed operation. When ambient air temp is above 50 degrees F (or 10 degrees C), at least the low-speed function is supposed to be “on” when intake air temps are 77 F (or 25 C) or higher while the engine is running. When the engine compartment temp exceeds 160 F (71 C) or when coolant temp exceeds 226 F (108 C), the fans are supposed to operate at the high-speed setting, which from what I recall in the past, was clearly audible.
When the engine is turned off, the fans are supposed to run up to 25 minutes based on engine compartment temperatures. The low end of the range where the fans turn on is only 147 F (64 C), which is very easy to reach of course. The fans are clearly not running on my car. I tested this the other day by leaving it in ‘Normal’ mode and making sure the water and oil temps were above 200F (as read from my Cobb AccessSport reading from the OBD-II port), giving it a few redline runs in 1st gear, and then turning off the ignition without any ‘cool down’ driving. No engine purge fan operation at all.
I’d appreciate feedback from the group here to see what your fans are doing. I wonder if Porsche changed the operating parameters in a later ECU update so the fans don’t come on unless things get really hot, though I see in other threads 981 owners are hearing their fans, especially when the car is parked when hot. I’m baffled by this one…
Thanks in advance for the help.
Josh
I have a 2013 Boxster S and have noticed for the past couple of years that I no longer hear my engine compartment purge fans running when the car is parked after any drive where the engine comes to full operating temperature. What about your car? Do you hear them?
To be clear, these are the two small fans nestled inside the side intake vents that bring in fresh air to the engine compartment. Since our engines are basically in an upside-down bathtub as far as natural ventilation, they can use the fresh, cooler air to keep the hoses and plastics on the engine from prematurely baking.
Thinking the fans were blown / worn out, I bought one new one to test. Once I wrangled out the old fans (replaced one and just tested the other), I tested their operation against the new fan, and they all powered up and spun the same when connected to a battery directly. I have no CEL, my local Porsche independent mechanic was able to manually trigger the fan operation with the PIWIS, and he also found no stored error codes. My battery is fairly new (auto stop-start function still works), so I have ruled out an old battery being the cause. There are no obstructions to the fan blades turning, either.
The purge fan’s operating conditions are explained on page 48 in the “Service Information - 2013 Technik Introduction - Boxster/Boxster S (981)” (download it from my dropbox here: 981 BOXSTER SIT.pdf).
For brevity’s sake, I won’t copy paste all the info from page 48 here, though in a nutshell the fans have a low and a high-speed operation. When ambient air temp is above 50 degrees F (or 10 degrees C), at least the low-speed function is supposed to be “on” when intake air temps are 77 F (or 25 C) or higher while the engine is running. When the engine compartment temp exceeds 160 F (71 C) or when coolant temp exceeds 226 F (108 C), the fans are supposed to operate at the high-speed setting, which from what I recall in the past, was clearly audible.
When the engine is turned off, the fans are supposed to run up to 25 minutes based on engine compartment temperatures. The low end of the range where the fans turn on is only 147 F (64 C), which is very easy to reach of course. The fans are clearly not running on my car. I tested this the other day by leaving it in ‘Normal’ mode and making sure the water and oil temps were above 200F (as read from my Cobb AccessSport reading from the OBD-II port), giving it a few redline runs in 1st gear, and then turning off the ignition without any ‘cool down’ driving. No engine purge fan operation at all.
I’d appreciate feedback from the group here to see what your fans are doing. I wonder if Porsche changed the operating parameters in a later ECU update so the fans don’t come on unless things get really hot, though I see in other threads 981 owners are hearing their fans, especially when the car is parked when hot. I’m baffled by this one…
Thanks in advance for the help.
Josh
