Flood Car: My 2004 Porsche Boxster S SE

When I first restored the car, there were some small cracks in the leather on the driver's seat. I repaired them with some leather repair adhesive and dye. The repair held up for a while, but eventually cracked worse.

I looked at Lseat.com and saw that they had some nice replacement leather, but not the correct color. I considered replacing both seats, but hesitated because I want to keep the integrity of the Special Edition interior.

One day I noticed that 'Oldcarguy' on the 986 Forum was doing some upgrades on his car including a full rehab of his seats (and a Jake Raby engine). I asked and he offered to send me his old seat leather, removed intact, for free. Today, I received leather from both seats. The driver's seat has some slightly noticeable restoration and the passenger seat is almost good as new. I plan to use the leather from his passenger side to replace my driver's side seat base. I'll patch the hole for the controls, but it will not be visible against the center console.

I sent you a PM not sure if it went through.

pimpm3 said:

I sent you a PM not sure if it went through.

I've been having trouble with forum messages getting through. Send it direct to an alternate address... (Deleted) ...then burn these instructions.

Just enjoyed reading this through for the first time. You have a good eye for photos.

Today I replaced the seat base on the driver's side. The original 'flood seat' leather has been slowly getting worse on the driver's side, but still looks like new on the passenger seat. I have had the leather for a few months, but it was a real pain to pull off the old leather so I was hesitant to put the 'new' leather on. What finally got me to do the job was buying proper hog ring pliers. The long grip on these Knipex brand ones really made the job simple.

Before:

After:

That brown leather looks very nice. Well done. 

-durty

Hi, do you still have this car? Has it produced any problems in its lifetime since the flood? Any problems chasing electronic issues or anything? I have a flood car and was trying to decide wether or not to keep it or not?

Thanks!

In reply to Maxwellroyal :

I still have the car and it is doing well. Regarding flood cars, it's probably not good to generalize condition. In my case, I replaced almost all of the electronics. I even replaced all of the fuses and relays because I wanted to clean the panels that they were plugged into and didn't want to take a chance with chasing problems from future corrosion. There have not been any problems related to the wiring harness, but I did check and clean all of the grounding points. Weak grounds are trouble because they can cause intermittent problems. In my case, I had a collision damaged parts car that was easy to swap everything over from, so I didn't have to hunt down or buy parts.

Right now the car has a radiator fan with a noisy bearing that I plan to replace soon. I don't remember for sure, but I think that was a fan that I already replaced after the flood damage. Good luck with your car.

Still going well. Most recently I replaced the alternator and water pump. The alternator was still working well, but the bearing was getting noisy. Water pump was overdue for replacement and when I removed it I found that the bearing was starting to go on it too.

I don't think that either was due to the flood damage, but just age and normal wear. I still want to have the dash reupholstered. At this point it's unlikely that I'll find a good used one in the cocoa brown leather.

I still kick myself for not living on FB Marketplace so I could've grabbed the SE that was listed for $11k here maybe a year ago