Marky''s 996.2 GT3 thread.

[Slippydiff]

Hi Mark, good to hear from a fellow sufferer. :grin:
Most of the time I'm like you and think exactly that 'because race car", but when I'm not in the mood and particularly in towns when you have folk turning around to see what's making all the noise, it's gets annoying pretty quickly.
Tremendous brakes though. 8)

Hi Roro, good summary and that's exactly what I'd been led to believe.
Like I say I'll use them until this autumn when the car comes off the road and I'll probably throw them in my spares box incase I want to fit them for a trackday.
I have just added some self adhesive anti squeal material to the backs of them. That's everything I could try, erm, tried now.

Been there, tried that Mark. Waste of time (I even had the circular mass dampers machined up from bar section, then drilled and tapped so I could attach them to the pad backplates like the OE pads) Guess what ? That was a waste of time too ....

All documented here :

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=48&t=447322

Long and short, in my case the rears were the culprits, using the car on the road just wasn't generating sufficient heat to bed/cure them properly and thus prevent them glazing up under gentle use. In the end I pulled them out and went to stock 996 Turbo front Textar pads (they're the same pad pattern as GT3 rears !!)

I've got as set here that have done less than 500 miles here. They're pretty much as new (circa 10-12mm pad material depth) yours for £35 if you want them ? I'd run them with the proper spider stickies that clip into the end of the pistons and the front face sticks to antisqueal backing on the pad backplate (just be aware the stickies are £10 a pop) and you'll need 8 of them. They'll be whisper quiet though, and have all the performance you need for road use.

FWIW I had the same issue on my E46 M3 CSL when I tried the RS29's in the AP rear calipers. This time I didn't mess about trying to stop them from squealing, I pulled them and fitted Ferodo DS2500's instead ...

 

[Marky911]

Hi Henry, more great info, as ever. That's a bit of a journey you went on with that GT2 then. I hadn't seen that thread.
There mustn't be an issue on these cars you haven't experienced, which probably isn't as fun for you as it is useful for us, but the info is excellent.

Yes I expected that to be the case with the sticky backing stuff. It was actually comments from you on another old P'heads thread that taught me all about the issues being with the pad material rather than the usual vibration side of things. :thumb:
For the sake of a couple of quid I just thought I'd do it anyway. The pads are all back in now and I'll leave it like that until winter, so I'll bear those pads you have in mind and have a think about what I'm doing.
My callipers need a refurb to be mint as they have a few touched up dink's from wheel swaps etc.
I may just go DS2500 all round, or as you say Textar in rears as they'll be fine.
It's annoying that the RS29s do what they do, but obviously they've a certain operating window they're very good in and they suffer if not kept in it.

Anyway like I say I'll have a think and get in touch. If you've sold them by then, no problem.
Main priorities for the next two weeks are rads/condensers/coolant sorted, re-gas, K-nuts on lower arms (thanks again for that info) and then alignment.

After that I'm leaving well alone until the car comes off the road for winter.

I hope all is good where you are. Catch up soon. :thumb:

 

[917k]

Hi 917, thanks for the comments. Yes I can get stuck in now I know it's AOK. :wink:
How's the R going? Serving you well I hope. :thumb:

.

 

[Marky911]

Very nice. 8)
Good to see it getting put to good use. :thumbs:


A couple of long posts now to try and get up to date for the weekend and more work.
Air-con condensers.
Well I didn't think I'd be doing this job again so soon after the C2. :grin:

So what's been the fuss with the air-con condenser?
Well, see below.
I got the car home from Jamie's and considered doing the full job as I had with my C2, so rads, brackets etc.
I decided though that I didn't want it all ripped to bits, with the coolant system to burp etc so close to my trip, so if it ain't broke don't fix it I said.
Having said that I obviously bought a pair of condensers, rather than just one, to sort those in one go.

Ebay condensers. A smidge cheaper than my local firm Advanced Radiators, but I was about to be taught a lesson for my cost cutting.




So Saturday rolled around and Craig and I made a start.

First job was to remove the drivers side, leaky condenser.
The coolant rad looked decent and exactly what we expected as the car has grills fitted to the bumper. It should just need a sweep and rinse out -




Then we removed the passenger side condenser to reveal that rad. Oh dear. -






The bottom 2 or 3 tubes looked ready to burst. :frustrated:
It was Saturday lunchtime by now, so no chance of getting any new coolant rads. That meant game over for another full week as we only have Saturdays to work on the car.
We had the rest of the day to remove the old stuff though and that posed the question, renew one rad or two? New hose clips and fixings or not? Powder coat things or not?

I decided to just do it properly as there isn't that much difference in effort or costs and I didn't want to have to revisit it in a year or so. So we moved the car into the garage and got it stripped.




Dirty plastics -




Powder coating pile, consisting of rad brackets, centre rad bracket, horn bracket and coolant pipes.




With everything stripped I could move onto cleaning the front tub and assessing any rust.
The only small areas were the outer lower welds on the seams....




...and a bit of flaky under-seal on the leading edge of these sections.




These were carefully ground back, not wanting to lose too big an area of the factory finish. I then applied zinc primer and 2 coats of good old fashioned Waxoyl.



Not too pretty but good to go for another good few years.

Another thing I had hoped not to have to do (otherwise I would have had Jamie do it during his work) was a full coolant flush/change.
Sure enough though when we drained the rads and removed them, the coolant that came out was the original style green stuff.
Great, so now I had that messy job to add to the list. :nooo:
We'd tackle that the following Saturday and then build everything up, or so we thought.

I then moved onto cleaning everything else up so it was ready for reassembly.

Plastics cleaned and treated -




Small coolant pipes polished. Top one to do. Bottom one done -




Broken pipe clips on upper cooling ducts -




Replaced, although I could only get grey ones. That obviously set my OCD nervous twitch off.




Fitted. I only swapped the broken ones. The other side was fine -




They face the other way round when fitted anyway -




Next I cleaned up the headlight tray areas.
Now I bought this machine by accident a couple of years ago so it had sat in my garage loft unused since, but it came in very handy twice during this round of work.

Behold the Titan! -




I watch a fair bit of detailing vids on YouTube, in particular White Details, Jim White.
He posted a vid about car dryers and using them to blow vinyl and rubber dressing into small areas that your fingers can't get into, particularly for engine bay detailing.
Well the Titan has a blow function so I thought I'd give it a try.
Spray the vinyl dressing on and blow it about. Voila. -




You'll see how else the Titan came in handy further on and it was even better. :wink:

That was about all we could do that weekend apart from making a list of what to order, etc.

More to follow anyway....

 

[Marky911]

So the following week (that's last week up to last weekend) saw a steady flow of parts arriving for the rebuild on Saturday.

(Obviously I already had the condensers from the week before but they're pictured below anyway) -




£50 went on stainless jubilee clips alone -




25 litres of coolant. The system holds 22. -




I collected my parts from the Powder-coaters. £30. It's worth that for the couple of hours saved in not having to prep and paint them and the finish is much nicer and more durable.




So Saturday came and we decided to get the old coolant flushed out first. Do the jobs you're least looking forward too first, then rest will be plain sailing. :wink:

I was dreading the mess. Sticky anti-freeze everywhere etc.
Then I remembered that the Titan was a wet-vac and could hoover up fluids. We tried the nozzle up against the front rad hoses and it was a perfect fit. Made for the job.




So all we did was place the nozzle up one pipe at a time and cover the opposite hose on the other side. All the coolant would then suck out.
We did this on all hoses refilling the system with clean water each time.
Once the water being emptied from the hoover ran clear we knew it was done. It took about 4/5 flushes.

We then moved to the back and removed the 2 lower engine drains.




The water from here was now crystal clear too. Job jobbed.
We hit a snag here though in that the small aluminium washers were badly corroded. Check out the right hand one at the 7 o'clock position.




So now we had to down tools and pop to my nearest town on a mission to find replacements.
Luckily Morpeth Motorparts/Morpeth Motorcycles came to the rescue with some copper ones which should fair better than the Ali ones.

New washers on drain plugs about go back in. -




With those back in we moved inside to build up the rad packs.
This is where things headed south.

Rads and condensers -




But look -






There was no way they were fitting together.
:frustrated:
Even more annoyingly I'd thrown the old stuff away the week before so we couldn't even pinpoint which parts were at fault, the rads or the condensers.

It was 12.20 lunchtime and Advanced radiators closed at 12. If we hadn't lost an hour getting the washers we'd have been able to get over and see which parts were wrong, their rads or the eBay condensers.

Aaarrrgghhh!! That's 2 weeks off the road now.
Lesson learned, don't buy the cheapest if you can buy locally for a little bit more. Second lesson learned. Unpack things during the week when everywhere is still open.

So again we just had to move onto anything else we could to shorten the jobs list, which basically just left my brake pads again.
As per earlier in the thread I thought I'd try one more thing with regard to the squealing. Which again, as mentioned earlier it had little chance of helping but for the sake of a few pounds I may as well do it for good measure.

Anti squeal adhesive pads -




Pads out and cleaned again -




Adhesive pads fitted then refitted -




My wear sensors were a bit crumbly where they clip onto the pads.






I'm surprised they were still fitted to be honest as most people just remove them for track use as they melt and whilst the previous owner didn't track it I'm guessing some of the others did, given the Alcons etc.

So I decided to do away with them. I'll fit new ones further down the line.

Wires snipped and soldered -




Heatshrinked -




Taped up -




So there went another weekend. On Monday I took the rads and condensers over to Advanced Radiators to se me what was at fault.
Weirdly it was a bit of both. The condensers were garbage and nowhere near square, but the small spigots/posts on the rads were a few mm too far in.
This is where it's good to deal with local people though. Advanced got me a set of their condensers and even though they weren't perfect they had their lads in the workshop tweak and adjust the mounting lugs so they fitted the rads. They will have to get onto their supplier though and tell them that the rads aren't quite right.
As I've mentioned the diagonal eBay ones went back for a refund as even if we'd got one hole to line up the other one wouldn't have. They were terrible.

So that has actually got us up to date. Sorry for the long post.
We'll see what happens tomorrow, but any more issues that stop me getting the car on the road again will be more than a little bit annoying.
My Groupon air-con re-gas voucher expires next week.

 

[abcarrera]

What a great write up!
You must be able to strip a 996 of its rads with your eyes closed! Forget the PET system you probably recite the clips and screws needed from memory 😊

Top job you are doing there AGAIN! will certainly pay off for the long term though. Bet you are looking forward to your/it's trip! I sure it will be a blast!

Looking forward to reading about the continuing adventures with your GT3 😍

 

[Marky911]

Hi T, good to hear from you and thanks for the comments. :thumb:
Yes me and Craig can do rads and condensers in our sleep now, well when the parts fit together like they should anyway. :wink:
It's an enjoyable little project usually, but this time we were under a bit of pressure time wise.
It's all done now which I'll no doubt cover soon.
The only bad part of the job is if you're doing a coolant flush/change.
Flushing the old stuff out is simple but messy and getting the air out after refilling can be tricky.
Anyway, I hope your health is holding up and letting you enjoy yourself still.
Has the 996 not sold then? Unbelievable if so. :nooo:

 

[abcarrera]

Heat helps the ole aching bones so loving the mini heatwave!
No luck with selling so still have the C2. Have just lowered the price, I hoping that makes a difference. As you know it a well sorted car with some nice suspension etc. But I guess it at the upper end of the price curve! 12-13k 996's always look more appealing, but as you know they going to require a lot of refreshing of the springy parts 😉, black circles, plus numerous other pipes, springs, clips, dit's and dats!
Going to Silverstone Classic this Saturday so will throw a sign in the window when it's parked up (you never know!)
Had thought reverting back to original M030 and 18's but 1. They help make the car different from the rest and 2. It probably would not net me enough doing that and is it worth the aggro!
I am keen to sell now as something else has now come along which I will update upon in the near future 😊
Enjoy the weather and have a great trip when you go 👍👍

Hi T, good to hear from you and thanks for the comments. :thumb:
Yes me and Craig can do rads and condensers in our sleep now, well when the parts fit together like they should anyway. :wink:
It's an enjoyable little project usually, but this time we were under a bit of pressure time wise.
It's all done now which I'll no doubt cover soon.
The only bad part of the job is if you're doing a coolant flush/change.
Flushing the old stuff out is simple but messy and getting the air out after refilling can be tricky.
Anyway, I hope your health is holding up and letting you enjoy yourself still.
Has the 996 not sold then? Unbelievable if so. :nooo:

 

[JJT]

Amazing thread :thumb:

 

[Marky911]

Hi T,

Yes unfortunately the average 996 buyer has a budget of upto about £15k and struggles to justify the likes of £20k.
I was guilty of it myself when I bought mine. I had a budget of £13k at the time. I then spent over £16k in 3 years and 2000 miles, selling for £19k. Cost of ownership £10k!

Had I bought a sorted one for £20k and left it alone I'd have probably got £19k-£20k back for it. Cost of ownership £1k or two after servicing.

Yours is worth the money to the right buyer but it just takes time. Plus we are in less rosy times than 2 or 3 years ago. Things will pick up though, sooner or later.

I'm glad the summer is easing your pain anyway. Everything is better when the sun is shining. :thumb:


Hi JJT,
Thanks for the comment.
Spain? You must get some great driving in over there. 8)

 

[Marky911]

Phew! A marathon Saturday we had there.
13 hour stint (9am - 10pm) for me and Craig, so massive thanks to him as always.
Although we had an hour for lunch and an hour for a shakedown drive at teatime. Still a looong day.
We had a surprising amount of bother getting the system bled, but got there in the end.

I didn't take that many pictures actually as it's been covered before by myself and others and we were in the zone. :grin:
Certainly the pictures make it look like a much quicker job than it is, but that's always the case eh.

First job was to assemble the rad packs.
During the strip down it was clear the fan resistor clips were shot.
We couldn't find them on the PET and guess they must only come as part of complete new brackets.
Luckily the ones that hold the small water pipe are the same diameter (or very close) so I ordered double of those.

Rusted clip -




But these fit -




Fitted -




There was also a rear cover missing from the fan that had a new resistor fitted at Autostore prior to collection.
I'm obviously not implying they lost it but it would have been nice if they'd have fitted one once they knew it was missing. They're only £17 after all. :roll:




£70 really doesn't go far when it comes to Porsche bits.




Pipes scrubbed out to remove any shotblast from the powder coating. Ready to fit -




Rads and condensers built up onto brackets -








Centre rad and bracket assembled. Centre rad has a few impact marks from stones but nothing that affects its function, hence we reused it -




Fitted -




Passenger side plumbed in and complete -






Drivers side plumbed in and complete -






The eagle eyed amongst you will spot my rear fan cowls aren't present. I can only guess they've been ditched to aid cooling but I may source and fit some at a later date.

I did get O rings with the eBay condensers but Jamie left me 4 of the ones he fits in my ashtray at service time. Good lad. -




Once everything was built up we moved the car outside.




I gave the condensers a quick coating of ACF50. They'll still look rubbish after 1000 miles I bet. -




Then we started filling the system and trying to get all the air out. This was easier said than done.
No point whinging about it as it's just one of those jobs, but eventually the rads and all pipes got hot etc as they should.

Plenty of info online but the short version is filler cap off, back end in the air, run engine with interior heater on full, keeping an eye on gauge. Once at 80 ish degrees rev up to a couple of thousand revs until thermostat opens. Put filler cap on before pressure builds and once you feel all rads getting hot.

We then checked for any leaks, topped coolant up and got ready to go for a drive.

Final jobs before going were to fit the arch liners to stop all the nice new parts getting filthy straight away -




Then it was upper ducts back on -




Finally it was the lower brake ducts.
My car still wore its large original ducts (dated '03), but they were tired and rattled around on the lower arms where they clip on.
New ones are £140 pair! Yep that's right, so I fitted the 997 GT3 items, which are less than £20 for 4, 2x front and 2x rear. They're a bit smaller but I'm sure they'll be fine and they fit nicely which is the main thing.

Old vs new -




Fitted left -




Fitted right -




I actually posted pics of both sides incase anyone wants the part numbers but I may as well list them below really. They fit Carreras as well and are a worthwhile mod. :wink:

Part numbers and prices for above -

997GT3 Front Ducts - £2.18 each plus vat
997.341.483.92
997.341.484.92.

997GT3 Rear Ducts - £6.30 each plus vat
997.331.487.92
997.331.488.92


We then headed out for a decent drive, stopping every few miles for checking/topping up the coolant.




With that done, back at home (it was 7pm by this time) we turned our attention to the front coffin arms in preparation for an alignment.

We removed these shims and old nuts -




Then fitted spacers (I had to grind a flat on for clearance) to take up the extra thread length left by the shims. K-nuts used to help with access.
Also it turned out we could squeeze 13mm nuts on the ends so a Nyloc was added behind each K-nut for good measure.




Of course removing 12mm from the track meant the wheels now towed out massively so Craig adjusted the track rod ends by eye, to get things a bit straighter.

As I've said it was 10pm by the time we got cleared up and got all the tools put away etc.

So on Monday I rang to book an alignment but I can't get it in until next Monday. I really want to use the car a bit this week to get some miles on it.
I'm having the air-con regassed this afternoon so I may pop into my local tyre place nearby and just get the front tracking set, so I'm not ripping my tyres off until next Monday.

That's about it, although I did have a tinker on on Sunday at a more leisurely pace.
Thanks for reading. :thumb:

 

[stichill99]

GT3

Great write up as usual. This is going to be as well sorted as your previous cars. When the yearning for an aircooled takes over you will have a waiting list of punters wanting to buy this :thumb:

 

[Marky911]

Ha, thanks very much Stichill,
This one's a keeper I hope. It was always meant to be just that, but you never know what life has around the corner so it's best not to plan too far ahead eh. :wink:

I'd love an air-cooled too but I doubt that will happen now. They aren't for the average joe anymore. The prices are mental, even for very tired examples. One 911 is enough anyway when there are so many other cars and bikes to sample if finances allow and dynamically a 996 GT3 is about as pure and good as it gets.


Quick update while I'm on.
I claimed my Groupon air-con voucher at ATS Morpeth yesterday.
I dealt with a nice lad, who was thorough and despite being very busy he didn't just rush it through. He talked me through it while he did it and was quite interested in the car.
Vac'd the system, pressure tested it, then filled.




All done. Lovely and cool again and a damn sight fresher . Another small but hugely important item off the list.

 

[Daniel]

Great thread....

When you doing mine :?:

If you get chance, could you list all the pipes required along with anything else.
I have a brand new set of rads and condensers boxed in the garage..

 

[Marky911]

Hi Daniel, thanks. If you were nearer I'd spare you a weekend no problem.

We've always just reused the pipework as it always seems fine and isn't a known weak spot or anything (unlike the glued in engine ones ).

The rigid pipes get powder coated in black as per factory finish and we polish the small alloy ones.

After powder coating the rad brackets etc, the rest is just a case of how far you want to go with new clips and fasteners, but we've now learnt from previous cars that Porsche fixings don't last five minutes, so they won't look new for long. :nooo:

It's a nice little project though and more important than the cosmetic aspect, you'll know your cooling system is tip top to protect that all important (and very expensive :wink: ) engine.

If your car has had a coolant change in the past you can just top it up after the job is done. If not then it's a bit of extra faff on and mess to do that. Nothing too hard about it though.

Good luck. :thumb: