Boxster S stubborn start

[Turd]

I had an interesting moment with "Turd" my 2001 Boxster S with 76,000 km. this morning as she was about to move from the garage for a Sunday morning wax and vacuum. Engine turned over great but would not start. There wasn't even one shot at a "fire". To go from good starting to no starting without even a couple misfires made me think of either a security shut down or computer problem. I rebooted the computer by disconnecting the battery. Bam! Started right away (after reconnecting the battery!). Went for a nice long drive today and had a number of starts. No problems. Any ideas why it would have done this? I had been working on the Litronic headlight several days earlier to change a small riding light bulb.

All is well now but I can't help wondering when it will decide to let me down again. I might do a Durametric scan and see if that shows anything.

[mexpat]

I am not sure this is what is wrong with your car but what you describe sounds a lot like what happened to my 2000 Boxster S and at about the same mileage:

I came out to my car and it would not start. It would crank and everything sounded right but it would not come on. After a few minutes I gave up and called for a wrecker. The car sat for about 10 minutes before I decided to try it again. This time it started without hesitation. I canceled the wrecker but drove straight to my mechanic to have it checked out.

When I got there, I turned off the car and tried to restart it. No problem. My mechanic thought it was the crankshaft position sensor going bad. I decided to not to replace it then as the car seemed to be doing ok. A couple of weeks later, though, the problem came up frequently enough that I had my mechanic replace the sensor. Problem solved.

I hope this helps.

[Turd]

Thanks MexPat. I replaced the crankcase position sensor last Fall. So I hope that was not the problem in March this year. I have not had the mysterious starting problem again and I have put a good 1,500 km on it since the non starting episode, so I guess the reboot of the OBC by disconnecting the battery for a minute fixed it up. Thanks for the good tip though.