Saaboteur

Whoops, went to update my thread and didn't notice the questions about the screens! Unfortunately, I can't add much. My car came with them installed when I bought it, and I have no idea on the supplier or how they are fixed. I do need to get in there with some compressed air to blow out some gunk (one disadvantage to having the screens in place), so when I do I will know more.

Meantime, some mods from the past little while, as I finally have the car back on the road after winter hibernation.

All red Tequipment tails, I like the look much more than the aftermarket LED units, much more subtle (but at some point I will likely move to the aftermarket LED units for the fronts, those look nice in my view):



Made my own bumper plugs and keyhole cover. Very simple really, I did this on my S2000 - I just purchased some plastic clips from the auto parts store and hand painted them with touch up paint. The keyhole cover needed some trimming to fit, but not a big deal with a utility knife. I did have to open up the holes on the front bumper slightly for the bumper plug clips to fit. The touch up paint was C$40, the clips maybe another $5. Easy peasy.

For reference, I bought the smallest clips available for the bumper. For the keyhole cover, I just used one that most matched the diameter of the keyhole - about 20-21mm.











Picked up a second hand set of BBS CH-Rs, I'm about halfway through refinishing them. The two fronts had some knicks, those have been filled or blended in by a local wheel shop. The next step is to have all of them powdercoated. The purchase of the wheels was pretty bare bones - I also need to get new centre caps (going to go with BBS as opposed to Porsche crest and valve stems. Currently debating whether to get TPMS, my car has it on the spec sheet but it's not activated. I think a previous owner deactivated the feature.



Finally (no picture though), I also have metric instruments. I have a bit of OCD about that, and reverting to metric instruments was very high on my 'must do' list for the car (it is a US car originally).

I have to thank Ralph at North Hollywood Speedometer specifically. Back in February, I had taken delivery of the FVD gauges. Very nice product, but very expensive (with the Canadian dollar taking a dump, they were almost $900 by the time they got here - should have bought them in the fall when the dollar was stronger!).

Then I painfully removed the instrument cluster - not very easy because it was cold out and the clips just did not want to disengage. Even scratched the clear plastic too, which pissed me off to no end. Ended up fixing that with some headlight lens polish kit. Anyway, then I painstakingly wrapped everything up, including of course the new FVD faces, and sent them down to North Hollywood Speedo.

Upon arrival, the shipping guy there called me and said he couldn't find the faces. WTF?! Unfortunately, he threw them out when unwrapping everything. Another set back. Also unfortunately for the shipping guy, it was his second strike, apparently, something to do with a mix up on another package. I was absolutely sure I packaged the faces, I mean it would defeat the whole purpose not to include them, I triple checked that, and must have spent 30 minutes just packing everything up.

Ralph stepped up and acknowledged the loss on their end and bought new faces from FVD at their cost. When I spoke with them again, he advised me that he had a new shipping guy, and I only paid for the removal and install service, not the faces again. Top notch service, would definitely deal with them again.

achman

Long dead thread, but I have to say, yes, if the car is an X51 car that was ordered with PSE, it definitely has the button for the PSE on the dashboard....as mine does. I would wonder if it was added later...unless it is on the order sheet.
Enjoy that great car!

achman

my bad, I am moron. I see you have a 2006, I mistakenly thought it was a 996.

Saaboteur

Edgy01

Nice deal!

srcn

Factory installed X51 comes with PSE.

If you have Sport Chrono and PSE, then PSE is tied to the "Sport" button. Cars with PSE but no Sport Chrono will have a PSE button instead.

Saaboteur

Okay, thread revival. The thread was meant to be my ownership diary, but I've neglected keeping it up to date. The last substantive post was in 2015, so I'll try to pick it up from there.

The second hand CH-Rs sat until winter 2016/2017 when I finally got around to refinishing them – powder coated in black chrome.

Side note – I think the owner of the powder coating shop does wheels and other auto related parts for fun. I’ve paid him cash always. The shop is massive, and most of the items there are oilfield related, and quite large too. The last time I was there he showed me a gold mining/sifting contraption that was to be powder coated, and it was about the size of an SUV. He is clearly a car nut, as he has a tuned CTS-V coupe, and an R34 Skyline GTR, along with two pallets of go-fast parts for a major build. Alas, I believe the latter is for sale, if not sold by the time I post this.

Saaboteur

Then I had a custom wheel done up by LedermanZ in Latvia (find him on eBay). Nothing really fancy, more of an “OEM +” look. Very happy. I had the option of sending him my existing wheel to be refinished, but comparing the cost of shipping, it wasn’t too much more just to buy a core from him, so went with that route instead.

At the same time, I also acquired a Numeric Racing shifter. I didn’t get their cables, or do any other modifications to the shifter. Very, very happy with this mod. My previous sportscar was a Honda S2000, which had the best shift feel ever, in my opinion (an opinion shared with evo magazine), so the Numeric brought the 997’s shift feel very close to the S2000. Note my car was originally ordered with a factory short shifter kit, and the Numeric is an improvement in feel on that too. I have it set to the medium setting, so the throw itself is comparable to the factory short shifter.

Saaboteur

I used to work at the Alberta Legislature for a very long time, and they still invite me back once or twice a year for special events. Being a government building, it typically isn’t open to the public for close vehicular access. So whenever I’m invited, I always take the opportunity for some pictures, as it’s a lovely background. These are some with the OE wheels.

These are some with the BBS CH-Rs, including pictures in and around Canmore, Alberta (quite near Banff if you don’t know it) when I went to Calgary for a week long mediation training. So twice, I took the car out to Canmore on Highway 1A, the twisty route.

However, almost as soon as I got home, I figured that the car needed a drop. Then acquired some Eibachs. Best price was an eBay seller (but actually drop shipped direct from Eibach in California I believe). Installed them and loved them!

Saaboteur

Later on in 2017, my wife and daughters got me a Function First shift ****. Actually, picked up two of them – one in preferred aluminum, one in delrin. So when the car sits in the summer sun for the whole day at the office, I swap to the delrin for that ride home.

I typically only drive the car between March/April and October/November each year due to Canadian winter. The irony is that of the three cars that I have in our stable for myself, the 997 is the only one that is AWD (the summer daily is my C55 AMG; the winter driver is my Saab 9-3 Aero Sport Combi). So that leaves the cold months for bigger projects that may mean some downtime.

So during the winter of 2017/2018, I removed the calipers and had them powder coated orange, as the existing red was fading badly. I felt that red was too plain, and wanted something different. Acid green too common; yellow would be fronting that I had ceramic discs, so orange it was. Ironically, orange isn’t one of my favourite colours, but I feel it is a colour that pops well. I think I got the idea because I have a suit jacket and a windbreaker that both have orange lining. Another inspiration for a bright colour for the calipers, actually, was women’s shoes. I always notice when the bottom of the shoe is a bright colour. Was very pleased with the end result, and consequently took many pictures of the car showing off the orange.

Saaboteur

For my birthday in June 2018, I ordered myself a set of FVD headers and cat pipes. After the poor experience I had with cheap Taiwanese made cat pipes, I turned towards more expensive options. However, the option that stood out the most to me were the FVDs, specifically part number BES 997 192 00S, as these are made specifically for PSE. I wanted to keep my PSE for the switchability, so that limited my options somewhat. I was told that the headers and cat pipes were fabricated together, and indeed the cat pipes themselves have distinctly different part numbers than the cat pipes sold on their own by FVD. The whole set up is made by M & M Exhaust in Germany, which FVD told me produces systems for Porsche Motorsport. Most impressive was that the items were made to order, as the part number sticker on the packaging had my name on it! Very cool. M&M were also responsive to my questions to them directly as well.

However, since the exhaust took longer than anticipated to arrive, as of November 2018 I haven’t put them on the car yet. So I’m taking the winter to have them ceramic coated (at the same time I picked up a set of headers for my C55 so they’ll get all done together), and new hardware too. I selected some stainless studs from 034 Motorsport (a VAG specialist) and new copper nuts too. That hardware, plus the ceramic coating, should ensure that the headers (and the mounting hardware) don’t corrode.

Saaboteur

I’m planning on taking the orange theme a bit further in the interior. I want to get another Function First ****, but plain this time, then have it re-anodized locally in orange. Function First can’t sort out custom colours, but the local shop is cheap enough for the re-anodizing.

The one option I wish the car had were sport seats, but for whatever reason, the initial owner didn’t spec them. Ideally I’d grab put in Recaro Sportster CS seats, but those are looking 50% more expensive than OE sport seats (therefore kicking myself for not grabbing a local set off kijiji when they showed up about a year ago). However, fortuitously, I was surfing kijiji and found a nice set of OE sport seats, out of a GT2 - full power, alcantara, heated, and crested. I would have preferred regular leather as opposed to alcantara, but with the seller within driving distance and a good price, I grabbed them.

Summer of 2018, I started getting an occasional click in the front suspension when steering at low speed. So I acquired new top mounts and bearings. Wrote a DIY on front suspension R&R for AWD 997s.

Once the sport seats are in, I’ll be ‘done’ with modifications, at least major ones. And that’s quite a change for myself from my past cars, as I always kept mucking around with them.

Saaboteur

And here are a few more photos of the car in and around my home of Edmonton. The one with the flame in the air is near the Esso/Imperial Oil refinery in the summer of 2018. From time to time, they light up the stack for whatever reason, and that one day, during the blazing hot summer, the flame was much, much brighter and warmer than I'd ever felt before. Like as in I felt the heat through the sunroof from the road next to the refinery. Also some photos from the local PCA chapter meets (three grey 997s showed up one day at cars and coffee, two slate grey C4Ss, and my buddy's C2S, seal grey I think).

Also some photos of a friend's lovely SC, which he let me drive for a little while. Very neat car, and whilst it is obviously old, I 'get' now why people love the air cooled cars. My only other previous experience with air cooled 911s is a very brief drive in a 993 Carrera, which I thought really felt its age. By contrast the SC was modified slightly, and a much more engaging drive.

The other air cooled photo I will post is of a RuF Turbo R, one of seven made, and the show car at Geneva this past year apparently. The seller of the sport seats works at the shop that has the RuF for sale so I was lucky enough to see it when I went to pick up the seats! Very cool car.

Saaboteur

And that's it. More photos when I get the sport seats in the car. The headers and cat pipes will probably only get onto the car in the spring.

Recently had a rental car with Apple Carplay, and now want that for my cars too. Thinking of going with a cheap-ish Sony head unit. I love the integration, but the only downer was the data usage.

Petza914

Great update. You're going to love the Adaptive Sport Seats. Here are some tips:

1. Put the windows down, make sure to pad the door sill very well (couple of moving quilts) as there's not a lot of wiggle room to get them in, and if you need to set it down on the sill, you'll mess up the paint and or metal if it's not heavily padded.
2. Move your current seats to the center position where you can access the seat bolts at both ends before disconnecting the battery, but make sure to disconnect the battery before unplugging any connectors from your current seats as you'll trip an airbag fault if you don't.
3. Don't latch the frunk once the battery is disconnected - it's a reflex and happens more than you'd think. I throw a folded up t-shirt over the latch receiver so it can't lock me out just in case.
4. Before moving the new seats into the car, check to see where the seat rails are positioned. If not in the center where you can reach both ends of the securing holes, hook up a 12v jumper to a spare battery and center the seat on the rails - lift it up a little too for ease of access. The photo below shows you where to connect the + and - wires from the battery to be able to power the seat controls. In this setup, white is 12v + and brown is ground (of course).

What's the asking price on the RUF R-Turbo or is it just there as show car?