Which body kit, nav & headlights for upcoming 986 purchase?

[RandallNeighbour]

What you're wanting to do will probably cost you about $10k by the time you get done. What others haven't mentioned is the CF hood intakes and the suspension mods to drop the car, which are probably coilovers. Those rims alone are $1500 or more.

Pioneer makes a great nav unit and someone on this forum sells a surround for it that fits the dash beautifully and I think they have it in shiny black and flat black too.

Eightysixer, you're probably not going to listen to me or anyone else, but you're about to piss away far more than the car is worth on mods, not realizing that older boxsters require a LOT of replacement parts and have very expensive issues to sort out that first year or two of ownership unless the previous owner can hand you a 2-3 inch thick file with all the bits he's replaced on the car because they've worn out or cracked due to age or heat or both.

The 986s and 996s were the first of a new breed of car for Porsche and they decided to use lightweight plastic pieces for many of the things that were made of stainless steel or aluminum on previous cars they produced.

Now this indeed dropped weight, which is what they boasted as the reason for using so much plastic in the cars. However, it also gave them a very healthy profit margin and guaranteed LOTS of replacement part sales for many years to come.

If you buy a 986, you should budget for at least $2,000 a year for repairs and maintenance for the first two years. If you don't need it, great! However, I'd put money on the line and bet you that if you buy a 986 you will discover you need a MAF, or oxygen sensors, or a wheel bearing or two, or you'll need to replace the coolant overflow tank, or just normal maintenance items like brake pads, discs, and tires. The discs should be swapped out with every other pad replacement on average, and they should not be turned if deeply scored.

I've got $38k in a boxster worth $9,500 on a good day if I sold it to a kid without any common sense and a pocket full of cash and no dad or brother to talk him out of it. I'd caution you not to do what I did over the course of the last eight years, which is to dump enough money to buy a much nicer Porsche into an old boxster to make it look cool and actually run smoothly and not creak and squeak and billow smoke.

I'll not attempt to talk you out of buying a boxster, but I will caution you to think about the car itself for the first few years before you drop ten large to make it look more aggressive.

[Ghostrider 310]

Thank you Randall, I no longer fear having to scrap my 986 if I'm wrong about the needed repair. I'd cry if I had over a 100 in it, the car that has over 100 in it better have a prancing black stallion or at least a GT3 on it.

[Perfectlap]

If you'd a bought a newer/nicer Porsche....you'd a dumped a bunch of money into that too. All Porsches need expensive maintenance and all Porsche owners love blowing money on upgrades. Front engine Porsche, Midengine Porsche, rear engine Porsche. At least you picked the Porsche that sets the bar for its class, can't say the same about the other Porsches. I'd also say you kept your hobby to the lowest possible cost given what you could have spent fixing and upgrading a pricier Pcar. A guy with a 996 Turbo that he bought "cheap" will talk your ear off about how he could have bought a Boxster or Cayman on all the major maintenance he had to do. That's my indy mechancis words not mine. Owning a Porsche for the long haul is a question of expensive or more expensive or holy **** I could have bought a condo in Florida...

Originally Posted by RandallNeighbour

I've got $38k in a boxster worth $9,500 on a good day if I sold it to a kid without any common sense and a pocket full of cash and no dad or brother to talk him out of it. I'd caution you not to do what I did over the course of the last eight years, which is to dump enough money to buy a much nicer Porsche into an old boxster to make it look cool and actually run smoothly and not creak and squeak and billow smoke.

I'll not attempt to talk you out of buying a boxster, but I will caution you to think about the car itself for the first few years before you drop ten large to make it look more aggressive.