kkswow12

have you covered those intakes yet? those radiators are accidents just waiting to happen...can't believe porsche let the carsout the door like that, and they didn't even offer a €1000 option of €10 worth of screen to safen up...new word... the front end...

Saaboteur

Fortunately for me, the car came with mesh over the grilles already!!

Now my only problem is getting in there to clear away the smaller gunk that has managed to make its way past the mesh. Might have to remove the bumper for that.

kkswow12

cool, that was my first mod, could cause untold chaos, well, it would be unnecessarily expensive to fix anyway...and looks much more finished with, and not those add ons on the outside, well, just didn't do it for me, they look added on...

Saaboteur

Ordered some of my first mod parts - LED interior bulb kit from USP Motorsports; LED licence plate light modules (whole module as opposed to just bulbs) and just because, titanium fasteners for under the engine lid. The latter two items are from Hoen USA. I was contemplating buying Hoen's xenon matching bulbs for the foglights, but I think I'll just get the whole LED unit instead. Not sure I like the Taiwanese made stuff, so I think I will go with the ones sold by FVD - any ideas which are the best ones?

Saaboteur

Some goodies arrived by mail at the office today:



Still waiting for the licence plate LED modules and the titanium fasteners from Hoen. Kicking myself for not checking out their 'xenomatch' bulbs for our LR3's foglights. Next time I guess.

Think I may have found a screaming deal on a set of Bilstein Damptronic coilovers, too good to resist. Will. Have. To. Buy.

Saaboteur

Installed the LED interior bulbs last night. Piece of cake, although I managed to break the little plastic clip on the glove compartment lens. Oh well, it went back in fine, so hopefully no worries.

Even though I bought the bulbs from USP (cheapest price I could find online for a comprehensive kit of seemingly decent quality), I used the instructions from ECS Tuning. Very helpful!

Saaboteur

These showed up the other day. Got them used from a kijiji seller. Very good deal. I wasn't thinking I would go with coilovers again (after having a set of KW Variant 3s on my S2000) but the price was too low to ignore.

kkswow12

ooo ooo , me too, want, though i never push hard enough that i would need these, but, do they give you adjustable ride height? reason enough, again, 1st world probs...enjoy...

kkswow12

and what are the advantages of this?

Saaboteur

Re: Bilsteins - of course, ride height adjustable. I want to retain PASM functionality, and was originally just contemplating springs only. But the price was too good to pass up. That said, I am missing some of the links that came with the kit, and the adjustment wrenches. I've been in contact with Bilstein USA and spoke with a very helpful lady there, who promises to get back to me soon with some pricing and such.

Re: underdrive pulley - the idea is that it will 'under drive' the accessories slightly, so as to allow the engine to concentrate on making power instead.

Saaboteur

Some new parts arrived the past few days:

Esco jackstands:


new Bilstein links and coil over adjustment wrenches:


Techquipment 'aluminum look' gas cap:


The Esco jackstands are a bit of a pain. I only have two! My engine builder (from whom I buy a lot of parts) made sure of the local distributor's price and that they were sold in paris when they were ordered. So I ordered two pairs - but of course the distributor buggered it up (or perhaps the supplier's supplier mixed it up, dunno) and actually only ended up with two. It already took them like 6 weeks to get these first pair to me - probably by the time I get the other two, winter will be over! Boo!

turbofever

i am very curious to drive an x51 car

Saaboteur

Ordered a set of FVD white faced gauges a while back, they arrived a few days ago.



My car is a US car, originally from Arizona. One of the previous owners brought it up to the Vancouver area, and I picked it up from Weissach last fall. I have this OCD issue with driving cars with MPH speedos, so high on my list of mods was a set of metric gauge faces.

Looking closely, the '1x1000 rpm' (or whatever is says) marking on the tach is gone. Also, the hand brake 'BRAKE' light is replaced by the more conventional "(!)" symbol.

Removing the instrument cluster from the car was a huge hassle. I used this DIY:
https://rennlist.com/forums/997-foru...uster-diy.html

However, in the cold of winter, the clips at the back of the cluster just would not disengage, no matter how hard I pulled. I finally resorted to acquiring a pair of 2.5" suction cup dent pullers:

http://www.princessauto.com/en/detai...ps/A-p8136608e

I think I will add a comment to the thread about the suction cups.

Once those were engaged, it still took a few tries, but I did finally disengage the clips.

In my initial fumbling attempt to remove the cluster, it seemed that I scratched the clear plastic, resulting in a loud round of expletives. In a pique of rage, bought the cheapest cluster on eBay that I saw with the idea of swapping the cases. A day passed, and calmer heads prevailed and I bought the Turtle Wax headlight restoring kit. I chose this kit specifically because the applicator pad is quite small. Anyway, some time spent with that seemed to restore the plastic on the instrument cluster.

I will now send out the speedo to North Hollywood Speedometer to have them swap the gauge faces. It's gonna be a bit of a pain with shipping with the border and all, not to mention the tanking exchange rate, but I just don't want to mess with the needles. Did that before on my Saabs, and it was a very delicate process.

Finally, I picked up the Tequipment all red tail lights a few weeks back too:



Subtle mod, looks great, and I think a bit less contrived than the aftermarket LED conversions for the 997.1.

Sweet993

Great write up on the X-51 optioned car. I am a recent purchaser of a 06 Carrera S factory X-51 car. What a car!! ~25k miles and smells like new!!

I don't have anything over the radiators and after reading this wonder why it wasn't designed with a screen. Can you tell me how the screen are installed or where they can be bought. This will likely be my only mod. as the car is complete stock.

Thanks!

SJP3003

Another 06 X51 C2S owner here. I bought the kit from Rennline, available in silver or black, and had it installed by the dealer when the x51 was installed.

The kit is highly priced compared to do your own alternatives, but I had no time to do my own. There are good threads here for inexpensive homemade grills made from common hardware store items.