AMacdonald

If you are running halogens and convert to LEDs, it's (theoretically) an automatic MOT failure, as per this, slightly blunt notice. However, swapping between LED and halogens takes about 10 minutes per side when MOT time comes and Philips Ultinons make a great upgrade. Beware of any LEDs that consist of a cluster of smaller LED chips - you need a single point source at a very closely defined part of the lamp to avoid ruining the beam pattern and making everyone coming towards you hate you even more.

Hmmm, last serviced, what, 18 years ago? Not used since then? I'd expect all sorts of things to break as soon it was driven. Not that it will be driven, of course. It'll just vanish back into someones collection.

It's definitely Triple-square (also known as Spline) and it looks like the "security" type with a hole in the middle too. The same thing is fitted to both the fill and drain plugs on my 986 5-speed. It's not very deep so make sure it's completely seated before removing, to minimise the chances of chewing the edges.

I bought a "Bergen 2024 M16 x 55mm tamper spline bit socket" from Amazon or ebay when I did mine and it worked perfectly.

And the word is Boxster. Definitely one you want to get right in these parts.

I believe the occasional puff at startup is normal. A little oil can collect in the cylinders of a flat-6 and it burns off at startup. Mine has done it for all of the last 5 and a half years.

I've always wanted a Convatable

31 minutes ago, ATM said:

You can pass an MOT with an oil leak. It isn't even an advisory. 

As long as it's not significant. If the leak doesn't form a pool more than 75mm across in 5 minutes of monitoring, it's a pass. That applies to all fluids and is cumulative so a small oil leak and water leak might total enough for a failure.

I brought mine home from a 1700 mile round trip of Local Hero shooting locations in Scotland. The old girl passed 100K on the way so I packed an AOS, couple of coil packs etc as insurance should the inevitable happen but she completed the whole trip without a single issue of any sort. Very impressive. Particularly since Google rather optimistically sent me on a C Class road up a glen at one point, bearing in mind that A-roads round there are single track with passing places.

There were lots of supercars out on the NC500 stretches we did (F458, 488, 550, Vantage, Aventador, Mclarens etc) and lots of Porsches, 930, 993, 987, 981, 718, 996, 997, 991, 992, even a 918 but oddly I didn't spot a single other 986.

On 7/12/2020 at 10:53 PM, ½cwt said:

Owning a Boxster (and many other 20+ year old cars), a route to self improvement!

Good work and by using man maths see how much money you have saved by not paying someone else to have that much fun and smug feeling as a reward.

Whoever invented the helicoil deserves a statue.

This weekend I swapped both front dampers and springs on my 986 and replaced a roof rope. I only actually needed a front spring but since it was my first time I bought a couple of complete units from Steve Strange so I could experiment with the dismantling before it mattered. When they arrived, the dampers and springs looked all-but new so I tarted them up a little, replaced the top mounts (just in case) and got them on complete. The only issues were I stripped two of the caliper bolt threads (helicoil kit is on the way) and had to take the angle grinder to one of the drop links. All done (apart from mending the calipers) and I'm pretty pleased with my unexpected manliness.

Without this forum, stripping the caliper threads and the seized drop link would have seemed like the end of the world. I love other peoples experience!

Replaced the battery. I was in tesco car park, enjoying an ice cream. Put the roof down with the engine off but as soon as I tried to start the engine it was all flashing dash warnings and alarm. I guess the load of lowering the roof unassisted was too much for the old thing (I've had the car for 4 years and never touched it so far). Luckily, Tesco is right beside Halfords so a quick walk, followed by a considerably slower stagger back with a battery and mini socket set and all was mended. The battery that was in it was under-spec as well so the car turns over better now.

Not sure if you've come across this already but you can download complete (and I mean really complete - every nut bot and washer is listed) parts catalogues for all recent models from Porsche themselves including exploded diagrams of everything. It's been an absolute godsend for me.

My 2003 2.7 is compliant, not that I'd ever contemplate driving it anywhere in london, let alone near the centre.

I got round to replacing the drivers door regulator. Climbing in and out across the passenger seat has not been a good look all week.

It went fairly swimmingly - no airbag lights or detonations - and all the bolts and trim buttons came out cleanly. I had to cut through the existing regulator cable in a couple of places to get everything apart, which was a little worrying but it all went back together smoothly and luck/diligence meant the glass was almost perfectly aligned first time. The only glitch was the anti-jam kicking in and dropping the window to half way on auto-close, but only when the door was reassembled and closed, annoyingly. A partial disassemble and 1mm slide of the glass backwards fixed that and all is now good.

https://imgur.com/a/ujZMw

Nope, still not embedding. You wouldn't know I've been an IT technical lead for 25 years, would you?

Oh and this is my first free day in 5 weeks and I haven't washed the car yet, OK?

No before photos I'm afraid. I'm from a generation that doesn't naturally take a photo of everything they see! Still, imagine a headlight lens that looks almost covered in light frost as a before. Not quite opaque but not far off either.

Now I just have to work out how to embed images.

Had a go at defogging my headlights with the Turtle Wax renovation kit. Pleasantly surprised by the results. Not as good as new but 15 year old units were never going to manage that. I even found my bonnet emergency release cable tucked into the offside lamp housing although I'm slightly at a loss to think how I could route it somewhere useful for when the inevitable eventually happens.