997.2 Track Prep
 

I get 8 to 10 track days per year and am about to pick up a 997.2 C2S. This will be a daily driver. What is current thinking around track prep? I'm interested in alignment specs and required upgrades. I drive in Red or Black run groups. DEs only, VIR and Summit Point.

Thank you in advance for your comments.

997 forum has tons of info on this topic. go with minimal mods in the beginning.
front axle: adjuatable fork arms, GT3 or RSS tarmac LCAs; rear axle: tarett toe arms.

also put on latest GT3 sway bars, front and rear. camber depends of what rubber you want to use.
front is typically set from -2 to -3 degrees, rear is set to -1.5 to -2.5, keeping .5 deg diff between front/rear. front toe is 0, rear toe 0.10.
adjustable fork arms in front are needed to set required caster, mine is set to 8.2 equal on both sides. on stock suspension it differs front/left.

after those mods you can decide for yourself if you want to swap shocks/springs to something else or continue rebuild.

Thanks Paul. Good info. I'll be on Hoosiers as soon as I can find a set of used wheels to put them on. That being said, I likely won't be as aggressive as I could because I'll be working on a compromise set up with this car being a daily driver.

No problem with oiling on the .2's when wearing race rubber? I'm hearing the new DFI motor has more or better positioned pickups making this a non-issue. I have not seen the design so interested in feedback on this.

PM sent on some used wheels for track use.

Best i can tell is that no one reported track related damage on 9a1 motors. You can PM BGB motorsports with this question as they did a 3.8 dfi motor install into GA racing cayman.

For track wheels try to find 9"/12" set in gt3 nb offsets, it goes fine on nb street cars.

2 or 3 teams in the Continental Tire Challenge are running the new 3.8 DFI motors. They look to be 997.2S with the aero kits. The Rum Bum 911 took 1st at Barber 2 weeks ago.

question was if those 9a1 have 'real' dry sump or if current sump design is still adequate enough, so, it looks like the answer is positive - they do run fine and do not have similar level of oil starvation in turns as m97/m96 generation had.
but to say anything about longivity it probably would take 2-3 more years at least, it is still quite early to speculate, imho.

i wish that process to swap m96 for 9a1 would be simpler, i would probably do that on my car myself if it would not require to swap out ECU with all sensors and harnesses.

We have only lost 1 motor and it was due to abusive shifting and a rather large missed shift in the uphill esses at the Glen while testing in May. In the photo below, we are retiring the 1st installed GTS motor ever run under race conditions. This motor is being prematurely retired with 80 + hours on her in anticipation of the final 3 races of the year and our wanting to put a fresh motor in the green #38. She has countless hours of abuse at north of 8100 RPM on a true, 100% bone stock engine. These new motors are awesome. We have a 9A1 3.4L Cayman motor with over 2 seasons on it and not much loss of horsepower. I can't say it enough...these new motors are awesome.

:D

P.S. In the photo, the PCNA crate actually contains another fresh 0 hour GTS motor that is our only spare, belonging to the owner of the silver/blue #83 Porsche that sits 1 point behind Rum Bum in the driver's championship. It's a great year for the Porsche!

Good to hear, John.

Will you 'tear down' the GTS motor ? If you do, and I hope you do :-), can you please post/report on any findings, positive and negative ?

TIA

I would love to but I have no choice but to return the engine to the dealer in Northern California, as it's securing a rather exorbitant $25,000 core deposit.

We have been inside and out of the 3.4 DFI motors. There really doesn't seem to be anything in there but left over carbon! Other than the fact that some torque specs on bolts really need to be increased due to the RPM and abuse like flywheel bolts, vacuum assist pump bolts, etc, they don't show signs of fatigue in the form of power loss or oil puking.