100% is always done by me on all my cars. Never trust anyone else with any one of them. Even good shops typically only have one or two good mechanics that actually care. No one will ever take care of your car as well as you will yourself so I do it all and occasionally consult with these forums or others when stumped on a problem or just want to get an opinion on what to look into first so that I can diagnose quicker.

I've had my Boxster serviced by dealer and an Indy here in Rochester NY. Price turned out to be about the same for both. Really like the dealer here although I think he tries to sell me things I don't need sometimes.

Flew down to Mebourn FL to buy my 996 and had the clutch and IMS done by the local dealer there. Totally different experience. Wound up using a slide hammer to pull my IMS and slipped a chain. Charged me three extra hours to fix his mistake. I'm waiting for that one to bite me in the butt. I called Porsche headquarters and complained and they sent me a $400 gift certificate.

Moral of my story, just because it's a dealership, it doesn't automatically make them any good.

I regularly buy parts from my local dealer. I also have them do my track inspections and alignments. They do a track inspection for $50. They do a non standard alignment any way I ask them. $125. I can not complain about their service or parts.

The dealership has two levels of service. Poor Boxster scum, and all other white-glove service types.

They flushed the brake fluid with wheels on and got fluid all over my freshly painted rear wheel barrels and the fronts. Made a sludge. Offered a detail of my perfectly clean car. Passed.

Boxster owners, go be poor somewhere else.....

Your dealer sucks! I had a customer last week that was getting his boxster fixed there in SLC for a lost key. They took his car apart and then refused to fix it. He was in a major bind and he needed his car fixed so he could drive home to Tennessee. They pushed his car out to the parking lot and said he needed to get it removed soon. I know there's always two sides to a story, but I can't imagine the guy I was dealing with deserved that kind of service. This isn't the only time I've heard something negative about that dealer in SLC either.

Driving down State few weeks back. 986 pulls out of P dealer. I pull along side, say nice car, (looking down from my truck) and tell him tail light out. He's instantly super pissed. Just had it inspected. How could it pass???

They really cater to rich new sales and customers. There's never a classic car in their service lot for a reason.

I bought mine with the thought I would do some, but probably not all, of my own work. For the first three years I was too busy to do much, retirement will hopefully be better. So far, I replaced the rods for the convertible top after foolishly breaking them, and just finished servicing the front brakes. Balance has been done by the dealer, and I will have them do an upcoming inspection before PCA DE in August. The dealer labor rate seems high, but parts, while expensive, aren't too bad compared to the import costs from US websites since the exchange and shipping kills the cost advantage. Plus, the parts manager told me he can drop off any parts orders I have to my house! Going forward I will probably review the tools and parts required, along with the amount of effort and degree of crawling under the car and weather (concrete can get quite cold and I'm a wimp_ before deciding.

The strangest part about this forum is how many people actually take their 15-20 year old car to the dealer or a shop and don't do the wrenching themselves. I have several "enthusiast" vehicles in that age range and on all the other forums that I belong to the only posts are about how to modify or repair the vehicle yourself and few if any people would even consider going to a shop to work on their old car. I think part of the charm of owning a car that is old but you find interesting or in my case couldn't afford when they were new, is wrenching on it yourself. It's like a "hot rod" now, not really practical and not really worth anything so you wrench yourself to make it something reasonable. Thanks to a good buy and repairs performed by me I have under $2k into my Boxster including the purchase price.
I can totally see why the dealers mentioned that seem to provide poor service to owners of these older, not worth much, cars do that. It is probably their experience that a person who has a 5-8k Boxster does not want to replace 10k worth of worn out parts. Mechanics typically work on commission, they get a percentage of every labor hour that is charged and a dealership is in the business of selling parts so as noble as they should be they still have to worry about keeping their doors open so it only makes sense to allocate your resources to the cars that will keep the lights on.

Once the warranty runs out I never take a car to the dealership unless it is for a recall. They typically aren't optimized for working on older cars and charge prices that are insane. If you aren't able to do your own work you want to find the local Porsche club and quiz people about good Indies.

BTW, so far, I've done everything myself, double-din stereo replacement, rear speaker install, backup camera install, top mechanism repair, starter AOS, serpentine belt, short shifter, HVAC display repair, seatbelt/airbag ground fault, oil changes, spark plugs, air cleaner, radiator cleaning, mirror cover replacements for visors....

The principal reason people continue to take them to the dealer is two fold: A dearth of available and/or reliable technical information, and the incredible number of "single use" special tooling required to do serious work on these cars. General maintence is not really an issue, but if you start to get into the deeper stuff, tools get real expensive very quickly.

I get that on internal motor work, most people who have no experience have no business in there anyway, but I was referring to simple straight forward jobs like brakes and clutches, water pumps etc...

It's becoming a world where less and less people want to get their hands dirty. Or should I say know how to get their hands dirty.