Buying a Used 986 Boxster

[Rob175]

As I've written in other posts.....my 20 yr old (1998) Boxster (beautiful) with 85,000 summer driving miles has only needed a new water pump and coolant tank in the 16 years I've owned it. With so very little work needed, I feel fine with spending the money with my "indy" shop, especially since I have no desire, place or expertise wrenching on it myself. So in those 16 years I've spent an average of about $130 per year (other than oil/filter changes)...........very very reasonable for such a fun and beautiful car.

[Russdawg1]

Originally Posted by Rob175

As I've written in other posts.....my 20 yr old (1998) Boxster (beautiful) with 85,000 summer driving miles has only needed a new water pump and coolant tank in the 16 years I've owned it. With so very little work needed, I feel fine with spending the money with my "indy" shop, especially since I have no desire, place or expertise wrenching on it myself. So in those 16 years I've spent an average of about $130 per year (other than oil/filter changes)...........very very reasonable for such a fun and beautiful car.

Thank you for your input! I do feel that sometimes the problems are blown out of proportion to how common they are. There are clearly plenty of happy owners with little or no problems!

[Nine8Six]

Lots of good FUD posts recently!

Fwiw, I bought this roadster for having fun. Didn't bought it to 'worry' about what could go wrong. You know, there are more or less 30k unique parts on this car and each and every one of them are a subject to fail a way or another. That is a whole lot of worrying, in case you are into that fear thingy

RE 'cost' of maintenance; personally I've spent on average $123,986 annually (lol). Nothing catastrophically failed mechanically (apart from the AOS). Those cost are only for fun mods.

Good luck with your upcoming Boxster

[CoBeerToad]

Don't forget about suspension. I don't know if everybody else replaces everything at 100k or not, but I did. If it is approaching or past 100k miles, you might want to check if the suspension was replaced or factor that in. Suspension is not my cup o' tea so I had somebody else do it and it set me back a tidy sum. I believe the parts alone were about $3500, but that was many beers ago, so I could be wrong.

I wish you luck on your search. I bought my '97 on accident and didn't do any research prior. Got lucky and we're still mostly best friends 8 1/2 years and 37,000 miles later.

[Russdawg1]

Originally Posted by Nine8Six

Lots of good FUD posts recently!



Fwiw, I bought this roadster for having fun. Didn't bought it to 'worry' about what could go wrong. You know, there are more or less 30k unique parts on this car and each and every one of them are a subject to fail a way or another. That is a whole lot of worrying, in case you are into that fear thingy



RE 'cost' of maintenance; personally I've spent on average $123,986 annually (lol). Nothing catastrophically failed mechanically (apart from the AOS). Those cost are only for fun mods.



Good luck with your upcoming Boxster

Having fun is definitely my goal!

Originally Posted by CoBeerToad

Don't forget about suspension. I don't know if everybody else replaces everything at 100k or not, but I did. If it is approaching or past 100k miles, you might want to check if the suspension was replaced or factor that in. Suspension is not my cup o' tea so I had somebody else do it and it set me back a tidy sum. I believe the parts alone were about $3500, but that was many beers ago, so I could be wrong.



I wish you luck on your search. I bought my '97 on accident and didn't do any research prior. Got lucky and we're still mostly best friends 8 1/2 years and 37,000 miles later.

Suspension. Got it. One of the ones I’m looking at had the suspension replaced at 100k or so. Guess that’s quite a plus. He also replaced the plastic window with a glass one and new top.