ALL info/help GREATLY appreciated! - Student

[Timco]

Just make sure both rear fog lights work before you buy.......

[Anker]

Originally Posted by Timco

Just make sure both rear fog lights work before you buy.......

Only the left rear fog light is wired from the factory.

[aczyzewski]

As Curley would say, we "resemble that remark." Thanks for the lighthearted poke at the curious mix of people we are. I remember my first post (CEL P0306) and being introduced to the ways of the forum...

Originally Posted by The Radium King

oh noes! the newbie thread death spiral!

it goes like this:

- newbie posts that they want to buy a boxster (or, often, a boxter) but have read about this ims thing and are a little concerned.

- resident tough guys tell newbie to either (a) buy a (insert favourite brand of Japanese car here) if they are worried about repair costs, or (b) use the search function as this has been asked a million times before. tough guys get to add more posts to their post count without even breaking a sweat (they can just cut and paste their last response to a newbie).

- helpful person tells them not to worry about the ims and just enjoy the car. typically helpful person has not experienced an ims failure.

- person who has experienced an ims failure, or is just a chronic worrier, responds that ims failure is real, quotes class action lawsuits, tales of woe they have personally experienced or read on the internet, etc.

- thread deteriorates into three to five pages of whether the ims fails or not, how often, on what years of cars, why it fails, how to prevent it, who's solution is better that the other guys, patents, testing, replacement ims failure rates, oil weight and change interval, driving habits, other failure modes to worry about even if the ims is replaced, etc etc etc.

- newbie gives up and buys a (insert favourite brand of Japanese car here).

conclusion? newbies should not be allowed to mention ims in their first 50 posts - it's like fentanyl around here (thought that i'd throw that in for the med student).

ps i'm joking.

[paulofto]

Originally Posted by Anker

Only the left rear fog light is wired from the factory.

Anker, That was Timco being Timco . . . . It's his standard welcome to a Newbie.

[Anker]

OK, will remember next time. :-)

[Timco]

Originally Posted by Anker

OK, will remember next time. :-)

I figured I'd throw it out there since this thread went south. Someone got bothered by this joke so I don't really do it anymore. It was all in fun and I say it knowing 2-4 members are always kind enough to correct me.

[Neal]

Man these 2009+ boxster's are expensive.
Average is around $23,000 USD.
Damn.

[Neal]

Originally Posted by husker boxster

All 2009 and newer Porsches have engine without an IMS. I think you have the MIF confused with DFI - direct fuel injection. S models have DFI, base models do not.

Base models do not have a cheaper interior, just different queues to identify it vs an S interior. The main difference between an S and base interior is the gauge faces are silver on an S and black on a base. The rest of the interior is subject to how the purchaser ordered the car, so you could have a Spartan S interior and an opulent base interior - it just depends how it was optioned.

You don't state where you're located, so it's hard to recommend a place to buy. If you're in SoCal, you could find many options on Craigslist. If you're in Montana, you may have to look on AutoTrader and have a wide search sphere. Since you are not a car guru (nothing wrong with that), when you find a car that you're interested in, have a PPI (pre-purchase inspection) done. This will cost $300-$500, but will allow an expert to look over the car and determine if it's in good shape. Since a PPI is not cheap, you only want to do them on serious candidates.

2009 and 2010 Boxsters are starting to hit the mid-$20K mark. They'll have a few miles on them, but these particular years are fairly low maintenance and should last well over 100K mi.

I hope your dreams come true and you're able to purchase a Boxster. They make an excellent reward.

I am actually located in Canada at the moment but will be coming to the states soon depending on where I get placement for my clinical rotations after writing my step 1 exam. Now I guess I can fly to the place I would buy the car and then drive it or have it delivered to where I get placed. In this circumstance where would you look for a good & cheapest prices for 2009+ model porsche boxster?
The one's that are on "autolist.com" with less then 60k miles on them are around $25,000 USD.

Thanks & I hope one day I can return to this first thread of mine and quote you saying I got one someday

[ttmedical]

Repost. Moderator please delete this post. Thank you!

[ttmedical]

Hey Neal, I think it's awesome that you are thinking of buying a new-to-you boxster! I was actually a second year medical student when I got mine and am now a PGY1. I daily drive the snot out of it, minimum 60 miles roundtrip a day. In total, I've racked up 60K miles (now at 120K) in 3 years (and that's on the low side compared to some members here!!). I was shopping for a 986/987 and ended up with an '03 that I found from an independent dealer off of craigslist. Yes, I wasn't car smart, and yes, I knew this would be a risky move, but I did some research and heavily researched PPIs and a trustworthy shop to do it. I'll try to give you my 2 cents based on my experiences of being a medical student shopping for car that others will say is unnecessary lol.

1) I was very lucky that most of my rotations were in the same city that I did my didactic years in, with the exception of 4th year "aways". This meant that I had the luxury of finding an apartment complex with a private garage. Now, I lived in West Texas at that time which means that Porsche knowledgeable shops are far and few (nonexistent for me within a 300 miles radius, no joke). I had never even done a filter change on a car prior to buying my boxster but I was an engineer prior to medical school and I like working with my hands. Which leads us to my second point:

2) 986forums and Pelican Parts. Remember these two sites and use them. Heck, peruse them often since something posted in the past may be useful to you in the future. I have gone from only knowing how to put gas and washer fluid in a car to doing things like brakes, rotors, suspension work, oil changes, fluid flushes, bulb changes, alternator and AOS replacements, and even learned to hardwire things like a dash cam, all from these two sites (and some google-ing). And experienced members can and will do far more things like entire engine swaps. Problems will creep up on your car, even if you get a 2009-10 boxster. The how-to guides and the members' knowledge is incredibly valuable. Especially since dealerships, while your car may have cost $10-20K, will charge you at the $60K+ level. As I mentioned before, I had garage space which was very useful for me being able to not only do my own maintenance but also fix things that prevent the car from running. This brings us to my third point:

3) If you plan on doing any of your own work, you will either need to have space or find space. Sometimes, a project may take more than one day, either due to a part that got broken or sheer frustration (I'm looking at you, alternator lol) in which case you will need the space at least overnight. You mentioned you will be at different clinic sites in (what I assume is) your 3rd and 4th years. This also means you need to be physically at the hospital or clinic, meaning you need to ensure you have alternate transport available. In medical school, I was lucky to have financed a beater car for an incredible deal so the one time I did get stranded back then I had the car towed to my apartment and could use the other car to go to work. Now that I only have the boxster, I either bum a ride from the wife (who has her own residency to attend to) or use Uber. I have been stranded by my car twice (once for the alternator giving out in the Middle of Literally Nowhere, Texas and the second time for an AOS that blew a smoke bomb all over the interstate), both of which would at the dealer have cost me $1.7k and $750 to get fixed, not even counting towing from West Texas region to Dallas (I fixed these myself for $400 and $100, respectively, not counting tools that I have collected over the years as I did different projects). Regardless, this is definitely something to keep in mind.

4) Like you, I picked up the car hundreds of miles from home. This required placing a small deposit to hold the car, finding a shop that would do the PPI that I could trust, negotiating a price, and then driving her home. Here I should note that I paid the car in cash so I was fortunate that any money I would have spent in monthly payments went straight into a checking account solely for parts and tools. Anyway, I was early in my second year and luckily the block I was on did not require attendance in class (we were fortunate that lectures at that time were also video recorded so I could speed them up to 2x and study on my own). You will also need to figure out things like this. And, if you are currently studying for Step 1, I would HIGHLY recommend putting this off until after the exam. You don't want to sacrifice a high score that could set you up for life for car shopping.

Sorry if this seems like a giant run on sentence. I'm just putting my thoughts into a semi-cohesive post. I'm almost done with a 30+ hour shift (and no, no one in the surgical world cares about resident 80hr per week limits hahaha....hah.... :'( ...). so this may come off with some grammatical errors and/or ramblings of a mad man. If you have any questions regarding shopping for the car, feel free to PM me. Good luck with school, happy hunting, and we hope to see you around on here!

[husker boxster]

Originally Posted by Neal

I am actually located in Canada at the moment but will be coming to the states soon depending on where I get placement for my clinical rotations after writing my step 1 exam. Now I guess I can fly to the place I would buy the car and then drive it or have it delivered to where I get placed. In this circumstance where would you look for a good & cheapest prices for 2009+ model porsche boxster?
The one's that are on "autolist.com" with less then 60k miles on them are around $25,000 USD.

Thanks & I hope one day I can return to this first thread of mine and quote you saying I got one someday

Based on the advice of ttmed, you might want to wait until you've taken / passed your test and are then assigned a spot in the US before you buy. Something else to consider if you plan to move back to Canada with a US spec car are the requirements to get the US car into Canada full time. It can be done but my understanding is it's not as easy as driving across the border. Our Canadian members can speak to that.

So back to your question on where to buy. In general, you want to look where there's the most competition so the prices are lower. Cities like LA, SF, Houston, Miami, Dallas, and Orlando seem to have lot of Porsches for sale. Look at their Craigslists for ads. Maybe you'll be assigned somewhere relatively close to one of these cities. Also look at AutoTrader (I like them better than Cars.com b/c Cars used to have lots of fake ads, this may not be true anymore). A fake ad will have a car for an unusually ultra low price and when you contact the "owner" they'll have some story about them moving overseas, yahdah, yahdah. They want to feed on your greed of getting a great deal and you have to move fast to beat everyone else, so good judgement goes out the window. Avoid anyone who wants you to use Western Union or PayPal to pay for an entire car. Also avoid rebuilt or salvage titles. You don't need that headache.

Since you're thinking about the 987.2 model (2009-2012), you are at a bit of a disadvantage - they have the desirable non-IMS engine + Porsche built vastly fewer 987.2 cars because of the 2008 market crash. So you have a highly desirable item in vastly smaller numbers, resulting in those 987.2 cars holding their value and selling quickly when one comes up for sale. If and when you're ready to buy one, be prepared to move quickly when you find one that meets your needs. You might want to start looking now just to educate yourself on what to look for, what dictates price (miles, options, color, etc), and what's a good or bad deal. Then when you're ready to buy, you'll be able to make good, quick decisions.

You sounded a bit shocked on the prices of 987.2s. If that's a bit out of your budget, may I suggest the 987.1 (2005-2008). They have the 3rd gen IMS which fails at approx. 1% rate. There are also differences in interior (987.2 is more modern in music abilities) and automatic transmissions (987.2 has PDK vs 987.1 tiptronic), but there are many more 987.1s on the market so their price is lower. You should be able to find a nice 2006 base Boxster for around $16K. Something to consider.

JFP - would you mind cutting your pics down to 1 or none? You've made your point and this thread is hard to read because of the pics. Thx.

[jdraupp]

Originally Posted by Neal

Man these 2009+ boxster's are expensive.
Average is around $23,000 USD.
Damn.

Don't forget to factor in about 2,000 a year in maintenance.

These cars are a blast and very fun to own and drive. But as I hope you're getting a feel for, this isn't a Camry that you can buy and drive 300,000 miles with only tire, brake and oil changes. German cars required continuous scheduled maintenance and the boxster specifically has a long list of interval parts that are known to fail at specific mileages. I can afford to own one because I do a lot of the maintenance myself and I only put 3,000 miles a year on mine so there is less maintenance to do. Just an oil change at the dealer will set you back 180 bucks on this car.

Being that you are a med student and and are going to be fairly broke for some time, a quality daily driver like an accord might make more sense for you. If this is a second car, then just be aware that maintenance costs of 1-2k a year are not a joke. Some years it's more some it's less. Just trying to make you aware of the quirks of porsche ownership. It can get really expensive, and the cheapest car you buy will be the most expensive car you ever own.

[Neal]

Originally Posted by ttmedical

Hey Neal, I think it's awesome that you are thinking of buying a new-to-you boxster! I was actually a second year medical student when I got mine and am now a PGY1. I daily drive the snot out of it, minimum 60 miles roundtrip a day. In total, I've racked up 60K miles (now at 120K) in 3 years (and that's on the low side compared to some members here!!). I was shopping for a 986/987 and ended up with an '03 that I found from an independent dealer off of craigslist. Yes, I wasn't car smart, and yes, I knew this would be a risky move, but I did some research and heavily researched PPIs and a trustworthy shop to do it. I'll try to give you my 2 cents based on my experiences of being a medical student shopping for car that others will say is unnecessary lol.

1) I was very lucky that most of my rotations were in the same city that I did my didactic years in, with the exception of 4th year "aways". This meant that I had the luxury of finding an apartment complex with a private garage. Now, I lived in West Texas at that time which means that Porsche knowledgeable shops are far and few (nonexistent for me within a 300 miles radius, no joke). I had never even done a filter change on a car prior to buying my boxster but I was an engineer prior to medical school and I like working with my hands. Which leads us to my second point:

2) 986forums and Pelican Parts. Remember these two sites and use them. Heck, peruse them often since something posted in the past may be useful to you in the future. I have gone from only knowing how to put gas and washer fluid in a car to doing things like brakes, rotors, suspension work, oil changes, fluid flushes, bulb changes, alternator and AOS replacements, and even learned to hardwire things like a dash cam, all from these two sites (and some google-ing). And experienced members can and will do far more things like entire engine swaps. Problems will creep up on your car, even if you get a 2009-10 boxster. The how-to guides and the members' knowledge is incredibly valuable. Especially since dealerships, while your car may have cost $10-20K, will charge you at the $60K+ level. As I mentioned before, I had garage space which was very useful for me being able to not only do my own maintenance but also fix things that prevent the car from running. This brings us to my third point:

3) If you plan on doing any of your own work, you will either need to have space or find space. Sometimes, a project may take more than one day, either due to a part that got broken or sheer frustration (I'm looking at you, alternator lol) in which case you will need the space at least overnight. You mentioned you will be at different clinic sites in (what I assume is) your 3rd and 4th years. This also means you need to be physically at the hospital or clinic, meaning you need to ensure you have alternate transport available. In medical school, I was lucky to have financed a beater car for an incredible deal so the one time I did get stranded back then I had the car towed to my apartment and could use the other car to go to work. Now that I only have the boxster, I either bum a ride from the wife (who has her own residency to attend to) or use Uber. I have been stranded by my car twice (once for the alternator giving out in the Middle of Literally Nowhere, Texas and the second time for an AOS that blew a smoke bomb all over the interstate), both of which would at the dealer have cost me $1.7k and $750 to get fixed, not even counting towing from West Texas region to Dallas (I fixed these myself for $400 and $100, respectively, not counting tools that I have collected over the years as I did different projects). Regardless, this is definitely something to keep in mind.

4) Like you, I picked up the car hundreds of miles from home. This required placing a small deposit to hold the car, finding a shop that would do the PPI that I could trust, negotiating a price, and then driving her home. Here I should note that I paid the car in cash so I was fortunate that any money I would have spent in monthly payments went straight into a checking account solely for parts and tools. Anyway, I was early in my second year and luckily the block I was on did not require attendance in class (we were fortunate that lectures at that time were also video recorded so I could speed them up to 2x and study on my own). You will also need to figure out things like this. And, if you are currently studying for Step 1, I would HIGHLY recommend putting this off until after the exam. You don't want to sacrifice a high score that could set you up for life for car shopping.

Sorry if this seems like a giant run on sentence. I'm just putting my thoughts into a semi-cohesive post. I'm almost done with a 30+ hour shift (and no, no one in the surgical world cares about resident 80hr per week limits hahaha....hah.... :'( ...). so this may come off with some grammatical errors and/or ramblings of a mad man. If you have any questions regarding shopping for the car, feel free to PM me. Good luck with school, happy hunting, and we hope to see you around on here!

I seriously have no words for you other then "thank-you and I greatly appreciate it. Reason I feel this way is because someone who I don't even know just spent so much time just for me to educate me not only on the car part of it but the medical part of it and the life part of it. Really don't know how to thank-you enough, seriously.

I really do hope to see you in person just to thank-you honestly.
As for the porsche: The more I read about it the more I think I would be focusing on fixing things & worrying about something going wrong then actually enjoying the car. This in itself is not that bad but only when you have the time for it. At this moment especially while doing rotations if I have to be worrying about all this it would seriously be a pain.

You are certainly correct about worrying about this later and focusing on my Step 1.
As your neighbor up north (Canadian med student) I will be a IMG there in the states sadly and apparently need to score above you AMG's to get a equal spot.
I really want to get into internal medicine but i need a higher score because after internal I want to do something in the cardiology department like non-invasive/invasive cardiologist or maybe even neurologist. Maybe surgery in those departments? I'm ready for the hard work but scared about my score. People keep telling me I'll need 260+ for these dreams to come true and to be honest a 260+ on step 1 which is now 238~ questions + longer questions, isn't that easy.

Going back to the car part of it...
1) I don't have enough to rent out an apartment & have a personal garage so mostly will be living as a paying guest when I get there.
2) I don't know if all my rotations will be in the same city/state. I want all of them to be green book rotations & as a IMG that's very important for me so might have to travel unless I get lucky.
3) Should I just grab a ford mustang, dodge challenger, mazda mx-5 miata, audi tt quattro, bmw z4 3.0, honda s2000, honda civic, or toyota carolla/camry for now? If you wanted to stay in the SAFE zone in terms of maintenance & wanted to be around the $10,000 mark which one would you personally go for taking into account my situation?
I would like to add that I haven't learned to drive manual yet which I want to 100% weather it be a porsche or not I'll be looking for a manual car period & want it to be fun.
4) Hook your north neighbor up with residency when your a doc

So hard to believe a person who knew as little as me about cars learned how to do so much. That is mind blowing and simply amazing, no joke.
I personally would be scared to even touch something thinking I'll do something wrong and cause more damage.

Originally Posted by husker boxster

Based on the advice of ttmed, you might want to wait until you've taken / passed your test and are then assigned a spot in the US before you buy. Something else to consider if you plan to move back to Canada with a US spec car are the requirements to get the US car into Canada full time. It can be done but my understanding is it's not as easy as driving across the border. Our Canadian members can speak to that.

So back to your question on where to buy. In general, you want to look where there's the most competition so the prices are lower. Cities like LA, SF, Houston, Miami, Dallas, and Orlando seem to have lot of Porsches for sale. Look at their Craigslists for ads. Maybe you'll be assigned somewhere relatively close to one of these cities. Also look at AutoTrader (I like them better than Cars.com b/c Cars used to have lots of fake ads, this may not be true anymore). A fake ad will have a car for an unusually ultra low price and when you contact the "owner" they'll have some story about them moving overseas, yahdah, yahdah. They want to feed on your greed of getting a great deal and you have to move fast to beat everyone else, so good judgement goes out the window. Avoid anyone who wants you to use Western Union or PayPal to pay for an entire car. Also avoid rebuilt or salvage titles. You don't need that headache.

Since you're thinking about the 987.2 model (2009-2012), you are at a bit of a disadvantage - they have the desirable non-IMS engine + Porsche built vastly fewer 987.2 cars because of the 2008 market crash. So you have a highly desirable item in vastly smaller numbers, resulting in those 987.2 cars holding their value and selling quickly when one comes up for sale. If and when you're ready to buy one, be prepared to move quickly when you find one that meets your needs. You might want to start looking now just to educate yourself on what to look for, what dictates price (miles, options, color, etc), and what's a good or bad deal. Then when you're ready to buy, you'll be able to make good, quick decisions.

You sounded a bit shocked on the prices of 987.2s. If that's a bit out of your budget, may I suggest the 987.1 (2005-2008). They have the 3rd gen IMS which fails at approx. 1% rate. There are also differences in interior (987.2 is more modern in music abilities) and automatic transmissions (987.2 has PDK vs 987.1 tiptronic), but there are many more 987.1s on the market so their price is lower. You should be able to find a nice 2006 base Boxster for around $16K. Something to consider.

JFP - would you mind cutting your pics down to 1 or none? You've made your point and this thread is hard to read because of the pics. Thx.

Some member's here are just SO HELPFUL. When I posted this thread I seriously didn't expect a person such as yourself to come in and literally read my post entirely and go step by step to give me so much detail and help me out so much instead of flaming on me for well.. being a "newbie". Thanks so much, I do truly appreciate it a-lot!

Once I buy a car there I won't be coming back to Canada with it to visit family I'll just fly back & get picked up by family and friends.

Yeah you're right, I am focusing on my exam at the moment and trying to collect all the information I can so when I'm done it and head over there I can be filled with information and make the right choice like you said. Personally though I know for a fact I literally have 0 car skills & all I know how to do is add windshield water in my car and fill the gas at the gas station so even with all the information at hand I'm honestly very very scared of buying this car because all I can think about is ... "what if i spent this much and then next month this and that happens and I have to spend another 3k because I don't know how to do it myself and don't want to take the risk to do it myself or have the time to do it myself or have the area necessary to do it myself".

I thought the 2005-2008 had the most failure rate when doing research after watching this IMS bearing video on the porsche boxster (1:05+):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lv4V232Bx8

I myself only wanted a manual transmission no matter what year porsche boxster I get.
For my situation, should I just grab a ford mustang, dodge challenger, mazda mx-5 miata, audi tt quattro, bmw z4 3.0, honda s2000, honda civic, or toyota carolla/camry for now? If you wanted to stay in the SAFE zone in terms of maintenance & wanted to be around the $10,000 mark which one would you personally go for taking into account my situation?
I would like to add that I haven't learned to drive manual yet which I want to 100% weather it be a porsche or not I'll be looking for a manual car period & want it to be fun.

I wonder how long boxster's "live" because there are so many boxsters on sale that have around 100-120k miles on them already and makes me think ... "will this last me another 100k+ miles"?

[jsceash]

Neal,
A couple of answers.
1. a 986 is a year 2004 and older. 2009 and 2010 are 987.(probably the wrong forum)
2. 2009 and 2010 have an upgraded motor the IMS doesn't apply.
3.Try Planet 9 and Rennlist forum. but if you think these guys are rough you haven't seen anything yet.
4. US buyers expect to pay a minimum of 24K to 32K non S and 32K to 40K for a S

Good luck

[Luccia at Pelican Parts]

Let's keep this thread on topic and continue to answer questions for the OP. He is here for a Boxster so let's post helpful information for his search for a Boxster.

[Neal]

Originally Posted by jdraupp

Don't forget to factor in about 2,000 a year in maintenance.

These cars are a blast and very fun to own and drive. But as I hope you're getting a feel for, this isn't a Camry that you can buy and drive 300,000 miles with only tire, brake and oil changes. German cars required continuous scheduled maintenance and the boxster specifically has a long list of interval parts that are known to fail at specific mileages. I can afford to own one because I do a lot of the maintenance myself and I only put 3,000 miles a year on mine so there is less maintenance to do. Just an oil change at the dealer will set you back 180 bucks on this car.

Being that you are a med student and and are going to be fairly broke for some time, a quality daily driver like an accord might make more sense for you. If this is a second car, then just be aware that maintenance costs of 1-2k a year are not a joke. Some years it's more some it's less. Just trying to make you aware of the quirks of porsche ownership. It can get really expensive, and the cheapest car you buy will be the most expensive car you ever own.

Should I just grab a ford mustang, dodge challenger, mazda mx-5 miata, audi tt quattro, bmw z4 3.0, honda s2000, honda civic, or toyota carolla/camry for now? If you wanted to stay in the SAFE zone in terms of maintenance & wanted to be around the $10,000 mark which one would you personally go for taking into account my situation?

[Anker]

Old Chinese proverb: When in doubt, don't!

[78F350]

Originally Posted by Neal

Should I just grab a ford mustang, dodge challenger, mazda mx-5 miata, audi tt quattro, bmw z4 3.0, honda s2000, honda civic, or toyota carolla/camry for now? If you wanted to stay in the SAFE zone in terms of maintenance & wanted to be around the $10,000 mark which one would you personally go for taking into account my situation?

For $10,000 you can get a nice 986 Boxster and have the car professionally refreshed and maintenance caught up. 1998-2000 are some of the best deals out there and I have found them to be very reliable cars if well taken care of. Having the IMS bearing replaced is good for peace of mind, as is having a good history of service. Audi TT Quattros are a great car too and the first generation is very affordable. Rather than a Corolla/Camry, how about an Infinity G35 coupe? Nothing wrong with the MX5 or Honda S2000. I was originally looking for one when I came across a 2000 Boxster S and decided to go with Porsche instead.

[BirdDog]

Sorry, I think I missed the posts where everyone wasn't doing that.

Were posts deleted or something? My internet's been down the last couple of days while Google Fiber was being installed, so I could have missed a few posts...

Originally Posted by Luccia at Pelican Parts

Let's keep this thread on topic and continue to answer questions for the OP. He is here for a Boxster so let's post helpful information for his search for a Boxster.