Routine Preventative Maintenance
 

I just recently purchased a 02 Boxster with 27k miles in excellent condition. I am hoping to keep it in good condition for a long life. I am curious what kind of preventative maintenance I should watch out for and any known issues with the car. I am aware of the IMS issue and do watch that when I change my oil. Also what are standard times to bring the car in for checks with the dealer.

Any information would be great! I've already very much enjoyed reading through post on here for numerous amounts of information regarding my car.

It's really up to you, but on my short list would be the serpentine belt and all filters including an oil change. If you want to keep going, replace the gas and coolant expansion tank caps. Not satisfied? Flush the brake fluid. Still game? Replace the water pump, thermostat and coolant. Oh yeah - relocate the trunk emergency cable. Like I said, it's really up to your appetite and wallet.

Might be a good idea to do some searches on the forum for your questions before asking them
They have all probably been answered many times.
I'm not trying to be an ass, but you really need to do a little searching first. You will learn much more that way, than just asking without a search.
You will find most here are more than happy to help on just about anything. just do a little work first

As far as dealer service, you might be better off finding a good independent shop. it will save you a bunch of $$

Do a google search for maintenance schedule, you should be able to download it from several places.

A good question to post might be who is a good indy shop in your area. Texas is a fairly large area, so you need to at least mention the city

Welcome to the forum. Love to see some pics of the car. 30k coming up is minor service with filter changes and 40k is spark plugs etc etc... Change the oil every 5k miles is what the pros say around here. Now post some pics. :D

Drive it really, really fast. Every day.

As for maintenance, just follow the recommended schedule but change oil very 5K miles.

And then drive really, really fast again.

Drive it. Its built to be driven.

27k. I wish.

Welcome aboard.

At 27k your car is hardly broken in! Drive it and drive it some more. There isn't much else out there that is near as fun to drive, especially with the top down.

DRIVE IT!

keep it under 3-4k until the oil is warmed up, about 10 min of driving, don't just let it idle
Then make sure it gets some 5-7k revs at least a little
find yourself a nice back road with some twisties and have fun

Join PCA and hopefully your local chapter will have a Performance Driving School. They are well worth the time and the few $$ they cost. You will be amazed at the performance and capabilities of the car

Drive it
 

The Porsche club DE. Driver Education and CCC
Car Control Clinic. Is well worth the price of membership.

The cost of the classes with the Porsche Club
Is the cheapest vs the local track in the Pittsburgh
Area. Is also cheaper than the SCCA

The car will amaze you. You will learn so
Much you will not believe it. On top of it
You will be having a ball.

Good Luck,

Jinx:dance:

+1 What Jinx said!!!

27K ? Sounds like someone rolled it back on you - I hope you did your research on the car before buying it.

I just sold an 03 with 19,000 miles. The car was in new shape. They do exist. I also sold my 02 with 37,000 miles.

I don't get why so many people buy these cars and then don't drive them? They aren't an investment! Have some fun, drive them.

Good point Giller - I have a 2001 and I have over 80,000. Being in Canada I can only drive it during the summer months on top of that....

I was in Ottawa a few weeks back (without my Porsche, sadly, not enough seats) and my wife and I saw quite a few Porsche's out and about. Great city to cruise around in. Was funny - I kept running into the same Porsche! On the Parkway, downtown Ottawa and then when having dinner in Kanata!

Giller - nice! Glad you had a good time here, the Boxster members here are small so most of us know each other or at least see one another over and over again. I'm happy I bought the car with the Orient Red for that 2001 year as I have not seen another one in this city the same which i like. I'm looking to upgrade the sterio systeam, any suggestions?

I've only had mine for a month now and priorities were getting it 100% mechanically sound. I've got the upgraded Bose system with sub and speakers all around, so it's not bad except I'm back to using CDs! Want to get a nice simple deck with USB. Take a look at crutchfield.ca I've been talking to them and they are very well versed in what we need to do. Lots of members recommended them to me.

Ok cool. I too have that same upgraded system but been using CDs - I'd like to have usb or bluetooth or a harddrive etc,. I'll take a look...

Thanks for all the input!

For the 3 months Ive had the car it has been amazing and I look forward to a long time with it. The car is my daily driver which puts the miles on it but there's no substitute for driving top down on daily commutes and hearing that beautiful flat six behind your head. :)
http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01...1408644435.jpg
http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01...1408644483.jpg

I've got a failure here with 14,139 miles on it. Yes, they do exist, last year I saw a 986 with 4K miles on it.

Curious - what's the highest you've seen with a failure? Rumours abound that if you've gone 12 years and over 100K km's - the odds are way way low of a failure.

Thoughts?

That's a great question

After reading the many many posts on this subject, I bet Mr Raby does not give us an answer as it appears to be in his best interests to emphasize the worst.
Is he an expert on the M96, without a doubt, certainly one of the top in the world, maybe #1. Still it seams that its all about failures, not the vast majority that don't fail and never will fail.

I would think that he does have the data on what will cause failures and what PM most likely will prevent failure (other than replacement)

nice car.

my tip, keep on eye on your needles. Make a mental note of how long it takes your coolant to point to 12 o'clock. It will take your oil about twice that to come up to temp. Don't rev the engine high before that.

Also, check your coolant level before you get in the car. Try lighting the tank with an LED flashlight behind the tank. Your coolant is should all one color, preferably pink which is the factory flavor. With that kind of low mileage the coolant tank may be brittle at this point. And make sure you have the most recent coolant cap from 2004. Replace your oil cap while you're at it. Over time these caps loosen up and can't hold the minimum seal required. And use a decent oil, you bought a Porsche not an old truck. I switched from Castrol Edge 5-40 to Motul 8100 Xcess 5-40. It's about twice the cost but the higher protection is worth it.

you've got five posts into this forum and you want to start an argument already?

One thing you should know about this forum is that we steer clear of pissing contests. In fact, it may be the only Porsche forum I've been to where there isn't a daily drama.

While I may not have many posts, that does not mean I have not read a lot of the threads.

I'm not trying to start an argument at all. I'm just calling them as I see them.
The fact is, he has an extreme amount of knowledge on the M96 and I just can't believe that all is bad with the engine. Porsche has shipped 100's of thousands of them in various forms and they all will self destruct?

I am just asking a question that I guess too many are afraid to ask.

He is an expert, but IMHO, he almost always see's the glass as half empty and focuses on fear and and destruction. Lets fact facts, he does profit from repairing and building motors. I'm not saying that is a bad thing nor is he not entitled to profit from his knowledge and research. Very much the contrary.

I'm not calling your familiarity into question simply your desire to steer towards controversy already. The topics you raise have been discussed many times with predictably heated responses.

Don't punch the gift horse in the mouth. By your own admission JR is an expert on our engines why don't you just take his posts for what they're worth.

Which is why i sold them :). Now I have a 996 daily driver!

I agree...EVERYONE of these engines will not crater. I thought I heard numbers like 1%, to 5%? depending upon the year and engine...as an engineer...I love finding the REAL relationship of data associated with engine failure...I have the utmost respect for Jake. So, I'm not pissing with him...I'd love to know for real the results of a root cause analysis. :)

We discussed this a couple times here and I even posted, years ago, some of the production numbers from Porsche for the Boxster and we "guesstimated" the number of failures. Given the numbers, in the 100s of 1000s, the actual percentage of cars with the IMS failure is certainly low. Sure many of the dealers and indies I talk to have seen the issue but again, in very low numbers compared to the total number of cars produced. From the top of my head around 160,000 986s were produced. Certainly less than 2% had IMS issues.
The lawsuit/settlement with PCNA will probably show way less claims than that.
I can bet Jake did not work on more than 3,200 engines with IMS failures. :D

Keep in mind people normally come to forums to discuss problems, and rarely to say how great they had their cars running for 10 years without a single issue.

Jake is indeed a great guy, top notch mechanic/inventor and an authority on M96 engines. One of my buddies attended his class on the engine and was extremely pleased and impressed. That comes from someone that was a Porsche Master mechanic for many years and left to open his own shop.

CR

I've seen some really stupid posting by folks who have been on here as a result of their lack of common sense and mechanical ability. At least this guy is asking good, valid questions. :)

Fair comment, and Jake does provide information not available many other places. Maybe its his no BS manner

Exactly!

Yes, and as I said before, he may even be the #1 expert

Also, its not just 986 engines, it is some 996 engines as well, so the number of M96's is higher

I have only changed the oil once in the car since i purchased it and used Mobil 1 0W-40 as the sticker on the inside of the trunk showed. You mentioned a different oil Motul (ive not familier with this brand) should i look at substituting something for the Mobil?

I think there's a way of raising the issue of aggregate failures vs. anecdotal, or whatever, without calling into question the motivate of an expert on the actual matter at hand.

From where I stand questioning motive seems to show a lack of perspective. Even if failures are 1% (at this stage -- most of this engine fleet are not nearly into high mileage territory since this is not a primary vehicle type car) and you're entire profession is built on this 1% then obviously you're going to see the fatal flawes that are coming down the pike well before us arm chair guys. These engines are performance oriented but they're not race engines. Which means we get all the bad of the cost-cutting internally and inherent durability weakness rolled into one out-of-warranty, specialized labor requiring proposition. Don't fool yourself into a false state of confidence simply because a high % of engines didn't crap out early in their odometers.

I'd be curious to see how how our M96 fairs on reliability vs other high performance motors from Porsche as well as maybe BMW

I do think many are primary/DD. In all the reading I have done, it does seem that cars that are driven often and harder have fewer problems.

Jake, do you have any empirical data you can share? On a tangent, you have mentioned many modes of failure, I for one am interested in what that list would be, or do we have to eagerly wait for your book?

That would be an interesting challenge - but how to measure reliability? Is it simply the fact it starts every time, or is it more related to cost over time or how many times it has to visit the shop/worked on annually? Tough call.

I for one did a lot of research before buying my Box and the one element that did keep popping up in almost everything I read was 'reliability'. These cars, whether new or 12 years old are still considered to be some of the most reliable, period.

Besides, for all this IMS talk - it still could be worse. How many GM cars have they recalled in the past few years? And how many died before they did the recall? So far as I know - no one died of an IMS failure.

I agree.

I believe that if you "maintain" the Boxster properly, you may not have to "service" it

Lets not forget the Toyota Prius debacle or Ford Explorer rollovers

but it seems that German cars in general require (as opposed to recommend) that maintenance be kept up dutifully. Ditto for Brittish cars.

Makes me wonder if putting off the expensive maintenance or doing improperly doesn't play a big hand in all of these engine problems. Wereas a $20 jiffy lube, among other inexpensive maintenance items on an American or Japanese car, would prolong durability.

Mine is a daily driver. I get annoyed when I have to drive my backup Honda Civic to work. Even though the Honda is a LOT easier to drive with the automatic and great gas mileage just under 40, BUT, it reminds me how much fun the Boxster is to drive...and my Box gets around 30mpg commuting. And a few head turns every trip. :)

As a former owner of an 88 944S I can tell you this. The maintenance cost on engine work is nothing compared to the twin cam 16v. The #1 maintenance work is what is called belts and rollers and pads and tube. This can easily be the same cost or more than the IMS re and re. This also has to be done,every 20 to 30 kms even more if you track the car a lot. My car had 200 kms on it when I sold it. You can do the math.
So ,as a Boxster owner who just had a LN installed at 133 kms and only having to do it once. Makes me a happy guy.:dance: