993944S2

Misc notes...
And some other news. I spent 2 hours today at the Porsche plant and had a factory tour. I did this about 10 years
ago and it was fantastic. Some cool things I saw and learned:
-They make the 997, Boxsters and current 997 cup cars on the same assembly line.
-I could see 3 Cup cars at different places in the assembly line. They do pull the cups off the line after they install most of the interior to do some "special" things. It then goes back on the line for suspension and the "marriage" of the engine.
-Saw them building all kinds of engines. Could not watch them build the Carrera GT engine. Its off limits.
I did see a display of a GT engine. It looked 1/2 the mass of a Cayenne Turbo engine sitting right next to it.
-Lost of sub contractors delivering parts all day. The sub that builds the axel, including the brakes and shocks is just next door. The factory holds 30 minutes of inventory. Yup, just 30 minutes.
-I saw them building a signal orange 997S4 with PCCB, and Turbo flairs. Totally custom. All the workers on the floor were looking at the car.
-The sub that delivers the carpets brings them, hanging in a big box like thingy. The cool part is the carpets are aligned by color, exactly like the cars are on the assembly line. They know what cars are going to be on the assembly line 7 days in advance.
-It takes 3.5 hours or something like that to assembly a 997 or Boxster engine.
-The leather from the dash boards and the seats comes from the same cow... Oh.. and if you have a bunch of cows, bring them to Stuttgart. They will arrange for those cows to snuggle up to your very own ***...
-Only 50% of the cars are roadtested today.
-All the cup cars are shipped to Wissach (sp) for final prep b-4 going to the team.
-They say the build the cups only for about 4 months of the year.
-All the guys painting the cars used to sign their names behind the right rear tail light. Go pull yours off and see if it is signed. They don't do this anymore because some of the young workers don't like it.
-The guys that build the cup car engines used to also sign them. They don't anymore. The teams used to look for the signatures, run the engines on dyno and see what guy build the most powerful engines. They would call the factory and say they only wanted engines from that guy.
-Two German (Stuttgart area.) laws. The workers must get a 5 minute break every 1 hour they work. Porsche negotiated 10 minutes every two ours. Also, the law states that all the engines must be within +/-4% of the published
HP rating. Porsche guarantees all engines to at least the stated number up to 4+ over.
-There are some hot chicks working on the assembly line.
-There are only about 5 guys in the entire factory who can properly fit the doors. They have to make specific adjustments so the doors make that classic thud we have all come to love.
-The painted bodies move on an assembly line about 2 meters above your head. I could look up and see a street 997 and a 997 Cup. It was really hard to see any differences. I could not even see the assemblies
for the air jacks.
-It takes about 20 years to be a test driver. Even then you only get to test drive for 4 weeks then you rotate back to your other job.
-When they build a cabriolet, and order a hard top, it gets two "wind" tests. A guy sits in the car (the guy with the biggest ears) and listens for wind noise as they hit the car with 80 mph winds. (They do the same with rain to see if it leaks.), The car gets pulled an the hard top is installed, and its done all over again.
-Yellow stitching on black leather looks really cool.
-I like the clock on the 997 dash board.

OCBen

Thanks for that detailed report - very informative.

But I'm not sure what you mean by that statement above. My girls may be a little chubby but I wouldn't call them cows, though I might bring them with me to Stuttgart to keep my *** warm if it's really that cold there, and if they really do provide accomodations for them.

993944S2

...The tour guide said if you wanted to bring your own leather, they would have it fitted to your own car....

OCBen

Ohhhhhhhhh ...... Got it!

Larry Harris

There was an old saying when I worked crimes against children for the sheriff's office that went "Incest is best" , but I wouldn't have thought it about you.

Sobe

were these flairs wider than the stock C4 rear flairs ?

JFScheck

Feel the LOVE for the wart!

OCBen

LOL ... I'm not a dad. ... Not yet anyways.

I was facetiously referring to some old girlfriends. (Mustn't let the wife read this thread. ...shhhh!)

993944S2

I could not tell if the fenders were wider. It was kind of up in the air and I could not get close enough.

AeroSmith

Great report. Thank you so much for sharing.

JFScheck

Fenders, Cows, where are we taking this thread?

944kid

I'll give you a hint:

It starts with an "A" and ends with an "s"...no it is not ***.

j/k

fluid15

I took the Factory Tour back in 1998. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the 993's come off the line, they were already into full 996 production. Very interesting tour, not surprising being we're all Porsche fans. I really liked seeing all the stock of wheels together in one area, along with the marriage of the shell to the chassis. At that time, the engines were assembled around an eliptical-shaped (close enough) track. One person assembled the whole engine as it slowly moved around the track. About every 10-20 ft was a set of tools he would need for that stage of assembly. I was told during the tour that if we brought our VIN with us we could meet the person who assembled our engine. I'll make sure to do that next time.

The_Phantom

Thank you for this thread.

So, the minimum that a 320 HP 996 engine, like my car has, would have would be 320 BHP + 4% which equals 332.8 BHP but it could be even more.

OCBen

Ah .... NO. ... What that translates to is: 320 - 0% + 4%. The guaranteed minimum (the least) is 320 hp, the maximum is 320 + 4% or more.