Arfur

Another vote for the gtechniq. I used it on all the faded black plastics 5 years ago when I got the car and I haven’t had to do it again. Car lives inside now which may help though.

We had a mk1 qashqai that would blow both headlight bulbs on the first frosty week of the year…every year, within a few days of each other. The auto headlamps would flick on and off rapidly when starting the car and that seemed to be too much shock for the filaments. Replace the bulbs and they would survive until the next year. 
I wonder if a similar thermal shock situation could have happened to you now that the cold weather is here?

Cheers. Nice to see a Kent recommendation as I need my wheel arch road rash seeing to at some point.  

996.613.114.02 ….too many sixes there

996 6613 114 02 based on my order. From memory there were 3 different 996 part numbers on the switch but it’s in the car now

Yes. Always started fine. Just annoying to drive at low speeds…most of which I had put down to me normally driving a diesel and having problems adapting to a petrol. 

I’ve got to say a quick thank you to contributors on this thread. Engine on my car has always felt strong on the move but has been strangely difficult to deal with in low speed car park type situations. Your description of the faulty clutch switch (red one) above made me wonder if there could be a fault here.  I was aware that the engine map switches when you dip the clutch so it makes a kind of sense.
As a new switch was only 20 something quid I ordered a new one and popped it in today. After a trip into town to sample the worst situations (traffic jams and car parks) the car feels much improved.  And gear changes on the move seem smoother as well. Hopefully I’m not imagining it and time will tell but at the moment I’m very pleased. 

Just to add my two penny worth. Following this thread I found a set of the bars for all of £26 on eBay and I think they made a noticeable difference. 
l’ve never been on a track but on the roads around here the car seems to be noticeably better behaved over bumps. I don’t think I can detect any difference on smooth roads but this is Kent where they like to mount all the manhole covers 2 inches below the surface and the car is far less upset by them. For the money they are definitely worthwhile. 

Not too bad, more tedious than difficult because of the need to dismantle the console and gain access to the engine via both covers. They are only held in by the bracket on the bulkhead behind the seats and the bracket on the gearbox, so the rest of the problem is threading the new cables over the engine. The gearbox bracket gave me the most issues as the old cables appeared to have welded themselves to it. In the end I removed the bracket from the gearbox (after a trip to Halfords to buy a T55 bit) so that I could separate them off the car.

So, ever since I got my 2005 987 the gearchange has been stiff. I even remember mentioning to the salesman in a half hearted attempt to get some money off. One of the first things I did to the car was strip down the console to do the gear cable adjustment and apply some lube to the mechanism. This improved it a little but it was always on the stiff side.

I've read a lot of internet threads over time where people have complained about stiff gearchange but these threads are either inconclusive or recommend gear cable adjustment.

However over the last year or so it has gone from stiff to almost unusable. It started to take so much force to leave each gear that you tended to overshoot and hit the gear opposite. So 2-3 and 3-5 changes became difficult. A-road driving where you are shuttling between 3rd and 4th was fine but anything else became a real pain. We had a magic combination of loads of slop in the change and a stiff gear change which was making it difficult to judge the changes and had caused more than a few missed gears.

I was fairly sure there wasn't a problem with the syncros because it was just as hard to leave a gear as it was to enter the next and there was no sign of crunching. The problem also seemed to get worse when hot and wasn't so bad when cold.

Fix 1 - Try and remove the slop from the gearchange

I thought the stiff change (remember I didn't know how ab-normal this was at this point) might be less of a problem if the huge amount of play in the gearchange was removed. So I purchased one of those cheap (£30!) SSK kits from ebay. Once fitted it did remove the slop from the gearchange, but it was now clear that most of the slop was elsewhere in the system and there was still loads of it. In addition I had now made the gearchange even heavier.

Fix 2 - Change the transmission oil

Lots of suggestions on the internet that incorrect oil can cause gearshift problems and no sign from my history that the oil had ever been changed. I even got the Porsche branded oil so that there would be no doubt I had the right stuff.

The old oil came out dark brown and gloopy (new stuff a straw colour and thin), so this seemed promising at first. Once filled up with the new stuff I thought things has improved a bit and I had seen a suggestion that they would continue to improve given a few miles, so I took the car for a weekend away and put 4-500 miles on it. Unfortunately by the time I got home it was clear that the gearchange was stiffer than ever and still a problem.

Fix 3- What I should have done originally. Gear cables

So the only two components left to change where the gear cables and the gearbox. Neither cheap but the gear cables were a cheaper option than a gearbox. So I bought a set of new cables. Not wanting to strip the console down any more than I have to I also found a second hand gearchange mech on ebay to replace the one I had butchered to fit the ssk.

So this weekend I spent a long day getting the old cables out and fitting the new ones. Problems where the rusty gearbox bracket had practically welded itself to the old cables (supports the idea that they had been on there for 17 years) but eventually got them out and go the new ones in.

Interestingly with both old and new cables on the bench there was only a small noticeable difference between them, which had me worrying that the expense was all for nothing.

However once I got everything back together and was able to drive the car and it is absolutely transformed. Light and easy to change now. I even drove to work (London traffic) once this week to prove the point and everything was good. Even in the hell that is the Blackwall tunnel queue during rush hour. It's still got a bit of slop, but nothing like as much as before.

So, in the end gear cables were the answer. I'm guessing that having spent years cooking on the top of the engine, they were binding under load and becoming stiff. Hope this helps anyone else who has the same issue.

If it’s any help when I replaced my front struts I found my spring compressors useless on the tapered springs the boxster has on the front. The trick I found recommended was not to assemble the struts at all.

attach your top mounts to the car. Insert the struts into the hubs, then jack the hub up into the top mount against the weight of the car.  Once one is connected to the other put the nut on the top of the strut.

As my spring project was to replace the shocks on my 2005 108k mile boxster I can probably offer some observations. 
My history suggests the shocks and top mounts were original and there were no obvious knocks or looseness. But the front shocks looked very rusty, which was part of the reason for doing the work.

Front shocks were clearly worn once removed from the car. No gas return-to-position evident and a big difference in pressure needed to compress them compared to the new bilstein b4 replacements. Test drove the car after replacing just the front and an immediate improvement in steering and general reaction to bumps. Old bump stops had almost disintegrated so these were replaced at the same time. Original top mounts and bearing looked horrible with rust but actually in good nick (replaced anyway). The shocks were a bugger to get out but now I know the trick I could probably do springs or top mounts fairly quickly.

Rear socks were in much better order with no obvious differences between old and new. Shocks and top mounts seemed to be in good condition but replaced anyway because we had got this far down the line. Bump stops had also disintegrated and replaced. 
 

in terms of other work, worth replacing the coffin arms at the same time (I’d already done mine before) as these are likely to be worn and you can get one alignment done afterwards. Indeed I think the ball joints are likely to be the reason for creaking.