In October of 2014 I made an impulse purchase of a blue 996 c2 – for those of you who don’t know, this means a watercooled, narrow body, rear wheel drive Carrera.
She’s a pretty little thing. The car came with a refreshed suspension and some outrageously expensive Champion RG5B wheels wrapped in Hankook RS3v2s (235/40/18; 265/35/18). It also had the IMS addressed, new brakes and a new clutch. Of course, the rear main seal is still a bit wet but nothing unusual for these cars. There’s also a pesky vacuum leak that pops up now and then and sets off a CEL.
Winter came so I promptly put on a set of hollow spoke Sport Techno 18s with Continental all seasons and drove it all winter long, mainly on days when the roads were clear but occasionally on some light snow.
As soon as the weather cleared I went through the car, cleaned it up, mounted the wheels on and took out some extra weight in the form of silly stereo equipment.
My first autocross saw disappointing results. 6/29 (beaten by my co-driver by 0.05 seconds, who took 4th in class – that’s how tight things were). The A-Street PAX index for my car is set by the Corvette Z06, so it’s a pretty brutal place to be in, coupled with running year old tires, which are last year’s technology (about 1 second off the mighty HoosierStones on a 60 second course), in a stock car. Well, I can’t fix the tire problem yet since they don’t make them in big boy sizes, but I can go full nuclear on the rest of the car.
According to the April Fast Track, Porsche Exclusive options are now legal in the Street class.
Options XSE, XSF and XSN allow the addition of GT3 seats front and rear and the deletion of rear seats. Since my son likes to ride in the back, I kept the back seats.
I can pick these seats up with one finger. Suffice to say that was not the case with the stock seats.
In furtherance of weight savings, Ross Temple built me a custom exhaust.
The weight savings are substantial. As you can see, we deliberately left room so that another muffler or resonator could be added.
It sounds alright.
No traffic laws were violated in the filming of this video.
I’ve been autocrossing the car with limited success on the Hankooks.
Lift off oversteer is a thing. I’ve got it fairly tamed with alignment and shock settings but it can still get you if you aren’t careful. The RE71R tires on it are fantastic.
The tires are FANTASTIC in the rain.
I originally had the car on the market for a reasonable price to fund my next purchase, but took it off because it really didn’t owe me anything – it is solid, fun to drive, fast, reliable, etc . . . but I received an offer I couldn’t refuse and now it’s gone to a good home.
autophiliac 