Knackered old Porsche with loads of miles - 996 content
Discussion
kevinf said:
First of all well done on an epic build I've enjoyed every page of it, Thanks for sharing .
I'm sure you've considered fitting LPG, What are the main reasons you decided not to go with it ?
From what I can see
- Added weight
- Possible difficulty finding filling stations when on the road
- slight loss of power
+ Increased range
+ Lower running cost
A LOT more weight and lot more complexity in the engine bay with additional regs, injectors etc. etc. It would also require a "valve saver" type setup to provide additional lubrication which is another potential failure point and complexity.I'm sure you've considered fitting LPG, What are the main reasons you decided not to go with it ?
From what I can see
- Added weight
- Possible difficulty finding filling stations when on the road
- slight loss of power
+ Increased range
+ Lower running cost
LPG is also less common on the continent when off the beaten track and it means there is no chance of using the Eurotunnel to get across the channel.
Reliability wise it's all fairly solvable but it's work to solve a problem that just doesn't exist as an additional petrol tank provides a lot more additional range, no real weight penalty (the tank, pump and plumbing when empty is less than 6KG) and requires no mods to engine loom etc.
LPG has its place, afterall we've had BTCC cars running it and the entire Palmersport fleet runs LPG but in this application the small cost save on a fill up just doesn't offer enough of a pro against the cons.
So a few more upgrades coming through, mostly on the electronics/data side of things.
As some may remember the car has an AIM EVO5 fitted for data acquisition. AIM have just released the GS dash for this logger so I have one of those on the way which I am going to de-case and investigate building it into the original rev counter area of the dash:
This will also allow me to tidy the dash area up a little by loosing the 4 light shift module I have above the rev counter at the moment and building it into the dash itself as part of the GS Dash.
I'm also going to add an additional LCU-One so I can monitor per bank lambda, these also give a fairly good indication of EGT as well by working backwards from the resistance in the heater circuit.
That should be pretty much everything ever required, unless I decide to harvest some spare brake temp IRs and laser ride heights from the F1s
As some may remember the car has an AIM EVO5 fitted for data acquisition. AIM have just released the GS dash for this logger so I have one of those on the way which I am going to de-case and investigate building it into the original rev counter area of the dash:
This will also allow me to tidy the dash area up a little by loosing the 4 light shift module I have above the rev counter at the moment and building it into the dash itself as part of the GS Dash.
I'm also going to add an additional LCU-One so I can monitor per bank lambda, these also give a fairly good indication of EGT as well by working backwards from the resistance in the heater circuit.
That should be pretty much everything ever required, unless I decide to harvest some spare brake temp IRs and laser ride heights from the F1s
Reposted from 911UK:
Preliminary Results
So with around 1200 miles on it now I thought it was time to see where we were in terms of power compared against the previous engine. Now the below is fairly accurate, even when compared to what a direct measure would be, but it's very reliant on the figures you are plumbing into it. It's really a system we use to monitor how the engine health is doing over life in a racing car but it does provide repeatable results and obviously having some 200K miles of data to compare it against is the important thing for measuring a gain. The below is based on linear acceleration over time to determine the wheel power developed to move the specific amount of mass with the specific amount of aero drag at the measure rate of acceleration.
It's fairly simple stuff, firstly we calculate the power absorbed moving the car through the air at the current speed which we can do by knowing the frontal area of the car and the drag coefficent along with the speed in metres/second. Once we have this value we can then calculate the wheel power of the car (it's important we know aero drag or the resulting figure would be vastly different for a given RPM in first gear vs 6th gear due to the greater vehicle speed), to do this we need to know the mass all up (so with fuel, driver, additional kit etc.) which I have from time spent on the corner weight scales along with the linear acceleration of the car - linear acceleration being essentially the rate of change in velocity. For the sake of accuracy we are using a 10hz GPS to determine the start and end velocities and validating this with a longitudinal G measurement i.e. to accelerate from X to Y speed in a certain time has to have yielded an average accelerative G of Z so if our measured G is vastly different at one point or our measured average G between the points doesn't match our calculated average then we disregard this measurement as flawed. To get to flywheel power from wheel power we use a simple formula based on a known measure of wheel power against a known OEM SAE corrected engine dyno result, in this case what my car made as a standard 100 and a bit thousand mile car vs Porsches 300PS no aircon, no PAS, engine dyno rating. It's a sliding scale based on torque produced but at peak power the total loss between flywheel and tyre contact patch is about 14.8% by my math.
It might all sound a bit math heavy but with a decent logger you can do this live on the box and it's pretty much the same system we used in pro motorsport in the days before we had reliable and long lived drive shaft torque sensors.
So here is where we have ended up from testing today. This is an average across 12 runs with 6 in each direction to account for the slope of the runway:
According to this it's making 363.2bhp at 6250RPM and a peak torque of 318.8ftlbs at 4750RPM. What's nice is that it makes over 300ftlbs from 3500RPM to 6200 and a bit RPM. It is quite clearly all done by 6.5K and torque drops away rapidly here to the rev limiter at 7200rpm.
Lambda is fairly good considering the ECU calibration is pretty much standard. There is something odd going on at mid RPM in low gears where the ECU is winding the throttle down during 100% PPS which is likely to be the result of a torque limiter somewhere being exceeded (not surprising all things considered!) and performance could clearly be found by going richer below 4500RPM, at the moment the ECU is staying in closed loop mode until this point to keep the cats happy (which is fairly pointless as mine hasn't had cats since 2013).
Gains wise when compared against the old engine (and that is compared using the same math as determined this engines performance so it is a good comparison!) this engine is about 30ftlbs and 25bhp up on it when the old motor was at its best with considerably more torque at lower RPM - indeed the additional low RPM torque is far more than I would have thought would be gained by going up a relatively small amount in capacity, it's likely there are some improvements in cylinder filling at lower port velocities/engine speeds as a result of the larger bore/swept capacity.
For those interested the full spec of this engine is:
- Autofarm 3.7L castings.
- Autofarm cylinder heads
- CP Pistons in standard C/R with reduced size skirts for friction reduction.
- Standard size inlet and exhaust valves.
- Standard Cam Shafts
- Variocam fitted and working.
- Cams timed to Autofarms spec for 3.7L
- FVD Equal length exhaust manifolds
- Cat delete crossover pipes.
- No name perforated tube stainless silencer boxes (I think these are the same as D911, Porscheshop etc. sell).
- 996 GT3 Throttle Body
- Slightly hooky IPD plenum to suit the above
- 997 Airbox
- Large diameter silicone hose to suit the above joint to the GT3 throttle.
- No Secondary Air System
- No Air Con Compressor.
- ECU Calibration is essentially standard but with lower fan on temps etc.
- FVD Large Capacity Sump (not that this really has any effect on power)
- Low Temperature thermostat (as above)
- Metal impeller water pump (12 months life) (as above)
- Roller bearing IMS (as above)
It will go on a dyno at some point in the near future as it's very clear there is more to be had from some engine calibration development (not least solving the torque limiter problem that rears it's head when launching the car hard) and the instant 30 second feedback a chassis dyno provides when doing this does rather minimise the time required. It's also pretty clear the cams that are in it are probably too soft for an out and out performance engine as the additional low RPM torque could be traded off for high RPM power, however as my car is 99% a road car and the lower the revs the longer the engine life I'm quite happy setting the last shift light at 6.5K RPM Very Happy
For those interested in how I'm logging this data the car has an AIM EVO5 logger onboard with two LCU-One wideband controllers, a GPS08 GPS/Glonass receiver and a GS-Dash (with motorsport cable tie mounting!). It takes basic data from the car via OBD2, RPM from the tach signal at the OBD2 connector and oil pressure on a dedicated sensor.
To sum up - I'm rather pleased with how the old girl goes now and it would be interesting to see where we are vs a 996 Mk1 GT3 Very Happy
Preliminary Results
So with around 1200 miles on it now I thought it was time to see where we were in terms of power compared against the previous engine. Now the below is fairly accurate, even when compared to what a direct measure would be, but it's very reliant on the figures you are plumbing into it. It's really a system we use to monitor how the engine health is doing over life in a racing car but it does provide repeatable results and obviously having some 200K miles of data to compare it against is the important thing for measuring a gain. The below is based on linear acceleration over time to determine the wheel power developed to move the specific amount of mass with the specific amount of aero drag at the measure rate of acceleration.
It's fairly simple stuff, firstly we calculate the power absorbed moving the car through the air at the current speed which we can do by knowing the frontal area of the car and the drag coefficent along with the speed in metres/second. Once we have this value we can then calculate the wheel power of the car (it's important we know aero drag or the resulting figure would be vastly different for a given RPM in first gear vs 6th gear due to the greater vehicle speed), to do this we need to know the mass all up (so with fuel, driver, additional kit etc.) which I have from time spent on the corner weight scales along with the linear acceleration of the car - linear acceleration being essentially the rate of change in velocity. For the sake of accuracy we are using a 10hz GPS to determine the start and end velocities and validating this with a longitudinal G measurement i.e. to accelerate from X to Y speed in a certain time has to have yielded an average accelerative G of Z so if our measured G is vastly different at one point or our measured average G between the points doesn't match our calculated average then we disregard this measurement as flawed. To get to flywheel power from wheel power we use a simple formula based on a known measure of wheel power against a known OEM SAE corrected engine dyno result, in this case what my car made as a standard 100 and a bit thousand mile car vs Porsches 300PS no aircon, no PAS, engine dyno rating. It's a sliding scale based on torque produced but at peak power the total loss between flywheel and tyre contact patch is about 14.8% by my math.
It might all sound a bit math heavy but with a decent logger you can do this live on the box and it's pretty much the same system we used in pro motorsport in the days before we had reliable and long lived drive shaft torque sensors.
So here is where we have ended up from testing today. This is an average across 12 runs with 6 in each direction to account for the slope of the runway:
According to this it's making 363.2bhp at 6250RPM and a peak torque of 318.8ftlbs at 4750RPM. What's nice is that it makes over 300ftlbs from 3500RPM to 6200 and a bit RPM. It is quite clearly all done by 6.5K and torque drops away rapidly here to the rev limiter at 7200rpm.
Lambda is fairly good considering the ECU calibration is pretty much standard. There is something odd going on at mid RPM in low gears where the ECU is winding the throttle down during 100% PPS which is likely to be the result of a torque limiter somewhere being exceeded (not surprising all things considered!) and performance could clearly be found by going richer below 4500RPM, at the moment the ECU is staying in closed loop mode until this point to keep the cats happy (which is fairly pointless as mine hasn't had cats since 2013).
Gains wise when compared against the old engine (and that is compared using the same math as determined this engines performance so it is a good comparison!) this engine is about 30ftlbs and 25bhp up on it when the old motor was at its best with considerably more torque at lower RPM - indeed the additional low RPM torque is far more than I would have thought would be gained by going up a relatively small amount in capacity, it's likely there are some improvements in cylinder filling at lower port velocities/engine speeds as a result of the larger bore/swept capacity.
For those interested the full spec of this engine is:
- Autofarm 3.7L castings.
- Autofarm cylinder heads
- CP Pistons in standard C/R with reduced size skirts for friction reduction.
- Standard size inlet and exhaust valves.
- Standard Cam Shafts
- Variocam fitted and working.
- Cams timed to Autofarms spec for 3.7L
- FVD Equal length exhaust manifolds
- Cat delete crossover pipes.
- No name perforated tube stainless silencer boxes (I think these are the same as D911, Porscheshop etc. sell).
- 996 GT3 Throttle Body
- Slightly hooky IPD plenum to suit the above
- 997 Airbox
- Large diameter silicone hose to suit the above joint to the GT3 throttle.
- No Secondary Air System
- No Air Con Compressor.
- ECU Calibration is essentially standard but with lower fan on temps etc.
- FVD Large Capacity Sump (not that this really has any effect on power)
- Low Temperature thermostat (as above)
- Metal impeller water pump (12 months life) (as above)
- Roller bearing IMS (as above)
It will go on a dyno at some point in the near future as it's very clear there is more to be had from some engine calibration development (not least solving the torque limiter problem that rears it's head when launching the car hard) and the instant 30 second feedback a chassis dyno provides when doing this does rather minimise the time required. It's also pretty clear the cams that are in it are probably too soft for an out and out performance engine as the additional low RPM torque could be traded off for high RPM power, however as my car is 99% a road car and the lower the revs the longer the engine life I'm quite happy setting the last shift light at 6.5K RPM Very Happy
For those interested in how I'm logging this data the car has an AIM EVO5 logger onboard with two LCU-One wideband controllers, a GPS08 GPS/Glonass receiver and a GS-Dash (with motorsport cable tie mounting!). It takes basic data from the car via OBD2, RPM from the tach signal at the OBD2 connector and oil pressure on a dedicated sensor.
To sum up - I'm rather pleased with how the old girl goes now and it would be interesting to see where we are vs a 996 Mk1 GT3 Very Happy
HarrietsDad said:
This thread has a lot to do with a 1999 manual Carrera 4 currently being sat on my drive
Mind you, equally guilty are Ebay and a bottle of Rioja.
The resulting "It'll never go for that" bid required the emergency sale of a 2003 MR2 and a supercharged 2cv based trike to placate my partner.
1 week in its been to work and back twice, including the school run, and the eldest daughter is a fan.
Lets hope there's a happy ending!!
Fantastic! I still think these early 996 are just crazy value for money and really very undervalued at the moment. When a less reliable and much heavier C4S is fetching nearly 30K how these are still available for what they are can't last. Congratulations on your purchase and I hope you have as happy a time with your as I have with mine Mind you, equally guilty are Ebay and a bottle of Rioja.
The resulting "It'll never go for that" bid required the emergency sale of a 2003 MR2 and a supercharged 2cv based trike to placate my partner.
1 week in its been to work and back twice, including the school run, and the eldest daughter is a fan.
Lets hope there's a happy ending!!
So a further update now we're nearing 5 figures in.
The engine has loosened up a little from when it was built and feels very settled now. No leaks, no worries and it now uses less than 25ml of oil per thousand miles which is fairly impressive but then it is vs half a million KM old rings and valve stems that were in the old one!
Performance is very impressive for a "slow" 996, obviously the fact the car is a bit lighter than a standard one helps but it quite happily pulls on a current M5 for example. I'm fairly gobsmacked at how much of an improvement there is over what was in there.
I've also (finally) swapped to a Lithium battery, specifically a Super B 20P which saves another 4KM over what was in there. I've kept my old Redtop/Helicopter battery for the time being whilst we see how the Super B holds up but I don't expect any major issues as they last well in the race cars!
I've got some planed maintenance coming up, mainly regreasing the coffin arm ball joints and swapping the ARB drop links as the sphericals on these are approaching end of life. I've made some new ones ready:
I'll also replace the fuel filters for the rail and aux tank at the same time and give it a general once over. We're getting near the point of needing to do some bodywork maintenance too as the level of stone chips and general rat look is getting a bit high, to be fair it does spend a lot of time chasing things like this:
So it's to be expected but I like to at least make the effort....... or maybe I just wrap it in full prototype camo as generally that avoids some bother on the continent!
I've also got to sort the dash pack out as the bubbles on the white dials are jamming the needles now! I've got a spare black dash pack so should just be able to swap the clocks over and leave the LCDs in place from the original. I also need somewhere to mount the AIM dash as I can't really leave it cable tied in front of the clocks!
Either way the old girl continues to be utterly brilliant at being a car and the engine freshen up has really made it feel fresh again
The engine has loosened up a little from when it was built and feels very settled now. No leaks, no worries and it now uses less than 25ml of oil per thousand miles which is fairly impressive but then it is vs half a million KM old rings and valve stems that were in the old one!
Performance is very impressive for a "slow" 996, obviously the fact the car is a bit lighter than a standard one helps but it quite happily pulls on a current M5 for example. I'm fairly gobsmacked at how much of an improvement there is over what was in there.
I've also (finally) swapped to a Lithium battery, specifically a Super B 20P which saves another 4KM over what was in there. I've kept my old Redtop/Helicopter battery for the time being whilst we see how the Super B holds up but I don't expect any major issues as they last well in the race cars!
I've got some planed maintenance coming up, mainly regreasing the coffin arm ball joints and swapping the ARB drop links as the sphericals on these are approaching end of life. I've made some new ones ready:
I'll also replace the fuel filters for the rail and aux tank at the same time and give it a general once over. We're getting near the point of needing to do some bodywork maintenance too as the level of stone chips and general rat look is getting a bit high, to be fair it does spend a lot of time chasing things like this:
So it's to be expected but I like to at least make the effort....... or maybe I just wrap it in full prototype camo as generally that avoids some bother on the continent!
I've also got to sort the dash pack out as the bubbles on the white dials are jamming the needles now! I've got a spare black dash pack so should just be able to swap the clocks over and leave the LCDs in place from the original. I also need somewhere to mount the AIM dash as I can't really leave it cable tied in front of the clocks!
Either way the old girl continues to be utterly brilliant at being a car and the engine freshen up has really made it feel fresh again
Just want to give a massive thumbs up to those who have taken the plunge on a 996 because of this thread. They are wonderful cars and I hope you have many years of fun with them
I've spent some time with/under the old knacker today as it was due a once over. Nothing particularily exciting I'm afraid just some basic service stuff. It's had fresh engine oil, gearbox oil and diff oil. The coffin arm ball joints have been greased (if anyone has squeaking ones on full lock then injecting some fresh grease in with a syringe extends the life by many years!) and sphericals cleaned up and WD40'd, bushes inspected. Few bits of floor patched up where it's been sliding on them. It will need some new manifolds at some point, or at the least a repair, in the not too distant future as they do get scraped along the floor occasionally:
It also had some fresh pads all round, after 60K miles the discs are barely worn so clearly the plan of using soft pads on decent discs for life works pretty well.
I've also updated the TomTom with the latest maps and speed camera locations, I don't know why Sony discontinued the XNV stuff as it is fantastic to have a proper TomTom setup running via the head unit but as long as the map support continues I have no plans to change it!
I'm also planning to add TPMS over the coming weeks, I just need to work out a way to do it without cluttering up the dash anymore. The Beru system is very good and has a CAN output I can link to the spare CAN on the Evo5 logger that's in the nose so that might be the way to do it as then I could configure a page on the dash to show TP's and Temps.
I'm doing Pure Rally to Monaco again this year in it as a bit of a busmans holiday so am in two minds if I should wrap it in some sort of homage livery to classic Porsche or not..... any suggestions?
I've spent some time with/under the old knacker today as it was due a once over. Nothing particularily exciting I'm afraid just some basic service stuff. It's had fresh engine oil, gearbox oil and diff oil. The coffin arm ball joints have been greased (if anyone has squeaking ones on full lock then injecting some fresh grease in with a syringe extends the life by many years!) and sphericals cleaned up and WD40'd, bushes inspected. Few bits of floor patched up where it's been sliding on them. It will need some new manifolds at some point, or at the least a repair, in the not too distant future as they do get scraped along the floor occasionally:
It also had some fresh pads all round, after 60K miles the discs are barely worn so clearly the plan of using soft pads on decent discs for life works pretty well.
I've also updated the TomTom with the latest maps and speed camera locations, I don't know why Sony discontinued the XNV stuff as it is fantastic to have a proper TomTom setup running via the head unit but as long as the map support continues I have no plans to change it!
I'm also planning to add TPMS over the coming weeks, I just need to work out a way to do it without cluttering up the dash anymore. The Beru system is very good and has a CAN output I can link to the spare CAN on the Evo5 logger that's in the nose so that might be the way to do it as then I could configure a page on the dash to show TP's and Temps.
I'm doing Pure Rally to Monaco again this year in it as a bit of a busmans holiday so am in two minds if I should wrap it in some sort of homage livery to classic Porsche or not..... any suggestions?
Oh just one more thing, I put it on the scales again today and with the lighter battery it is now only 8KG away from a Mk1 GT3, I'm going to add another 1.5KG with TPMS but I don't think that's bad all things considered...... lighter seats are still tempting me which would see it below GT3 weight!
ooid said:
Uber-Fantastic pic 
Would you be able to explain your cooling upgrade/hack in the car please, if possible? would love to learn about it more. I remember you mentioned a few pages before briefly but would be great to see in more details.
No problem, it's not really a hack a such but the parts list changed on the car from standard is: Would you be able to explain your cooling upgrade/hack in the car please, if possible? would love to learn about it more. I remember you mentioned a few pages before briefly but would be great to see in more details.
- Lower temperature thermostat with a 78 degree opening temp.
- Metal impellor water pump.
- CFS aluminium radiators
- Air-Con delete which removes the condensors from in front of the radiators.
- Rad fan control moved to the AIM Evo 5 logger.
The CFS rads provide a little larger/more efficent core than standard as well as being quite a bit stronger. The lower temp stat is well covered elsewhere but essentially it reduces the thermal difference between cylinders across the engine at the expense of emissions compliance and low load efficency (as the engine is cooler, so the wall surfaces are cooler), the metal impeller pump is much stronger than the plastic impeller which I had fail BUT it must be changed yearly as a bearing failure will damage the crank case/block casting. The air con delete boost cooling system efficency massively as it removes the condensors from in front of the water radiators, this provides unrestricted airflow to the rads and also means the air passing through them is ambient temperature rather than already having been heated by the air-con rads. The rad fan control via the logger allows me to turn the fans on at a lower temperature, the fan control on mine is permanently on low speed below 15mph, it then switches to high speed if the coolant temp is greater than 88 degrees and the vehicle speed is less than 20mph.
I rarely use my car in situations where you can't just crack a window and a lot of my mileage is done at night when it is quite and cool so I don't really miss it, obviously this isn't really an option for those who wish to pop out for lunch in Nice in July
Hope that helps!
pokiou said:
Yup, i bought my 97-98 996 C2 3.4 because of this thread and POPPOPBANGBANGS info on the car. good to know that my dual row IMS will last a long long long long time lol
Howd you go with the x51 baffle Pop? is it a straight swap? is it worth all owners doing or is it for a 3.6 motor ?
I used the FVD Sump kit Howd you go with the x51 baffle Pop? is it a straight swap? is it worth all owners doing or is it for a 3.6 motor ?
Which copies the X51 baffles but in a deeper sump closing plate which adds around 0.6L of oil capacity over standard.
It's a very easy fit and also has a finned bottom which helps with cooling a little. I've had no issues with oil pressure on circuit with it and it doesn't seem to be taking a beating under the car even though it reduces ground clearance a little.
Big thumbs up from me.
Congratulations on your purchase
Yes not wise to have the whole plate in photos on the internet I don't think, especially considering someone spent the time to go frame by frame through a video I posted on here to work out the plate then reported it for being on the road whilst sorned...... a slow handclap required there!
Been playing with rear spring rates today, not a major change just 20N more on the rear. I'm undecided as yet, it does handle better but ride comfort has reduced a little. I think really I need to go back to 120N rears and make a new rear ARB...... On the bright side it gave me opportunity to clean up the rear dampers and have a look around, even at nearly 4 years old the Ohlins still clean up like new, they might have been expensive but they do wear well!
Aside from that it keeps clocking up the miles
Aside from that it keeps clocking up the miles
I updated the logger and dash to the latest firmware today, which adds a lot of features including new dash layout options and better conditional warnings.
Here's a video of the dash during fire up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV0rwX-egFQ&fe...
Really happy with this new generation of AIM stuff, with the new user configurable CAN support it's getting more and more of a no brainer for 90% of applications to just run AIM as it's so easy to setup and so reliable in operation.
Here's a video of the dash during fire up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV0rwX-egFQ&fe...
Really happy with this new generation of AIM stuff, with the new user configurable CAN support it's getting more and more of a no brainer for 90% of applications to just run AIM as it's so easy to setup and so reliable in operation.
Yearly service time again. Not a lot of engine related bits to do for obvious reasons beyond oil, filters and spark plugs. Everything else is fresh from the engine build. This is mostly a preventative maintenance service.
Under trays off ready for the floor to be cleaned down, I do this yearly so I can address any damaged underseal etc. the car was 18 years old last week and is still as solid as anything else so I'd like to keep it this way. Usual places have picked up some damage over the last 40K miles so these will be treated and resealed to stop the rot getting in. You can see how dirty it is in the above pic, that's a years worth of road grime and muck
New pads all round, the discs have about 30K left in them so are wearing well. I also built up some new ARB drop links as these are a yearly service item really as the joints get fairly knackered from salt and debris.
Arches cleaned and a quick check over of lines and mounts. All in good order.
Same at the rear. I also replaced the FVD manifolds for a chinese copy set. At the price these are they will be a yearly service item as no point running them longer than that and risking a failure. The car is low so the primaries take a kicking from getting scraped on things.
I've regreased the coffin arm ball joints as in my experience this extends the lift of the joint considerably and the rear track control arm sphericals will be replaced with new.
I'll finish the big clean down tomorrow and the floor can go back on then with new fasteners.
I've also got a set of fresh PS2s to go on and will be fitting the TPMS sensors at the same time so I can finally get that in and working. I also want to fold up some peli case carriers to fit in the nose above the aux tank so I can move the spares and tools cases out the back for a bit more load capacity.
The old girls got plenty of life in her yet
Under trays off ready for the floor to be cleaned down, I do this yearly so I can address any damaged underseal etc. the car was 18 years old last week and is still as solid as anything else so I'd like to keep it this way. Usual places have picked up some damage over the last 40K miles so these will be treated and resealed to stop the rot getting in. You can see how dirty it is in the above pic, that's a years worth of road grime and muck
New pads all round, the discs have about 30K left in them so are wearing well. I also built up some new ARB drop links as these are a yearly service item really as the joints get fairly knackered from salt and debris.
Arches cleaned and a quick check over of lines and mounts. All in good order.
Same at the rear. I also replaced the FVD manifolds for a chinese copy set. At the price these are they will be a yearly service item as no point running them longer than that and risking a failure. The car is low so the primaries take a kicking from getting scraped on things.
I've regreased the coffin arm ball joints as in my experience this extends the lift of the joint considerably and the rear track control arm sphericals will be replaced with new.
I'll finish the big clean down tomorrow and the floor can go back on then with new fasteners.
I've also got a set of fresh PS2s to go on and will be fitting the TPMS sensors at the same time so I can finally get that in and working. I also want to fold up some peli case carriers to fit in the nose above the aux tank so I can move the spares and tools cases out the back for a bit more load capacity.
The old girls got plenty of life in her yet
Floors clean again! No major dramas under it, which is pretty impressive given how many winters it has been through.
I'm changing ARBs as the front has started to corrode and it was due bushes anyway, plus my front one was a slight hack to make it adjustable so may as well do it nicely whilst it's in the air. Also rear upper arms need changing as the bushes are starting to show signs of wear - these were a OE quality part rather than an OEM part and haven't really lasted like the pukka ones did. I will give them one more chance and see but if they keep wearing like they are it will be cheaper to go back to OEM at 4 years life than use these at 12 - 18 months life.
Other than a bit of tidying and fettling it's good to go so should be back in daily use again middle of this week.
New bars are on and I have to say H&R do make a nice product!
Adjustable stops are nice too as it means you can perfectly centralise the bar on the car.
I also finally got around to fitting the correct battery mount for the SuperB - which is an improvement over a red top mount with some foam in it
Setup as per normal so no changes here aside from rear bar on medium and front bar on soft which has changed the handling balance nicely and got rid of the some of the oversteer which was always present at lower speeds previously.
So that's its yearly service complete - time to put some more miles on it
It was also 18 today, or rather it left Stuttgart today 18 years ago, the shell went down the line on the 5th July 1999. With a bit of luck it'll do another 18 years without too much trouble!
Adjustable stops are nice too as it means you can perfectly centralise the bar on the car.
I also finally got around to fitting the correct battery mount for the SuperB - which is an improvement over a red top mount with some foam in it
Setup as per normal so no changes here aside from rear bar on medium and front bar on soft which has changed the handling balance nicely and got rid of the some of the oversteer which was always present at lower speeds previously.
So that's its yearly service complete - time to put some more miles on it
It was also 18 today, or rather it left Stuttgart today 18 years ago, the shell went down the line on the 5th July 1999. With a bit of luck it'll do another 18 years without too much trouble!
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