I've just bought some poverty Pork…
Discussion
raceboy said:
Any ideas on this little 'issue'?
When the Mrs unlocks her PovPork sometimes it gives 2 honks of the horn, similar to the warning honk it does when you lock it if something isn't closed.
Checked all the doors, boot, bonnet, glovebox, everything seems ok but still get the honks on unlocking and can't find anything in the handbook relating to this.
It's the little glovebox behind the handbrake .When the Mrs unlocks her PovPork sometimes it gives 2 honks of the horn, similar to the warning honk it does when you lock it if something isn't closed.
Checked all the doors, boot, bonnet, glovebox, everything seems ok but still get the honks on unlocking and can't find anything in the handbook relating to this.
woogie said:
Sold it for 3200 . Had things coming up in April like tax, mot, service , insurance but still under priced . Pretty gutted to see it go actually . There was nothing wrong with it . Amazing car . Wish a porsche enthusiast had bought it that's why I put add on here
I keep flirting with the idea of one of these for those times when the sun is out, I'll be driving on surfaces that take the fun out of the GT3 or I need to use a shopping centre car park. If I'd imagined that you would go that low I might have finally bit the bullet. Doh.
DiscoColin said:
I keep flirting with the idea of one of these for those times when the sun is out, I'll be driving on surfaces that take the fun out of the GT3 or I need to use a shopping centre car park. If I'd imagined that you would go that low I might have finally bit the bullet. Doh.
woogie said:
Wished you had bought it mate. I had a couple of people enquire on here a few weeks ago but messed me about a bit so it was the easy option for me. I cant stand tyre kickers. He will no doubt sell it for 1500 more but it was a great car with nothing wrong.
Damn - my car sold and was going to email you about it.I had a quotation from A Plan for £400 for my Boxster.
As an aside a quick update - almost 1 year after purchase my Boxster had new front brakes fitted and sailed through the MOT. Yesterday I was at Center Gravity having new wishbones and arms all round and geo set up. After all that work it feels like a different car. Partly by design and partly by circumstance it is running more negative camber both front and rear than stock. Selfishly, I had the car weighted and optimised for myself driving only. My aim was to have a car set-up for mainly B-road use with frequent fast flowing A-roads too. I also wanted a rear-neutral throttle adjustable attitude. Based on the first short test drives I seem to have got what I was after. I won't write chapter and verse about Chris and CG here but suffice to say I was in for nearly 8.5 hours for a totally thorough job. He's a friendly likeable guy and very persistent when getting things as close to perfect as he can.
As an aside a quick update - almost 1 year after purchase my Boxster had new front brakes fitted and sailed through the MOT. Yesterday I was at Center Gravity having new wishbones and arms all round and geo set up. After all that work it feels like a different car. Partly by design and partly by circumstance it is running more negative camber both front and rear than stock. Selfishly, I had the car weighted and optimised for myself driving only. My aim was to have a car set-up for mainly B-road use with frequent fast flowing A-roads too. I also wanted a rear-neutral throttle adjustable attitude. Based on the first short test drives I seem to have got what I was after. I won't write chapter and verse about Chris and CG here but suffice to say I was in for nearly 8.5 hours for a totally thorough job. He's a friendly likeable guy and very persistent when getting things as close to perfect as he can.
Took mine out to dust off cobwebs today & had the coolant level warning light blinking at me it turns out that the n/s radiator is leaking so its in now having 2 new ones fitted.
Should be able to collect & finish off dusting those cobwebs tomorrow.
Should be able to collect & finish off dusting those cobwebs tomorrow.
Edited by kippax on Tuesday 19th February 09:39
R500POP said:
The more I look at 60,000 mile Bocsters, the more I want one. I can just see it costing a fortune though.
Servicing is not expensive even at OPC. You are looking at circa £265 and £395 for minor and major service. I paid £340 for a major and brake fluid change but supplied my own oil. 2 new rear tyres £320 fitted. Stuff wears out on higher mileage and older cars whether it is a Boxster or not. I went overboard and renewed all the wishbones and control arms when actually I only needed to renew a couple. Even then the parts costs was only about £400. New front discs and pads with wear sensors £220. If you have to do this all in one go then it can be painful but this is just routine stuff for any car really.Link to my boxa.net post re my suspension overhaul and geo set-up by Center Gravity if anybody is interested http://www.boxa.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=5307...
edc said:
Link to my boxa.net post re my suspension overhaul and geo set-up by Center Gravity if anybody is interested http://www.boxa.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=5307...
ERROR!I guess you need to log-in. Here's a cut and paste of the relevant posts:
After another user posted up the free session at Center Gravity I booked my car in and had a free 90 mins suspension check over. This consisted of road test, Geo check, visual inspection of suspension parts, damper test and corner weight check, Tyre check.
I've read lots of opinions of Chris Franklin, some good some bad. My opinion is that he came across as very knowledgeable, happy to talk and explain his findings during road test and as car was on lift. This was a check and review session rather than a change and adjust session. Despite my car needing work there was no hard sell, indeed, it was almost as though he didn't want to quote for the work.
For the lay person he was happy to explain the car's behaviour/faults/traits in an understandable way.
The upshot is, and I kind of knew it before I went, is that at 11 years and 67k miles, the track control arm and diagonal arm bushes front and rear are past it. I could probably get away with just replacing the front track control arms but depending on cost I will just renew the whole lot.
The dampers and top mounts are in good condition. The car has sagged to 15mm at the front but looking at the spec sheet the stock ride height of 145mm is marked as +/- 10mm so arguably very little change.
The rear has nearly 1.5 neg camber and this is showing up in the Tyre wear. I will get some of this dialled out I think as the rear three have only been on a few months and a few hundred miles but already 1mm extra wear on the inside edge.
All in all it was worth the longish drive for me. I was also pleased to hear him tell me I had a really sweet car
Here's a quick update for any late nighters or early risers. I arrived at CG at 10 am and didn't leave until 6.45 pm. We hit a couple of snagging problems and fixed a couple of things that weren't on the job sheet. All in I was charged 3.5 hours labour for the fitting of the suspension and £250 as a fixed fee for the geometry. That includes pre-work measurement, a multitude of adjustments, some additional labour for getting out a couple of awkward bolts, investigation of suspected play in tie rod ends or steering rack, post-work shakedown tests for both he and I.
A couple of the other things we fixed along the way: broken alu outer sleeve for nearside hand brake cable. This was temporarily fixed and packed with grease to stop water ingress; make good some missing fixings and minor damage to under trays; replaced rear anti roll bar bushes; identified rubbing hand brake cable due to outer sleeve breakage and resecured it; re-positioned fuel hose so it was not so close to nearside manifold; cut down some exhaust bolts to stop fouling.
Chris's attention to detail was excellent. For example all new parts were sprayed with wax to prevent corrosion; all removed bolts were cleaned and coated with protective paste, upon re-assembly they were also sprayed with wax; torquing of bolts in correct order to correct spec and checking each one off by 'QA' marking them; jiggling and resetting the car after each minor Geo adjustment.
From the first session the dampers and springs were known to be good. However with age things had sagged. This presented a problem at the rear as it had excessive rear camber. There wasn't quite enough adjustment to dial it all out after the toe was set. The next options would have been shims under springs or the expensive RSS adjustable arms.
The car is now running 2 minutes of toe in on each wheel. 1 degree of negative camber on each front wheel and 1 and 5/6ths negative camber on each rear wheel. Because of the rear camber we had to go for slightly more camber on the front to maintain the right balance.
I was aiming for a mainly B-road with some sweeping faster A-roads type of set up with a rear-neutral balance with more steer on throttle behaviour. When Iget the chance I'll post up the before and after geo .
I'll write more about the way the car felt before and after later but suffice to say my initial impressions are good and Chris did a really diligent job. He takes as much time as you want to explain things, is happy for you to poke around and ask questions etc.
Oh, one last thought for the moment - my car was set up to be optimised with just me driving. This meant it was set up with a full tank of fuel and 65kgs weight in the front seat. Watching the Geo change as the weight was loaded in was quite interesting.
I haven't had the chance to drive the car much since the work was done. I have managed a 2 hour motorway schlep which tells me nothing and a 20 min test drive before returning home in the dark on unfamiliar roads with Chris acting as co-pilot. I also managed a 20 minute drive at the other end of my trip on roads i am familiar with.
There was nothing drastically 'wrong' with the mechanical grip or handling of the car before. I didn't need to replace all the suspension arms but figured if I'm replacing half then I might as well do the other half too. In terms of feel, on smooth roads it was fine with the odd clonk from knocking ball joints. On bumpier b-roads it became more of a handful and rather than the car flowing with the road it was 'bullied' by the road. This was exacerbated under WOT. Ridges and bumps midcorner would produce an unexpected shimmy and on the odd ocassions the back would skip out. The car didn't feel 100% keyed into the road and felt like it was floating over the top and being thrown off course by bumps and cambers. The car didn't feel that adjustable on the throttle from the rear and the transition to oversteer felt a little unpredictable (probably in a large part due to play in suspension components and mid corner bumps) and a bit snappy. It lacked the progression I know the Boxster can have. The overall balance of the car under steady throttle felt neutral with perhaps a bias more towards the front.
It is difficult to put into words how a car feels before and after and probably even harder to read it and know what that actually feels like.
After all the work some of the immediate things I noticed were that the steering felt a touch lighter. This was a good thing. Chris had noted the steering felt heavier than normal pre-work. It also felt more connected and a bit more alive. Around the dead ahead the slack, which to be fair I had never noticed before, was gone. Sometimes it takes a geo change to notice these things. The front end was more pointy and you could feel the car pivot more. Under WOT and coming off the throttle the car's behaviour was much more controlled and predictable ie it stayed in a straight line despite the road surface. On the bumpy roads you could let go of the steering wheel and it would track straight. Before the car would have steered with the undulations of the road and steered you left or right. It was more composed over cats eyes, white lines, sharp ridges and bumps.
The feedback through the steering wheel was 'clearer'. Before the feel coming back was clouded by bumps and jars from the suspension. Filtering that out was hard. Now it feels 'purer' if that makes sense. The wheel isn't writhing in your hands per se but gives you a much better sense of what is going on and the new suspension components were taking care of the more vicious cracks and bumps in the road. It's like the white noise from the road had been filtered out.
The other thing I asked Chris was for the car to be set-up with a rear-neutral balance so you could steer it from the rear quite progressively. I think I actually said 'a bit like an MX5 if you know what I mean' with various other descriptions either side. I said i didn't want to be sliding about every corner but wanted the rear to be in play a bit more.
As an aside here, Chris inspected the anti-roll bar bushes all round and noted the fronts were fine, indicating the front roll bar was not doing much, but one of the rear bushes had a little bit of slop and upon removal you could see some wear on it's inside. Both rear arb bushes were replaced. They were actually replaced by lightly used bushes of a 1mm smaller diameter, 18mm vs 19mm. Chris did also look for an M030 rear roll bar to swap with but didn't have any lying around. I never actually asked what it would cost but I don't think he would have charged me anything for the exchange.
In terms of the overall balance the rear feels like it is doing more share of the work now. Under power in tight turns and corners I can definitely feel it digging into the road more. I didn't try to cross the line and totally unstick it but I could if I wanted to and the sensation of what is going on at the rear gives a lot more confidence in one sense as it is much more communicative and feels a lot more progressive. On and off the throttle or changing the steering input mid corner has more of an effect now. There is more 'transition' period going on at the rear whereas before it would go from stick to unstuck over a much smaller window and with less feel. This is not solely down to the geo but can also be attributed to fresh suspension components keeping everything where it should be and transmitting the road forces where they are meant to go. Tunring into corner with the power still feeding in you can feel the car push from the rear and be directed from the rear more. The front just sticks and you know its the rear you have to look after.
I'm sure I'll get to drive more at the end of the week or at the weekend and will post back any more observations.
Time and money well spent? In my opinon yes. Parts, labour and set up cost is close to £1k. The set-up and assessment can be bought at £250 plus VAT I believe. You have obviously overhauled your car yourself so you will save a fair chunk. My car prior to my purchase has been well-looked after with money thrown at it and has been maintained by OPC then well known specialists. It has even in my ownership had an 'alignment' ie toe adjustment done as a half decent local place last April. I would say that anyone with a car that is older or has a fair few miles piled on and who has not had any suspension components renewed or not had a proper set-up in many a year then get it done!
As I have already said Chris can talk in lay terms or be as technical as you want and is happy to talk all day long about the car and it's behaviour / traits. It is very hard to put into words and quantify the changes. When you first buy your car and put the roof down to drive you get that sense of fun, and excitement, the grin factor. This is like that again.
If you wanted you could 'transform' your car or on a more subtle note have it fine tuned to your preference.
There are limited adjustments you can make as standard and you could be on the slippery slope to buying adjustable suspension everything from RSS! However, getting everything in the right place and symmetrical does wonders.
After another user posted up the free session at Center Gravity I booked my car in and had a free 90 mins suspension check over. This consisted of road test, Geo check, visual inspection of suspension parts, damper test and corner weight check, Tyre check.
I've read lots of opinions of Chris Franklin, some good some bad. My opinion is that he came across as very knowledgeable, happy to talk and explain his findings during road test and as car was on lift. This was a check and review session rather than a change and adjust session. Despite my car needing work there was no hard sell, indeed, it was almost as though he didn't want to quote for the work.
For the lay person he was happy to explain the car's behaviour/faults/traits in an understandable way.
The upshot is, and I kind of knew it before I went, is that at 11 years and 67k miles, the track control arm and diagonal arm bushes front and rear are past it. I could probably get away with just replacing the front track control arms but depending on cost I will just renew the whole lot.
The dampers and top mounts are in good condition. The car has sagged to 15mm at the front but looking at the spec sheet the stock ride height of 145mm is marked as +/- 10mm so arguably very little change.
The rear has nearly 1.5 neg camber and this is showing up in the Tyre wear. I will get some of this dialled out I think as the rear three have only been on a few months and a few hundred miles but already 1mm extra wear on the inside edge.
All in all it was worth the longish drive for me. I was also pleased to hear him tell me I had a really sweet car
Here's a quick update for any late nighters or early risers. I arrived at CG at 10 am and didn't leave until 6.45 pm. We hit a couple of snagging problems and fixed a couple of things that weren't on the job sheet. All in I was charged 3.5 hours labour for the fitting of the suspension and £250 as a fixed fee for the geometry. That includes pre-work measurement, a multitude of adjustments, some additional labour for getting out a couple of awkward bolts, investigation of suspected play in tie rod ends or steering rack, post-work shakedown tests for both he and I.
A couple of the other things we fixed along the way: broken alu outer sleeve for nearside hand brake cable. This was temporarily fixed and packed with grease to stop water ingress; make good some missing fixings and minor damage to under trays; replaced rear anti roll bar bushes; identified rubbing hand brake cable due to outer sleeve breakage and resecured it; re-positioned fuel hose so it was not so close to nearside manifold; cut down some exhaust bolts to stop fouling.
Chris's attention to detail was excellent. For example all new parts were sprayed with wax to prevent corrosion; all removed bolts were cleaned and coated with protective paste, upon re-assembly they were also sprayed with wax; torquing of bolts in correct order to correct spec and checking each one off by 'QA' marking them; jiggling and resetting the car after each minor Geo adjustment.
From the first session the dampers and springs were known to be good. However with age things had sagged. This presented a problem at the rear as it had excessive rear camber. There wasn't quite enough adjustment to dial it all out after the toe was set. The next options would have been shims under springs or the expensive RSS adjustable arms.
The car is now running 2 minutes of toe in on each wheel. 1 degree of negative camber on each front wheel and 1 and 5/6ths negative camber on each rear wheel. Because of the rear camber we had to go for slightly more camber on the front to maintain the right balance.
I was aiming for a mainly B-road with some sweeping faster A-roads type of set up with a rear-neutral balance with more steer on throttle behaviour. When Iget the chance I'll post up the before and after geo .
I'll write more about the way the car felt before and after later but suffice to say my initial impressions are good and Chris did a really diligent job. He takes as much time as you want to explain things, is happy for you to poke around and ask questions etc.
Oh, one last thought for the moment - my car was set up to be optimised with just me driving. This meant it was set up with a full tank of fuel and 65kgs weight in the front seat. Watching the Geo change as the weight was loaded in was quite interesting.
I haven't had the chance to drive the car much since the work was done. I have managed a 2 hour motorway schlep which tells me nothing and a 20 min test drive before returning home in the dark on unfamiliar roads with Chris acting as co-pilot. I also managed a 20 minute drive at the other end of my trip on roads i am familiar with.
There was nothing drastically 'wrong' with the mechanical grip or handling of the car before. I didn't need to replace all the suspension arms but figured if I'm replacing half then I might as well do the other half too. In terms of feel, on smooth roads it was fine with the odd clonk from knocking ball joints. On bumpier b-roads it became more of a handful and rather than the car flowing with the road it was 'bullied' by the road. This was exacerbated under WOT. Ridges and bumps midcorner would produce an unexpected shimmy and on the odd ocassions the back would skip out. The car didn't feel 100% keyed into the road and felt like it was floating over the top and being thrown off course by bumps and cambers. The car didn't feel that adjustable on the throttle from the rear and the transition to oversteer felt a little unpredictable (probably in a large part due to play in suspension components and mid corner bumps) and a bit snappy. It lacked the progression I know the Boxster can have. The overall balance of the car under steady throttle felt neutral with perhaps a bias more towards the front.
It is difficult to put into words how a car feels before and after and probably even harder to read it and know what that actually feels like.
After all the work some of the immediate things I noticed were that the steering felt a touch lighter. This was a good thing. Chris had noted the steering felt heavier than normal pre-work. It also felt more connected and a bit more alive. Around the dead ahead the slack, which to be fair I had never noticed before, was gone. Sometimes it takes a geo change to notice these things. The front end was more pointy and you could feel the car pivot more. Under WOT and coming off the throttle the car's behaviour was much more controlled and predictable ie it stayed in a straight line despite the road surface. On the bumpy roads you could let go of the steering wheel and it would track straight. Before the car would have steered with the undulations of the road and steered you left or right. It was more composed over cats eyes, white lines, sharp ridges and bumps.
The feedback through the steering wheel was 'clearer'. Before the feel coming back was clouded by bumps and jars from the suspension. Filtering that out was hard. Now it feels 'purer' if that makes sense. The wheel isn't writhing in your hands per se but gives you a much better sense of what is going on and the new suspension components were taking care of the more vicious cracks and bumps in the road. It's like the white noise from the road had been filtered out.
The other thing I asked Chris was for the car to be set-up with a rear-neutral balance so you could steer it from the rear quite progressively. I think I actually said 'a bit like an MX5 if you know what I mean' with various other descriptions either side. I said i didn't want to be sliding about every corner but wanted the rear to be in play a bit more.
As an aside here, Chris inspected the anti-roll bar bushes all round and noted the fronts were fine, indicating the front roll bar was not doing much, but one of the rear bushes had a little bit of slop and upon removal you could see some wear on it's inside. Both rear arb bushes were replaced. They were actually replaced by lightly used bushes of a 1mm smaller diameter, 18mm vs 19mm. Chris did also look for an M030 rear roll bar to swap with but didn't have any lying around. I never actually asked what it would cost but I don't think he would have charged me anything for the exchange.
In terms of the overall balance the rear feels like it is doing more share of the work now. Under power in tight turns and corners I can definitely feel it digging into the road more. I didn't try to cross the line and totally unstick it but I could if I wanted to and the sensation of what is going on at the rear gives a lot more confidence in one sense as it is much more communicative and feels a lot more progressive. On and off the throttle or changing the steering input mid corner has more of an effect now. There is more 'transition' period going on at the rear whereas before it would go from stick to unstuck over a much smaller window and with less feel. This is not solely down to the geo but can also be attributed to fresh suspension components keeping everything where it should be and transmitting the road forces where they are meant to go. Tunring into corner with the power still feeding in you can feel the car push from the rear and be directed from the rear more. The front just sticks and you know its the rear you have to look after.
I'm sure I'll get to drive more at the end of the week or at the weekend and will post back any more observations.
Time and money well spent? In my opinon yes. Parts, labour and set up cost is close to £1k. The set-up and assessment can be bought at £250 plus VAT I believe. You have obviously overhauled your car yourself so you will save a fair chunk. My car prior to my purchase has been well-looked after with money thrown at it and has been maintained by OPC then well known specialists. It has even in my ownership had an 'alignment' ie toe adjustment done as a half decent local place last April. I would say that anyone with a car that is older or has a fair few miles piled on and who has not had any suspension components renewed or not had a proper set-up in many a year then get it done!
As I have already said Chris can talk in lay terms or be as technical as you want and is happy to talk all day long about the car and it's behaviour / traits. It is very hard to put into words and quantify the changes. When you first buy your car and put the roof down to drive you get that sense of fun, and excitement, the grin factor. This is like that again.
If you wanted you could 'transform' your car or on a more subtle note have it fine tuned to your preference.
There are limited adjustments you can make as standard and you could be on the slippery slope to buying adjustable suspension everything from RSS! However, getting everything in the right place and symmetrical does wonders.
Thanks for the insurance replies -
Another question -
Some posts have mentioned £1000 upwards per year to run a Boxster.In your opinions what would that £1k or more include apart from fluids and filters.
I see some people have said that they get away with about £300 - £400 for a major service. Similar to my other vehicles.
The reason I ask is I would like to take the plunge into some 'Poverty Pork' but sadly I have 'Poverty Pockets'!
I currently run other vehicles so would not do many miles in my Pork - mainly weekends and probably no more than 3,000 - 5,000 miles each year. My theory being (major engine blow ups aside!)that if I could find a tidy car to start with that needs little spending on it after initial purchase and then dealing with routine maintenance (that every modern car would need)why would I need to budget over a grand?
Am I being naive and that in reality I would have to keep chiucking money at it regardless of my 'limited' mileage?
Thanks
Another question -
Some posts have mentioned £1000 upwards per year to run a Boxster.In your opinions what would that £1k or more include apart from fluids and filters.
I see some people have said that they get away with about £300 - £400 for a major service. Similar to my other vehicles.
The reason I ask is I would like to take the plunge into some 'Poverty Pork' but sadly I have 'Poverty Pockets'!
I currently run other vehicles so would not do many miles in my Pork - mainly weekends and probably no more than 3,000 - 5,000 miles each year. My theory being (major engine blow ups aside!)that if I could find a tidy car to start with that needs little spending on it after initial purchase and then dealing with routine maintenance (that every modern car would need)why would I need to budget over a grand?
Am I being naive and that in reality I would have to keep chiucking money at it regardless of my 'limited' mileage?
Thanks
edc said:
If you are on boxa.net click the link I posted above. I have detailed all of my spend in the past 1 year which includes non-essential purchases, tyres, servicing and other maintenance.
Ha! I wasn't on boxa.net until about an hour ago! I have just signed in and am avidly searching and learning. I have just found out out about 'brakes wearing out quickly (more £££'s) or rusting and not working! I didn't know about that problem as I am blinkered by IMS, etc issues!! Gassing Station | Porsche General | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff