Look what came in the mail today! (ok, to be honest it was UPS Freight)
Its a used 2.5L Boxster engine with only 75K miles. Paid $2850 including shipping. This will be my spare engine so I can swap it in quickly when my existing engine fails. It's a fully complete engine with intake and all accessories (some of which I will have to remove to put it into racing configuration). If I was still running a street car, it would be a straight swap.
After having two professionally rebuilt Boxster engines fail dramatically and losing big money on the investment, I am committed to running only used factory (salvage) engines.
DIY swap would only cost the price of a set of new plugs and an oil change. Even if I paid to have the engines swapped at a shop, I'd be back on the road for a little over $4K.
My existing used engine was bought with 92K miles and now has an additional 40 hours of racing on it. Hard to know how long it might last (still has original IMS bearing) but I'm starting to get that feeling in my gut that its time might be running out. And while it doesn't have any problems that I am aware, I'd like to be ahead of the curve when that time comes.
You can imagine the look on my wife's face when I mentioned that I wanted to buy a
spare engine. I explained that every time that my engine fails, I re-evaluate my racing goals and if I was to do that now, I'd be very tempted/motivated to move up to racing a GT-4 class air-cooled 911.
When I told her what that might cost, she was immediately on board with spending less than $3K for a spare engine.
