We’re entering new territory here! Porsche has just introduced the first of likely many electric cars in its Taycan, and it probably won’t be long until we have a hybridized 911 in dealer showrooms. It’s time we got with the program and see how this electric propulsion stuff works first hand. We’ve had “Project Boxster Clubsport” for a few years, and it’s been dormant for the last two trips around the sun. I’ve done some work on the car, and it’s been driven a quick trip here and there, but it has mostly been laying in wait. Now I’m going all in on the Boxster that has been sitting for far too long. This month I’ve been working on sourcing the car’s eventual electric heart in the form of a used Nissan Leaf motor. We’re ready to start cutting and welding and mounting stuff.
In case you haven’t seen where the project has been in the past, here are links to every installment.
Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – GT3-Style Center Console Delete
Part 3 – LED license plate lights
Part 4 – Headlight Polishing
Part 5 – Tail Light Tinting
Part 6 – Emblem Delete and Paint Correction
Part 7 – Lightweight Battery
Part 8 – Short Shift Kit Installation
Part 9 – Lightweight Audio
Part 10 – Big Brakes, Spacers, and Wheel Studs
Part 11 – Wheels and Michelins
Part 12 – Parking Lot Damage
Part 13 – Flares and Paint
Part 14 – Interior Door Handle Update
Part 15 – Non-Smoker Kit
Part 16 – Stiffer Sway Bars
Part 17 – Momo Steering Wheel
Part 18 – H&R Sport Spring Installation
Part 19 – Adjustable Rear Toe Control Arms
Part 20 – Rear Suspension Braces
Part 21 – How Does It Drive?
Part 22 – Aborted Revival
Part 23 – Starting Again
Part 24 – Buying An Electric Motor
Before we get started we would need to thank Michelin. As many of you know, Michelin is a long-time sponsor of FLATSIXES.com. Recently, they have generously offered to sponsor Project Boxster Clubsport as part of their involvement with our site. Please consider checking out what Michelin has to offer by clicking their banners on this page. Without Michelin’s support, and others like them, this site really wouldn’t be possible.
The fun and inexpensive portion of building a track-focused car is the weight reduction. It’s something of an organized chaos.Just remove things until there aren’t things to remove. This car needed a crash diet, obviously. Porsche had very good intentions with the original 986 Boxster, but at almost 2800 pounds, it’s a little bit on the chunky side. Our goal, as stated before, is to get the car under 2,000 pounds before adding weight back in with a roll cage and the hybrid stuff. This is mostly a preliminary run through of the car to cut weight in the easiest ways possible. Here’s a rundown of what we ditched and how much all of it weighed.
There are a number of projects that we have already completed which were not documented properly with before and after weights. For example, the convertible top is long gone because I have a garage and the weather here in northern Nevada is always sunny. Another example? Surely the airbag steering wheel weighed a good bit more than our Momo wheel installation, but we neglected to record that data, as well. Once everything is removed from the car that we can get to, we’ll make sure to put it on a proper set of scales to see exactly where we stand.
In the photograph above, you see the first round of weight stripping. The mechanical metal tonneau cover over the back half of the convertible top was ditched, as well as everything over the engine cover, the door panels, side windows, the mechanical spoiler, the convertible top motors, and a bunch of hardware. Everything in the bin on the right added up to 45 pounds. The convertible lid and associated motors totaled 38 pounds. That insulated carpet piece above the engine cover and its associated zippered glove box? That’s another 24 pounds!
Next we tackled the rear bumper and muffler. The aluminum bumper bar and the shocks add up to 20 pounds, while the hardware, brackets, and black impact pieces were another 11 pounds. The bumper cover itself was another 11 pounds. The big loss here was the heavy stock rear center muffler, which was a massive 35 pounds off the back of the car. The car is still emissions legal, as the catalysts have not been tampered with or removed, and it is certainly louder, but not too loud to be annoying to me.
For the time that the car had been sitting, I’ve left a lead acid battery in it for the cold cranking amps and ease of long term storage. By re-installing the 2-pound Lithium battery, that was another 48 pounds. It’s astonishing how much difference those things make.
I’ve had a Lotus Exige carbon bucket seat sitting in my garage for a couple of years waiting to go into this car, and finally have an opportunity to use it. Each of the factory (non-power adjustable) seats weighed a whopping 54 pounds. The Lotus seat that replaced the driver’s side seat weighs just 15 pounds, plus a pound for a pair of aluminum brackets. That’s the most impressive weight loss thus far, adding up to 92 pounds!
With the passenger’s seat ditched permanently, I also pulled the carpet, seatbelt, and trim from that side of the car, plus the parking brake mechanism (which has been non-functional since we upgraded to Carrera brakes) netting another 41 pounds.
That brings us into the present. There is still plenty of work to be done on the weight loss front, including the long dead air conditioning system, the windshield and frame, and replacing various metal components with carbon fiber, which we’ll tackle soon. But, in what amounts to three afternoons of wrenching on this car, we managed to pull 365 pounds out of or off of the Boxster. If we include previous weight loss efforts, I’d guess this is around 500 pounds removed from the car, and more than half way to our goal.
With the rear bumper removed, however, we no longer have a place to mount our license plate, which is important, because we aim to maintain street legality for this car. And some cosmetic work needed to be carried out. First, some heat shields needed to go. Then we masked off the previously hidden area to spray paint it with some spare matte black paint we had laying around.
Then we found a mounting hole on the transaxle that previously held a bracket for the muffler. Drill a hole in the middle of the license plate and find a proper pitch and length bolt to hold it on. Voila.
Not a bad look if you ask me.
And before we dive out of this update, here’s a new piece of the puzzle that will really set this project apart. Someone in our instagram feed was selling a pair of race-used Japanese Super GT Boxster fenders in carbon fiber that we just had to have! This throws a bit of a wrench in our project, as we’ll now have to source some wider rear wheels and flares to make this look right. The current thought is to move the rear 10″ wheels to the front, source a pair of 12″ wheels for the rear, and get a set of 996 RSR rear bolt-on flares. If they were good enough for Le Mans, they’re good enough for this project.
These fenders were sourced from the Arktech Motorsports which ran a 986 Boxster S in Europe for the 2005 season, before applying significant aerodynamic updates to the car and racing it in the Japanese GT Championship from 2006 to 2008. The car’s best finish was a 19th overall (6th in class) at the 300 KM race at Sugo in 2006. How exactly these fenders ended up in California, I’m not sure, but this opportunity doesn’t come along every day. I’m picking them up next weekend!
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