Crankshaft oil seal change
I would appreciate your insight and advice regarding a problem that has arisen following a crankshaft seal change on my 2012 Porsche Panamera diesel PDK. The car has 60,000 miles and was running perfectly apart from an oil leak that necessitated removal of the gearbox to replace the rear crankshaft seal.
The battery was disconnected prior to the work and reconnected after everything was replaced. The car was started to test it and all was well but, after running for a while, it would crank but not fire. If the battery was disconnected and reconnected, it started fine and would run all day until it was shut down, then wouldn’t restart again. There are no driveability issues when the car is running.
Plugging the car into PIWIS 2 showed the code ‘P1570 Engine control unit blocked’ when it wouldn’t restart. Clearing the code made no difference and the car wouldn’t restart unless the battery was disconnected and reconnected. It then restarts and no codes are logged until you stop the engine and try to restart it. Looking at all the wiring that had to be disconnected for the gearbox removal, all seems to be OK. Min Chew The code ‘P1570’ is a reference to the immobiliser system and is not something which would normally be expected after disconnecting the battery. The common reason for the code is that the key is not being recognised. This can happen if the key is left in close proximity to a magnetic field, although as the vehicle will start after the battery has been disconnected and reconnected, this does not seem likely. If you have a spare key, this may be worth trying first.
The next point to check is the condition of the battery earth and the engine-to-body earth connections. These are really the only points that might have been disturbed and would have any effect on the starting of the vehicle.
Providing all earth connections are in good condition and before carrying out any more complex tests, I would try a discharge of the system. Remove both battery cables and, once they’re out of the way, touch the positive and negative cables together for around 45 seconds; this will effectively discharge the capacitive voltage retained in the system. Then reconnect the battery cables and see if the problem is resolved.
If the problem is still present, the ECU or instrument cluster may need to be recoded. By accessing the codes in the immobiliser and instrument cluster directly, you should be able to detect any problems. From the details I have on the PIWIS 2, you should have the software version 11.7 to cover your 2012 vehicle. We later had a reply from Min... Just to update you about the Panamera, the local Porsche independent who is a friend found the defect. It turned out to be the GPS tracker that was at fault. More specifically, the internal battery was a dud, so when the car battery was disconnected, it powered down and lost its settings. It needed a new internal battery recoded to the car. Thank you for your help.