Fire in the Boxster! - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

HamB3 · 06-21-2014, 05:07 AM

Hi,
I am brand new to this forum and to Porsche in general. I have restored many cars over the years but this is my first experience with Porsche.
A '97 Boxster with less than 50k miles became available recently that was too good a deal to turn down. The car was well maintained, but when the storage garage went to charge the battery, a fire started it looks like in Relay Panel #1. Fortunately it was put out before too much damage was done, but all of the plastic components in the area were melted.
Now I am hopeful that I can diagnose and repair all of the electrical components that were damaged and the obvious plastic components like the cowl and battery cover etc. However, after many searches on line for photos of that area without the plastic grills in place I don't believe they exist. It looks to me that everything directly above the relay panel is gone. I have found photos of the main components like the windshield washer and wiper arms, but there seems to be nothing else in the form of a panel or cover above the relay panel, separating the drivers footwell from the front trunk.
Could someone direct me to a photo or diagram that may be helpful to me?
I have included a photo showing the damage, but it is not too clear.

I would appreciate any direction someone can give.

Thank you,
HamB3

thstone · 06-21-2014, 07:14 AM

All of the factory diagrams/PN's can be found here: Porsche Boxster Parts

jsceash · 06-21-2014, 07:42 AM

I believe you have a hand full of problems and wish you luck. Did this get to the brake booster, master cylinder, clutch cylinder, and or brake ines. I looks like you could have damage to the AC filter and lines.

HamB3 · 06-21-2014, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thstone

All of the factory diagrams/PN's can be found here: Porsche Boxster Parts

That's what I was looking for. Thank you.

HamB3 · 06-21-2014, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsceash

I believe you have a hand full of problems and wish you luck. Did this get to the brake booster, master cylinder, clutch cylinder, and or brake ines. I looks like you could have damage to the AC filter and lines.

The brake system seems untouched, but I won't really know until I have it running. I'm not sure about the A/C Filter yet. It seems that the fire was put out quickly enough that only the plastic parts suffered, but I am not sure.
HamB3

mikefocke · 06-21-2014, 11:54 AM

Had a battery get so hot it melted the paint off the fender. Alfa. But my sympathy.

Look in the PET and any wreck should have the parts you need. A list of wrecking yards specializing in Porsches is here.

HamB3 · 06-21-2014, 01:12 PM

Thank you, this is what I was looking for.

rdass623 · 06-21-2014, 06:36 PM

look in the classified section of this forum, there are quite a few people who are parting out old boxsters. they would probably be a great source for the parts you are looking for, which are not in a really high demand, thus not much inspiration for the aftermarket business to reproduce...

mikeman · 06-23-2014, 10:47 AM

that looks like a giant headache... hope it was really cheap !

don't forget to check all of the wiring, as the heat travels pretty quickly down the copper and can mess up other connections, or even just melt the shielding away, which will lead to corrosion down the road.

HamB3 · 07-29-2014, 07:56 AM

I thought I would update you all on my progress to date:
I purchased a complete front harness including relay panel with relays from a 2000 Boxster. I was careful to compare the wiring in my car to the newer harness and fortunately there were only a few differences. I first cleaned up the melted plastic and ash as well as I could. Next I started cutting wires to the old relay panel, marking them as I went and also making a very detailed spreadsheet. I was lucky in that approximately 60% of the wires (there were over 150 of them) were intact from the relay or bridge point socket to a convenient place to splice the wire. Although, some of them were so badly melted that they were not traceable by color and in some cases, size. I have a new respect for Porsche engineering though, in that they use many different colors/combination of colors.
Using the wiring diagram, tracing the wires where I could and taking an educated guess in only a couple of instances, I am glad to say that I got the car running today and actually drove it down the road! I actually tried to start it last night, but it wouldn't do anything except some of the lights worked. I thought it was possibly something to do with the dreaded Immobilizer, but this morning I went through all of the fuses and found 6 that were blown. It looks more and more to me that whoever the idiot was that tried to "charge the battery" where the car was in storage, actually hooked up the charger in reverse polarity!
But it runs- Now the bad news for me:
The directionals worked for a few minutes but it sounded like the flasher was failing and then they stopped working. The power windows do not work except to move down slightly when you open the door. The fog lights do not work. I'm actually not sure if the heating blower is working unless it is that quiet. These are the only obvious things that I know of so far, but there is sure to be a few others. I guess now is the difficult part in troubleshooting the systems I need the most like the windows and directional signals. The one thing I was concerned about the most because it had a lot of damage to that wiring, was the power top, but that works seemingly like it's supposed to.
Anyone have advice on how to go about trouble shooting the windows or the directionals?

Thanks,
HamB3