Crazy eh?

[crod]

Gents,

First of all yes I know I haven't been around the forums for quite some time. Not because I got rid of my beloved Boxster S; just because after almost 17 years without kids wife got pregnant and we had a third one that keeps me busy to this day (now turning 2 in August). Add to that a couple other cars acquired that demanded my time and you have the reason for my absence.

So back to the title of this post, I got my "S" three years ago with 30,000 miles and up to today has been a pleasure to drive and extremely reliable. Not even a single problem. Just your typical maintenance, oil changes, breaks etc.

Last week when I was away my son, the older one, now 18, tells me he got an engine light when starting the car at home. As he is mechanically savvy he turned it off, got the ODB scanner and saw there was a misfire on Cylinder 5.

He proceeded to change spark plug, coil and still misfiring.

Today we were able to do a compression test and put a camera inside the cylinder and guess what? Cylinder wall is cracked.

After some debating on what to do next we looked at our options:
- Buy used engine that of course we will know nothing about how it was used/abused and will carry at the most 3 month warranty.
- Buy new engine from Porsche. Yeah, right. I appreciate the fact I have two kidneys and have no plans of selling one to get the new engine.
- Bring to my loyal mechanic that has been super all these years for a rebuild.

Guess what? We decided to rebuild the DAMN THING AT HOME.

I know as much about Porsche Engines as I know about Lawn Mowers what means nothing. HA!

Thing is I do have an engineering degree and that comes with a tinkering mindset and as I told my wife this is a car at the end of the day and not the Space Shuttle. It is made of parts built by humans and not using Alien technology so no matter what, it can be rebuilt with patience and time.

As I have five other vehicles (and a scooter! YAY!) the fact the Boxster is not running does not affect me at all and I have all the time and patience in the world and more than that, I am in no hurry whatsoever. Plan is to start next week and hopefully have it all done before end of fall.

I will certainly need your AWESOME help and input along the way. I decided to take pictures for every single step and potentially record on video everything and later post all this as a nice PDF guide and as a website (for the videos) so the whole community learns along the way.

And before you ask, yes, this will be the first thing ever that runs on gas that I tear apart and rebuild. If Germans can do it, so can I. LOL

Wish me luck and keep an eye on a thread I will probably create just for this. And if anyone decides to visit Ottawa, Canada and give a hand/some advice, feel free to let me know and stop by. Beer is on me.

Cheers.

CR

PS: Sorry for the loooong post.