986Jim

Acetone works great to remove paint. If you wipe quickly without using too much product on a rag it will not damage the plastic. It will melt the plastic if left on there or large amounts of it are put on but if your wiping quickly and wipe with a dry cloth afterwards it will be fine and take the paint off with no problems. You can buy it at any Auto parts store (Pep boys kinda thing) in a small can. It's the god send of removing anything like that... paint, glue, tar etc etc..

20+" wheels looks pretty cool on a larger vehicle. Hell the new Bentleys come with 20+" chrome wheels on them. If done tastefully they can really class up a vehicle. I'm not big on the spinners tho they do look cool on an Escelade or Yukon. With all that weight they totally hurt the performance and gas mileage of whatever your putting them on. These wheels should never be used on a sports car as your basically ruining the delecate balance of handeling and power that a Boxster comes with. So in the right place they are just fine.

This is the answer to this question, for those wondering. The boxster has hydraulic lifters (presurized by oil) and when the cars sits for a long time (few days) the oil pressure from the lifters bleeds away. When you start the car the cams momentarily "slap" the lifters creating the noise your hearing. Once they are pumped up the noise goes away. The oil pump is mechanical so there is no way to create oil pressure without starting up the car, hense the temporary noise until the system is fully pressurized. You do not need to wait for the count down, thats bologna, it's only to check the oil level. You can get in and start it right up just like any other car. You will hear this noise on any car with hydraulic lifters (VW and Audi etc.) typically Japanese cars don't use hydraulic lifters so you never hear this noise which is why some are not used to it. I build the engine in my talon myself and it has hydraulic lifters. I compeltly disassembled my head and ported it. All the oil was completly removed from the lifters (completly) so when the car was first started it took a good 8-10 minutes for the lifter slap to dissappear. The Miata 1.6L and 1.8L motors are the same. If you ever pull the head for a head gasket you get this crazy noise on first start up for quite a while. Sounds like the motor spun a bearing, but it goes quiet all the sudden once they are fully pumped up. After that it's all good.

In my experience problems like this are generally related to the shifter cables being totally out. 1st and 2nd are on the same selector in the trans so if your having problems with both, theres a possibility that it's the cable. My Talon is cable and when I swapped out the motor/trans for a new fully built motor and shep tranny my cables just didn't seem to be the same. I had to mess with the alignment at the shifter a few times. It would pop out and give me all kinds of problems. After I got the alignment of the cables on it was ok. Not sure if this is also applicable to the boxster but it's cable and must have some adjustment somewhere. Either way sounds like your under warranty so shouldn't be too much of a concern.

umm... yes they do. They eventually fail just like any other bulb tho they have about a 2000hr life span. Generally you know they are bad as they look dim and a different color. Buy a replacement bulb and it will fix the problem. The ballast/ignitor can also go bad, but it's much more common for the bulb to fail than the ballast.

So you were able to pop out the plastic air duct thingies that you put the mesh screen on without takeing off the bumper? I bought new ones because mine were going grey and I didnt really wanna pull off the bumper if I didn't have to. How hard was getting the bumper off anyway? Can you post the link that you use so I can look at it?

The first O2 sensor is used during part throttle driving only and adjusts the air fuel ratio slightly depending on what is seen in the exhaust. It's totally ignored by the computer at WOT during Closed Loop. The second O2 sensor is only to measure the efficency of the catalyst. If your cat converter breaks up or is no longer working both O2 sensors get the same reading and it sets off the CE light. Normally when the cat is fine the second O2 sensor would read way more oxygen in the exhaust as all the excess fuel is burnt in the cat. These CE lights may put the car in "drive home safe mode" but shouldn't cause a mis-fire situation. Screwed up plugs or coils will be the culprit for that.

Poping from the exhaust means your ignition timing is seriously retarded, if your maf is toast thats why it's doing that and not when your stepping on it as timing will dip then advance normally as you approach redline at WOT. Your car ignores most of the ECU signals and runs closed loop at WOT and the MAF is reading mass volumes of air. Generally a maf never fails reading at wot it's part throttle where they always have trouble.

They definately look good. I don't think I would run BSA wheels on my car however, they are low pressure cast wheels made in Malaysia and quite weak which makes the suseptable to bends and other carnage. Good luck with them, hope they hold up ok.

On my Talon, if I fill the car with the keys on even in the play stereo position it takes say 10 mins to reach the full mark. The fuel sending unit does not change quickly on purpose so that the needle will not flop around when your breaking and accelerating. If you were to pull the speed sensor from the trans while driving (which I have done before on my GTI) the needle will flop around. When I break the low fuel light would come on and acccelerate the fuel would go right to full, it was almost like an acceleration meter the harder I accelerated the higher my gas would go hahah. When the car senses speed it dulls the movements of the fuel sending unit so that it doesn't move the needle around like that. I find that when I fill up and the keys are in the ignition and the stereo is on, so the ecu is powered it takes forever for the needle to go all the way up. When filling the car it's stationary and the ecu knows to let the fuel gauge move rapidly to show the new fuel that has been added but once you move, it's again slowed down so the needle doesn't move. If your pulling the keys and it still doing it, then there could be another problem. It doesn't matter that it's slow going up, you physically KNOW there is gas in the car, so who cares. As for the acceleration, you have to remember your car is drive by wire, so the throttle is probablly turned down during warm up. So even if you go 100% throttle it may only open the throttle body 60% or something until the car is warm. I don't acctually know if Porsche does this or not, but it does on my Jetta because they won't allow you to floor the car when it's cold to hurt the motor.

when i mouse over the picture it pops up in firefox :) Just when he thought he was sneeky, you're sneekier!!! Long live firefox.

Also, from my experience with clutches, most of them come with a release bearing (throw out bearing) and generally the bearing that comes with the clutch is a POS. Make sure whatever your using is OEM from Porsche because aftermarket bearings never seem to last. I do about 3 clutches a year on my talon and the release bearing lasts about 1 year with me going through 3 clutches, but twice I used the aftermarket bearings that came with my clutches (ACT and Competition Clutch) and both times they failed fairly early. They don't lock up or anything but make noise all the time, and when you push the clutch the noise goes away which is the sign of a smoked release bearing. Anyway not sure how it works on a BOX but make sure you're using OEM part for that, don't wanna go back in to change it because a cheap bearing that came with the clutch failed. If your buying a Saches clutch, don't just assume the release bearing it comes with is OEM, it might not be.

Well the tire wear also depends a lot on the tires. Normal tires the the PS2's have a treadwear rating of 320 which is pretty low, so you might see those miles. Look at the side of the tire wall and you will see three ratings. Traction (Prob AA) Temperature (prob A) and Tire Wear 320 or somewhere around there. The Bridgestone Poleposition S-03 on my talon have a tread wear rating of 180 which is even lower. I got around 6600miles on them and they were toast. It's AWD so the wear is like a FWD car, but no tire spin. They handle great and really hold all the power on the street, but **** they wear fast. My Box has Bridgestone RE730's which stick ok, but are noisy. The blocks on the inside are worn pretty well now even though there is tread left. They are ridged from the neg camber (hi - low, hi - low) so they are gonna need to go shortly. I won't get them again, they are crap. S-03's fpr the Box next I think...

And your car is designed that way, It's for better handling and turn in going around corners.

I would love to see a pic of the lights off your garage doors or something. I have retro-fitted hid's into 4 different cars now. Two of them were almost OEM looking with literally no glare, the other two were horible and glared like crazy. I'm interested to know how the stock headlamp assembly works with HID's in them. I have seen a few people retro fit and they all say its fine, but I have yet to see the results on a wall to see if there is a lot of glaring. My GTI VR6 was great, my talon glared like crazy as did my Jetta VR6, so I put projectors in the jetta and they are really good now. btw for good HIDs check out www.cqlight.ca I bought the 5000k setup its really a beautiful sparkling blue white light, not blue blue like fake looking bulbs.

I also notice on the left side of the tire on the second set of block in, you can see where the top part is grey from the floor and the lower part is dark. My tires are doing this as well and I'm not sure of the cause. Its like the front part is wearing more than the rear part of the tire tread. Is this from it being old or the camber or what is the cause? I have notice that there is a bit of shake from the wheel at ceritan speeds. I adjusted the pressure to what it says in the manual (29psi and 36psi rear if I remember correctly) but it didn't really help.

Is it the suspension control arm or an arm off the steering column? Your post talks about the ignition key so I'm confused. If your talking about control arm of the suspension here is some basic info... The reason you need to change your control arm is that is houses a ball joint that is gone. To replace that ball joint you must replace the whole control arm as it's all one piece. The control arm is the lower part in blue attaches to the hub which is also in blue. This is not boxster specific but will give you an idea of what it is. It's basically the lower piece of the suspension that holds it all together and moves with the car. The ball joints are the moving parts that allows the suspension system to move but not fall appart. If the ball joints break out of the control arms you wheels are free from the suspension. On the front of the car this can cause a wheel to turn on it's own while the other is not turned like the picture below. On the rear it will wobble like a *****. Do yourself a favour and get it fixed before that ball joint breaks. Cause usually it smokes the fender when the suspension drops on the wheel and the wheel turns taking out the fender as well as the bumper hitting the ground etc... Not sure exactly what would happen on the rear of a boxster but it still wouldn't be pretty. This is a talon: On this particular car it was on the front (it's AWD) and it pulled the drive shaft outta the tranny tearing the boot and allowing it to flop around like a fish outta water. You can see the round end on the control arm that's got nothing attached to it and the brakes hanging way out there.. That's a problem.

The easy way to know if you have drive by wire is how the gas pedal reacts when you put the cruise on. On cars without E-Gas or drive by wire the car will hold the gas pedal down when you turn on the cruise control then when you cancel curise the pedal will pop back in the normal position. With EGas or drive by wire, when you turn on the cruise the pedal will come back off the floor as if you have backed off the throttle but the car will remain in cruise mode. This is because the computer is keeping the throttle plate open for you and it's not directly linked to the gas pedal. So put on your cruise and see if the pedal holds down off your foot or just comes back into the fully out position then you will know what you have.

I have the CDR-220 and factory alarm. When I shut off the car, the a/c controls go off but the LED display for speed and trip/mileage stays on for a while. The radio stays on for about 10 seconds then shuts its self off after that. When I arm the alarm the LED dash speedo etc shuts off. When I disarm the car the radio does not come on until I start the car. I can turn the radio on manually with the ON button and off again with that when the car is sitting and the alarm is not armed. The radio does not stay off after the ignition is off and does not come on after the alarm is disabled. I woudl assume this is normal operation as it seems reasonable. The radio stays on after shutting off the ignition for only for say 10 seconds then fades away.

It can't be that close to the wall that you cant get to it seriously. Get a blanket and lay it on your trunk, then lay on the trunk/fender of your car and reach upto the door. It's a pretty small car if you can't get to it then there is something wrong. Borrow your neighbours 5 year old and put him on the car and hold him by the feet so he can unlock it. Honestly, you should be able to reach it no matter what. Just stretch over get get it done.

Not that it's relevant now, but whenever working on the elctrical system disconnect the battery. Sometimes you can't tell if a fuse is broken or not, even if it looks good. Try replaceing one you know should be working like dash lights and see if putting a brand new fuse in it will fix the problem. If not you have done other damage and may be going to the dealer.

These are Porsche Tequipment and are like $595 canadian from the dealer 30.25" Long and roughly 3" wide.