demick

Polishing tends to make you notice all of the paint chips and imperfections. Driving tends to make you forget about them. I prefer the latter. Congrats on a beautiful car.

Well, it's a pretty dumb driver who manually locks the armrest compartment with his key, but is unaware that he didn't actually close it.

Yes, and if the alarm chirp told you whether the glove compartment or armrest was locked when the top was down, that would be useful. But it does not. It simply let's you know if it is latched - which isn't any better than unlatched if it is unlocked. Therefore, it's useless.

I like the chirp. So I just disconnected the switch that goes to the armrest. I couldn't care less whether the armrest is latched or not, and don't understand why Porsche thought this was important.

Sorry, I was mistaken. It is not discussed in the owners manual. But rather in the Bentley service manual. Flashes 5 times per second: remote signal being received Flashes 2 times per second for 10 seconds, then flashes once every 2 seconds: Door-safe mode (alarm on, passenger compartment monitor on) Lights for 10 seconds, then flashes once every 2 seconds: Locked (alarm on) Lights up for 10 seconds, then flashes twice every 2 seconds: Emergency (locked but faults in alarm or locking system) Unlit for 10 seconds, then flashes twice every 2 seconds. Brief alarm horn signal: Alarm triggered. Demick

It's normal. The blink rate and # of times have meaning. This is explained in your owners manual.

That's right. You simply don't rotate the tires. This means that you will wear out one pair of tires before the other. It is fairly common for Boxsters to go through 2 sets of rear tires for every 1 set of fronts.

I've found the Bose door speakers to be very good. But remember, they are subwoofers. If you want full range speakers, then there are plenty of very good aftermarket speakers to choose from. If you are OK with the door speakers being subwoofers, then the Bose solution is good. But don't buy the Bose dash speakers - you can do MUCH better with aftermarket speakers for the dash.

My understanding was that no USA cars were delivered from the factory with an aerial. All were dealer added. So the saying goes, the aerial hole was drilled on whichever side of the car the dealer happened to be standing.......

I just made an aluminum bracket that uses the stock bracket mounting locations (2 rear bolts, and a tab at the front). The new amplifier attaches to the new bracket. It is wider than the stock amp (and bracket), but that doesn't really matter unless you have the CD changer that sits to the left of the amplifier

No way they can issue you a speeding ticket for having your spoiler up just because it automatically deploys at 75mph, as there are many other reasons it would be up. The police would have to nab you using any of the usual methods. The spoiler being up is not a valid reason.

It definitely affects aerodynamics even at 75mph. But the question is whether it is helpful, or needed for safety or handling at speeds below 100mph. I would say almost certainly no. I think it's more of a gimic than anything else. But at higher speeds, it may indeed play an important role in keeping the car firmly on the ground.

I used the 'alternative' circuit, rather than the one with dual switches. So about 250 ohms, and about 2K ohms. I don't believe it's important to get to the exact value - just as long as you are in the ballpark.

All of the electronics are still under the seat, same as yours. I just put a couple of resistors on a wiring board like yours, and shrunk wrapped the whole thing (only about 1/2" x 1"). A connector on one end connects to the connector under the seat. A pair of wires runs to the switch in the center console that when depressed, just bypasses one of the resistors under the seat. Attached is a picture of the lock inside of the center console. I made a metal bracket that fastens using the same screw that holds the lock in place. The switch is mounted to that bracket. As the lock is rotated into the locked position (shown), it depresses the switch. Green arrow shows how the lock rotates.

I did basically the same thing on mine. Only I hooked up a switch to the center console compartment lock (had to remove the center console to do this). The lock still works as normal, but also now serves as an airbag disable. Lock the console compartment, and the passenger airbag gets disabled. Now my kids (who are too big for a carseat and too small for an airbag equipped seat) can ride in the Boxster.

Very nice sub install! Do you have any more pictures showing the box, how it was made, secured, etc?

Could be: 1. alignment - if they didn't properly align the car, this could still be the problem. Did they perform a complete 4-wheel alignment? 2. tires - even with a perfect alignment, if the tires are unevenly worn (as you say they are), then the car can still pull to one side 3. suspension or frame damage. Sounds like it is a used car. There can be suspension or frame damage that throws the suspension out-of-wack. Let's hope for #1 or #2.

From what I have gathered, it is possible that the original bose subs are ~2 ohms each, but are wired in parallel (as a single channel), giving ~1 ohm impedance for the pair, which would be too low of impedance for most any aftermarket amplifier. But if this is true, you could simply rewire the subs inside the enclosure from parallel to serial, then giving a total impedance of ~4 ohms. Perfect to be driven by an aftermarket amplifier (mono subwoofer channel), without having to do any speaker rewiring inside the car. If you wanted to rewire the car, then you could run them in stereo, each off of their own channel, at 2 ohms each. However, since I've never had the stock bose rear speakers, I am unable to verify the wiring or impedance of the original speakers. This is just speculation on what I have been able to gather.

If you have a full Bose system, like it sounds like you do, I'm not surprised the "upgrade" sounds bad. The Bose drivers are weird impedance and wired in a weird way that will only sound good when mated with the Bose amp. If you try to drive "regular" speakers with the Bose amp I'm not surprised it does not sound any good, A. That's not quite the situation. And it does not sound bad. It just doesn't have the bass that I would expect. The previous owner of the car paid $2300 or whatever for the full Bose system. Then proceeded to replace most of it with aftermarket components. I assume this is because he decided he wanted Satellite radio, bluetooth, Ipod, USB, etc etc. So the head unit was replaced with a unit that provided all of this. And because of the MOST bus, that means replacing the amplifier as well. The aftermarket amplifier works fine with the Bose dash and door speakers, but not with the rear sub (impedance and wiring reasons as you point out). So the sub drivers inside of the enclosure were replaced as well so that they could be driven properly by the amplifier. This was all done before I purchased the car, so I don't know for sure all of the reasons, nor want to imply that it was all for good reasons. Regardless, after purchasing the car, I again replaced the amplifier with a more compact unit (that fit in the original amp location and did not take up the entire front trunk floor). I also did not like the sound of the Bose dash speakers, so I replaced them with Boston Acoustics separates - this vastly improved the sound. I think the Bose door subwoofers are fantastic, so I left them alone.

I might be wrong but IIRC the 13KS are better suited in sealed enclosures (I guess all of Focal's subs are designed for sealed, not ported, enclosures). It might not be easy to find a 13cm sub that works well in this Bose box. You are probably correct on that one. The box was already retrofitted with those before I bought the car. You are also correct that there probably aren't many options for a sub that would work well in this box.

In my Bose box the subs were replaced by Focal 13KS subs (5"). They look like they were a drop-in replacement. The tweeters are disconnected. Even with that, the bass is not as good as what I get from the Bose door subs. In other words, if I had to pick one or the other, I would keep the door subs over the rear Bose box (despite it having high-end drivers installed).

I believe it has two 5" subwoofers facing downward, and two very small (2" perhaps) cone tweeters facing forward.

Cut off at 63kHz? I'm assuming you mean 63Hz, since 63kHz is outside of human hearing range. 63Hz is very low unless you don't have any other speakers in the car. If you have other, larger speakers that can handle the bass better, then I would raiser the freq cutoff for the dash speakers. I've got my dash speakers high-passed at 250Hz. But I've got door subs which are low-passed at 250Hz, and rear subs low-passed at ~120Hz.

Porsche dealers are very good at this type of conversion. Just bring your car and a check for $50K down to your local Porsche dealer and they'll handle everything. :-)

I leave the top down if I'm just running into the store for 15 or 20 minutes. If I'll be gone for an hour or more, I would probably put it up. My biggest concern with leaving the top down is not theft, but vandalism. It's just too easy for some kids to release the parking brake and give the car a little push.....