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2000 Porsche Boxster - SOLD and GONE! 😥


SiC

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18 minutes ago, Tickman said:

Making good use of the new garage there.

Changing the doors for a big single is going to make a massive amount of difference when you get round to it.

It's very nice being able to down tools in an evening and leaving them where they are, rather than packing up outside. 

The paint on the floor under the rear tyres has already lifted though. :(

Not sure if it's the weight of the rear end, rubber on paint or the car pushing backwards when I jacked the front end up. 

I think I'll just have to accept it'll lift and redo the patches every 6 to 12 months. If I park cars in there long term and not intending to do work, I'll probably get some rubber tiles for it to sit on. 

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Coolant topped up early this evening and then did the bleeding procedure according to the Porsche workshop manual. Basically pull up special bleed valve on the coolant tank. Run engine at idle with cap off and top up when required. Brief revving to circulate coolant. Before it gets to 80c, put the cap back on. Then rev at 2.5k to warm up to 90c. Then at 90c rev at 2.5k for 5 minutes and every 30seconds rev to 5k.

Going really well and had Mrs SiC come out wondering what all the noise was. I asked her to check the coolant level on the tank. Her response?

You know there is steam coming out?

Err what.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6rYZ7eGxWo

Oh fiddle sticks, that will be the coolant tank then.
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I did suspect it was the tank before the radiator and had bought one already. Despite spending £250 on a genuine unit, after I found it was the radiator leaking, I decided not to change it as it's apparently one of the worst and most difficult jobs you can do on the Boxster. I just assumed/hoped it was the radiator.

Full write up tomorrow.

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So I went to burp the cooling system last night. Bit fearful of doing it considering I've heard it's a pain job. Followed the Porsche workshop procedure closely as I could. Ended up topping around 12 litres or so into it.

One oddity I had was the rear hub without a wheel attached was spinning when the car was in neutral. This caused me some confusion as it was the other side of the car and I could see the Speedo on the dash registering a speed. Must be the transmission oil moving around that is effectively working on the gears as a pump. Pulling the handbrake stopped it. Never noticed this before on other cars I've worked on.

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Now as I was heating up the system to bleed it, I had Mrs SiC come out to see what all the engine noise was about. She alerted me to the fact it was boiling itself in the rear.

 

This meant only one thing. Coolant tank leak.

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As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I always suspected it was the tank or the cap. However when the radiators started leaking badly, I hoped it was just that. I'd previously bought the tank before I bought the rads, so I had the part to hand. Except I didn't want to fit it as it's a notorious job to do on the Boxster.

Anyhow this incident meant I had to change it. I did consider possibly I could outsource this job but it's one of those things you just have to get on with. Don't think about what could go wrong, just do it.

The biggest problem with the tank is accessibility of the hose clamps. They're all inside the engine bay and with stuff in the way. The guides online show using an expensive hose clamp tool and going in from underneath. I don't have massive hands but there was absolutely no way I could get in there.

I tried removing the loom bung and going in that way.

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I could see them but still not enough room. Then removed the oil fill pipe to give me more visibility.

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Notice it had a split in it. Possibly what caused my slightly lumpy idle?

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Did a professional* repair and left it to dry.

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Side note, I found this box. Apparently it's a battery backed tracker. Easy to forget that these cars used to be worth quite a lot of money!

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Anyhow one of the problems is despite undoing the bolts to the tank, you can't pull it forward. The pipes are straight with short run on the other side and these go to hard lines. Looking at the hard lines, there was two clamps to the body. The runs were quite short and went to rubber hoses with a fair amount of movement in. So I thought what about undoing these clamps.

 

Turned out it was a master stroke. This allowed me to pull the tank out.

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Enough to get to this clamp by twisting the tank. The only fitting on the actual tank that needed to be removed from the engine bay.

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Surprised no one had thought of this idea before. Maybe I'll find out later when trying to put all the hard pipes back into place.

Undoing that clamp allowed me to remove the tank.

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Left the tank to drain.

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It was clear why and where the tank was leaking.

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New tank went in the same way. Pro tip I found out recently is silicon spray. Applying this on the pipes makes it super easy to then push the pipes in.

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Just waiting for the oil fill pipe repair to dry, then I'll finish it off tonight and refill the system again. However the worst of the job is done now. The rest of the evening was spent replacing the other bank of plugs and coils.

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Yesterday evening I got the tank bolted in. Ended up being more of a palavour than I expected.

Firstly this oil fill pipe (after wrapping in tape) was just refusing to go on. After a lot of oil, it eventually popped on after copious swearing.
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For anyone that has to do this and is reading this, firstly I salute you. Secondly undo this pipe clamp in the wheel arch - top right is the brake pipe ferrel for reference.

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Then undo this clamp - above the tyre in this picture.
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After spilling a my jug with a litre of coolant in, I did a further top up of coolant to fill the tank up. A quick startup confirmed no major leaks.

Next was replacing the fuel filter. On post facelift cars the fuel filter went to in-tank jobs like most modern cars. Pre-facelift there is a canister type. No record of this filter being changed, especially as the Porsche dealer services don't list the part being changed.

It lives up in the middle of the car. Not a huge amount of access to get it out. Wish I jacked the car up more.
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Old filter was date coded 2013, so looks like it has been changed.
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After that, just a warm up using the Porsche recommended procedure. Then wheels on, drop car, top engine access cover back on and carpets back in.
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Job jobbed.

I dread to think what this all would have cost to get done at a specialist, let alone a Porsche dealer. About £800 in parts and probably 6-8 hours labour minimum. Roughly I reckon it's rads 3 hours for pair, water pump 1 hour, tank 3 hours, coolant change+bleed 0.5 hours and plugs+coils another 1 hour. For me double that as I'm slow and working under stands.

Now time to swap cars around, get it back out of the garage and go for a test drive!

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Bonus pictures of inside a late 90s car tracker. This would likely be the older non GSM style systems where the police used an antenna array to track the car. With no way of talking back, I'm not sure how the tracker subscriptions work. Pager network maybe?

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There are 5 wires on this. 2 power, two long wires that likely are antennas and one that went into the fusebox. I think it was the fuel pump relay. Looking at the electronics, it doesn't look like it can drive anything of significance. So I reckon it was simply a sense wire to see if the engine was running.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, SiC said:

Bonus pictures of inside a late 90s car tracker. This would likely be the older non GSM style systems where the police used an antenna array to track the car. With no way of talking back, I'm not sure how the tracker subscriptions work. Pager network maybe?

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There are 5 wires on this. 2 power, two long wires that likely are antennas and one that went into the fusebox. I think it was the fuel pump relay. Looking at the electronics, it doesn't look like it can drive anything of significance. So I reckon it was simply a sense wire to see if the engine was running.

 

 

Googling, it appears MSC70014 is a really old GPS chipset. Pagers ran on 138MHz or 153MHz in the UK. Wavelength of that is 2m or so. The wire antennas are plausible to be for receiving from the pager system. I bet for enabling/disabling subscriptions and possibly kicking it alive in case of theft. 

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Went for a blast early afternoon to give it a test drive and discovered some great rounds around here. Came back home, picked up Mrs SiC and then went shopping while took the back roads with the roof down. First time I've had a proper fun drive since moving thanks to COVID!
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Running great again. Definitely in need of some rear tyres though!

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It's not that clean close up! Got very dusty in the garage and needs a good clean + polish. 

I think it's just getting to the age where these things needed looking at. Almost all mid engine cars have a complicated cooling system. The Boxster is certainly no exception (just look at that cooling system diagram) and they have their weakpoints. Most notably the water pump and that coolant tank are what fail - usually quite suddenly. The date code on the tank is year 2000 - so original to the car. Hence a part that is known to fail on these still managed to last 20 years!

I think what happened is replacing the Cap with a working one set off a chain. I know that the tank and cap are definitely all original and are ones that will certainly fail. Tank as said has a 2000 year date code on and the Cap is revision 0 (now on 4). Cap is what I replaced first as that was leaking for sure (residue around the cap). This then allowed the cooling system to get up fully to pressure. By getting to pressure, the radiators then started to bulge at the bottom leading to them subsequently to fail. Also the coolant tank only leaked when up to pressure. So now the system was up to pressure, those cracks in the tank got worse. 

Why didn't you see it? Well you only did low miles and likely longer runs with little time sat idle. I know from watching the gauge, it sits around 80-85c when up to temperature. It's only when sat stationary or crawling traffic that it starts to get hotter and fully open the stat. At that point the system is getting to full pressure and the old cap started letting pressure out earlier than it should. So when you owned it, the conditions you drove it in, it's unlikely that you would have seen the problem happen. Just a theory why you didn't.

As I was living in Bristol itself, there was a fair amount of time that I was sat at traffic lights and in heavy traffic. This caused the temperature to rise and thus coolant to leak. Remember I said that I only noticed coolant level dropping when it had been sitting idle for a bit, slow traffic or when getting home after a run. So my driving scenario either caused or accelerated the parts to become end of life quicker. 

If I had been driving where I am now, I'd not likely seen any issue for a longer time. Maybe a slight coolant level drop at most. 

Basically, changing that cap with a new one basically hastened the failure of the radiators and tank. Which I thought would happen with the tank, hence why I didn't replace the cap until right before it went into winter storage last year. It had never leaked the way it did in the video above before.

In fact it was only when I'd put it into winter storage did I notice any steam coming out of the tank area. That I thought was because I hadn't screwed the cap on properly. Running it up fully to max temp in the garage to bleed the system was the final straw for that tank. Even then, once it had cooled to ~80C, it stopped leaking out!

Original water pump didn't seem too bad. Very slight grumble on the bearings when compared to the new but only slight. As I had everything else off and another known weak part, it made complete sense to get that sorted with everything else. Pretty sure it is original to the car. Or replaced after it had the light rebuild done at the Porsche dealer to fix the IMS leaking problem it had about 10 years ago.

Essentially though, I'm hoping the cooling system should be future proofed now for another 10 to 15 years at least. 

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I also want to say to anyone reading that in no way do I think Peter sold me a car that he thought was going to have these problems. He was completely honest when I viewed it and allowed me to have a good look over everything before I handed over any money. 

Firstly, I know Bristol is hard on cars. Speed bumps everywhere, awkward 20mph limits, a lot of idling at traffic lights and heavy traffic. E.g. my Grandads old Laguna played up when I'm Bristol and now I'm out it's been trouble free. 

Secondly I detail everything on these threads to give people an idea of the ownership experience of a 20 year old Porsche. Even one that has been thoroughly looked after.

I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when buying this. As I have said quite a few times throughout this thread, my mum owns a 2007 Cayman that she has had from new. Despite being driven lightly and pampered, in 62k miles it has had a lot of money spent on it. Far more than your average family car. Now that's a combination of Porsche dealer prices and also just these cars can be a bit needy. Much like any other premium performance brand - whether Porsche, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Bentley, BMW M3/M5/etc, Audi RS, etc, etc. 

Also spent similar on this getting it sorted again as I have on my MGB. Despite the MGB supposed to be one of the most affordable classics to run out there!

However they're ace things when it's all working well.

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It's still cost a lot less in repairs than depreciation on a brand new, factory fresh MX5 in a year!
Good point. The absolute rock-bottom price of a well maintained Porsche will always be higher than less prestige brands.

Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk

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  • 2 months later...

Thought I'd do an update on this. Haven't done one for a while, not because it's been forgotten - quite the opposite! It really could do with a oil change service as overdue on time. Should be every year or 12k miles. A year would have been last October but with COVID, I've only done about 6k since it had the last service under Peters ownership and so not too stressed. I wanted to get it done at a specialist that my mum uses for hers, but that's down Devon and requires a bit more organisation + timing which is difficult with CV19. To be honest, right now I might just get the proper oil and filter, then let my local garage sort it.

 

Anyhow I got two new black rings fitted on the back. Car is now wearing Michelin Pilot Sport 4 all round. They don't have the special Porsche required N-rated tyres but that doesn't bother me. The idea is that those tyres are tested by the factory and approved by then. Problem is, 1) they're a fair bit more expensive, 2) due to tyres getting bigger, there isn't any modern tyres that are N-rated. So I'd have to get Michelin Pilot Sport 2 (rather than 4) for 30% more

...

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Also got it re-gassed on an ATS offer. The Aircon worked but was very noisy on the compressor and not very effective. I couldn't see any record of it being regassed but given it had a rebuild about 13 years ago, that was probably last time.

 

I didn't trust them to not break the plastic or loose the caps, so I took it off before they got their grubby hands on it.

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In terms of levels, 240g came out and 850g in. So no wonder it was lacking.

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If you've got this far, you've probably realised I don't really have any content and just rambling on about boring shit. We've basically just been mostly been running around on day trips with it and enjoying the weather with the roof off. Essentially being a car. Still needs the top mounts doing but given this year has pretty much been a write-off, I'll get that done at the end of season now.

 

So here is some picturesque images of Wells Cathedral and it's grounds.

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  • 7 months later...

Pulled it out of storage and made a video. Tried a new video editing software, rather than editing directly on my phone. Easier in some ways, but actually less features. Probably try another package when I get around to doing another video of something else.

Edit: Turns out the cover image is broken on previews. I'll fix that another day!

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  • 7 months later...

TL;DR used it over the summer and haven't had any problems.

Bought Bini and put Boxster away. Bini clutch went, so pulled Boxster back out. Opened roof and this happened.
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Fixed with speed tape
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Could get a glass replacement hood for £750 fully fitted ... except the earliest fitting date was April next year. Found a trimmer who would replace the back screen for £222. This has the advantage of keeping the Porsche hood which is in excellent condition still. Glass window is a lot smaller than the plastic windowed version too.

Today got it back. Double sitch line annoys the heck out of me. Super neat job though and water tight.
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Given the choices I think this was the best option.

The trimmer was down in Devon, so gave me a chance to visit Moretonhampstead Motor Museum that I've been wanting to go for a while. Last week it's open this year.

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  • SiC changed the title to 2000 Porsche Boxster - Hood Split and Moretonhampstead Motor Museum Visit

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