Occasionally my heated wheel chooes not to heat. It seems to happen only in extreme cold and, as a matter of fact, it was almost exactly a year ago when this occurrred. At that time I took it to the dealer and they said that it was a loose connection-apparently fixed as it did not act up again until today.
If the ignition is turned off and restarted the wheel works again. I'm wondering if there is too much draw on the hydro with cold starts and this is causing the problem.
I pretty much always have the wheel on and the extreme cold is the only variable that I can isolate.
Anyone have this problem or thoughts around this-cause ya all know that it will be a dealer non replicable issue!

 

I had a Boxster loaner that had the opposite problem. The heat wouldn't turn off. I believe the SA told me they had to replace a switch.

Hydro, I wonder how many people had to stop and think about that one?

 

Bad switch probably - unless your battery is weak or dying, otherwise it all should work. Heated wheel that doesn't work in the cold seems pretty useless. And it looks like they test these things in places cold enough to reveal a problem like thatn

Does it kick in with the heated seat control or does that also fail? I don't think I have actually used the button on the wheel and when I got the car, I thought what an inconvenient design. Once I noticed that the Seat Heat Button would also activate the wheel, I realized again how clever Porsche can be.

 

My wheel heater does not turn on automatically with the seat heat, the button must be pushed.
The car is an 09C4S Cab with only 13300kms. so hopefully the battery is ok. I usually have the tender plugged in, however lately I have been using it in my wifes's car.
Perhaps on warmup (with a myriad of systems on demand) it is the lowest in the pecking order. I'll keep the tender plugged in and see if that works.

Rob

 

I find no mention of this in the owner's manual either, but when I push the seat heat button, I get a notification on the dash that steering wheel heating is ON - and it certainly gets warm. And when I turn off the seat heating, the wheel is deactivated and a similar notification is displayed.

I'd have to check to see if having the AC system in Auto affects this - maybe. Seems like a cool feature, but you might want to ask your dealer about it if yours is not working this way or is behaving strangely.

 

What the hell is a 'hydro'. I don't think water has anything to do with the heated wheel.

I'd expect that the temp outside might cause contraction of materials (that shrink a bit the colder they get) which could cause a connection or switch failure (if a lubricated switch binds up, for example), but if it works when you restart the electrics, then it may well be a stuck relay or similar switch, and not a loose connection.

 

All I know is that the steering wheel heating in the 997.2 is a complicated matter. It was explained to me that it utilizes the interior temp as well as the ambient temp??

It does seem that if you turn the seat (and wheel) heat when it's not cold, the seat will heat but the wheel won't. It's got a mind of it's own.

That said, I would ask your dealer to check to connections in the wheel - clock spring (in the dash at the bottom of the steering column) and also to do a PIWIS check. I'm not a tech (far from it). Just a thought.

Good luck.

Does anyone find it odd that our cars can be equipped with a heated wheel and cooled seats, but there is no automatic switch for the headlights....?

DRP

 

I have never noticed that behavior and the manual does not indicate it. How cold does it have to be? At any rate, I have not seen it warm enough in GA lately to prevent the wheel from heating if this is really true.

 

I can see the benefit of that behavior.. heating the steering wheel makes sense when the wheel is very cold. Above a certain temperature, heating the wheel makes no sense.. it doesn't do anything usefull and even may be a problem above a certain temp. Meanwhile, you may want to heat the seat for a host of reasons, even on a warm day (to sooth the back, lets say).


Nope.. not odd at all. I've never seen the point of automatically activated headlights. I definitely see the value in heated steering wheels (since it wasn't an option on my 2009 6spd, though I wanted it and really wish I had it on cold days), and ventilated seats (I appreciate that feature in my Targa every very warm and sunny summers day.

 

Stacheman,

I had the same thing, exactly as you described, happen this morning. Going to talk to dealer to see whats up.

akbjr

 

Too warm in Chicago today, maybe?

 

huh?

 

exactly

 

Stacheman,

I have the same problem in a 2009 987S.
After some time I also found the relation of the phenomenon with the ambient temperature. It never happened during summer (Holland) and I am registrating the ambient temperature every day since last June. Up to now the highest temperature at which the heater refused to work was 13C (55F). The lowest temp. was -1C (30F) (I do not have winter tires so I don't drive much in the winter).
Within this temperature range the misbehaviour occurs about once in every three trials and I didn't find another relevant parameter up to now.
I also noticed that after switching on the heater, the system waits exactly 3:00 minutes and then decides (on hidden grounds) to switch the heater off (with anouncement in the display) or to leave it alone.
The dealer has replaced the steering wheel module, without solving the problem and they now are planning to replace the switch in the steering wheel together with the NTC resistor, which - I suppose - is monitoring the wheel temperature.
This might solve the problem because the PIWIS tester, and also my Durametric, point to the NTC resistor in the steering wheel.
Unclear remains why the fault only occurs once in three times.
The relation with the ambient temperature could be understood if the applied power to the wheel depends on it. It is reasonable to apply more power when it is really cold, but then it is necessary to monitor the wheel temperature and lower the power when it gets warm. When the reading of the NTC value is outside some range the system might switch the heater off and for safety reasons disable the steering wheel switch. A bad contact of the NTC could be the cause of the random (1:3) behaviour.
I think that above some preset temperature (say about 15C) only low power is applied to the wheel and there is no need to measure its temperature and hence no reason to disable the heater.

When the switch and NTC are replaced I hope to be able to see if there is reason to suspect the contacts of the NTC and I will be happy to report the results.

 

Update of my heated steering wheel problem:

In March 2011 the switch and NTC on the steering wheel were replaced with no effect.

In September 2012 a reprogramming of the CDR-30 radio was called for by Porsche (WB47, see for instance http://www.imakenews.com/carlsenpors....cfm?x=b11,0,w) to correct for a software error.

That action solved the heated steering wheel problem .

My guess is that when the radio puts erroneous data on the CAN bus due to a software error, anything can happen, including generation of a spurious 8041 error, thus disabling the steering wheel heater.

Maybe even Porsche doesn't know this connection, because in the description of action WB47 the steering wheel heater is not mentioned.