In reply to CAinCA :
Yeah, I'm not sure how much I'm loving the stock sports seat. It's much easier to get in/out of the car now, which is great, but not being able to sit back into the seat is uncomfortable.
In reply to CAinCA :
Yeah, I'm not sure how much I'm loving the stock sports seat. It's much easier to get in/out of the car now, which is great, but not being able to sit back into the seat is uncomfortable.
Last week drove the car to lunch with a friend. When going over a speed bump, the rear end bottomed out after going down the speed bump. Hmmm, that's not right and it's not a spring rate issue, I run ~800lb springs back there. A call to MCS to ask them if I can tell externally if the shocks are leaking yielded, "Nope, you need to take them off the car and see if they compress easily and don't rebound".
Well, shoot. This morning I took them off, took them apart and found they had plenty of gas charge. Hard to compress and they pop right back up. Next thing to check was the amount of wheel droop I have, I should have around 2.5" or 6 +ish cm. So rear shocks back together, back on the car, wheels on and I found I've got 3 cm of droop, so half of what I should have. Sigh, but this does explain why the car felt skittish in mid corner bumps sometimes. I need to check the front droop too, hopefully those are fine because if I remove them I'll need another alignment.
Called MCS, thankfully these are imminently rebuildable and easily changed setup wise. Makes sense to service them now, since they're about 3 years old. Lengthening the shock bodies another 3cm is $100 more a shock, so happily affordable. If I have to send all 4 back I could have them turned into double adjustables, but that would cost another $1300 on top of everything else. Kinda doubt I'd go that way, just $$ wise.
I'm not real keen on removing them to send them in right now, between transit time back and forth, plus 2ish weeks in shop the car will be down for a month and the season is just starting. But I suppose it's better to do it now and get the car back up at the end of May vs driving it like this until October and then sending it in during their busy time and maybe having it stuck on the lift for longer...
Decision made to send them in now. That way I get them back at the end of May, can install them and have the rest of the season to make sure the setup is good. If not, I'll pull them at the end of the season and send them back.
Since the car will be up on the lift for ~ 1 month, I decided to make sure it's properly supported. Stands underneath each rear jack point, plus have the bridge jack (on its locks) supporting from the center of the rear cross member.
Everything came apart easily. MCS wants everything off the shocks except the spring seats. When I went to remove the swaybar endlinks I found the bolts galled into the bracket. Of course I discovered this once I'd broken both the bolts.
The irony here is I was going to remove the entire bracket, but decided not to once I saw I'd have to remove the spring seats, which would potentially mess up my ride height. Irony #2 is that I probably could've put the rachet on the nut, spun it off and gotten the end link off and left the bolt in place. Sigh. Now once they come back I'll have to figure out how the F to remove those broken bolts.
Friend is going to loan me his old, stock, assembled rear shocks so I can at least move the car off the lift. Which is a good thing because I want to do a front brake job on the cayenne, then swap out diff, t case and transmission fluids on it.
I'm struggling with the thought of having MCS turn the shocks into double adjustables while they have them. The cost isn't too much and it definitely makes sense to have them do it now. Then in a few years when the fronts need to be serviced I'd have those turned into double adjustables too....
Put my friends stock rear shocks in yesterday afternoon so the car is a roller. Needed to get it off the lift so I could work on the Cayenne today. Man, installing the stock shocks sucked! They're way longer than the aftermarket stuff, to the point where my body weight wasn't enough to push the knuckle down to get the bottom eyelet seated. I had to use a rachet strap, which thankfully worked out.
Had a quick talk with MCS, sounds like they're going to lengthen them 20mm. I'm still waffling on spending the money to have them turned into double adjustables....
In reply to docwyte :
no waffles, only double adjustable dampers!
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Currently struggling with whether my very amateur butt will be able to tell the difference and exploit it, to the tune of the $650 it costs to turn them into double adjustables...
Couldn't help myself and had the rear shocks upgraded to the double adjustables. Figured it'd never be cheaper than right now and I'll do the fronts in a few years when I send them in for service. Having had to borrow my friends rear shocks I decided it'd be a good idea to get my stock stuff assembled so I'd have it if I need to make my car a roller in the future. I'd cannabilized the stock suspension for needed parts when I installed the PSS9's. When I pulled those I should've taken all that stuff off, but I just didn't think about it.
I asked a friend who runs a Porsche shop if he'd recently pulled some off and turns out he had. His shop isn't convenient to me tho, 1.5 hours away in Ft Collins. Happily I needed to be up there this morning to drop my dog off at the CSU Vet school to meet his girl friend and make puppies. So on the way home I stopped by my friends shop and picked up the top hats for the front/rear.
When I got home I checked out my box of stock parts and found the front strut bearings, spring isolaters, etc. The only thing I'm missing are the front strut retaining nuts and I can buy those from FCP Euro. So I'll reassemble all this stuff and have it as spares...
Didn't see that coming.
- R. Charles
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I almost resisted, I came really close to just leaving them as single adjustables. The good news is MCS got them last Thursday and yesterday afternoon I got an email from them saying they were done and ready to get shipped back to me. So I paid the invoice and hopefully they'll get sent out today. 1 week turn around is pretty spectacular, with any luck I'll be installing them next weekend.
So MCS had my rear shocks for a week, which is an unbelievably short amount of time for a turn around. I got them back yesterday and will install them tomorrow. I thought my car would be down for the better part of the month of May waiting for MCS to do the work, shipping time, etc. Super happy about how this turned out and glad I sent them in now! I need to buy two bolts to replace the broken ones for the swaybar end links, otherwise I'm good. I've run a thread chaser through the threads on the swaybar brackets where the broken bolts were.
This afternoon after work I'll reassemble them, tomorrow I'll install them and set the ride height. Here are the shiny, rebuilt, double adjustable rear shocks...
And assembled and ready to go back into the car later this morning
Installed.
Had to make a few ride height adjustments to get it where it was before. Then line up the swaybar endlinks to connect to the swaybars. Drove to lunch and ended up in the same parking lot where that speed bump was that started all of this. So of course I went over it and I'm happy to say the rear of the car didn't bottom out. I did check the droop when it was still on the lift and I picked up about 3cm or so, which is where MCS wanted it to be.
Ride seems better with the double adjustables but that's hard for me to say for sure given I haven't driven the car in a few weeks. Happy that this is sorted! Jon hooked me up with the stock parts I need to reassemble my front struts, so I'll probably do that tomorrow.
A friend followed me home today and remarked that the third brake light wasn't working on the 911. Hmm, wiring had to be done to get it to work in the GT2 decklid, but I remember the shop swapped the light itself out. I swapped it out because the little trim piece that goes over the cover screw had disappeared. Wonder if the shop swapped the lights because the light itself was bad? Quick enough to swap, so I did. I need to get someone to step on the brake pedal while I'm behind the car to check. If that doesn't fix it I'll have to look into the wiring...
So there are always blood sacrifices to the German Car Gods, and this time was no exception. I pinched the inside of my left index finger and ripped off some skin compressing the shocks, lining up the dowel and starting the nuts and somehow when installing the shocks yesterday I must've mashed my right 4th finger. That caused a blood blister underneath my finger nail, which took a surprisingly long time to show itself.
I know some people like to heat up a needle to pierce the fingernail and relieve the blood and pressure but I don't like that. I drill stuff for a living, so it's easy enough to go to my office and just drill a hole in my fingernail. I've found it to be quite a bit less painful compared to the hot needle. Complicating it this time was the fact the finger was on my right hand, so I'd have to drill lefty. Happy to say it worked out fine, relieved a ton of pressure and my finger, while still a bit tender, feels much better. The whole left side of my fingernail was all purple before.
Need to ask my daughter to step on the brake pedal and see if swapping the 3rd brake light fixed it. Hope so, don't really feel like checking the wiring out, which will be the next step
Got my daughter to step on the brake pedal and, as suspected, that other third brake light was bad. The one I swapped in works fine, happily don't have to dive into the wiring
Turns out MCS didn't send me the correct adjustment knobs. I called them last Monday to ask why my current knobs didn't fit well and found that out. They sent me the correct ones, which I installed yesterday. They work, but there's a pin that pops up through the knob and in their instructions it looks like when the knobs are in the "up" position that pin should be flush with the top of the knob. On my car it isn't, it pokes thru several mm. I also noticed that getting the knob to move from the up to the down position and back is sort of sticky feeling. It works and I verified that I'm able to get to both compression and rebound, but I don't like the feel of it. So I called MCS and left a message for them.
This morning I thought I'd put together the stock front struts sinze AACZD-Jon sent me the parts I needed from one of his scrap boxsters. Thanks Jon!! Glad I mocked this stuff up, like I said in my Cayenne Diesel post, I'm slowly learning to make sure I have everything I need and it all fits. Anyways, most of the parts Jon sent me will work, like the concave washers and the strut retaining nut. However the metal plate that the strut bearing seats into is different between the turbo and the boxster, which was a surprise.
The turbo one is much larger than the boxster one. Here's the turbo on the left, compared to the boxster
And the bearings themselves, again, turbo on the left
That part is sold separately, so I'll pull the part number and see if I can get it from FCP Euro. Then I'll have everything I need to reassemble these.
While cruising FB a guy posted in the 996 group some carbon fiber parts for sale. A hand brake and a shift knob, sadly the shift knob was for a tiptronic, and he didn't want to separate them. I noticed he was in the Denver-ish area, so I shot him a PM, saying I'd take the hand brake if he'd separate them. He got back to me saying sure, so I ran up there today. Hand brake is in pretty decent shape, so I bought it. My friend just sold his 996 turbo and he has his carbon fiber shift knob laying around, so I'll get that from him and complete the set. Score!
There's tons of carbon fiber available for this car, Porsche had an enormous carbon fiber package available. However, most of it cracks and cracks very noticeably. So I think the shift knob and hand brake will do it for me.
Went to cars n coffee this morning, when I got there one of my friends asked me if I'd ripped my front splitter off again? Wait, what? I'd been super careful pulling out of my driveway and hadn't heard anything. Looked at the car and sure enough I'd ripped it off on the passenger rear mount again, plus pulled off the fix I'd done. Argh! This afternoon I put the car on the lift and pulled off the front passenger wheel for access...
I'd previously tried to fix this by sandwiching the broken bumper piece between two metal washers and jb welding the whole thing together. This time I decided I was going to jb weld a piece of plastic behind the bumper tab, then jb weld the broken bumper piece to that.
The JB Weld tacked up enough so I removed the vice grips...
I'm letting it cure overnight, then I'll sand it down, put the speed clip back on and re-seat the splitter. I'm getting tired of this and would love a GT2 or Ruf front bumper but they're insanely expensive.
I also got the parts from FCP Euro, so reassembled my stock front struts
I've also been noticing that the rear end of the car just feels unsettled. I checked everything while on the lift today, everything is torqued, paint marks lined up still. Nothing loose. I did rotate the Tarret swaybar endlink mounts so the sway bar end links would be vertical. Maybe those were binding? Not sure. There aren't very many control arms back there, so not sure what's going on...
Racked the car again today, closely looked at all the torque paint marks. Found something!
Here's the drivers side eccentric toe bolt
Here's the passenger side toe eccentric bolt. Look at the paint marks, see how they're not lined up?
Decision made to try and realign the right eccentric. To do that you have to unbolt the swaybar brackets and let the bar dangle out of the way. Did that, and was easily able to rotate the eccentric into place, without even putting a wrench on the other side of the bolt. Hmmm....
Then I tightened up the bolt and found that it wasn't really all that tight! So I guess the shop didn't torque it down properly when they did the alignment a few months ago? I have the Elephant Racing locking toe plates, so that eccentric can't rotate on its own...
I then went to bolt the swaybar brackets back on, only to find that they wouldn't line up. Discovered that I needed to lengthen the swaybar endlinks to get the swaybar into a neutral position so the swaybar brackets would line up properly. Yesterday I'd played with the swaybar endlink brackets so the endlinks were sitting vertically. So it seems like the rear swaybar might've been binding some too.
I haven't had a chance to drive the car but gotta figure this fixed the issue...
Have driven the car a few times now, it feels much better now.
Was able to put together this set, used, locally from another porsche guy and a friend.
So center console has to come off to install the hand brake...
Four 13mm nuts hold the hand brake on, the front left one is a PITA to get to, since the hand brake is in the way. There are also two 13mm jam nuts that hold on the parking brake cables. Take those off and swap the hand brakes over. There are three wiring plugs, a small one for the ash tray, center console and the hand brake. The two that go to the center console don't have much slack...
Next up is the shift knob, that just pops on and uses a surprisingly large 5mm allen set screw.
Then I spent a bunch of time and six zip ties getting the shift boot where I wanted it
After that the battery, which has been in the car since I bought it, decided to die. It was a massive H8 battery, the battery tray will fit H6 and H7 batteries too. So I pulled it out and decided to go with the H7, which ironically had more CCA's than the much larger H8 I just removed. However the battery hold down threaded hole was all full of debris. So I blew it out with an air gun, ran a thread chaser through it, found a proper bolt in my bolt collection and installed the battery. I trimmed the termainl covers to fit my cables too.
Grabbed this boost leak kit from a friend, he'd never used it. Put the caps together but need to get the car on the lift to see which pair of the 4 silicone couplers that came with the kit fit.
Compared the new boost kit to my homemade one, happy to see that the diameter of them is basically the same, so I won't need to use the silicone couplers that the new kit came with. Score.
Washed it Saturday, Adam's ceramic coating holding up well, I put it on ~4 years ago, water still beads up nicely.
Playing around with the rebound/compression on the shocks. Car has been feeling unsettled in corners, springy like. Figured it was the shock dampening not controlling the spring rate, so I bumped them up 2 clicks all the way around. That's made a *huge* difference! Going to drive the car more before I make any other changes...
Drove it to the base last week for my 4 day drill. About 1+ hours there, so a nice drive. Car did great, had some fun with an STI that had a license plate reading "500 awhp". All I can say is that my ponies are larger than his ponies, haha!
Tons of fun driving the car, gave my friend a ride and he was pretty blown away...
Put the most gas ever in it on the way home, it's got a saddle fuel tank and the low fuel sensor is in one half, so when it gives the low fuel warning, there's actually still ~ 5 gallons left. I went 279 miles on 14 gallons, so I still had ~ 2.5 gallons left. Was shocked when I hand calculated the gas mileage that the dash display was 100% correct. Especially since I've got the tune, larger turbo's and 5 bar fpr...
Was offered a used Ruf front bumper, painted Artic Silver like my car. Sadly just the bumper cover though, and Ruf wants $3250 shipped for all the hardware, ducts and brackets. Between that and what the seller wants for the bumper cover I think it'd make more sense for me to just buy the whole thing new from Ruf. It's for the best though, as I really shouldn't be spending the money anyways....
Doug Demuro recently did a video where he replaced his current garage for far less money. It was interesting to see what choices he made and it kind of got me thinking about what I could do if I did the same, sort of. Instead of less money, what could I get for the same money, but would give me an upgrade on the daily driver and still have a fun weekend, occasional track car.
For a daily I'd pick this, I've always wanted one and the 2018 is the sweet spot of the newer motor but still has buttons on the interior vs touch screen/haptic controls.
For a fun car, this would work pretty well. S54 equipped, cult car, will hold its value.
The two of these would cost a bit more than what I'd get from my 996 and Touareg, but I suspect I could get both of them for less than listed pricing....
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