n00b Servicing Question - Page 1 - Boxster/Cayman - PistonHeads UK

I'm going to start self servicing my 2002 Boxster as she's an old girl now and the minor service looks to only be an oil change anyway. There are a heap of inspection items, one being reading out ECU faults; I've never had the ECU warning light come on so I was wondering if there was any other info in there which might be useful and whether it was worth getting this done/buying the kit to DIY it?

I wouldn't bother. If the engine is misbehaving and you want to investigate it can be useful but unless the light comes on there's no point plugging it in just to see what's there. Save the money or buy more expensive oil or do the filters or something. You'll struggle to get a decent reader cheap, I bought one of the £20 bluetooth OBD readers and it's hard to get it to connect. Edited by scarble on Tuesday 19th November 09:54

Or, and this is being very cheeky, if you have a recovery service (AA, RAC etc.), call them out. Tell them you got a warning light and you're worried there might be a problem. Let them plug in their computer and see what it says. Whilst you won't get the full Porsche diagnostics it will do the basics. I legitimately called them out when my alarm kept going off but they could find no fault. As he was there I asked him to do all the engine checks and he kindly obliged.

Was thinking along the lines of a Bluetooth reader and the Torque app on my phone, but I might not bother right now. On the subject of servicing, what weight oil do most people use? There are quite a few options in the manual and it doesn't really say why yo'd go for one over the other.

I think that depends on your time of year and typical trips. A thinner oil for the winter, particularly if you drive from cold. I have torque and a bluetooth reader. Worked on my mate's Astra diseasel except the throttle angle was reversed, can't get it to work at all on my Clio. Don't know if I'm doing it wrong or if Torque is s**t or the reader is s**t (or even my phone??). The cheap ones are supposed to use some cheap rip-off of the old version of the chip/firmware design rather than the proper version which is copyrighted and has to be licensed (hence the cost). Google will explain it better.

If you are a member of tipec then there are some good guys in there and depending on where you are usually one of them will have a durametric you can borrow.

Durametric is what you are after

shantybeater said: Durametric is what you are after Yep this is what you want. I got mine off ebay quite cheaply and it runs on my PC. A standard OBDII reader will not read the Porsche codes. I tried! I like it as you can watch various parameters in real time and compare bank 1 to bank 2.

edcs said: I'm going to start self servicing my 2002 Boxster as she's an old girl now and the minor service looks to only be an oil change anyway. As my cars put on the years I tend to, Cut out intermediate services completely and just do an oil change myself - nothing else. Get the MOT done at main dealer or with a specialist who's familiar with the cars - they'll soon tell you if anything's amiss.