lax01

You just had an F1 pedal lying around?

andy2

Yup, a gift from a client who’s company name was on the car.. It says ‘Peddle’ on it actually, British humor 😁

Tom@TPC Racing

They do say a good pedal box gives track driver more consistent foot positioning that results in more consistent foot control. The short drive I did was very satisfying to me.

ngng

lol, that's as good a reason as any

Wind911

When you are pulling 4G+ in corners you’ll probably need that. Plus almost all F1 drivers left foot brake.

Tom@TPC Racing

Planning for my next mod and calling out to see if I may enlist help from those who has done this mod.

The mod is 997 Cup Front Strut Brace. The only pics I found online are the two low-res images below. Unable to get any documents on this either. We have raced and worked on a lot 997 Cup cars, none came was this brace.




Here's my armchair estimation of the steps, please let me know if I'm missing something or there's a better way.

1. Remove all plastic covering from front trunk.
2. Remove battery.
3. Remove the strut tower nuts that the brace go on to (leave one nut per side tight to hold the alignment position).
4. Remove the top fender screws and pull back on the fender(s) enough to clear the corners of the brace.
5. Rest the brace on the strut towers.
6. Mark the holes to be drilled on the car's bulkhead.
7. Drill the holes that are marked.
8. This is the step I am unsure about since I haven't had the opportunity to see in person, do this location allow for M8 flange nuts or does it require rivet nuts?

Thanks in advance for any info. I will be sure post pics.

gt3be

It was only installed in the last 997 GT3 Cup 2013 where the Supercup already where driving 991 Cup. I have installed the strut brace on my 997 GT3 RS MkI. The Porsche Motorsport instruction says you have to remove/loosen on fender. I wrapped the strut brace both sides an squeezed through.

Here is a link to the Porsche Carrera Cup Bulletin 1/2013
https://content2.eu.porsche.com/prod...Bulletin_1.pdf

Tom@TPC Racing

Thank You Very Much, Sir! This is exactly the information I am looking for. We went from racing 2012 997 Cup to 2014 991 Cup so have not seen this brace in USA Cup.

Tom@TPC Racing

The Porsche Motorsport front strut tower brace arrived earlier than expected so here's my installation with pics.

I was expecting July arrival since the Porsche Motorsport warehouse in Germany is closed for the month of June. Fortunately, the strut brace was shipped before closing.





Its interesting that the installation document specified using M6 bolts for the connection to the car's bulkhead. The bolt holes are drilled to accommodate M8 bolts. I'll go with M6 since I special ordered the bolts and hex rivet nuts specified by the factory document.



Here's the brace loosely lying in place.



The corners protrude beyond the fenders so this is going to take a bit more effort to install than strut brace for other cars.





At first, I removed the top fender screws, then flexed the fenders. But I didn't like the creaking sound it was making so then I removed the bottom screws to make the fenders move easier. Alternatively, I could have lower the front suspension top mounts but then I'd have to do a 4-wheel alignment. If you need to have an alignment done anyway then lowering the front suspension top mounts instead of loosening fenders is a good option.



Now that the brace made it passed the fenders, I marked the holes to be drilled. The passenger was spacious to work with.



While the driver side had the AC accumulator in the way.



Here's the factory hex rivet nuts to be installed after drilling.



Angle drill is the only way to do this job. The factory installation document specified drilling 2 holes on the passenger and the using an existing stud for the dual brake master cylinder(on Cup cars) on the driver side. Street cars don't have this stud on driver side so I drilled a total of 4 holes even though the document specified 3 fasteners total.



I had trouble with the rivet nuts "spinning" on the installation bolt. I didn't take any pics of that.

Fast forward, the brace is installed!







Comment on the special ordered M6 bolts- These bolts have much smaller head than standard M6 bolts. I think the smaller heads is for potentially preventing over-tightening that will destroy the rivet nuts.



For those who don't know what a rivet nut(aka blind nut) is, it is a collapsible threaded tube that is used for applications with no access to holding the nut side during tightening. So the collapsible tube is designed to flare out on the nut side to grip the surface where is there's no access(hence the name "blind" nut). It works well, but usually you get one shot at installing it right. I sacrificed one rivet for testing. See how the hex nut side started to flare out. I used a new bolt and new nut for each rivet nut to prevent damage.



In my opinion the most hateful step wasn't the rivet nuts even though I got frustrated at one point. The most hateful step was to reshape the bracket for the AC accumulator...which I may remove later.


This took around 5 hours. That's it for tonight. Time to drive home and test out the new mod.

flsupraguy

Nicely done

Tom@TPC Racing

After driving home last night and back to work this morning, I can feel the front end is "tighter" over bumps. Before the strut brace I was driving with DSC in Sport mode all the time. After installing the strut brace I switched the DSC to Normal mode during a bumpy section of the highway. It feel as if the front end is more "unitized" now, whereas compared to before there was some flex which wasn't a bad thing, flex is calculated as part of the suspension by design in many cars. How the whole chassis feels now over uneven road grades is kind of like the feel of a 991RS where the chassis feels like a solid plate of steel rocking with no flex when a wheel is about to coming off ground. Its a neat feeling. Hope this doesn't induce push on track. I should note that the plastic trim pieces won't fit with the strut brace.

MC 968CS

Interesting. Given the feedback I’d be interested in a good simple to fit one. Does anyone make an aftermarket ‘traditional bolt on’ Front strut brace you know of?

Wind911

Racing Dynamics makes Aluminum https://www.racdyn-usa.com/PROD/997+99+00+010.html
CF https://www.racdyn-usa.com/PROD/997+99+00+011.html

But without bolting to the bulkhead like the 997 cup car bar, it'll just be redundant to the two diagonal bars from the factory. IMO.

Tom@TPC Racing

There are few different brands of bolt-in strut braces, I don't think they'll produce the same results as having the brace connected to the bulkhead. But their installation simplicity is a plus.

MC 968CS

ok thanks, appreciate that input.