circuit.heart

Hi!

My name's Brian, I was never expecting to be a 911 owner but a cheap 996.2 C2 popped up that ticked all the boxes and felt tackle-able (as a Porsche newbie). So I brought her home.



For context, it's far from my first rodeo building cars, but the world I come from is a little more rough-and-tumble:





I love/hate the BMW - it's terrific fun and drives sideways everywhere but I've literally blown up an engine every season. After the 6th dead S52 came out, I threw the towel in and started developing an HPD K20C1 engine swap.





While that's cooking, the 996 will be turned into the nicest car I can muster, which will be a new challenge for me as a product designer and engineer. As the thread title states, I imagine three parts to this:

1. Restore: Tackle all deferred maintenance, fix native weaknesses (within $ reason), return mechanical and cosmetic condition to factory or better
2. Enhance: Invent or install improvements to the 996's functionality or cosmetics (especially the interior!)
3. Explore: Once it's all working, we go new places and meet new people!

So, starting with the Restore part This is gonna be a theme I think, there were little annoyances with the plastics:



One of the previous owners tried to fix a crack here using tape and cardstock. That obviously failed, so the cowl was flapping when I first drove the car home. I removed all the garbage and basically built up JB Weld until the tab was functional again. Not as beautiful as a brand new cowl cover, but not worth throwing away an otherwise fine panel that can be restored anyways. I encountered other broken plastics just like this (cracked fender liners and underpanels) but will replace them later instead - JB Weld doesn't seem like an elegant solution for large, load-bearing gaps.

On the bright side, the suspension was refreshed very recently with receipts to prove it, so I've got myself a nice H&R/Bilstein/Eibach suspension package and really only need to grease the urethane bushings (pic from seller).



Unfortunately, the last alignment was done to factory Porsche specs and lets the car down handling-wise:



I have an appointment to rack this car up next week and investigate - those slots are begging for at least 1-1.5deg of camber, which should get the front tires to bite. As it is the front end washes out everywhere and I was resorting to trail-braking to get it to hunker down. I'm told that's unwise on a 911 so I'd much rather have front camber. Not -4.5 like my track cars, but at least give me a little bit!

Moving on, the paint wasn't that bad on Day 1 but there were brown flakes impregnated into the clearcoat all around. Solution, clay bar and polish it all off, then apply two thick layers of Rocklear to replace the lost layer and further UV protect the silver underneath.



It actually took two visits to get everything done, and a phone camera can't capture it all. On the first visit, we laid the Rocklear and gave it a week to cure - it's almost as thick as PPF and truly looks like clearcoat, just not smooth. Because of that, the second visit was for leveling and polishing the coating on the paint to get that deep, wet clearcoat look. We also wetsanded the coating on the rubber trims to bring back the original satin appearance.

Headlights sanded, polished, sealed:



The aforementioned cowl:


The frunk:


The engine bay wasn't fully cleaned up, which I OK'd as I'm gonna be in here dirtying it up soon.


It almost looks like a new car again.



Other basic maintenance stuff had clearly been deferred on this car, so:

• New Continental DWS06+ in 225/40/18 and 275/35/18
• Transmission flushed twice with Porsche Tiptronic ATF (sheesh, this stuff is $$$)
• Engine oil flushed twice, first Driven BR30 then Driven DT40
• Bottle of Techron
• Fresh engine air filter (Porsche) and charcoal cabin filter (Mann)
• Replaced broken visor mirror cover

Nothing sexy here so no pics, but after doing all of it and going on a test drive, I literally called my wife to say "damn... I get it now". When I bought the car, the exhaust pulsed a bit - gone; injectors ticked a bit - gone; on cold start the engine shook and rattled for a split second - also gone. The Mercedes Tiptronic feels about as good as a 90s automatic is gonna get, buttery smooth going up and willing to be rev-matched going down. I feel successful cruising on the highway now, which I suppose is how Porsche sold so many of them back in the day.

I'll cap it here for now before diving into the interior (pic from seller). It's overall been kept in decent condition, and being full leather it's already much better than it could be, but man, looking at the center console and the horseshoe just makes my brain hurt. I'm looking forward to 3D scanning this interior, and putting ideas to paper to make it legitimately sexy. More soon!

Porschetech3

Congrats !! Looking forward to it...( as long as you don't start talking about putting a Honda power unit in there..lol)

hatchetf15

A hearty welcome to you. It’s a slippery slope like canola on a Teflon-coated Slip-n-Slide. So much fun to tinker with these cars.

I applaud your selection of the 275 rear. I found it protects the rim better than a pinched 265, has a taller sidewall than a 285/30 and improved my rake by a couple mm.

Your Tip probably holds a gear longer with PSM off. At least it does on my Pepper.

Always trail brake your 996. Push is designed into the car. With your suspension set up you can get -1 and -1.8 on the camber with stock links and tops.

Wow! on the paint correction.

freddworks

Very nice!

Looking forward towards the upgrades!
K20C1 swap in the BMW sounds like a fun idea

TheChunkNorris

Very cool and love the paint correction, looks great.

philbert996

Congrats on the 996, looking good already!

Subscribed to see a legitimately sexy 996 interior.
IMO Seinfeld‘s Classic Club Coupe is probably the best 996 interior I’ve seen.
But that involved mostly nicer materials, not a reworking of the original design.

SSDVC

You car looks great and that paint is popping ! I have never heard of Icon Rocklear. How did you find out about it? Is it a west coast only thing? How does it compare to the nexgen ceramic/graphene coatings?

Also, what did it cost to get your 996 to where it is now using this product?

circuit.heart

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Honestly, if the M96 lets go, I am not a purist... The C1 is a phenomenal engine, just sounds like crap

The tires are, uh, placeholders lol. I have a one-off set of 19" Titan7's on order, they'll pop the front end up 8mm and the rear 5mm (245/35/19 and 295/30/19). I checked the rake will be acceptable (~7mm, down from ~10mm now), so I'm looking forward to filling out the massive front wheel wells better.

Went for a canyon drive today and yeah, I hate the stock alignment and frankly the Bilsteins too. Too stiff for the bumpy roads here, so the front end skips and pushes on every perturbation. I didn't plan on throwing out new dampers so we'll just have to live with it for now and enjoy drives at a slower pace.

It's the only way I can keep all the luxury amenities (sunroof, A/C, radio, sound deadening) and still have the power:weight I want haha. >300whp, <3000lbs, >30mpg, and the ability to Sub-2 Buttonwillow carrying as many passengers as I'm allowed to.

Yeah, most people update the materials and sometimes the seam patterns - it helps. I'm not sure how big the market is for involved interior mods, but to me the horseshoe and center console should draw a single line swooping down the middle of the cabin. For the "GT3 delete" gang, the horseshoe can still be updated with a sharper line, and it'll actually complement the abrupt bottom "cut" better than the factory blob shape. I'll spare you my MS Paint doodles, just know that once my 3D scan man is back from SEMA we'll get right to work making renders.

My detailer is a former employee of mine, so I follow his development as a business owner and occasionally point out when something looks like a bad idea. He recently became an Icon dealer, so I got the spiel lol. It's not a panacea, but being thick and soft, it repels the day-to-day rock chips better than "traditional" ceramic coatings. Think "liquid PPF" rather than ceramic coating competitor. I have ceramic/hydrophobic coatings on my track cars, and the problem was that rock chips at 100mph would still go through it, so that square millimeter loses the coating. The mm's add up quickly if you regularly drive fast in dirty conditions, and you end up basically stripping the coating off. We'll see how well Rocklear holds up!

Only a small picture update for today, I yanked the passenger front fender (old, cracked, missing the air guide) and just went for a brand new one. Coming from BMW's, these are remarkably easy to install! Noticeably less aero lift at 120mph too, I'm a happy camper. A Cup lip would really help with the lift, does anyone have data on the additional drag it contributes?

circuit.heart

Starting "Enhance" chapter a little early - I received a render of the 996 NB-fitment Titan7 T-S7 I ordered before committing to forge -> machining.





I asked Ed for an OEM+, conservative spec; these will be 19x9 +46 F / 19x11 +63 R. Once they're validated on my car, they should be made available on Titan7's website later. Hoping to make this the pattern with everything we develop for this car - I don't want 1-of-1 flex pieces, it's always better to share (and sell ).

EVOMMM

Great looking rims but for the 996 18 inch should be max especially if you plan to track it
I went from 19 back to 18 and my overall ride control improved as well as off camber changes

c didy

Word.

zbomb

If the OP wants to run 19's... at least he picked a dope set.

Plus, gives him a good excuse to throw a set of 380MM GT3 brakes on it, the stock ones gonna look teensy weensy behind those big *** wheels.

circuit.heart

I'm never tracking this car besides playing a bit at the PEC - have no appetite to ruin an M96 lol. With a 245/35 and 295/30 tire it's practically the same sidewall height as the stock 18" spec, so I'm not expecting any real change besides a higher ride height. As zbomb said though, the stock brakes will be swimming in there haha. Can't afford GT3 consumables so I'm looking at the Girodisc 340/325 upgrade kit. Seems like a well thought-out package to improve bite, thermals, and appearance.

In the meantime, I... really dislike the Porsche Roof Transport System. I get that it's functional and that it's the only one that levels a roof box, but the bars are an old design, they're really tall, and the overall aesthetic is just kind of frumpy IMO. Roast me all you like. My other cars all use Yakima racks - quiet, pretty, and adaptable left and right - so I'm going to figure out a way to make my Yakima bars fit the 996/997 roof as well as, if not better, than factory Porsche. My daily driver wears a hacked-together Whispbar setup and I love it. No wind noise, super low profile, and somehow 25-30mpg with the box.



Yakima specifies "Landing Pad 22" for the 996 so I eBay'd a set to test fit. They're 1) huge and 2) surprisingly ill-fitting. Again, I get why everyone just says to use the RTS.





Still - the Yakima bars and towers themselves look great mocked up, so I just need to do the feet properly.




Took measurements on the roof for an hour then came up with a first draft.



From the screw hole already, you can see I'm trying to nickel-and-dime a shorter stack height out of this landing pad. The huge Yakima rubber gasket can be replaced by a much thinner, smaller piece like the Porsche RTS (basically just for paint protection), so I made a lip on the underside to stick a basic, 2D rubber gasket to (later). The landing pad can basically go as low as the 996's plastic flap allows while leaving enough meat for a screw to securely fasten the pad to the roof. There's probably a few mm left to optimize once I try to bolt on a physical prototype.



The front and rear feet can use the same basic design, just different heights. I think I did a decent job reducing the visual weight of the landing pad compared to Yakima's.



Next steps are to 3D print some protos and see how far off I am - if by some miracle I get all the dimensions right in one shot, I'll throw the box on too for a vibe check.

circuit.heart

3D printing round 1!



My caliper measurements did great - the Yakima towers clip in with the perfect amount of preload/friction, I probably have to tweak it a hair before transferring from 3D printed prototypes to CNC machined finals. But it looks so good.



Fitment on the roof is also good, but to avoid astronomical machining costs I'm going to tweak the design at the roof interface and try to source an off-the-shelf, soft rubber gasket to squish in between our landing pad and the roof rail.



Super stoked to finish this up and get the rack setup mounted!

freddworks

Cool!

They new wheels will look great!