997CS4

If you lift the parking brake one notch on a Carrera 4 (S) you disengage the front axle and turn your car temporarily in a rear wheel drive car!

Edgy01

Have we proven this to actually work? We read about this once earlier. It's seem a little too easy.

rijowysock

was in video i saw with porsche engineers.. one click disengages for like times when u wanna have RWD... guy said put down and back to normal.

Edgy01

Saw and heard the same video several months ago. Is that all we have?

For example, can you put that car on a 2WD dyno and 'disable' the front end and make a dyno run?

It just makes me nervous,--that something could be damaged.

KeninBlaine

Was it applicable to 997.1 or 997.2 or both? And did it apply to both automatic and manual transmissions? I recall that there was some limitation mentioned when brought up last time and I don't remember that it was ever fully verified.

rijowysock

Video was 997.2 PDK

BlueJay73

I mentioned this to a couple of Porsche techs at a Porsche dealership awhile ago. They said they'd never heard of it.

medtech

Supposedly you can do something similar even in a 996. Only for limited use like if you get stuck in a ditch and need to focus the traction to the rears.

tooloud10

It seems strange to me that they'd design an AWD car in such a manner that the front driveshaft is interrupted/disconnected every time the parking brake is used.

1Carnut

I find that very had to believe, I have turned 2 996tt's to RWD, and recently my Gallardo to RWD, both were a lot more involved than that.

medtech

I doubt it's disconnected. I think it just fools the traction mgmt.

JohnnyBahamas

I was under the impression that was affiliated with 4's and PDK.

One thing that comes to mind immediately would be allowing the car to be dyno'd on the most common form of in ground dyno... those being RWD dynos.

Other than that and possibly maintenance of systems I can't imagine why one would want the weight up front without the additional traction up front.

Rob in WA

LINK TO AUTO BLOG ARTICLE

VIDEO

Moderato

Since the car now has an electro magnetic c.diff, most likely all this does is release the clutches completely and essentially "open" the c.diff. When the car is in motion, this would allow the parking brake to lock up the back wheels with minimal disruption to the AWD system. They probably designed the system to do this with the very first click of the parking brake. As long as the parking brake isn't engaged at this point (however minimal) I suppose this is just a way to open the c.diff and alter the handling characteristics of the car. If the parking brake is even slightly engaged at one click, I wouldn't think it's a great idea. Perhaps if this gets enough publicity, Porsche will either make a driver's controlled center differential available in the future (which I doubt they will), or just put an "on/off" in a menu somewhere for the c.diff (maybe a possibility as part of a future sport crono feature). Disclaimer - this is all pure speculation on my part.

Ray S

The AWD system in the 996 is a viscous coupling (much different than the system in the 997). I don't see how you could turn it off.