[landrovered]

After fiddle farting around with several different after cat O2 hacks on my Boxster that were marginally effective I finally ordered and installed the Magnum O2 simulators yesterday.

A bit if history: My Box has an 04 3.6L motor, it has headers and no cats but retains the factory muffler, the after cat O2 sensors were simply attached to the underside of the car and after throwing a lot of codes I came to the conclusion that they were likely bad and therefore the normal hacks were not effective in stopping the codes. It did not make sense to buy new O2 sensors to simple hang them next to the engine so I bought the Magnum O2 simulators.

The parts: the simulators have six wires, two for the heaters, two for the signal, and a 12v power supply and ground. They are well made and mine came with a heat sink that was not shown in the pictures on their website. The electronic bits are sealed and there are two dash pots and an indicator light on the units. They run $69 per and you need two of them for a Boxster.

The Install: Soldering the wires from the original wiring harness to the part is straight forward and they provide you with shrink tubing to make the job neat. They suggest that you locate the modules as far away from the heat of the motor as possible. I ended up mounting the units on the aluminum brace that extends on a diagnal from the bottom of the motor to the rear of the wheel well. It was convenient to the plug in point for the O2 sensor and far enough away from the headers to reduce heating. I fished the power and ground wires up the back of the engine and inserted the wires into some vacuum tubing to protect it and improve the appearance and then zip tied that to the existing plumbing.

It is suggested that you power the units from a "keyed" circuit so that the power required does not draw down the battery even though the load is only 4 milliamps. Not wanting to tap into any critical circuits, I decided to power the wire off of the fuse panel from the cigar lighter circuit. I drilled a hole in one of the grommets that is under the carpet of the front motor cover. I attached the ground to the top bolt on the front motor cover which was convenient and then tucked the power wire under the edge of the center consol and ran over the drivers footwell to the fuse panel. I used a power supply that plugs in place of the fuse and moves the fuse to a 90 degree postion but preserves the fused nature of the circuit. Very handy piece of kit.

The install is very clean and the out of the box settings on the O2 Simulators worked like a charm and the codes are gone. The units did not require any further adjustment.

So if you are catless, I recommend this approach to eliminate codes once and for all.

Cheers