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I’m damn impressed with attention to detail and also envious of your skill and collection please keep posting updates
im trying to make my car into a 996 gt3 wannabe and your car is my template
Mike
All very impressive❗️
My personal favorite part is the tech tip on installing the CF door Jam thresholds. I agree with Ryan, those CF parts against white is THE best look.
Nah… you’ll be fine, you’ll be out of there in half the time. :-)
Want me to really blow your mind? Best way to clean the HVAC system: pull the cabin filter and steam all the vents. Install a new cabin filter. It’ll blow out any dust or funky smells.
Nice! I will certainly give it a try. Which nozzle did you use?
The last thing I had to do on this car was pin the coolant lines. I dropped it off at SharkWerks a couple weeks ago and had them, replace all the rubber hoses, pin the coolant lines, replaced the expansion tank, thermostat, water pump, fuel filter & upgrade the LSD with a Guard unit.
I picked up the car today (‘saw @smceo ’s beautiful white 7.1 RS waiting for it’s pinning — what an incredible stance with those JRZs).
All the parts that came off the car looked to be in decent shape, but on a 17 year old car the preventative maintenance is well worth the peace of mind. I was on the fence about upgrading the LSD in this car given the 19K miles on the odometer. How worn could the LSD actually be? I was wrong. I immediately noticed the difference on hard acceleration out of a corner. In fact, I feel so good about the work @sharkster, James and Dan @ SharkWerks did that I’m starting to think about a good time to take my 997.2 GT3 in for the same work + coolant line pinning.
Now there is literally nothing left to do to this car, all my maintenance items are up to date, paint looks fantastic and I’ve got fresh rubber… I guess I’ll just drive the hell out of it! See you all as I rip through the Santa Cruz Mountains! 👋
Edit: I just gave this thread an entire read from the top, and I have to admit that I am incredibly envious of your level of attention detail (I thought I was OCD)! This is the level of perfection I strive to be operating at, and you have just set the benchmark incredibly high. This is one of my favorite threads on RL now, looking forward to future updates on your machine. Keep the photos coming!
The last thing I had to do on this car was pin the coolant lines. I dropped it off at SharkWerks a couple weeks ago and had them, replace all the rubber hoses, pin the coolant lines, replaced the expansion tank, thermostat, water pump, fuel filter & upgrade the LSD with a Guard unit.
I picked up the car today (‘saw @smceo ’s beautiful white 7.1 RS waiting for it’s pinning — what an incredible stance with those JRZs).
All the parts that came off the car looked to be in decent shape, but on a 17 year old car the preventative maintenance is well worth the peace of mind. I was on the fence about upgrading the LSD in this car given the 19K miles on the odometer. How worn could the LSD actually be? I was wrong. I immediately noticed the difference on hard acceleration out of a corner. In fact, I feel so good about the work @sharkster, James and Dan @ SharkWerks did that I’m starting to think about a good time to take my 997.2 GT3 in for the same work + coolant line pinning.
Now there is literally nothing left to do to this car, all my maintenance items are up to date, paint looks fantastic and I’ve got fresh rubber… I guess I’ll just drive the hell out of it! See you all as I rip through the Santa Cruz Mountains! 👋
I saw the instagram post and immediately thought of his car
Brand new black OEM lugs from Porsche always look like they’ve been in a rock tumbler, so I splurged on a set of titanium lugs in black from Acer Racing.
Ryan
You wrote the above in your initial post.
I've really enjoyed following you on this journey. One thing I appreciate is that you do not appear to have left anything to chance.
Instead, it's as you've put your GT3 through a structured enhancement process.
This is why I know I can count on you to have given this some thought - what type of socket(s) do you use to prevent scratching your new lugs?
I recently bought an aluminum socket from suncoast, but I found that the walls of the socket are too thick to use on my current wheels.
@The Duke I largely have Sonic Tools hand tools, they sell a plastic sleeved 19mm socket that prevents the outside of the socket from damaging the lug hole in your rim. For extra assurance, use a manual socket wrench instead of a power tool to loosen and remove the lugs. Here a link to the socket I have, but I’m sure you can find something similar on Amazon at a cheaper price.
I purchased a set of perlon 996 GT3 seats off BAT, for a fairly reasonable price. With shipping, they were a bit more inline with market price. The seller was nice and easy to deal with.
The red buttons on the seatbelt receptacles, while fine, had started to age and fade. So I order two new receptacles:
Part numbers:
996-803-183-09
996-803-183-10
...and the harness pass-through trim had been spray painted silver by a previous owner. So I order two new sets of trims:
Part number:
996-521-905-90 - x2
The four parts ran me about $400.
The perlon material on the seats is in good condition, they just needed a cleaning. I used a carpet extractor on them and they look good as new, including the Porsche logo embroidery in the head rest.
One thing I forgot to check before purchasing them, was whether the harness blocks had all the hardware intact. Both seats where missing the spacer bushing on both sides, but the rest of the pieces of the harness blocks were retained. I swapped the spacers over from my leather version of the seats, while I search around for replacement spacers on McMaster-Carr, Grainger, etc.
For reference, the door side spacer is:
Outer Diameter: 24mm; Inner Diameter: 16mm; Height: 5.5mm
One other note: the two "outer" screws on the brand new harness trims were about 0.5" longer than the screws on the trims I replaced, which resulted in the screw coming through the other end of the trim creating a visible bump in the plastic. That was annoying. On the other trims, I reused the old screws with no problem. My advice, snip the last 0.5-0.75 inches off the long screws if replacing the trims with new pieces. I will likely have to get 1 more set of trims for the single seat that was damaged, but I'll wait to see if I also have to pick up new harness mounting blocks in order to get the spacers.
With the seats in the car, this car looks incredible. I couldn't be happier with how they came out.
The leather 996 GT3 seats go up on the pallet rack to join the growing collection of 996/997/991 seats. FWIW, I've been covering seats for storage with breathable Christmas Tree covers that can be purchased off Amazon. They are cheap and the right size/shape.