Porsche Boxster 986 - engine swap project

[Escy]

Thank you everyone for the generous donations. The ball is rolling again. I won an auction for a ropey looking A6 that's got the all important 2.7t engine. Only has 125k which is pretty low for one of these. Not sure what the plan will be yet, either use bits from this to build mine back up or just use this one. I'll make that decision when I start stripping my crispy one down. I'll break it for parts so it should hopefully make a few quid back for the kitty to put towards a Boxster.

Edited by Escy on Wednesday 16th August 18:17

[Escy]

J4CKO said:

Awesome, should imagine now you have done it once it should come together a bit easier, hope you can save some of the specific parts to re-use.

Did you get to the bottom of what caused the fire ?

I've don't think i'll be able to work out the cause with any degree of certainty.

The majority of the conversion parts are fine but I might need to do it differently this time as i'm not sure i'll have the money to replace all the damaged parts. I'm considering another approach, keep it bi-turbo and cut the shell to give the clearance needed. I'm not sure yet.

prof said:

great to see you back at it, which gearbox does that one have? just wondering if it's one of the new gen with the driveshafts near the flywheel?

It's an automatic.

[Escy]

Thank you guys, I really appreciate it. I made a modest profit on the original A6 I bought at the start of the project and I didn't strip much off it. I will be more thorough with this car.

Since i'll have the A6 I'm considering cleaning up my fire damaged engine, swapping all the bits over from the new engine, buying any replacement seals I need and sticking it in the A6 to check it'll all ok. Does anyone have any experience with re-commissioning fire damaged engines?

[Escy]

Thank you for the donations guys, the fact people care enough to chip in is heart warming.

The Boxster got taken away for scrap today. It was depressing seeing how it ended up but i'm glad to get it out of the way, it stinks so I bet the neighbours weren't happy with it being there.





The A6 is the one I recently picked up that i'll be breaking. To be fair it was a lovely drive and it pulls nicely. It's very blue inside, I actually quite like it but not sure every surface of the interior needed to be the same colour. Probably pretty rare i'd guess. When I lifted the boot carpet i'm convinced I saw a white tail disappear, I removed the spare wheel and noticed some evidence of a mouse. Not sure where it would have gone but I couldn't find it. The last A6 I bought also came with a free mouse (in the V of the engine), lucky me.





I took the cam covers off the old engine, not a pretty sight, the plastic cam chain guides have melted.

[Escy]

Thank you for the donation, really appreciate it.

My ECU ended up pretty crispy in the fire. I was gutted once I opened up the case. One of the guys on the Audi SRS forum had the same ECU which he sold to me for a great price.


The CANbus and DriveByWire modules fared better in the fire. They were mounted next to the ECU but in the fire the sticky pads I used to hold them to the body came off so they fell down and weren't exposed to as much heat as the ECU. I'm hoping they are still serviceable with some wiring repairs, they did get blasted by the hose so were wet inside. I've sent them off the RRR Engineering for testing. Fingers crossed.

[Escy]

It's not a great picture, there are loads of resistors and capacitors that have fallen off, it's definitely ruined. I've got all the maps saved on my laptop which I did rescue from the fire so if I can afford to rebuild it how it was before I'll be able to get it back to the point it was at before.

[Escy]

It's probably not the measurement you're after but the only thing I can remember was it was 83mm internal diameter.

[Escy]

I want to resurrect this build if possible. I nearly bought a non running Boxster S for £2000 this weekend but the guy selling stitched me up. I contacted him on Thursday and said I could come that evening, Friday evening or any time on the weekend. He told me Saturday midday and then sold it on Friday.

I've taken the engine out of the A6. I forgot just how much crap there is on them.


I was looking at the standard turbo's and wondering if I should retain them. Before I ditched the Porsche shell I realised that if I was going to re-build it I might not be able to do it like it was previously, going by memory of where the standard turbos fouled the chassis when I offered up the original engine I took an angle grinder to that spot to see what's behind. It wouldn't be a big deal to cut and weld it up for clearance. I also thought about a hack job intercooler install so cut the boot lid up (very badly!) to give me some sort of idea.




I recently watched the video of the 1200bhp Mclaren with 3 turbos and it got me thinking I could make use of the standard turbos and I could rig up the exhaust to run to my rear mounted turbo and have it running 3 turbos with a compound set-up same as that. The standard K03's make boost by 1500rpm. All very much pie in the sky at this stage but it'd like a crack at it.

[Escy]

I don't know if I'm scrapping the air to water yet. Probably not, just looking at different options while I had the old shell to cut up.

The majority of my a2w setup has survived, i'd just need the radiators and the pipe work. I'd have to do something different for the radiators this time as the Hybrid Cayenne ones are expensive and rare.

[Escy]

That's what i'd like to do. My Holset is a HX40 compressor housing, HX35 exhaust housing, 60/83 impeller, 60/70 turbine.

[Escy]

Thanks for the heads up, you got me all excited. It looks lovely but he's asking 4k for a pre facelift Boxster that's done over 100k and it needs an engine. Think it's optimistic to say the least.

[Escy]

It doesn't need to be an S. Thanks, I'll check it out.

The only direct fit gearbox is the 5 speed. The 987 6 speed needs some minor modifications (removing a stud, drilling out and tapping a few threads and adding the crank sensor)

[Escy]

Thank you, much appreciated.

For anyone that subscribed to this thread, I've bought a new Boxster and started a new build thread here...

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[Escy]

It depends on what your definition of easy is.

[Escy]

Thank you. I don't think they were on call, the fire chief would have probably mentioned that when I went to talk to him about it a week or so later. I was kind of in shock as it was happening so asked the guy on the bike to call the fire brigade while I was trying to get the fire extinguishers out and use them. I was on one road under a roundabout and they went around the roundabout and took an exit, 5 minutes later they did the same thing and took another exit and the guy on the bike called them back to give better directions. The fire chief told me they didn't know where I was. I'm thinking maybe they just didn't understand what they had been told as a Police officer found me in half the time.