r/986Boxster

Looking to sell my hardtop since I rarely use it, any recommendations on best place for finding a new owner? PNW, arena red. Appreciate any advice!

I got a ‘98 986 in arctic silver for 10.5€ in Austria with 92k km about a month and a half ago! This is my first manual, first sportscar (still dailying a golf mk6).

The bumper was cracked on the passenger side (bad enough to make a repair more expensive than a replacement), which certainly helped me get the price I did!

I thankfully found a replacement bumper (1997, arctic silver) for just 200€, which i immediately drove about 3 hours each way to get (fun Saturday lol).

Here it is on the car! I took the opportunity to clean the radiators, “fabricate” and install a leaf guard (home depot special).

The color doesn’t match perfectly, but it’s very close and it’s my first time doing any kind of work on a car (besides changing air filters and fitting a new radio to my golf).
Cursed a fair bit (especially when removing the upside down screws by the blinkers and the plastic clips in the wheelwell) but I got tools, wd40 and it worked out great!

Have any of you guys mounted leafguards? Any other advice on 986 ownership?

I bought this 2000 986s a couple months ago and the day after I bought it it started making a terrible rod knock sounding noise, I then drained the oil and found glitter everywhere.

I am currently tearing the engine down and just took the heads off today and found what looks like the start of bore scoring. I also found thickened oil sludge in some of the oil passages near the cylinders. The worst cylinder is cylinder 1 on the front of the engine passenger side. Cylinder 4 is the second worst on the front of the engine driver side. I can feel very very slight ridges on the lines with my fingertip, but nothing on the walls catches my fingernail.

Need to choose whether to continue the rebuild with these cylinders, buy used cylinders, or spend like 15k and send the block off to get bored out to a 3.8.

I'm also thinking about buying a wrecked car from copart and swapping the engine from it into my car, but if I can I would prefer to rebuild an engine so I know I have a fresh one that will last a long time.

Any thoughts are appreciated

I bought this Boxster 987.1 with the 3.4L M97.21 engine a few weeks ago. I'm concerned it might have a bore scoring issue. An endoscopy is scheduled for next week, which will give me more clarity, but is there anything you can tell from the engine sound that might indicate whether it's affected, so I can have some peace of mind in the meantime?

I kind of like the look of the seat covers you can find on Amazon and eBay but I’ve heard they are really hard to install correctly. Also in the end they’re still just seat covers.

Another issue is this color. The color code of the interior is B4 which according to ChatGPT is Cocoa… however Cocoa in 2004 was different than 987 cocoa which is a MUCH darker brown. 2004 cocoa is more like Savanah Beige. So ya finding a color match is proving to not be easy.

So ya has anyone tried seat covers and how do you like them? How hard were they to install? Anyone have a good pointers for finding the right paint/dye for 2004 B4?

Worst case there’s an excellent leather shop here in the PNW and I should really get a quote but I’m the kind of person that like to do it myself at least once and after watching tons of videos online I feel like I can.

Thanks.

I’m looking at this 2003 986 Boxter, what should I look for and ask when I go the check it out?

997 throttle body with Bens Auto Design Carbon Fiber Plenum

I've tried thr 996 Plenum and its and extremely tight fit, leaving me to either cut or notch the body or engine cover where the 90° bends into the throttle body.

Car is a 550 50th SE so it already has the 987 intake box, ive added 3.5" intake tube from the MAF tube to the throttle body.

More induction noise and butt dyno tells me its a little more power, may have lost a little power in the lower RPM but in the higher RPM it Def screams.

was told 12 hp gain at 5k rpm and 5 hp up top on a stock 2003 986 S

When my 1997 Boxster 2.5 sits for maybe an hour or longer (coldstart) i have a rattle until oil pressure is on operating level. The rattle is about 1 sek long. The rattle is a bit louder on video than live. The Car has 250000km. What would you do? Does your car the same?

2004 base with a manual and 90k miles. Only issue right now is the fuel system burp when filling the tank combined with a slow fuel system air leak that occasionally throws the check engine light. Im guessing they’re related and have thrown a few parts at it but haven’t gotten it to go away.

I don’t have a lift or even a garage but I do have a private driveway and a fair number of tools so as long as it can be done with jack stands in a weekend it’s in the realm of something I can do.

Already done:
- IMS bearing was already done according to imscheck.com.
- Basic fluid flushes have been done with the exception of the clutch which I will do next time I do the oil and have it on jackstands.
- Motor mount replaced but the vibration came back after a month or two so I want to check it again… when I’m back under it.

Anything can do with the top? Can I grease the gears to keep them from breaking or is that just a time thing? I basically live with the top down as long as it isn’t raining.

Suspension? I’ve actually never done anything with suspension on any of my cars.

Spark plugs? I have no indications they need to be done but I have no idea when they were last done if ever.

Other? The car doesn’t leak anywhere (something the PPI called out when I bought it as being in excellent mechanical health) so I hesitate to crack any seals if I don’t need to.

I bought the car just for fun. Something to drive around while I’m in town as I travel a lot. That said I’ve fallen in love with it more than I expected… and now I really want to keep it in top condition.