Under the Knife

[Nmbrsix]

Hello on the other side of the lake! The car spent some quality time over there at Chris's German after I bought it.

The car is at Tru Line. They and Omni in Kirkland are the best shops in the region. They were doing suspension work on a 996 racecar when I dropped it off...I'm not too worried about them working on my grocery getter 986.

I'd checked the sway bar end links prior to taking it into the shop; they don't have much (if any) slop in them. It really sounded like a track rod, and initially that's what I told them to look closely at. They swapped it out & drove it--no difference.

At 12+ years/nearly 70k miles, it felt like it was due for new dampers--high speed transitions weren't as crisp as they could be. I would have likely gone through all of this within the next year anyway due to that. I'm not thrilled with spending all of the $ now, but best to get it done and enjoy it to the fullest (before it gets stuffed away for Winter).

I'll replace all of the end links and swaybar bushings over the Winter as part of the other PM work I want to do (brake/PS fluid flush, cleaning the radiators, etc).

[jakeru]

Sounds like your box is going to be pretty sweet when the suspension is rebuilt. When I bought my '01 base a few months ago (with standard suspension, not the M030) I was very disappointed with the handling, for what I expected the Porsche Boxster to do. (I do have autocross racing background, so have certain, maybe high expectations ). The suspension was quite floppy and got very easily unsettled when say, trying to shift in the middle of a corner or doing any input that wasn't ever so gentle and slow. Rebuilding the front suspension made a huge improvement! Can drive the car the way I expect a Porsche to be driven now.

Unfortunately the rear shocks I had ready to installed turned out to be defective (I noticed before I installed them, luckily), so I have more rear suspension work in my future. (I now have new GOOD rear shocks - complete with shock dyno plots to prove it - ready to go, as well as new trailing arms on order, to hopefully deal with a similar rear suspension noise issue you're talking about in this thread) and need to order a few more small bits like CV joint bolts before I tackle that job.

I have heard of tru-line (are they the shop with frame straightening capabilities?). But haven't actually been there. Same with Omni. As a member of the local racing community, Fordahl motorsports (used to be in east side, but I understand they moved to Seattle near SPU now) comes to mind as being surely competent in working with lots of Porsches and especially Porsche alignments. On the Eastside, have been also impressed looking at facilities of Cantrell motorsports (plenty of high end cars in there). I tend to prefer doing my own wrenching if I can justify it. I used the local firestore to get my alignment, as they had a pretty economical "lifetime alignment" I can use as I do more the rear suspension work. (And maybe if I start autocrossing this car, I'll want to play with the alignment some.)

I plan on daily driving my boxster even through the winter time. It's my first Porsche, first convertible and am already having lots of fun with it. Best of luck with the tru-line work, and hope you enjoy the car lots afterward!

[Nmbrsix]

I like wrenching on my own cars too! Just a question of when I have time. I did a bunch of work on my old Miata, which was blissfully easy to work on.

What kind of shocks did you end up using? I looked at getting the ROW M030 setup, but I wouldn't be able to get it quickly enough. I've had very good experiences with Bilsteins in the past, and given this car will be mostly street driven (and I'd like to use it on long trips without it killing my kidneys), I figured this would be a good compromise. We'll find out tomorrow I suppose.

I'd had a great experience with Tru Line in getting my Miata set up for a mix of road driving and autocross. I highly recommend their expertise if you ever get serious about autocross/DE setup with your car.

[Nmbrsix]

Happy Friday! I finally got the car back. Per the guy at Tru Line, "You basically have a new car." Where have I heard that before...

Parts replaced:

-All 4 struts
-Strut bearings (F/R)
-Pivot bearings (F)
-Front thrust arms (chasing down the noise, didn't charge me for the part or labor)
-LR track rod (chasing down the noise, didn't charge me for the part or labor)
-LR control arm (had a loose ball joint)
-Front tires
-4 wheel alignment (duh, but wow was it out of alignment up front...and it was just done 2 years/7500mi ago)

I've only driven it about 15 miles with a little in-city and then 13mi of highway. Initial impressions:

-Steering is much smoother when stopped; I chalk that up to the new strut bearings up front
-No more noises! Hallelujah. (Apart from the damn headrest windscreens and center windscreen, argh)
-I will need more time to assess the Bilsteins once the new front tires get broken in a bit. From the short drive I've had so far, body control is MUCH improved, they are pretty busy at low speed over in-city pavement but not uncomfortable at freeway speeds with a much better sense of control. Overall this feels like about 75% of the US spec M030 car I drove (which felt a bit too harsh for comfortable in-city driving), which is a good compromise.
-Steering feel at highway speeds is much improved. Previously it felt like there was at least 3/4" of free play at dead center that made me worried the rack was bad; that's eliminated now. The car also tracks much better.

It's filthy, so if the weather holds over the weekend I'll give it some cleanup time and drive it as much as possible.