Happy New Year! I have my rear suspension rebuilt! About the only thing I did not replace was the outer CV joints. You have to replace the complete axle at $700 each! Moving on to the front. Hopefully it will be a little easier!

I saw your message and agree. The trick is not to get in over your head and take on a job you cannot complete. Fortunately, I have a good mechanic (labor rate is $95 per hour) and I hand off the jobs that I think are beyond my skill and equipment levels. I recently bought a 2005 Mercedes C230 for the days the Boxster doesn't work for me. The car needed some work, but I've been able to take care of some of it. I had to farm out some upholstery work and the "craftsman" somehow disabled the seat heater. I'm still sorting that out.

To be honest, I made myself a promise I would do as much of the work as I could because at $150 Hour I cant afford to pay someone. I am quite handy and honestly I haven't been very impressed with the "experts" ability to diagnose and fix the car and they have the "machine" to help them. If I am going to pay through the nose I expect the "experts" to do a better job than me and know more than me. I have found more knowledge trolling this and other forums and talking to enthusiasts like you!

I had a co-worker who was married to two different Navy jet fighters. (The first one passed away in an F4 crash.) We went to several parties with her and the jet pilots' mantra at the time was "No guts, no glory." I guess you need to think that way in their line of work.

Hey no guts no glory! LOL!

Mike,
I haven't replaced the CV joint. I would like to know if your technique is successful. I'm not sure this is one I would tackle myself.

Regards,

Kevin

Hi Kevin, Have you replaced inner cv joint? I have a 99 and my right inner cv joint is toast. I am considering replacing it without removing the axle. I am thinking that if I remove the bolts holding the joint to the transmission then the circlip then the joint should slide off?

No - My camera is fixed. It has a wide angle lens and it covers a big swath of territory behind the car. I'm not aware of any cameras that rotate, but I haven't done much research. I wired mine to the reverse signal wire under the driver's seat, but I don't think that makes a difference.

I'm sorry you are having so much trouble with the cluster upgrade. If you are ever passing through Virginia, bring your equipment and clusters with you and I'll work with you on it. I'm about 10 miles from I-95, so if you are traveling south for a vacation it's only a slight detour.

Hi Kevin, Me again still working on the cluster upgrade/rear spoiler switch hack/intermittent wiper hack/4 stalk hack. question is I found your posting of Double din upgrade and your rearview camera. Does your rearview camera adjust as you turn the wheel? I wired up my rearview camera power to the backup lights and that works fine. But the "aiming" does not move with the wheel does your "aiming" of the rearview camera work?

Mike,

Here's a link to Boxa.net that shows the process in more detail: How to - Upgrade to a 996 Instrument Cluster - How To - www.BoXa.net

You will probably need to register on Boxa.net (a UK site) to read it. It's been over two years since I did this work, so my memory is a little fuzzy. I do remember that when you read the code off the chip, you had to swap the bits to make them readable. I forget the steps that I followed to do this, but it was not difficult. The best advice I can give is to not make any changes to either circuit board until you are confident that you have it right. Save a copy of the code that you download from both clusters in case you need to go back to the original programming.