Back In The Saddle Again!
 

8 months and 7 days later and I have my car back! I drove from NJ up to Mt. Tremblant last July 5th, for a PCA NE-NNJR HPDE at Mt. Tremblant. The next morning, as I was about to leave the hotel for the first day at the track, my car sounded like a washing machine full of rocks running with no water in it. I was lucky enough to get my car towed back to NJ by another club member who let me drive his 997 GT3 home that he had trailered up to Mt. Tremblant.

My shop performed a leakdown test on the engine before removal and disassembly and it had great results. Teardown revealed that the IMSB had failed with minimal collateral damage to the rest of the engine. The IMSB was an LN single row pro that was installed by my shop at about 42,000 miles. In earlier posts about this I may have said my car was up to 68,000 miles, which was a definite senior moment on my part, as my car had 77,000 miles at the time of IMSB failure.

After looking at used engine options, and having missed out on the RND closeout sale of rebuilt M96 engines, I decided to have my shop rebuild my engine. In addition to the usual new parts and rebuild items of bearings, gaskets, timing chains, valve job, crank polishing, etc, I needed a new timing chain paddle to replace one that broke on the flywheel end of the engine, a new oil pump due to gouging of the inner surface and a new IMS. Other new parts were a new oil cooler and new lifters as there was no way to determine if there was any debris inside. Perhaps the oil cooler could have been flushed, but a new one was less than $200.

Since I was going this far, I decided to get the LN 3.6 Nickies too. This took the bulk of the time to get my engine rebuilt, over 4 months. LN uses a plater that is in very high demand and that plater has a huge backlog of work - auto engines, motorcycle engines and snowmobile engines. So I guess they have no off season.

Other upgrades include the IMS Solution this time around, ARP rod bolts, Fabspeed headers with catalysts, a 987 airbox with a 987 MAF, a Softronics tune, low temperature thermostat and housing, a new 987 motor mount and Function First "Sport" motor mount and transmission mount stiffeners.

My car already had an underdrive pulley and a MantisSport deep sump, and those are on the new engine.

The engine has to be broken in, and even though I need to take it easy for 1,500 miles, it pulls very nicely in 6th gear at 70 mph, I can feel it has more power. The exhaust note with the headers and the rest of the stock exhaust sounds nice - a little more aggressive and deeper, but still pretty tame.

After the break-in, the car will go on the dyno to verify the tune and perhaps do some tweaking to it. It will be interesting to see what the HP and torque numbers are compared to published stock for a 2003 3.2.

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Thanks for the great update & congrats on the "new" ride! Looking forward to the updates on how the new setup works vs your prior. Bet it is great to get your car back after such a long break.

...just in time for Spring! :D

The car looks great (all the more so with the Seal Grey finish :cool:). And it sounds like she may well run even better than she looks! Keep us posted on your thoughts---especially after you get past the 1,500 mi mark!

Thanks! With what it cost I am going to be married to this car but that is ok! It’s really the perfect car for me to do a few HPDE’s and improve my driving a bit, and I enjoy doing the fixes and upgrades I’ve learned about here that are within my skill level. In the interim I got a 2019 BMW X3 M40i as my new daily driver so life has been good. It is so much higher off the ground, the steering wheel is almost twice as thick and it has nannies and warnings galore. I was afraid I might not like the Boxster any more but that’s not the case at all!

Great news, safe travels.

You’re driving the dream, my friend! Hope to see you at Tremblant sometime!

I am planning to return to the scene of the crime on July 4th, the NE-NNJR HPDE is July 5th-7th! How is your new engine install going?

Congrates, maybe a disaster is actually a disguised gift of more HP! I rember you posting about the failure.

Black sharpie that NJ EZ-PASS :)

Glad to see you didn’t scrap it! Awesome!

Is that really a thing? :) The velcro things will still be whitish though, unless I took them off and put new ones on. I see you're in Red Bank. My first 6 years I lived in a house in Lincroft that my parents had built in a development a million years ago! Too bad we had to move, I loved that house and area. Years later I drove back down to Colts Neck to purchase a Detroit Locker positraction differential for an Austin Healey 3000. I put it in my Healey for a while, but took it out as it became very squirrely. Driving straight on the highway, step on the gas or take your foot off the gas and the back end would squirm around before it settled down.


It was too nice to scrap or sell as a roller. I needed/wanted a new daily driver and didn't want to spend more on a newer Porsche, or go down to a single car for all my driving. And I want to continue participating in a few HPDE's each year, and I think this is the perfect car for me to learn how to drive on the track. I would feel more uncomfortable on the track in a newer, more valuable car and would have to buy track insurance.

lovely...and seal grey to boot :cheers:

We'll done, your car looks fantastic!.