exploserous

Hey guys! I bought my first Porsche, a 996 C2 about 6 months ago. Now that I've got a few trackdays under my belt, a few upgrades done and a bunch of new ones underway, I thought it'd be fun to start a build thread to keep track of my progress.

This car is both my daily driver and my track rat (around one event a month), so this build will be focused on track performance while still being drivable (and hopefully comfortable) on the street. I'm still learning a lot about these cars and building a car in general, so feedback, questions, and comments are totally appreciated!

First, a couple images.

Right when I bought it


At Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with SpeedSF


Current Status
When I bought the car, it came with a lot of goodies. The previous owner (Coffeehead here on RL) really loved this car and it shows. In addition to maintenance records for days, he upgraded the car quite a bit. My aerokit 996 came with Bilstein PSS9 coilovers, OEM GT3 decklid with MAShaw carbon wing, Older EVOMs intake, Rottec GT3 reps, rear seat delete, and two-piece Sport Design wheels.

Since I took the car home, I’ve also added a bunch of new goodies.

Michelin Pilot Super Sports
LN Engineering IMS bearing
Deep sump oil pan
Center radiator
Brand new clutch, flywheel and AOS
Recaro SPG XL

Recaro SPG XL


I’ve got the passenger seat in the garage, waiting until I find just the right setup with the driver’s seat before being installed. Soon I’ll replace the Brey Krause seat adapters with a Rennline single piece adapter, hopefully solving some of the issues I’ve had with lining things up and getting the seat mount nice and rigid.

Up Next
In addition to the Rennline seat adapter I’ve got on order, I’m also waiting on a Rennline track mat. I’ll share my impressions once I’ve used it for a little bit.

While I love the sound of my EVOMs intake, it’s tough to find replacement filters for it, so hopefully I’ll have a brand new one installed shortly.

I’ve also got some wheels I ordered back in December which will hopefully be arriving sooner or later. Beyond that, I’ll be doing a half cage and harnesses eventually.

I’ll try to keep this updated as things change on the car. Please feel free to ask questions or share feedback on anything. I’d love to learn as much as I can from the knowledge in this community as well as share what I learn.

In between updates, check out what the car is up to on Instagram: @Exploserous. I usually post shots from the track and local shows and events I attend.

johneecatt

Looks great!! I have a similar build. +1 on the half cage / harness. Not only a lot safer, but a lot easier to drive when you're snug in place.

Mine's also a street driver, but a really fun track car! Just won my class championship in Porsche Owners Club in CA. But remember - the deeper you go, the more uncomfortable it gets... remember where you want to be...

vandersmith

Congrats! Looks like you've made a lot of progress.

Great looking car, love my SPGs as well.

I've got a similar build underway that includes just about everything and is almost complete if you need any ideas. Keep the updates coming!

mick.uranko

Do you plan on selling the Rottec Seats?

joe-1972

I would also be interested on the seats... I could use the pair...
Please let us know if your interested in selling them.

exploserous

I look forward to driving into work every morning, but it's amazing how the car wakes up on the track. The more you push it, the harder it grips. I'm trying to be wary of how trackified I make it, but already am planning on a replacement DD the day it becomes too uncomfortable to drive every day.

It's awesome how many things you've done that I'm planning on doing, right down to the Planted seat mount adapters. Great build! I'm especially looking forward to hearing your opinions on the upgraded brakes. The Ridge also looks like a super fun track, I might have to plan a trip up in the summer sometime.

I'm open to it! Are you interested? It'd definitely motivate me to get the passenger one out of the car if I had a buyer. :P

vandersmith

If you've got any questions just let me know. I've had to tackle a bunch of 996 unique problems along the way and am happy to help.

Brakes should be on in the next two weeks. I'm probably going to swap them and keep the stop MC (25mm) in to see how much pedal travel I have. If its too much then I'll swap in the GT3 (27mm) to firm it up a bit.

There's a few PCA events at Portland International this year. If you come up for anything, that'll be the one to go to. Huge paddock, great straight. I love that place!

How often are events at Laguna? Would love to come down that way - I've got my eye on the BMW anniversary event in August

exploserous

I'll definitely reach out if I get stuck on something. It'll be nice to bounce ideas off of someone.

This is the first year I'm driving at Laguna. It seems like early in the season there are a lot of events on the weekends. I usually run with SpeedSF. Laguna is easily my favorite Northern California track. It's relatively forgiving, but super rewarding when you hit corners just right. It's definitely worth a road trip (though there are also a ton of folks to rent cars from down here, so it might be almost as good to fly down and drive someone else's car. :P).

If you end up making it down, definitely let me know. I'm always up to spend a weekend there.

I haven't heard much about PIR, though have had friends used to the tracks down here complain about it being relatively flat. I would love to head up sometime to give it a try myself.

steved0x

I've got 2 Recaro SPG XL installed in my 986 Boxster. I experimented with different mounting and what I landed on was:

Recaro Profi SPG XL
Brey-Krause 9075/9076 side mounts
Brey-Krause 9044 Floor mounting with integrated sub bar

This is solid as a rock and works for me since I am the only driver so I don't need any reclining, and I need maximum headroom.

I also mounted it onto Recaro sliders and semi-custom B-K mounts (the lowest possible seat mounting for Recaro Profil XL on sliders) which was only about 3/4" inch taller than floor mounting, but when I slid the seat back it hit my BK roll bar extender and didn't give me enough legroom.

Now that my seats are installed, I have a bunch of stuff left over, 2 sets of the "semi-custom" BK side mounts for Recaro Profi XL, 1 pair of planted universal side mounts, a couple of BK sub bars, and 1 recaro slider. The planted are brand new, if you are interested in any of it send me a PM. Or if you have any questions about them, let me know.

Thanks

Steve

exploserous

Update time!

Some big changes. Or maybe small-ish changes that make a pretty big difference.

Something that has bugged me about most cold air intakes made for our cars is that they don't seem to actually be better at pulling in cold air than the stock design. They sound great, and they're maybe freer flowing, but they mostly pull hot air from the engine-bay rather than cold air from outside.

With my GT3 decklid, I'm no longer able to use the stock intake location on the driver's side of the lid, so my mechanic (Tony at Heyer Performance) fabricated a new cover for my EVOMs intake which mates directly to the GT3 intake location on the passenger side of the engine-bay.

Here's a before photo of my EVOMs intake:



You can sort of make out the left side of the box which would have mated to the top of the stock decklid. Instead it's cut to make room for the fan on the inside of my GT3 decklid. Hot air is pulled in through here, into the filter. The cone filter is located under the intake holes in the lid, but mostly pulls in hot air from the engine-bay.

The updated design:

Here the entire cone filter is enclosed, protecting it from the hot air of the engine-bay and it mates directly to the inlet on the decklid, pulling cold air directly from outside. Where the original intake existed on the driver's side, you can see that it's blocked off to keep hot air from entering the filter.





I'm not sure if I've actually got any extra power from this, though butt-dyno says throttle response is definitely quicker. It maybe sounds a little bit better, but the EVOMs intake already sounds so fantastic it's hard to quantify that gain.

I'm tempted to do the IPD Plenum and GT3 throttle body, but I'm a little worried that if it gets louder I'll struggle to pass sound at Laguna Seca.

NYoutftr

Wow, that is great looking work.
I have the IPD compitetion plenum and GT3 throttle body with stock air box and BMC filter.

+1 on hot air vs. Cold air intake.

I would like to see an affordable aftermarket CAI similar to X51.

alpine003

Your mechanic did a good job. Throttle tip in is probably improved at the least since there isn't as much heatsoak. I'm thinking if you had the gen2 Evoms, it may have been easier to fabricate for your mechanic.

exploserous

We talked about that, but decided against it. The added cost of a new EVOMs intake was definitely prohibitive, but I'm also unsure if it would have actually reduced the fabrication work. He still would have had to chop up the airbox to remove the driver's side intake, since my GT3 decklid has a fan where the C2 intake goes. I was also unsure if the 'boot' around the intake on the gen 2 EVOMs would have lined up nicely with where the GT3 stock location for the intake is. I think we ended up pretty lucky, since the EVOMs intake is so exposed. The trickiest bit was working around the shape of the decklid, since it's such a severe curve. You might notice he also had to move the strut from the passenger side to the driver's side, to make room for the box.

Have you noticed much more noise from the IPD plenum and GT3 throttle body? I'd love to hear the difference with the stock airbox.

It'd be nice to see an off-the-shelf intake that uses the stock location but with the noise/freer breathing of most after market intakes. We were debating getting a GT3 intake and trying to make it fit, but it was much easier just to fab this than to add the complexity of modifying a GT3 intake.

5CHN3LL

Does that box still have drainage at the bottom? You might want to verify that the bottom isn't now water tight - you definitely don't want it to fill up and ingest a bunch of water.

exploserous

Yeah. The drainage is fantastic, probably better than it was without the box, since it has a deflector to more completely protect if from outside water. We've been getting a ton of rain here in the bay area lately and when I've looked, it's bone-dry inside.

As another small update, I finally picked up my new plates from the DMV. I really hate working out.