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GT3 slick top roof going on. A carbon version was the original plan but when everything factored in, especially the relatively low cost of the factory part, the weight savings was not worth the additional money for me.
Slick top is on my short list of remaining mods. Parts are definitely reasonable. Nice to see the labor can be a garage effort. Are leaving the headliner and other interior pieces off?
Slick top is on my short list of remaining mods. Parts are definitely reasonable. Nice to see the labor can be a garage effort. Are leaving the headliner and other interior pieces off?
For the roof to come off, both the windshield and rear glass need to come out. The glass guys I had do the work were really good but the windshield still cracked coming out. I got kind of lucky that I still have the cup car chassis here and they were able to successfully get the glass out of it, so I didn't have to spend another $400 on a windshield, just something to keep in mind. The process of removing the roof took a long time. Aaron was very careful drilling out the spot welds, he counted and there are 1 million of them and we never pried too hard to getting it separated from the car, this was all in an effort to leave as pristine a surface as possible for re-install. You can see in the picture below how good of a job he did, I'm so stoked how well it came out. I'm having the install done by a body shop and they will get it painted at the same time.
No headliner going back in. In fact, the only stock interior piece going back in will be the dash and it will be modified while its out in a couple ways. I think some of you guys will really dig it.
Hey @theprf ! See you in the reflection. Nice of you to help out a friend.
I'm always ready to help someone. That's Jason's son in the picture, too, a master tool fetcher. Jason was the catalyst for me to get the second 996TT and put the track mods on it so I felt I needed to return the favor. Besides drilling holes in someone else's car is fun.
So in case that cat is not far enough out of the bag - the car is getting a big cage put in.
I'll go over the details on the cage and why I went with the design I did in another post when I have everything completely locked in with the fab guy.
To try to save as much money as I could, I have done as much of the prep as I thought reasonable. So, to facilitate access for the fab guy the glass, roof and dash came out.
In the back I cut out some unneeded brackets for both the front and rear seatbelts, chipped away a fair amount of sound deadening and got rid of the plastic harness holder in favor of split loom. The split loom allows some movement, particularly for the harness to be moved out of the way during cage build / interior paint and I can secure it when all that work is done. It looks a lot better too. The plan is for the lexan that will be going in place of the rear glass to be relatively easily removable to keep some decent access to the back without having to play monkey bars.
In the front I removed the harness from the sill areas, detached the fuse box to give it some play and hung the parts of the dash harness I need up and out of the way. There is a ton of dash harness stuff I won't be using (switches for PSM, defrost etc...) and those got zip tie bundled out of the way. I wish I had more time to properly go through the harness and get rid of all the stuff I don't need but I don't at the moment, so this will have to do for now.
With prep work done (I could have spent 10 times as long but you have to say you're done at some point) it was time to get some pieces back in place so the fabricator has an idea of the cockpit requirements and the space he can take advantage of. So, the seat goes back in and I hung the carbon doors. The doors have no windows (I'll address that later) and have large bump outs in the inner shell for room to move the door bars away from the driver.
And that's that. The car goes to the fabricator next Saturday and I have a horrific garage to clean - tomorrows job
if you figured out how to remove the headliner from the sunroof frame, please let me know. Also how to get the liner off of the sliding part.
I pulled the headliner. To get it off the sunroof frame (1) open the sunroof all the way (2) push the headliner up towards the sky to release the bracket from the frame at the front corners (3) flex the bracket to get it inside the sunroof cutout at one front corner (4) flex the bracket to get the other corner inside (5) lift up the back of the bracket and pop it inside. We did not remove the inner sliding trim panel, that came out with the sunroof frame.
Well that escalated quickly. I guess the budget is also going to include a trailer?
if you figured out how to remove the headliner from the sunroof frame, please let me know. Also how to get the liner off of the sliding part.
look forward to the progress.
Search is on for a trailer.
Originally Posted by GC996
Looks to me like you are preparing to enter club racing...
👍
Hate to disappoint, but no club racing in my future. I don’t anticipate this car ever going wheel to wheel. Racing against the clock though, that’s a possibility.
I would really like to try endurance racing in the future - but not with this.
Hate to disappoint, but no club racing in my future. I don’t anticipate this car ever going wheel to wheel. Racing against the clock though, that’s a possibility.
I would really like to try endurance racing in the future - but not with this.
I’ve looked at his design and talked about some of the stuff I liked from his layout with the cage builder. In totality - I could never afford the cost of that cage and all the extra fab work beyond the cage itself, it will be more expensive than mine in multiples. That said, I am confident in what I want, have gone over the design principles with a lot of different people I trust (people who have actually had to rely on a cage in a shunt) and am happy that if anything, my cage will be more complex and heavy than it really needs to be. I want the car to be good to run hill climbs in the area and the cage will be built to my comfort level for that kind of activity.
For anyone that hasn’t seen that thread though, good looks in linking to it, it’s got a really good write up and what looks to be top shelf level chassis preparation.
Good news (kinda bad news ) - this gives me an opportunity to address the wiring in the car on a more relaxed schedule.
So… the next batch of time I spend with the car will be trying to remove as much unneeded wiring and relocate things like fuse panels to places better suited for my needs.
This gets me into a non comfort zone area and I will and have been reading a lot about what the SPB Boxster guys do. The immobilizer will be staying.
If anyone reading has any experience paring the wiring in these cars down, I would be much appreciative to get your input.
11-28-2021, 03:17 AM
and we never pried too hard to getting it separated from the car, this was all in an effort to leave as pristine a surface as possible for re-install. You can see in the picture below how good of a job he did, I'm so stoked how well it came out. I'm having the install done by a body shop and they will get it painted at the same time. 
