Adey's 986 Porsche Boxster

[Adey]

hahahahaha, I'm just enjoying it currently tbh. Its odd for me, who usually chases power, to be so at home in something like this but its great as it is....... a touch more shove would be nice but you can really drive its pants off and work it on nearly all roads. No where near as fast as the Twingo in acceleration but it would pull its pants down on most tracks/back roads I'm sure, and despite its low power it has no issues getting up and above 130+. Its great as a usable daily, retro/classic fun car, and I still commute in it everyday.

As a side note I'm at 6 months of ownership now, there are potentially some things in the pipeline just waiting for them to pan out.... though I do worry I will ruin it

 

[andybond]

If you dont try it how will you know if you ruined it?

 

[Adey]

I've been offered a 1.8t engine in the future and a decent sized holset turbo, in my head it would be great with 350/400bhp (the Cayman gt4 has 414bhp... gt4 RS has just off 500) but I know it will completely change the delivery and dynamics of the car, and bar on the motorway where it'd be nuts, I'm not sure it'll be actually make it a nicer car to drive, fun yes but overall I'm not so sure. A bigger, N/A flat 6 in there would be awesome though for something that would drop in nicely id be looking at 2 to 3 times the value of the car.

 

[andybond]

Hmmmmmmm.

Thats a seriously dilemma.

I am with you on the blown 4 banger route. It will really change the dynamics of the car.

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

What about the usual Ewok Pikey Endor Special turbo/super charging the existing flat 6??

 

[Duncan Grier]

4 pot turbo lump would def up the power/pace nicely and even lose a bit of weight.......however you are moving away from the more grown up feeling and nicer noise of 6 cylinders......

As you say though more exotic engines are ££££ so tough call and imagine tuning current setup unknown and expensive route?

Store oem setup, have fun and reverse to retain investment might be sensible option to feed your tinkering needs?

What's the end goal/use?

 

[Adey]

End goal I dont have tbh. What I always want from anything I have is for it to be usable as a daily. I think I may just stick to basic tinkering and chassis upgrades. See how i feel when things fall in my lap (engine and turbo) there are a few turbo 2.5's kicking about. They have the thickest and strongest internals/liners vs the 2.7 and 3.2. A turbo conversion could be fitted in place of the stock back box and exhaust setup.

I guess with a correctly sized turbo it could deliver a few lbs of boost with increasing revs and give it a shove without feeling too much like a turbo motor. The stock ecu can be mapped well (minus boost control) and having a maf sensor, it can be placed on the turbo intake side of things so the fuelling isn't a million miles away. Would need a rear mount intercooler or charge cooler setup. hmmmmm could be done well though and still keep the flat 6 sound track.....

 

[Adey]

So this next part has taken a few months to actually get around to doing and has been a bit of a dick job. I first went under the car to start the job of swapping the manifolds and snapped a stud. I put the job on hold till i could get on a mates ramp. Pretty common issue on Boxsters. Stainless bolts into ali heads, but on the only part of the car that has no covers, sprayed with salty/dirty water and then heat cycled for 20+ years means they are pretty much the same part now.

Got onto the ramp last week and it went tits up yet again, even with Oxy and some fancy inductive heater the bolts sheared. We ended up with one manifold off and went to work on some repair work, just enough to get it home as time was dragging on. A little disheartened and beginning to think i shouldn't have started the job by this point. Got a few studs in there but left it another week.



Above is how it went and how it was left for a week.

On to todays antics. I prepped myself with some fresh hss cobolt drill bits. I went with approach that id use the original manifold as a jig for any of the snapped bolts. This worked well, 9mm drill bit to prep the snapped bolts and then followed through as best i could with a 4, 5, 6 and then a 6.8mm to give me the correct size to run a tap through. I ended up having to do this for 5 out of the 12 bolts and i have 1 left that will need to be done when i can get back on the ramp. Purely as it will involve removal of the thermostat housing and i want to have the correct kit available to pressure/vac fill the coolant system afterwards.



I'm definitely way too old and unfit for the driveway stuff these days, I'm absolutely battered this afternoon lol. I've a few joints left to nip back up but the finest chinesium equal length headers are on hopefully an upgrade on the oem log manifolds. Time to get back to the dyno and see how many more horses I have lost .......

 

[Steve Swan]

What can help sometimes is a variation on a Toolmakers button. The alignment of the parts must be good. You turn up a sort of top hat with a 4-5mm hole thru the centre and it's a snug fit in the manifold hole and 3-4 times longer than the thickness of the manifold. You have made this from Silver steel, which you can get in the web anywhere. Next you heat the little button to red heat and quench, this has hardened it so the drill cannot wander in it. Hold in place with Vicegrips and drill thru. Appreciate this information is a bit late now, but it works well for getting a nice centred true hole. A cheap set of lefthand drills from Tracy tools are also worth their weight in gold for the drilling after finding the centre. I have about a 50 % success rate in unscrewing stuck bolts with the Lefthand drills. Have fun .......

 

[andybond]

What an absolute Ballache for you Adey.

 

[Duncan Grier]

Worn out just reading the joy @Adey we are def getting too old for these battles but we'll done sticking with it and getting done

Any difference in noise? Fingers crossed for another 50bhp

 

[Adey]

yeah the noise has changed, has less of an unequal throb and sounds to me like a cross between an old gt3 and an e46 m3 (stock) has a slight rasp to it, defo feels smoother

 

[Adey]

Skip to the end of the vid for chav tastic sounds. I managed to leave the filter on my gopro and haven't actually checked anything on it for months so had loads of unusable footage. Flick the subtitles on to read my black screen waffle

 

[Adey]

not that dissimilar

 

[andybond]

Need a in engine bay pic to confirm that isnt a s54 transplant. Sounds identical!

 

[Adey]

just the noise

 

[Duncan Grier]

Much better noise!

 

[BrettM78]

Where do you find the time and the energy? Great effort though

 

[Spooky]

Hes an Ewok, they're very resourceful and have ants in their pants

 

[Adey]

Where do you find the time and the energy? Great effort though

currently i don't lol. It took months to get around to getting that sorted tbh. I also ached for 2 days afterwards

Should be on the Dyno again next week and then i need to have a think on what i want to do next....