A $1,600 Boxster and two projects

[78F350]

A question was asked about how to get the engine out and how high the car has to be. I just use cheap Harbor Freight jacks and jackstands. I'd love a scissor lift or QuickJack.

Here's my answer to how I did it this time:
To get the engine out, I just used jack stands on top of concrete blocks (laying on their side). The front wheels were on "Rhino ramps". For a jack, I use a "Pittsburgh Automotive 3 Ton Heavy Duty Ultra Low Profile Steel Floor Jack" from Harbor Freight for about $79.
I lowered the engine and transmission together with the jack under transmission and an "ATV Lift" under the engine. Use a couple blocks of wood for padding or to fill space.
After it's lowered on the jack, I get it off the jack onto a sheet of cardboard or plywood, then slide it out on the floor. I usually have to rotate the engine to get it past the suspension support.



I don't have an exact height. "As high as my jack can get it" is what I use. Higher is better. Always have another support in place to prevent the car from falling more than a couple inches.

A good alternative method is to drop the rear suspension with the engine and transmission. I have done that too. Here's a post with pics of that being done on Tom Stone's car: Spec Boxster Build

[78F350]

I'm still debating if I want to keep the 2.5L engine in the '01, or go ahead and swap the Audi engine into it rather than the '99. I've had two problems develop:

• When the car is driven hard, the the coolant tank over-pressurizes and vents coolant. The engine still runs in the normal temperature range, but the coolant level drops. I actually had a guy in a Mustang wave me down because he though I had a fuel leak (coolant draining out by the right rear wheel).
• I got a check engine light with codes P1128 and P1130, which from my understanding means that the O2 sensor is detecting a lean condition that cannot be compensated for.

Water punp that I removed when I first got the engine:

This engine had a failure of the water pump that put debris from the composite impeller into the cooling system. It was like that when I bought it in a cheap Boxster S and I eventually removed the engine because of it. I was hoping that a thorough flush of the engine would clear it. My theory is that a piece of debris is either causing a hot-spot in the engine making steam or keeping an air pocket in the system, which expands. My next (last?) attempt to resolve the cooling will be to replace the oil cooler.

Venturi tube removed from intake:

At first, I thought that the 1128 and 1130 DTCs were from using the intake and DME for the 2.7L engine with a 2.5L engine – too much air for the 2.5. Some reading showed that there are a variety of causes and cures for those codes, so I checked a few things. Oil cap and crank case vacuum were good. Next I looked for intake leaks. I found that the brake booster venturi line was starting to separate from the intake just before the throttle body allowing unmetered air in. I'm planning to remove the intake tubing and fix it or replace it. For the moment, I have the venturi hose and hole in the intake 'patched' with Gorilla Tape. I'll see if the codes come back. It takes about 50 miles of driving to get the codes to trigger.

I really want to get moving on the Audi swap. I don't need have the actual swap car ready to get started. For fitting the engine, I have a parts car already that I can use to develop the engine support with. For wiring, I have charts and pin-outs for most of it already worked out. This week I plan to pull the harness off of the ABZ (1998 32-valve Audi V8) and splice on harness connections from a 2001 car that I stripped. That should allow me to work on the harness in air conditioned comfort, then just plug it in when I install the engine in the car.

[78F350]

Here's some of the damage to the 2.7L engine I removed:



It looks to me like the front left (Bank 2, cylinder 4) rod broke and destroyed the piston, valves, and cylinder, or a big "D chunk" took it out. The rest of the engine looks good other than damage from debris and wear on the chain guides.

[78F350]

I thought that I had much of the wire harness work done already, but when I started looking at the details from my previous work using an '03 Audi V8 I realized that almost none of it matched the '98 harness. The 2003 uses Bosch Motronic ver. 7.1 and the 1998 uses ver. 5.4.


Here's a problem: The transmission control module connector wired into the ABZ engine harness is different than the Porsche 986 Tiptronic connector. It looks the same and plugs in, but the wiring is different. The ABZ (1998) ECU and TCM do not use CAN at all. I had expected some problems with software/firmware, but this could lead me straight to transmission Limp Mode or physical damage to the TCM or transmission.


My plan is to re-wire the TCM connector on the Audi harness to be as close to the one in a 1999 Boxster as I can make it. There are some specific connections on the 1999 Boxster diagram that aren't included in the 2001, so I'm guessing that the '99 CAN bus carries less of the load.

If I was running with a manual transmission, there would still be some quirks from the missing signals from the automatic transmission unless I chipped the ECU. Pricey, but effective. At best, running with the Tiptronic transmission, there will be some problems. My goal is to get it mostly functional and driveable even if it means using a few work-arounds to keep it out of Limp Mode.


I have two fall-back plans to keep the Boxster for the Challenge if this swap turns into a complete mess. One is to stay with the 2.5L engine and work on making the car as light as possible. The car is running decent right now and could do the Challenge -not competitively, but still fun. The other is to pull my 2003 Audi 4.2L engine out of another project, fit it into the $2,000 budget, and hope the CAN signals from that will work with the Boxster TCM and transmission – the wiring looks the same.

[78F350]

After some thought and discussion, I realized that if I try to get the Audi swap working correctly with the Tiptronic, I will probably not have the car ready for the $2,000 Challenge in October. Running the car through an autocross and drag race in 4th gear limp mode would not be fun. Someone on the GRM forum mentioned nitrous oxide on the 2.5L. The engine may not survive, but the drag race is after the autocross, so I'm going to give it a try.

Summary of the current plan: The 2001 car is going to the Challenge with the 2.5L engine and a nitrous kit for the drag race. If the engine survives, it just means that I didn't give it "all she's got". Many of the nice parts that I take off the 2001 will go onto the 1999 - head and tail lights, top, Porsche crest heated leather seats after I replace the lower leather, and whatever else looks worthy. The Challenge car will be stripped down for weight loss, cheap aero mods installed and tested, and increased front camber. Additionally, some parts will be removed and replaced with ugly scrappy parts to work the budget as needed -trading fair market value of the parts 'off' for the actual cost of parts 'on'.

I installed the oil cooler from the '98 Boxster (Free with $10 shipping - Thanks Jim) and adapter plate ($169.75 with O-rings, tax, and shipping). The upgrade a lot of people do to a Base model Boxster is to add the S model oil cooler. It's larger and more effective (why didn't Porsche just make it standard?). The '98 oil cooler is smaller than the one from the '97, so it's probably a slight downgrade.




Since the '97 engine has an air purge hose coming from the front of the engine and the newer oil cooler has a purge hose on the top, I merged the two together with a brass T ($3.89) and connected it to the coolant tank.

This car has some issues with the central locking system. The windows don't drop slightly when the doors are opened, sometimes the interior lights stay on after the doors are closed, and the key would not lock or unlock the doors.The Central Locking System Module under the driver's seat looks good and pristine. The driver's door latch mechanism was damaged/worn, so I rebuilt it. The lock mechanism in the door handle had two broken tabs that prevented it from unlocking the door. I fixed it all with parts from my stash, but the door repairs don't directly count on my budget. I will be trading the doors with stripped out doors from another car.




I've been keeping receipts and looking at prices for eBay 'Solds' to track fair market value for trades and budget recoup. It's all scattered across 2 PCs, my phone, and an external drive. I need to consolidate it all and put it in a spreadsheet before it becomes any more of a mess.