KevinC

I tend to swap between stock and Pagid Orange pads. I just pop the sensors out of the sockets on the struts and leave them in the stock pads. I made a set of "stubs" from an old set of sensors which I plug in to replace the real sensors. I find this easier than removing the sensors from the stock pads and tying them up. Hers's what the stubs look like:

Yes, the rear spoiler must be removed to take off the rear bumper cover. Here's a link to some instructions which helped me with my Porsche Sport Exhaust install: Exhaust R&R Instructions from PPBB archives It's not really necessary to remove the rear bumper, but doing so does give you slightly better access to the plumbing which attaches the exhaust to the cats. The install should be pretty straightforward. The only tricky part is getting at the nuts which attach the hanger bolts to the top of the transmission. You just need to reach up past the muffler and find the nuts by feel.

When I twist and hold the key in my '00 S, both doors lock and the windows go up. Does this not work the same on your car? Perhaps you just have a broken locking mechanism on the passenger door.

Hi Steve. I believe that adding the 996 brakes in front, while leaving the standard brakes in the rear, will *not* disturb the brake balance, whereas moving the front brakes to the rear probably will change the biasing significantly. I know for a fact that the sizes of the caliper pistons in the standard Boxster brakes are the same as those in the 996/S brakes. It is the size of the pistons which determines how much braking force is applied. (The amount of clamping force on the pads is equal to the pressure of the brake fluid times the area of the pistons.) The 996 brakes have larger rotors and larger pads. However, the same amount of clamping force is applied - it is just spread over a larger pad area. The larger pads, and (especially) the larger rotors keep the temperatures lower, but since the pistons are the same size, the total amount of braking force is approximately equal. The pistons in the rear calipers are considerably smaller than those in the front calipers. (About half the area!) Therefore, when you move the front brakes to the rear, you will be providing more clamping force on the rear brakes than you had before, shifting the brake bias to the rear. One can argue about just how bad this is. While you wouldn't want the rear brakes to lock up before the fronts, some additional rear bias will take some load off the front brakes and keep them a bit cooler. It is *possible* that the factory was overly conservative in setting the brake bias in the first place. Also, keep in mind that ABS should keep things from getting too far out of hand by stopping any wheel from fully locking up. Bottom line - there is no *need* to mess with the rear brakes when upgrading the front ones to the 996/S setup. The rear brakes are still going to be much cooler than the fronts and the bias won't be affected. Oh, and one more thing, while I am rambling - the rear rotors are 4mm thinner than the front rotors, so moving the front brakes to the rear will cause the pistons to extend further. This is probably OK, since I found that even when I accidentally extended the front pistons all the way to the rotors (no pads in place!) they still didn't go past the seals. However, I would be especially careful not to repeat this bonehead maneuver with the front calipers mounted on the rear rotors.

Yuk! I would never get my car aligned based on these factory specs. These are much sloppier than anything my alignment shop would ever do. These specs are better than the factory Boxster specs I have seen posted, but they still allow 1/3 degree difference in camber on each axle, and allow positive camber on the front axle. Not good.

Brake pads and rotors each have their own break in requirements. It is recommended that new rotors be burnished with old pads and new pads bedded in to old rotors, but this is not a requirement. When pads are bedded in two things are accomplished: 1) the binding resins are burned out of the outer region of the pad, reducing further "outgassing"; 2) a uniform layer of brake pad material is deposited on the rotors. When new rotors are burnished you also want to put a uniform layer of pad material on the new rotor, as well as heating the rotors up to operating temperature and letting them cool back down. In both cases, the procedure is to do a series of progressively harder stops. The following article explains it all in more detail: http://www.stoptech.com/whitepapers/warped_rotors_myth.htm