2003 Porsche Boxster S
Discussion
Sorry I haven't been updating this, been a lot going on 
In September, I'm going to throw around £2,500 at the Porsche in one go to turn it more into a car that focuses much more on performance whilst retaining its quality. I was worried a while back that it's focused too much on luxury rather than driving feel, and almost decided to sell it for something more focused, but after realising I do have a great car to start with, I'm instead going to tailor it to be much more performance oriented. I don't mean ripping out interior parts or fitting 6 point harnesses, I'm just talking about leaning it away from the 'Jaguar' style of car to a more 'Elise' style. A Boxster GTS way of thinking, if you will.
I've got a big document full of things I'd like to do to the Porsche which I've had since I bought the car, and around £2,500 covers most of them in one fell swoop, from performance upgrades to visual enhancements.
Here's what's going to happen in one go in September:
- Yellow Speed Racing coilover suspension
- GT3 brake ducts
- GT3 front bumper
- GT3 side skirts
- GT3 steering wheel with black alcantara rim and red stitching
- GT3RS gear knob with black alcantara and red stitching
- 997 shifter assembly
- Gloss piano black painted centre console, radio surround and speedo surround
- Red seat belts
- DOT-Matrix dials with cruise control
So you can see where I'm going with this. A car more focused on driving, more performance focused elements, such as the alcantara wheel and uprated suspension. A red and black 'performance' look and feel, while retaining all of the original Porsche road car feel. I'll be keeping an eye out for better seats in the future, too.
But...
Before I do any of that, there was a few things I needed to take care of. One of my DRL's was faulty, the left self-cancelling indicator wasn't working, my water pump was on it's way out (rattling), it needed a service (including coolant when I changed the pump), and I needed to replace the front control arms (I changed the rears, so wanted to do the fronts too) as well as giving it another alignment setup.
So this weekend was a very busy one.
I've removed the DRL's for now as one of them has failed due to water getting inside of it. They've sent a replacement, but for the meantime I've put the sidelight bulbs back in which are seated behind the projector lenses, but I've put very bright ones in to make up for the fact that they're hidden. When it comes to refitting the DRL's, I'm going to do them better with the bumper off.
This will do as sidelights for now. I may keep them in as well as the DRL's when it comes to refitting them.
Also decided to fix the self-cancelling issue, so I opened everything up to have a nose, to see what the problem was.
Look at this tab which pushes the indicator mechanism back into place when it comes into contact. It's worn down on one side, so like a door latch, it skips one way and works the other way.
Decided to file down the curve so it was a perfect right angle:
And voila! Done. Next up, servicing.
Friday was spent servicing the car. I originally thought "Ah it'll only take an hour or two", and ended up finishing at midnight.
Was never a great fan of working on the gravel driveway, so my brother in law offered his driveway for the weekend. The beauty of his driveway is that it's on a slight slope, which means when I jack the back of the car up, it ends up being level. Perfect for draining coolant where the nose needs to be higher too, as I just lower the car again.
Did the control arms in about half hour, they were an absolute doddle. There's a slight knocking after I've changed the arms, so this will either be a loose bolt or a drop link. I'll have a check on the weekend, either way it won't be anything serious.
Started the water pump then. The job was easy enough, the coolant was drained, water pump changed, but the jubilee clips on the hoses were a pig as I didn't have the right pliers so I couldn't finish the job on Saturday due to this. Also, it didn't help that it rained, so I called it a day and waited for the next day to borrow a pliers off their neighbour.
The next day had gorgeous weather in store, and as I had the right pliers I finished attaching the hoses within minutes. Filled the car with coolant, bled the system, and away we go!
Car runs fantastic. It's amazing how loud that water pump was, it's lovely and smooth now.
Also, the ebay parking sensors are still working brilliantly and look completely OEM, but they don't sound OEM. The speaker that came with them is a rubbish piezo speaker, so I decided to change it to more of an original sounding beep.
I bought a gong from a BMW 3 series for £9. You can wire this thing to make different sounds - triple beeps, echoing beeps, etc - but I settled for a straight beep that didn't echo. It works by wiring the positive and negative to the + and - terminals, then you split the negative terminal and wire it to one of the other pins depending on the sound you want.
Once I was happy, I taped it so that it was permanent, and resulted in a positive and negative wire to directly replace the old speaker.
This is the sound after testing it on a 9V battery:
https://youtu.be/ikNpddVeYXc
I've also ran wires from the sensor box all the way to the dashboard (nicely hidden away), so the sound now comes from the dash. It's now totally OEM feeling!
I'll get a better video of it soon Not bad for £15 ebay sensors.
So there we are! The car now has new:
- Front control arms
- Water pump
- Coolant
- Drivebelt
- Oil
- Oil filter
- Air filter
- Pollen filter
- Spark plugs
- Wipers
- Parking sensor speaker
In September, I'm going to throw around £2,500 at the Porsche in one go to turn it more into a car that focuses much more on performance whilst retaining its quality. I was worried a while back that it's focused too much on luxury rather than driving feel, and almost decided to sell it for something more focused, but after realising I do have a great car to start with, I'm instead going to tailor it to be much more performance oriented. I don't mean ripping out interior parts or fitting 6 point harnesses, I'm just talking about leaning it away from the 'Jaguar' style of car to a more 'Elise' style. A Boxster GTS way of thinking, if you will.
I've got a big document full of things I'd like to do to the Porsche which I've had since I bought the car, and around £2,500 covers most of them in one fell swoop, from performance upgrades to visual enhancements.
Here's what's going to happen in one go in September:
- Yellow Speed Racing coilover suspension
- GT3 brake ducts
- GT3 front bumper
- GT3 side skirts
- GT3 steering wheel with black alcantara rim and red stitching
- GT3RS gear knob with black alcantara and red stitching
- 997 shifter assembly
- Gloss piano black painted centre console, radio surround and speedo surround
- Red seat belts
- DOT-Matrix dials with cruise control
So you can see where I'm going with this. A car more focused on driving, more performance focused elements, such as the alcantara wheel and uprated suspension. A red and black 'performance' look and feel, while retaining all of the original Porsche road car feel. I'll be keeping an eye out for better seats in the future, too.
But...
Before I do any of that, there was a few things I needed to take care of. One of my DRL's was faulty, the left self-cancelling indicator wasn't working, my water pump was on it's way out (rattling), it needed a service (including coolant when I changed the pump), and I needed to replace the front control arms (I changed the rears, so wanted to do the fronts too) as well as giving it another alignment setup.
So this weekend was a very busy one.
I've removed the DRL's for now as one of them has failed due to water getting inside of it. They've sent a replacement, but for the meantime I've put the sidelight bulbs back in which are seated behind the projector lenses, but I've put very bright ones in to make up for the fact that they're hidden. When it comes to refitting the DRL's, I'm going to do them better with the bumper off.
This will do as sidelights for now. I may keep them in as well as the DRL's when it comes to refitting them.
Also decided to fix the self-cancelling issue, so I opened everything up to have a nose, to see what the problem was.
Look at this tab which pushes the indicator mechanism back into place when it comes into contact. It's worn down on one side, so like a door latch, it skips one way and works the other way.
Decided to file down the curve so it was a perfect right angle:
And voila! Done. Next up, servicing.
Friday was spent servicing the car. I originally thought "Ah it'll only take an hour or two", and ended up finishing at midnight.
Was never a great fan of working on the gravel driveway, so my brother in law offered his driveway for the weekend. The beauty of his driveway is that it's on a slight slope, which means when I jack the back of the car up, it ends up being level. Perfect for draining coolant where the nose needs to be higher too, as I just lower the car again.
Did the control arms in about half hour, they were an absolute doddle. There's a slight knocking after I've changed the arms, so this will either be a loose bolt or a drop link. I'll have a check on the weekend, either way it won't be anything serious.
Started the water pump then. The job was easy enough, the coolant was drained, water pump changed, but the jubilee clips on the hoses were a pig as I didn't have the right pliers so I couldn't finish the job on Saturday due to this. Also, it didn't help that it rained, so I called it a day and waited for the next day to borrow a pliers off their neighbour.
The next day had gorgeous weather in store, and as I had the right pliers I finished attaching the hoses within minutes. Filled the car with coolant, bled the system, and away we go!
Car runs fantastic. It's amazing how loud that water pump was, it's lovely and smooth now.
Also, the ebay parking sensors are still working brilliantly and look completely OEM, but they don't sound OEM. The speaker that came with them is a rubbish piezo speaker, so I decided to change it to more of an original sounding beep.
I bought a gong from a BMW 3 series for £9. You can wire this thing to make different sounds - triple beeps, echoing beeps, etc - but I settled for a straight beep that didn't echo. It works by wiring the positive and negative to the + and - terminals, then you split the negative terminal and wire it to one of the other pins depending on the sound you want.
Once I was happy, I taped it so that it was permanent, and resulted in a positive and negative wire to directly replace the old speaker.
This is the sound after testing it on a 9V battery:
https://youtu.be/ikNpddVeYXc
I've also ran wires from the sensor box all the way to the dashboard (nicely hidden away), so the sound now comes from the dash. It's now totally OEM feeling!
I'll get a better video of it soon Not bad for £15 ebay sensors.
So there we are! The car now has new:
- Front control arms
- Water pump
- Coolant
- Drivebelt
- Oil
- Oil filter
- Air filter
- Pollen filter
- Spark plugs
- Wipers
- Parking sensor speaker
Podie said:
Well this just more interesting... looking forward to the forthcoming updates
Won't be long before I get more updates on the way So I've bought a load of stuff to get the car into a perfect condition the way it is before I go upgrading it.
In the next few weeks it'll have:
- Refurbished alloys (same colour but silver barrel)
- New heater blower (current has a small whine)
- Windscreen machine polished to eliminate wiper marks
- Windscreen scuttle resprayed matt black
- Stone chips repaired with Chipex
- Headlights machine sanded & polished
- Re-fit DRL's from behind the vents (with the bumper off)
- Clean starter motor (has a donkey sound sometimes on start-up. Very common)
I've got genuine 'PORSCHE' lettering for the rear boot which I'm going to spray matt black, but I'm toying whether or not to put it on. If I do put it on, I'd want a smaller 'Boxster S' badge as the 986 & 987's badge is quite large. I could always 3D print one though...
Had another productive day. The Boxster S badge started to suffer from paint peel, and the 'Compound' side stickers were getting a bit old. Took them both off and machined the paint underneath so that it was debadged and ready for what I planned to do next.
A friendly forum member offered me genuine 'P O R S C H E' lettering badges in exchange for some headlamp seals. I took them, resprayed them matte black, and put them on the rear. They look AWESOME.
Measuring up with fishing wire
And voila!
Instead of the Compound stickers on the side, I decided to go down the 981 style route and have the model designation on the sides.
These were bought from ebay, and while the 'Boxster' is perfect, the 'S' isn't the style of the original 'S'. It's almost there, but not quite right. I've got a friend who will print the actual one, but in the mean time these will do just fine!
They make up for the fact there's no 'Boxster S' badge on the rear.
Muchos better going to put the DRL's back into the bumper in the next few days.
A friendly forum member offered me genuine 'P O R S C H E' lettering badges in exchange for some headlamp seals. I took them, resprayed them matte black, and put them on the rear. They look AWESOME.
Measuring up with fishing wire
And voila!
Instead of the Compound stickers on the side, I decided to go down the 981 style route and have the model designation on the sides.
These were bought from ebay, and while the 'Boxster' is perfect, the 'S' isn't the style of the original 'S'. It's almost there, but not quite right. I've got a friend who will print the actual one, but in the mean time these will do just fine!
They make up for the fact there's no 'Boxster S' badge on the rear.
Muchos better
going to put the DRL's back into the bumper in the next few days.
TheDukeGTi said:
Great progress with this! Looking forward to the 'GTS' changes. I'd like to do something similar with my M3. Sort of M-GT3, if you like. 
Thank you Re-did the DRL's but took the front bumper off to do them. They're now fitted far more securely, further into the bumper, one notch higher, and are on angles to make them straight on.
Before:
After:
Looks much more OEM now. Love it!
Edited by geraintthomas on Thursday 13th July 10:29
anomaly said:
Interesting updates. Ours had the same self-canceling indicator issue and the water pump is on it's way out too. I laughed when you said about the starter motor sounding like a donkey, that's exactly how ours sounds!
Hah it's true! The pump itself (and the belt) is very, very easy to change with a nice amount of access. It's changing the coolant that's the tedious part. You'll need a pair of groove joint pliers (you know, the ones that freely slide to make a large or small grip) for the jubilee clips on the hoses to drain the coolant as they're a pig. When you've got all the hoses off and the car's tilted backwards, just wait for it to drain, put them all back on and fill it up with coolant and bleed it. It's really not a horrendous job and saves your a fortune doing it yourself.The starter motor just needs a clean to fix it too. Take it off (there's a guide online, again it's not a difficult job, it's on top of the engine), get engine de-greaser and clean it with that and WD-40, preferably with a stiff brush. That'll fix it
Actus Reus said:
Great thread OP, the car's a credit to you.
I had a 987.1 Boxster S and then a 987.1 Cayman S, but these 986 cars are looking like stupidly good value, particularly if you can do work yourself. Particularly like that 'P O R S C H E' on the rear - very nicely done.
Thanks for the kind words, really appreciate the feedback.I had a 987.1 Boxster S and then a 987.1 Cayman S, but these 986 cars are looking like stupidly good value, particularly if you can do work yourself. Particularly like that 'P O R S C H E' on the rear - very nicely done.
They're very good value, but obviously compare this one to a standard 986 and it's a lot different due to the extra refinements I've done, but it's totally worth it. I like the way the 986's front end is identical to the 911 of its year too, unlike the 987's. Still they're both excellent cars though.
I'm looking forward to putting the next 100,000 on it.
Bowen86 said:
Well kudos to you, wealth of skill and knowledge you have.
I live in Caerphilly, but work in Cardiff.
Thank you I live in Caerphilly, but work in Cardiff.
I've taken the side vents off and gave them a lick of matt black paint. The 987 and onwards have this and it looks lovely with the contrast between the paint and the vent.
I'll also be doing the front fins on the bumper, as per the newer models. So the only bits that will be matt black are the exhausts, rear diffuser, rear badge, side vents and front fins. Basically the modern variants of this car have these parts in ABS plastic, so painting in matt black gives the same effect.
Whilst the side vents were off though, I've de-snorkel'd it.
This is a common thing to do, which removes the 'snorkel' restrictor from the intake which in turn allows more air in. Two resulting things happen, the first is a much louder intake sound which sounds gorgeous, and apparently there's a 5bhp power increase which someone proved with a dyno.
Seen here: http://986forum.com/forums/performance-technical-chat/9671-finally-dyno-charts-de-snorked-986s.html
Whether or not that's true, I don't know and I don't really care, I did it for the sound, but the fact that someone had a 5bhp increase from it just gives me peace of mind that I won't loose any power by doing it.
The sound is lovely now! Sounds exactly the same unless you bury the accelerator, and around 4,000rpm you get this snarl which sounds reminiscent of the induction noise on an E30, or a McLaren F1. No I'm not saying it sounds like a McLaren F1, but find an on-board video (EVO on YouTube) and listen to the snarl of the induction - that's the sound you start to get, and it's lovely.
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff