zoomster1776

thank you RENN GTS. I am one of those 3.2 S owners who have spent 20k$ for a 3.6 and I knew from the start that I would never recoup the dollars expended. I will leave it to my heirs (the car is in my will) to be concerned with value as I believe that this will be my last Porsche. And it is magnificent!

Bush Pilot

Can I be put in contact with your heirs when they sell it?

RENN GTS

Cheers to enjoying the car in good health while you have it

JJJMCD

I thought that the OP was referring to a stock rebuild of an engine, not a transplant of a larger engine or rebuild to increase engine size.

To the right person, a heavily modified car can be more valuable than a stock car, sometimes even enabling the seller to get some or most of the cost of the mods back upon sale.

However, it’s a REALLY small universe of people who not only (1) are interested in buying an older Porsche, but (2) are ALSO interested in buying a heavily modified older Porsche, and (3) are ALSO interested in buying a heavily modified older Porsche with the exact mods that you have done to your car.

If you’re talking about cosmetic mods, there is the issue of differences in taste. Some people like wings on back, splitters on front and wraps and stickers in between, and some people don’t. Unusual colors - interior and exterior - can be very polarizing.

if you’re talking about mechanical mods, most of them are made with substantial trade-offs in reliability/longevity (e.g., big turbos or other forced induction, advanced timing via chips ) or everyday livability (e.g., stiff, low suspensions and loud exhausts). What you’re willing to live with in terms of those types of trade-offs is unique to you and may not be shared with many other people.

Narrower pool of buyers = either: (1) longer sale process to find the right buyer, or (2) desperation sale at a heavy discount.

There is also the great unknown of just how hard a car with a heavily modified engine has been run in the past. You have to assume that it’s been run pretty hard, otherwise, what’s the point of modding it? And, therefore, how close is it to catastrophic failure and engine rebuild or replacement? Heavily boosted turbo cars can become grenades pretty quick.

As the owner of a modded Boxster S (and previously owner of two modded 911s), I clearly believe that all of the above is worth it to have my Porsche be exactly what I want, but I’m not harboring any illusions that I would get back what I spent on it if I had to sell it.

Bush Pilot

Agree with JJJMCD.

The only mods that wouldn’t scare me away are suspension mods because I doubt that “Tuners” of the power train have the technical breadth that the factory engineers had. Also, my first thought is, “So XYZ hp wasn’t enough for you? Porsche thought it was.”

JJJMCD

Thanks, Bush Pilot. Regarding engine power, I guess the Boxster is in a someone unique position in which Porsche didn’t want its lower cost car (Boxster) to outshine its higher priced car (911) and so was incentivized to artificially limit the amount of power you could get in a Boxster. Comparable to Chevrolet limiting Camaro power plants to avoid outshining the Corvette. I think that it’s pretty well known that the Boxster platform can handle more power.

If I was going to do any serious engine mods to my Boxster S, I would go whole hog and transplant a complete stock 996 TT engine into it, maybe with the factory X50 450hp power package added.

To your point about aftermarket vs. factory engineering, swapping in a complete stock 996 TT engine would mean that I wouldn’t have to screw around with trying to figure out compression ratios, boost amounts, air/fuel ratios, timing, etc. and can preserve some semblance of factory reliability, while ending up with a Boxster that has a pretty wild power to weight ratio.

I’m sure that someone else has done the 996 TT engine swap into a 986 Boxster, but I wonder whether they also went the next step and swapped in the 996 TT’s 4 wheel drive system. My second 911 was a Carrera 4 and I really loved the surefootedness of 4 wheel drive, particularly with higher horsepower.

Quadcammer

swapping in a mezger turbo will require quite a bit of trimming of the body and is nowhere as easy as just dropping it in. AWD would be a total waste of time.

My 986 is a stripped out track car. I give almost zero thought to its value, which is minimal anyways