Ok, so last week it was service time. The short version is all is well.
I will use this post though to cover a funny thing that had been bothering me since I bought the car. It's a very minor issue but I wanted to look into it a bit more.
Basically when you start the car from cold it fires up and idles lovely, at about 1000 rpm or whatever. After 30 seconds to a minute the fast idle then cuts off (as it's supposed to) and the revs drop to a pretty stable 700 rpm.
However imagine you have the constant tone of the exhaust like any other car. That's fine, but as well as that you get these funny little pop-pops every second or two. No pattern to them and not in time with the engine but just a little unevenness, almost like small misfires.
Now I mentioned this when I viewed it and was told 'It goes through the workshops, blah blah".
Pre collection I asked if they'd found anything and was told 'No misfire present, it's the same as the other GT3s we've known".
So anyway I got it home and was obviously chuffed to bits with it. It pulls like a train and the performance difference between it and my old C2 is greater than I expected.
The little pops were bugging me though as the new car buzz wore off. It has the Cargraphic exhaust which I know exaggerates them and a Parr remap, which I was starting to question. Could it be that?
Everyone I knew said 'Just drive the bloody thing", but I'm a fanny and I wanted to know the motor was sound and safe as it has seen very little use with the last owner.
The only guy I'd trust to look into that would be Wayne Schofield of Chip Wizards. He needs no introduction on here as he's simply the best in the business. I met him when I had my Mk1 GT3 as he used to race in my mates Championship, but I never ended up getting the Mk1 done.
Anyway we all know how hard he is to get hold of as he works long hours and has his head in his work.
As luck would have it though Craig had a slot booked for his C2, so we decided we'd head down in two cars and see if he'd have time to look at mine too.
(funny story about Craig's booking. He basically had a two year wait)
Anyway, the week before our booking we decided to eliminate any simple things so we fitted new spark plugs (due in my service soon anyway) and fitted a 'known to be good" set of coilpacks Craig had.
All 6 of the old plugs looked perfect on removal, a nice light brown. We thought we might have found one that was different, signalling a firing problem, but we didn't.
We fitted the new ones and there was no difference after starting it up, so it was off to Wayne's as planned.
We went down one Sunday night and stopped over so we were at Waynes first thing Monday morning.
We felt a bit cheeky rocking up in two cars but we'd had no joy getting hold of him on the phone to ask.
Wayne had no issues with looking at mine though as I explained it was new to me and I had a 3500 mile trip planned.
(Ignore the mess. Wayne had just moved from the unit next door).
Wayne started by going through all of the standard systems first.
Everything was functioning perfectly though, every sensor, solenoid etc.
So next he removed my ECU and took it into the office to learn more about the map. Most remaps have a 'read protect" built in to stop other people accessing them.
However, Wayne showed us that by jumping certain pins on the chip you can gain access.
Wayne also said that Parr won't be doing their own mapping and it would just be a downloaded map. Sure enough it was - Superchips.
Again though it all looked fine.
Only one thing stood out as being less than optimum and again Wayne had already warned us of this. For some reason Superchips program in a load of ignition advance at idle. Mine wasn't the worst he'd seen at about 4.5 degrees but he said it didn't need that. So he cut and pasted that section of map from a known good map (actually Mikes from S&C) and laid that over instead.
He said it may or not sort my little pops.
It didn't.
So that was that basically. Wayne had done all he could and proven that all the electronics on the car were spot on.
He said the next step would be to get a leak down test done as a precaution, to check the actual health of the engine internals and valve gear, incase someone had buzzed it (over-rev'd it) and clipped a valve or something like that.
We didn't think it would be that, as the lumpy idle isn't that heavy and has no pattern to it. Obviously bent valve noise runs in time with the engine.
Also my Rev range history was great and the car runs perfectly everywhere other than at warm idle.
Wayne said if the leak-down test came back good then it obviously couldn't be too much to worry about. In fact the only other thing he could think of was that it may be a fuel injector with a less than perfect spray pattern at idle, when it's not under much pressure. Again, all plugs being the same colour meant not much else untoward could be going on.
With that, we headed home. We had a good day at Chip Wizards. Very informative.
I would like to add that booking is now much easier as Wayne has just rolled out online booking. You have to put your money where your mouth is and pay a bit upfront though, as Wayne gets all sorts of time wasters, from no-shows to cars that are simply not in a fit state to go on the rollers. Understandably he needs to separate the wheat from the chaff.
For us genuine customers though it means we can book a slot much easier. Just make sure you've eliminated as much as you can yourself if something isn't right and make sure your car is fit for the rollers. :thumb:
Back to mine then and I already had the car booked in with my Indy for a major service and full going over, so we added a leak down test to the list.
Trouble was I had a 6 week wait after Wayne's until my service date and in that time, despite all the evidence suggesting the engine would be fine, I managed to convince myself the engine was kaputt. :grin:
Not a fun few weeks wait. Thoughts of having bought a very expensive paperweight entered my head etc. Bloody cars! Why do we bother eh??
So as I've said the car went for it's service (which I'll cover next time) and leak-down test a couple of weeks ago, with Jamie at Nelson Porsche Stockton. My mate and Indy for over 15 years now. Blimey.
He was the bearer of good news anyway. The engine is in rude health with barely 5% losses in each cylinder and almost identical across the board.
Phew! Quite a relief. Logically I knew it would be but sometimes the more you read about something online, the more you think you're doomed. That goes for health as well as cars eh. :wink:
Craig sent me this though and reckons this is the real reading. Jamie just didn't want to tell me. :grin:
So what now? Probably nothing.
I may stick a set of injectors in at some point but again everything you can check is fine and all the old plugs were perfect, so am I chasing a problem that isn't there? I welcome any input from 996 Mk2 owners. I need to meet up with me ole mate YK off of here and compare cars.
I also stumbled across this thread specifically about 996 Mk2s where a few people said the idle should be smooth, but equally a good few said theirs was lumpy/had a missing feel to it.
This was way back in 2008 when the cars were only 3-5 years old, so I don't believe that all the lumpy cars were faulty without their owners knowing it.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=48&t=489363
Just to finish this part, Craig's day at Wayne's was even less fruitful than mine, but I'll let him cover that in his thread.
There's always something. :wink:
Next time I'll cover the service and the whole heap of work I'm half way through at the moment. With my trip drawing ever closer I did not want the car pulled to bits so much at this point. I'm gonna have no time to get any miles on it beforehand now.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Back to more picture based posts soon I hope. :thumb: