997.1 Turbo troubles – car shuts down 10 sec. after start up

Today was a bad day in 997.1 Turbo land – my 2007 Turbo decided that running for 10 seconds after startup was enough.

This error came out of nowhere – I drove the car for about 20km (12miles) mostly around 100-120 km/h (60-70 mp/h), outside temperature 27°C (80°F). Oil and water temps normal – car idled normally and nothing special happen. Then I parked the car for about 2 hours. When I returned to drive away the car started as normal. After 10 seconds it then shut down with anything special – no rattles, no fighting – just calmly shutting down.

I tried again and looked at the oil pressure – everything normal. The car idled for 10 seconds normally at 780 rpm and then after 10 seconds it shut down again. Weird I thought – started again and gave it some revs. The car behaved normally – rpm went easily to 2500 rpm – then after 10 seconds shut down again. I repeated this two more times – switching the car on and off again. Locking it from the outside – tried again … nothing worked. Here is how the problem looked like in the car:

So next step for me – pull out my laptop with Durametric running on it – lets see what the DME hold in terms of fault codes. – When the car runs for 10 seconds there are no codes or any CEL … and the DME .. nothing no fault codes …

So – I was close to calling a tow truck. So I did what every person does these days – googled the problem. Luckily I found this German forum post where somebody had the exact same problem:

https://www.pff.de/index.php?thread/2731640-997-1-turbo-springt-an-und-geht-nach-ca-10-sek-aus/

The solutions suggest from the forum members ranged from:

• cleaning Mass Air Flow Sensor – no option no cleaning fluid with me also DME Mass Air Flow Sensor Values looked fine
• try your second key – no chance second key was 50km (40miles) away
• gas tank vent not working and a vacuum in the tank forms – might try to unscrew the cap if nothing else works

And then there was the comment of user RoyalOak in short he had the same problem. Lucky for him it happened at an actual Porsche dealership – so they connected the car to a Porsche analytics tool and found – nothing, no fault codes. (head scratch) – They tried starting the car 10 times and observed that after 10 seconds the fuel pressure goes away and the car shuts down. – The official Porsche dealer suggested disconnecting the battery for 5 minutes – afterwards the car ran fine and the problem did not come back. – BINGO! So I did the same and the car started up and stayed on.

Did you have the same problem and have solution ? Let us know in the comments below!