GT3 Stick or twist

[reddevil]

 

On 8/24/2018 at 7:58 AM, Jon Miller said:

I also have the cup version waiting to fit.
 

I've finally got hold of a cup one too (two weeks delivery as TNT lost the first one).

Have you painted/are planning to paint yours @Jon Miller? 

I'd added about 1000 miles now to the GT3, which is nearly as much as the previous owner managed in total! I've started to tackle some of the dreaded 996 interior rattles, which basically involves dismantling the interior and adding felt padding behind panels.

Also some small trim bits are off to the leather man for retiming, they are ferociously expensive to replace at the dealer.

I'm also adding a bluetooth CD-changer emulator which will wirelessly integrate my phone+music, rather than changing the FM/CD head unit, there is space under the radio but behind the dash for it, and I can wire it into the vacant PCM fuse in the fusebox to make it totally reversible (rather than cutting into wires).

To do this, the head unit needs recoding by the OPC, I've received a variety of quotes from £313+VAT to £35!!

Finally, the DesignTek leather carbon bucket Recaro replicas are high on the want list, as the standard hardback sport seats continue to frustrate. I could add heating to these too 😎

[Jon Miller]

Actually only getting around to fitting my splitter this afternoon (track day on Sat). I’m just going to fit it as it is, fully expect to be replacing it on a regular basis!

Mine doesn’t have too many squeaks or rattles, only one that annoys me is from the upper dash, haven’t worked out if it’s from the screen or dash.


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[reddevil]

3 minutes ago, Jon Miller said:

Mine doesn’t have too many squeaks or rattles, only one that annoys me is from the upper dash, haven’t worked out if it’s from the screen or dash.
 

I *think* I have eliminated all the ones except from the upper dash - I've read elsewhere that this is often the screen. Not sure how to start debugging that one....

[Jon Miller]

Fairly certain mine is a screen issue as it had a new fitted not long before I bought it and the noise has got steadily worse.


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[786]

4 hours ago, reddevil said:

Finally, the DesignTek leather carbon bucket Recaro replicas are high on the want list, as the standard hardback sport seats continue to frustrate. I could add heating to these too 😎

 

What's the consensus on quality of these seats, seem fairly inexpensive.

[reddevil]

I haven't seen them. But internets say's they're OK. 

Ideally would love to view one. 

[jjeffries]

What a seriously cool car. Funny, because I was just reading an Excellence from late 2012 in which then-editor Pete Stout says this was the best (or his favorite) GT3 also. My SC is black/black, so your speed machine looks just right. John

[wilson59]

I have the 997.1 seriously love it . The black 996 looks fantastic

[jjeffries]

These GT3's are such ultimate devices, best expression of Porsche ethos IMO. John.

[786]

On 12/5/2018 at 12:08 AM, wilson59 said:

I have the 997.1 seriously love it . The black 996 looks fantastic

Lovely car. I've always liked the 997.1. Unfortunately, I had a friend with one in Scotland who crashed it and passed so bad memories associated with the car for me.

Agree that the GT3 is probably the ultimate expression of Porsche's ethos.

[reddevil]

Well I thought I'd tear into the front suspension on the GT3 whilst there is salt on the roads. It requires a front damper refurb and seeing as we have an account with Bilstein via the race team I thought I might as well drop it all out myself and have a good poke around what else might be required.

It all came apart pretty easily and here is the front end on the bench.

Most of the components look to be the items it left the factory with.

Springs, these seem to be standard H&R, starting to look a bit tired, think we'll just replace these...

These top hats look fancy. Standard?

Top mounts. 964 part number! They look in relatively reasonable nick. Should I just bother replacing these anyway? 

On to the dampers, which is why we are here in the first place. Can't actually find any bilstein markings on them. Hard to tell in the photos but the RH one seems to have more grease/oil on the tube than the LH.

ARB drop links. One is new one is old. For that reason these are probably going in the bin. New porsche ones are a ridiculous £250. Really Porsche? I think I'll make some rose jointed ones that are adjustable. 

ARB. This looks crusty on the ends. Off for blasting and e-coating.

Although where the bushes pick up on it looks a little rough. Strange?

Talking of the ARB bushes, these are manufacture dated 03 so I guess original to the car. They look OK but I guess they're cheap enough to renew whilst here.

On to the coffin arms, which it said in the pre-sales report where just starting to delaminate around the bushes. They look in good nick to me. Anyone disagree? Someone has been kind enough in the past to add RSS bushes for the "tuning fork".

These pieces tie in the sub frame to the front of the floorpan. Going in the e-coat pile as a bit crusty.

Finally, after a little bit of track time at Donington, the front discs are starting to crack. I take it I don't need to worry about this tool much until the cracks are right across and join the holes?

Finally, hibernating on stilts with its mezger cousin!

[reddevil]

Right, stick or twist time. One has to go in the Spring.

Having lived with the GT3 for 18 months, my conclusions are it's too fast for fast road, downright frustrating down a B-road, I have the wrong seats (comfort) and truth be told I'm not 100% happy with the front suspension rebuild I did with factory serviced bilsteins. It neither has the ride quality nor the feedback of, say, my oil cooled on the KW Clubsports. It also feels a bit inert - even after a switch to Cup2s from the rock hard old PS2s. But on a very smooth track it is sublime and above 5k that engine....

Having taken it in for a major service today it needs a few things (nothing major for a 15 year old car) - probably about 2k spending on it in the next year (coil packs, center rads, new discs). And to cap it off, if I were to sell it, I'm probably down 5k from the peak of 996 GT3 prices back in 2018 - exactly when I bought it! Adding more miles over the next few years will compound that. 

Conversely, with a little bit of a retrim to the cushions on the oil cooled (imminent), the blue car is "finished". And perfect. It's a great Sunday blaster, but in truth I've just tweaked Steve's perfect 911 over the last four years and it will never be a hotrod of my making. The mileage between MOTs confirms it's limited window for use. I tried, adding 6,000 miles in the first year, but the following 3 years have only added a further 4000 to that tally.. It's probably worth today about what I've put into it.

So I think the plan is the blue car needs to go, and I need to put some personalisation and investment into the GT3 and turn it into my "hot rod". Current plan:

• Man up and pay the premium for a set of Recaro GT3 buckets. Expensive but they'll always be worth similar 2nd hand. Think of it as The Porsche Parts Man Maths ISA.
• Investigate something like Ohlins R+T and sort out that ride, and the inert front end
• Weis gold the wheels and hell to the originality
• Girodiscs and some new front pads. Seems the OE front discs are good for about 3 trackdays.
• Freeflow cats, 997TB and Visit to Wayne to unleash ~420 beasts.
• Maybe even a cheeky CSR ducktail bootlid?
• Hell to the values and drive the nuts off it for the next 5 years

 

 

 

[World Citizen]

I'm confused 🤔 your GT3 is too fast but you want to hot rod it and make it faster

Who is Steve and we need a pic of his perfect hot rod

Whatever you do may I suggest you stick to bolt on changes so you can easily return your GT3 back to standard when you decide you need something slower and fun 

Edited January 15, 2020 by World Citizen

[reddevil]

Haha yes it is very irrational. I am confused too.

Steve (Higgoe) was the previous owner of my IB, latterly of this forum. I think he was one of the original crew and evolved my blue IB with a similar ethos to Longman.

Edited January 15, 2020 by reddevil

[World Citizen]

9 minutes ago, reddevil said:

Haha yes it is very irrational. I am confused too.

Steve (Higgoe) was the previous owner of my IB, latterly of this forum. I think he was one of the original crew and evolved my blue IB with a similar ethos to Longman.

Ah ha taht Steve! I'm confused too, got a similar 1st world problem, I'm completely indecisive about my indecision's of what to do with my 964

What about selling both and build a hot rod of your making, something that would be a blend of the best bits of each car

[Richard Bernau]

My own longish term view is that the value of all but the most collectable ICE cars will inevitably fall over the mid-term future.  I don't think having money tied up in cars whose value is derived from perception makes much sense any more.  I would now only buy or hold what I want to drive and if it doesn't get used, it gets sold.  I am not a big buyer of "the market will come back" message the traders continue to push.  The mid market classic space, particularly for Porsches - say £50-70k - is super crowded right now.  How does that get better with more GT4s and the 6 cylinder 718 GTS further crowding this space?

My other $0.02 - all the GT cars are too fast for the road.  You have more fun in slower stuff with less tyre.  You still need the shove to make progress and overtake, but beyond that, a Boxster S is as fast as a McLaren up the side of a mountain.  I have a friend with a 540 who has just found in the Pyrenees last summer, much to his frustration, the truth in that statement.

See if I am right in 10 years...

[reddevil]

Good points on what is not being used needs to go.

But I guess it depends where you like to do your driving.

In my view what will get more and more marginalised most quickly is fast road driving. It's pretty impossible and frustrating anywhere in the UK with few exceptions (notably parts of Wales and the Highlands). Even a Boxster S and its capabilities way exceed what will become to be seen as reasonable very quickly and the answer in that case is probably more like MINI Cooper or Mazda MX-5 fast.

Personally I think track and motorsport will be tolerated indefinitely especially seeing as EV is making inroads (albeit small ones) so over time the ICE cars on track will be quietly ignored and we will be left to get on with it.

To be fair the most fun I've had this year with my clothes is racing our fairly modestly powered fleet of race cars - I can see me selling all my road cars before parting with those.

[Richard Bernau]

Can't disagree with any of that.  What that means (I think) is that if you like the road driving bit and want to make the most of it in the remaining window of opportunity (which may be a little longer than we think), then its worth thinking about how much resource to commit to road cars.  Committing resource to track/race cars over and above that is 100% an option that some will go for and embrace.

Its interesting to think about what is driving the hypercar renaissance at the moment, which in turn (I think) is driving ever faster sports cars.  I was listening to Matt Farah earlier in the week noting that its the same 300 people buying all the hypercars citing that the average Bugatti owner has 50+ other cars.  The top 0.00001 of the 1%.  To some extent, I think its the same with sports/supercars - its still a very small number of people buying them and they are still say the 0.01 of the 1%.  They don't care if they lose money in the mid-long term, but we probably do.  I mean, have you seen the depreciation on a McLaren recently?  No sane person would buy a McLaren, yet they still manage to sell cars.  Second thing he discussed was how the US is still hugely focused on 0-60 times.   Plus drag racing and now runway racing.  That probably also applies equally to the middle east and Asian markets.  These factors - straight line speed and selling halo cars to an incredibly narrow and wealthy audience - have had and continue to have a distorting effect on what is "right" about cars that are actually good to drive.

I have digressed...

[sopor]

To continue the digression... McLaren road cars (save for the F1) have always suffered from heavy depreciation. It seems to be a function of eye-watering service and repair costs, less than stellar reliability, derisory trade-in figures from McLaren themselves who seem to have zero interest in helping owners sustain value in the cars and a plethora of new models every year seemingly rendering existing ones “old” and obsolete. I suspect some day the McLaren bubble will burst big time, more so than other exotica.

As for future car values... I wonder if ICE sports car values will climb a bit after the point in time when it gets difficult to impossible to buy a pure ICE sports car. Any anti-ICE legislation on legacy cars could have a big impact though.

[Richard Bernau]

56 minutes ago, sopor said:

To continue the digression... McLaren road cars (save for the F1) have always suffered from heavy depreciation. It seems to be a function of eye-watering service and repair costs, less than stellar reliability, derisory trade-in figures from McLaren themselves who seem to have zero interest in helping owners sustain value in the cars and a plethora of new models every year seemingly rendering existing ones “old” and obsolete. I suspect some day the McLaren bubble will burst big time, more so than other exotica.

As for future car values... I wonder if ICE sports car values will climb a bit after the point in time when it gets difficult to impossible to buy a pure ICE sports car. Any anti-ICE legislation on legacy cars could have a big impact though.

Its almost as if McLaren are modelling their customer service along Enzo Ferrari lines...

I like the contrarian thinking on future ICE sportscar values.  I think that is right for the seriously rare/old/collectable stuff at some point in the future.  Maybe its right in a wider sense, but I think you would have to ride a wave of value destruction before you see a long term uptick in value.  Driving a noisy, thirsty, fast  car now already has negative public perception.   Why would govt basically protect those who choose to own something unpopular and polluting?  A lot clearly depends on how restricted the use of old ICE cars becomes by legislation.  And when restrictions start.

[World Citizen]

Contrary to popular opinion I don't think it's all doom and gloom for the ICE during our driving lifetime so hold fast and hang on to your old smokers!

I don't think the jump to full electric will be as soon as the press/governments will have you believe, just too many technology eg battery and logistical hurdles eg green power stations to jump over first. There is a big gap between what the governments wants and what can be achieved by the car makers and electricity companies.

I've spent the last few years working on the most advanced motorsport EV vehicles and to me it's a long way off from becoming the norm. Getting a F1/Formula EV battery to a reliable enough level to go racing for a few 1000 km's is like preparing for a mission to the moon.

For sure the technology will trickle down to road cars but the challenges of scaling the quantities up and up productionising it all for established automotive companies that have no experience of electrical propulsion will mean it's a low rising EV high tide coming at us rather than EV tsunami 

If I had to guess, we will first see an era of hybrid ICE/EV cars, these will be very cool to drive 😎

 

[reddevil]

Hyper/supercars - personally just not interested. Interesting to hear Chris Harris’ boredom at driving the latest and greatest in his recent podcasts including discussion on the ‘Instagram/YouTubers’ effect and the decline of credible motoring journalism. Some friends and in the trade have been offered new 570 MCs 70k off list.. 😳
 

My take is this corner of the market is not really catering for any kind of enthusiast at all. It’s not all doom and gloom though we do have things like Alpine/restomod market/most current Lotus models to still be thankful for, as well as a great club racing scene in the UK.

Back on topic I took advantage of the good weather and my (relative) proximity to Wales today for an overdue winter blast.

The more you drive this one the more it gets under your skin, but it’s hard to use the last sonorous 2k rpm on the road as that’s 115mph at 8.2k in 3rd gear..... maybe for the road it needs a shorter final drive.

 

Edited January 18, 2020 by reddevil

[Busybee]

So great to see the 3 out and being used. Bet you had a great time 👍

On super and hyper cars, think their numbers are probably exaggerated by the huge number of social media posts they receive.  If you can stump up to buy one, you’re likely able to absorb a loss at sale time or just blow the finance.

If your gt3 struggles to use its capabilities on the road, one of those things probably rarely come off tick over. 

I really fancy one of the new 4.0 718’s. More car than you could need or want I think and a future classic. Strange how the base cayman gts is nearly 2k cheaper than the equivalent Boxster. 

Edited January 19, 2020 by Busybee

[Aldo]

On 7/11/2018 at 10:19 AM, reddevil said:

The 997 is the more modern, faster car and historically might be viewed more fondly, esp in .2 form, but you can’t overlook the 100% price premium. Is it 100% better? Does it matter on the road that it is academically faster? I don’t know without seeing and riding in some cars. 

 

Thanks

Chris

 

[reddevil]

I've since driven a 997 GT3 CS, albeit a 997.1. Not any faster and less raw IMO. But does look prettier. The very small price difference between a 996.2 and a 997.1 reflects this.