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.

You said:

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.

Did you also order a matching DME? If not you will need at least the codes for the existing DME and the new immobilizer plus at least a PST-2.

I have pulled the seats and have wedged ice cream buckets under the carpet where the hole under the seats are. I have also pried the carpet on the firewall back and have now my wife's and two daughters' hair dryers blowing under it all. It is getting much better. I am happy with it as I can tell it is getting better but my wife is not pleased.

As far as the source of the water damage, the back drains were clogged with debris, leaves, etc., and I also found the glass back window had come unlaminated from the convertible top in a three inch long section on the bottom edge of the window. I pulled the engine cover carpet and it was also wet and the foam storing a ton of water. It is now drying in my house.

I re-siliconed the window/top bottom edge and have it clamped together to fix the window leak and have cleaned out the drains.

I am confident I have the water entry issues taken care of.

B6T, see my previous post. There is no water line witness that I can see anywhere. I believe it came in from the drains/ rear window.

I did check the oil though and it looks good.

I made an appointment for Wednesday with the local dealership to program the new immobilizer and key transponders. As far as the DME, I believe codes are based on the car vin and when programming a new immobilizer the service rep has to acknowledge the vin code is correct. At that point the immobilizer is "locked" to that vin code and cannot be reprogrammed.

I found some maintenance and registration records in the car today while looking over it to make my upgrade/repair plan.

RMS, clutch, and flywheel were replaced 6k miles ago. No indication of IMS.
Trans driveshaft boots replaced around the same date.

When did these repairs take place? 7 years ago. :confused:
The PO was a 60ish year old woman as far as the registration records show and my googling her name/address listed. She had the car at least since 2008 based on the oldest registration card. She didn't drive it much it seems. The car will be much happier with me.

That will work, I thought you were trying to do this yourself. I have a PST-2 and have done this. In the past dealers would not give the owner the learning codes, now most do.

With the engine cover carpet out and drying I wanted to take a look at the engine bay. Uggh. Years of road grime, grease, oil, dust, and filth covered the engine. I couldn’t stand it so I got out my Chemical Guys Grime Reaper and got after it. I’ll do a better job later but at least now I can leave it with a somewhat good conscience that the car is not wallowing in its own filth.

https://image.ibb.co/cxn9BF/Dirty_Engine.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/ckkwrF/Grime_Reaper.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/jw9BQa/Clean_Engine.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/jmStov/70bf5f01...0bd12f7498.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/fwa2gF/DashRPM.jpg

Woohoo!

Might want to put some gas in.

Nice and low miles, wonder why it needed a clutch a few years ago from your earlier findings.

I think the PO was advised to do the clutch while an RMS was done. There were multiple service events where she was charged large amounts of money for random items where I think she was taken advantage of. The clutch not being one of them.


When I arrived at the dealership, the service manager gave me a line about how programming the immobilizer sometimes doesn’t work, something else might be wrong, etc., and that he has seen it take up to two days to get it working. While this is true it is most likely a rarity. He wanted me to leave the car with them but I told him it is on my trailer as it doesn’t run without the immobilizer working and that wasn’t possible. :rolleyes:

I ended up backing the trailer into a service bay after some discussion as it was raining (water is no longer entering) and immediately opened the Boxster driver door and removed the seat (previously unbolted) and placed it on the fender of the trailer. The old immobilizer was also already removed and I had the new immobilizer and keys sitting in the seat well.

Shortly after the service technician brought out his PST-2 and plugged in the new unit and completed the programming the car fired right up!! It ran pretty rough and died twice but stayed running after that but was still running pretty rough. The gas gauge was pretty low and I thought the rough running was a result of sitting for a period of time and having old gas. I mentioned it to the tech and he thought that could likely be the issue. The service manager only charged me for 15 minutes of labor to complete the programming as maybe he realized, based on my preparation, that I knew he was trying to snow job me in our initial conversation to be able to pad the labor for the job a little.

On the way home I filled the car up completely to dilute the old gas and I also added Sea Foam to the tank. After unloading the car I drove it for about 10 minutes and by the time I brought it back home it was running pretty well. The brakes feel awful and sound terrible though.

The Boxster now sits in my garage having been given a reprieve and a new lease on life and is eagerly awaiting its new future. It has no idea..

https://image.ibb.co/ebs9Tv/Boxster_run.jpg

You got Porsche dealer to charge you 15 minutes for something? Dude, you are a hero to everyone on here now. Excellent news that it is running decent.
As far as big, unnecessary charges go here is a story. 20+ years ago I used to drive a tow truck. I brought a Mercedes in to the local dealer and the service lot was so packed I went inside and asked where I should put the car, as a smart alec I also said "I thought Mercedes were pretty good cars so why do you guys have 100s back here for repair?" Writer replied: "they just need regular service but if we don't do a bunch of crap and tell them we have to wait on special parts from Germany they don't think their car is special enough and won't trust us unless it takes lots of time and costs lots of money, they want to tell their friends and neighbors how much special care their car requires"

I've had similar experiences.

Dealers are more willing to help when you order the fobs and immobilizer from them. Not so much when you order them from Sunset Porsche at a much lower cost.

Yeah, I had to do some talking to get him to even do it as I did not get it from him.

As a side note, I had a cool experience while there to have the immobilizer programmed that I thought you all might appreciate. A 918 sat two bays down from where we were working on my car and I got to take a nice look at it after my car was done and out and I was able to talk to another service manager and technician about it. The manager told me it had already changed hands twice in its short life. The original “owner” never took delivery of it as he sold his purchase place with Porsche to another for a cool $200k above his deposit. The second owner took delivery of it but never drove it when he sold it to a woman who ‘just had to have it as a surprise’ for her husband’s birthday. The second owner supposedly profited another $200k on this transaction. The car was absolutely stunning in its options. It was very humorous to me to have my ‘ball of yarn and bellybutton lint’ priced Boxster S next to the 918. Quite opposite ends of the price/performance spectrum though both carry the Porsche legacy.

https://image.ibb.co/iAwjVa/918_1.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/dC5NGF/918_2.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/j6FNGF/918_3.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/kYSrAa/918_4.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/mLWwbF/918_5.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/kgzhGF/918_6.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/dk503v/918_7.jpg

https://image.ibb.co/mpbjVa/918_8.jpg

P.S. - The thought of somebody who can buy a spouse a $1.4 million car as a surprise birthday gift blew my mind.

I wonder if the immobilizer is still under the drivers seat in the 918.

The car is now on jack stands in the garage and wheels, brake calipers, rotors, and brake lines from the unibody connections to calipers have been removed. Rotors went to O’reillys this evening for turning as they are the only place I know that will turn drilled rotors. The guy turning the rotors felt bad that he took so long doing them that he charged me $15 to turn them. :) They now look pretty good.

Pads, caliper seals and o-rings, and stainless braided brake lines have been ordered from Zeckhausen. LN spin on filter adapter has been sourced and 160 degree thermostat and water pump have been ordered. When I took the tires off, I saw some oil leak witness from the coil packs so I probably have some cracked spark plug tubes or leaking o-rings so I also ordered plug tubes, o-rings, and plugs from Vertex.

https://image.ibb.co/enhFmF/Dirty_Wheels.jpg
Diiiirtyyy.

https://image.ibb.co/khQqLa/Polished_wheels.jpg
Washed and polished wheels.

The calipers are very faded and look more pink than red so I also bought VHT brake primer, paint, and clear and ordered Ebay Porsche brake stickers to refurbish them.

Phew. This is fun!

Those rims look incredible, definitely my favorite! I did the same with my calipers, VHT and eBay lettering. They still look great several years later :cheers:

:cheers: I have the same wheels on my 2002 S, once a year do the same as you just did, great wheels.

I Live about two miles from Rhodes Scholars in NC. They host a monthly cars an coffee. It is a wonderful place to see vehicles like that one.

Great to see you bringing your Boxster back to life. I bought mine from a guy in NY that pretty much did nothing but change the oil, brake pads, and tires. Bought my 986 S a year ago and invested about $8k in it (wife wasn't happy :o). needed the major service done at 60k which I did. I did 90% of the repairs but new top with glass window, RMS, LN IMS, clutch, flywheel done by a Porsche shop local to me. Not sure why owners let these cars go to **** and treat them as appliances. Nice job with your car. I always have a project planned, next ones are suspension work, brake caliper refresh, maybe a coolant tank replacement.