motoring

Ryan was on the Starke Design SC18 from Tire Rack, a little heavy but legal offset without spacers

Twfa5

Are the Allegerita HLT not a good option? They'd seem close to perfect at +53 and +40 offsets front and rear.

sjfehr

They should be great. The main reason I didn't go this route is that I had just bent one of my old 18x9 Allegerita HLT rears (after 5 years of daily driving) and was hoping the Forgestars would be more robust. Also, the Forgestars were $100 cheaper. One big advantage of the Allegerita HLT is you can use your existing bolts, so swapping wheels is easier.

Twfa5

I'm balking at the cost of a front sway bar and drop links (by Tarrett)...I usually spend about $150 on a sway bar for a street class car lol...Nearly $600 is nuts. Do I have to get the drop links if I'm sticking to autox? (Also, any suggestions or ideas of which hole I would use on the adjustable settings on the bar)?

And is an exhaust worth it? Most cars I've driven haven't added much power to make them an important mod unless competition is very close.

Thanks for the info guys!

As for background, I've raced STX, ES, KM, CS, GS (currently) for the past 7 years.

sjfehr

I've often joked you could buy a miata sway bar and drop links, and a miata to put them on, for what it costs to do a front bar change on a Porsche. Probably take less time, too. Pain in the butt install that involves dropping the subframe. I tell you what, though: my car handles absolutely fantastic and I can tune it just how I like it.

You need the adjustable droplinks to make it fit without hitting the A-arm. They allow you to adjust pre-load, too. If you like the way your car handles now, might not even be worth your trouble, though.

Twfa5

I have a set of race ramps and most tools you'd need. Is it simple enough to do lying down in a driveway or am I better off throwing money at a shop to put it in?

Might've found the right Cayman in Texas...and of course now I'm getting cold feet! Thinking of the thousands I could save staying in GS...how I already own a car I love driving in my S2000...and yet I've always wanted a Porsche, especially a Cayman S!

mopar bob

"and yet I've always wanted a Porsche, especially a Cayman S!"

Ding Ding I think that we found a winner. I don't think that any one of us got into this to save money. All kidding aside a Porsche is a special car and I love driving mine every day even in the snow. Yes the front bar cost a bit but was the best money for making the car a blast to run. I do most of my own work but I let the shop do the front bar. Maybe I'm getting old but they had to do the alignment anyway so I let them do the install. It's a hard choice as the S2000 is a great platform. I know the way I would go but hey your on a Porsche site.

burglar

You're in the wrong forum to get cold feet, we're enablers here. You definitely want a Porsche.

I'm no help on DIY stuff on those inferior water coolers though...

sjfehr

It's still a DIY job if you're ambitious, just not a trivial one. My wife and I did ours in the garage with a couple of jack-stands. A shop could knock it out pretty quickly.

These are AWESOME cars, well worth the effort!

Twfa5

Planning to get the Tarrett sway bar (Unless there's others I should consider other options?).

Anybody know what setting I should put the sway bar on to start for autox? Curious what setting Ryan C used.

Sprockett

I ran the Tarett 26.5" GT3 bar with their drop links. Quality and fitment are really good and Tarett really do take care of their customers. On asphalt I ran the bar with one side on full soft and the other side on the second softest. On concrete at Crows and Lincoln I ran the bar with both sides on the second softest setting. At the limit, this little change makes a huge difference in how the car behaves.

Actually burglar was correct, at Nationals I ran those Replika brand Fuch reproductions. The fronts fit without spacers and you can run something like from 4mm to 18mm spacer in the rear and be legal (not sure about inner tire clearance) given the XRP 5mm spacer option available on the car plus the +/-7mm rules (watch you front offsets match the XRP as well). The reason I ran these wheels and not the super lightweight Enkei NT03 is that because of the profile of their drop center the Enkei wheels are super hard to mount oversized and stiff tires to. I was stuffing a 265/35 tire on the front 8.5" wheel and just could never get a new RE71R tire to seat the bead. The Relipka's are not light weight wheels by any definition but who doesn't love the Fuch look on a Porsche they also cost like $500 brand new for a set of four.

Again, I ran 265/35 front and 285/30 rear RE71R. Yes, the rear diameter was much smaller than the front. Car kinda looked goofy if you paid attention but I wasn't going to give up the width up front where the car really needs grip and the short rear helped give the car a little more thrust which it really needs. I never had a problem with nannies or abs despite the diameters. The car did plenty of around town miles and likely 5-600 highways miles like this.

Besides the above, the only other modification I made to the car was an alignment. With snow still on the ground, we guessed at a alignment (Zero toe and maybe -1.8 or -2 degrees camber rear. Nearly 1/4" toe out and max front camber/caster front), loaded the car on a trailer and Wayne towed it to Fontana. I never set or checked the alignment again all year.

I don't think there is an 'easy' way to swap out the exhaust on a 987.1 because of the location of the cats. The 987.2 has off the self options.

PASM shocks seem more than fine no matter where we were...plus the less things to adjust the less I'll screw it up.

Twfa5

Wow! Thanks for all the notes! I appreciate it!

I just purchased the Allegerita HLTs in 8.5 and 10". Hope they work out! Did you ever try any other tires with the car? To start off and get some seat time with the car, I may run Federal RSRRs for a bit, since they grip so well for a 1/3 of the cost, but I'm then looking to compare the Stones to RS4s or other tires that have come out recently.

Thanks again!

burglar

Just one quick note to anyone prepping a 987: XRR (big wheels) and XRP (5mm spacers) are explicitly not able to be combined in some of the Porsche literature, it's one or the other.

It's really hard to find that info, and it's not consistent in all of the literature, but I don't want someone to lose a protest because of it.

sjfehr

Those graphics say tyres. Obviously not related to the US market

The extra spacers are also unnecessary; you don't need more than 7mm beyond XRR to stuff giant tires, and the extra rear track width would only increase understeer and the extra width hurts in slaloms. I hit so many more cones when I added that half inch of tire...

slate83

Hello. My name is Evan. I'm an autocrosser out of Austin, TX. I just purchased a 2006 Cayman S for autocross and have been reading this as well as some other threads to try and figure out wheels and offsets.

sjfehr,

I'm also looking at Forgestar F14s and I was thinking of going +48 front and +35 rear (-7mm from stock XRR wheels per SCCA rules). Is there any reason you would go 49/37 vs. 48/35? I'm assuming that small change shouldn't cause fitment issues. I've found other posts that make me think I'm safe in the rear (people with lowering springs and 11" wide wheels with 295s on the rear with similar offsets) but haven't found many posts about running 265+ tires in the front.

Ryan,

I'm confused about the legality of 4mm to 18mm spacers on the rear with a +50mm offset wheel.
SCCA says +/- 7mm
Stock rear offset is +42
There is an OE option 5mm spacer (ignoring any potential issues about availability of spacer with XRR package for the moment)

First question:
Per the rules, could one run a wheel without a spacer with offsets between +30 and +49? Or is it only legal to run either:
+35 to +49 withoutspacers
+30 to +44 with spacers

Second question:
How did you come up with 4 to 18 mm spacers as the legal range in the rear with a +50 offset wheel?
50-18 = 32
50-4 = 46
It seems to me that the legal range is either +30 to +49 or spacer dependent as noted above. Depending on how the rule is interpreted, I would think the range of spacers you could use with that wheel would be either:
1mm to 20mm
or
6mm to 20mm