Geza

A few months back, I’m driving about in my ’97 when a dip-**** in and SUV comes around the corner part way into my lane – on her cell phone. I laid into the horn which made a slight noise then went dead. After doing some trouble shooting, checking the fuse, listening for the relay click, etc. I conclude that the horn needs replacement. Not too excited about pulling off the front bumper, but, OK. Checking online, I order a new high pitch horn and await delivery, surprised to see they have a low pitch version also?? Horn comes in and I start the disassembly process.

Pulling the bumper cover is fairly easy. The only additional suggestions I have for disassembly (above what is described in the maintenance manual) would be as follows:

1. Before removing the 2 plastic rivets which hold on the front of the wheel well liner, give them a shot of WD-40 or equivalent to help “lubricate” the removal process. The head of the rivet has a straight pin attached (not tapered) and can be completely disassembled from the rivet body (though it’s not necessary to remove).
2. When removing the side marker lights, I initially attempted to disconnect the connector – not necessary, just twist the light bulb holder as if you were to replace the bulb – the bulb stays with the car and the lens body gets removed.

So, I pull the bumper cover off and take stock of the situation – what do you know, the car has 2 horns! Since day one (I’m the original owner) I always though this car had a weak horn, not nearly as powerful as the horns on my Audis. I thought, perhaps I got a single horn because I ordered a base model, with no alarm? No, the low pitch horn just never worked from day 1! I pulled both horns and checked the wiring with the new high pitch horn – the wiring works. Now, I have a disassembled Boxster up on jack stands and no low tone horn to assemble. After a quick search, and not finding a low tone horn online, I end up ordering a pair of horns out of a Cayman, for $32 (the new high pitch I bought was ~$60). Horns are delivered and I take them down to the garage to test – low pitch horn doesn’t work! The newer horns also have a larger threaded stud, which I would have worked around, but it is something to note - the connectors are the same between the 2. Wanting to get the job wrapped up, I reassemble the old, non-working low pitch and new high pitch horns – hey, I drove around for 21+ years with the bogus horn, right? After reassembling the bumper cover, which was very easy, things lined up great, I decided I’ll tackle the inoperable low pitch once I find a new one. My only tip for the bumper cover assembly is to test your lights before snapping the side markers back in place – turns out, one of the bulbs was bad on mine – it is a lot easier to change while they were disassembled.

Pulling the bumper allowed me to clean things up, especially all the leaves and sand wedged into the deep corners of the condensers. I filled up a 5 gallon bucket a 1/3 the way with the crud I pulled out of there. I cleaned up all the exposed parts (the inside of the bumper cover was filthy!). Interesting to see that a lot of the parts behind the bumper cover have a 996…. P/N on them. Also note the center radiator brackets mounted to the trunk tub on this early 986.

LammMorada

When I bought my 2000 Boxster S, the horns didn't work, but interestingly the chirpy horn that sounds when you lock and unlock the car did. This is also the horn that serves as the burglar alarm. So it dawned on me that Boxsters have two sets of horns - the two that sound when you hit the horn button on the steering wheel plus the one that beeps for security functions. This latter horn, by the way, lives somewhere in the cowl area.

At any rate, neither of my normal horns worked, although I could tell they were getting juice (or ground) when I pushed the horn button. I priced OEM horns at local Porsche dealers and also on eBay, and they were all way too expensive. I ended up buying a set (high and low pitch) at Pep Boys for $25, left the old set where they were, drilled new holes in the aluminum crossbrace, mounted and wired the Pep Boys horns, and they've worked fine ever since.