My first actual breakdown.

[Retroman1969]

Well the alternator started going out in the daily driver today.
Of course it was on the way to a job and out in the middle of nowhere. I went ahead and did the job, and fortunately my Porsche mechanic was right on the way to my next job. I called him and headed over there. The lights on the dash began to go dim about two blocks from the garage, but it made it!
The test showed it was barely charging.
The repair will be $700 and I'll have it back by tomorrow.
I could whine, but the car has 130,000 miles on it, 3,500 of which I've put on it in the past eight weeks.
I'd say that's a pretty good track record so far.

[Timco]

I paid $130 for mine and it was a 3 hour job, just for comparison.

Swapping it also fixed the start up chatter. The bearing was bad.

[woodsman]

$130! Did you change the bearing yourself?

[Retroman1969]

Wow, $130? Best I could do was $435 for a rebuilt unit, plus 3 hours labor.
I also have had a bit of chatter on startup, so hopefully it will go away with this.

[Timco]

Yep. Don't recall if it was Orieley or Autozone. I ran into a Porsche mechanic outside the store, older soft spoken German guy who was in charge of all older P cars that came through P service, their shop is two buildings over. I asked him about an alternator, belts, batteries, and other parts. He suggested Pelican or turned his head over his shoulder and nodded towards ORieley. He said "no buy Porsche battery. You just give your money to them".

For start up chatter, alternator bearings go bad, and my WP vanes were scraping. Then I had belt noise. Bought a really good belt, and cleaned every groove on the CS pulley, all had hard packed rubber in them. That made it run super smooth & quiet. I was very impressed.

[jmatta]

Likely just the voltage regulator and not the alternator...mine did the same thing at 20k miles. $50 later (Bosch VW part) and I was back in business. If you search, you will find the part number from a previous post I made. Porsche does not have a replacement part, but it's the same that VW, Audi and MB use.

Good luck and fairly easy to replace yourself.

[particlewave]

Im sorry, but $700 is nuts. You need a new shop because you're getting ripped off.

[CoBeerToad]

$700 sounds a bit right. That part costs roughly $450 unless you go the route that Timco (and myself) went and go to Autozone and pick one up for $130. Throw in some markup and labor and that's about 7 bills.

[Retroman1969]

I appreciate the input guys. It's just one of those things I don't have the time to try to tackle myself. Working and driving a lot right now. Borrowed my dad's '96 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham for a couple of days. Great car, but sure is a different driving experience. It's smooth and silent as a car can get, and no need to worry about bad pavement or bumps. But the handling wears you out. Always slowing to a crawl for turns and hanging on and bracing for it! LOL!
Picked up the Boxster this evening and all is well again. 2 year warranty on it.
While he was in there he checked on the AOS again and told me it looked fairly new, like the water pump, it appears to have been replaced recently.

Honestly, I find the shop reasonable. Among the "modern" cars in my adult life, I've had two Nissan pickups, a Dodge Stratus, a Cadillac Eldorado, two Jeep Wranglers, and a Land Rover Discovery. The maintenance and repairs done on the two Boxsters at the Porsche specific shop by comparison has ranged from just a little higher to about the same to even a bit cheaper in some cases.
Frankly I find the parts and service on all of today's cars to be fairly outrageous. That's probably because I remember a simpler time.