Transformation #2 - The Seats

The very first time I took a car out on a track I quickly realized that the seats I had found so comfortable and accomodating during my commute (aka the "daily drive") were completely unsuitable for track duty. I was sliding all over the place - yes, it was taking most of my effort just to keep my ass behind the wheel!

While some cars have seriously decent OEM seats (Nick's GT3, for example), the Boxster was equipped with flat, tired, worn-out, pieces of... junk. They were a mess. Replacing the seats would be the next project.

Racing seats are purchased in much the same manner as you get shoes. You go to a race shop and you sit your derriere in seats of various widths. Once you butt is snug, your back is comfortable, and your wallet can stomach it... you buy a seat. Wait, you buy two seats. Unlike shoes, seats are not sold in pairs. Ouch.

We knew we wanted 6-point harnesses, so our seats had to have all of the proper holes in them - no big deal. We found two very nice "Momo" fiberglass seats that were on close-out for about $400 each. Sold! Most seats don't bolt directly into the "rails" (the metal sliders on the floor). You need to buy those too (add about $100 per side). This is painful.

Sitting in my garage, I decided to pull the passenger side seat first. I didn't know how long it would take (and I knew I needed hardware), so I would do all my "learning" on that one. With socket wrench in hand, and a special star-type socket set (thank you Sears) I made quick work of the OEM bolts. The seat was loose, but it was held in by the wires from the power cords (power seats), and the seat belts. I cut the wires with wire cutters, and unbolted the seat belt from the "B pillar" (the pillar behind the driver and passenger). The seat was heavy, so I dragged it out of my car onto the floor of the garage. My painter just happened to be there painting doors inside my house, so I gave him the seat (so, if you ever see a mid-80's Toyota pick-up with a Porsche Boxster seat...).

Seats (and rails) don't have instructions. Dig back deep into your memory for your long-lost "erector set" skills - you will need them at this point. After about 60 minutes of "laying things out" I headed over to Home Depot for some hardware. I purchased special grade bolts (read all about that stuff here), and I started putting everything together. Do not tighten anything until you have all of the bolts in their proper places - much easier, isn't it? I found it was easiest to assemble and mount the seat rail, and then mount the seat into the car. As they say, your experience may vary.

Remembering the female recepticle of the seat belt was bolted to the OEM seat, I ran out to the painter's truck and removed it. Whew, that was close. Belt receptible in hand, I re-mounted the "street" belts to work with the new seat (remembering to thread them through the lap harness hole). It was done!

Little did I know that this was the beginning of my seat nightmare...

- Mike

Project #4 - Boxster Oil Change

With the brakes out of the way (yeah, they really were pretty bad), it was time to change the oil. The Boxster doesn't have a true "dry sump" engine like my 930 (think of a "dry sump" engine as having a separate oil tank that feeds the engine). This means you just have one drain plug (bottom of the oil pan) and the filter to deal with. The filter itself is a paper element (cartridge) that is inside a plastic oil filter housing. Buy the OEM filter, as they aren't expensive. You'll get a new filter element, and an O-ring for the plastic housing. We use full-synthetic Mobile 1 15W-50 oil, as we race the car. The car seems to like it, and our first oil analysis was promising (more on that later).

After you get the car in the air, use the pic below to reference where everything is located. You want the car LEVEL (unlike most "normal" cars that have oil pans designed so the oil pools by the drain plug, the Boxster oil pan is flat), so I suggest getting all four wheels off the ground.

Reference pic:

1. Warm up the car by driving around at least 15 minutes. You have a lot of oil to heat.


2. Jack the car up into the air.


3. Put on a pair of rubber/latex gloves


4. Place a large catch pan under the oil pan. Note: About 10 quarts of oil will come out, so be prepared (place it on newspaper, just in case).


5. Loosen the drain plug with an 8-mm allen wrench.


6. It will take a while for all of the oil to come out (about 20 minutes), I usually take this time to check out the rest of the undercarriage.


7. After the bulk of the oil has drained, remove the oil filter housing using a strap tool. Keep it level, as it is FULL of hot oil. Bring it over to the catch pan, and dump it out.


8. Replace the "O-ring" on the plastic filter housing (discard the old O-ring and the dirty filter). Lightly lubricate it with new oil.


9. Slide the new paper element onto the "pipe" where the oil filter fits (you will understand what I am talking about once you are there).


10. By hand, screw the oil filter housing back onto the threaded base. You don't need a wrench to tighten it (only about 20 ft-lb of torque).


11. By now, the oil will have drained. Replace the drain plug gasket, and screw the drain plug back into the pan (about 40 ft-lb of torque).


12. Inside the trunk (the rear of the car), you will find the oil cap. Put about 9.25 quarts of oil back into the engine.


13. Lower the car, and start her up. After it has been idling for several minutes, shut it off, and then check the oil with the dipstick.

The Boxster has a digital oil level display on the dash. It is fairly accurate, but always use the dipstick at least once a month. One more thing, after the car has been driven about 100 miles or so, check the oil again!

- Mike

Project #3 - Jacking up the Car

Yeah, we are out of sequence, but I think this deserves its own blog. Just how do you get a Boxster in the air? It's pretty simple, actually.

Porsche supplied the Boxster with four "traditional" jacking points. They are located several inches behind the front wheels, and inches in front of the rear wheels... just inside the rocker sill. Get down on your hands and knees to find them (see arrows in pic).

You can easily get a floor jack under the car with stock suspension to get the car into the air. Once up, there are several places to put the jack stands to ensure the car stays up in the air. I always use the strong areas of the frame where the suspension mounts. Whatever you do, use multiple systems (floor jacks, wood blocks, jack stands, wheels, etc...) to make sure the car won't come down. I won't go under my car unless it has at least four jack stands firmly in place, and a jack in the raised position!

Once you get used to jacking up with the factory points, you can also use a single-point rear jacking location. In this pic, you can see it located (red dot) several feet forward from the muffler. It is pretty obvious once you see it in person (notice how I threw the tire under the raised car for additional security in case the car falls off the stands):

In stock configuration, jacking the car up is easy. Once you lower the car with race suspension, it's a bitch. Trust me.

- Mike

Transformation #1 - The Brakes

After our initial once-over, Nick and I decided to address the braking system first. Everyone likes to go fast - however, we also like to stop!

As this is early in the game, we intend to upgrade the brakes to "BSX" level. This means the pads are "free" (we can use any pad we'd like), but we need to retain stock rotors and stock calipers. We can add brake cooling, but intend to do that later.

We ordered new brake rotors ("Zimmerman"), brake pads ("PBR Ultimates" - a good street/track pad that won't eat the rotors), brake lines ("ATE" rubber DOT-approved), and brake fluid ("ATE Blue") from Strasse USA Porsche Parts (if you give them a call, ask for "Gabe" and tell him Mike sent you!). The rubber pedal pads inside the cabin were also heavily worn, so we replaced those too (in hindsight that was dumb... because Nick threw them into the trash at the first track event to improve his heel-and-toe technique!).

Servicing the brake system was fairly simple. As everything was coming off, and the fluid would be replaced, we didn't have to worry about much. We did the fronts first, and the rears second. We did have a slight issue... When pulling off the caliper, one of the bolts was "galling" (seized) inside the aluminum mount. After slowly (I mean slowly) removing it, we had to re-cut the threads with a tap-and-die to clean the up. During re-assembly, we used high-temperature "anti-seize" on the bolts to prevent it from happening again.

Once everything was slapped back together, and the brakes bled (start with the right/rear, then left/rear, then front/right, and finally the front/left) it looked like new! Very nice.

A few notes: Even though the brake lines looked OK, they are the only "flexible" (read that as "wear item") in the hydraulic system outside of the master cylinder and calipers. They had 115,000 miles on them over the past decade. It would really suck to have one fail at speed, and they are inexpensive to replace... so better safe than sorry. Oh, why didn't we use stainless braided lines? In all honesty, I have braided steel lines on my 930, and I cannot tell the difference. The Boxster's brake lines are wrapped in a steel spring (you can see it in the pic above) for protection against debris damage anyhow.

- Mike

Project #1 - Taking Inventory

The first step, and one of the most important, is to take a good look at what you just purchased. We took a risk at purchase time by deciding to not do a Pre-Purchase Inspection. We figured the car "looked" decent, and we could throw the money we saved towards the first repair. If this Porsche was staying on the street, I would always recommend a "PPI."

In any case, we put our new silver 986 up on a set of jack stands, pulled the wheels, and crawled under her. As expected, there were many items that needed attention. Some immediate, so later, some were were going to remove anyway (so screw 'em). We made up a list of the obvious tasks that needed to be tackled just to keep the car on the road. Mind you, most of these have little or nothing to do with racing:

• Oil Change (replace oil with synthetic 15W-50)


• Brake fluid flush (replace with ATE Super Blue)


• Brake Pads (replace)


• Brake Lines (replace)


• Brake Rotors (replace)


• Air Filter (replace)


• Engine Belts (replace)


• Tires (replace)


• Shocks (replace)

All things considered, the car was in decent shape. Not bad, actually.

The Car

The POC "BSX" rules specify everyone starts with an early 2.5-liter Porsche Boxster, or a "986" in Porsche-talk. With only 201 hp, and 181 lb-ft of torque, the convertible isn't going to win any stoplight drag races. In all honesty, the Boxster's strength is its suspension - it handles amazingly well. A fairly decent Boxster FAQ can be found here.

We found our 1998 Porsche "986" Boxster on Craig's List. No joke. It had 118,000 miles on it. The owner said it had received a new engine at 85,000 miles (Google "Boxster RMS" and you will get enough reading material for years) and a new clutch only weeks before we first saw her. She had been sharing the household with a Pontiac Aztek - scary bedfellows! Here she is the first time we saw her at her home in Moorpark, California:

After a bit of negotiating with the owner, Nick took her home for $12,000. She'll never be the same again. Of course, the obligatory pics of her at her new home (my driveway) before her make-over began. She doesn't look that half-bad from twenty paces away:

Who are we?

This Boxster is a joint effort between two old college friends, and fellow car enthusiasts:

My name is Mike (aka "Emission"), and I am a certified car nut. I have owned many cars over the past two decades, and have been driving on the track for about ten years. I started "tracking" (that is the term insiders use for taking their car to the track) my '98 BMW 328i in 1998. It was completely stock, but a blast to learn basic car control with. After that, I moved up to a '01 BMW 330i. After a decent spin one day at Buttonwillow Raceway Park (nothing hurt except my ego), I sold the BMW for a '86 Porsche 930 (aka 911 Turbo). It was a completely different beast, and I loved it! While I still have the Porsche 930 in my garage, the Boxster is my track whore these days.

My partner's name is Nick. He is the owner of the Boxster - his name is on the title (I am a "race partner" for lack of a better description). Compared to myself, Nick's track training is much more formal. He's done the Bob Bondurant Racing School where he learned open-wheel racing behind the wheel of a Formula Ford (lucky bastard). Nick has a beautiful '07 Porsche GT3 in his garage. However, the Boxster is also his track whore.

She's a busy gal these days!

What is a Porsche Boxster Spec Racecar?

By definition, a "Spec Racecar" is a vehicle that has been modified or altered while following a set of guidelines ("specifications"). These modifications ("mods") would include race components, add-ons, and performance upgrades. For a "spec Boxster" this would mean specific suspension and tires, and limits to what other components within the vehicle may be modified.

What's cool about a spec racecar (spec Boxster, spec Miata, spec Mini, etc...) is that all of them perform nearly identically on the track. That's right, they are a blast to race because it is driver skill, not the size of the wallet, that determines who crosses the finish line first!

This particular spec Boxster is built following the rules and regulations from the Porsche Owner's Club.

Introductions

Okay, the virgin first post. Cutting to the chase, this is our objective:

In creating this blog, we are going to attempt to document our progress as we build a competitive "Porsche Boxster Spec Racecar" from square one - hopefully, this blog will be helpful, informative, and interesting. Check back often, as we are always tinkering!

- Mike