[TypeA]

Hi Mitchell,

Enjoyed reading your post, youre a talented writter.

My history somewhat paralells yours so I may have a few tid bits that you may find useful. I puchased my first ever Porsche two years ago. At the time of purchase I told myself then that in order to justify a car that I own solely for enjoyment, it being a second car and a garage queen, that I would need to learn to do most all of the repair work personally. I knew then that my new-to-me 12 year old high performance sports car, with already 99,000 miles on the odometer, would require almost constant repair attention. For the most part that has proven to be accuate.

At the time of purchase my background in auto repair was limited, and while my experience has increased, I still consider myself pretty new to all things maintance and repair. Going back a little further, I spent five years active duty and another seven years as a defense contractor and I will tell you that the auto hobby shop is something that I dearly wish I had access to now as I did then. Having access to a lift and the specially tools makes life so much easier. Ironically, in those 12 years that I did have access the internet was fairly new. The wealth of repair instructions and the ease of ordering parts all via the internet make a DIY auto repair much easier, and combined with your access to the auto hobby shop, you are in a great position to do most all of the work yourself in a fairly painless manner.

I purchased the car from a dealership and almost immendiately the rear main seal went out. Because the dealership covered the cost of that repair I did spend the extra money, out of my own pocket, to replace the IMS. As a rookie mechanic, without access to a lift, I probably would have had that extensive of a repair done professionally but your situation may allow you to take on that big job. Perhaps in 50k more miles I will have the confidence to take on the clutch, sans a lift, but time will tell if I have that kind of confidence.

Its understood your situation and finding a mechanic. However I would continue to look and find someone who you can ask questions and help diagnose problems. On more than one occasion I have paid my mechanic an hours labor to help me diagnose the problem to which I then drive home and repair myself. The things that I have done to my car, both self and professionally, can be found in the narrative of my garage link found below my handle on this post. It will give you an idea of what work I have done.

Folks recommend publications like 101 Projects For Your Porsche Boxster and the Bentley Repair Manual as good books to have. I personally have found them to be marginally helpful, ofter containing lots of info you wont need and little in the way of info you do need. Which still leaves you scouring the internet for repair info. They are good to have, I suppose, but have thus far been of little help to me when compared to the internet.

I dont know what other cars are like to work on and, again, for all I know all cars are this way but in my experience patience is required with a Boxster, a lot of patience. In order to remove and replace part 'D' you will first be required to remove part 'A', 'B' and 'C.' In other words everything takes longer because of the design of the car, it was not built with repair in mind. This probably explains why many shops in my town flatly wont work on Porsche. But as long as you keep this general rule in mind and prepare yourself for it, the car is otherwise the same to repair as any other car. From what my experienced Porsche mechanic told me an under drive pulley is not worth the trouble. I do like the results of desnokling my Boxster and Im considering cutting up my muffler for a DIY sport exhaust.

Finally, four words: Maguires Paint Correction Kit. Live it, love it, learn it. Lots of youtube videos, invest in a DA machine, the kit, add their polish as an intermediate step and perhaps replace the included wax with their synthetic Ultimate Wax. You will be amazed how pretty your boxster can be by learning and properly executing paint correction.