A new German toy nestles into the MBC
Okay, so a couple of issues ago, I coughed up that I’d cashed in all my empty beer cans, raided the change bowl in the hallway and cleaned down the back of the lounge looking for loose coins. And with the proceeds, I’d finally gone out and done something I’d been threatening to do since the turn of the century. Yep, I bought myself a Porsche Boxster S.
And for the last few weeks, it’s been the most frustrating car purchase I’ve ever made. Not that it’s gone wrong, more that I haven’t given it the chance to. As in, I haven’t driven it farther than the shed at the MBC where it has sat for weeks now.
Why would I do such a dopey thing? Because the Boxster engine has a dirty little secret. Those in the know will be nodding sagely about now, but the water-cooled flat-six is laid out with a chain-drive from the crank to an intermediate shaft, and then another chain to each set of camshafts. Which is fine. What is not so fine is that the intermediate shaft is carried in a pressure-fed bearing at the front of the mid-mounted donk, and a normal, grease-filled roller-bearing at the rear of the mill.
The pressure-fed end of things is fine, but what happens over time is that the sealed roller bearing eventually runs out of grease and starts to break up. Before too long, the bearing drops its lunch and stops supporting the intermediate shaft. Which would be one thing, but when it does, those cam-chains go all slackety-slack, the camshafts stop twirling and Mr Valve meets Mr Piston. Insta-junk. You’re a pretty good bet to have tiny bits of bearing washed through the rest of the engine by then, too.
| 2021 Market Review: Porsche 911/993/996/Boxster 1988-2008
Experts tell me that the failure rate of these bearing is a handful of a per cent, but that’s like telling me that unemployment is only running at three per cent. Until I don’t have a job (thank you Covid) and then, at 13 Struggle Street, it’s a 100 per cent unemployment rate.
So why on earth would I buy a car like that in the first place? Because the Boxster S is one of the all-time great cars. And, perhaps as a result, there’s a fix for this problem. But it ain’t quick and it ain’t simple. And it definitely ain’t cheap. Ask me how I know. Anyway, this is why I drove the car into the shed and closed the door on it until I could organise that fix to be carried out by somebody who knows their Boxsters from their bollocks.
| Read next: 2009 Porsche Boxster S review
The fix involves removing the six-speed manual gearbox (you didn’t think I’d buy a two-pedal Porker, did you?) removing the suspect bearing and fitting a new one. In my case, I managed to find a US mob doing replacement bearings in a ceramic-hybrid ball-bearing that doesn’t need grease and is, instead, perfectly happy being lubricated by splashed-about engine oil. And since it has no grease seals (it’s open to the crankcase) and sits in the engine’s sump with a big chain attached to it to sling oil everywhere, it gets plenty of that. So, problem solved, and we’re back to traditional levels of Porsche durability.
Well, that’s the simple version, anyway, because in reality, I’m never going to remove the gearbox on a 140,000km car and not put a new rear main seal and a new clutch kit in it, am I? Of course not. The catch there is that the flywheel in these things is a dual-mass mutha, so you need to change the whole flywheel and clutch as an assembly. Let me tell you, ouch!
| Read next: 2012 Porsche Boxster 2.7 review
While we were in there, it made sense to give the thing a new set of plugs and closer inspection revealed that the spark-plug tubes had leaking O-rings which were causing a fair old oil leak. All these things I knew would be happening when I first looked at the car, so you better believe the price I paid allowed for all this to take place. Even so…
And why did I wait so long to have the work done? Partly so I could let the beer cans and loose change mount up again, but also because finding the right workshop isn’t a simple matter with cars like these.
But my old Transsyberia Rallye-driving mate (and former Porsche Oz tech guru) Watto came to the rescue with the recommendation of a mob not too far from the MBC called Cascone Autosport. A quick chat with Nick (who runs the show) told me all I needed to know, and a visit to the gleaming, operating-theatre-spec workshop (complete with a smattering of hot-rodded old air-coolies and a few water-pumpers) told me the rest. The catch was, of course, like any good workshop, Nick was booked up for weeks. So I had to be more patient than I think I’ve ever been. For an eat-the-cake-now-Dave kind of guy, this was torture, but now it’s all done and me and the S are getting to know each other.
The car itself? Bloody brilliant. I was a judge on Motor mag’s Performance Car of the Year in 2002, when the Boxster S beat all comers (including the BMW M5, 911 GT3, HSV Clubsport, Audi S4, and many others) to take home the chockies.
I still have a few little chores to do including having the driver’s seat bolster fixed and greasing the tracks for the convertible roof, but right now, I’m just making up for lost driving time.
Oh, and what was the condition of the original, 20-year-old, Achilles-heel IMS bearing that was the cause of all this angst? “Perfect,” according to Nick, “was never gonna fail”. That’d be right. The clutch, however, was a different story and was right down to the rivets, so I’d have been pulling the tranny pretty soon anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever been comforted by a rooted clutch ever before.
From Unique Cars #468, Jul/Aug 2022
Photography: Guy Allen