Since I’ve purchased my 2001 Porsche 911, it has been sitting in my driveway for about a few weeks. I didn’t put a trickle charger on it yet, so when I came back out to start the car again, the battery was totally dead. I was able to open the door with my key, but there was no power to the car at all.
Normally when faced with this, you’d just open the hood and jump start the car. But on the 996, it’s different. On the 996, the engine is located in the rear, but the car battery is located under the frunk (a.k.a. the front hood). Since the frunk is electronically actuated, it won’t open because the battery is dead.
The Porsche 911 996, there is a specific way that you can get power to your car to allow you to open the frunk. Open the plastic door cover near the driver’s side pedals. There is a red lead that can be pulled out here. After you pull this red lead out of the fuse box, you can attach the positive lead of a a jump starter or jumper cable to it.
The positive (red) cable attaches to the lead that you just pulled from the fuse box. The negative (black) wire attaches to ground, which you can simply attach to the metal door hinge. After doing this and knowing that you have power going to the jumper lead at the fuse box, the car should now have power to operate the frunk of the car.
The frunk will now open up and you can gain access to the car battery which is located right under this plastic cover under the front trunk. Jump start your car as you normally would with a portable jump starter or with jumper cables.
And to avoid your Porsche’s car battery from going dead again, drive your car regularly or make sure your car is put on a trickle charger if it’s going to be sitting for a while. Jump starting your 996 is not a difficult thing to do compared to a normal car, but it does take an extra step that makes it a bit more annoying to do.
I desperately wanted to write this post because my 996 is new to me and I went through some unnecessary steps to try to jump start my car. I’ve also seen people unknowingly try to access the rear hood thinking the car battery is underneath. The fact that the frunk is operated electronically rather than by wire, throws in a wrench if you’re trying to jump start your car the traditional way.
So, I hope this was helpful to you if you’re trying to jump start your Porsche 911 996. I’ve tried to lay out every step required to jump start your 996 so that you don’t have to jump through all the hoops like I did when I did this the very first time.
