To keep or sell, serious maintenance problems

[peterbrown77]

The selling is up to you. However, I always keep in mind a column I read in Automobile magazine a few months ago by Ezra Dyer. He posited that you can go buy a 9 year old, $60,000 car for $15,000 but when it came time to fix it - you were still dealing with a $60,000 car. It's not going to be cheap.

[husker boxster]

You don't mention what yr your Boxster is. My guess based on your list is that it's at least 10 yrs old. The items you've listed are pretty common weak points on the 986. About the only ones you haven't experienced yet are a window regulator failure and rear wheel bearings. Other than that, your list has them covered. You might be on your way to many trouble free miles now that you've replaced these items. Porsches are not Hondas when it comes to quality and reliability. They're a low volume producer of sports cars.

Four yrs ago I was kind of in your same shoes. I had purchased a CPO 01S in July 2005 and many of the items on your list also failed on my car. Some were covered by CPO, some were not. By Dec 2007 my warranty was several mo gone and I was concerned about a major expense. So I did the only logical thing and bought a brand new 2008 Boxster S. Kind of illogical if you think about it, but I did have the peace of mind of a 4 yr warranty. What I found since is the 987 has been a much better, more reliable car than my 986. The only item that has failed is the water pump and it was covered by warranty. Everything else has been 100% rock solid. And she's not a garage queen - I have 28K miles on her.

I haven't told you what to do. Only you can make that decision. Just wanted to give you some options to think about.

I have to go now and find some wood to knock on after bragging about my 987.