GT4 or modded Cayman R

[J-P]

fioran0 said:

J-P
If you have done all that work you need to get the GT3 mc on there. It's almost criminal you haven't.
It will give you a proper brake pedal once you get it on. The one in there presently is long!

Cmoose
I've no idea on price, £300 or so most likely. TRW make the part however. I'm sure with an afternoons effort one could source it via an alternative channel for half the price.
Its a fairly easy swap if you are handy, though I would probably pay someone as bleeding brakes is possibly the dullest car work around.

I'll get it done - sounds like a no-brainer and not too expensive either.

[J-P]

Interesting - like the look of that Tubi exhaust. I'm looking forward to trying the SVP car in a couple of weeks.

[J-P]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

This is part of the problem - both comments are valid, however, I believe that the 987 is more in keeping with what I like in a car, the mods that Cmoose describes are exactly the shortcomings that I feel the car has.

[J-P]

FrankCayman said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Are you sticking with the 987 CS? I know you were thinking of moving it on? Be good to see it properly lowered.

Perhaps the OP should consider selling the Cayman R, buying a the cheaper Gen 2 987 CS and modding that up with the money made on the R? He could build a bespoke car better than the R?

People always say that. As I stated previously, if I do mod the CR, I'll keep it forever. I wouldn't make money if I sold the CR, I would in fact have crystallised a loss. If you already have a CR, there are quite a few bits you get with that car that are desirable and I'd like to keep, bucket seats, Spyder alloys, lightweight doors to name a few, but if I mod it to exactly what I want, then why sell it at all? No money lost either, I'll just have a nice car, with all mod cons that is great on track and could probably teach some way more powerful cars a thing or two on track

[J-P]

J12KJR said:

You really can't see a genuine apology when it is in black and white.
A poorly judged bit of humour my first post may have been but that was all it was.
Apologies to the OP as well.

No need to apologise to me. I've got what I wanted from the thread and had some fun reading the posts. But if anybody wants to give further views I'm

After I've tried the SVP car, I'll feedback on here but I won't actually buy any upgrades or make a decision until the spec for the GT4 is announced. I still think keeping the CR is the best option, it will mean more track days, keeping the M235i (and changing it every few years for another decent, practical performance car - M2 next or RS3), and getting a Macan GTS for the Mrs, which would make a great little fleet.

Gt4 would mean the bimmer has to go and can't be replaced, Mrs would still get Macan though, so still OK, but not as good.

[J-P]

Heard back from John Tecce yesterday. Thanks for the tip, Neil. I'm going to get some quotes for parts and see where we get to.

Just hoping the weather holds out for the try out of the SVP car on Monday!

[J-P]

So, weather was just about as good as it gets for January, it was sunny and dry. Roads could have been a little drier but other than that couldn't really have asked for more.

Dom showed me around the car and explained some of the mods (what a lovely guy btw).

After that he switched it on - what an outrageous noise it makes! Very rude indeed. "It's got race cats", Dom explained. Hmmm, I thought, I really like that. Dom then gave me some suggestions of where to try the car and then left me to it.

I strapped on the harnesses (this by itself made the car feel one hell of a lot more serious than the R) and set off. Within about 200yds I realised this was precisely the sort of feel I was looking for and within about another 400yds, I'd decided the race cats were definitely not for me. The thing is, the noise is amazing on start up, idle and when you're on it but droning, loud and an utter PITA, the rest of the time. I know I couldn't live with the droning, it ruins a perfectly good road car.

So, things I picked up on. The gearbox had cup cables, which massively improved the feel and precision of the shift over my R (which I thought was pretty good until I drove the SVP car). The next thing I quickly picked up on was the overall quality of the damping, which performed the neat trick of being at least if not more comfortable than the R but also significantly enhancing the focus, I must say I also like the smaller diameter steering wheel. But the car turns in very well indeed and maintains the delightful mid corner balance of the R. When you push on a bit, it feels very, very good indeed and the noise and gear shift really give you the impression that you're driving a race car, it's fantastic! The one thing that I didn't like too much was the brake pedal but when I got back Dom explained that it didn't have the GT3 MC, so I'd imagine that this would be resolved by making this small mod.

Engine wise, the car felt about as quick as the R but the lightweight flywheel really did its thing for throttle response.

All in all it was a good day, I really like the car and have asked Dom to quote for a few bits. I have plenty of food for thought now.

Edited by J-P on Monday 19th January 19:28

[J-P]

I shall wait and see the spec of the GT4 but I think that the R with harness bar and harnesses, cup cables, SVP damper mods, QR wheel, GT3 MC, IPD plenum, GT3 throttle body, Michelin pilot sport cup 2 all round and a remap should be pretty spectacularly good to drive on track and still road friendly enough to drive around in the rest of the time too!

[J-P]

Thanks, Neil. That Jack Olsen vid was very inspiring. I'm very tempted to just mod the R and get it exactly as I'd like and ignore the GT4. For me the best thing is that today demonstrated that it's possible to get a lot from the R and turn it into something that is truly spectacular rather than just very good.

[J-P]

Slippydiff said:

J-P said:

I'm very tempted to just mod the R and get it exactly as I'd like and ignore the GT4. For me the best thing is that today demonstrated that it's possible to get a lot from the R and turn it into something that is truly spectacular rather than just very good.

Ex-rally boy comes up trumps modding road cars into something really rather good. Quelle surprise ..........



Good to meet you J-P

Cheers, Henry

[J-P]

PR36 said:

I have an 07 CS which has pss9, h and r arb, gt3 mc, ssk, carnewal gt catback, ipd plenum and gt3 tb, desnork and softronic flash and it is awesome. To me the cayman in standard trim is a sharp knife thats been blunted and these mods give it back that sharpness whilst it still being a great road car. Next on my list are new oem engine mount and wevo tran mounts along with the numeric cables which seems another tried and trusted improvement. The reason for my reply is I've also considered the LWFW but the issue is you have to have the comp clutch fitted, and my RMS has been 'weeping' for a few months so whilst my indy said not to worry about the rms, they did say to fix it when the clutch is next out which i can easily see making the cost of the LWFW inc labour between £1500 to £2000 for me. Did it make that much of a difference to justify spending that sort of money on it?

Is the LWFW worth it? I think so. It makes throttle blips awesome and the speed at which the engine picks up is impressive. On paper it sounds like it's a little bit of a st mod but in practice, it adds to the driving experience, I'm going to have it. You should try it first though, just because I liked it, doesn't mean that you will.

[J-P]

fioran0 said:

J-P said:

Thanks, Neil. That Jack Olsen vid was very inspiring. I'm very tempted to just mod the R and get it exactly as I'd like and ignore the GT4. For me the best thing is that today demonstrated that it's possible to get a lot from the R and turn it into something that is truly spectacular rather than just very good.

The one potential snag is what engine is in the GT4. If its something special (and I am not expecting it to be, nor I am talking simply HP increase) then it may change the proposition quite dramatically.
I agree, the whole story with Jack Olsen is one that, if you are that way inclined, really speaks to possibilities and another dimension to car ownership.

I know - double wishbones and dry sumped, high revving NA engine would get me all of a quiver. Oh well, not long to wait now, until we find out what they've done.

ETA - the other thing that was pretty cool about going to SVP was seeing just how far they could go. They had a Cayman which when finished will weigh 800kg it's got a SADEV sequential, full aero, cage, supercharger, 3.9l engine and is also dry sumped as well as race dampers. Of course that's waaay too far for my needs but good to know how far you can push the envelope if the bug really takes you!

Edited by J-P on Monday 19th January 20:54

[J-P]

GT4owner said:

J-P said:

I think that the R with harness bar and harnesses, cup cables, SVP damper mods, QR wheel, GT3 MC, IPD plenum, GT3 throttle body, Michelin pilot sport cup 2 all round and a remap should be pretty spectacularly good to drive on track and still road friendly enough to drive around in the rest of the time too!

still be pants, as you are not fitting any adjustable LCA so you be limited on your camber to about -1 degree which is st.
And not changing out the manafold which has 4 x 400 cell cats in it, or having engine mounts or rear toe arms !!

just sayin.
the MC imo does nothing but make the pedal travel shorter the IPD with GT3 throttle passes too much air for that 3.4 DFi lump so not needed.

you will see no performance gain until you change the front manifold, and you will go no faster on track until you can dial in some camber.


You should come and try my Spyder which imo has the right mods for the Gen 2 car before throwing your money down the toilet.
Seems totally pointless waste of money for your chosen mods.

remember the gen 1 car had a tiny Throttle body and cats in the rear section, the Gen 2 flows enough air and all 4 cats are in the manifold.

So all in all bad advice from every one on here imo, inc SVP if that's what they came up with.

Edited by GT4owner on Monday 19th January 20:50

Actually, I'd get your bits done too!

[J-P]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Yes thanks ever so much for the tip Cmoose. I agree, it would have been very easy for Porsche to make the car like that out of the box. Odd that they didn't

[J-P]

fioran0 said:

GT4owner said:

still be pants, as its a Cayman which is $hit. I have a GT4
And not changing out the rear toe arms !! Rookie move. I dont know why I have them, but just get them on.

just sayin.
the MC imo does nothing but make the pedal travel shorter somehow suspending the rules of science wrt pressure = force/area but confusingly still following volume = area x length.. science, its just a paradigm anyways.

You will go no faster on track until you can dial in some camber. I mean wtf has braking, line, steering, throttle or any of that crap got to do with "faster". $hit, what does "faster" even mean. Its all just new age bull$hit and dont let anyone tell you otherwise. Camber man, thats what the people wont tell you.


You should come and try my Spyder.
Seems totally pointless waste of money.

remember the gen 1 car had tiny cats in the rear section, the Gen 2 flows enough air like 4 cats are in the manifold. MMMMMMeeeeeooowww!

So all in all bad advice from every one on here but me. I drive flat out!

Edited by GT4owner on Monday 19th January 20:50

[J-P]

fioran0 said:

too funny!
J-P, I meant to ask but did the SVP car run a wider front rim or just the stock size? Getting more tyre up front is something the cayman has been crying out for since it first appeared but its not something I have seen many cars running. Maybe that will all change if the GT4 comes with a 265 front.

Didn't have wider front tyres. But did have lightweight wheels and Dunlop sport max, which were actually pretty good considering how cold it was. To be honest I didn't get to try it in anger, combination of unfamiliar roads, which were cold and damp and being very aware that it wasn't my car. However, even at 6 or 7/10ths it felt a lot more sorted than mine.

[J-P]

PorscheGT4 said:

Sports maxx are a normal tyre, I run the Race Maxx on mine, which hate the cold.

http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Article/Dunlop-Sport-...

Edited by PorscheGT4 on Tuesday 20th January 17:58

Thanks. Mr D why do you keep changing your handle? It's bizarre, we all know it's you!

ETA - tread pattern in those pics looks different to the SVP car, so god knows what tyres it was running!

Edited by J-P on Tuesday 20th January 19:03

[J-P]

Slippydiff said:

J-P said:

Didn't have wider front tyres. But did have lightweight wheels and Dunlop sport max, which were actually pretty good considering how cold it was. To be honest I didn't get to try it in anger, combination of unfamiliar roads, which were cold and damp and being very aware that it wasn't my car. However, even at 6 or 7/10ths it felt a lot more sorted than mine.

Awww. J-P you should've said, there's a great section of road 3-4 minutes from Doms place that's a superb test route. Good corners, undulating and plenty of room to get lairy in some sections. The car you drove yesterday has been down it quite quickly previously ..........

Oh I found some lovely roads, great visibility, but the sheer fact that I don't know them made for somewhat less "progress" than I'd have liked. Still had fun though and gave the car enough of a stretch to get a sense that it will definitely work for me. Pleased I took the time to try it out!

[J-P]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

PR36, you need to go and see them. As I alluded to in my earlier post, they can do pretty much anything, supercharge the engine increase to 3.9l, dry sump the engine, add lightweight body parts, build full aero kit, install a full cage and seam weld if required. The world's your oyster, you can have whatever you want. The attraction for me is that unlike most specialists, they have chosen to use the Cayman as their main development platform. Yes they do loads of stuff for 911s, but they've set out their stall as a Cayman modifier and they have plenty of customers racing caymans to test their parts on. The quality of some of the parts that they have fabricated is beyond reproach. I was very impressed with their professionalism. Dom knows what he's doing, he's totally confident of his skills and that you'd be hard pressed to try his car and not like it. IMHO, he's right, his development car is exceptionally good to drive, just don't get the race cats!

[J-P]

fioran0 said:

Be wary of assuming anything about their engines and whether or not they are stock. If you race, what you can do is usually tightly controlled by regulations and in most cases this translates into not much at all of anything is allowed. A race car with no where to race is useless so you may often be quite surprised to see whats not on them after being built for a specific series. A street car and track day types have way more freedom thats for sure.
The classes where you can run what you bring are rare, and the cars that run in this tend to not be heated up caymans. Ive seen a couple of "caymans" run in open classes. They were space frame builds with some carbon fiber cayman looking panels hung on top and all sorts of engines (LS7 units usually but not the factory cayman one thats for sure).

The twin chamber air/oil separator works by simply having a second chamber as an overspill for the first creating more volume capacity. The regular separator can end up with too much oil in it under some track conditions (high g load turns) and this then returns to the intake and is blown out as a puff of smoke. From memory its as much about the drain side of the system under loading becoming slow rather than an increase in oil blown up but its been a long time since I looked at an M9X engine so I may be misremembering here. By fitting the twin chamber version, the larger capacity gives some extra oil capacity to provide a buffer for the few seconds where its needed.

I used to wonder about the source of the "motorsports" tag used on that twin chamber AOS. Obviously its not something that was developed for or from the Cups etc given that they are dry sump engine. The only thing I could think of from an actual motorsport series would be the koni/continental challenge series stuff that ran Carreras (996 and 997) and I wonder if it was made for that. It seems like its probably more likely to have come out of some X51 stuff - but who knows.

I built a full on race M96 engine way back purely to see what it would be like/capable of. I will post some stuff up about it later in light of the way this thread is going.

Looking forward to seeing that. Completely get what you're saying about race cars. SVP had a Cayman shell with roll cage. They said that the only reason they hadn't seam welded the cage in was because that would invalidate it for one of the championships in which their customers race.