2001 996TT in Canada - MAF & cardan shaft

Published Aug. 31, 2008 at 10:41 p.m.
There were a few remaining issues to fix on the car...I ended up buying a bosch MAF on ebay from maxspeed motorsports for $150 shipped, which was a good price...The part did look new, but did not come in a Bosch package...Before this purchase, I had called Sunset imports and asked about a quote for the MAF - came in around $400 for a genuine porsche part, rather than the OEM bosch unit...The end result is the car is easier to drive and there's fewer occasional misses on partial throttle application, but there's still the odd moment where things don't feel exactly perfect (though much better than before)...Much improved, though...The largest improvement is taking off from a standing start...Often, especially with the Stage 2 clutch, it was easy to stall the car, seemed like there was a delay between throttle application and an actual increase in engine RPM...Now, there's none of that feeling of potentially stalling the car, and shifting gears the engine seems to behave better, so it's an overall improved experience.

When I had my clutch replaced, the mechanic noted a bunch of cracks in the rubber bushing of the cardan shaft (the driveshaft from the transmission to the front diff)...I had been putting this off since the part itself is pretty expensive - list $600, I paid $375 from Sunset, I think - and the labor is about four hours...The rubber bushing was not available on its own, so a new shaft has to be purchased.

About a month ago, I was driving on the highway and started to notice, occasionally, a vibration from the drivetrain that would cause the car to shudder a bit, generally above 65 mph...I decided that getting stranded wasn't a great idea, so had the part changed out...There weren't any dramatic tears, but certainly the rubber was cracked all around and you could imagine that transmitting large forces wasn't fun for the shaft in its present state...The 997 part (updated) that replaced this is certainly lighter, and post-install the drivetrain shimmy is gone, as is any judder from a start (only occasional in the past)...Generally, the car feels even more nimble and stronger than it did before.

I ended up purchasing a new boxster alternator for a manual transmission car on ebay for $130 shipped, no core charge...I'm guessing that all 996/986 share this part (120A alternator), so I will replace this myself at some point...The mechanic said that the car didn't seem to be charging properly, and this is especially exacerbated when the engine gets wet, from washing the car or in rain...However, I've not had any battery issues, so I'll probably put this off for a while, as I've been busy working on my 993.


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