986forum is dead
 

this forum is dead. who killed it?

Pelican…….

moderation really pooped the bed after the sale for sure.

Might be the age of the cars and fact that so much knowledge has already been shared on the site. Newby comes in and asks a question and finds that he should have searched first.
Nothing (hardly) new under the sun here.

Heck, not even any cool cars for sale on the site either.

i actually think that is part of the moderation issue here. a few trolls moved in and yelled at all the newbs for asking questions. with a welcome like that a lot fewer new guys joined, and most of the old guys got tired of all the bull******************** and left. killed the forum.

Yep. Reason why I mostly lurk and only post when I have something to add. Surprised one of them hasn’t curmudgeoned up this thread yet. I joined my first Internet forum in 1998 and have seen guys like that try to ruin **************** ever since.

Might also be the censorship from Pelican where they block other website urls.
That's a cheeky thing to do

I still check the new posts here almost everyday, but I haven't been driving much since I started working from home, and most of the questions are some variation of things that has been asked a dozen other times. :cheers:

Time marches on….
 

The Miata forum started dying after the NC had been out a few years.

When the ND launched, the forum completely died.

All the “Fast & Furious” Miata owners grew up, got married, and had kids.

The 986 has reached “Porsche Classic” status and with that, the cars have become the bottom feeders for low income Porsche and sports car perspective owners.

For lower income folks who want a Porsche, you can choose a 944, 924, or 986.

Post Covid, the 996 and even 914’s are getting too expensive.

With the 986 just bouncing along at the bottom of the market for over a decade now, all the kids have bought them and destroyed them, and left them for dead on the “Buy here, Pay here” car lots and You Tube garages of the world.

The 986’s that are left are either basket cases, or well cared for cars that the owners don’t want to part with.

Anything in that middle area is going to end up on BAT.

So this forum is dead. There aren’t any 986’s left for lower income folks to attempt to keep running.

Not without a lot of heartache, anyway.

i get the arguments about the kids moving to facebook or reddit, or that the car has run it's cycle, but i'm on other forums for things long past their due-date and they are still active. reddit and facebook are cool but impossible to search or thread properly - works for sesame street syndrome kids and that's about it. yes the 986 is an older car, but the older it gets the more it needs fixing and folks will be looking to find out how (those who thought they were getting a cheap porsche until they tried to fix it).

really this forum should be booming, teeming with muppets asking what a deviation is, or what oil to use because the flaps doesn't sell the prosche stuff.

it's gotta be moderation issue - rennline is fascist it its moderation but still going strong so it can't be a few blocked urls - every site does that to support sponsors. i think the troglodytes killed this place.

Well…
 

….the difference here is that you have a car with a $30,000 engine replacement cost.

I can buy a NA Miata engine for $1,000.

Poor folks can’t afford to tinker with a 986 and risk a catastrophic failure that bricks the car.

On top of that Sword of Damocles, all the other parts are freaking expensive. Everything from convertible tops to coffin arms.

Bottom feeders in the market just cannot afford these cars, even if you got a 986 as a gift for free, the care and feeding is not affordable.

It’s all about the Benjamins.

I think it is partially the forum owner and partially the niche 986.

the 986 was always an entry-level porsche. that hasn't changed. same type of owner as 5 or 10 years ago. rennline and pelican going strong. and the 911 wasn't always a $100k collector car.

Well sure…
 

….but when new, a Boxster was still $40,000 to $65,000 in 2004.

I bought my 2004 Boxster S “50 Years of the 550 Spyder Edition” in 2015.

I paid $28,000.

If my engine grenades, it’s a $30,000 bill. The car isn’t worth that much.

My 986 is THE most expensive 986 they ever built.

A lot of the early 986’s are selling for less than $10,000 today.

But how many people want to buy a $10,000 Porsche knowing that they are an IMS away from a $30,000 repair?

It scares away the shade tree mechanics

Again, a large number of these cars have been abused and passed from failed owner to failed owner over the past 25 years. Years of bottom feeding have thinned the herd.

Time marches on and the forum is dead because the market for these cars has dried up.

Porsche sells about 3,000 Boxsters a year in the USA now. The entire sports car market has collapsed. The death of this forum just reflects what is happening in the car world in general.

People just don’t buy sports cars anymore. Especially convertibles.

Pile on the internet and Uber and texting and online dating instead of drive-in movies and only 8% of the population able to drive a manual transmission, et al, and here we are.

It is what it is.

Moderation here sucks. New members are having a hard time joining (I think I made a post about it in here). Mods need to approve new member's requests to join and I saw in another forum a few members talking about trying to join this forum and their requests going unanswered for months.

On top of that, a forum where you can't post links to shops and businesses other than the forum owner's is going to be lacking on info and member participation. Anytime I have a question like that I post on FB (as much as I hate their format). There are always new photos, products, builds, shops, projects, events, problems, repairs, etc. to talk about so forums don't simply die after all questions have been supposedly answered. Right now I'm rebuilding my suspension and would like to talk about Glenn Yee Motorsports' excellent strut rebuilding service but I'm pretty sure the post would get censored :mad:

I believe my original paperwork said my 01S with some special interior package was 68k when I got it in 2014. I paid 21[/B]
The whole reason I lost my interest was because of the engine and transmission. First few months of owning it, 2nd gear was completely gone. I already forgot but just to tear the trans apart was a huge bill in itself. Then the engine takes a dump 1 month after I got my title in the mail from paying it off.
No shade tree mechanic here but I legit don't want to rebuild the M96 and have trouble paying for the rebuild of the G86. I really don't want to get rid of it, and wish that my business would just take back off after the past 2-3 year BS that killed it so I could restore/rebuild mine. But that's not in the cards. Its all a money thing and not having enough.
I personally cannot stand FB but its the only decent way to communicate with the people I know now. I always will think Forums are far superior when it comes to a thing like information sharing of a vehicle. Sure you can still "search" and go back through posts on FB. But its not as easy or forward about it. Forum, as long as its active, its a easy to navigate full blown memory bank. And with how old these cars are, I bet any question I could have, possibly has been asked and is readily available for me to read people talk about it, debate it etc.

I'm a little disheartened, reading this thread. I'm "casually" back in the market for a 986. I'm shocked at the market, though.
5 or 6 years ago when I bought my first 986, it was an '03 S, 6-spd. 120kish miles, iirc. Paid under $7k. The same car today is more than double that. And there just aren't many of them out there, as there once were. This leads me back here, naturally. But I see that the traffic is far less than it used to be.

I won't do the Facebook thing for car groups. That format lends itself far too easily to the trolls, and it's not great for searching. In a forum like this one, a guy can usually read the last several posts and find a consensus, or at least somebody correcting any wrong information. Not so on fb.

Anyway. I'm back. Kinda.
At least for a bit.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

Good morning. :cheers:

I think everyone here has pretty good points. The forum will never get new blood if they can't post, or their first posts are met with criticism.

For me though I think the issue is what dghii said - the cars are played out. Options for stock customization are extremely limited, and there just aren't that many guys who are willing out even want to do serious tinkering. I can remember one of my first motivations to get involved with the forum was to learn "what else can this car do". I feel like there used to be a lot of that, not so much at all now though :(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...350da2ca5b.jpg

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

I was wondering what happened. There are more tinkerers than you think. It’s not the money in the 986 engine. It’s that it’s just iffy. We are not talking ground breaking design. The car is fantastic.

Whenever I have tried to post to any thread, i am told it is waiting moderator approval and nothing posts. This may not post either.

So... what I'm gathering... you're a low-income schmuk-bloke and a bottom feeder? Welcome, again, to the club.

No, no... he spent the $$$big bucks for a nicely hardened engine in his 2004 SE. What I get from reading his post is that we should look at swapping $1,000 NA Miata engines into our old 986s.

I guess….
 

…..I’m not being clear.

These 986’s have engines that cost $30,000 to replace.

If you bought the car for $10,000, and the engine grenades, it will cost you three times as much to repair it as it did to buy it.

This scares people away who are looking for a cheap sports car to tinker with and drive on weekends.

That’s all.

And yes, I bought a very clean, low mileage, well cared for, 2004 “50 Years of the 550 Spyder Edition” Boxster S.

I bought her in 2015 and have put 50,000 miles on her since.

I love this car.

Cheers.

Oh, no. You made yourself quite clear.

Cheers.

For me...

#1 Unappreciative noobs/one posters. They'd pop in, post a question/issue. Experienced owners like myself would go to great lengths to answer their questions and assist, but receive nothing in return. Not a "thanks". Not a "hey, that helps". Not even a reply in a lot of cases. Why waste my time? Without that, it's just us old members finding reasons to bicker. :)

#2 Pelican censorship. They soured it for me. Couldn't even share cool deals or basic links.

You hear that, Pelican? Go suck an egg, you money grubbing ***hats.
You pushed people like myself and Fred away...I doubt I'll be back much, if at all. Before last month, I hadn't checked the site in years.

RIP

Newbie perspective
 

As a relative newcomer and not-yet-owner of a 986, I'm still very appreciative of what life seems to be left here. I have had some really excellent insight into a car I'm considering buying and those who have contributed have been both positive and realistic, with no negativity that I am able to detect.

As a lay-person who is still brand new around here, I think these cars are simply mismatched between their cost to buy vs their cost to own.

I'm currently shopping for a cheap boxster, like $12k is the top of my budget, and there are a handful of cars at and under that price point near me. But of the ones I've checked out, none of the owners look like they could handle the cost of taking a 20 year old Porsche to a mechanic, independent or otherwise. If they have done their own maintenance they haven't kept records so it's hard to believe that they have kept up with the necessary care and feeding.

Beyond that, buying a cheap sports car these days, 986 or otherwise, is becoming less and less justifiable these days. The price of premium fuel around me is $4.50 and unleaded can dip as low as $3.79. If I were just shopping for a fun drop-top a miata is going to be infinitely less expensive to live with.

I think pristine examples are becoming collectors items, and thus not really driven much, and rough examples are becoming parts cars for the remaining few who are brave enough to try to work on a 986 themselves.

Again, take everything here with a grain of salt, I'm new to the forum and still shopping for my own Boxster so my experience in the space is limited to say the least.