Hey gang. I'm 18 mos into owning a 99 Boxster and have started doing some mechanical work. "Hans Gruber" had ~39K miles when I purchased him and I put about 3K miles on him last year. Spent most of his life in CA and IA and was very clean inside and underneath. Also sat a lot during the past 10 years and was probably only/mostly driven for registration or inspection updates.
Anyhow, I'm not doing anything that several others haven't already done. But will document things here to give-back since many others who posted their experiences helped me. My primary objective was to inspect and replace the IMS, but am also replacing the RMS, trans seals, AOS, and a few other items while I"m in there.
Also -- completely unnecessary and impractical, but I spend more time cleaning than repairing. As long as everything is off it's a good opportunity to degrease and remove grime. ...and this vehicle is a semi garage queen which is only driven on nice non-winter non-rainy days so tends to stay clean.
So here's where I started... I use this quick jack on all my vehicles. The only challenge is the rails tend to restrict access to the bolt that holds the aluminum cross braces. So I loosened it and removed the small black fairings in front of the rear wheels before lifting (yes I'm guessin' an alignment will be required after reinstallation).
Removed the rear bumper and pulled the exhaust to get here:
After that I disconnected the axle shafts from the tranny and used a harbor freight stand to support it. Axle shaft boots were in perfect condition! I shimmed the rear portion of the transmission and took extra photos so it will hopefully be well aligned and level w/the car when I reinstall.
Supported the rear engine, removed the clutch slave cylinder, shift cables, and trans mounts and pulled the tranny... Pro tip from others here was to scribe the bolt pattern for the trans on a cardboard box and shove the bolts into it in the same location they were removed since all are different sizes and difficult to track. The lower driver-side bolt requires a "triple square spline" bit. You can get an entire set on Amazon for $17. I popped the bit out of the socket and put a wrench on it to remove since clearance for tools is tight.
