I am curious to see a detailed listing or explanation of the how specifically the suspension was improved from the 997.1 GT3 to the 997.2 GT3.

I have tried to search this forum for this, but without a lot of success. Surely a function of the poor search function of this board ...

Driving the .2 GT3 car back to back after the .1, the difference is immediately noticeable... .2 car is more calm and settled, especially at the front end. Overall the .1 car is more jittery and nervous feeling. Kinda cool 'super-alive' feeling on the street but NOT at the limit on track...LOL

I am NOT talking about aftermarket improvements.

I would just like to know whether it has been detailed as to what the PAG's GT division did specifically to improve the car's suspension when they released the .2 vs. the .1 as the base...

...spring types and rates?
...shock parameters?
...mounts/bushings?
...geometry?
...other hardware such as control arms?
...programming of the PASM modes?

Thanks in advance...

 

In the pet: dampers, springs, and the pasm controller have new part numbers. I believe the control arms are all identical, along with mounting points. Unclear if stock alignment specs changed. Sway bars may have changed also, can't recall off top of my head.

 

I'm in the middle of doctor office but short and sweet.

Their is a notable difference between the .1 w irons and pccb at the front, with steering and road feel. Driven cars back to back several times. Even when swapped pccb out for irons, still feels different. Anyone know if upright has changes besides mounting points for calipers? I can 3D scan and model on cad but I have been busy these days.

 

Interesting observation. The pccb upright is different. I'm unclear if the geometry is different. My car was pccb is now steel but pccb uprights.

 

The sway bar part numbers are different in the .1 vs. the .2. But I am not sure if the sway bars themselves are different. I have adjusted them in my .2 and .1 and don't remember them being different thicknesses or having different geometries.

 

The .1 is much more a handful and more fun to me than the .2. I do remember a few race shops back in Germany saying the .1 factory alignment is too aggressive for the road - I don't know if these geometries translated to the U.S.

 

IMO, majority of the difference in feel between a stock .1 and a stock .2 is from the sway bars. All the other parts that are different doesn't amount to that much of a difference in feel as I experimented by swapping .2 springs & shocks into a .1 car. The difference in spring rate is only ~50 lbs which is insignificant on a 3000+lbs car. Ultimately the damping characteristic of the shocks are limited by the commands from PASM module anyway, which the stock PASM module is not interchangeable from one model car to another. Back to the sway bars, the .2 sway bars are significantly stiffer than .1 bars, which makes the car more stable(less moving around under load). The stiffer bars help resist the wallowing around even when the car is not turning because left/right side of the suspension very rarely move up/down at the exact same time and at the exact same rate, so the bars are adding stiffness to the chassis anytime the road is less than perfectly flat. As a side note, TPC Racing makes sway bars that are even stiffer than the .2 bars so I think of TPC bars as an equalizer without having to change the entire suspension. And then there's the DSC module to vastly expand the command to the shocks over the stock .1 and .2 PASM module.

 

Having driven both in stock form, the dampening is notably different between the two. I don't want to start a war on which is better but I voted with my wallet for the one that's better for me.

FWIW Preuninger also mentioned in the Q&A at the PCA tent at RRV that they made a major redesign of the car.

 

AS I recall Porsche took many of the lessons learned on the GT2RS and employed them on the .2.

The swaybars are definitely different, but I also think that the front track in particular is wider, I also
think the spring rates are different too...

 

Like others said, different PASM valving, spring rates, sway bars and quite possibly PASM programming.

The control arms and linkage bits are the same. Different front track width (in the RS only, not GT3) is down to wheel width not other hardware.

.1 and .2 cars feel VERY different to drive. The latter car is not necessarily better but def more composed on street.

 

If you watch this original roadtest by Harris he talks about what advances they made on the Gen2 997 GT3 - in particular something about a new, lower front wheel carrier they introduced to aid turn-in/reduce understeer.


As always with Porsche i'm sure they made lots of seemingly small changes which together made a noticeable difference in the handling.