FlashingBlade

I feel more comfortable having a fire extinguisher next to me, and I am surprised that it's not required in the US, unlike in some Europe nations. This DIY contains 3 different methods of attaching a fire extinguisher to the passenger seat of a non-motorized regular 996/Boxster seat. Other seats (e.g., motorized, GT3, sports, whatever) may be different. These seats come equiped with two tabs with holes to which you can attach a bracket that can hold an extinguisher. See the first picture. Ignore the drill chuck for now. The purpose of having an extinguishersin your car is to extingish *small* fires before they get worse. Do NOT expect to extinguish an engulfing fire with these 1 - 2 lbs units. Just stand back and look real sorry. There are different kinds of extinguishers. The most popular ones that are small enough to fit in your car are either powder extinguishers, Halon, or Halotron. Powder extinguishers are inexpensive (e.g., 10$ for a Kidde unit at most hardware stores), effective but they leave a terrible mess. The dammage caused by the corrosive powder may be worse than the fire they extinguish, especially in the passenger compartment. The Kidde units typically don't come with metal brackets which is a must for cars and also required by most clubs. Club rules may also require a minimum size (e.g., > 2 lbs). A better choice are the Halon and Halotron units. Unfortunately, production of Halon has been banned because they dammage the Ozone layer, though you can probably still find a few units (at a very high cost). The current replacements are the Halotron units, however, be aware that the Amerex 2.5 lbs Halotron bottles are a tad longer than their Halon counter parts (15 1/2" vs 14 3/8"). Amerex seems to be the preferred choice for car extinguishers. They also come with metal brackets. http://www.amerex-fire.com/products.html Amerex sells both red as chrome plated extinguishers. Shop around for best prices and be aware of hefty shipping costs! In the US, probably your best bet is to get the Brey Krause R-2020 bracket http://www.bkauto.com/porsche/r2020.php and attach your extinguisher to that. List price is around 110US$. See a typically installation in the next two pictures: Note however that he extinguisher sticks out a bit, and also note the clearance of the Halon bottle to the right. A Halotron bottle is almost 1"larger which means it will be a pretty tight fit. Seat movement seems to be unimpaired, and neither is seating. I was also warned to raise the seat to it highest position when installing the BK unit to releave tension in the spring. It's very hard to compress the seat-raise spring. I also had a look at how they installed an extinguisher in Europe (see next two pics). This particular example was held in place by a plastic strap. It's not the cleanest install, but it was the least obtrusive and visible. The final option that I am aware of is to buy the Porsche bracket (996 521 674 00, about 15US$, you need to go to the stz2 section in PET to find it). See next picture. I decided to go this route, and get the smallest Amerex Halotron fire extinguisher (again, be aware of the club rules). I had to make an adaptor plate from a piece of metal (I used a piece of 0.03" thick aircraft aluminum) to mate the Amerex bracket with the Porsche bracket: see next picture with all the pieces ligned up and assembled before I painted the plate black. The Porsche bracket had a tab sticking out that I flattened. The bad part of all this is attaching the P bracket to the seat and then the rest of the parts without removing the seat. The Porsche specs call for 5mm diameter bolts. However, the holes in the seat are smaller and either require you to drill out the holes or tap them (good luck trying to get a drill in there). The simplest route is to use 4 mm bolts and locking nuts (with a few washers) which you can purchase at most hardware stores. Nevertheless, accessing these bolts and nuts for the P bracket, and then attaching the plate and extinguisher bracket requires some acrobatics and creative use of swivel tools and other tools to put this together. I did tap (5mm .8 pict, see first picture) the center hole under the seat, but it really serves no purpose because the P bracket actually slide above the hole and so a bolt does no good. This is why the Brey Krause methods is significantly easier to install. Nevertheless, I am happy with the results. The unit is tucked away like in a European install.