1999 Porsche 996 C2 3.7
Discussion
DanG355 said:
Can you please post some interior pics when you get time? I am keen to see the GT3 console delete. I am looking for one of these for my 986 but they rarely come up and cost a fortune so may try a DIY alternative.
Nice car and write up. These cars like to be used regularly and if they are well maintained then mileage seems no issue as can be seen from some of the other 996 threads on here.
As promised, a quick interior pic.Nice car and write up. These cars like to be used regularly and if they are well maintained then mileage seems no issue as can be seen from some of the other 996 threads on here.
rufusgti said:
Great story, and great to see you doing so much yourself.
Bit weird, but any more info on your peugeot drop handled bike. I have the exact same bike in the garage waiting for a new set of wheels and a refresh but I'm always at a loss as where to start. Old bikes are not my thing and bike shops do not want to know about retro stuff.
Yeah, that was my 'summer cruiser' single speed build I did last year.Bit weird, but any more info on your peugeot drop handled bike. I have the exact same bike in the garage waiting for a new set of wheels and a refresh but I'm always at a loss as where to start. Old bikes are not my thing and bike shops do not want to know about retro stuff.
Was pretty chuffed with how it came together in the end. What are you struggling with?
Mallone said:
rufusgti said:
Great story, and great to see you doing so much yourself.
Bit weird, but any more info on your peugeot drop handled bike. I have the exact same bike in the garage waiting for a new set of wheels and a refresh but I'm always at a loss as where to start. Old bikes are not my thing and bike shops do not want to know about retro stuff.
Yeah, that was my 'summer cruiser' single speed build I did last year.Bit weird, but any more info on your peugeot drop handled bike. I have the exact same bike in the garage waiting for a new set of wheels and a refresh but I'm always at a loss as where to start. Old bikes are not my thing and bike shops do not want to know about retro stuff.
Was pretty chuffed with how it came together in the end. What are you struggling with?
They're just 700C wheels.
You do need to measure the gap between the rear dropouts though - it can be narrower with older bikes.
This is a very useful website:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-spacing.html
You do need to measure the gap between the rear dropouts though - it can be narrower with older bikes.
This is a very useful website:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-spacing.html
Sheldon Brown is an excellent resource.
Along with eBay, I use these guys for parts:
https://www.velosolo.co.uk
http://espressowheels.com
Along with eBay, I use these guys for parts:
https://www.velosolo.co.uk
http://espressowheels.com
Wrote this up on 911uk but thought I'd keep up to date on here too in case anyone was interested. The 996 has been a bit busy going round race circuits and then being tarted up a bit with some paint.
First up was a track day at Silverstone GP on the 25th. I've raced here before (but in a Clio 182 - quite different speeds down the back straight!) so knew the track, but was really keen to see what the 996 was like to hustle quickly.
We lucked out and managed to get a garage and, although it was pretty grey and cold, the rain stayed away and the track was dry. I was with my racing 'partner in crime' in his 987 Boxster and we were keen to see how they differed.
So how did it get on? Overall, OK. With room for mechanical improvement.
In terms of driving the car, the balance was good with a sniff of understeer to manage, along with a couple of nice playful slides in the high speed stuff like Copse. Nothing too scary (as long as you remember not to lift!) to manage. I hadn't been massively impressed with the Toyo's that are currently on the car during road drives, but must admit they came alive on track with some heat in them. Might not write them off just yet....
Car felt a tiny bit soft at times and there was a little more body roll than I had expected. What was startling was driving the Boxster back to back with the 996. The 987 is on OE Porsche suspension (not sport or PASM) and it felt WAY WAY softer. It really wallowed around a lot more. Engine placemenet will affect that too but it really surprised me just how different the experience of driving each of them was.
Mechanically things were a bit more of a mixed bag. Engine and gearbox were bulletproof - not a sniff of oil or coolant used - but rather frustratingly the brakes became an issue pretty quickly and I had to manage them most of the day.
After only one fast lap we were getting a lot of vibration from the fronts. Got the car up in the air while they were still hot and could feel a high spot on the disc. Seems that they were slightly warped to begin with, that hadn't ever shown up on the road, but once we put some real effort and heat in to them they were really grumbling. Overall stopping power didn't seem to be affected but the vibration was painful. The brakes are the only thing I haven't changed on the car yet and I now wish I had!
In the end I used the day as a chance to practice my lines and just made sure that we were doing lots of lifting, coasting and gentle braking into the hard stops around the track. That seemed to keep the brakes more or less happy.
The only other mechanical issue that showed up was that by the time I'd got home at the end of the day the welds had failed on one of my Dansk exhaust tips and it was rattling like mad. Caused a few weird looks sat in traffic as it sounded like I'd chucked a load of bolts into the air intake
Thankfully Design911 were pretty good at sorting it out once I'd sent a bit of evidence and I've already got a new set delivered FOC to go on the car this week.
Overall a good day: engine didn't explode, Silverstone is still a mega track, car handles well, need to sort brakes.
Next up: Paint
Although the pics when I first bought the car made the front bumper look pretty tidy, like a lot of 996's of this vintage they are actually a bit knackered close up. After a local old boy accidentally reversed into me at a set of traffic lights and cracked the lacquer (and gave me £300 in cash on the spot to say sorry. That was unexpected!) I knew it was time to sort it our properly.
I also wanted my paint guy to fill in the various bits of woodscrew butchery caused by badly fitted numberplates over the years (I'm going to go with a stick on plate) and see if he could sort out the really scruffy GT3 front splitter (I'm not paying Porsche £150 for a sliver of hard plastic. Mad money!)
Finally, when my paint guy saw the car he offered to see if he could give the lights a good going over as the plastic was a bit faded and yellowing and my own efforts with a 3M restoration kit had been pretty disappointing.
Thankfully he was able to manage a pretty solid result on all three bits!
Woodscrew Bodgery filled and sanded
Primed and ready to go
Lights sanded, polished and lacquered
[/i]
Looking super clean as it was reversing out of the paint shop
I haven't got any pics of the splitter in paint but he was able to sand down, prime and then apply a satin black finish to it. Looks good as new. I'll likely do this myself next time but good to know it can be brought back to life fairly easily.
Parked up at home looking better than ever. Why oh why do we have to have numberplates that spoil front ends like this!?
And that's the car up to date again. Not likely to get the chance to use it much over the next few weeks as we're in build mode for our new race car and that will keep me busy with the spanners. Time to start planning for a few summer road trips. Might see if I can nip out to the Ace Cafe on the 24th though.....
As always, cheers for reading.
First up was a track day at Silverstone GP on the 25th. I've raced here before (but in a Clio 182 - quite different speeds down the back straight!) so knew the track, but was really keen to see what the 996 was like to hustle quickly.
We lucked out and managed to get a garage and, although it was pretty grey and cold, the rain stayed away and the track was dry. I was with my racing 'partner in crime' in his 987 Boxster and we were keen to see how they differed.
So how did it get on? Overall, OK. With room for mechanical improvement.
In terms of driving the car, the balance was good with a sniff of understeer to manage, along with a couple of nice playful slides in the high speed stuff like Copse. Nothing too scary (as long as you remember not to lift!) to manage. I hadn't been massively impressed with the Toyo's that are currently on the car during road drives, but must admit they came alive on track with some heat in them. Might not write them off just yet....
Car felt a tiny bit soft at times and there was a little more body roll than I had expected. What was startling was driving the Boxster back to back with the 996. The 987 is on OE Porsche suspension (not sport or PASM) and it felt WAY WAY softer. It really wallowed around a lot more. Engine placemenet will affect that too but it really surprised me just how different the experience of driving each of them was.
Mechanically things were a bit more of a mixed bag. Engine and gearbox were bulletproof - not a sniff of oil or coolant used - but rather frustratingly the brakes became an issue pretty quickly and I had to manage them most of the day.
After only one fast lap we were getting a lot of vibration from the fronts. Got the car up in the air while they were still hot and could feel a high spot on the disc. Seems that they were slightly warped to begin with, that hadn't ever shown up on the road, but once we put some real effort and heat in to them they were really grumbling. Overall stopping power didn't seem to be affected but the vibration was painful. The brakes are the only thing I haven't changed on the car yet and I now wish I had!
In the end I used the day as a chance to practice my lines and just made sure that we were doing lots of lifting, coasting and gentle braking into the hard stops around the track. That seemed to keep the brakes more or less happy.
The only other mechanical issue that showed up was that by the time I'd got home at the end of the day the welds had failed on one of my Dansk exhaust tips and it was rattling like mad. Caused a few weird looks sat in traffic as it sounded like I'd chucked a load of bolts into the air intake
Thankfully Design911 were pretty good at sorting it out once I'd sent a bit of evidence and I've already got a new set delivered FOC to go on the car this week.
Overall a good day: engine didn't explode, Silverstone is still a mega track, car handles well, need to sort brakes.
Next up: Paint
Although the pics when I first bought the car made the front bumper look pretty tidy, like a lot of 996's of this vintage they are actually a bit knackered close up. After a local old boy accidentally reversed into me at a set of traffic lights and cracked the lacquer (and gave me £300 in cash on the spot to say sorry. That was unexpected!) I knew it was time to sort it our properly.
I also wanted my paint guy to fill in the various bits of woodscrew butchery caused by badly fitted numberplates over the years (I'm going to go with a stick on plate) and see if he could sort out the really scruffy GT3 front splitter (I'm not paying Porsche £150 for a sliver of hard plastic. Mad money!)
Finally, when my paint guy saw the car he offered to see if he could give the lights a good going over as the plastic was a bit faded and yellowing and my own efforts with a 3M restoration kit had been pretty disappointing.
Thankfully he was able to manage a pretty solid result on all three bits!
Woodscrew Bodgery filled and sanded
Primed and ready to go
Lights sanded, polished and lacquered
[/i]Looking super clean as it was reversing out of the paint shop
I haven't got any pics of the splitter in paint but he was able to sand down, prime and then apply a satin black finish to it. Looks good as new. I'll likely do this myself next time but good to know it can be brought back to life fairly easily.
Parked up at home looking better than ever. Why oh why do we have to have numberplates that spoil front ends like this!?
And that's the car up to date again. Not likely to get the chance to use it much over the next few weeks as we're in build mode for our new race car and that will keep me busy with the spanners. Time to start planning for a few summer road trips. Might see if I can nip out to the Ace Cafe on the 24th though.....
As always, cheers for reading.
trails said:
Looks lovely. I did like the Fuch wheels, but it looks so right now.
Needs silver front indicator bulbs though
Thanks. I'm really chuffed with it.Needs silver front indicator bulbs though
Re: the lights - I agree, but learned the hard way on my old 996 that the reflectors themselves are orange inside the 996 front light units.
I'd love to split them open and rip out the orange (while converting to proper HID projectors) but I haven't got the guts to stick these units in the oven when a new (used) set would be in the region of £500 if anything went wrong!
Mallone said:
trails said:
Looks lovely. I did like the Fuch wheels, but it looks so right now.
Needs silver front indicator bulbs though
Thanks. I'm really chuffed with it.Needs silver front indicator bulbs though
Re: the lights - I agree, but learned the hard way on my old 996 that the reflectors themselves are orange inside the 996 front light units.
I'd love to split them open and rip out the orange (while converting to proper HID projectors) but I haven't got the guts to stick these units in the oven when a new (used) set would be in the region of £500 if anything went wrong!
Wrote this up on 911UK but thought it worth sharing here too.
I’ve been doing a bunch of stuff over the last few months during lockdown and figured this audience might be more interested in my ramblings than my long suffering girlfriend!
When I last updated this the car had recently had a bit of paint but was otherwise, supposedly, ‘finished’. The key lesson here is that I really need to stop pretending to myself that I can actually allow any project car to be ‘finished’
Making the most of some good weather, long evenings, and awesome B roads
New Brakes
After the Silverstone track day in January the brakes were found pretty wanting, with some big vibration from the front discs at speed. Decided to do a full overhaul with Pagid discs and Textar pads all round, as well as a set of HEL braided lines and a fluid change. I’ve done brakes on a few 996’s/986’s in the past and knew of the usual niggles that can show up. This car treated me to a full suite of brake related pain.
The first was that (even after backing off the handbrake mechanism to prevent exactly this…) upon removing the rear disc on the passenger side there was a lot of loud pinging and a bunch of metal springs collapsing out of the hub. That’ll be the handbrake assembly then. Arse. Managed to repair some of the fixings and had some other parts from old jobs that I could reuse but still needed some parts from Porsche to get the mechanism back in one piece. £20 for a single spring is a new record for me and was a complete pain on the arse to fit. Adjusting them up each side through the wheel bolt holes is also a crap job. Drum brakes are the work of the devil.
The second issue was a bit more problematic. On these cars you can sometimes run into issues with the caliper mounting bolts stripping the threads in the aluminium hub if they have been over tightened. Guess what someone had done at some point in the past? When I went to remove the top bolt from the front caliper on the passenger side it was already loose and rattling around in the hub….. Hmmm. Not ideal. It was bad enough that I could literally pull the bolt out of the hub by hand. There was nothing holding it in and it wouldn’t take any torque.
Seems that at some point in the past someone had completely shagged the thread in the hub and just decided to…..leave it. Complete madness. Given I’d been on track a few weeks earlier I was pretty f’ing miffed, mostly with myself for not checking the brakes a bit better, but also a little bit with previous owners/garages that had worked on the car and not bothered to check the caliper. Someone actively decided to leave the bolt like that. Makes me pretty angry when it comes to safety stuff like that. Grrrr.
No pictures of the brake job because……they are brakes and we’ve all seen them, and also because I was too pissed off to take photos.
At this point the car went into AMS to get the hub helicoiled and I also asked them to sort out the braided lines.
Thankfully that job went pretty smoothly, other than HEL initially sending the wrong lines, and the helicoil in the hub worked out so the brakes were finally sorted. Now they’ve bedded in a bit they are proving to be pretty excellent. A really solid pedal that can be modulated nicely and with strong overall stopping power. Even stock Porsche brakes are really, really good when in good shape.
New Lights (sort of)
When I first picked up the car I’d quickly installed a set of H7R HID bulbs and ballasts into the back of the standard 996 light units. The factory halogens are like glow worms. Terrible! It’s a tight fit to get all the HID hardware in the back of the light unit but I’d done this before on my previous 996 without issue. This time around, and with a more powerful HID kit, things were getting a bit too hot and I was starting to cook ballasts/bulbs.
This was a proper squeeze to get in. Wasn’t really going to last. Should have done It properly first time round!
Knowing that the standard Litronic units just bolt the ballasts to the back of the light units I knew I had some space behind the lights/above the wheel arch liner to play with. After I’d got the tape measure out to check my working, and following a bit of fettling with the Dremel and drill, I had a set of these ready to go:
It looks slightly heath Robinson but is actually really solidly mounted and all of the heat issues have disappeared. The ballasts now sit in nice cool air. A solid upgrade and, although some people really moan about HID’s being used in reflector headlights, these H7R bulbs result in a really clean cut off of the beam pattern.
Interior Trim
Sorting this has been a multi month labour of love.
The problem is really simple: I literally cannot stand rattles from a car interior. It drives me insane.
This car seemed to have more rattles than any other car I’ve ever driven. Even convertibles I’ve owned that had the body stiffness of jelly were better than this. I had to fix it.
Based on the amount of rogue speaker wire I’ve discovered throughout the car it’s clear that at some point in it’s life this car had a serious stereo installed and that, along with a particularly invasive immobiliser/tracker install, gave me reason to suspect that most of the interior had been apart at various times and my guess was that it had never really been put back together properly. There was only one thing to do to solve this - pull it all out, replace all the trim clips, add felt and foam to anything that might move/rub/rattle/annoy me in any way and then put it all back together again.
Doing all this during lockdown, and with Porsche parts departments closed in the UK, meant I had to rely on Teile.com for most of my parts. I'm not sure I can ever bring myself to disclose just how much money I spent on having a bunch of random trim clips delivered to the UK from Germany...
With the centre console out I took the opportunity to install a 997 shifter housing. Well worth it. Good upgrade.
Don't worry, the hardback seat isn't resting directly on the tarmac, there's a floor mat under there protecting it!
Doing this on a very hot, 25c, day was a big mistake. I was sweating BUCKETS crawling around in the back of the car.
It turned into a massive job and I ended up pulling nearly the entire interior out.
As predicted, a huge amount of the trim clips were wrong, missing, or fitted incorrectly and I spent what felt like days cleaning up every interior panel. Now it’s back together the difference is ENORMOUS. Adding sound deadening and felt tape to all of the major panels made a huge difference. A lot of the leather rubbing/squeaking is gone and the whole car now feels like it’s made from one solid piece of material. Complete OCD overload, and I’m certain my neighbours think I am going completely mad, but it was well worth it.
While I was on a bit of a trim mission I also wanted to solve another little annoyance. When I’d removed the CD changer from the frunk it left a bit of a gap between the plastic trim and the carpet section. Bugged me every time I used the boot.
After a bit of part number Cluedo while browsing the 996 Katalog and I noticed there was a version for cars without CD changers. A bit of eBay hunting and £8 later and it was one more thing ticked off the list.
Sometimes it really is the little things…
MOMO Wheel
This is wholly unoriginal these days on a 996 but having felt the difference a new wheel can make on our race car I knew I wanted to switch the standard Porsche wheel over to a MOMO one. I wasn’t initially sure about the idea of disabling the airbag, but given I’ll happily jump on my motorbike, or take any of my older cars for a spin, without a second thought for any safety systems I decided to go for it.
It’s an expensive upgrade, you’re definitely paying for some Italian flair and branding, but I can’t deny it felt really, really nice the first time I got a hold of it.
There are a lot of fitting guides online for this so I’m not going to write another one (and I’ve already written way too much in this update anyway….) but it was fairly straightforward. I got hold of a second clock spring unit to harvest the aribag and horn cables from so everything is reversible if needed. I had similar issues with the grounding for the horn that others have run into, but had already run an earth behind the steering column for the OBC retrofit I did late last year so just tapped into that. Job done.
Looks great, feels great. Has made a genuine difference to how the car drives, as weird as that sounds.
And that’s it for now. Those were all of the major jobs on the car since February. Phew.
I also thought I’d add a selection of smaller bits and pieces below, alongside some glory shots of the car looking shiny when it actually gets a wash every now and then.
Stumbled across an advert on Gumtree for a set of mint Porsche EP4110 Big Oval exhaust tips for just £40. Bargain! Looking much better than the Dansk tips.
Still not 100% sure on this one but wanted to try and see what the car looked like with just a simple 911 rear badge. Sometimes I think it looks great, sometimes I think it shouldn’t have anything, sometimes I think I should go back to a standard Carrera badge. First world problems.
Had a few legitimate reasons to have to drive through London during Lockdown so wanted to at exercise the car a bit rather than cycle. Felt pretty insane basically being one of very, very few cars on the road in Central at night. Was like a ghost town.
Keeping some good company on a drive out with a car club local to me last weekend. New stick on front plate shown in this one. Not sure it will hang around much longer. Can’t stand how it bends up the sides of the bumper from this angle.
Various shots of the car looking clean for a change. Looks good from afar but it’s got its fair share of swirl marks close up. Black is a nightmare to keep clean. Really need to learn how to do a bit of paint correction…
It goes into AMS again next week to get some new tuning forks and coffin arms fitted as I’m getting a few knocks and creaks from the front end but then that’s it for a while. I think. Maybe. Probably. Though I am tempted by a set of Recaro’s……
As always, thanks for reading
I’ve been doing a bunch of stuff over the last few months during lockdown and figured this audience might be more interested in my ramblings than my long suffering girlfriend!
When I last updated this the car had recently had a bit of paint but was otherwise, supposedly, ‘finished’. The key lesson here is that I really need to stop pretending to myself that I can actually allow any project car to be ‘finished’
Making the most of some good weather, long evenings, and awesome B roads
New Brakes
After the Silverstone track day in January the brakes were found pretty wanting, with some big vibration from the front discs at speed. Decided to do a full overhaul with Pagid discs and Textar pads all round, as well as a set of HEL braided lines and a fluid change. I’ve done brakes on a few 996’s/986’s in the past and knew of the usual niggles that can show up. This car treated me to a full suite of brake related pain.
The first was that (even after backing off the handbrake mechanism to prevent exactly this…) upon removing the rear disc on the passenger side there was a lot of loud pinging and a bunch of metal springs collapsing out of the hub. That’ll be the handbrake assembly then. Arse. Managed to repair some of the fixings and had some other parts from old jobs that I could reuse but still needed some parts from Porsche to get the mechanism back in one piece. £20 for a single spring is a new record for me and was a complete pain on the arse to fit. Adjusting them up each side through the wheel bolt holes is also a crap job. Drum brakes are the work of the devil.
The second issue was a bit more problematic. On these cars you can sometimes run into issues with the caliper mounting bolts stripping the threads in the aluminium hub if they have been over tightened. Guess what someone had done at some point in the past? When I went to remove the top bolt from the front caliper on the passenger side it was already loose and rattling around in the hub….. Hmmm. Not ideal. It was bad enough that I could literally pull the bolt out of the hub by hand. There was nothing holding it in and it wouldn’t take any torque.
Seems that at some point in the past someone had completely shagged the thread in the hub and just decided to…..leave it. Complete madness. Given I’d been on track a few weeks earlier I was pretty f’ing miffed, mostly with myself for not checking the brakes a bit better, but also a little bit with previous owners/garages that had worked on the car and not bothered to check the caliper. Someone actively decided to leave the bolt like that. Makes me pretty angry when it comes to safety stuff like that. Grrrr.
No pictures of the brake job because……they are brakes and we’ve all seen them, and also because I was too pissed off to take photos.
At this point the car went into AMS to get the hub helicoiled and I also asked them to sort out the braided lines.
Thankfully that job went pretty smoothly, other than HEL initially sending the wrong lines, and the helicoil in the hub worked out so the brakes were finally sorted. Now they’ve bedded in a bit they are proving to be pretty excellent. A really solid pedal that can be modulated nicely and with strong overall stopping power. Even stock Porsche brakes are really, really good when in good shape.
New Lights (sort of)
When I first picked up the car I’d quickly installed a set of H7R HID bulbs and ballasts into the back of the standard 996 light units. The factory halogens are like glow worms. Terrible! It’s a tight fit to get all the HID hardware in the back of the light unit but I’d done this before on my previous 996 without issue. This time around, and with a more powerful HID kit, things were getting a bit too hot and I was starting to cook ballasts/bulbs.
This was a proper squeeze to get in. Wasn’t really going to last. Should have done It properly first time round!
Knowing that the standard Litronic units just bolt the ballasts to the back of the light units I knew I had some space behind the lights/above the wheel arch liner to play with. After I’d got the tape measure out to check my working, and following a bit of fettling with the Dremel and drill, I had a set of these ready to go:
It looks slightly heath Robinson but is actually really solidly mounted and all of the heat issues have disappeared. The ballasts now sit in nice cool air. A solid upgrade and, although some people really moan about HID’s being used in reflector headlights, these H7R bulbs result in a really clean cut off of the beam pattern.
Interior Trim
Sorting this has been a multi month labour of love.
The problem is really simple: I literally cannot stand rattles from a car interior. It drives me insane.
This car seemed to have more rattles than any other car I’ve ever driven. Even convertibles I’ve owned that had the body stiffness of jelly were better than this. I had to fix it.
Based on the amount of rogue speaker wire I’ve discovered throughout the car it’s clear that at some point in it’s life this car had a serious stereo installed and that, along with a particularly invasive immobiliser/tracker install, gave me reason to suspect that most of the interior had been apart at various times and my guess was that it had never really been put back together properly. There was only one thing to do to solve this - pull it all out, replace all the trim clips, add felt and foam to anything that might move/rub/rattle/annoy me in any way and then put it all back together again.
Doing all this during lockdown, and with Porsche parts departments closed in the UK, meant I had to rely on Teile.com for most of my parts. I'm not sure I can ever bring myself to disclose just how much money I spent on having a bunch of random trim clips delivered to the UK from Germany...
With the centre console out I took the opportunity to install a 997 shifter housing. Well worth it. Good upgrade.
Don't worry, the hardback seat isn't resting directly on the tarmac, there's a floor mat under there protecting it!
Doing this on a very hot, 25c, day was a big mistake. I was sweating BUCKETS crawling around in the back of the car.
It turned into a massive job and I ended up pulling nearly the entire interior out.
As predicted, a huge amount of the trim clips were wrong, missing, or fitted incorrectly and I spent what felt like days cleaning up every interior panel. Now it’s back together the difference is ENORMOUS. Adding sound deadening and felt tape to all of the major panels made a huge difference. A lot of the leather rubbing/squeaking is gone and the whole car now feels like it’s made from one solid piece of material. Complete OCD overload, and I’m certain my neighbours think I am going completely mad, but it was well worth it.
While I was on a bit of a trim mission I also wanted to solve another little annoyance. When I’d removed the CD changer from the frunk it left a bit of a gap between the plastic trim and the carpet section. Bugged me every time I used the boot.
After a bit of part number Cluedo while browsing the 996 Katalog and I noticed there was a version for cars without CD changers. A bit of eBay hunting and £8 later and it was one more thing ticked off the list.
Sometimes it really is the little things…
MOMO Wheel
This is wholly unoriginal these days on a 996 but having felt the difference a new wheel can make on our race car I knew I wanted to switch the standard Porsche wheel over to a MOMO one. I wasn’t initially sure about the idea of disabling the airbag, but given I’ll happily jump on my motorbike, or take any of my older cars for a spin, without a second thought for any safety systems I decided to go for it.
It’s an expensive upgrade, you’re definitely paying for some Italian flair and branding, but I can’t deny it felt really, really nice the first time I got a hold of it.
There are a lot of fitting guides online for this so I’m not going to write another one (and I’ve already written way too much in this update anyway….) but it was fairly straightforward. I got hold of a second clock spring unit to harvest the aribag and horn cables from so everything is reversible if needed. I had similar issues with the grounding for the horn that others have run into, but had already run an earth behind the steering column for the OBC retrofit I did late last year so just tapped into that. Job done.
Looks great, feels great. Has made a genuine difference to how the car drives, as weird as that sounds.
And that’s it for now. Those were all of the major jobs on the car since February. Phew.
I also thought I’d add a selection of smaller bits and pieces below, alongside some glory shots of the car looking shiny when it actually gets a wash every now and then.
Stumbled across an advert on Gumtree for a set of mint Porsche EP4110 Big Oval exhaust tips for just £40. Bargain! Looking much better than the Dansk tips.
Still not 100% sure on this one but wanted to try and see what the car looked like with just a simple 911 rear badge. Sometimes I think it looks great, sometimes I think it shouldn’t have anything, sometimes I think I should go back to a standard Carrera badge. First world problems.
Had a few legitimate reasons to have to drive through London during Lockdown so wanted to at exercise the car a bit rather than cycle. Felt pretty insane basically being one of very, very few cars on the road in Central at night. Was like a ghost town.
Keeping some good company on a drive out with a car club local to me last weekend. New stick on front plate shown in this one. Not sure it will hang around much longer. Can’t stand how it bends up the sides of the bumper from this angle.
Various shots of the car looking clean for a change. Looks good from afar but it’s got its fair share of swirl marks close up. Black is a nightmare to keep clean. Really need to learn how to do a bit of paint correction…
It goes into AMS again next week to get some new tuning forks and coffin arms fitted as I’m getting a few knocks and creaks from the front end but then that’s it for a while. I think. Maybe. Probably. Though I am tempted by a set of Recaro’s……
As always, thanks for reading
GR_TVR said:
A great read - reminds me of all the work I've done to mine during lockdown
Don't suppose you have the part number for the CD changer cover bit...I was considering removing mine as well.
No problem, part number is 99655113502 but there are a load of different variants for model years, option codes etc.Don't suppose you have the part number for the CD changer cover bit...I was considering removing mine as well.
A quick search on eBay pulled up these two. Both should work if you're trying to do the same thing I did.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Porsche-996-Boxster-986...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Porsche-Boxster-986-Und...
Edited by Mallone on Saturday 20th June 10:11
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