Okay, back to the targa. I've been hem-ing and haw-ing about upgrading the seats for a couple of years. Last week I stumbled across an ad for these seats and pretty much had no choice but to jump on the deal. They've been reupholstered with Hydes leather -- they supply Porsche with leather -- in Metropol Blue. That's my interior. The plastic trim around the holes are painted Polar Silver. That's a match too! The topper was that they were located less than 2 hours from my home. Kismet. I am still working out some fitment stuff but the driver's side seat is bolted in for now so I can spend some time with it.

 

Sweet, I'm jealous!
My interior is Metropol Blue too.

 

Wow. I didn't realize how long it had been since I last updated this thread. There's a reason, several in fact. The first one is the biggest one so I'll start there. Last June I was on my way to a gathering of kindred spirits in Roanoke VA when I had an altercation with some gravel and a signpost. I'll let pictures tell most of the story.

Here is the Corner of Doom in all of its glory. The sign next to the one with the truck on it used to have a neighbor. I cut it off clean right at the base. It doesn't show in the pictures but the turn is banked and the road is going substantially downhill. There were two tight turns in quick succession, the second one being sharper and steeper than it appeared at first. Although I wasn't really cooking, the back of the car managed to get a bit light and stepped over the white line, which put that tire in the gravel and cinders blanketing the edge of the roadway. The car slid and I contacted the signpost dead sideways. The right rear tire and suspension took the brunt of the impact. I was probably going under 20 MPH when I hit the sign, which stopped the car immediately.






Amazingly, and quite luckily as it turned out, there was a car heading up the mountain in the other direction just as I slid off the road. A retired couple on their way to casinos in Ohio. They got quite a show. They were kind enough to take me to the nearest town, where I was able to find a towing company. Which was also pretty amazing considering the size of the town and the remoteness of the location. The driver told me that they do a pretty brisk business bringing bent cars off the mountain, especially in wintertime. So it makes sense economically I guess.




The reason the above events are serendipitous is because all of this took place in the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), a 13,000 square mile area in rural West Virginia where cell service is totally unavailable, along with other radio signals.


After many many many phone calls I arranged to have the car flatbedded to the nearest Porsche dealership, over 100 miles away. Then after many many more calls I arranged for a rental car, the closest of which was 70 miles away. Then I waited. Nothing was going to happen right away. Everything was hopefully! going to happen the next day. So I spent the night in the miniscule town of Durbin WV, which had a single open restaurant that also happened to have rooms upstairs. (That place is a story unto itself.) Everyone in the town was as friendly and helpful as can be, which made it all a whole lot easier to deal with all of the stuff I had to get through. They also let me use their WiFi, which was in every building. Because how else are they going to get anything done.

The next day a fellow from a AAA office 60 miles away picked up the car and took it 100+ miles to the Porsche dealership. Another fellow from the rental agency picked me up and drove me 70 miles, in the opposite direction from both my car and my ultimate destination, so that I could drop him back at his workplace and sign a piece of paper. Then I drove all the way to the Porsche dealership and arranged matters there. Then I went to my event, where since I was now Porsche-less I got to be a passenger in other peoples' cars. It was as good as it could be under the circumstances. The folks I was with were awesome as always.

After the event I headed back to the dealership and got a better look at the damage underneath. I was thinking about having them do the mechanical work and then driving it home, but ultimately decided to have it shipped back to my garage so that I could undertake the work myself. Here it is back at the garage. I was able to (very gingerly!) drive it onto the lift which I took as a hopeful sign. Here are some pictures of the damaged bits before I took things apart.








More pictures of the damaged suspension components on the bench. I didn't have a lot of trouble getting it apart since I had just replaced all of this stuff just a short while ago!






Once I had it home I cleaned about 3 tons of gravel out from every imaginable crevice under the car. Then I replaced all of the obviously bent items, found a replacement wheel, and buttoned it all up. I aligned and measured and measured and aligned some more, and then I went for a short spin. It seemed fine. I measured and checked and measured again, then went for a longer drive. It seemed fine. I don't think anything else under the car is damaged; the engine sounds and runs great, the transmission feels and acts just like it did before. The wheel and suspension pieces absorbed the impact. If there is a takeaway for me personally it is that genuine Porsche parts are the way to go if one plans to smash sideways into stuff.

At that point, even though I had the car back to being roadworthy, I pretty much just let it sit. One reason was that the replacement wheel wasn't very straight and the car had a wobble because of it. (I swapped sides just to make sure the wobble followed the wheel from one side to the other.) So I needed to do something about a wheel -- or wheels. Also there was obviously going to be some paintwork involved in repairing the body, and I had other items I wanted to do body-wise while that was underway. And then there was the little white roadster sitting next to it that I had just gotten sorted, and I was driving the heck out of that. Weeks became months. And, as of this writing, the bodywork is still waiting to be done.

But there is more to the story! I'll continue the saga in another post.

 

Glad to see that you’re well and the car survived albeit very little work.

 

Wow! Quite the story. Sorry to see it happened but glad you’re OK. And it’s cool that you were able to get it done your self.

Small communities are great. They have everything covered. Time is usually the only issue. Looking forward to the rest of the story.

 

That's an excellent point and one I should have mentioned. I was completely unhurt -- if you don't count my ego. It really was low speed so even though I was going sideways there was no neck strain or seat belt rash.

I really was lucky. All of the roadsides in the area were coated with cinders and gravel from winter, and quite a few of them do not have a nice little runoff area like the one I blundered into. And, assuming the car continues to behave itself, the mechanical damage really was light. I am crossing my fingers that a decent body shop will be able to maintain the complex body lines in that area.

 

Sorry to hear about what happened and glad you weren't injured.

Appreciate the pictures especially of the suspension arms after the accident. Sounds like you were able to replace them and dial it in without any problems. Love to hear if you were able to find TRW parts or if you went with Porsche OE and what the part numbers were. You had peaked my curiosity while ago with moving to 991 arms of which I just started the same exercise. TRW arms are tough to find today. Seems they are no longer making them.

 

I'll compile a list of the parts I used for the suspension refresh. The short answer is that every suspension arm was a genuine Porsche part, and was whatever has superseded the original 996 part in the PET. The "991" discussion earlier turned out to be a false lead -- I believe it was just a casting number and not a full-on 991 part.

At the moment I have to rush out and take advantage of the recently de-salted roads to give a few cars a quick romp. It's supposed to snow again this afternoon, grr. Meanwhile I'll just drop this in here...

 

Christmas presents are great! Looks like wheels, a bumper, and something else, 3rd radiator?

I got an upside down bumper for Christmas. It should be going on today!

 

Looking forward to hearing what you found.

I may have bought the last TRW 991 coffin arm in US inventory last week from a major vendor. I have a second one on order from another one, but no confirmation that it had actually shipped. Seems that they all rely on the same Porsche warehouse for inventory.

I also bought a used 996 control arm off of ebay with a wishbone for a cheap price to measure and compare 996 and 991 arms. Still gotta get a used 991 wishbone arm off of ebay. Funny thing is the local Porsche dealer can't confirm measurements between 996, 997 and 991 arms, nor can any of the major vendors that we all use. So I figured I would measure everything myself to see what we got.

 

This parts list is from my original rebuild in 2022. All were genuine Porsche, ordered from dealerships (online).

Qty Part Number Part Name
4 996-341-053-19 Wishbone
4 997-331-047-01 Ft Lateral Arm
4 996-341-043-06 Suspension Control Arm
2 997-331-045-04 Rear Lateral Rod
1 996-343-069-04 Suspension Stabilizer Bar Link Kit
1 996-343-070-04 Suspension Stabilizer Bar Link Kit


This is the list of the suspension arms I replaced as a result of the signpost infringement.
996-341-053-19 Lower Control Arm
997-331-043-02 Ft Lateral Rod
997-331-045-05 Track Rod

 

Two out out of three! I intend to do a third radiator but I thought I'd wait until I have other cooling system maintenance lined up.

I think you got the same bumper cover? Aero 996.2 piece. I got mine from Suncoast. Considering that: a) it is still the same price as it was pre-tariff; and 2) it includes a bunch of bits including the now-outrageously-priced front lip, it seemed like a bargain.






Apex EC-7 Hyper Silver, in what I call their "GT3+ spec":
Front Wheel Size: 18x9” ET46
Rear Wheel Size: 18x11” ET60






Wire harnesses from @Adrian Taillights , I can't thank you enough for doing this! It's a genuine service to the entire 996 community. They look very nice.





Santa Claus also brought me a new wall decoration.




Aaannnddddd there's one more item that I'll cover in its own post.

 

This is the last item. A mini ducktail. I got it from DNS Performance out of England. The tariff situation turned into an enormous SNAFU that is still not completely resolved and required one item to be returned and another sent in its place. That's a story for another day but if anyone is interested PM me. The vendor was enormously helpful throughout. I do not hesitate to recommend them. The packaging was top notch as well.






When the part arrived I did a test fit on the car so I could be confident going forward with paint. I hope to make a video of that task because there was a wee bit of trimming involved. Nothing major whatsoever but it might be helpful to others.

 

Ha I was going to offer you my OZ’s! The Apex wheels are fantastic and all the other goodies are going to make the car look great.

 

Great thread. 👍 Sorry to read about your sign run-in. Those new Apex wheels will look sharp.