Houston C4S's New Box!

[RandallNeighbour]

Mark is a forum member (Houston C4S) who just took delivery of his sweet, 2007 Boxster S. He just emailed me a slew of pics and asked me to post them to the forum for your viewing pleasure. I have not had the priviledge of riding in or driving this beautiful car, but here are the pictures showing the ceramic brakes, etc.

[RandallNeighbour]

Here's some more!

[RandallNeighbour]

can't leave out these...

I can't wait to hear Mark's (and yours) impression of the Porsche Sport Exhaust he ordered. I hope Porsche offers this through Tequipment, so I can add it to my car soon. It that the stock exhaust tip...or part of the PSE package?

Those calipers are huge. He did not waste any time changing the amber side markers to clears!

Looks great!

[AUDIOGUY]

It is pretty sick looking! I hope they threw in the hat for all the options he added in the car. Pass along my congrats!

[jwilson95]

Great color combo and set up of options. I just personally couldn't drop that $8k for the brakes because I don't think I'd get 8k of performance out of them in the driving that I do.

I'd probably go for 19" wheels, aluminum shifter/e-brake/console, etc.

That's why they let us build them in a million combos!

Congrats and I'd like to hear the PSE also when you get a chance.

Jeff

[Houston C4S]

Thanks, Randall, for handling the pictures for me. I am such an
igmo about that. (But I promise to learn!)

For the other commentors,

The exhaust tips are the "sport tips" available at your friendly,
but profit concious, Porsche dealer. They should fit any 987.
It's just a quick bolt on thing. I do like the way it looks better
than the trumpet style ones that came on it.

They didn't "throw in" the clear markers, but the parts guy did
pop them in on the spot.

And, yes, they did toss in the hat. (Big of them, eh?)

Okay. Now onto the subject you all have been waiting for...


PSE


With Sport Chrono, the way it gets turned on is only by selecting
the SC mode. And that's not too bad. The throttle is a bit touchier,
but no big deal. What I had to fix was that the gnomes over there
in the black forest of Europe have decided that the DME will be in
charge of its operation and that as a result of Euro noise regulations,
they will turn off (ie. make it quiet) the PSE over about 10 mph and
back on about 45-50.

And that deprives one of some really great engine noises in that
speed window. Which is one of my favorites because you haven't
gotten to a speed where the wind noise begins to cover up the
song of the exhaust.

The quick fix takes 5 minutes and consists of pulling off the vacuum
lines to the actuating valves and plugging them and securing them
out of the way. The downside is that you cannot get back to quiet
mode without getting back under there to plug them back in.

And that's not much of a downside to me.

Now, what does it sound like?

In a word -- awesome. Not as loud as the 996 I used to have and
its tone is quite a bit higher. In fact, it gets pretty shrieky at the
higher rpms. I haven't taken it much past 5,000 yet (well, maybe
6,000 that one time), so I can't tell you what it's like around redline --
yet.

Heavy throttle yields lots of intake suction noise -- I was afraid it
might suck in a small child or a deer if the throttle is really open!

Light throttle and higher rpm, though, it sounds really sweet.

I don't know about getting one through Tequipment yet, although
I would expect that you would be able to at some point. I will
comment here that there are no annoying resonance points that
seem so common in aftermarket systems.

Randall will soon lend his impressions.

I don't want to spend much freeway time, if any, until I get the
clear bra on the front -- no rock chips so far and I would like to
keep it that way.

Oh -- let me confirm one more rumor. The PCCB's do not leave
brake dust on the wheels. YIPPEE!!! And they do feel as good as
"they" say. The dealer's service manager did say, however, be
really, really careful if you change a tire/wheel as they are very
easily cracked and really really expen$ive to replace one if you
break it. (You don't want to know)

Other notes:

The standard suspension seems fine to me.

I like the colors. I had not seen Meteor Gray when I ordered
it last October and had not ever seen it paired with Cocoa
leather. But I think it works well.

There are not too many other options -- it is configured as close
to a performance spec as I could get (not that they aren't pretty
darn good as they are stock) with sport seats, sport steering
wheel and just a couple of other things.

So there you go.

Thanks for the comments and again to Randall for posting
the pictures for me.

All the best...

- Mark

[Houston C4S]

Oh -- one more thing.

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed, but the side
grills are painted to match the body color. Not expensive
to do, but I like the way they turned out.

That contrasting aluminium-y (as the Brits might say) look
just didn't do it for me.

Best,

- Mark

Mark, great write-up about the PSE, thanks! I exchanged a few e-mails with Sunset Porsche last week, and they expect a PSE kit from Porsche this summer. I hope they are correct. Don't know the price yet.

I like how the entire muffler is completely covered in your photo from the back. This is not the case in the aftermarket products from FabSpeed and others. A real no-no and deal breaker for me.

Car looks awesome!

I like how you did the "delete model designation" too!

[Houston C4S]

Delete model designation -- I think it's the only free
option in the book!!!

You would think they would put the "Boxster" and the
"S" in a package for you and leave it in the truck, but
I can report that they do not.

Oh well.

Thanks for the comments.

- Mark

[Travis]

Mark -

When are we doing the Magnolia drive again now?

Sweet looking, congrats to you.

Mark, you should really sign-off the Forum and go drive that bad-boy, and complete the brake-in period ASAP!

[eslai]

Wow, that's a pricey boxster! I like the Cayman wheels on it--hmm.. I need to find a Cayman owner looking to get rid of his stockers...

And wow, the ceramics look really good in there... *sigh*

[porsche986spyder]

Are you sure that is the "S" type? A guy posted a picture of a new "S" type that was red a week ago and it had a totally different spoiler on it. Where is the badging? Normally it looks like this.

Originally Posted by porsche986spyder

Are you sure that is the "S" type? A guy posted a picture of a new "S" type that was red a week ago and it had a totally different spoiler on it. Where is the badging? Normally it looks like this.

The red one had a Sport Design Package (code XAL $5,865). That's why it looked different.

[Houston C4S]

bmussatti is correct -- that's the Sports Design package.

It does not do anything for me, but I am sure someone will just
love it.

And yes, mine is the S. I like the relative anonymity of not
having a badge there as well as not having to get out the
brushes to get the wax and dirt out of all the letters.

I wish I knew how to properly record the exhaust note for
you all. The best I can do is to let Randall take a shot at describing
it to you after he hears it. Those gnomes in the black forest did
a great job on it.

Someone mentioned it was pricey -- it wasn't too bad, other than
the brakes. The dealer knocked $4K off the MSRP which isn't too
bad for a Boxster. I promise you can spend a LOT more than I did,
even without the PCCBs. Add some more leather and wood or carbon
fiber stuff, the nav unit, electric seats, etc. That option list is quite
long. And I didn't really put all that much on it.

So thank you all for the comments.

All the best,

- Mark

[z12358]

Mark, enjoy it!
The best color combo I've seen so far.

Z.

[kls]

Nice summary on new car - it helps everyone make decisions on options down the road. Nice choice on the side vents - I have an 2004 in which the vents match the car color, I have not liked the vents on the new models. Painting them worked great.

[Houston C4S]

Randall seriously hates silver -- but I think it's mostly
because it seems that most P-cars are silver.

He loves black, the color of his Boxster. He must also
really like washing it, because you get to do that a lot
with black cars.

So I told him to consider this Meteor Gray as "light black."

He got a good chuckle from that.

I must admit that I do like the way the side vents turned
out. The darker the color, the more the stock grills contrast.
And I didn't care for it. So I had it fixed.

It's a great week for Boxstering around here with temps in the
70's for the next 10 days, according to weather.com. Hope you
all have great Boxstering this week as well.

- Mark

[RandallNeighbour]

In my defense, let me say that I do like silver Pcar owners a lot! I just wouldn't own the color on any car make or model because it's over-used in my not-so-humble opinion. Every other car around Houston is one shade of silver or another.

It ain't easy maintaining this attitude either... silver is the racing color for Germany and I now only buy German cars.