NXI20

Club Sport - it's a no cost option on European GT3s that includes a cage (rear is factory installed, the front section isn't fitted but comes with the car), Recaro buckets in cloth, driver's 6-point harness & prep for a battery cutoff.

The rear badge I had made as Porsche don't badge the CS option differently although they did on the 968.

Odd fact: there are actually fewer CS cars than RS in the UK.

NXI20

I may do a write-up at some point, if only to illustrate quite how many wrong turns (and how much wasted money!) is possible in the quest for your personal "perfect track GT3". It's been painful & frustrating at times but at least half the reward of cars like this is the journey you undertake to make them exactly what you want. A write-up of impressions of this car & one of my other project cars is available here:

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/t...GT2+recreation

I do know what you mean about the lack of 996 GT3s being used these days, apart from mine I only know of two others that are regularly tracked although there were 4 GT3s at the 'ring last month when I was there.

hf1

Well done, sir!

Jens L

Fantastic story. So glad someone is using the cars. I did 2 trackdays on the Ring last year with my 964 RS. I was pretty alone. Air-cooled cars are disappearing from the track day scene. Such a shame.

Interesting to read about your upgrades and mostly about how oem solutions brakes during hard track work.

spiller

Thanks for posting! Would you mind sharing some details on service intervals and oils used in the car throughout your ownership (as it's obviously worked for you!). Is the car used as a daily driver as well or just weekend road/track trips? When you said the suspension "wore out" at a rapid rate on the track, are you referring to the OEM bushings? I have monoballs everywhere and mine is all rock solid even after 10 years and probably 30,000 kms.

Great story, I wish I'd see more 6 GT3s at the track too, I get a little lonely at the club events these days.

NXI20

Oil service intervals are 4K miles, That's new oil & filter with the old filter checked for metal! Oil has been variously: Mobil-1 10/50 Motorsport, Mobil-1 10/60 and then as of a couple of years ago, Millers 10/60 Nano Technology. The car has never been used as a daily as I have other cars plus I'm effectively retired and so don't really need to go anywhere except for fun

Yes, I found that OEM bushes (and even uprated urethane bushes) don't stand up to track work well & you suffer constant problems with the geometry needing to be reset. Monoballs everywhere cure all of that and mean longer tyre life due to the geo remaining exactly where it was set. I also found the standard dampers started leaking and getting them rebuilt would only hold the leaking for a further 25K miles. Motons were the answer to that problem.

nigelonich

I counted 6? :-): Yours, GT03APE, The cobalt one, ADE's silver one, mine and the black one that went off at Adenau.

BTW I got the CF roof, CF bonnet, cup rear bumper and cup exhaust search on going....

Cheers
Nigel

NXI20

Hi Nigel

You're on the slippery slope now...

Since we spoke, I see that FVD do an M+M Cup exhaust if you want something new & top quality

http://www.fvd.de/de/en/Porsche-0/92..._and_tips.html

spiller

I have this system on my car, cannot sing it's praises enough. Beautifully crafted and sounds great. Probably sheds a good 15-20 kgs too.

Backmarker

Nice to hear that you are finding the Moton CS to be more durable than stock. I have nowhere near the miles that you have on yours but they have been flawless for me too.

997rs4.0

OP.

Thanks for sharing your great experience with your 6.3!
My car has half as many miles as yours. Track season coming up in Florida. So will try to catch up. Now with solid engine mounts and new shifter. Probably placebo, but throttle response felt a little quicker. Car felt really tight.
Hope the MCS suspension on my car holds up as well as Motons.

NXI20

My Motons were rebuilt after 85K miles on the car (~ 35K of them track miles) and it became evident I'd left it a bit too long. The seals had all suffered & the front left damper had virtually no gas pressure. The top collar bushes on the front dampers were very worn & had been knocking when cold for quite a while.

Still impressive longevity & rebuild cost wasn't too bad at $ 1150 for all four.

cfjan

Would be interesting to hear about the experience with the 4.0 setup and the decision to change it down to 3.8 later.. !

NXI20

Not a 4.0 but the shortish version is that I went for a Capricorn 3.9 piston & liner set. After the engine was built, it became evident that Capricorn hadn't gaped the rings correctly on 2 of the pistons which caused some slight damage to the bores. After a fight with Capricorn, who tried to deny that they had been asked to gap the rings until we found an email in which they had confirmed that they would gap the rings), 2 new pistons & liner were installed and the engine ran for 40-odd thousand miles, albeit noisily - we suspect that this is inherent to the design. Eventually, a "ticking" noise suddenly developed that put the ECU into limp mode. When the engine was torn down, this is what was found:










Not pretty

As can be observed, the top ring has slowly enlarged its groove and eventually made a hole at the base of the inlet valve pocket (top left of the fist pic, by the head stud). This then allowed the ring to break off small pieces as it rotated round the piston. We calculated that we lost around 40mm of the top ring out of the exhaust before the teardown. Nothing was recovered in the cylinder itself.

By this time, I'd had enough of Capricorn so I went with using Porsche parts this time around. If anyone else is contemplating going down the Porsche 3.8 road (and I'd highly recommend it if you are looking at doing a rebuild on a 3.6 engine as the cost is barely any more than doing a 3.6), you need to be aware that you either need to buy new 3.8 rods (~ $1K each!) or have a machine shop open up the little ends in your 3.6 rods and then make & insert a 23mm bush (the standard 3.6 little end bush is 22mm). If your engine has done significant work, new rods are the way to go.

cfjan

New OE rods? So they are Ti as well then? I have seen some tuners (such as Sharkwerks) using steel rods for the strength.. I guess the combination of the aftermarket rods and pistons are light enough (despite being steel) to sustain the high rpm of the GT3 engine..