Sonic Boom Boy

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With hurricanes and tidal surges in the news of late, my newly acquired 986 Boxster S has gone along with the flow and adopted a new soundtrack – a rushing tsunami tune that, under hard acceleration at high revs, conjures up nothing so much as a fast-moving tidal wave. All credit, then, to Cargraphic for bringing about the transformation from babbling brook-style choppy sea to full on surf-smacker surge.

A day on the hoist at Cargraphic’s Cullompton, Devon, factory saw the standard 986 box replaced by a gorgeous shiny ovoid cylinder. If that sounds like a straightforward job, hear this: with the car up on the ramp, first action is when Keith, a veteran exhaust specialist, cuts the brackets off the old pipes connecting the silencer so it can be de mounted. He removes the car’s rear bumper panel and raised the spoiler to gain better access via the engine bay to undo the captive nuts to the silencer support. ‘There’s no way of getting your hands or a tool on the other side of the nut to prevent it from spinning, so the only option is to remove the rear valance, and the job is made far easier by doing that, once we’d figured out how to lift the spoiler.’