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Thought I would write a little piece about my latest toy. I've been wanting a Porsche for many, many years. However, even before I got my learner license back in the day I would watch the prices of basically anything Porsche climb. First it was older 911s, then nice 928 S4s and 944 S2s and then it was just everything else. Currently there is a 20K 924.... umm wtf. Anyway, over the last year I came to the realisation that the best way for me to get a decent first taste of the Porsche life was going to be through a manual Boxster. I narrowly missed a bargain (for the time) 987 Manual at the start of the year when the market was still quite hot, but since then prices have come back a little bit. Although that said, I am rather grateful I sold my D3 Audi S8 when I did, as I saw a really tidy looking NZ New example similar to mine go for 9.7K recently... I got double that for mine in March this year. Anyway I digress. I was torn between 986 and 987 Boxster. 986 has the bonus of the detachable hardtop, but the regular 2.5s are apparently a bit gutless, and the S variants or 986.2 2.7s are hard to find at a half sensible price in manual. Plus, the interior is a bit uninspiring and while I actually don't mind the fried egg headlights on a 996, I'm not completely sold on them on a Boxster, especially pre-facelift. Then a month of two ago a high ks 987 rolled across my screen. I'm sure a few of you will recognise it. Seller had it listed as an auction, and had some excellent photos of it in the rain with the interior absolutely filthy. Furthermore, it had faded headlights, stickers on the doors and plasti-dipped wheels which generally just made it look a bit tired, BUT had a NEW Soft Top (which cost $8K apparently). Unsurprisingly no one bid on it, and I was the highest bidder some $8K below what he wanted for the car. Car was re-listed two more times and while the final bid increased from the first auction, it was not hitting reserve. As I was the highest bidder every time I eventually negotiated with the seller to a price I thought was fair. I then made the trip to pick it up. Of course I generally do not have normal car buying experiences. Whether its my Subaru Legacy E-Tune blowing up on the way home, the clutch packing up in my Manual W8 on the test drive, or getting a flat tyre in my newly acquired Boxster at 10pm on a Sunday night in rural Hamilton, there's generally something. So yes, flat tyre.... 10pm at night.... rural Hamilton. Obviously the car does not have a spare and is missing its stud key, excellent! The letter box at the driveway I pulled into was 1126 from memory - just to put into perspective how I had absolutely no idea where I was. Only reason I was on that road in the first place was because the motorway had been closed 😕 Went to two nearby houses to ask if they had an air compressor I could borrow (as the car's one is rubbish and slow) just to try get the car somewhere safer such as a petrol station, but of course: young, Aucklander, driving a Porsche - Do you think I got any help? First house I went to I was ridiculed for not buying a ute, and then ridiculed for buying a girl's car. Second house I went to I was asked if I go to spastics school for being younger with a Porsche. Anyway, luckily the lady at the AA centre had done a good job upselling me to be a premium member with extended towing allowance so I waited with the car for a couple hours and got the tow truck to flat bed the car to a tyre shop on the North Shore in Auckland. Great 19 hour day that was. The next day I set about sorting the tyre. Of course the Pirelli DragonSport it had on it was apparently out of stock nationwide, so naturally I put on a new set of Bridgestone RE003s for $1.3K. Would have preferred Michelin PS4s but the RE003s were ready to go at the shop it was at so its whatever. So finally I got the car home and set about its deep clean. I don't think the interior had been cleaned since the previous owner bought it. It was super dusty and full of rubbish and food crums. Luckily not the hardest to clean, just a little time consuming. Then I set about removing the hideous aftermarket "Porsche" script from the bootlid (to be replaced by a Boxster badge when I find one), and also stripped off the stickers and the plastidip on the wheels. Headlights had a tidy up at Renew Car and already the car looks alot tidier. So anyway, how does it drive? The previous owner upgraded the rotors and put performance pads on it so when you get on the brakes hard it stops like nothing I have ever driven - its SUPER impressive. I think it may have a different intake on it - sounds incredible, like a baby GT3. Has that intoxicating Porsche flat 6 howl when you rev it out. Gearbox is lovely, clutch weighting is nice, steering is awesome - probably the best car I've driven. (I actually think it sounds better than my Mum's 997.2 C2S) The previous owner asked me when I was paying for it - "Is this your first Porsche?", "Yes" I replied. "Well you're screwed then, all you will want to drive from now on will be these". And so far he's been right. I've driven it everyday. Drove my W8 on the weekend and hated how light the clutch was and how high up the car felt. But of course, after excitedly telling everyone I got my first Porsche, someone from my extended family has offered me their manual 987 Cayman S for essentially trade in value so this 987 will probably go up for sale within the month (as passing that deal up is insanity) because there isn't much point having two and under 25 insurance is already an unpleasant experience with the 540i, Manual W8 and the Boxster. P.S: The car has a silly Hikeit throttle controller in it which I hate - a Boxster is obviously not a diesel Mitsubishi Triton, and surprisingly Porsche know a thing or two about making a nice, reactive throttle. Who would have guessed? Anyway, if anyone wants the Hikeit, if you know what you are doing and can remove it from the car you can just have it. Anyway, here's a couple photos of how it's looking now.

I’ve hidden that post as it is more of a general slagging of a company with no context or details. As it was the users first post, very much looks like an axe To grind. If they come back with a more balance post, with details and facts then that’s fine.

BMW E34 M5 hillclimb.mp4

I reckon they're on the right track there (😜), but still eludes me why people don't spend a few hours cleaning to make it look 3x better !! Like selling a house with your skiddy undies on the floor and last nights nachos still on the bench.

550i e60 in Wellington. Tinted out , straight pipped , burble and pop tune. Pplate of Iran or similar. Car load having a bit of fun , on the gas / off the gas. Was torn between laughing and crying 😀 I must be getting old 🤘

Looks like a fabulous car and I'm not surprised its an amazing drive - light(ish) weight, top down, flat 6, mid engined - I also think the 987 exterior / interior was a big leap over the 986. And yes - Cayman S manual - DO IT *BRB, off to look at longhood 911s on Bring a Trailer*

Motorsport Alcantra

Tempted to become a hairdresser looking at that. Looking mint, good buy.

Anyone else see an ad for a Nissan Tiidious, or Toyota Wish-I-was-a-proper-car, extolling the virtues of cheap japanese transport and how wonderful it is, how comfy, what a great little runabout, so good for popping to the shops, always cared for, never thrashed, crashed or bashed... And feel like screaming "It's a horrible piece of SH!T!" Right hand lane on the way to a roundabout, going straight on, got to stop and check three times that nothing is approaching from the right (heaven forbid we look ahead), and don't - whatever you do - push the pedal on the right because you saw Back to the Future and who knows - it might happen? You might (unlikely, bud!) find yourself alongside another vehicle when the 200m to single carriageway sign is passed so you brake - HARD! - and cannot understand why the 40-ton truck behind you is so p!ssed off, leaning on the horn... Can't be because that tractor and trailer in the inside lane that you're now tucking in beind has nowhere to pull over for the next several km...

Hey guys - recently picked up an m325i which I’m sure most would be familiar with.. Post the latest auction on trademe I had gotten in touch with the seller to organise a deal and here we are! Have come from a long line of silvia’s, ae86’s and the like so being my first E30, wanting to get an idea of the best sources for new replacement and used OEM parts, local workshops in Auckland etc etc. Cheers - and hope to catch you all soon.

Cheers both! Appreciate that rundown as well Sam. Yeah she's in good shape tbh, plan is to give her a big 'maintenance' birthday over the next few weeks just for peace of mind and then enjoy driving it. See you on Sat lads!

Swapped my springs out - looking for a slightly more age-appropriate (myself and the car) stance and comfort level. Replaced the ST Springs (50mm/40mm) with the popular H&R Sport 29664-1 springs (35mm/35mm). Really happy with them - have gained a very useful 10-15mm height all-round but car still looks great and sporty - ride quality is significantly improved as well (and I didn't feel the ST's were harsh). Possibly a slightly less performance orientated spring (?) but I already have larger sway bars and sticky tyres for fun stuff anyway.

Here's some sounds stuff I wrote up as a message might be useful to anyone with NZ spec e34s coming across this I have been doing a mild bit of reading online, from what it seems our NZ spec cars are practically different from all other cars online. At least to my info the Sony headunits were all dealer fitted, rather than put together in Germany, so they all have inherent wiring funkiness. Mine went from Sony head unit through RCA to a Sony amplifier that was stuffed somewhere under the dash. This already had a bit of funky wiring, the illumination circuit was abandoned for example for the lights to be always on running off the head unit activation signal. From the small (like 17watt RMS per channel or so) Sony amp through the factory speaker wire into the boot and through the factory amp in the boot. At first I wasn't sure why it was amplified twice, but it is not being amplified twice, the factory Blaupunkt amp had been gutted by the dealership, and was only being used to run the crossovers. At first I thought my car had been f**ked with when they fitted the Clarion head unit and that the POs must have done all the gutting themselves, but the "factory" loom for the Sony that I had gotten was equally f**ky, used the same connectors, and had the Blaupunkt amp gutted as well. From the Blaupunkt amp it went into the speaker circuit like normal. They also ran some Sony CD changer instead of the factory CD changer system. My original plan was only to run the head unit off the boot battery (was originally intended for the phone that has been removed) because I thought it would be an incredibly nifty modification, rewire the plugs into an ISO connector so I could always upgrade the head unit later, and then to run the RCA to the back and move the Sony amp to where the CD changer used to be. Then when I had all the wiring out I thought "I mean seeing as the Sony head unit has RCA I might as well run a better amp off it instead". Then I thought, might as well run fatter speaker wire while it's all apart. And then I thought I hate taking the parcel tray out I'll do the speakers while it's all apart. The issue still remains that the car has a component speaker system, with woofer and tweeter in rear, and woofer, mid range, and tweeter in front. My plan was to buy speakers with separate, non inline, crossovers so I could run everything still through the factory Blaupunkt crossover system. Ideally in 5 1/4" inch so I would have to do modifications to fit it all. Along the way I realised that maybe running my audio through a thirty year old gutted Blaupunkt amp is never going to give the best sound, and also that 5 1/4" component speakers with external crossovers are not exactly very common in NZ. Not wanting to buy cheaaaap 5 1/4" speakers, and knowing I could get a half decent price on Kicker stuff I bought some Kicker CSS 6.5" component speakers. Now I plan to use the external passive 2 way crossovers that come with the speakers for the rear, and then I bought some 3 way passive crossovers off AliExpress (lol) to run the front speakers. At this point I still have the issue of the mid range speakers in the dash, which are in standard form 2" speakers. I haven't really found any affordable 2" mid range speakers at all. So my options are: either I blast the music through the factory Nokia speaker (which will be doing the majority of the grunt-work being around 1000hz to 5000hz on the Chinese crossovers), I risk it and buy a 2 3/4" mid range speaker (Kicker does some that aren't toooo bad in price) and hope to god I can make it fit, or not run the mid range at all and just run the two way setup (audio engineers on webforums say no to this as the big woofer is blasting directly into our legs and gets muddled and funky and yuck sounding). I am doing it in the way I am doing it now so that it will leave a semi decent amount of modularity in the system for later on. People say that passive crossovers are sh*t. Yeah, in an ideal world I'm running my RCA pre out through an active pre amp crossover and amplifying each speaker channel individually with one 6 channel amplifier for the front and one 4 channel amp for the rear and I guess to top it all off a monoblock amp and a sub as well. But I like having money to spend on other things, and I also like having things in my boot without worrying that I take a corner the wrong way and I damage 2500 dollars worth of Audio equipment. I'm going to keep the NZ fitted Sony head unit for now, mostly again because I am being a cheap bastard, but also aesthetics. It's most likely going to become the limiting factor in the audio quality, so maybe down the line I upgrade to a modern head unit with 3 high voltage RCA pre outs with USB input for flac music, but I hate the spaceship look of modern head units and don't want to splurge and spend 600 dollars on an old clarion or something funky like that. Maybe I buy a Kenwood, I don't think they look too awful and have an RGB capable display so I should be able to get it to match the interior reasonably well. I actually already sort of have my mind made up, I probably will buy a modern Kenwood, and also probably a sub since I've made it this far. I have a lot of trouble with project feature creep issues, everything seems to be going steadily to plan but man I do have a tendency to expand on everything I do. Anyway here's some pics of the work I've done to fit the 6.5s in the rear. Took some minor dremel work but it will fit: Here's some brackets I have gotten 3d printed by my brother (have yet to try them). One to fit the tweeter onto the rear tray, and one adaptor/spacer to fit the 6.5s into the kick panels, and a smaller one to fit the tweeter into the factory location in the rear (fronts will just glue in): Alright that's about it I think. That's about up to date with the car.

have s54 and 6spd and m50 sump etc

And spotted the Coolest car I have ever seen on the road the other day, it was the Hulme Supercar in Manukau, was covered in dirt and the drivers were wearing WW1 fighter pilot etire, looked f**king amazing.