6 months to live build thread

[Hasbro]

Newby here. Great thread! I'm at a little under 2,500, shooting for 2,300?. It's amazing how much extra weight is on Boxsters. Street legal and keeping the ac because Georgia. Will lower windshield and make a sort of spyder/918 type roof.

[itsnotanova]

Originally Posted by 78F350

Looks good, nice buy on the wheels & tires. One issue with the current Toyota radiator set-up that I don't like is that the fan blows directly on the brake reservoir and ABS unit. I don't know if it's hot enough to really be a problem, but it worries me. I'm going to cut a section of aluminum heat shield from the piece that goes over the transmission and use that to deflect the air across and up. If that doesn't work, just mount a fan on the other side instead.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Most brake boosters in other cars live their life right above very hot exhaust manifolds. Sure cooler is better but I don't think the 180-190 air temp blowing on it will effect it.

Originally Posted by Hasbro

Newby here. Great thread! I'm at a little under 2,500, shooting for 2,300?. It's amazing how much extra weight is on Boxsters. Street legal and keeping the ac because Georgia. Will lower windshield and make a sort of spyder/918 type roof.

Thanks. Removing Interior and sound deadening pieces are where you'll get a lot of weight reduction. Even better if you go topless.

[itsnotanova]

Update on the radiator. I'm loving the new radiator/water pump. I don't think it has much more cooling capacity than the single Porsche radiator, but having another cap in the front is helpful. I can check if the waterpump is working, add coolant and bleed the system easier. I did notice that air was circulating around the radiator inside the trunk and not going through it. I bought some foam from Hobby Lobby and filled the air gaps around the radiator. I think I have my cooling issue solved. I'll know more come May.

The cooling issue has been a learning experience. Even bigger than that has been what tires to use and driving style. Everyone dictates that you need to use winter or rally tires and drift like crazy. I tried those winter tires and my times were down. I thought that maybe I needed to drift more now that I have the "correct" tires. Times were even slower! Maybe that's the case with some tracks, but where I race it seems to be wider and stickier tires work best. I've also noticed that the more the ass end swings out, the slower the car.


This past weekend I was at COTA helping some friends race in WRL. It's an endurance race with a 8 hour race on Saturday and 7 on Sunday. We finished second out of 22 both days and I think we're third out of 60+ in points for the year. We were only 10 seconds behind first on Sunday. The corvette that beat us blew it's radiator right before it crossed the finish line. One more lap and we would have gotten first and it would have also bumped us up in points to first for the year too. That's racing!


Anyway, while I was there I noticed this huge pile of tires. I believe they were left over tires from F1. I went over to look at them and noticed that about 1 out of 10 were competition racing rain tires with more than half their tread. There's still ton of life left in them. I quickly found someone who worked at COTA and asked what's the story with all the tires. He told me they were going to have to pay someone to take them away and I could have as many as I wanted. So I quickly stuffed as many as I could fit in my subaru. They were all for 18 inch wheels. I wish they were 17's but I can live with 18's. Specially when you're getting $400 tire's for free. There were a verity of widths. I grabbed 8 260mm, 2 280mm and 2 300mm wide tires. I skipped on the 320's.


Now I'm on the lookout for some 18x10or11 turbo twist

[itsnotanova]

So after a year of racing the 77,000 mile rear struts are blown. I plan on replacing them with a set off a 2001 S tiptronic. I'm hoping the stiffer spring rate will help with compression, but not be too stiff that my rear end is bouncing all over the place. Everyone I've seen, no matter the car, has had problems with too stiff a rear end. Cross my fingers this decision doesn't set me back. Seeing that I'll be taking the rear suspension apart, I decided to also reinforce the rear subframes. I've seen lots of guys break them on asphalt tracks. Most of the time it's when they go off track sideways. It's a huge problem for the 97-98.5 boxsters. I'm actually surprised I haven't broke one yet as the suspension wasn't designed to have the car landing sideways after getting lift. I took a pair and had my neighbor tig weld on plating to box in the part of the subframe that gets the most abuse.

[itsnotanova]

It looks like I've started a new fad. I had a customer come out and watched me at one race. He went back home and turned his 2.7 5 speed boxster into a rallycross car. He did ok his first time out but I haven't seen him since. He did make it to one race that I couldn't attend. I'll post some pictures of his boxster when I get some.

My friend who originally had joined in on my boxster has decided to build his own rallycross boxster. He's using a 2001 S 6 speed with 135k as his car. The first race he brought the car to, he used his the first half and mine the second. He said both cars were about the same. Mine turned and rode better but his had more power. He set the fastest time of the day with his. He brought it out this past weekend and broke a toe link on the first run. The car is a work in progress.

I also have a customer/facebook friend who saw me posting about it and decided to start rallycrossing his 924.

[itsnotanova]

I've been cheating on my boxster. I bought my wife a wrecked MK6 Golf and also bought a parts car to fix her's up. When I was done fixing up my wife's car I was left with this parts car. I was content with the boxster but I have relatives who can't drive a manual. So I decided to get the parts car race ready so people who can't drive a manual can join me. Like the Boxster, the Golf started off as goof. I gutted the car of dead weight, put some of the damaged sheet metal from my wife's car back on it, and threw on some wheels. I bought some adapters so I could use my vast collection of porsche wheels with a variety of tires. The first set I tried were those ice tires I got a few months back. They sucked on the boxster but I thought maybe they would be better on the front wheel drive Golf. Nope! They sucked on the Golf too. I was dead last on Saturday using the ice tires. For the next day I threw on those RS4's just to see if they would help. It was like night and day difference. The Golf was a beast on the dirt with those RS4's. I finished second in class and fifth out of 29 overall. That was also the first time I've ever driven a FWD car like that. On top of that, the Golf's alignment was way out of adjustment from the accident. I was impressed. The Golf can be a major contender. With that I went home and made improvements on the golf. I removed more weight, moved the battery to the back, and fixed the bent suspension pieces. I also tried making it look a little bit better by somewhat finishing out the front end. I used the rear bumper cover from a subaru and wheel liners from a dodge dakota. Yeah it's still ugly, but not as much. My second race with the golf I got first in class and second out of 28 overall. I've decided that I'll be racing the Golf at one track and the Boxster at the other. The picture below is at the first race

These are what it looks like now