Help please Porsche boxster

[ayellowbusa]

I have only recently purchased a Porsche Boxster 1998 2.5 TipTronic of eBay 70 odd thousand miles with full service history, with the description repairs needed
Apparently he had purchased the car with the head gasket gone and all the repairs were carried out inc new gearbox fluids and filter, new radiator, water pump, at a Porsche garage to the tune of £5391.10 on the6th June 2017, I have the receipt here, within the receipt it states that the car does not start in park only drive and the gearbox switch unit and link rods stiff
The seller dis state that it only started in drive and that was a problem with losing coolant he suggested the header tank which apparently are prone to deteriorating and suggested it should be recovered until the water problems were found and rectified
I drove the car and it drove with no apparent problems
Upon further inspection I noticed that the rear floor well was wet coming from the header tank, I stripped out the carpet and the floor was wet, topped it up and ran I no problems until you revved it a bit, I had a pressure gauge in the tank and it rose every time you revved
After being on several forums I read the best way to test the fans were to start the car and put the air conditioning on and both fans should kick in, there was nothing, I thought I had some direction to the problem
I went to start it but had great difficulty getting it out of park to enable me to start it, I had to apply reasonable force to disengage, started it in neutral, then low and behold there was no drive whatsoever in any gear
I jacked up the rear of the car and put it on axle stands to check for broken cable or linkage oiled all moving parts and cables, still nothing, ( the problems with the fans now seemed insignificant to the new problem),
I removed the linkages and made sure they were all free, removed the centre consul to check the linkages there
The problem I had was I could not then remove the key from the ignition and had to disconnect the battery
With the cable of shifter it freely goes into park but does not read this position on the dash display (all others are displayed), when you manually activate the cable from the underside there are five distinct positions it clicks into, but only park reverse neutral and drive on shifter (4 positions)

I am now totally at my wits end getting deeper and deeper with each move
There was no pre warning , noses, clunks etc, I just stopped driving after being reversed onto my drive
I don’t know where to go next
Sell it the way it is and cut my losses
Or get it recovered to an automatic gearbox specialist
Or seek advice from anyone that can help me on this forum

Doug

[Brian in Tucson]

The coolant tank is relatively cheap ($50) in the US aftermarket (Ama zon) And difficult but doable (the hose clamps are real bastidges.) You can pull the carpeting out and hose the coolant out of it and the trunk with a garden hose.

"Or get it recovered to an automatic gearbox specialist " I guess that's brit speak for get it towed. Yes that's a possibility. Or have it towed to an indy Porsche shop--usually they are a "European Motor Werk" or something like that. Have the car evaluated and diagnosed. If you are going to have to pay to have its ills corrected, pay close attention to Klause or Horst when they tell you what's broke and what it's gonna take to fix. My particular indy guy (Jim) advise me that my 01 wasn't economical to try to fix. For me, a college educated home mechanic, those are fightin' words!

The problems with the Tiptronic should be able to be sorted by a competent mechanic that knows Porsches. It sounds like all the probs are related to the shift controller--misaligned cables, position sensors, etc. Shifting of rev, neutral, and forward are all mechanical, manual shifting of gears are all electronic--either in the shifter or on the steering wheel paddle shifters.

Were it me, I'd keep with it and sort it all out. You might not be that far from getting it fixed-tho other things will like raise the head.

I don't know what you paid for this car, but it sounds like you paid too much. If you cut your losses, you'll probably get penses to the pound for it either from a breaker or a buyer.