1999 Porsche 996 C2 3.7
Discussion
TL;DR - I bought this old Porsche, spent some time sorting it out/fixing it. It’s awesome.
I had been meaning to write this up for a while and both CornedBeef’s Guards Red 996 and PPBB’s epic thread of 996 motorsport goodness being bumped over Christmas and the New Year reminded me to finally get it sorted.
Warning: Long, rambling, wordy post ahead.
Since learning to drive (feels a long time ago now….) I had generally stuck with hatchbacks, and have had a variety of hot hatches in the past - Clio 172, 4 different 205 GTi’s, Mini R53 - as well as an early MX5 and some rough sheds. A few years ago, with student loans paid off and a bit of spare cash floating about, I decided to get into something a bit more ‘grown up’.
I got really close to getting into an E46 M3. I’d done my research and looked at a few cars but I wasn’t sure they felt special enough and I wasn’t quite smitten. I’d inherited a love of Porsche’s from my dad at a really early age but hadn’t really considered them as part of my ‘grown up’ car research as I didn’t think I could make the money work. The idea of the mystical £10k 996 idea started to get me seriously thinking about them and I started doing my homework.
I soon had my head round all the various horror stories - IMS, RMS, Bore scoring etc - but also knew that there were a few years/models where you weren’t likely to have too much bother if you bought the right one. This narrowed things down to the early non facelift 3.4 cars, with the dual row IMS. I’m pretty handy with a set of spanners these days so didn’t mind something that needed a bit of work, but didn’t want a basket case.
Looked at a few cars at the lower end of the market, with most of them being really rough, before I engaged in some epic man maths and started upping the budget. Wasn’t long before I was in that horrible car buying mode where every waking hour was spent trawling PH, Autotrader and eBay looking at anything and everything. I HAD to have one.
In the end I made some rookie mistakes and bought this car:
These were pics from my for sale ad at the time. It had just had a bunch of paint and looked super clean. Such a simple shape and I will always love turbo twist style wheels.
It was a straight car overall, but I missed some things when I inspected it (Mostly bodywork/paint related. Don’t view cars in the rain!) and while it was mechanically sound and pretty low mileage, the spec wasn’t quite right for me and I never grew to love the Savannah interior. Drove the car for a year, sorted all of the niggles out, enjoyed learning about working on 996’s, but then had to sell up to help fund a house deposit.
I ran another Mini for a while while the finances recovered but was REALLY missing a flat six in my life. Trouble is, I couldn’t really afford one. Attentions slowly turned to the 996’s cheaper brother, the 986 Boxster. I kept an eye on the classifieds and had considered getting a really, really cheap early 2.5 but then this one came up for sale up north for a fair price.
It was a really high spec for a Boxster and I couldn’t say no to it. It had the 3.2S engine, M030 sports suspension, Bose, heated sports seats (fantastic with the roof down), and came with a hardtop as part of the deal. History was good and speaking with previous owners/dealers it all checked out. I knew it needed a clutch soon (and as it had the smaller IMS bearing it was a chance to sort that out too) and some brakes so was able to do a bit of a deal with the seller (after more man maths…)
Had this for around a year and really enjoyed owning it, quite a different steer when going quickly compared to the 911, and it felt nice to get 90% of the performance of the 911 for around 1/3rd of the price. I sorted a bunch of the mechanical bits myself and then had the clutch/flywheel/IMS changed by Revolution Porsche.
The Boxster was an incredibly practical little sports car, and I think anyone who has one has a great car on their hands, but the 911 desire simply wouldn’t go away for me. I HAD to get into another one.
Even more ludicrous man maths got involved and after convincing myself of what I could flog the Boxster for, and deciding that I could accept something that was a bit more of a project, I started looking at 996’s again.
Throughout this time I’d been keeping an eye on a few 996 forum threads on PH and 911uk (along with that epic Drivetribe video Jethro did on his purple 996) and had slowly been coming round to the looks of the Aerokit cars. There’s a relative simplicity to the shape of the front bumper and rear wing that really appeals to me compared to the later cars, and although some (not me…) think there’s an element of ‘fake GT3’ about an aerokitted Carrera, it had evolved into my favourite looking car of the 996 era. The aerokit wasn’t a deal breaker for spec, but this time I wouldn’t dismiss them immediately.
After a month or so of keeping an eye on the classifieds this showed up on Facebook Marketplace. The wheels were wrong, it had some horrible tints on the rear, and I didn’t think the ad was particularly well written. Nearly glossed over it completely. Something about it kept me coming back to it though and a quick chat with the owner suggested this was a well specced car underneath. This could be the little project I was looking for…
These were pics I took when I first went to look at the car. The front view looks SO aggressive with the splitter and I will never tire of the rear 3/4 view on a 911
It also had some other weirdness and general bodgery going on with some nasty aftermarket rear bumper winglets, broken Carrera badge, incorrect exhaust tips from a facelift car, a badly installed K&N induction kit and various bits of interior trim looked pretty tired. If this was the first 996/986 I’d seen I would have walked away, but knowing these cars pretty well by this point I could sense a good car underneath and knew I could get on top of it pretty quickly. Outside of the ASBO exhaust, the car drove really well so could sense I was on to a potential winner. Despite his questionable taste in mods, the owner before the seller had the car around 11 years and it had a solid service history with Porsche Torque.
The guy who was selling it had previously been into big power Japanese cars - Supra’s, RX7’s etc - and bought this from Northway Porsche to try something different but didn’t get on with it at all. He’d put less than 1000 miles on it since he’d got it from the dealer about 6 months previous and was selling on to try and get back into an RX7. (Pictured below from when I picked the 996 up from him.)
I’d never been in one of these before and the seller took me for a quick spin. Couldn’t believe how tiny it was inside and also how quick it felt. Awesome bit of kit.
I phoned Northway and the story stacked up, they had got the car in as PX against a 997 and they gave me a thorough overview of recent service work they had completed and vouched for the car. Even offered to let me get it up in the air on their ramps to have a better look. As a bonus they also told me they had a set of recently refurbished original Porsche/BBS split rims they would swap for the replica Fuch wheels if I could sort out some tyres. Result.
That sealed the deal for me so I made the seller an offer and we shook hands. It was a good bit cheaper than the blue car so man maths gave me a modest budget to sort out all of the niggles and get it spot on. My plan was to go for an OEM+ vibe with the whole car.
I picked the car up in July 2019 and have given it a thorough going over since. All of this was largely elective, other than the water pump spectacularly letting go one Saturday afternoon, and the car is now feeling pretty fit and healthy. I’ve almost certainly blown my modest budget to bits in getting everything done so I’ve simply stopped adding up the cost of things
List of mods/fixes so far in no particular order:
And that’s about it so far and brings the story up to date. Car sits at around 115,000 miles now. That list above represents quite a few weekends worth of spannering but it’s been good fun to work on and it’s now nearly finished! (Though project cars are never really finished, are they?)
Here’s a bunch of pictures of it in various states of undress while working on it over the past few months. (I know it’s parked in a disabled space in some of these pics. It’s the one they gave me when I applied for a permit and for some reason won’t let me change it!)
Sorting out various front bumper niggles and fixing the rad fans. Looks dramatic but only about an hour to get to this point. These things come apart easily.
Water pump and thermostat time. Got lucky with the exhaust fixings coming apart. This was on the limit of what I’d want to do without a proper garage/lift.
The one and only time the two ‘brothers’ met each other.
Bottom end open as part of the X51 sump install. Looking pretty clean for 100,000 miles and 20 years.
I got the stand AND the bike in the back of the car. It’s a bit of a Tardis at times.
Someone had a good sense of humour when it was parked up covered in muck
It goes for a bit of paint at the end of the month to tidy up the front and rear bumpers and then I’m planning on enjoying it for the rest of this year. I’m lining up a few track days (At Silverstone on the 25th if anyone else is coming to that?) and a bit of a Eurotour by car as part of a summer holiday. I live in north London and cycle everywhere during the week, but given Big Brother will want to charge me £12 every time I take it out of the garage when the ULEZ expands, I want to try and get as much out of it as I can in the next 12 months. Further down the line I’ll think about a suspension refresh, and might switch to a smaller MOMO steering wheel soon, but that’s about it.
These things really get under your skin and it feels so special every time I take it for a spin. Equally at home caning it down a bumpy A road or pottering through town at <10mph and they are surprisingly practical as an only car. Even got the Christmas tree in there this year.
I’m a bit crap at keeping threads up to date, but now I’ve gone to the effort of writing this up I’ll try and keep on top of it with any updates. If you’ve got this far then thanks for reading, hope it inspires someone else to take the plunge on an early 996. You won’t regret it!
Covered in crap after a cross country bombing run on Boxing Day and looking all the better for it.
I had been meaning to write this up for a while and both CornedBeef’s Guards Red 996 and PPBB’s epic thread of 996 motorsport goodness being bumped over Christmas and the New Year reminded me to finally get it sorted.
Warning: Long, rambling, wordy post ahead.
Since learning to drive (feels a long time ago now….) I had generally stuck with hatchbacks, and have had a variety of hot hatches in the past - Clio 172, 4 different 205 GTi’s, Mini R53 - as well as an early MX5 and some rough sheds. A few years ago, with student loans paid off and a bit of spare cash floating about, I decided to get into something a bit more ‘grown up’.
I got really close to getting into an E46 M3. I’d done my research and looked at a few cars but I wasn’t sure they felt special enough and I wasn’t quite smitten. I’d inherited a love of Porsche’s from my dad at a really early age but hadn’t really considered them as part of my ‘grown up’ car research as I didn’t think I could make the money work. The idea of the mystical £10k 996 idea started to get me seriously thinking about them and I started doing my homework.
I soon had my head round all the various horror stories - IMS, RMS, Bore scoring etc - but also knew that there were a few years/models where you weren’t likely to have too much bother if you bought the right one. This narrowed things down to the early non facelift 3.4 cars, with the dual row IMS. I’m pretty handy with a set of spanners these days so didn’t mind something that needed a bit of work, but didn’t want a basket case.
Looked at a few cars at the lower end of the market, with most of them being really rough, before I engaged in some epic man maths and started upping the budget. Wasn’t long before I was in that horrible car buying mode where every waking hour was spent trawling PH, Autotrader and eBay looking at anything and everything. I HAD to have one.
In the end I made some rookie mistakes and bought this car:
These were pics from my for sale ad at the time. It had just had a bunch of paint and looked super clean. Such a simple shape and I will always love turbo twist style wheels.
It was a straight car overall, but I missed some things when I inspected it (Mostly bodywork/paint related. Don’t view cars in the rain!) and while it was mechanically sound and pretty low mileage, the spec wasn’t quite right for me and I never grew to love the Savannah interior. Drove the car for a year, sorted all of the niggles out, enjoyed learning about working on 996’s, but then had to sell up to help fund a house deposit.
I ran another Mini for a while while the finances recovered but was REALLY missing a flat six in my life. Trouble is, I couldn’t really afford one. Attentions slowly turned to the 996’s cheaper brother, the 986 Boxster. I kept an eye on the classifieds and had considered getting a really, really cheap early 2.5 but then this one came up for sale up north for a fair price.
It was a really high spec for a Boxster and I couldn’t say no to it. It had the 3.2S engine, M030 sports suspension, Bose, heated sports seats (fantastic with the roof down), and came with a hardtop as part of the deal. History was good and speaking with previous owners/dealers it all checked out. I knew it needed a clutch soon (and as it had the smaller IMS bearing it was a chance to sort that out too) and some brakes so was able to do a bit of a deal with the seller (after more man maths…)
Had this for around a year and really enjoyed owning it, quite a different steer when going quickly compared to the 911, and it felt nice to get 90% of the performance of the 911 for around 1/3rd of the price. I sorted a bunch of the mechanical bits myself and then had the clutch/flywheel/IMS changed by Revolution Porsche.
The Boxster was an incredibly practical little sports car, and I think anyone who has one has a great car on their hands, but the 911 desire simply wouldn’t go away for me. I HAD to get into another one.
Even more ludicrous man maths got involved and after convincing myself of what I could flog the Boxster for, and deciding that I could accept something that was a bit more of a project, I started looking at 996’s again.
Throughout this time I’d been keeping an eye on a few 996 forum threads on PH and 911uk (along with that epic Drivetribe video Jethro did on his purple 996) and had slowly been coming round to the looks of the Aerokit cars. There’s a relative simplicity to the shape of the front bumper and rear wing that really appeals to me compared to the later cars, and although some (not me…) think there’s an element of ‘fake GT3’ about an aerokitted Carrera, it had evolved into my favourite looking car of the 996 era. The aerokit wasn’t a deal breaker for spec, but this time I wouldn’t dismiss them immediately.
After a month or so of keeping an eye on the classifieds this showed up on Facebook Marketplace. The wheels were wrong, it had some horrible tints on the rear, and I didn’t think the ad was particularly well written. Nearly glossed over it completely. Something about it kept me coming back to it though and a quick chat with the owner suggested this was a well specced car underneath. This could be the little project I was looking for…
These were pics I took when I first went to look at the car. The front view looks SO aggressive with the splitter and I will never tire of the rear 3/4 view on a 911
The good bits:
- Early 3.4L car with the cable throttle
- Dual row IMS
- Recent gearbox overhaul with new clutch, flywheel
- New brake lines all round
- M030 Factory Sports suspension
- Sports seats
- No sunroof
- Factory LSD
- Black on black
- Aerokit
The bad bits:
- (Relatively) high mileage at 105,000
- The heavy, too big, replica Fuch wheels
- Horrible pitch black window tints
- Nasty and unreliable non factory immobiliser install
- Horrible aftermarket SUPER loud exhaust
It also had some other weirdness and general bodgery going on with some nasty aftermarket rear bumper winglets, broken Carrera badge, incorrect exhaust tips from a facelift car, a badly installed K&N induction kit and various bits of interior trim looked pretty tired. If this was the first 996/986 I’d seen I would have walked away, but knowing these cars pretty well by this point I could sense a good car underneath and knew I could get on top of it pretty quickly. Outside of the ASBO exhaust, the car drove really well so could sense I was on to a potential winner. Despite his questionable taste in mods, the owner before the seller had the car around 11 years and it had a solid service history with Porsche Torque.
The guy who was selling it had previously been into big power Japanese cars - Supra’s, RX7’s etc - and bought this from Northway Porsche to try something different but didn’t get on with it at all. He’d put less than 1000 miles on it since he’d got it from the dealer about 6 months previous and was selling on to try and get back into an RX7. (Pictured below from when I picked the 996 up from him.)
I’d never been in one of these before and the seller took me for a quick spin. Couldn’t believe how tiny it was inside and also how quick it felt. Awesome bit of kit.
I phoned Northway and the story stacked up, they had got the car in as PX against a 997 and they gave me a thorough overview of recent service work they had completed and vouched for the car. Even offered to let me get it up in the air on their ramps to have a better look. As a bonus they also told me they had a set of recently refurbished original Porsche/BBS split rims they would swap for the replica Fuch wheels if I could sort out some tyres. Result.
That sealed the deal for me so I made the seller an offer and we shook hands. It was a good bit cheaper than the blue car so man maths gave me a modest budget to sort out all of the niggles and get it spot on. My plan was to go for an OEM+ vibe with the whole car.
I picked the car up in July 2019 and have given it a thorough going over since. All of this was largely elective, other than the water pump spectacularly letting go one Saturday afternoon, and the car is now feeling pretty fit and healthy. I’ve almost certainly blown my modest budget to bits in getting everything done so I’ve simply stopped adding up the cost of things
List of mods/fixes so far in no particular order:
- Replaced the crappy K&N filter kit with a standard 996 airbox
- Fit correct sized BBS Split rims along with a new set of Toyo Proxxes (Not impressed with these. Didn’t have much choice at the time from the tyre supplier. Michelin PS’s going on next time.)
- Upgraded 12v socket (The early cars have a weird sized 12v socket that doesn’t fit anything)
- Hubcentric spacers - 5mm at the front, 15mm at the rear
- Bluetooth install for the standard Becker head unit
- Upgraded front and rear speakers and fitting kits (Alpine SPG 10C2’s for anyone interested)
- Carnewal 996 modified exhaust and new Dansk exhaust tips (Had one of these on the Boxster. Great exhaust. Quiet round town, screams at high revs)
- Removed the ropey immobiliser install (This was a complete rats nest behind the dash. The alarm guy I used found two different tracker systems plumbed in from previous installs!)
- New pierburg water pump, low temperature thermostat, upgraded coolant cap and full coolant flush
- GT3 centre console delete
- GT3 Front brake ducts
- Removed the horrible window tints
- HID H7R Retrofit into original light units (I know HID retrofits are frowned upon by some. These new ones have a good cut off and are approximately 100000% better than the candles fitted as standard by Porsche so they are staying)
- Porsche X51 baffled Sump (Want to do a few track days this year and figured this was a cheap insurance policy against oil starvation)
- New Bosch idle control valve (these early cars use a separate idle controller and have a habit of cooking them over time. Was causing issues with cold starts and a temperamental hot idle)
- New Bosch fuel Regeneration Valve (helped solve a fuel tank vacuum issue that was making the car moo like a cow every time I turned it off!)
- 993 RS Engine Mounts
- Low speed fan resistors for both radiators (vital to help keep the car running cool round town)
And that’s about it so far and brings the story up to date. Car sits at around 115,000 miles now. That list above represents quite a few weekends worth of spannering but it’s been good fun to work on and it’s now nearly finished! (Though project cars are never really finished, are they?)
Here’s a bunch of pictures of it in various states of undress while working on it over the past few months. (I know it’s parked in a disabled space in some of these pics. It’s the one they gave me when I applied for a permit and for some reason won’t let me change it!)
Sorting out various front bumper niggles and fixing the rad fans. Looks dramatic but only about an hour to get to this point. These things come apart easily.
Water pump and thermostat time. Got lucky with the exhaust fixings coming apart. This was on the limit of what I’d want to do without a proper garage/lift.
The one and only time the two ‘brothers’ met each other.
Bottom end open as part of the X51 sump install. Looking pretty clean for 100,000 miles and 20 years.
I got the stand AND the bike in the back of the car. It’s a bit of a Tardis at times.
Someone had a good sense of humour when it was parked up covered in muck
It goes for a bit of paint at the end of the month to tidy up the front and rear bumpers and then I’m planning on enjoying it for the rest of this year. I’m lining up a few track days (At Silverstone on the 25th if anyone else is coming to that?) and a bit of a Eurotour by car as part of a summer holiday. I live in north London and cycle everywhere during the week, but given Big Brother will want to charge me £12 every time I take it out of the garage when the ULEZ expands, I want to try and get as much out of it as I can in the next 12 months. Further down the line I’ll think about a suspension refresh, and might switch to a smaller MOMO steering wheel soon, but that’s about it.
These things really get under your skin and it feels so special every time I take it for a spin. Equally at home caning it down a bumpy A road or pottering through town at <10mph and they are surprisingly practical as an only car. Even got the Christmas tree in there this year.
I’m a bit crap at keeping threads up to date, but now I’ve gone to the effort of writing this up I’ll try and keep on top of it with any updates. If you’ve got this far then thanks for reading, hope it inspires someone else to take the plunge on an early 996. You won’t regret it!
Covered in crap after a cross country bombing run on Boxing Day and looking all the better for it.
Edited by Mallone on Tuesday 14th January 15:16
Edited by Mallone on Tuesday 14th January 15:47
Edited by Mallone on Wednesday 28th September 05:31
Edited by Mallone on Wednesday 28th September 05:33
Edited by Mallone on Wednesday 28th September 05:33
Edited by Mallone on Wednesday 28th September 05:34
Densetsu said:
Nice thread OP! Good effort bringing back a nice 996 to a decent state. Is the Aero kit OEM/factory fit?
Yeah, apparently. Although it's not listed explicitly in the option codes that came with the car. Apparently some cars just had the kit fitted under the 'Exclusive Programme' option code.Should have included them in the main post but the full options list is:
C16 - UK Car
030 - Sports suspension -10mm lower
XRB - 18" SportClassic 2-piece wheels
220 - LSD Limited Slip Differential
222 - Traction control ASR AntriebsSchlupfRegelung
224 - Traction control ABD Automatic Braking Differential
236 - Internal production code related to tyres
375 - 2-way electrical sports seat, left
376 - 2-way electrical sports seat, right
436 - 3-spoke steering wheel
790 - (No idea what this one is!)
09991 - Manufacture from the exclusive-programme
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.
Will do. Didn't realise I'd included no proper pics of the interior until after I'd posted everything up. Doh.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.
The prices for the delete kit from Porsche are mad when you consider what it actually is - £150 for a bit of plastic and carpet! Does transform the feel of the interior though. Loads more leg space too.
CornedBeef said:
That is lovely, I'm biased of course! Our ownership stories are a bit similar actually, I started looking at the cheaper end of the market and even went to view one just like your first 996 - but it was too rough in person. Then man-maths and budget creep took over. Looks like its a similar spec to mine too - and no worries on the mileage, I've been using mine plenty and its now on 121k. Good effort doing things like the exhaust as a DIY, I've heard its a nightmare.
Is that the GT3 front splitter? That looks really good with the aero bumper.
It was your car that really got me thinking about an Aerokit car! Looks so good in red.Is that the GT3 front splitter? That looks really good with the aero bumper.
I also ended up using AMS for a bunch of work after you mentioned them in a post. Top guys. Great Indy.
I believe it is the GT3 splitter. It has a habit of grazing on speed bumps sometimes unless you take things slowly but it looks awesome so I can live with that. It’s a bit battered but can’t justify the £200 Porsche seem to want for a bit of tough plastic. Seems to have both Porsche tax and GT3 tax applied. Might see if my paint guy has got some sort of flexible plastic paint he can use to tart it up a bit.
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?
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!
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
LunarOne said:
J.C... said:
LunarOne I don’t want this to sound sarcastic or in any way gobby, but genuinely can you explain how you think the airbag saved your life? I’m not a doctor or anti airbag and going to get into trying to prove you wrong, I’m just genuinely interested.
Because a policeman I spoke to after the accident told me several things.1. That he'd seen people in less severe accidents have severe leg injuries including losing legs. He thought my lack of serious injury was down to not having an engine up front to ingress the passenger compartment, wearing a seatbelt, and having airbags.
2. That had the airbag not prevented my head from moving too far forward, I would likely have suffered severe spinal injury or death had my head hit the wheel.
3. That he didn't need to breathalyse me as he couldn't smell alcohol on me. I insisted in case it might be needed in court or for insurance reasons. I blew 0.
I've obviously replayed the accident 1000 times in my mind, wondering if there's anything I could have done to avoid the accident. Should I have slowed down more as I entered the area with intersecting roads. What if I had gone faster? Would I have avoided him? I did see him pull out slightly before I could react, but I had already slammed into him just as I pushed the brake pedal. I can't remember if I tried to steer away from him or not. There wasn't enough time for my life to flash before my eyes, but I remember thinking "time's up!" The feeling of shock, disbelief and then feeling of my stomach going through my body. Followed immediately by the acrid smell of gunpowder in my nostrils, the ringing in my ears, and the feeling of blood trickling down my legs. I broke several ribs in the accident due to the force of my body pressing against my seatbelt. But I didn't know it at the time. It took a few days for all of the pain to hit me, and it took more than a year until I was pain free.
But yes, I'm absolutely convinced that without the airbag, I wouldn't be here to comment on this. An airbagless wheel might be fine in a racing car where you are strapped in with a 5-point harness and have a helmet with a HANS device. But when you're sharing the road with teenagers doing Instagram, morons, drunks, drug addicts, and people without driving licences or insurance - I don't think it's a risk worth taking. The other party tried to blame me for the accident for speeding. The police investigation and the witnesses discounted that, but now I don't drive without a dashcam either.
Anyway I don't wish to hijack this thread, so I'll try to avoid further comment here.
These are fair comments and gave me a bit of food for thought over the weekend. As I said in my update, I'd considered the airbag implications, but seeing your pictures was a bit sobering. I'm going to give it a bit more thought and might see if I can sell the MOMO on without taking a bath and go back to the standard wheel. Didn't expect such a strong response from others, which makes me think I might have undercooked my own justifications for running it. Thanks for your input.
CousinDupree said:
OP, love the car and enjoyed the read! Thanks.
Did you consider fitting the additional oil pickup that came with the X51 factory kit? Only one bank of cylinders has one IIRC.
I would agree about the steering wheel though. I used the smaller RAID airbag steering wheel used by Ruf / Aston / Morgan / exotics. A massive improvement and quite cheap second hand.
Would have loved to have done a bit more of the X51 upgrade but the sump is the only cheap bit! Googling suggests that I'd need £2k or so for the oil pump kit, plus fitting, and for the one or two track days a year I might do in this car it doesn't make sense.Did you consider fitting the additional oil pickup that came with the X51 factory kit? Only one bank of cylinders has one IIRC.
I would agree about the steering wheel though. I used the smaller RAID airbag steering wheel used by Ruf / Aston / Morgan / exotics. A massive improvement and quite cheap second hand.
Well, It’s been six months or so since the last update on the C2, so figured I’d go through the iPhone photo album, dig out some pictures of the posh VW Beetle and get this topic back up to speed.
I put a lot more miles on the car than anticipated in 2020, she’s just ticked over 127,000, and I do worry slightly that if I ever came to sell it most people would value it at about 50p, especially given the myriad horror stories about 996 (and 986) reliability.
Saying all that, for some people it became worthless the moment it ticked over 100k anyway, and I get the benefit of daily driving a 911 without worrying too much about losing the shirt off of my back if it decides to grenade itself. Swings and roundabouts I guess.
MOMO Wheel (removal…)
Last time I posted I got a bit of (justified) airbag flak for the change to a MOMO steering wheel. Despite how good it looked and felt, some of the stories I saw about people getting into fairly grim situations without an airbag whilst in a shunt made me think twice. I’d happily drive an old car without one, but something didn’t feel quite right about doing it on this car. I think on balance I’d slightly undercooked my own justifications for running without an airbag on a road car, and when my girlfriend said she didn’t think she would drive it without the original wheel and airbag I decided to switch back. Made 99% of my spend back when selling it, so no great loss, and a bit of an interesting learning curve navigated around how wheels/airbags/clock springs etc work. It’s also not like the original wheel is terrible, I was mostly just being a tart for Italian leather!
I really should replace the floor mats given the hole in the drivers side one but every time I think about pulling the trigger on £100+ for 2 bits of cheap carpet from Porsche I feel queasy…
Coffin and Control Arms
For a while I’d been getting a few knocks and rattles from the front end so wanted to investigate what sort of state the lower arms were in on the car. On all my previous 996/986’s I’ve ended up doing the suspension arms at some point. I put the car into AMS and, after Angus had had a good poke round the car, he showed me the wear on the various arms. It was recommended I do all four coffin arms, and the tuning forks on the front. In the end I went one step further and got the control arms replaced on the rear too, followed by a full alignment.
As usual, when trying to remove things that have been on the car for 20 years, AMS ran into some issues, having to cut some of the bolts out and generally fight with stubborn old suspension, but once back together it made a HUGE difference to the overall quality of the ride. I don’t think I’d realised how tired the original arms were and so many clunks and knocks had suddenly disappeared. Angus had also gone for a slightly more aggressive geometry setup (though nothing too crazy for the road) and this also made a big difference when pushing on. A lot more positivity from the front end. Unfortunately all that new kit started to show up some other parts of the suspension. We’ll get to that later……
I actually took this when getting the tyres done (see below…) so the arms are looking a bit grubby after some miles on them. GT3 brake ducts probably the cheapest brake upgrade Porsche have ever sold!
NC500 2020 Summer Trip
With COVID putting paid to any dreams of a proper holiday out of the UK in 2020 I decided that maybe we should tick off something I’d had on my bucket list for a while and head up to Scotland for a week to do the NC500. I’d imagine most on here know what this is but, for those that don’t, think of it as Scotlands answer to Route 66. A 500 mile snaking route around the top of Scotland taking in some of the best scenery it has to offer. It was, quite simply, incredible.
I’d planned the trip over two weeks, the first week we were staying with some family in the Lake District, near Keswick, and then the second week we headed up to Inverness to start the NC500 properly.
The whole route including the lakes. The north of England and Scotland is a very BIG place
A closer look at the NC500 bit. We actually ended up skipping out the bit back across to Inverness when we finished it. The west coast from Durness to Applecross is simply unreal. The best driving roads I’ve ever been on.
Having spent most of the start of 2020 stuck in London, even getting up to the lakes was a complete breathe of fresh air and the car was in it’s element. We had to take a LOT of stuff up for the first leg of the trip and there was some worry if the 996 would manage to squeeze it all in. Shouldn’t have worried. Who says Porsche’s aren’t practical!?
Click the picture for a little video of the Tetris like packing we managed to achieve. Loads of space.
I won’t do a full detailed run down of the various bits of the route, there’s plenty of other people who will have done a better job than me of that, but will say that it was an epic road trip and one I wouldn’t hesitate to do again. Some of the single track roads were hard work, purely in terms of work rate at the wheel and level of concentration needed, but you were rewarded with absolutely unbelievable views at every turn. We did the east coast first, which was nice enough in isolation, but it’s as you start heading west from John O’Groats that things really start getting special. I could easily run out of adjectives trying to describe the beauty of the West Coast. Unreal.
This might be my absolute favourite picture of the car. It looks absolutely perfect. I think the 996 with the aerokit can look a little off from certain angles. This is not one of them.
Parked up near Derwentwater for a quick work call. A bit nicer than being stuck in the flat back in London on Zoom…
Looking grubby on a very wet day near John O’Groats
We’d stopped here for a bit of breakfast but found they weren’t open. Scotland was still very much struggling with getting going again after Lockdown and a lot of places weren’t open or were severely restricted.
Gorgeous MK2 Golf GTi spotted in the Balkaneil Craft Village, near Durness.
Don’t think you’d get tired of views like this
Looking out towards the Isle of Skye
Views for days.
Despite pushing the car hard for over two weeks and 2000+ miles, she didn’t miss a beat. Not a drop of oil or coolant used and the car was comfortable, fast and practical. I really don’t know what other car would have done all of those quite so well.
Aside from the driving we found everyone to be incredibly hospitable and welcoming, despite COVID making things difficult at every step, and some of the long walks and sights we saw were breathtaking. I could probably have posted 200+ photos of the NC500 trip. If you haven’t been yet then I suggest you go immediately.
New Tyres & Wheel Repair
If there’s one thing that the NC500 did do to the car it was finish off the set of Toyo’s I had on the car. They managed about 18k miles in all, including a track day, so pretty happy with the wear. It was also a good chance to try something new. I wanted to go Michelin this time around as everyone has been banging on about the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 (4S isn’t available in an 18 inch size unfortunately).
A quick trip over to my tyre place, and the new boots were fitted. I’ve since done about 800 miles on the Michelins and they are very, very good. Particularly in the wet. The Toyo’s always felt a bit light and nervous on the front end in the wet and it’s night and day with the Michelin. Very, very good tyres. Will hopefully get the chance to try them on track later in the year.
Looking a bit like a spacecraft when it’s up in the air like this. Would recommend The Tyre Shop. Good prices, good service, nice guys.
Unfortunately my tyre guys also found that one of the rear wheels had taken a knock and was slightly buckled. Think I know when I did this in Scotland. Be cautious of potholes!
Everyone raves about Chris at Exel Wheels and a quick phone call later he was round to collect the offending wheel and leave me a spare. Thoroughly nice bloke, turned the job around super fast and, at £100 for the wheel to be collected, repaired, a spare lent to me, and delivered back, represents good value. Highly recommended.
Thankfully I didn’t need to drive the car while it was getting fixed. Think the mismatched turbo twist wouldn’t win the car any beauty contests!
This looks so….wrong
As luck would have it though, I managed to put a nail through the brand new tyre just two days later. Arse.
Why is it always a brand new tyre!?
Headlight Restoration
When I first bought the car the headlights had a little yellowing on them so thought I’d give them a go over with one of the 3M restoration kits. Unfortunately, I think due to the headlight having been lacquered at some point in the past, it didn’t help at all and the headlight remained stubbornly hazy. I’d got my paint guy to give them a going over last year when the from bumper got painted but already the lacquer was peeling off again and I wasn’t very happy. Decided to do a proper job myself.
Pretty nerve wracking when you first get started. Easy to convince yourself they are completely knackered
After the first compound on the DA, getting there.
Lights finished and lacquer applied in the home made spray booth. Top shelf drinks to one side to help with a steady hand
Both headlights were wet sanded from 800 grit to 3000 grit before being machine polished and then lacquered. The wet sanding took FOREVER by hand, and it was clear the headlights had been lacquered more than once before. Quite a few layers to get through before the plastic itself was exposed.
They’ve come up MUCH nicer than before, though the pictures don’t quite show the difference that well. It’s also exposed that there is some fogging/dirt on the inside of the lens that’s stopping them from being truly crystal clear. Looks like a previous owner had run too hot a bulb in the headlight housing and its lightly scorched some of the surrounding plastic. Apparently this burning/smoking of the plastic causes grot to build up on the inside of the lenses. Didn’t really fancy splitting them to get to the inside of the lenses (though would give me a chance to upgrade to proper projectors….maybe one day) but did find an ingenious technique that Mercedes have used before to clean the inside of some headlights. Magnets to the rescue.
Picture links to YouTube to see it in action. Clever idea.
I’ve ordered the bits to make a similar magnet cleaning kit myself and will give it a try in the next few weeks. Fingers crossed it can help clean all the crap out and the lights should be looking brand new.
127,000 Mile Service + Suspension Decisions….
The car went into AMS again last week for an engine oil change (Millers 10W50) and a gearbox oil change. Gearbox was rebuilt not long before I bought the car so know it’s fairly sound, but was still having to baby 2nd gear a little when the car was cold so figured it couldn’t hurt to change it.
Old oil was sent off to Millers for analysis and given a clean bill of health (though with a slight warning about fuel dilution. Must try not to use the car for too many short trips!). New gearbox oil has made a big difference to the shift so that was worthwhile doing.
Got Angus to investigate some other creaks and groans from the front end after the new arms and looks like, finally, I’m going to have to bite the bullet on some new springs/dampers/top mounts. The current (possibly original) top mounts are starting to go, I’ve lost a bump stop somewhere in Scotland and, truth be told, at 127k the original dampers will be long past it. Knew this was coming at some point!
In an ideal world I’d love to go for coilovers, would be great to be able to perfectly dial in the ride height and damping for road or the odd track day, but given this is a daily that’s used year round (would they stand up to a salty British winter etc?), and the cost of anything decent from Bilstein, KW or Ohlins representing a good chunk of the cars overall value, I’m not sure I can justify it.
I had thought of taking a bit of a punt on a cheaper set of coilovers from someone like PB, Designtek, BC etc, probably with custom spring rates. Some people think they are awful, others incredible, but no real consensus either way. Even a ‘cheap’ set at £800-1k is expensive if they are terrible overall.
I’m currently leaning towards Koni Special Active dampers with Eibach springs as a ‘fit and forget’ option that should give me something that will cover all bases. Trying to speak to Centre Gravity at the minute for their view but they seem very, very busy! No rush to make any decisions but want to try and get something sorted in the next few months. Should make an even more positive difference to how the car drives.
Odd jobs + other car stuff
I’ve managed a few other bits and pieces of maintenance over the year. Whilst doing the aux belt I noticed most of the idler pulley bearings were grumbling a bit. Picked up a set of suitable SKF bearings from eBay for £20, £10 to borrow the hydraulic press at the local garage and boom. All three done for far less than the cost of a single new one from Porsche.
Will also be swapping the current fixed alternator pulley for a newer clutched one at some point, just haven’t got around to it.
Also spotted a few dramatic fluctuations in the oil pressure readout after the trip round Scotland. Figured the oil pressure sender was probably on its last legs after 20 years. New one that was ordered from Design911 turned up looking like this:
These things are not supposed to be separate….
So sent that back and picked up a proper one from Porsche. Bit awkward to change, even with the right crows foot spanners, but problem solved.
A few more pictures below of random car bits:
Spotted an awesome little Porsche service Playmobil man on an Instagram post by Type7. Couldn’t resist getting something similar myself.
This years tree was quite a bit bigger than the one from last year, so elected to make the most of the aerokit wing for the trip home. Got a few strange looks!
Rather unexpectedly I’ve been given an old Morgan by my dad as a project. It’s a 1971 Plus 8, with the Rover 3.5 V8 and Moss gearbox. Hasn’t turned a wheel under it’s own power for at least 20 years, so is definitely going to be a bit of a project. Thankfully it’s been dry stored, so no rot. Be nice to get this going before the end of summer this year. We’ll see….
Looking absolutely filthy. Something about sports cars covered in muck in winter looks so ‘right’ for me.
Making the most of the grotty roads in Essex. In my view, these cars are meant to be driven, not tucked away. Nothing better than an early morning, cross country, winter bombing run.
Finally, some pics of her looking clean just after I got back from Scotland to demonstrate I do actually clean the thing sometimes!
Another ‘spot on’ view of the 996. Sometimes I think about swapping the rear wing for a standard one and do the 996 GT3 Touring look, but that taco rear wing is still something special.
That just about gets the thread back up to today. Phew. I always seem to write LOADS more than expected so, as always, thanks for sticking with it
I put a lot more miles on the car than anticipated in 2020, she’s just ticked over 127,000, and I do worry slightly that if I ever came to sell it most people would value it at about 50p, especially given the myriad horror stories about 996 (and 986) reliability.
Saying all that, for some people it became worthless the moment it ticked over 100k anyway, and I get the benefit of daily driving a 911 without worrying too much about losing the shirt off of my back if it decides to grenade itself. Swings and roundabouts I guess.
MOMO Wheel (removal…)
Last time I posted I got a bit of (justified) airbag flak for the change to a MOMO steering wheel. Despite how good it looked and felt, some of the stories I saw about people getting into fairly grim situations without an airbag whilst in a shunt made me think twice. I’d happily drive an old car without one, but something didn’t feel quite right about doing it on this car. I think on balance I’d slightly undercooked my own justifications for running without an airbag on a road car, and when my girlfriend said she didn’t think she would drive it without the original wheel and airbag I decided to switch back. Made 99% of my spend back when selling it, so no great loss, and a bit of an interesting learning curve navigated around how wheels/airbags/clock springs etc work. It’s also not like the original wheel is terrible, I was mostly just being a tart for Italian leather!
I really should replace the floor mats given the hole in the drivers side one but every time I think about pulling the trigger on £100+ for 2 bits of cheap carpet from Porsche I feel queasy…
Coffin and Control Arms
For a while I’d been getting a few knocks and rattles from the front end so wanted to investigate what sort of state the lower arms were in on the car. On all my previous 996/986’s I’ve ended up doing the suspension arms at some point. I put the car into AMS and, after Angus had had a good poke round the car, he showed me the wear on the various arms. It was recommended I do all four coffin arms, and the tuning forks on the front. In the end I went one step further and got the control arms replaced on the rear too, followed by a full alignment.
As usual, when trying to remove things that have been on the car for 20 years, AMS ran into some issues, having to cut some of the bolts out and generally fight with stubborn old suspension, but once back together it made a HUGE difference to the overall quality of the ride. I don’t think I’d realised how tired the original arms were and so many clunks and knocks had suddenly disappeared. Angus had also gone for a slightly more aggressive geometry setup (though nothing too crazy for the road) and this also made a big difference when pushing on. A lot more positivity from the front end. Unfortunately all that new kit started to show up some other parts of the suspension. We’ll get to that later……
I actually took this when getting the tyres done (see below…) so the arms are looking a bit grubby after some miles on them. GT3 brake ducts probably the cheapest brake upgrade Porsche have ever sold!
NC500 2020 Summer Trip
With COVID putting paid to any dreams of a proper holiday out of the UK in 2020 I decided that maybe we should tick off something I’d had on my bucket list for a while and head up to Scotland for a week to do the NC500. I’d imagine most on here know what this is but, for those that don’t, think of it as Scotlands answer to Route 66. A 500 mile snaking route around the top of Scotland taking in some of the best scenery it has to offer. It was, quite simply, incredible.
I’d planned the trip over two weeks, the first week we were staying with some family in the Lake District, near Keswick, and then the second week we headed up to Inverness to start the NC500 properly.
The whole route including the lakes. The north of England and Scotland is a very BIG place
A closer look at the NC500 bit. We actually ended up skipping out the bit back across to Inverness when we finished it. The west coast from Durness to Applecross is simply unreal. The best driving roads I’ve ever been on.
Having spent most of the start of 2020 stuck in London, even getting up to the lakes was a complete breathe of fresh air and the car was in it’s element. We had to take a LOT of stuff up for the first leg of the trip and there was some worry if the 996 would manage to squeeze it all in. Shouldn’t have worried. Who says Porsche’s aren’t practical!?
Click the picture for a little video of the Tetris like packing we managed to achieve. Loads of space.
I won’t do a full detailed run down of the various bits of the route, there’s plenty of other people who will have done a better job than me of that, but will say that it was an epic road trip and one I wouldn’t hesitate to do again. Some of the single track roads were hard work, purely in terms of work rate at the wheel and level of concentration needed, but you were rewarded with absolutely unbelievable views at every turn. We did the east coast first, which was nice enough in isolation, but it’s as you start heading west from John O’Groats that things really start getting special. I could easily run out of adjectives trying to describe the beauty of the West Coast. Unreal.
This might be my absolute favourite picture of the car. It looks absolutely perfect. I think the 996 with the aerokit can look a little off from certain angles. This is not one of them.
Parked up near Derwentwater for a quick work call. A bit nicer than being stuck in the flat back in London on Zoom…
Looking grubby on a very wet day near John O’Groats
We’d stopped here for a bit of breakfast but found they weren’t open. Scotland was still very much struggling with getting going again after Lockdown and a lot of places weren’t open or were severely restricted.
Gorgeous MK2 Golf GTi spotted in the Balkaneil Craft Village, near Durness.
Don’t think you’d get tired of views like this
Looking out towards the Isle of Skye
Views for days.
Despite pushing the car hard for over two weeks and 2000+ miles, she didn’t miss a beat. Not a drop of oil or coolant used and the car was comfortable, fast and practical. I really don’t know what other car would have done all of those quite so well.
Aside from the driving we found everyone to be incredibly hospitable and welcoming, despite COVID making things difficult at every step, and some of the long walks and sights we saw were breathtaking. I could probably have posted 200+ photos of the NC500 trip. If you haven’t been yet then I suggest you go immediately.
New Tyres & Wheel Repair
If there’s one thing that the NC500 did do to the car it was finish off the set of Toyo’s I had on the car. They managed about 18k miles in all, including a track day, so pretty happy with the wear. It was also a good chance to try something new. I wanted to go Michelin this time around as everyone has been banging on about the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 (4S isn’t available in an 18 inch size unfortunately).
A quick trip over to my tyre place, and the new boots were fitted. I’ve since done about 800 miles on the Michelins and they are very, very good. Particularly in the wet. The Toyo’s always felt a bit light and nervous on the front end in the wet and it’s night and day with the Michelin. Very, very good tyres. Will hopefully get the chance to try them on track later in the year.
Looking a bit like a spacecraft when it’s up in the air like this. Would recommend The Tyre Shop. Good prices, good service, nice guys.
Unfortunately my tyre guys also found that one of the rear wheels had taken a knock and was slightly buckled. Think I know when I did this in Scotland. Be cautious of potholes!
Everyone raves about Chris at Exel Wheels and a quick phone call later he was round to collect the offending wheel and leave me a spare. Thoroughly nice bloke, turned the job around super fast and, at £100 for the wheel to be collected, repaired, a spare lent to me, and delivered back, represents good value. Highly recommended.
Thankfully I didn’t need to drive the car while it was getting fixed. Think the mismatched turbo twist wouldn’t win the car any beauty contests!
This looks so….wrong
As luck would have it though, I managed to put a nail through the brand new tyre just two days later. Arse.
Why is it always a brand new tyre!?
Headlight Restoration
When I first bought the car the headlights had a little yellowing on them so thought I’d give them a go over with one of the 3M restoration kits. Unfortunately, I think due to the headlight having been lacquered at some point in the past, it didn’t help at all and the headlight remained stubbornly hazy. I’d got my paint guy to give them a going over last year when the from bumper got painted but already the lacquer was peeling off again and I wasn’t very happy. Decided to do a proper job myself.
Pretty nerve wracking when you first get started. Easy to convince yourself they are completely knackered
After the first compound on the DA, getting there.
Lights finished and lacquer applied in the home made spray booth. Top shelf drinks to one side to help with a steady hand
Both headlights were wet sanded from 800 grit to 3000 grit before being machine polished and then lacquered. The wet sanding took FOREVER by hand, and it was clear the headlights had been lacquered more than once before. Quite a few layers to get through before the plastic itself was exposed.
They’ve come up MUCH nicer than before, though the pictures don’t quite show the difference that well. It’s also exposed that there is some fogging/dirt on the inside of the lens that’s stopping them from being truly crystal clear. Looks like a previous owner had run too hot a bulb in the headlight housing and its lightly scorched some of the surrounding plastic. Apparently this burning/smoking of the plastic causes grot to build up on the inside of the lenses. Didn’t really fancy splitting them to get to the inside of the lenses (though would give me a chance to upgrade to proper projectors….maybe one day) but did find an ingenious technique that Mercedes have used before to clean the inside of some headlights. Magnets to the rescue.
Picture links to YouTube to see it in action. Clever idea.
I’ve ordered the bits to make a similar magnet cleaning kit myself and will give it a try in the next few weeks. Fingers crossed it can help clean all the crap out and the lights should be looking brand new.
127,000 Mile Service + Suspension Decisions….
The car went into AMS again last week for an engine oil change (Millers 10W50) and a gearbox oil change. Gearbox was rebuilt not long before I bought the car so know it’s fairly sound, but was still having to baby 2nd gear a little when the car was cold so figured it couldn’t hurt to change it.
Old oil was sent off to Millers for analysis and given a clean bill of health (though with a slight warning about fuel dilution. Must try not to use the car for too many short trips!). New gearbox oil has made a big difference to the shift so that was worthwhile doing.
Got Angus to investigate some other creaks and groans from the front end after the new arms and looks like, finally, I’m going to have to bite the bullet on some new springs/dampers/top mounts. The current (possibly original) top mounts are starting to go, I’ve lost a bump stop somewhere in Scotland and, truth be told, at 127k the original dampers will be long past it. Knew this was coming at some point!
In an ideal world I’d love to go for coilovers, would be great to be able to perfectly dial in the ride height and damping for road or the odd track day, but given this is a daily that’s used year round (would they stand up to a salty British winter etc?), and the cost of anything decent from Bilstein, KW or Ohlins representing a good chunk of the cars overall value, I’m not sure I can justify it.
I had thought of taking a bit of a punt on a cheaper set of coilovers from someone like PB, Designtek, BC etc, probably with custom spring rates. Some people think they are awful, others incredible, but no real consensus either way. Even a ‘cheap’ set at £800-1k is expensive if they are terrible overall.
I’m currently leaning towards Koni Special Active dampers with Eibach springs as a ‘fit and forget’ option that should give me something that will cover all bases. Trying to speak to Centre Gravity at the minute for their view but they seem very, very busy! No rush to make any decisions but want to try and get something sorted in the next few months. Should make an even more positive difference to how the car drives.
Odd jobs + other car stuff
I’ve managed a few other bits and pieces of maintenance over the year. Whilst doing the aux belt I noticed most of the idler pulley bearings were grumbling a bit. Picked up a set of suitable SKF bearings from eBay for £20, £10 to borrow the hydraulic press at the local garage and boom. All three done for far less than the cost of a single new one from Porsche.
Will also be swapping the current fixed alternator pulley for a newer clutched one at some point, just haven’t got around to it.
Also spotted a few dramatic fluctuations in the oil pressure readout after the trip round Scotland. Figured the oil pressure sender was probably on its last legs after 20 years. New one that was ordered from Design911 turned up looking like this:
These things are not supposed to be separate….
So sent that back and picked up a proper one from Porsche. Bit awkward to change, even with the right crows foot spanners, but problem solved.
A few more pictures below of random car bits:
Spotted an awesome little Porsche service Playmobil man on an Instagram post by Type7. Couldn’t resist getting something similar myself.
This years tree was quite a bit bigger than the one from last year, so elected to make the most of the aerokit wing for the trip home. Got a few strange looks!
Rather unexpectedly I’ve been given an old Morgan by my dad as a project. It’s a 1971 Plus 8, with the Rover 3.5 V8 and Moss gearbox. Hasn’t turned a wheel under it’s own power for at least 20 years, so is definitely going to be a bit of a project. Thankfully it’s been dry stored, so no rot. Be nice to get this going before the end of summer this year. We’ll see….
Looking absolutely filthy. Something about sports cars covered in muck in winter looks so ‘right’ for me.
Making the most of the grotty roads in Essex. In my view, these cars are meant to be driven, not tucked away. Nothing better than an early morning, cross country, winter bombing run.
Finally, some pics of her looking clean just after I got back from Scotland to demonstrate I do actually clean the thing sometimes!
Another ‘spot on’ view of the 996. Sometimes I think about swapping the rear wing for a standard one and do the 996 GT3 Touring look, but that taco rear wing is still something special.
That just about gets the thread back up to today. Phew. I always seem to write LOADS more than expected so, as always, thanks for sticking with it
Edited by Mallone on Wednesday 27th January 17:28
LunarOne said:
Still fantastic reading - thank you!! I really hope you didn't take my comments (and pictures of my destroyed Boxster) as flak, as I truly believe in self-determination and the right of everyone to live their lives as they see fit. However I wanted to make sure you were aware what can happen, and I must admit that I'm glad you changed your mind on the wheel. Yes, the Momo wheel looked great, but no more so than the original wheel in my mind. Plus you get the benefit of staying alive if you are ever unfortunate enough to meet a similar fate as me. As it stands, I lost out financially and health-wise due to the accident, but I can always earn more money and try to regain my fitness. Not so if my face has been turned inside out!
Look forward to more - your NC500 trip sounds amazing and if you have a link to your custom map, that would be very useful as I've been hoping to make the same trip in The Flying Carrot - the car that replaced the written-off car.
Glad you like the write up. Something really satisfying about going back and actually writing down all the things that I've done with and to the car.Look forward to more - your NC500 trip sounds amazing and if you have a link to your custom map, that would be very useful as I've been hoping to make the same trip in The Flying Carrot - the car that replaced the written-off car.
re: NC500 map - Of course, be my guest. This map includes the section from the lakes, but if you're heading up to Scotland from the south then you many want to stop there on the way anyway. An equally lovely part off the world. Link: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1zvz-3l0GCU...
And no issue with your comments about the wheel at all. As I said at the time, all just food for thought. No regrets fitting the MOMO, no regrets taking it off
shalmaneser said:
Car looks lovely!
Just out of interest, what clearcoat did you use on the headlights? I used U-pol on mine in the past and it looks like it reacted a little. I initially thought I had put it on too thick but I did another set of 996 headlights and was super careful and the same thing happened. Looks like you had a good result so would be keen to redo mine at some point.
I went for this stuff:Just out of interest, what clearcoat did you use on the headlights? I used U-pol on mine in the past and it looks like it reacted a little. I initially thought I had put it on too thick but I did another set of 996 headlights and was super careful and the same thing happened. Looks like you had a good result so would be keen to redo mine at some point.
Can't remember exactly where I picked it up but it did the job perfectly. I laid it on pretty thick when I applied it, so ended up doing a very, very light machine polish over the top to remove any orange peel etc.
I also managed to give my 'inside the headlight magnet cleaning' trick last week (snappy name, I'm sure you'll agree). That's made an even more dramatic improvement to the overall clarity of the light. They are looking brand new.
Jhonno said:
Koni Actives on my daily E61 btw, and really rate them for all round road use. Rides better than standard, but much tighter handling.
Good to know. Keep hearing lots of good things about them on some of the 911 forums and Centre Gravity have confirmed it's their recommended choice for a 996. The 993 community loves them too apparently.Alfred Pina said:
Superb thread.
I was in regular communication with the seller of your car and I was going to buy it, pending the sale of the non-aero 996.2 I had at the time.
It's always interesting to see then, what could have been my own ownership experience! I have to say, although I love the look of your car, and it's factory options are perfect - I hate cars that have had their interiors messed around with!! Wiring modifications and poor fitting trim pieces etc really annoys me. Very glad to hear you sorted it.
I have put a thread on here recently under "Red 3.4 Carrera" where you can see the journey I subsequently took...
Looking forward to your next update. I would like the Koni shocks as I have already fitted the eibach springs and the way it sits is perfect. I am sure with the mileage you do, you will be fitting them first!
Quite a few people have mentioned they saw my car for sale before I bought it. Must have got lucky in snagging it! I'd already seen your thread on your red 3.4, really love how the car is looking right now. Some great mods. In fact, you've just made me pull the trigger on a standard engine cover. Going to emulate the touring look you've gone for....I was in regular communication with the seller of your car and I was going to buy it, pending the sale of the non-aero 996.2 I had at the time.
It's always interesting to see then, what could have been my own ownership experience! I have to say, although I love the look of your car, and it's factory options are perfect - I hate cars that have had their interiors messed around with!! Wiring modifications and poor fitting trim pieces etc really annoys me. Very glad to hear you sorted it.
I have put a thread on here recently under "Red 3.4 Carrera" where you can see the journey I subsequently took...
Looking forward to your next update. I would like the Koni shocks as I have already fitted the eibach springs and the way it sits is perfect. I am sure with the mileage you do, you will be fitting them first!
Thought I’d start with a bit of a dramatic first picture for this update! A few things have happened to the car since the last time I posted. There are some big changes coming up for the 996……..
No more than 48 hours after I last updated the thread (car karma for putting all that effort into the last post and continuing to bore on about how reliable the old girl had been…) I went to use the car for a trip and, about an hour into the journey, as I came to a stop at a set of traffic lights, noticed that the engine was feeling incredibly lumpy at idle. The motor was really quite unhappy and was visibly shaking the steering wheel, with big vibrations running through the body of the car. Not good.
Weirdly, it felt fine at speed with a few revs, and engine didn’t sound mechanically rough, more like a very bad misfire only at idle. Exhaust note was quite lumpy and rough on the LHS exhaust tip, indicating an issue with the RHS bank of cylinders given the exhaust crossover.
Nursed it home and called my specialist, Angus at AMS Porsche. Discussed a couple of possible issues (mostly ignition related - coil packs, plugs etc) but he had an inkling it was going to be related to the VarioCam solenoids.
Dropped the car off a few days later for a bit of diagnosis and sure enough, when AMS connected PIWIS to the car to manually activate the solenoid, it wouldn’t work. Problem identified. Now to work out what to do about it….
It’s quite an involved job to replace, cam cover off as a minimum, and the solenoid itself isn’t cheap. Circa £400. On the 996.1 you have a single solenoid on each bank and, depending on which side you have fail on you, you can get lucky with not having to remove the exhaust manifold. Guess which side had failed….
This presented a few further issues. The manifold, and manifold bolts, looked to be original on my car and they were KNACKERED. I’d already been steeling myself for the day they were going to need to come off as it was highly likely the vast majority of the bolts would snap in the head. The manifold itself wasn’t looking too clever either and I had a suspicion that once they came off they may well turn into orange dust. The labour involved just in sorting the manifold bolts is significant in itself.
Bracing myself for the numbers to start adding up, AMS threw together a few options for sorting the car:
1. Cheap - Manifold off just on the one side, pray it doesn’t fall apart too much, cam cover off, replace solenoid - £
2. Sensible - Sort manifold on both sides, both cam covers off, replace solenoid and anything else sensible/broken while you’re in there - ££
3. Sensible+ - Drop the motor, manifolds off, cam covers off, proper top end overhaul (chain guides, tappets, tensioners etc) - £££
4. ‘Go Big or Go Home’ man maths option - Drop the motor, full strip and rebuild. Future proof the car - ££££
I had quite a bit to think about. I hadn’t intended to throw lots and lots of money at the car in 2021, but I also couldn’t quite justify spending what was still quite a lot of cash on options 2 or 3 (I couldn’t bring myself to not do a proper job and just go for option 1) and knowing that, with circa 130,000 miles on the car, I wouldn’t have any idea of the condition of the bottom end. If you believe everything you read online, any 996 motor over 100k will have oval, scored, bores, the IMS will be about to collapse, and all the crank bearings will be through to the copper. I wasn’t quite so convinced of the doom and gloom prophecies, but I did still want to be able to sleep at night knowing I hadn’t half arsed the job.
I’d already been weighing up what to do with the car long term anyway. I normally get into something new every 18 months or so but the way the world is going I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to drive around in cars like this at all. It was always the dream to get into a 911 with this sort of spec, and I’d spent so much time and effort getting this car to be exactly what I wanted it to be that I didn’t really have any idea of what buy now if I did sell up.
Another 996? I’d never find one with a better spec for me, didn’t fancy a Turbo, and a GT3 is a long, long way off yet. Move up to a 997 for more money and more risk? I don’t care one bit about the ‘better’ headlights, and the larger chance of IMS/bore scoring issues on those cars made me wince. I could go for something different all together, an M3 has always been near the top of the list, but they have their own issues and I knew it wouldn’t feel as special. I’d miss owning a 911. The more I thought about it the more it didn’t make sense to do anything other than double down.
I was already relatively fortunate that, even with the issues I had that needed sorting, I wasn’t in the same boat others can be in where the motor has already let go, there’s lots of bent metal in the bowels of the thing, and they are looking at a really big bill just to get back to square one. I was in a position where I might be able to build a strong new engine, go over the rest of the car to make sure everything is in tip top shape, and create something a bit unique and special to me.
With all that in mind, more time spent with the man maths abacus, and a healthy dose of ‘f**k it, you only live once’, I instructed Angus to pull the motor and start stripping it. We’d be able to find out what was good, what was bad, and what was ugly, and then make a call on what to do next with the rebuild.
The Stripdown
Angus was kind enough to invite me to be at AMS, with some sensible COVID restrictions in place, when the engine was to be fully stripped, but they needed to get the engine out of the car first and get the ancillaries/exhaust off.
Only casualty on the way out was the oil filler tube, otherwise it was smooth sailing.
Not too rough on the other side either. Expected a bit more grot from the AOS in truth.
Onto the exhaust. This was a full house. All 12 bolts snapped in the head upon removal!
I pity anyone who has to do this job on their driveway with a jig. Life is too short for that sort of thing!
I didn’t manage to get photos of everything as it came apart, was too busy asking stupid questions and getting in the way. Haven’t stripped an engine for a long time, so was super keen to see how a flat six went together.
Block on the stand looking grubby, and with evidence of squirrel activity, but otherwise in good shape.
Cam cover off, cams out. Solenoid on this side looked to have been replaced already when we pulled it. Chain guides in better shape than expected on both sides. Tensioners were badly scored and will definitely need replacing.
Pistons looking ok. Bores on both banks looking pretty fresh…..
…..but there was some light scoring at the bottom of the liners on both banks.
Pistons in good shape overall. You can also see how limited the wear is on some of the bearing shells.
Crank out and looking in good shape. No issues at all. You can also see the IMS in this picture. Mine is a dual row car and there was zero play in it at all. We’ll be replacing it as a matter of course, particularly while it’s this easy to access.
Overall we were both quite surprised at how little wear a lot of the major components showed. Angus said it was one of the cleanest he’d seen. In theory we could have replaced the wear items and thrown it back together there and then. In truth, I’d been keeping my fingers crossed for a good result from the strip down as it opened up budget to spend on more interesting things.
I knew that If I was going to go to all this trouble then I’d want to future proof the engine, from both a reliability and performance standpoint, as much as I sensibly could. When you’re already in for good money to get the liners and pistons sorted, it becomes relatively cost effective to explore a capacity increase at the same time. I’d read through PPBB’s rebuild thread a few years ago (it inspired me to buy this car in the first place) when he went to a 3.7L, and I was aligned with his thinking on the way he approached the engine build.
Long story short - It’s being bored out to a 3.7L, with new closed deck Nikasil liners and pistons to suit. We’ll reuse the existing crank (with a set of stronger crank bearings) rods and cams. Everything else, pretty much, is getting replaced.
The blocks are away for machining at the minute, due to complete sometime in late April. Engine should be built up and ready to go in the car in early May.
The costs, particularly as a percentage of the cars purchase price, are pretty significant/terrifying, and I doubt I’ll ever tell my girlfriend quite how much I’m spending on ‘that old Porsche’. On the flip side, I get to build my own 996.1 3.7L unicorn and I’m giddy with excitement. Can’t wait to drive the thing!
Suspension Overhaul
Knowing the car would be laid up for a good while with no engine in it, it made sense to tick off some other items on the to do list that had been knocking around for a while.
In my last update I talked about how I was exploring a suspension overhaul and now seemed as good a time as any. Some friends up in Cambridgshire have some barn space they were able to lend me for a few weeks so, with a bunch of holiday to use up in Q1, I had the car trailered up from AMS in order to strip it down and give the thing a good going over.
Starting the strip down. I would kill for this much workspace in London!
Plan was to strip the car as much as possible and replace or renew everything that was looking a bit grotty or past its best. The meant removing bumpers, arch liners, springs, dampers, anti tool bars, rad brackets, the battery tray and binning the rotten old condensers. Along with most of the under trays and chassis braces etc.
Angus let me take a bunch of random gearbox brackets and other fixings with me when the engine was stripped, and anything else that I pulled off that car that was steel (and showing signs of being subjected to 20 British winters) got shot blasted and power coated in black.
I didn’t get as many pictures as I’d have liked of the process, got a bit preoccupied with the job in truth, but this was three days well spent on making sure the car was a fit as possible to receive the new engine. Super satisfying work.
Stripping the suspension turned into a bit of a pain though. The rears come apart easily enough, but the fronts are a different story. The front drop link also does double duty as the pinch bolt for the damper body. After such a long time on the car these are known to seize in the hub and cause issues. I’d been advised to cut the old drop link off, get the strongest rattle gun I could on it, and give it as many ugga-dugga’s as possible to get the thing to start moving. It’s not threaded in the damper body, thankfully, but until it starts moving there’s no way you’re getting it out with heat/hammers.
The first one turned into a real pig of a job, with the drop link nut rounding pretty much instantly, resulting in us getting a bit agricultural and welding a large nut on it to get enough purchase to finally get it moving. About three hours just on the front left corner!
My one finger review of the job!
The other side was a bit kinder to me and once the entire suspension was off the car I was able to clean up the arches, apply a bit of rust treatment to any little spots that showed up under the muck and generally get them ready for shiny new bits and pieces.
After discussions with some forum members, and Pete at Centre Gravity, I pulled the trigger on a set of the Koni Special Active dampers, along with some Eibach lowering springs. Should give me a ride height a touch lower than M030 when the engine is back in the car. Centre Gravity recommend doubling up on the spring perch on the rear to get the right ride height and were kind enough to supply some for me. This was coupled with new bellows, top mounts and bump stops all round. I was able to clean up and reuse the various washers that came off the old M030 suspension.
Front suspension units bolted up and looking pretty fresh in the arches.
At the same time it had new AC condensers, just showing in the rad ducts in this photo.
Engine bay looking a bit sorry for itself. Bit of work in here to grind back some little rust spots on some of the seams and touch up with some rust converter. Can just about see the shiny powder coated ARB in this picture.
I’m planning on swapping out the aerokit rear wing for a bit and go with a GT3 touring style look when the engine is back in. Needs a bit of TLC and, obviously, some paint, but offering up to the car and testing the motor works correctly in this picture.
As expected, the old manifolds were very tired when they came off the car. Couldn’t say no to nice set of Top Gear manifolds to replace them. Shame it will be a while before they are used in anger...
It’s been so nice to have the time to work through the car top to bottom. Lots of tiny little fixes and tweaks made everywhere that make me feel better knowing that everything is sorted properly. Not everyone is lucky enough to have the space, time or inclination to do this kind of work but this sort of stuff, especially over the last year, has definitely helped keep me sane.
That about brings things up to speed for now. I’m impatiently counting down the weeks until the blocks are back and we can start making progress with everything else. Exciting times
This is a LONG overdue thread update. I promised myself I’d keep on top of it and I’ve failed miserably! 
There's been a lot of changes to the car, both big and small, over the last 14 months that I need to get written up.
Some of this update, which I’m going to do over the course of a few posts, will probably end up out order, so some pictures might jump backwards and forwards in time. Let’s start with finishing the engine rebuild and 3.7 conversion…..
Engine reassembly & Collection
So when I last updated this thread the intention was to have the rebuilt engine back in the car reasonably quickly. The blocks had been sent off to Hartech for machining work in the March and we’d hoped to have them back no later than May. That turned out to be a bit optimistic.
Due to various supply chain issues (and Hartech being very, very busy) we didn’t get the blocks, pistons and bearings back until late July. That put Angus @ AMS smack bang in the middle of his busy season, with a huge amount of both road cars and race cars all needing urgent attention. A touch frustrating, but not much I could do about it. Angus was great at sending regular updates as things came together, whetting my appetite nicely…
Shiny new oversized Capricorn/Hartech pistons ready to go in.
One of the assembled banks showing the closed deck goodness (that had cost me a small fortune!)
Engine back in the car, new manifolds looking smart. Was keen to hear the difference
While the engine was busy being assembled I needed to pull the car out of storage and deliver it back to AMS. It had sat outside, and then in a dusty barn, for a good few months and was looking pretty sorry for itself when I pulled it out.
Not a clean car! Can just about see the new grills in the radiator intakes though. Pretty happy with how they turned out.
Definitely carrying a bit more rake than usual without all the weight in the back! Does give a sense of the new ride height, at least at the front, with the new springs/dampers.
In the end, after a holiday of my own delaying things further, the car was ready for collection in the first week of September
I must admit, I was giddy with excitement when the collection had been booked, and didn’t really sleep much the night before. I’d missed it far too much over the summer. So, bright and early on a sunny Saturday morning, I jumped on the train to AMS to collect V349LDE and to start the slightly painful running in process.
First time I’d spotted the old girl back on her feet as I arrived at AMS. Looking lower at the rear than expected, but in a really good way. Height, to my eyes at least, looks spot on. Centre Gravity were very clear about using an extra spring perch with this spring and damper combo and they weren't wrong.
Had a good chat with Angus, paid a fairly eye watering bill (that my girlfriend will never, ever, see), and I was on my way for the first drive with the new 3.7
Running in instructions were simple - Warm the engine sensibly when using it, don’t load it heavily, try not to keep the revs in the same spot all the time (keep varying speed on the motorway basically) and don’t take it much over 4k RPM for the first 500 miles or so. The summary was, and I quote, ‘Drive it as you would normally, but pretend your gran is in the passenger seat’. Easy.
Even with those instructions ringing in my ears as I set for the journey home, and with a pretty light right foot, I could immediately feel the difference in torque low down. Keeping the revs down was going to be difficult for 1000 miles!
Parked up at home again, finally! Just 960 miles of running in to go…
As always, thanks for reading. Got updates to write up on new brakes, seats, lights, wheels and some tweaks to the stereo. I'll also write up some thoughts on the performance of the 3.7 for anyone that's on the fence about the capacity increase when undertaking a rebuild on an M96/M97. (SPOILER: Do it. It's awesome. The car feels WAY faster)
Currently enjoying a couple of months of gardening leave so I've no excuse to not get those done over the next week or two
There's been a lot of changes to the car, both big and small, over the last 14 months that I need to get written up.Some of this update, which I’m going to do over the course of a few posts, will probably end up out order, so some pictures might jump backwards and forwards in time. Let’s start with finishing the engine rebuild and 3.7 conversion…..
Engine reassembly & Collection
So when I last updated this thread the intention was to have the rebuilt engine back in the car reasonably quickly. The blocks had been sent off to Hartech for machining work in the March and we’d hoped to have them back no later than May. That turned out to be a bit optimistic.
Due to various supply chain issues (and Hartech being very, very busy) we didn’t get the blocks, pistons and bearings back until late July. That put Angus @ AMS smack bang in the middle of his busy season, with a huge amount of both road cars and race cars all needing urgent attention. A touch frustrating, but not much I could do about it. Angus was great at sending regular updates as things came together, whetting my appetite nicely…
Shiny new oversized Capricorn/Hartech pistons ready to go in.
One of the assembled banks showing the closed deck goodness (that had cost me a small fortune!)
Engine back in the car, new manifolds looking smart. Was keen to hear the difference
While the engine was busy being assembled I needed to pull the car out of storage and deliver it back to AMS. It had sat outside, and then in a dusty barn, for a good few months and was looking pretty sorry for itself when I pulled it out.
Not a clean car! Can just about see the new grills in the radiator intakes though. Pretty happy with how they turned out.
Definitely carrying a bit more rake than usual without all the weight in the back! Does give a sense of the new ride height, at least at the front, with the new springs/dampers.
In the end, after a holiday of my own delaying things further, the car was ready for collection in the first week of September
I must admit, I was giddy with excitement when the collection had been booked, and didn’t really sleep much the night before. I’d missed it far too much over the summer. So, bright and early on a sunny Saturday morning, I jumped on the train to AMS to collect V349LDE and to start the slightly painful running in process.
First time I’d spotted the old girl back on her feet as I arrived at AMS. Looking lower at the rear than expected, but in a really good way. Height, to my eyes at least, looks spot on. Centre Gravity were very clear about using an extra spring perch with this spring and damper combo and they weren't wrong.
Had a good chat with Angus, paid a fairly eye watering bill (that my girlfriend will never, ever, see), and I was on my way for the first drive with the new 3.7
Running in instructions were simple - Warm the engine sensibly when using it, don’t load it heavily, try not to keep the revs in the same spot all the time (keep varying speed on the motorway basically) and don’t take it much over 4k RPM for the first 500 miles or so. The summary was, and I quote, ‘Drive it as you would normally, but pretend your gran is in the passenger seat’. Easy.
Even with those instructions ringing in my ears as I set for the journey home, and with a pretty light right foot, I could immediately feel the difference in torque low down. Keeping the revs down was going to be difficult for 1000 miles!
Parked up at home again, finally! Just 960 miles of running in to go…
As always, thanks for reading. Got updates to write up on new brakes, seats, lights, wheels and some tweaks to the stereo. I'll also write up some thoughts on the performance of the 3.7 for anyone that's on the fence about the capacity increase when undertaking a rebuild on an M96/M97. (SPOILER: Do it. It's awesome. The car feels WAY faster)
Currently enjoying a couple of months of gardening leave so I've no excuse to not get those done over the next week or two
shalmaneser said:
Looks very smart! How does she sound, is there a difference in noise from 3.4 to 3.7? Have you been tempted with a remap? I know Hartech say the standard ECU can handle the displacement increase but I'm sure it could be optimised. Wayne at chipwizards seems to be the go to man...
There’s a definite difference in sound, but unsure how much of that is due to the new manifolds. From 3k onwards the car is quite a bit louder, in a good way.I’d considered a remap but, as you say, everyone seems to suggest the ecu does a good job on its own. If there was loads of power being left on the table I’m sure they’d be recommending a remap as part of the conversion….
Finalise running in and thoughts on performance
Fast forward around 6 weeks and I’d managed to do enough pottering about to cover the 1000 miles of running in.
It was hard work, and quite dull, to keep the revs down but the thrill of finally having the car back hadn’t worn off. A quick text to Angus to get it booked in for its first oil change so I could actually start to use it properly….
The running in period had flagged up a few other snagging issues - the new oil pressure sensor was being a bit flaky and failing occasionally (causing the oil pressure gauge to drop to zero and gave me an instant heart attack the first time it happened!) and the new gear cables I’d had installed with the engine rebuild were binding up in a weird way and had made changes across the gate a bit stiff - all small stuff that Angus could sort without too much issue.
We struggled with parts availability with new gear cables from Porsche (the set I had fitted had a manufacturing fault with the cups at the gearbox end), which pushed things back by a week or two, but with everything else buttoned up the car was soon good to go.
As you might imagine, it was very nice to be able to finally start to open it up and the performance immediately felt significantly stronger than the old 3.4. You need to remember I’m comparing the new 3.7 engine with a 20 year old 3.4 that was carrying 130k miles of use (and also sporting a faulty Variocam actuator for a while) before we decided to pull it apart.
Top end performance is much improved, as expected, but it’s the torque that is really transformational. It’s so much more grunty everywhere. On an A road you can just casually row through 3rd and 4th gear and have so much performance on tap, steadily leaning into the torque with not much more than 50-60% throttle. Then, when the mood or situation allows, you can rev it out and it feels silly fast. Far more performance than you’d ever really need on the road.
As an aside: Whenever I get the chance to drive something fairly quick I am astounded that manufacturers make cars with anything more than about 300bhp for the road. While my car was away I had use of a tuned 550bhp 996 turbo for the weekend. It completely redefined what ‘fast’ felt like. When I was in it, I was amazed at how careful you had to be to not be accidentally doing bonkers speeds. I can’t conceive of how insane the performance of something like a 720S would be, and how much self restraint you’d probably need to keep your licence if you were using it day to day.
Only picture I took of the turbo when I borrowed it. Cross country performance with 500hp+, even in grotty January weather, was INSANE.
New Wheels
I’ve always been a fan of Jethro Bovingdon’s car and his philosophy around the 996 in general. His Drivetribe video (well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6jCiB9dt0A) was one of the reasons I started looking at aerokit cars in the first place.
I was also a BIG fan of the Oz Alleggerita wheels he’d fitted to his car. A wheel design that I think looks really spot on for a 996. They are MUCH lighter than the Sport Design split rims that were on my car, around 13kg for the Porsche wheel vs 8kg for the Oz, and looked so, so good to my eyes. I badly wanted a set…
Jethros’s car looking pretty spectacular somewhere autumnal. Only thing I don’t like (and it’s the same on my own car) is the smiley stick on plate. Still think I’m going to go back to a proper plate…
Buying a new set of Alleggeritas would set you back around £2k without tyres. A fairly serious outlay even with some nice weight savings to be had, so if I was going to get any it would have to be a second hadn’t set. Unfortunately they are like unicorn tears and very rarely come up for sale, especially in 911 fitment. Until one day I was browsing FB marketplace and these popped up…..
The perfect wheels, in the correct narrow body 996 sizes, in good condition, with good tyres, for a decent price. I had to do a triple take. Messaged the chap selling at the speed of light and was lucky enough to get first dibs on them. A deal was done and a couple of days later I had these beauties sat in the spare room (and pissing off the girlfriend….).
They were in great shape and you really could feel the weight difference lugging them about. Wasn’t a massive fan of the Oz centre caps but a simple problem to solve.
The wheels had originally been fitted to an RPM Technik CSR car that the chap had bought on collecting cars, but he was going down the path of a full GT3 replica and had picked up some 996.2 GT3 wheels and needed to get rid of these. Couldn’t believe my luck.
Wheels as they were on the CSR car. I was surprised he wanted to change them tbh. I think this is a great looking 996.
A few days later and I had a chance to swap them all over. To say I was happy with the look is an understatement. To my eyes they make the car look PERFECT.
My absolute favourite picture of the car so far. Looking spot on.
Still got a bunch more stuff to write up to get up to date but, as always, thanks for reading
Fast forward around 6 weeks and I’d managed to do enough pottering about to cover the 1000 miles of running in.
It was hard work, and quite dull, to keep the revs down but the thrill of finally having the car back hadn’t worn off. A quick text to Angus to get it booked in for its first oil change so I could actually start to use it properly….
The running in period had flagged up a few other snagging issues - the new oil pressure sensor was being a bit flaky and failing occasionally (causing the oil pressure gauge to drop to zero and gave me an instant heart attack the first time it happened!) and the new gear cables I’d had installed with the engine rebuild were binding up in a weird way and had made changes across the gate a bit stiff - all small stuff that Angus could sort without too much issue.
We struggled with parts availability with new gear cables from Porsche (the set I had fitted had a manufacturing fault with the cups at the gearbox end), which pushed things back by a week or two, but with everything else buttoned up the car was soon good to go.
As you might imagine, it was very nice to be able to finally start to open it up and the performance immediately felt significantly stronger than the old 3.4. You need to remember I’m comparing the new 3.7 engine with a 20 year old 3.4 that was carrying 130k miles of use (and also sporting a faulty Variocam actuator for a while) before we decided to pull it apart.
Top end performance is much improved, as expected, but it’s the torque that is really transformational. It’s so much more grunty everywhere. On an A road you can just casually row through 3rd and 4th gear and have so much performance on tap, steadily leaning into the torque with not much more than 50-60% throttle. Then, when the mood or situation allows, you can rev it out and it feels silly fast. Far more performance than you’d ever really need on the road.
As an aside: Whenever I get the chance to drive something fairly quick I am astounded that manufacturers make cars with anything more than about 300bhp for the road. While my car was away I had use of a tuned 550bhp 996 turbo for the weekend. It completely redefined what ‘fast’ felt like. When I was in it, I was amazed at how careful you had to be to not be accidentally doing bonkers speeds. I can’t conceive of how insane the performance of something like a 720S would be, and how much self restraint you’d probably need to keep your licence if you were using it day to day.
Only picture I took of the turbo when I borrowed it. Cross country performance with 500hp+, even in grotty January weather, was INSANE.
New Wheels
I’ve always been a fan of Jethro Bovingdon’s car and his philosophy around the 996 in general. His Drivetribe video (well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6jCiB9dt0A) was one of the reasons I started looking at aerokit cars in the first place.
I was also a BIG fan of the Oz Alleggerita wheels he’d fitted to his car. A wheel design that I think looks really spot on for a 996. They are MUCH lighter than the Sport Design split rims that were on my car, around 13kg for the Porsche wheel vs 8kg for the Oz, and looked so, so good to my eyes. I badly wanted a set…
Jethros’s car looking pretty spectacular somewhere autumnal. Only thing I don’t like (and it’s the same on my own car) is the smiley stick on plate. Still think I’m going to go back to a proper plate…
Buying a new set of Alleggeritas would set you back around £2k without tyres. A fairly serious outlay even with some nice weight savings to be had, so if I was going to get any it would have to be a second hadn’t set. Unfortunately they are like unicorn tears and very rarely come up for sale, especially in 911 fitment. Until one day I was browsing FB marketplace and these popped up…..
The perfect wheels, in the correct narrow body 996 sizes, in good condition, with good tyres, for a decent price. I had to do a triple take. Messaged the chap selling at the speed of light and was lucky enough to get first dibs on them. A deal was done and a couple of days later I had these beauties sat in the spare room (and pissing off the girlfriend….).
They were in great shape and you really could feel the weight difference lugging them about. Wasn’t a massive fan of the Oz centre caps but a simple problem to solve.
The wheels had originally been fitted to an RPM Technik CSR car that the chap had bought on collecting cars, but he was going down the path of a full GT3 replica and had picked up some 996.2 GT3 wheels and needed to get rid of these. Couldn’t believe my luck.
Wheels as they were on the CSR car. I was surprised he wanted to change them tbh. I think this is a great looking 996.
A few days later and I had a chance to swap them all over. To say I was happy with the look is an understatement. To my eyes they make the car look PERFECT.
My absolute favourite picture of the car so far. Looking spot on.
Still got a bunch more stuff to write up to get up to date but, as always, thanks for reading
Edited by Mallone on Sunday 3rd July 14:17
New Amplifier
Not a particularly exciting update, but a useful quality of life upgrade for anyone else disappointed with the stereo in a 996. The standard sound system on them is pretty crappy, and even if you picked up a car that had the fancy BOSE system it wasn’t that much better. I’d already upgraded the speakers to a set of Alpine SPG 10C2’s when I went through the car in 2020, but it didn’t really make a huge amount of difference. They were clearly in better shape than the 20 year old units that had come out of the car, but still sounded pretty thin and weak.
The Alpine's are a straight swap (with a few small mods) and do sound better than the originals. Very reasonably priced too.
I’d never really been into upgrading the sound system on any of my previous cars, they were always generally good enough, but I was finding that on long motorway drives I was really missing the chance to actually listen to some music with a decent amount of volume.
There’s plenty of write ups online of people putting really big systems into 996’s. An amplifier in the frunk, a sub somewhere in the back, and then a suite of new speakers throughout the car. I’m sure they sounded great but knew I didn’t fancy going that far (or spending that much) just to make the most of the speakers I’d already spent cash on.
I also wanted to try and keep the Becker head unit if I could, just because I like things to look as OEM as possible. Not a fan of a lot of aftermarket head units (though Continental do make a couple of nice ones that fit these) and wasn’t interested in going with the Porsche PCCM+ double DIN setup. I like my GT3 Centre console delete
I wondered if there was a simpler alternative that would keep things a bit OEM, make the most of the speakers I had, and wouldn’t cost the earth….step forward the £150 Vibe Audio POWERBOX65.4M-V7!
I stumbled across these little plug and play ‘micro’ amplifiers by Vibe when I was doing my research and it seemed perfect for the job. The Alpine’s can handle around 45W each, and this little amp would happily supply 4 x 65W. More than enough to power the two dash speakers and two rear speakers in my car and much, much more than the 4 x 18W the standard Becker was able to put out. It also made placement of the amp a bit easier by being really, really small. I had confidence I could find a home for the amplifier in the dashboard somewhere.
As standard these little amps come with an ISO loom that’s designed to essentially intercept/merge with the existing loom in the car and is mostly plug and play as below:
Usefully, the amp can also accept low level inputs and I already knew that the Becker could supply an un-amplified line out signal directly from the head unit through socket C1 with the right adapter. I was already using the old Becker CD changer plug for a bluetooth connection on sockets C2 and C3, so knew I might have to get a bit clever with wiring the plugs up to use all three.
Standard outputs on the Becker
If I was going to use low level output from the Becker to the amp I also needed to supply a signal so that the amp knew when to turn on, but the Becker already helpfully supplies exactly that wake up signal from Socket A, pin 5. It was all looking very achievable, so I pulled the trigger on the amp (got lucky with a chap selling a nearly new one of FB marketplace and saved a few quid) and ordered the right adapter cables from china via eBay. I’d still use the Vibe supplied loom to run connections for the speakers and power, but would be supplying audio directly from the head unit. Would definitely be a bit of a nightmare for cable management, but should result in the best sound - comments about bluetooth audio quality notwithstanding!
Existing bluetooth add on had done sterling service for a few years. These cost pennies from Aliexpress/eBay. Only thing to watch out for is some of them are wired to permanent live rather than switched. I had to mod mine so that it would turn off with the car.
Low level RCA adapters for the Becker. Also only a few quid from eBay/Ali.
Once everything had arrived I spent a bit of time trimming the Vibe loom of unnecessary connections, rechecked that I wouldn’t have any issues with my combination of line out and bluetooth (worked perfectly!) and started pulling the dashboard apart to see how everything was going to fit together nicely. The only question I still had was, knowing that there’s not loads of space behind the dash, even for a very small amp, was where would I be able to mount it all neatly….
Thankfully the gods were smiling on me for this install. I couldn’t believe my luck when I pulled the headhunt and climate controls out to find out that there is a PERFECT shaped space to store the amp just below the standard cage for the headunit. As the bottom of the dash angles away underneath, towards your feet, it creates a perfect cavity for the amp to sit in.
Bit of a mess but plugged in, tested, and working as expected. You need to tweak the amplifier gain as part of setup so needed to do this before mounting the amp in its final spot as I wouldn’t have been able to get access to the controls at that point.
The amp sat neatly in its new home. I had a slight concern about heat in this position, but having kept an eye on it since, even when putting out decent volume for a few hours, it really doesn’t seem to warm up much at all.
I secured the amp in the little cavity with some dual lock, and backup cable ties, mounted to the inner face of the dash, and it sits neatly against some of the internal reinforcement of the dash. More than enough airflow and the way it sits in the dash means it can’t move anywhere at all. It also meant I had a bit more space to do some cable management under the existing stereo/climate ‘stack’.
I didn’t really take any more pictures of the install, It’s always a bit of a nightmare when you’re juggling head units and metres of cabling at once, but I put everything carefully back together and fired it all up. The amp wakes up and goes to sleep as expected, takes the line out from the Becker, and with the Bluetooth/AUX adapter still lets me use my phone for music/navigation. Exactly what I wanted.
The difference in sound, even with these basic Alpine speakers and a fairly small amp is ASTOUNDING. Night and day versus the original Becker. Way more depth, bass, clarity etc. Sounds absolutely fantastic, looks completely OEM, and keeps the Bluetooth connectivity. Very chuffed and recommended to anyone who wants a simple amplifier upgrade on a 996
Not a particularly exciting update, but a useful quality of life upgrade for anyone else disappointed with the stereo in a 996. The standard sound system on them is pretty crappy, and even if you picked up a car that had the fancy BOSE system it wasn’t that much better. I’d already upgraded the speakers to a set of Alpine SPG 10C2’s when I went through the car in 2020, but it didn’t really make a huge amount of difference. They were clearly in better shape than the 20 year old units that had come out of the car, but still sounded pretty thin and weak.
The Alpine's are a straight swap (with a few small mods) and do sound better than the originals. Very reasonably priced too.
I’d never really been into upgrading the sound system on any of my previous cars, they were always generally good enough, but I was finding that on long motorway drives I was really missing the chance to actually listen to some music with a decent amount of volume.
There’s plenty of write ups online of people putting really big systems into 996’s. An amplifier in the frunk, a sub somewhere in the back, and then a suite of new speakers throughout the car. I’m sure they sounded great but knew I didn’t fancy going that far (or spending that much) just to make the most of the speakers I’d already spent cash on.
I also wanted to try and keep the Becker head unit if I could, just because I like things to look as OEM as possible. Not a fan of a lot of aftermarket head units (though Continental do make a couple of nice ones that fit these) and wasn’t interested in going with the Porsche PCCM+ double DIN setup. I like my GT3 Centre console delete
I wondered if there was a simpler alternative that would keep things a bit OEM, make the most of the speakers I had, and wouldn’t cost the earth….step forward the £150 Vibe Audio POWERBOX65.4M-V7!
I stumbled across these little plug and play ‘micro’ amplifiers by Vibe when I was doing my research and it seemed perfect for the job. The Alpine’s can handle around 45W each, and this little amp would happily supply 4 x 65W. More than enough to power the two dash speakers and two rear speakers in my car and much, much more than the 4 x 18W the standard Becker was able to put out. It also made placement of the amp a bit easier by being really, really small. I had confidence I could find a home for the amplifier in the dashboard somewhere.
As standard these little amps come with an ISO loom that’s designed to essentially intercept/merge with the existing loom in the car and is mostly plug and play as below:
Usefully, the amp can also accept low level inputs and I already knew that the Becker could supply an un-amplified line out signal directly from the head unit through socket C1 with the right adapter. I was already using the old Becker CD changer plug for a bluetooth connection on sockets C2 and C3, so knew I might have to get a bit clever with wiring the plugs up to use all three.
Standard outputs on the Becker
If I was going to use low level output from the Becker to the amp I also needed to supply a signal so that the amp knew when to turn on, but the Becker already helpfully supplies exactly that wake up signal from Socket A, pin 5. It was all looking very achievable, so I pulled the trigger on the amp (got lucky with a chap selling a nearly new one of FB marketplace and saved a few quid) and ordered the right adapter cables from china via eBay. I’d still use the Vibe supplied loom to run connections for the speakers and power, but would be supplying audio directly from the head unit. Would definitely be a bit of a nightmare for cable management, but should result in the best sound - comments about bluetooth audio quality notwithstanding!
Existing bluetooth add on had done sterling service for a few years. These cost pennies from Aliexpress/eBay. Only thing to watch out for is some of them are wired to permanent live rather than switched. I had to mod mine so that it would turn off with the car.
Low level RCA adapters for the Becker. Also only a few quid from eBay/Ali.
Once everything had arrived I spent a bit of time trimming the Vibe loom of unnecessary connections, rechecked that I wouldn’t have any issues with my combination of line out and bluetooth (worked perfectly!) and started pulling the dashboard apart to see how everything was going to fit together nicely. The only question I still had was, knowing that there’s not loads of space behind the dash, even for a very small amp, was where would I be able to mount it all neatly….
Thankfully the gods were smiling on me for this install. I couldn’t believe my luck when I pulled the headhunt and climate controls out to find out that there is a PERFECT shaped space to store the amp just below the standard cage for the headunit. As the bottom of the dash angles away underneath, towards your feet, it creates a perfect cavity for the amp to sit in.
Bit of a mess but plugged in, tested, and working as expected. You need to tweak the amplifier gain as part of setup so needed to do this before mounting the amp in its final spot as I wouldn’t have been able to get access to the controls at that point.
The amp sat neatly in its new home. I had a slight concern about heat in this position, but having kept an eye on it since, even when putting out decent volume for a few hours, it really doesn’t seem to warm up much at all.
I secured the amp in the little cavity with some dual lock, and backup cable ties, mounted to the inner face of the dash, and it sits neatly against some of the internal reinforcement of the dash. More than enough airflow and the way it sits in the dash means it can’t move anywhere at all. It also meant I had a bit more space to do some cable management under the existing stereo/climate ‘stack’.
I didn’t really take any more pictures of the install, It’s always a bit of a nightmare when you’re juggling head units and metres of cabling at once, but I put everything carefully back together and fired it all up. The amp wakes up and goes to sleep as expected, takes the line out from the Becker, and with the Bluetooth/AUX adapter still lets me use my phone for music/navigation. Exactly what I wanted.
The difference in sound, even with these basic Alpine speakers and a fairly small amp is ASTOUNDING. Night and day versus the original Becker. Way more depth, bass, clarity etc. Sounds absolutely fantastic, looks completely OEM, and keeps the Bluetooth connectivity. Very chuffed and recommended to anyone who wants a simple amplifier upgrade on a 996
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