Boxster Resurrection: 2001 Boxster S back from the Dead
 

This being my first post to the forum, I want to say this is a great community of Porsche enthusiasts with an amazing amount of collective knowledge in which all of us can share. :cool:

That said, I recently purchased a 2001 Boxster S as a project car at an insurance auction and wanted to share the journey of bringing it back from the dead. It pains me to see these cars parted out when many could be repaired by someone looking for a project. I feel these cars have souls and desire to be driven as the good Dr. wished and I hope the car returns these resurrection efforts with long lasting spirited and faithful service to myself and any subsequent owner.

The car is marked as water damaged and will not start and most electrical functions do not work other than the odometer display. Rainwater is the most likely culprit as I do not see any witness of any significant water. I am sure that the immobilizer is damaged and will need replacement and I would bet my life on the drains being plugged.

I basically bought the car for a ball of yarn and some bellybutton lint so the project risk is essentially nonexistent and funds spent will be to upgrade and renew.

Video is of the car being forked at the auction yard and being loaded on the trailer.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MrW-l6S34DE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Picture is of the car loaded on the trailer backed into my garage. Yes I have mad backing skills. My kids call me Mater.

https://image.ibb.co/mtdKtv/IMG_2811_1.jpg


Looking forward to the journey.

Welcome and congrats. Double check your links re-post please.

Best of luck with your project. Woody, aka "Itsnotanova" may be a good source for any parts you need. Looking forward to seeing more and hearing about your satisfaction from a job well done!

Great! Another one in Utah!

Keep us in the loop...

Good color and nice wheels!

Have to wonder how much damage was done to all the piping under the car by those forks....

I bought my car from an auction and it was loaded like this as well. They broke the rear track arm on the driver side but surprisingly nothing else was damaged.

The people driving these front loaders move such a large volume of vehicles that they are amazing in their careful placement of the forks. I have never had any real damage occurring on a car being forked at an auction other than minor scratching of various items. However, I tend to buy higher end cars in the auction and they might take more care in handling them.

I'm going out to take the seat out. I have a pretty good idea what I will find.

I'll second that! Have fun and keep us updated :cheers:

https://image.ibb.co/k9UF0a/Immobilizer.jpg

Hmmm, I think this might be bad. What do you all think?

NM - Duplicate

I love this thread already, I love buying a car for a ball of yarn. I am at about $1500 total into my 66k mile Boxster that I enjoyed driving all year last year. I used to work at Copart a long long time ago and bought stuff like that all the time. Finding an S for a steal, well let's just say I am envious.
I "stole" a Mustang convertible last week, guy put aluminum heads, Trick flow intake, 24# injectors and a whole bunch of other parts on it and couldn't get anything electrical to work so I bought it for pennies on what he spent on just the parts and you should have seen his jaw drop when I started it and drove it home after handing over the cash (he forgot to ground the engine back to the body after replacing the heads and yes I did burn rubber on his street as I was leaving)

I agree. Love these types of threads. I'm subscribed! And btw this post is hilarious.

Is this car on a salvage title??

Have fun!!

The car has been marked as having water damage and Utah will brand the title at registration as being rebuilt/restored.

So, after removing the seat and immobilizer last night and opening the immobilizer and seeing the fried board and components, I decided that I would I get out my trusty Power Probe III circuit tester and a spare 12v power source this evening . With the chassis circuit diagram in hand to read to determine the correct immobilizer plug output pin on which to connect my Power Probe and supply the pin with the correct signal (either power or ground), I was successful in actuating all controllable units. The door locks, windows, convertible top, frunk lid, trunk lid, all open/close/lock/unlock and I now have a battery charger on the car battery. :)

The carpet/foam under the seats/seatbacks are wet and I have now placed hairdryers between the carpet and the floorpan to dry them out. The foam under the carpet is extremely dense and is holding a lot of water. I have squeezed the foam multiple times and scooped out the water collecting in the floor pan and I probably got half an ice cream bucket out of the driver side pan. It might take a few days to completely dry out the carpet which is fine as the new immobilizer and two key transponders (I will reuse the two cut keys that were with the car) I just ordered will not be here until early next week.

As a side note, I highly recommend any car enthusiast having a Power Probe in their tool arsenal. Using one is invaluable to me in testing circuits to find where the failure points are. Before I had a Power Probe I would routinely use the ‘shotgun approach’ and change out what I thought was the bad part only to find out it was something upstream/downstream in the circuit from the part I changed out. Sometimes the last part changed was the culprit. The Power Probe has paid for itself numerous times in precluding the purchase of electrical parts that are not returnable after installation.

Tomorrow I will inspect the chassis drains and I guarantee some/all are plugged.

Good to see you are trying to revive a Boxster S. Good luck, many will be watching

How high up was the water line?

Did any get into the engine?

I'd recommend taking the carpet out and letting it air dry out of direct sunlight for a week. That's the only way I've had luck drying carpet out. My car was also a flood damaged IAAI purchase. It sat for 5 hot Texas summer months before I had a chance to pull the carpet and it still had tons of water in the insulation after all that time. Check your drain holes also because 90% of all flood damaged boxsters are caused by clogged drain holes or a hole in the top/window.