mikesz

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.

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.

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

Hello

Sorry I did not see your reply.

I took off the rear speaker deck and noticed 1 speaker was torn.
So I was hoping to find drop in replacement speakers as I did not want to cut anything

Thanks

Hello MikeZ

I saw a post from you stating you upgraded your speakers with chinese drop in replacements
I have a 2001 base Boxster and the rear speakers are shot
any advice on how to find replacement speakers would be great

thanks

Mike

I contacted a member named qumulus lives in Colorado his name is steve eiche I am going to have him do the coding. I have a cluster out of a c4 yes I know gas gauge will be off but I always refill after a sunday drive anyway and I like the white guage faces. I have a cluster from a c2 cabrio with a damaged led screen that he says he can fix also. so I am getting there! car is in for the winter anyway. thanks for your help will keep you posted!

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.

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.

I sent you the file. The VIN is actually stored in the cluster, so if the seller doesn't know the VIN it doesn't matter. Let me know if you have any questions after you read the document.

If you have a friend who is a bit of an electronics expert, it may be a good idea to enlist their help.

Send me your e-mail address and I'll send you the instructions for programming the 996 cluster. The beauty of my instructions is that enable you to use a 996 cluster with damaged LCD's. The damaged clusters should be available for much less than a perfect one. I paid $150 for mine.

Here's my post on the subject: http://986forum.com/forums/general-discussions/43017-carrera-gauge-swap.html