Challenge Boxster?

The Cayenne on FB Market... I suck at selling stuff and getting money for it. Now I'm actually considering a Hearse. Challenge Hearse? I hope not, but then....

In reply to AAZCD :

Obviously the only sane answer is to get the hearse, then swap in a W8. You might as well go for the AWD/6-speed swap while you’re at it too. 

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Yes, but maybe keep the current engine:

We meet tomorrow after work in the Walmart parking lot. Mrs AAZCD is going to kill me. ...how long can I hide it?

At least it's not another Boxster.

I know the hearse seems cool, but they aren't even worth their weight in scrap. Seriously. Look around and you'll see them for sale forever despite really cheap prices. 

In reply to AAZCD :

One of us!!  One of us!!

Javelin said:

I know the hearse seems cool, but they aren't even worth their weight in scrap. Seriously. Look around and you'll see them for sale forever despite really cheap prices. 

Yes, but have you ever tried to sell a broken Porsche Cayenne with a rebuilt title? I think I'm on the better end of the trade as far as 'hard to sell'. And I decided it would be best to just go ahead and tell Mrs AAZCD. She said, sounds cool, go ahead. There goes my easy shot at backing out.

Bonus points if you build a fake coffin to put in the back of it, with nitrous bottles hidden inside.

AAZCD said:

Javelin said:

I know the hearse seems cool, but they aren't even worth their weight in scrap. Seriously. Look around and you'll see them for sale forever despite really cheap prices. 

Yes, but have you ever tried to sell a broken Porsche Cayenne with a rebuilt title? I think I'm on the better end of the trade as far as 'hard to sell'. And I decided it would be best to just go ahead and tell Mrs AAZCD. She said, sounds cool, go ahead. There goes my easy shot at backing out.

So what besides struts is keeping this thing off the road? Seriously considering this one.

In reply to captainawesome :

"Off the road" is just the rt front strut. It's going to need 4 new tires soon, brakes in a few thousand miles, dented hatch, cracked clear bra on the front that's really hard to get off, check engine light for air leak - most likely evap purge valve, more minor cosmetics and wear.

In reply to AAZCD :

Hearse it is!

Ok, which one of you jokers sent me this:

In this case, a '77 Caddy Hearse is the Answer...

"In reply to AAZCD :

Obviously the only sane answer is to get the hearse, ..."

Focus, focus... Back to the Challenge.   Here's what I'm thinking:

Five Boxsters is too many. Giving one of five to my in-town daughter still counts as mine for maintenance and upkeep. The one that I should probably sell is the one that my daughter currently drives (the 1999 Tiptronic that I was thinking of swapping the V8 in and using in the Challenge). If I buy the Honda Fit, daughter gets it and I sell 'her' Boxster. She can still drive another Boxster any time she wants.

The $1,600 black '01 that I just put the 2.5L engine in remains the Challenge car. Today it got a check engine light with codes 1128, 1130. Not a big concern, but means it may be running lean or could be a bad O2 sensor. MAF cleaning often fixes it too. My (probably unwarranted) concern is that the 2.5L engine is getting too much air from the '01 intake. I'm not comfortable selling it as is, or making it my daughter's daily. I am comfortable pulling the 2.5L back out after a week or two of working 'bugs' out and doing the Audi swap in the '01 for the Challenge. I can keep all of the stripping-down for weight reversible. I can also put the 2.5 back in if needed.

Caddy Hearse? I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but lets just say it's a bucket list thing.  [x] Own a Hearse. Maybe a tow vehicle to the Challenge, but I expect my project schedule is full enough without that. I can tow with my other Cayenne, or just drive the Box' to the Challenge.

The only place that any of this conversation makes sense is here on the GRM Forum. Thanks guys.

I have nothing to add except this is awesome and so much GRM

I'm still debating if I want to keep the 2.5L engine in the '01, or go ahead and swap the Audi engine into it rather than the '99. I'll have to decide for certain pretty soon and get the project moving. Still dealing with two problems in the '01:

• When the car is driven hard, the the coolant tank over-pressurizes and vents coolant. The engine still runs in the normal temperature range, but the coolant level drops. I had a guy in a Mustang wave me down because he though I had a fuel leak (coolant draining out by the right rear wheel).

• I got a check engine light with codes P1128 and P1130, which from my understanding means that the O2 sensor is detecting a lean condition that cannot be compensated for.

This engine had a failure of the water pump that put debris from the composite impeller into the cooling system. It was like that when I bought it in a cheap Boxster S and I eventually removed the engine because of it. I was hoping that a thorough flush of the engine would clear it. My theory is that a piece of debris is either causing a hot-spot in the engine making steam or keeping an air pocket in the system, which expands. My next (last?) attempt to resolve the cooling will be to replace the oil cooler.

At first, I thought that the 1128 and 1130 DTCs were from using the intake and DME for the 2.7L engine with a 2.5L engine – too much air for the 2.5. Some reading showed that there are a variety of causes and cures for those codes, so I checked a few things. Oil cap and crank case vacuum were good. Next I looked for intake leaks. I found that the brake booster venturi line was starting to separate from the intake just before the throttle body allowing unmetered air in. I'm planning to remove the intake tubing and fix it or replace it. For the moment, I have the venturi hose and hole in the intake 'patched' with Gorilla Tape. I'll see if the codes come back. It has takes about 50 miles of driving to get the codes to trigger.

Venturi tube pulled off of intake:

I really want to get moving on the Audi swap. I don't need have the actual swap car ready to get started. For fitting the engine, I have a parts car already that I can use to develop the engine support with. For wiring, I have charts and pin-outs for most of it already worked out. This week I plan to pull the harness off of the ABZ (1998 32-valve Audi V8) and splice on harness connections from a 2001 car that I stripped. That should allow me to work on the harness in air conditioned comfort, then just plug it in when I install the engine in the car.

Here's some pics from taking apart the failed 2.7L engine. The head and cylinders on bank 1 all looked pretty good:

Bank 2 had the front cylinder destroyed (#4 not #2 as I said in an earlier post) and there was a lot of debris.

The remaining five pistons and rods look undamaged, but the block and #2 head are scrap. After seeing the solds on eBay, I think I'm going to list the undamaged parts after I clean and inspect them. People buy this stuff....

I thought that I had much of the wire harness work done already, but when I started looking at the details from my previous work using an '03 Audi V8 I realized that almost none of it matched the '98 harness. The 2003 uses Bosch Motronic ver. 7.1 and the 1998 uses ver. 5.4.

Here's a problem: The transmission control module connector wired into the ABZ engine harness is different than the Porsche 986 Tiptronic connector. It looks the same and plugs in, but the wiring is different. The ABZ (1998) ECU and TCM do not use CAN at all. I had expected some problems with software/firmware, but this could lead me straight to transmission Limp Mode or physical damage to the TCM or transmission.

My plan is to re-wire the TCM connector on the Audi harness to be as close to the one in a 1999 Boxster as I can make it. There are some specific connections on the 1999 Boxster diagram that aren't included in the 2001, so I'm guessing that the '99 CAN bus carries less of the load.

If I was running with a manual transmission, there would still be some quirks from the missing signals from the automatic transmission unless I chipped the ECU. Pricey, but effective. At best, running with the Tiptronic transmission, there will be some problems. My goal is to get it mostly functional and driveable even if it means using a few work-arounds to keep it out of Limp Mode.

I have two fall-back plans to keep the Boxster for the Challenge if this swap turns into a complete mess. One is to stay with the 2.5L engine and work on making the car as light as possible. The car is running decent right now and could do the Challenge -not competitively, but still fun. The other is to pull my 2003 Audi 4.2L engine out of another project, fit it into the $2,000 budget, and hope the CAN signals from that will work with the Boxster TCM and transmission – the wiring looks the same.

I hate to say it, but 2.5L and a diet is probably your best bet at finishing with decent results. Getting the other stuff to "talk" to each other is probably going to take time from getting the car dialed in for a legit shot at competition. The right set of tires and a hot shoe can really make you look like a hero if it can do car stuff properly, and that's what I imagine this car could do. At least at autocross. I imagine 1/4 mile would be in the high 14s?

I’ve always wanted to know how much nitrous a 2.5 Boxster could take.  Thank you for taking the lead on showing me.

captainawesome said:

I hate to say it, but 2.5L and a diet is probably your best bet at finishing with decent results. Getting the other stuff to "talk" to each other is probably going to take time from getting the car dialed in for a legit shot at competition. The right set of tires and a hot shoe can really make you look like a hero if it can do car stuff properly, and that's what I imagine this car could do. At least at autocross. I imagine 1/4 mile would be in the high 14s?

Very true. Taking the car to the Challenge poorly prepared and barely tested is not a good strategy. I'm not giving up on the swap, but I'm going to keep my work 'modular' enough that it does not compromise the option to switch configurations. ...and that could add enough complexity to push it to 2020. Hey, that's an idea I realized as I typed it. 2.5L this year, 4.2L next?

AngryCorvair said:

I’ve always wanted to know how much nitrous a 2.5 Boxster could take.  Thank you for taking the lead on showing me.

I'll probably trailer the car there either way. The drag race is the last event, yes? I would actually be happy to put an end to this 2.5 with a bang rather than a whimper. Learn me fire suppression!

In reply to AAZCD :

Fire suppression is budget free i believe . Id suggest two nozzles and a 5 pound bottle. Not halon. 

And a 175 wet shot. Because, why the hell not? Just bring kitty litter and a broom. Autocross and drags are friday, concourse saturday. Don't have to run for concourse....

Work on the Challenge car got slowed down a bit last week. I got a bunch of VW parts and replaced the struts, CV boots, and a control arm on the Dung Beetle, then started on what I thought was going to be simple CV shaft replacement and brake work on the '89 VW Cabriolet. There is a lot more wrong with the Cabriolet brakes than I thought and the small job got big. The hearse has a serious battery drain (probably the mess of wires where the stereo was or the driver's door harness) and there is absolutely nothing attached to the linkage for the choke. I only have a 1.5 car garage and probably over 10 cars of which 1/2 are projects. ...so, yes, I should keep the 2.5L engine for this year because the V8 swap will push me past this year's Challenge.

In good news, I received an adapter plate for the oil cooler and a free oil cooler was donated by a guy on the 986 Forum. Hopefully that will resolve the expanding air trapped in the cooling system problem. I'll probably install that tomorrow even if I do it outside with the Cabriolet still in the garage.

Nitrous kits on Amazon look pretty reasonable and can probably be traded in FMV for something that comes off for weight reduction. Could actually happen if I still have time when the rest of the car is sorted out.

Summary of the current plan: The 2001 car is going to the Challenge with the 2.5L engine and a nitrous kit for the drag race. If the engine survives, it just means that I didn't give it "all she's got". Many of the nice parts that I take off the 2001 will go onto the 1999 - head and tail lights, top, Porsche crest heated leather seats after I replace the lower leather, and whatever else looks worthy. The Challenge car will be stripped down for weight loss, cheap aero mods installed and tested, and increased front camber. Additionally, some parts will be removed and replaced with ugly scrappy parts to work the budget as needed -trading fair market value of the parts 'off' for the actual cost of parts 'on'.

I installed the oil cooler from the '98 Boxster  (Free with $10 shipping - Thanks Jim)  and adapter plate  ($169.75 with O-rings and shipping). The upgrade a lot of people do to a Base model Boxster is to add the S model oil cooler. It's larger and more effective (why didn't Porsche just make it standard?). The '98 oil cooler is smaller than the one from the '97, so it's probably a slight downgrade.

Since the '97 engine has an air purge hose coming from the front of the engine and the newer oil cooler has a purge hose on the top, I merged the two together with a brass T ($3.89) and connected it to the coolant tank.

This car has some issues with the central locking system. The windows don't drop slightly when the doors are opened, sometimes the interior lights stay on after the doors are closed, and the key would not lock or unlock the doors.The Central Locking System Module under the driver's seat looks good and pristine. The driver's door latch mechanism was damaged/worn, so I rebuilt it. The lock mechanism in the door handle had two broken tabs that prevented it from unlocking the door. I fixed it all with parts from my stash, but the door repairs don't directly count on my budget. I will be trading the doors with stripped out doors from another car.

I've been keeping receipts and looking at prices for eBay 'Solds' to track fair market value for trades and budget recoup. It's all scattered across 2 PCs, my phone, and an external drive. I need to consolidate it all and put it in a spreadsheet before it becomes any more of a mess.

Here's a last look at the car while it's still looking pretty. Anything of value or significant weight that isn't needed to keep the car roadworthy or quick through an autocross course is being considered for removal.

After reading, and re-reading your posts on this car several times, I bit the bullet and jumped on this today. I have "0" Boxster experience, but have had quite a few 924S/928's/944's and 914's back in the day. I figure enjoy it as long as I can and if/when it goes BANG, I can always part it out. Rough around the edges. 2 owner car. Lots of interior trim missing, will PM you when I figure what I need, I love dealing with GRM guys. 129,500 miles, unknown IMS Hx, so guessing never done. Drove it 2+ hours home with zero issues. I will continue following your build, just wanted to let you know what you have started 

In reply to Billy_Bottle_Caps :

Awesome. That's a great price for a running Boxster.  My initial maintenance advice is: Change the oil, clean the drains ( https://sites.google.com/site/mikefocke2/drainsdiagram ), consider a new water pump (Pierburg for about $250, or a cheap one if you will replace it every couple years), check the inner tread on the rear tires - it can wear a lot faster than the rest, and drive it, drive it, drive it. That bent fender comes off fairly easily, the other side can be a pain because of the fuel filler and evap stuff. I have a pretty good assortment of interior parts, mostly black. Let me know if you need anything. Also check this thread out: http://986forum.com/forums/boxster-general-discussions/73106-roof-issue.html  Which has a link to this: https://sites.google.com/site/mikefocke2/convertibletopedgedoesnotfallintoguidech