geoff

An update: I took the car in to the dealer, spent a few hours with the mechanic trying to track down the problem. The brake light that raises up on the spoiler was a little loose, so he popped it out, added some felt pads, carefully routed the wire harness and pushed it back together. He also cleaned the contacts on the wire harness connector to the raised spoiler and reprogrammed the rear module controller (to fixed spoiler and then back to standard moveable spoiler). According to my wife, the problem now occurs more often than before! Any other suggestions of what to try before spending money replacing parts? All the lights in the brake panel appear to be working just fine

I just went through this a month ago on our '05 997. Two long screws (over 3" long), and my wife drove too long so the tire couldn't be patched. I think there is some spec on how much difference between a new and existing tire on the same axle before you want to think about replacing both. Porsche specs are very conservative, but the tire store said if they are within around 3/8" wear you are OK. I found out the right rear tire gets way more nails than all the others combined. Also, I think the right rear wears faster than the left rear, so you might want to check whether it makes sense to put the replacement tire on the right side

I found out a CTEK 7000 (or the newer 7002) will electrically pop open the trunks even with no battery connected. I tested it out while swapping the original batter for an Optima recently just to see if it would work or not. You will need the cigarette lighter adapter. The 7000 is an upgraded version of what Porsche rebrands as their battery maintainer, and you can pick them up through the Renntech Amazon store. To me, it's an easier alternative than groping around under the car for the hood release and you end up with a very nice battery maintainer when you are done You didn't say where you are located, but if you're near me, I'd be happy to meet up with you and help you out using mine

Thanks--this looks great! Found it here too: LINK Is the diameter of yours 4"? Just need to find an appropriate floor jack (mine has a smaller diameter pad) If you have aerokit sideskirts you won't be able to use that one without damaging them. It is too wide. The guy who makes these sent me a JPEG of the engineering drawing, and it is 4.19" diameter. It fits into the cup of my Harbor Freight floor jack perfectly, and I suspect it will work with many other floor jacks as well. It costs more than a hockey puck, but feels to me like it's more secure when the car is jacked up. If you have sideskirts, listen to Loren

Search eBay for "porsche aluminum floor jack adapter". I bought one of these from seller delubozparts several years ago, and while not inexpensive, are definitely high quality and work very well. The web site for the guy who makes these is http://www.imagineering-web.com/ and his email address to contact him is mark@imagineering-web.com I couldn't find the jack pad on his web site, but it's definitely on eBay. I wrote a review of it a long time ago on RennTech, but can't find where the reviews moved to. I found a picture of the jack pad adapter in one of my old posts

Check out the Bentley Boxster Service Manual from the Renntech Amazon store

I have an '01 Boxster that I bought used in late 2001 for a healthy chunk of change. It now has just over 67K miles and has been a wonderful car. I have no intention of getting rid of it. It runs perfect, but has a few rock chips in front because I drive it. I figure I could probably realistically hope to get about $9 to $13K if I was going to sell it. Molested cars are worth less. From your pictures, it looks like you're looking at several thousand dollars in parts even if you go through Sunset for a great deal and buy some parts used. Front bumper cover, radiator, fender, mounting parts and who knows what else. Porsche parts can be expensive, even at a discount. Even if you restore it perfectly, the engine could crap out at any time depending on how the car was maintained, so definitely get a pre-purchase inspection on the mechanicals before you buy. Unless you're getting the car for next to nothing, you might want to shop around for a better car that doesn't need much work. Heck, if you're getting the car for next to nothing, grab it, part it out to some of the spec Boxster racers, and use the proceeds to buy something in one piece that runs.

There is a service action for '05 Carreras where some of the wiring to the alternator is substandard and needs to be replaced. Takes a few hours at the dealer. My dealer didn't charge me, even after the warranty was over If your car is 5 years old and still has the original battery, you might want to also check the battery. Even though they look like maintenance free batteries, they aren't. Peel off the sticker covering the caps and check how low the water is. Chances are after 5 years your battery is very thirsty!

When one of the OEM shocks on our '05 997 was loose, the suspension shop I talked to said even though Bilstein makes the OEM Porsche shocks, the Bilstein replacements are much better. Not sure what the options are for PASM, but based on what I found out, I would go for Bilstein HD shocks over Porsche branded. The dealer replaced the one shock under warranty, so I didn't have to pick. I think the Bilsteins have a lifetime warranty. I don't think the HDs work with PASM, though

Thanks Loren. We thought it might be a loose connection somewhere, since it was intermittent and the warning came on even though I wasn't pressing on the brakes. The mechanic didn't have any contact cleaner in his cabinet full of spray cans, so I'll bring some with me next week. All the lights in back lit up with the brake pedal pressed - what can go bad on the light panel? No code showed up for PIWIS, even though at one point the red exclamation lit up on the dash - should it have.

For an '05 Carrera tip with 60+K miles: Today driving back from getting my right rear tire patched with multiple 2" screws sticking all the way in to against the wheel, the "Check Raised Brake Light" warning came on intermittently on the dash display. Then it would go out. I wasn't pressing the brake when it happened. Only one did the red exclamation mark appear on the dash display, and when I checked the OBC, the Info option said "Check 3rd Brake Light". I drove to my local dealer, and checked the brake lights with my service advisor - all were good. So I drove back to the head mechanic, who spent about half an hour trying to figure out what was going on, and thought it might be a loose connector. I'm going back next week with some contact cleaner for him to pull things apart. Besides a loose connector, is there anything else we should be looking at? No codes or stored errors showed up in the PIWIS. Everything seems to work fine, but it's always annoying to get warning messages when driving!

http://www.renntech....atch-mechanism/ I think the mechanic just adjusted the little rubber bumper that controls how snug the hood latches. He just loosened a nut, rotated the rubber bumper raising it, and retightened the nut. If you want, I can take a photo and highlight what he adjusted

My front end squeak ended up being the front hood latch adjustment. I originally thought it might be the front lower control arms (after reading too much on various Porsche forums!). Read more here

I found out the Porsche "maintenance-free and sealed" batteries are neither. There is a sticker over the fill caps to "seal" the battery, and since you can't readily see the fill caps, it is maintenance free. Water in the battery still disappears. After 4 years the battery in my Carrera took a lot of water to get back to the proper level. I'm sure with the placement of the Cayenne battery under the seat nobody has ever checked the fluid level

Something I forgot to include in my original post: The original Porsche Moll battery weight 47.2 lbs when I measured it (not sure how much water evaporated from the cells), and the new Optima weighed 40.6 lbs. The mounting plate I made and fasteners weighed much less than a pound

The TSB fix is for the piece above the windshield that the convertible top goes in to. If you don't get the noise with the top down, only with the top up, it's definitely related to the convertible top The problem with squeaks is their exact location is sometimes really hard to track down. After multiple trips to the dealer to fix a squeak that was driving me crazy, the head mechanic and I went out for a joy ride through the canyons until we found a corner where we could reliably recreate the problem. He got out of the car and I slowly drove forward and coasted back for over half an hour until he was able to pinpoint the source of the noise. The fix was easy then. It just took a long time to diagnose the problem. If you can find someplace where you can consistently get the car to make the noise and you have a assistant who can stand outside the car in various locations until you can pinpoint approximately where the noise is coming from, it will be a lot easier to identify where to start checking

My original Moll battery weighed 47.2 lbs, my new Optima 34R weighed 40.6 lbs (sorry about not weighing in KG) Optima red top battery specs are at http://www.optimabat...edtop/specs.php Lots of web sites with battery sizes, such as http://www.rtpnet.or...a/bcigroup.html

There's an old TSB (6110: Rattling Noises From The Cabriolet Top) for a new/improved set of convertible top roof pins that eliminate a lot of squeaking and groaning. Not very expensive. I helped a friend put them in in his '99 cab and he said his top was a lot quieter; very easy to do yourself. Part numbers from the TSB are as follows: 996 561 605 02 A09 New/centering peg, incl. cap, left 996 561 606 02 A09 New/centering peg, incl. cap, right On my Boxster, I also had intermittent squeaking over bumps and it turned out to be the front hood latch adjustment. The Boxster and Carrera front hoods and latching mechanisms are the same

I'm not sure about the Phillipines, but any Interstate distributor in the US can get you an Optima. I've seen them on Amazon as well (buy through renntech Amazon store)

I just replaced my original Porsche battery with an Optima 34R red top and saved around 7 pounds (I'm not home, but did weigh both and will report back on the weight difference). The Optima is a bit smaller than the OEM. As long as you have enough power to regularly start your car, you don't need a battery so big it will continuously crank the starter in sub-zero conditions (which doesn't look like a problem for your location) Depending on how much smaller you go with a replacement battery, you may need some kind of mounting adapter and/or a longer negative cable. See this topic for pictures of my install. And yes, a battery maintainer is a good idea if you have a smaller battery as the cars do use battery power when just sitting parked

I've got an '01 Boxster, have driven lots of newer Boxsters, and my wife drives an '05 Carrera (which has a similar interior to the '05 and newer Boxsters). The newer cars have a more refined interior, although personally I'm happy with the older ones. Interior material quality is much better on the '05 and later models, but the older three spoke steering wheels feel and look better. The newer cars have a bit more power, and up until the 2000 model year, the Boxsters only had a 2.5 liter engine (newer ones are 2.7 liter). As already mentioned, the rear window was plastic up until the end of the 2002 model year, so that limits your ability to put the top down in cold temperatures without cracking the window. Boxsters through 2002 had a different roof design than later, I think one more roof rib was added for 2003 and later, which changes the roof profile - if looks are important to you, see which you prefer. The "fried egg" headlights came on Boxsters until 2005, but personally I like they way they look, it reminds me of the GT1, others hate the look. Side intake and exhaust vents changed in 2005 as well and became more noticeable. I love my 2001 Boxster. Even though the new ones are better, they aren't so much better I have to spend the $ to get a newer one. I figure my engine will have a catastrophic failure one of these days, so I drive it as much and as hard as I can and enjoy it until the day of reckoning comes See Mike Focke's most excellent pages on buying a used Boxster and changes from year to year 2 miles of driving isn't enough to get the oil warmed up, which is supposedly bad for these engines, especially if you believe those who say Mobil 1 0w40 comes directly from Satan and is designed specifically to kill Porsche engines $267 is a lot for an oil change, even at the dealer. My local dealer usually charges just under $200 and does the full inspection along with the oil change.

I've got the CTEK 7000, but there's a slight update called the 7002. On CTEK's web site at http://www.ctek.com/EN-US/consumer/mus-7002.aspx they say "Thanks to its SUPPLY mode the battery charger provides power even without a battery. The SUPPLY mode is indispensable when changing the battery as you avoid losing complicated program settings." Based on their design with this functionality, I used it to keep from losing settings. The 7000 is a higher end version of their 3300 model, which is what Porsche rebrands and sells.

Great writeup! Did you also look at the option in http://www.renntech....ge__pid__186215 ??

10-24 x 1 1/4" stainless steel flat head phillips head machine screws (quantity 4) from the bottom of the HDPE plate. The screws aligned with the holes on the Optima battery, then a washer and #10 stainless lock nut. I countersunk the screw holes so the heads were flush with the bottom of the plastic. Very simple, but easy to just unscrew the 4 screws in the future, replace the Optima with a new one, and then screw it back together. I made the mounting plate the same size as the old battery so I could just use the existing Porsche mounting clamp. It was about 12 1/4" x 6 7/8", same as I did for my 986 in this topic I'm out of town all this week, but can post pictures when I get back of the mounting plate I made if anyone is interested

The other weekend I finally got around to installing an Optima battery to replace the original 5 1/2 year old Porsche battery in our '05 997. I made a simple mounting base for the Optima 34R from 3/8" thick HDPE sheet. I plugged my CTEK 7000 battery maintainer in to the cigarette lighter socket hoping to maintain radio and other settings while I disconnected the battery. After removing the battery, I was amazed the trunk light stayed on, so just for grins I pulled the lever for the rear deck lid, and was amazed it actually popped open - without a battery. Then I pulled the lever for the front trunk and heard the click noise, even though the trunk was open. The bottom line is you can open the front trunk with a dead battery using one of these chargers, which has a built-in supply mode! The Optima 34R fits in the 997 just as easily as in my 986. It's easier to remove the left and right plastic covers as well, and these come off easier than on a 9x8. The trick I remembered was to take off the ground cable, install the battery, then reinstall the ground cable and orient it so it's long enough. I tied off the vent tube out of the way in case I ever put in a conventional flooded battery. Otherwise it's just like installing any other battery. I've got some of the 3/8" HDPE sheet left over, so if any RennTech contributing members near me want one, let me know and a piece is yours for as long as I have any material left. Here are the pictures of the completed install