986Forum Update...
 

Hello everyone. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am the current owner, founder, and CEO of Pelican Parts (http://www.pelicanparts.com), and I am excited to announce to the 986Forum community that Pelican has recently acquired the 986Forum. Who is Pelican Parts? We're a leading online community-based resource and retailer for DIY enthusiasts, and our primary focus over the past 13 years has been the Porsche and BMW marques.

As you may know, Pelican currently has the Internet's largest collection of Boxster technical articles and photos, pulled primarily from my latest book, "101 Projects for Your Porsche Boxster". BruceLee and rkwei have done a marvelous job of growing and nurturing the site. BruceLee is planning on continuing his frequent posts here. Rkewi (Richard) will be missed, but we like to think he has left the forum in good hands.

Just a little info about me - I'm a regular guy who loves to work on his cars, just like you guys. I've written quite a few how-to books on Porsches and BMWs and I started Pelican (in my garage a long time ago) to help out and assist people just like you and me. I'm a hands-on guy who works on his own cars, rebuilds his own engines, and does his own oil changes (okay, well the wife's minivan usually goes to JiffyLube). I'm on the Pelican forums all the time, posting and helping people with issues there - I love to get involved and help.

You might be thinking: "oh great, these guys think they know everything and will start making incredibly annoying and stupid changes on the forums." Let me assure you, that is not the plan. However, as you probably noticed, we upgraded servers and software last night to the latest version, and that created a few minor issues we're still working on. The forums software that was on the site was from 2005, more than six years old. The site had already been hacked quite a few times because of these security holes. In addition, the performance of the site was terrible because the software was so old. No one likes change, but in this case, it was *absolutely* necessary to update the site's software into this decade. In addition, the speed of the site should be lightning fast now, which is pretty important as well. We're not planning on integrating the 986Forum within the Pelican site, but we will be looking for ways to mix the two together in some fashion to draw upon their individual strengths (like have the search engines search both sites, etc.). Any changes will be nothing major, nothing earth-shattering, and I like to think we're smart enough to know that we need to get input and feedback from *everyone* prior to making major changes.

Finally, forum members are a very valuable asset. We know great members are the key to a great community. We're all very excited here about the 986Forum, and we hope to have your continued support as we grow the site into the future !

-Wayne

Whoa! I see no problem with this :)
Long time visitor and customer to Pelican parts :cheers:

Interesting. I'll reserve judgement until I see if this becomes a Pelican forum or remains the "open minded" forum I've watched for a while.

A regular guy with a 959...

The rat bastard! ;)

does that mean we can have links back now? :D

Give Wayne a chance...
 

I found the Pelican Parts Boxster forum prior to finding this one. I am willing to state that both forums have been extremly helpful, fun and full of great posts from people that love (and a few that don't love them quite so much) their Boxsters. I do not foresee any problems with Wayne acquiring this forum, as it likely was a good deal for both parties.

Pelican Parts has earned nothing but high marks from me on their parts pricing, delivery and customer service. Not that I haven't purchased come parts elsewhere, but I think they do a great job for the Porsche owners that don't just want to blindly go to the dealership and spend considerably more money for parts.

In short, I'd say give Wayne a chance on this one. It appears that he's already upgraded the software and speed, so how bad can that be. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks Wayne...

Pat :cool:

I for one, welcome our new overlords. Now, can I take the 959 for a spin? ;)

Welcome to the crew Wayne. Every forum has a culture and I am sure you will feel right at home here in Boxstertown. I am a very satisfied customer of Pelican Parts and fellow PCA-GPX member. :cheers:

I started out in 1995 working on my 914 in my garage in my apartment. I spent many weekends on that car (including one cutting out the rusty rear trunk by hand). I still have that car - but now it has a 240 HP 3.2L engine in it. Learned a lot about what to do and what not to do while working on cars.

As for the 959, it's in my garage right now, up on jack stands. I'm personally replacing the shocks, brake discs, and the hydro-accumulators on the suspension because they are shot. Nothing's really changed in the past 15 years except for the fact that the cars I'm wrenching on have become a bit more unusual and difficult to obtain parts for!

I'll see if I have some pics handy, here's a link to that project: http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/543408-new-959-project-replacing-suspension-accumulators.html

Hmm, I'm still having problems with attachments since the move, please stay tuned...

-Wayne

Sure, do you mean active links inside posts? I'm assuming this was turned off because of spamming problems? We have good filters on Pelican that I will be applying here - the system works very well over there.

thx,

Wayne

Hi Wayne. Love Pelican Parts and your technical bulletins. Been buying and using your website for years. Keep up the good work!

This is great news for the 986 Forum...I've been a "Pelican" for years with my 911s and now my Boxster.

Good luck Wayne and thanks!:cheers:

Wayne is a car guy. That is sufficient to the day.

Best of luck, Wayne!

:)

986forum has been on neglect for quite a while. Good thing vbulletin has been upgraded to fix the severe page load time and spammer posts.

And I think it's better that all these boxster forums get more integrated... there are already too many Porsche forums as is.

I've still seen a few spammers getting in; just today in fact...

Welcome Wayne,

does this now mean I have no longer to double post on Pelican Parts and 986 forum?
Hey, can we please also integrate the Babblers, so that I don't have to look at 3 places at the same time (no kidding)

Cheers Chris a.k.a "Hatzenbach"

Glad to have you here, Wayne. Cheers!:)

Wayne, very happy to have you running the 986Forum! A lot of us are already loyal Pelican Parts customers and hopefully more will follow.

Personally I love Pelican parts and the 101 projects book is great as well. This site, and company's like Pelican Parts, make owning a boxster more enjoyable. I think this is good news for the community. If you don't own the 101 projects book I'd look into it. It's very detailed and I've referenced in numerous times in the short time I've owned my 986.

I just installed the anti-spam filter this morning. Basically, it places all posts with URL links in them from newbie members into the moderation queue. This works great on Pelican, has cut down on 99% of spam. I also installed a spam-word filter, so posts with words like "viagra" automatically get tossed in the moderation queue and don't show up. Again, works like a charm on Pelican.

-Wayne

hi - couldn't find the bug thread so i thought that i'd post here. the site doesn't remember you if you leave it, even if you chek the 'remember me' box.

or is it just me ... ?

Do we get a discount now? :p Just Kidding (or maybe i'm not...)

I've purchased a many parts from you as well as used your technical posts and the 101 book to wrench on my Boxster and they all have been extremely helpful.

Welcome and Cheers!

Mark

Now if we can merge all my rover boards with my porsche boards I might be able to cut my time posting in half...

Great news about Pelican and good on you for working on your own 959. DIY or Die I say!

Futurama

http://www.theculturalapocalypse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/futurama-cast.png

Wlecome Wayne, are you going to integrate this board into the Boxster section of the Pelican site? Many of us are already members there too (paul in wi).

Welcome Wayne, I'm a member on your forum also, I enjoy the layout of 986forum better other then two things, links and pictures having to be clicked on (see you fixed that already!!). Things are speeder too, nice!

Does this mean you'll have time to un-crate those IMS bearings :cheers:

Glad to have you!

Great news, welcome Wayne! Any chance we can up the 70 PM limit a bit? I like to keep track of everyone I have interacted with over the years.

Be sure to log in from 986forum.com - it should remember you then. The website is moving people automatically from "www.986forum.com" to "986forum.com" in order to maintain consistency. BUT, if you log in or have cookies enabled from www.986forum.com, it won't necessarily remember you at 986forum.com

Bottomline, enable cookies for 986forum.com and you should be okay.

Thx,

Wayne

We're not 100% sure of the plans just yet. We will be integrating some of the functions together (like search engines, etc.), but the plan so far is to keep them somewhat separate at this time.

-Wayne

It took about 30-40 hours to get these forums ported and setup onto the new servers - about 10X longer than I anticipated. Stuff like this is indeed higher on the list than the IMS bearings that we have on the shelf. Soon though...

-Wayne

Done! It's now 300, which is what I think it is on Pelican. Server storage is cheap, no need to limit this so low!

Any other requests while I'm "under the hood?"

-Wayne

Howdy Wayne!!
 

Glad to see you on this sight!

I enjoy your tech forums as well as your book. I'm doing my front brakes with Pelican parts today, which is what brought me here this morning!!

Both sites are great and I could get the answers I need from either forum. I appreciate your personal responses to my questions on Pelican and your mail order parts business (and the Pelican website) is tops in my book. I have great respect for you and your company and welcome the new direction!

Brucelee and rkwei - Thanks for your efforts and dedication, I've probably saved several thousans of $$'s due to the 986forum resources. This must have been a lot of work and my hat is off to both of you!

Awesome, thanks Wayne!

Welcome Wayne!
 

Many thanks to the past owners...but very glad to have you aboard.

As a fellow entrepreneur, I admire what you have done with Pelican and I am sure you will make many improvements here...it is in our DNA and what we do.

The great thing about this forum is it inclusive and helpful to everyone from the most exotic Porsche owner to those who found their first Porsche under a tarp covered with 8 inches of snow in the county pound.

Man...the things you miss not logging in for most of the weekend. Well, welcome Wayne! Glad to have you, and so far, other than a little hiccup with my "Boxster Picture Game" thread's pictures that has since been cleared up, I'm not minding the changes to the forum so far (300 PMs, woohoo!). Pelican's saved me at least $500 just this year (my first of ownership) in parts costs, and I'm sure it'll be an even greater amount in the years to come.

I thought I was gonna be the only guy to ask about parts discounts, but looks like Appleguy beat me to it. :D (so uh, just out of curiosity...do we get one?)

If I can make one suggestion, maybe the automatic logout period can be extended by about 5 minutes?

Again, very nice to have you, and thank you for keeping this forum alive and healthy.

Hmm, I'm not sure exactly what you mean?

-Wayne

I know exactly what he means. Sometimes when replying to a question I'll search for a few links to add for clarification. If we do this and it takes more than a few minutes, 986forum drops our log in. Now we have to copy and paste everything to a clipboard, log in again, copy and paste to the forum, and complete our post. A 30 minute window to post would be helpful before being dropped out due to inactivity. :)

I have a forum request...

Six stickies per forum category is excessive and it is annoying to have to look half way down the page to find the active threads.

Can we let the stickies go and if they warrant being on top they will be there because of peoples actual interest in the threads.

Or start a special category just for all the stuff that is now stuck to the top every category.

How am I supposed to have discussions about Viagra now?