pokey

I have a 2000 Box S with 54K miles. About 10k miles ago I was told that the rotors were getting close to the limit (0.5 mm from the min) and to begin thinking of replacement. I decided to hold off until the brake wear warning light came on because my normal street driving is pretty easy on the brakes. I recently had the brake warning light come on for a day, then go off again. Rumor has it that this intermittent light is a pre-cursor to the light staying on for good (sounds odd, but . . .). Even once it comes on I understand there is no rush to replace (although I'd like to find out how much pad is remaining at that point). Keep in mind that the brake warning is based on pad wear, not rotor thinkness. Anyway I'm starting to plan for a brake replacement (rotors and pads) - I guess that'll be my Christmas present. Parts for all 4 wheels run about $900. This is a fairly easy DIY. Here are good instructions: http://www.bombaydigital.com/boxster/projects/brakes/

Here's the solution guys - take really nice care of your care and in about 30 years it'll start going up in value. Then you may have a conversation with a teenager that goes like this: Teen: Whoa! Is that a Porsche? You: Yea, an old Boxster 2000 S. T: No way! Does it still run? Y: Sure does. Really sweet and fast. (Except for the dang check engine lights, you mutter to yourself) T: Where do you get gas for this? Y: I had it coverted to methanol. Gas is too expensive and hard to find. And it's pretty lousy nowdays anyway. T: Can I get a ride? Y: Wish I could, but I ran out of carbon credits this month :drive:

The cause of the RMS problem has been subject to some speculation, but unless we can get a Porsche engineer to crack and fess up we'll never know for sure. It is clearly the result of some poor engineering rather than anything that the owners do to their cars. Over the years Porsche has issued a few revised seals and a tool for checking shaft alignment and possibly they've solved it or reduced the frequency of occurance. There is a school of thought that the way the trans is secured in the mid-engine cars is a contributing issue. When going in to replace the RMS seal it is common to replace the intermediate shaft seal at the same time.

I have a family member who's a Porsche Service Manager and he tells me he hasnt been seeing many RMS failures these days. He speculates that the engineered part that was installed for repairs may have finally resolved it. (I think there were several iterations of engineering on the part). My car (2000S) had a few RMS repairs during the first 4 years (prior owner), but has been good for about 4 years now. I had to replace the RMS within about 6 months of buying the car and the local dealer quoted about 12 hours labor. My relative said his best tech could do it in 4 hours or so and was stunned at the 12 hour quote. He told one of his techs and they had a hardy laugh. (You may be wondering why I didn't take the car to his shop . . . unfortunately he's half way across the country from me). In the end I got the work covered under warranty since it had been done by another dealership less than a year before, but I had to escalate the issue to the regional guy. I think the local dealer loves RMS jobs because they their effective billing rate is 2 to 3 times their $110 per hour once they inflate the labor hours. Anyway I found a local independent that works only on P cars. They don't have leather chairs, plasma TVs, and perky advisors, but they're honest and reliable.

Looks a lot like the exhaust sold by Maxspeed Motorsports. I'm leery of most aftermarket exhausts due to resonance at cruising speeds.

Dougman, As a Trombone player who reread a Scientific American article on the Horn Function several times in the 80s, I choose to disagree with your theory on harmonic resonance. Your basic thought is good but it seems to ignore two issues: 1) the air filter placed in the middle of the relevant airstream totally mucks up the harmonics, 2) the open cup at the end of the tube (in the ah position of the wa-wa sound of a hat mute) radically disrupts the Bernoulli effect of the flared end of the tube. After the air filter, there is 'an effective length to the intake track' that could favor certain RPM ranges. De-snorking doesn't affect this length. PS. I have no direct knowledge as I have never de-snorked. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hmmm, interesting. There may be something to this discussion. I have no answers, but rather can share an experience. Long ago I had a motorcycle. I was looking at the air box and noticed that the intake was teeny-tiny. So I removed the top of the air box. Surely, this engine would now breathe so freely that my arms would pop out of their sockets when I hit the gas. I started the bike, pulled away slowly then gave the throttle a good twist -- nada -- the power was gone. It was so stunningly dramatically devoid of power that I aborted the test. To this day I have no idea what physics lesson I was learning, but I've learned that modifying things put in by clever engineers means I've turned my precious vehicle into an experiment. I wish we had a Porsche engineer to enlighten us on the purpose of the snorkle

I have a warranty thru GE Financial. I got the warranty at a little over cost for $1590. Read the fine print because a warranty can exclude many items. My warranty is the GE 4 star with the addon options for electronics (instruments, elec ignition, etc.) and power tech (power windows, top, seats, mirors, cruise, etc.). So far the only thing it did not cover was the oil separator. So far it has worked well except for one thing beyonds GE's control - the dealer . . . My local dealer boosts their effective billing rate by increasing the number of labor hours for a job, and GE has a pre-established number of hours for each repair. My dealer bills me for the diff. Example: my dealer charges 12 hours for a rear main seal (RMS) replacement while GE reimburses for only 6 hours. Based on my inside knowledge, I understand that 6 hours is very feasible for a tech to do an RMS repair. In other words my dealer is effectively billing at over $200/hr! (yea, I no longer use that dealer)