Today the mail carrier brought me two 5-Qt. jugs of Mobil 1, 10W-40 "High Mileage" Full Synthetic motor oil, so I dropped what I was doing and started preparing to change the oil. The new filter, drain plug & washer from Pelican Pts. arrived the other day , so I was eager to do my first oil change on the Boxster.
Fortunately the concrete apron in front of my garage slopes away from the house just enough, dropping about 8 inches over the 8 ft. span between the Boxster wheels center to center, so that when I back up onto the ramps the car is very nearly level.
Then it was a simple matter of laying some cardboard down, slide under with the 8 mm hex drive on the ratchet and removing the plug to drain it all into the oil pan. What a gusher! I've never owned a vehicle that holds 9 quarts of engine oil. My Silverado only holds 4.5 qts. with a filter change as I recall, with the 4.3 liter V6. I suppose this is why the recommended oil change intervals for the Boxster and other Porsches are so long ... 12K miles? I've even seen 15K miles recommended. Of course I am not ever going to let it go that far on any car of mine. But with a 9.3 quart capacity I don't see why it wouldn't be good for at least 7K miles.
Then I got under there with my new Porsche specific oil filter wrench which worked a charm, let it all drain a while longer while I cleaned up all the contact surfaces and adjacent areas, and put the new filter on with the newly cleaned filter housing with new o-ring. I did take the extra measure of filling the filter housing half full of oil before screwing it on and torqueing to 18 ft. lbs.
After refilling with 9 qts., running the engine a couple of minutes and rechecking, the dip stick showed slightly under midway between the marks, so I added maybe another pint which brought it close to the upper mark. Good enough I'd say, and followed up with a 20 mile drive and no issues. I'll check it again tomorrow.
I've seen the comments about cutting open the old filter to check for metal or other debris, so I did this and you can see the result here:
No trace of any debris @ 86,757 miles
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