2007 Cayman S – Door Locks

When I recently purchased my new to me 2007 Cayman S, it only came with one key. Key as in a traditional metal blade cut with custom grooves attached to a triangular plastic piece with 3 buttons. One button to operate the doors, one for the frunk and one for the rear hatch. Pretty standard stuff. My local Porsche dealer, Leith Porsche in Cary, set me up with an appointment to get a second key cut and programmed. As a precaution, I purchased an extra key blank to be cut. The idea is that if you were to lock your regular key in the car, this little key can be used to open the drivers door and retrieve your regular key. Note when you do this, within about 10 seconds the horn will start beeping. You stop that by inserting your regular key in the ignition. No big deal. Note that the key stub will not start the car. Interestingly enough, my wife’s 06 CS came new with a plastic “valet” key. This key will actually start the car so it must have a “chip” in it to negate the alarm system from sounding. Anyway, my key stub is “stashed” externally on the car where I can get at it if need be.

So, when the job was done, I tried one of the keys in the manual latch. The key turned in the latch but nothing happened. The external key cylinder did not seem to be connected to anything. I feel fortunate to have discovered this situation. The reason being, if your battery goes dead, you have to use a key manually in the key cylinder to open the door, as your electronic key will not work with a dead battery. Once you get the door open, you have to put your battery jump device of choice on the little “jump post” in the left footwell. This gives you temporary power to electrically pop the frunk latch and access your battery. In effect, if your door key cylinder doesn’t work, the alternatives are grim.

The next day, I reviewed a youtube video by Summitlife that discussed getting the inner door panel off. This was pretty straightforward. Then I found a second video by the same guy regarding how to take off the metal inner door panel. Finally, I was able to get at the hardware on the inside of the external door latch required to remove it. It was not intuitive so be sure and watch the video. When I finally got the door latch removed, I found that a short plastic shaft was loose. It should have been engaged into the inner latch but wasn’t. That’s probably a common situation for older Porsches. I’m just glad to have found something that was simple to fix. Putting everything back together was no picnic but I got the job done. My one comment to the video is to go ahead and substantially remove the inner metal door panel. He discusses leaving it “tightish”. I’m here to tell you, you will never get the latch reassembled without giving yourself more room for access from the inside.

So if you haven’t done it in a while, be sure and check your manual door key cylinder. You may thank yourself one day when you find that you have a dead battery!