The most obvious problem with the Boxster was an exhaust rattle. The culprit is below. This clip is missing a tooth that should hold the locking bolt in place. Without the bolt, the heat shield over the catalytic converter is only held at one end and bounces about.

I replaced both bolt and clip as the design has changed in the last 8 years. The total cost was a bit under $20. Rattle fixed.

Next, the wind blocker has extraordinarily tatty parts to hold it in place. Parts that are pretty much guaranteed to break every few years, especially with the sun beating down on them constantly. I’ve had a look at the clips used on the new Boxsters and they’ve been greatly improved. Never mind.

The most badly-broken part is below. This clip has a piece of plastic that bends back when you pull the release lever. After a few years the plastic gives up and snaps. Porsche redesigned the clip to use a slimmer piece of plastic and these are the clips I’ve installed. Only time will tell as to whether they’re actually better or not.

This was the priciest fix as I needed to not only buy the clips but also replacement brackets on the roll bars for the clips to attach to. Yep, they’d broken as well. As an aside, doing this bit involved taking a drill to the car; arse-clenchy but fortunately successful. Total cost was around $50 to get rid of the loudest rattle in the car next to that exhaust!

Also, a purely cosmetic issue – the carpet on the rear speaker kit was starting to peel back from the plastic. $3 worth of carpet glue and it’s fine again.

The next problem to tackle will be the seats – making sure the heating elements aren’t making contact with the foam inserts and working out why the driver’s seat seems a little flat in the back. This will have to wait for my finances to catch up.

For the Boxster, I knew the brake pads were brand new as you can easily see them through the spokes of the wheels. Crossed off the list! I also knew the brake fluid was still good as my brother had already tested that for me with a tricky little machine that can tell how much water is in the fluid (in this case, my Golf had more water in there than the Porsche did!).

I decided to just buy an air filter, cabin air filter and a new serpentine belt as I assumed the car still had an 8-year-old belt in it.

Once parts arrived I bought a few tools (a 24mm spanner and a new ratchet for our socket set to replace the one that had gone walkabout) and started installing the parts.

The cabin air filter was obviously the original (they normally only get replaced at 40-60k kms) but this one was stuffed with leaves – MORE WEIGHT! The replacement is a carbon-infused one which should do better at neutralising stinks from outside the car. Sadly it can’t do anything about any stinks we might make inside the car.

The old air filter didn’t look terrible but it’s a cheap part and I know it’s done now.

This surprised me. I really didn’t expect a belt from 2003 to be completely undamaged. I’ve left the old belt in the car for now and will re-inspect it in 12 months.

Total cost for maintenance so far – $70 in parts and $150 for an oil change. Total: $220.

That finishes the maintenance for the Boxster – next time we’ll look at the repairs I needed to do.

Here’s how it looked on the day that I first went to have a look at it.

It was a 2003 Boxster S with about 32,000kms on the clock. The exterior was in virtually perfect condition, the interior not far behind. My brother came with me to have a quick look at the mechanicals and said it looked okay to him. The previous owner had put brand new brake pads on it to pass the roadworthy, which made the test drive a bit exciting as they hadn’t quite bedded in yet… oops!

Obvious faults that I noticed were a rattle in the exhaust (which my brother tracked down to a loose heat shield bolt) and broken clips in the wind blocker behind the seats – both of which would be cheap fixes that I could do myself.

I was worried that the Porsche hadn’t had an oil change in two years. I asked the owner to change the oil during the roadworthy test.

Long story short, I bought it. More in a bit!

Hi.

Which scares the shit out of the typical user more?

420kms. 5 hours, 44 minutes.

Give me 150kW and one of the most beautiful chassis I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing and I’ll cover it for you in 4 hours 30 minutes, at an average of 90km/h and 9 litres/100km.

If you have even the slightest interest in driving, you must drive between Hobart and Launceston via St Helens in a decent car before you die.

My God.

Decide for yourself.

I put my old iPhone on a site with the price set to $400. I added a simple explanation of the condition of the phone, some decent photos, my reason for selling it and what it came with. At the bottom of my ad I wrote, ‘This price is firm’, hoping to get rid of the hagglers. It didn’t work. Almost immediately I started getting emails with offers of $300-350.

Which is why I found this SMS exchange so wonderful:

Thanks to this person, I raised the price to $420 and sold it for $420 the very next day. Sticking to your guns can work.