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| My Porsche Diary
January 2003 My Kid is Sick The past 6 months have been trying on my little Boxster. In July, it got into a fight with a freshly cut tree at the Garlic Festival in Gilroy. The scratches went from the top of the car to the bottom. Thank goodness it only hit the clear coat. After a major detail and a lot of pointing on my part, all of the scratches were gone. I tried to clean them up myself, with some Turtle Wax in Gilroy. I must have forgotten to wash this car. I ripped the B off, so, for the second time, I owned an oxster. I also notice the plastic rear window seperating from the fabric. So, I ended up with my 2nd replaced convertible top. The car is also starting to show its age. As of now, it has 46000 miles on it. The passanger seat is looking worn on the left hand side. It has two leather nicks in it (one my my mom and one by my golf clubs) but, they are tiny. The side door has a spot on it where I seem to rest my arm. I think a good cleaning would get that out. All the little things I notice are minor, and the car is still in fantastic shape for being an almost daily driver. My plan was to keep the car until its turn in date of June 11. The new Boxsters had a new look (which I thought would happen in 2004), the price has dropped, and, a lot of things that were options before are now standard. Dealers want to move Boxsters, so, deals are to be made. In fact, my initial price shopping showed me that I would be paying $50 less per month. Until the 45K service of January. With only 4 payments to go in my lease and 4000 miles until the car is out of warranty, I discovered I need new brakes and tires. The price of the repairs equal my reamining payments. I cannot find used tires anywhere. The car has also been deemed undrivable and any more wear and tear on these items would leave it out of bounds on my lease and they would charge me to have these items fixed anyway. So, basically, the car is sitting in my garage and has been since early January 2003 I am currently looking into new cars. Of course, a Boxster! Yes, I am still alive. Just a bad Web mom. You would think with all the activity this site gets, I would be a little more aggressive with updating it. My apologies. Let's see. My kids are great. The yellow Escape has 17,000 miles on it and is running great. Although, it has been recalled 4 more times than my Porsche. My Porsche has 37,000 miles on it (7000 miles under lease). I will celebrate my 3rd year with my Porsche on June 13th, which means, only one year left on the lease. If I had to do it all again, I would have gotten the 5 year lease. I love the car more now than when I got it. As for the cars life since the last update. It is beginning to show a tad of age. I have had numerous things replaced or needing to be replaced. The nice thing is that so far, all of the items have been under warranty. They are the lug nuts, roof, CD player, vanity mirror and rear right shock. The car also has took a slight beating at the hands of two different cars. Within a week of each other, my car suffered its first door dings, on both doors even. Amazing because I still park my cars ages away from anything. My best guess is that it happened in valet parking. Luckily, I remembered someone mentioning Dent Wizard. They drove out to me and within 15 minutes, my car was ding/dent free. Granted, $100.00 a ding, but, I have learned to continually say "business expense". A little side note. My apartment complex put new garage doors on everyones garage. No more dust flying up from the leafblowers. I think I saw my car smile. What will I do when the lease is up? Well, unforseeing any tragic business event, I will be heading out to my pal at Desert Motor Cars in Palm Springs and getting another Porsche. I will wait for the 2004 model because there is talk of a body change. This means probably 6 months without a Porsche. Funny thing is that my new Porsche will show up one month after my Escape lease is up! As long as I am recall free, I plan to purchase my Escape. 9/26/00: There is a new kid in town I gave in. I purchased a new Ford Escape today. Why? Well, I wanted a car with a little more storage, the ability to be left at the airport without worries and something I can take to a bad area without worry. Did I need to get this? No. Did I want to? Of course! I guess what I am trying to say is that my Boxster is still a great car and I would have survived perfectly without a second car. Me and the yellow Escape. 8/14/00 General Update and Love Story Well, my little car is now one year old and my life is completely different then when I bought the car in June 1999. Whats been going on and how has me and my car handled it? Read on. The Site: Wow, amazing. This site gets 20,000 hits a month and I continue to get dozens of emails thanking me for the information. I feel guilty that I have tons of typos and have not even updated the road trip section. Thanks to all of you who continue to visit the site and it warms my little tiptronic heart that it has helped you purchase your Boxster. The Divorce: Yep, the big D. Take life, turn it upside down, you have me! Life is going surprisingly well after the D, but, I had to make some life changes which went directly against my reasoning on purchasing the Boxster. No more Maxima: I turned my leased Maxima in March 2000. I wondered what life with one car would be like. I always could fall back on my husbands (X husbands) XTerra and now that option (and him) were gone. Surprisingly, no problems yet. I had to give into one thing, I would need to haul some stuff in the car. Computer monitors for example can only sit in the passenger seat. I now have a black towel in the trunk if I need to use the seat to haul. I can easily fit one or two computers in the boot. Can I still fall back? Yes, I can! I still have my parents cars. When I moved, I rented a truck for a week to haul stuff. Some people think this is going out of your way. I would gladly go out of my way like this to enjoy my Boxster. My New Garage: I moved into an apartment. The garage is a standalone building which houses 8 garagages. There is an open gap below the roof. Because of this gap, I get everyone elses dirt. Now my poor little car can be dirty within an hour of it going to the wash. My neighbor (a felllow geek) fed up with this situation noticed that the gardners and their leaf blowers are using our garages kindof like a kid uses the carpet to hide whatever they swept. We are planning to install those rubber guards to help keep the dirt out from at least the gardeners. I will let you know if this works. No More Hand Wash: Snif Snif. My apartment complex does not allow you to wash your car. I know I know, but, its a really great place and this is the only ding I give em. I cannot even sneak a wash in because they have all the hose attatchments hidden far away from the roads. I went to the leasing office of my apartment and they recommended a "high end car wash" down the street. So, me and my Boxster headed off to the wash. What a nice place. They open your door, shake your hand, ask if there are any special cleaning needs for the day and off it goes. The entire process is a hand wash. They dry the car with air hoses and use brushes to clean the nooks and crannies in the interior. They even know to clean my windstop. The only problem. I owned an oxster for awhile when a new kid caught his rag on the B on the rear Boxster logo. Good news that it did not dent and the hand car wash had no problem paying the $17.00 to replace the logo (I actually just asked for a free wash). But, take a look in your area for a 100% hand wash. This is a great way to keep your Boxster clean. Also, you can go to a regular car wash and pay for a hand wash. I usually need to do a few touch items when I get home but it is better than nothing. Cell Phone Productivity Down: I noticed I did not want to answer my cell phone as much in the car. Maybe it was the view. No, I know it was because I did not want to deal with the wind, the hair, the phone, etc. This changed when I got my new voice activiated cell phone and headset attatchment. I now drive my car, phone rings (vibrates), pop in the ear piece and say answer. TADA, I am on the cell phone with only a few seconds spent with the ear piece. I can also voice dial. I noticed I answer the phone all the time in the car and can have conversations with no problem on the freeway with the top down. The ear piece has a connect disconnect feature that works great. The phone by the way is the Ericsson T28 world phone. Im Still Smitten: I still am in love with my Boxster, maybe more. I had those what the heck are you doing pangs when I bought it but they went away quickly. The car is my decompression vehicle. Its wonderful to see it waiting for me at the Wally Park when I come home from one of my work trips. 8/4/99: Shifter top, Leslie. Leslie, shifter top. Well I was enjoying the blue sky day zipping around in my car and then all of the sudden the top of my Tiptronic shifter popped off! Quite an interesting sound and visual. Quite a bit of spring in it seeing it hit my windstop! I popped it back on once I came to a stop (shifting is not fun when you only have a silver spec the size of a pebble to push). Well, every hour or so it decides to pop off just to be different. I will get it fixed the next time I am back home in California. 7/28/99: Speedo Fixed! Loose carpet and Coolant hose fixed. Service Trip #2 If you did not know, there is a chance that your Boxster will have a speedometer that reads too high. Turns out mine was running 6mph high. There is a safe speed sign near my house which makes it easy for testing. Also, there is rumor that the odometer is too high as well and I do not want that happening with a leased car. Now, my car reads only 3 mph high which is more tolerable, but, I have noticed no change in the odometer. I also notice my car runs smother, but that could be from my service god working on the engine when he replaced the coolant hose. I also had the re-tuck some carpet that was loose on the passenger side. 6/28/99: My first Porsche Club Meeting The Porsche Club was one of the first things I did for my Porsche. If you are not familiar with them, Porsche Club America is a nationwide organization with many different regions. My region meets monthly at a different restaurant in our region. They also join up with other regions occasionally and plan a little road trip. There are many different PCA events which you can take part of. I am sure their website can explain it better, but, I will give it my best shot. Each region will have different events or many regions will get together and have an event. Event items include Autocross which is you race driving your Porsche around a track, Concourse, which is you spending eternity cleaning your car to have it judged on many topics such as cleanliness, original parts and more. Then there are the rallies. Rallies can either be time based or gimmicks. Time based rallies have you follow an exact route and you need to complete this route in an exact time. Gimmick rallies are rallies where you need to jot down particular things at a particular location, etc. I think you will find me at the gimmick rallies. There is also drivers education which is a class that teaches you better driving skills. There is a ton of things that PCA membership offers, I recommend it. 6/26/99: Window, oh window? and Is that oil on my garage floor? Service Trip #1 Just finished washing the car and right when I was done with the last wipe on the drivers window, down it went. I tried to raise the window with no luck. A PPBB suggested I put the key in the door and turn it counter clockwise. This is a step to raise the windows manually in case you forgot to do so when you were in your car. That did not work. In fact, the window motor was dead, and I was without my car for the weekend. The car was at the shop and I was cleaning out the garage only to notice oil on the floor. One call to the dealer and they had already found it. Turned out I had two leaks. The oil leak was from my rear main seal (which had to be replaced) and there was a coolant leak from a bad coolant hose. I would smell something electrical occasionally and thought it was another car. Turned out is was my car when the coolant was hitting the tailpipe. 6/12/99: My post to PPBB regarding my delivery: Wholly Molly I got it! |
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