Marky''s 996.2 GT3 thread.

Some great work again.

Looks rubbish

Hi Graham, cheers. :thumb:
I hope the holiday let venture is going well? Good weather for it lately. 8)


Enough of your cheek Yk.
Hope you're having a good weekend where you are. I'm just having a lunch break between swapping seats over. A few snags so far but nothing major.

Black on black has already grown on me, blue GT3 what now?!

Love the attention to detail, credit to you both.

Just read this thread, I think you have it quite bad Marky :grin: very shiny now mind. Great to see a GT3 being used and enjoyed :thumb:

Hi Marty, yep black always look good, in or out. A ***** to look after but you can't have everything. :thumb:


Hi Rich, always good to see you posting. Yes the bias will swing heavily towards use rather than fiddling soon. I just hope we've put it all back together properly. :grin:


Cheers. :thumb:

Ok so just to rattle through some minor jobs then. Going back two weekends now technically, I worked on the car a bit more on Sunday, after our long day on Saturday. Just small jobs, but a bit more leisurely and enjoyable.

So I got up on the Sunday and gave it a wash.
I took it to the end of the village to put my tyre dressing on and take a nice pic but I forgot my phone didn't I, so here's yet another driveway picture. :wink:




I knocked off after that but found myself with a spare hour or so at teatime so thought I'd sort a couple of cosmetic niggles on the back end.

The reg plate wasn't level and was too far over to the left. Doesn't look bad in the pic but it was worse in person and once you'd noticed it, it was pretty obvious.




So number plate off to reveal the usual mess -




Cleaned up -




I also cleaned the toe eye cap recess up because as with every other recess/gap/join around the car, it was caked with polish thanks to the awesome (not) prep it had by Autostore prior to collection. :frustrated:

Before -




After -




I then moved onto the tailpipes and whilst I did try the bolts so I could remove them and polish them properly, access was poor and they were pretty tight. I didn't have spares if I snapped a bolt, so I decided to leave well alone until winter and just polish them in-situ.
I gave them a clean with Solvol, wire wool, then a general buff up. They have some scratches from other peoples previous efforts though so I'll whip them off and send them to a proper polishers later on maybe.

Before-




After -




All done -




Whilst on the subject of polish residue etc. The side repeaters were equally caked in it and had been caught by the buffer. I could have cleaned them up ok but I had a pair of new 'old stock" ones in the loft. They're better off on the car than sitting in the loft -




Old -




New -




Of course I swapped the new bulbs and seals over onto the old bulb holders to maintain the correct date stamps.




Oh and one last thing on the exterior was just to clean the keyhole up in the door handle. A bit of WD40 on a cotton bud is good for this.

Before -




After -




After that I moved onto the inside and swapped out the CD drawers for a cubby hole.
I will probably do the centre console delete later on but those cubbyholes are handy for now.

Before -




After -




So that has things almost up to date now.
Boring but I always log it anyway.
I've been busy over the weekend sorting road-trip friendly seats and I had a much more road biased alignment done yesterday too. Oh and those Pagid RS29 pads have to go. The squealing is beyond funny now. :frustrated:

Cheers. :thumb:

Yes, something milder seems to be the way to go. My RS29s don't squeal #becausetrackdays

Just noticed the Autostore number plates, are you going to get a new pair made up from the original supplying OPC/dealer? :wink:

Wow the car presents amazingly, good work!

Marky911 said:

After that I moved onto the inside and swapped out the CD drawers for a cubby hole.
I will probably do the centre console delete later on but those cubbyholes are handy for now.

Before -




After -




So that has things almost up to date now.
Boring but I always log it anyway.
I've been busy over the weekend sorting road-trip friendly seats and I had a much more road biased alignment done yesterday too. Oh and those Pagid RS29 pads have to go. The squealing is beyond funny now. :frustrated:

Cheers. :thumb:

Click to expand...

Where did you get the GT3 stickers?

Hi Yk, yes I always fit dealer plates as it looks so much better. Maybe not the supplying dealer although I might if I leave it on it's original number. I'm debating whether to fit my plate with my initials on it. Once I decide I'll sort new plates.
'Autostore" conjures up images of a local car parts shop selling magic trees and wheel trims. :wink:
Plus I'm not too eager to advertise Autostore given that I was lied to about the level of prep the car would receive.

Hi Marty, yep each little job improves things incrementally, although the paintwork will only ever be 7 out of 10 without some refreshing by a body shop. Nothing major but it has stonechips or the odd scratch on most panels. I'll get it a lot better when I can put some time aside to touch up and flat things down but I'm waiting until after my trip.
To most people though it's a lovely shiny black Porsche, but I'm not most people. uh:

Hi JJT, the sticker must have been added by a former keeper, so I can't tell you where it came from, although I imagine any graphics place could create one.
To be honest I'd never given it a moments thought until you mentioned it and I'd just presumed it was standard, but a bit of googling suggests not.
Centre console delete will probably happen anyway at some point so all of that unit will disappear. :thumb:

Road trip seats.

The Porsche bucket seats are superb, they hold you tight and really key you into the car, but they aren't the most practical and the base cushions aren't brilliant for really long stints.

The other main drawback though is that they block access to the rear, being non-reclining fixed buckets. This access is vital for luggage on longer trips, so I had to find some reclining seats to fit.

I still have the grey ones out of my old C2. They are technically my mate Ralf's, who bought the C2, but I must have inadvertently given him a years worth of parts storage in with the cost of the car, as I somehow still have a garage full of his parts. :dont know:
Anyway I decided they'd look weird in a black interior and also the rails are now on the carbon buckets I fitted to his car.

Luckily Craig came good with his old Cobra Misanos from when his car was Cobra Seats demo car, the 'Cobra RS" :grin: .
Now I used to take the pee a bit as they have RS stitched into the headrests and things, but they're actually really nice seats and they still have the rails and everything attached, so an easy swap.

So Craig brought them home from his unit at the weekend and we got cracking.
My cage was still out from last time so it was just a case of buckets out, Cobras in.

Cobras -




Comparison pic. One out, one in. The Cobras are very low. Maybe even a touch lower than the factory buckets. The rails and mounting frame are very low and flat -




Fitted -




All done and they don't look too bad. More importantly they feel very good. The centres are Alcantara which is nice and grippy to stop you sliding about and they're still nice and low as I've said. They just need a quick vacuum and wipe down now.
That was last weekends task done then.

On Monday I went for an alignment.
I decided to try a newish company up here called BTG Performance beside the Tyne Tunnel.
I'd had one or two recommendations and they have a great setup down there.
I'd already had my Indy free off all the relevant bolts etc and me and Craig had removed the shims to get back to road camber so we weren't expecting any disasters.




Sure enough it went ok. We got things set to what I wanted which involved pretty much the same values as the machine recommended, just a touch more camber, as it said -1 degree whereas I wanted -1.5 really.
I'd usually post a photo of the 'finished" printout, but unfortunately this is one of two minor issues I had at BTG. One, the printer wasn't working so they're going to forward the final settings on to me (as yet I've heard nothing) and two, despite the lad road testing it and declaring it good to go, when I drove off I quickly realised the steering wheel was pointing to the right a bit when going straight.
I turned around and went back and the lad said he'd rebook me. I asked how long it would take and he said probably half an hour. I said 'well surely you can do it now? I just left 5 minutes ago".
So they did and the steering wheel is spot on now. I wouldn't usually be so pushy but it's 20 miles out of my way and it should have been right first time as it was straight when I drove there.

I'll update the thread if my printout ever turns up, but I doubt it will.
So the jury's out on whether I'd use them again (I will if the printout comes through), but the most important thing is that the car is much improved. It's still very stiff, as you'd expect, but it's not hunting out every camber or rut in the road and it isn't locking a front wheel anywhere near as much under heavy, bumpy, braking.
I have the KWs set at half way. 9 clicks out of 18 or something like that so I think I'll take them back out to 4 or 5 to soften things a bit more.
I'm much happier at the thought of heading away in it now though and the full alignment only cost £72 which isn't bad.

Next year I hope to make a trip to Centre Gravity for a full in-depth setup but I've a bit to sort by then so we'll see.

Oh and the final settings were -
Front camber -1.5 degrees
Rear camber -1.6 degrees (that's all we could get it back to)
Zero front toe
0.2 rear toe (toe in)
The castor is what it is, so to speak.

Cheers. :thumb:

Hi Mark,
James (Jamesx19) has fitted some Audi sports seats to his 996. The seats themselves are excellent but what's amazing is that they were grey and he bought a kit and re-painted them. Several of us saw them recently at Precision Porsche's open day and we were very impressed. I;m sure you would never know that they weren't new, black seats.

As to the steering wheel angle, it's basic isn't it, I would expect any garage to get that right. My car came with the wheel wrong so it's a sore point, I got nearly right by refitting the wheel and CG sorted it out with the suspension last year.

Mike

Hi Mike, hope you're well.

Yes there are some good products out there these days. My seat change is only temporary though so I wanted the easiest solution. :thumb:
I look forward to seeing the seats feature on James' thread. They sound like a nice modification.

And yep, getting the steering wheel straight during an alignment is the basics surely.
I'd have been a bit miffed even if it had been wonky when it drove in, but the fact it was perfectly straight beforehand meant I had to complain.
Obviously the wheel is moulded where you hold it and your hands grip just above each spoke, hence no way of ignoring the issue. I wasn't going to drive 3000+ miles to Italy and back sitting as if I was steering all the time. :grin:

Hi marky. Just caught up on this thread. I followed your last one on the c2 and found it very helpful. I think you pointed me in the right direction when fitting my omp steering wheel iirc. Nice to see things are looking good. I e a few points/questions.
1. I had ds2500 pads in d2 8 pot calipers on my p1 impreza. First class, no squeal and worked well on the road so I'd give them a go
2. How do find the genuine gt3 seats compared to the ones you fitted in the c2? Are the copies any good? I like the look of those cobra seats.

Still well impressed on the detail you go into. I'm just completing the welding work on my c2. Id like to do a thread but there's just so much work in it that I haven't time. I do stick pictures up on instagram though as it's handy. @nedhannon if anyone interested or #modified996mk1
Anyways good to see the progress