JJJMCD

I've been thinking about adding a carbon fiber dash kit to my C2 cab for a while and looked into the options, which seemed to consist of: (i) the Porsche factory pieces from Gert (upwards of $1,200 for all of the dash pieces); (ii) pieces from Marcus Beuhler in Germany, who apparently was an OEM supplier to Porsche (a little cheaper than Gert but not by much); and (iii) the junky stickers (NOT real carbon fiber) from Cup Sport on ebay (~$120 but not a real option since it's not real cf). I then stumbled across this listing on ebay from ebay seller "auto_stil":

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...m=300088963133

This got me thinking - $150 for a complete set of REAL carbon fiber? Could it be? The upside was that it looked like real carbon fiber; the downside was that there were no pictures of the actual pieces for a 911. However, since they seemed to do A LOT of kits for a broad variety of cars, I thought that it could be reasonably good quality. I decided to give it a shot, thinking that if it turned out to be junk, I would just return it and call it lesson learned.

To my surprise, the pieces turned out to be quite good quality; good enough that I decided to have them installed by my mechanic (since you need to pop out the gauges and remove the fog light and defroster ***** to do the install, I thought it best to leave it to the professionals - it took them around 2 hours). The following are the pics. I have no affiliation whatsoever with the ebay seller - I'm a corporate lawyer in DC - I just wanted to pass along this information in case anyone else is looking to do a CF dash on a budget.

I'm very pleased with how it came out. Although they're admittedly "stick-on" pieces, not the structural Porsche factory pieces, the quality is so good that it made it impossible for me to justify spending 10 times as much on Porsche factory pieces. An added bonus was that this kit came with a CF piece for the AC control unit, which doesn't come with the factory kit. In addition to the pieces pictured below, this kit came with pieces for 993 doors (which didn't fit my 964) and a parking brake surround piece, which I didn't install because it didn't include the cup-shaped part below the handle. One quirk was that, because the kit is designed for a Euro non-airbag dash with the glovebox lid in the center part of the dash (rather than in the lower dash on US airbag equipped cars), the top-right piece had a hole for the glovebox lid ****, which needed to be plugged. The plug that came with the kit was a little too large, so we needed to trim it down. You can see the plug in some of the pics. I'm looking for a metal Porsche emblem like the ones for the steering wheel to cover up the plug.

Good luck!

jimq

looks great but what happens if the pasanger airbag goes off? Price sure is right.

MisterRisky

I may be confused on how the airbag on the passenger side works, but I thought the dash just hinged open between the taller lower piece and the shorter upper piece. It looks like the trim pieces are separate so the dash should just open up, as normal. Someone correct me if I am off base on that.

rroobbcc

WOW! That looks much nicer than I would have guessed. Nice mod!!!

JJJMCD

Thanks for the compliments. Like I said, I was really impressed by the quality. We can thank all of the kids with their hot rod Hondas and Toyotas for creating enough demand to bring down the prices of carbon fiber pieces. I do think that there is a "Porsche mark-up" for aftermarket parts that would otherwise cost 1/2 (or less) as much. Some vendors charge whatever the traffic will bear and Porsche owners have displayed their willingness to pay a lot.

MisterRisky is correct - the airbag is the reason that there are two pieces of CF above the glovebox, which correspond to the two pieces of the dashboard underneath. When the airbag goes off, the top piece hinges open (there is an internal hinge at its top), as does the bottom piece (there is an internal hinge at its bottom), allowing the airbag out in the space created between the two pieces. As a result, the airbag functionality is not affected at all by the CF installation. This is the same set up as the factory CF set.

964russ

looks v good...

ilko

Actually carbon fiber is becoming more difficult to produce (I read that somewhere) and prices are expected to go up. For $150 you did great

Oracle

Looks horrible.
So you should sell it to me

MarkD

That is an incredible price for all of that CF!
And the cloth is layed down straight... congrats on the find.

R6XTERRA

I just ordered one. 2 weeks....wooohooo

Jeff

JJJMCD

The seller is located in New York City. They told me two weeks for shipping, as well, but it took only 3 days to arrive in DC.

MassGuy

I like it...did you do the white guage faces too?

JJJMCD

Thanks very much. North Hollywood Speedometer refinished the gauges in white after the original black finish on my speedometer started flaking off - I had my mechanic pop them out and put them in a Fed-Ex box to California, NHS returned them refinished by fed-ex 3 or 4 days later, and my mechanic put them back in. Total cost was around $400. The aluminum rings on the gauges I found somewhere on the 'net; they were around $50 I believe.

993_Pilot

I hate to be a spoiler, but the piece above the glovebox seems to be upside down. At least the orientation of the CF appers to be different than the rest of the dash. Hopefully this will be an easy fix, because it looks pretty good otherwise.

Edit: After thinking about it for a second, I am not sure inverting it will correct it, and I am not sure how you could. Maybe you can live with it. If not, contact the seller.

JJJMCD

Yes, I realized that the matting was done backwards for that piece. I doubt very much the seller will have anything different to offer and it doesn't bother me.