MEXICO BLUE Turbo build thread

Hey everyone, I'm a long time lurker and am active on many other places, but I felt it was a good time to share my build thread as some of my efforts (and struggles) may help others in the quest to building a really good 996. Before I get started, I'd like to thank John Sellinger (pwdrhound), Todd Nall (blackhorseturbo), and Freddy Lewis for the support, inspiration, and guidance over the past handful of years that I've been messing around with this car. I'm sure there are others who I am missing, but you know who you are. Without further ado, here is my story. The story starts in around 2014. I had been getting the itch for a 911 for a while, after having had numerous E46 M3s and other sports cars in the previous few years. As I young Marine, I was about as financially irresponsible as they come, but I knew that it was a great time to jump on a 996 Turbo as they were ridiculously cheap at the time. I sold my Alpine White M3 coupe for a hefty profit, and picked up a black 2001 Turbo, which came with a few mods that had been done by BBI and some others done by Platinum Motorsports in LA. These included Tial Alpha 28s, a BBI Barcode exhaust, Bilstein PSS10, H&R sways, and some HRE 547Rs. The car looked really period correct for the early 2000s, but it wasn't necessarily my cup of tea. Still, it was a great price at the time and I was very anxious to jump into one so I made the plunge. Looking back, I probably should have paid a little more for a car that was more to my liking, but hindsight is always 20/20. Pretty early on, I decided that I wanted to do the full Techart GT Street kit, and so I picked up a few pieces from Tony at Precision as at the time Techart was not (or at least I was under the impression) selling the GT Street kit anymore. Manu of Aristo Collection, formerly of DPE, produced a set of custom wheels for me in GT2 offsets, and I sold the HREs to someone in Hong Kong. The wheels came out awesome, and I really loved the BBS gold on black. The fitment of the wheels was perfect, though springing for 335/30R18 rears without being prepared to fit them was a rookie mistake and they were a bit of a hassle to work around. I ran the BF Goodrich G Force rivals on this setup for a few months before they were revised, and I was less than pleased with how they wore. I am under the impression that the revision fixed those issues, though I have never tried them since then. It was at this point (Late 2014) that I had begun to prepare for deployment and had intended on dropping the car off at the shop to have what Techart pieces I had installed, as well as a new Unobtainium exhaust, and some custom long tube-equal length headers that John over at JSP Fabrication was making for me. Just a few weeks before I was set to depart for Japan, my car was vandalized while it was street parked. Unfortunately, it would require a 70% repaint of the car and the car was already showing 14 years of use in the California sun, at which point I decided that I would just fully repaint the car in a different color. I played around with a few different options, before settling on Mexico Blue. It was a tough decision to make because the PTS craze had not yet started, and I had only ever seen a few of my color choices in person, plus all of the color samples that the shop sprayed out for me were only visible over messages since I was out of the country. My friends were kind enough to send me a few spray-out cards, and I settled on L336. Getting the paint was also a bit of a pain, because PPG had not yet had a modern waterborne equivalent formula for Mexico Blue. Eventually, they went through their systems and came up with a formula for a modern solvent-based system, which was tried on my car. It was exciting knowing that I would come to a completely different car, even if the circumstances were less than desirable. Unfortunately, the Unobtainium exhaust didn't work out due to fitment issues, and I ended up selling the exhaust at a loss to another 996 owner because I couldn't reach an agreement with the manufacturer. The headers turned out spectacular, and really did an amazing job of changing up the tone of my car. I took delivery of the car right around the time of my birthday in 2015, just a few weeks after I had gotten back from deployment. I had not been too sure on the Techart rear bumper, but ultimately ended up purchasing it as I felt the rear of the car looked strange without it. I also sold my BBI exhaust and picked up a Fabworx exhaust from my good friend Zubair. I maintain to this day that it is the absolute best sounding exhaust setup for these cars, and believe me I have tried, owned, and experienced many. I had my wheels painted black, and brakes painted yellow, as I felt that it would better suit the aggressive look of the car. Not much after that, I had a bit of a whoopsie on a canyon day when my ABS failed. It wasn't too bad of an accident, but it was a pricey one. Luckily USAA took very good care of me and even my aftermarket parts were replaced under insurance. Sometimes **** happens, unfortunately. At this time, I also replaced my Bilsteins with Ohlins DFV, as well as converted the car to rear wheel drive and installed the techart rear. I ran with this setup for just about a year and a half before I had enough of the hassles that come with the techart kit. The first of them is the front lip, which is much lower and more forward than an aerokit or GT2 lip. Add the fact that it's carbon, and it becomes a frequent and costly replacement. From about January 2016 to March 2017, I had two instances of rear tire delamination or R888s, occurring on opposite sides as well as on separate sets. I will absolutely never run these tires again, as the QC just does not seem to be there. During this period, I also added a OE RS lightweight flywheel, a GT2RS clutch disc, a 764 pressure plate, and a GT3 underdrive pulley, as well as replaced some of my worn suspension arms. The car remained mostly untouched besides that, and I really just wanted to spend time enjoying it. The biggest factor in me removing the whole Techart kit was the method of attachment, which ultimately ended up causing damage to the paint on my rocker panels. Rather than fix and add the skirts back, I instead decided to pull the whole Techart kit off and purchase a GT2 bumper and wing from Precision. I sold the various pieces, all of which now adorn other cars besides the skirts, which are hogging up space in my storage unit. I will pick up in the next post, as I fear this first one will already be a hundred miles long by now...

If I ever change body color, it will be to Mexico Blue. Great choice! Fun journey to read about.

great looking car......love all the "right" mods

Quotes source post: 16758026

That's probably the color I'd choose too. I like Mexico Blue and Speed Yellow.

I'm rarely jealous of others cars vs my own... my hats off sir. That is beautiful.

Moving forward, the story gets much more interesting, at least from my perspective. In 2017 I got out of the Marine Corps and moved from San Diego to Los Angeles for school. The car stayed in San Diego with friends, as I did not care to have it with me in LA for reasons that I'm sure many of you that have lived there or visited need no explanation of. It was around this time that I had decided that I wanted to re-design 997 GT3 to fit the 996 perfectly. What I didn't understand at the time was really just how much pushing the wheels out would have an effect on clearances, especially with Turbo uprights. I also didn't consider just how much wheel you can fit underneath the stock fenders, but we'll get to that in a bit. As you can see in the pictures below, the development process for the flares was a long and complicated one, mostly because I had the car on the back-burner to focus on school. Also, the shop that was doing the work on my car isn't known for being very time-efficient. Regardless, here are the pics showing how we made progress on the flares, which did start as an OEM 997 Cup flare. You can see just how different the 997 flares are from the 996 body. Don't let anyone convince you that adding them is an easy job, it isn't. I have seen plenty of hack jobs using them out there. The radius of the 997 flare is much wider and taller, and the fitment on the body is almost non-existent. The shop did reproduce them in small batches but I didn't really push them too much as the original intention was for them to be unique to my own car. I think we started really working on them in early-ish 2018, and they were finished and production-ready by the end of the year. Unfortunately, at some point, we had to cut the fenders which meant that I didn't really drive the car too much more that year besides taking it around the canyon behind the shop to make sure that she didn't feel too neglected. As you can see here, almost the entire flare needed to be reshaped and modified to fit the car, we had cut it into numerous pieces just to get it to sit flat. First test fitment. Here they are mostly made up of the original parts, body filler, fiberglass, and primer. I am very satisfied with the overall fitment, and they head out for the mold process. BUUUUUUT... first we paint one side to see what the finished product will be. I am extremely excited at this point. I also forgot to mention earlier that I had purchased a 996 GT2 driver door panel and modified a leather turbo door panel upper with the lower Boxster carpet to delete the door speaker on the passenger side. I had also deleted the lower dash portion and added the factory delete carpet there. At this time, I also deleted all of my speakers, the double-din Kenwood that someone had to hack up the horseshoe to install, removed a heavy amount of the sound-deadening and purchased black carpet which I carefully shaved to cut some excess weight. The car never came with rear seats, which my friends never seemed to mind as it actually gave them much more space in the back. I also had my center console painted to body color, which made a huge difference in the interior. At some point in 2015 I had traded my OEM plus leather seats to someone for a pair of carbon GT3 buckets. I assume they are replicas though I didn't care too terribly much at the time as it was a one for one trade. I intended to eventually picking up some OEs, but honestly having seen both side by side, the quality difference isn't very apparent so I am not in much of a rush. At this point, I finally removed my rear seat belt receptacles and belts, as it was nearly impossible to cram in the back seat. I won't say that people haven't made their own decision to sit back there anyway, but for the most part, it never happens anymore. In mid-2018 I also picked up some 997 Grand-AM spec E88s in full polish finish, which I paid a very fair price for. If I recall off the top of my head, the offset was 18x10et38 and 18x12et63. If you know this chassis really well, you'll know that those fronts will fit underneath stock fenders, and the rears are way too high offset so require a rebuild or some pretty chunky spacers. I decided to add spacers in the rear off the bat, knowing that I would eventually rebuild but I needed them on the car to move it at the shop as I had already sold the Aristos. What I didn't really expect was to put the front wheels on with tires and have them fit completely fine under the stock fenders. Still, it was already too late because the fenders had been cut, so we kept moving forward. I added a 20 mm spacer in the front to fill out the flares, though with the Turbo uprights and 265/35R18 Advan A052s this presented a lot of clearance issues. Even with trimming and pushing forward the radiators, I found I was still rubbing on the metal fuel line guards at the rear of the wheel well while turning. I carefully trimmed the top mounting slots for the coilovers to get just a bit more camber, but I knew that ultimately this wasn't the right decision. It was around this point that I learned the pitfalls of the Turbo wheel carriers. As the Turbo suspension mounts at an angle, this causes the wheel sweep radius to be a bit wider than a GT2 or GT3. This radius is drastically exacerbated as you push the wheel out further and further. This also introduced a lot of clunking, binding, and noises at parking lot speeds, which made using the car on a regular basis a bit frustrating. I am sure that a proper GT carrier would correct some of this, but the reality is you would probably want to use a steering rack lock limiter to prevent it from happening at all. Some very wide, very tall Pirelli DH slick scrubs. I used these primarily as rollers for around the shop, but they also helped me *unintentionally* discover clearance issues as well. No exhaust? Crazy things planned at this point... For clarity, this is an 18x10 under a cut stock fender. It clears just fine on both sides, but at this point, it's already too late to turn back. You may notice in some of those pictures that I am lacking a rear exhaust. While the car was at the shop, I decided to do yet another exhaust changeup. I (and the various women I have dated) had been beginning to grow tired of having a ludicrously loud exhaust. The 996 drones at cruising speed with most setups anyway, and having a large x-pipe with no cats and bigger turbos really makes a lot of noise at freeway speeds. Add in two exhaust noise tickets, a serious lack of sound deadening, and new exhaust laws being introduced, and this pushed me to change up my exhaust setup yet again. This one was exciting, as no one had ever attempted this exact setup. I purchased a titanium 997 RS exhaust from one a fellow Rennlist member who was referred to me by Tye (bmwtye) who has constantly supported me in making completely irrational and expensive decisions with my car. I designed a side pipe setup that would properly step down to the 2.5" side inlets of the exhaust. I purchased all the required parts and mocked up a setup that would work well. Luis over at SpecFab cut and welded everything up to my specifications, and work well it did. I have noticed no seat of the pants difference going from a 3" x-pipe to a 2.5" box muffler, though I'm sure it did have some effect on power, realistically. More importantly, it cut down drastically on drone and cabin noise at freeway speeds, eliminated some of the nasty straight pipe tones, and kept most of the desirable higher pitches that come with a low crossover x-pipe. People seem to love the tone from outdoors, though the 6500 RPM cut off is a bit of a tease when you now the sounds these boxes can make at high RPMs. At the same time, I also decided to partially overhaul the interior and finally change everything to black. I had the GT3 seat backs repainted in Mexico Blue (I am generally not a fan of carbon fiber for aesthetic purposes. Slowly I had the steering wheel rewrapped in black Nappa leather with Riviera Blue stitching, as well as cutting the wheel in Carrera GT style which has four horizontal cuts. as opposed to the 630/730 cuts on the standard 996 wheel. I also had the whole dash redone in black Nappa leather with the lower joining seam in Riviera, dash strips in Alcantara, key surround in leather with blue stitch, center console lid in houndstooth stripe with leather borders and blue stitch, 997 GT3 shift **** in OE Alcantara with Alcantara-covered gate pattern cape and blue stitched stripe, shift boot in OE Alcantara with Riviera stitching, gauge pod in leather with Riviera blue stitch and leather front plate, black Nappa steering column covers, A-B-C pillars in OE Alcantara as well as capping the seat belt slots in the rear and covering them in the same Alcantara, rear door cards in black Nappa, and center console side caps in black Nappa leather. Later in the year I also had the centers of the seats done in houndstooth and the entire seat redone in Nappa leather with the same Riviera blue stitching. While AP Upholstery did all of the work for me, I did remove and install everything myself, as I usually have done with this car. The vast majority of the leather was heavily skived to keep weight down, and I removed all of the factory leather and vinyl on all of the parts that were recovered. I know I have more pictures of the work somewhere, but I believe they're on my old phone so I'll fish them up eventually. At some point, I also had to buy another center console as I had lost the locking mechanism for the lid, eventually causing the lid to crack off when it flew up. I was able to actually remove the bracket on a later-year 996 console and use a countersunk screw and bolt to attach the lid mechanism to my original center console, avoiding having to strip off more soft touch and repaint. Here you can really see the difference of the 996 steering wheel after I have modified it. The parallel cuts across the wheel are similar to those on the CGT. Finally, we can get to some pictures of the culmination of much of the work. I used two factory bumpers to create the center exit bumper, as well as did a third bumperette delete on the new bumper. I could have been able to use my previous bumper except when I was trying out 315/680 slicks I ripped my bumper off. Again, stuff happens. The 996 rear does not have much clearance for tall tires at a low offset, and you really need to trim the body where the bumper meets as well as some of the inner flange of the bumper to keep it from ripping things apart. Lesson learned, was able to pick up a rear bumper for cheap enough anyway. The bumper came out pretty nicely, though it did start to crack along the bottom where the pieces were plastic molded together. I haven't decided how to address this yet, but may epoxy in some metal strips to increase the rigidity that was lost from cutting the middle out. The black strip at the bottom actually accounts for the vast majority of the rigidity at the base and middle of the bumper, FYI. I also opted to do a few fairly minor details, including shaving the roof rail openings, paiting the inner frames of the GT2 rep bumper black, and shaving the hood emblem holes so that I could add the factory 996 RS hood decal. The car has looked roughly the same from about January until now, though I will delve a bit more into what I have learned and changed since then. Some shots of my car next to a Riviera Blue 997.2 GT3 at the Petersen Luftgekuhlt event. I have a few others that I will post later that are not so edited. The color difference is much more obvious in person. There was also a Riviera Blue 918 Weissach parked near us as well. I drove the car pretty regularly through 2019, taking it to various events in California including Luftgekuhlt, Car Week, numerous private canyon runs, plenty of Rancho Santa Fe Cars and Coffees, and my fair share of solo drives. From 2017 to 2020 I put on nearly 15000 miles, which is impressive when you consider the fact that the car wasn't being driven for the better part of a year. 2019 was not without it's events though. I started the year off with a fresh set of the newly released Advan A052s in their original depth of 5/32 I believe. I was never able to figure out just how short their life span was, as about 3 months into owning them I got a lovely nail right at the edge of the tread. It survived a trip to LA and back, but not much later it blew out again and went flat. During this trip, I also discovered that the bolts included with my spacers were of questionably ****ty material. At first I had thought they were falling out, but I later discovered that they had been cracking. I replaced them with studs for a temporary fix, but I really knew that the proper solution was to rebuild my wheels to the correct widebody offsets. Unfortunately for me, I also had to wait almost 2 more months before the A052s would be made available again, as they were re-releasing them in 7/32" tread depths (obviously at an increased price). I picked up a set in June, and then one lovely day during a swift cruise Highland Valley after leaving my girlfriend's house, I let out a massive pool of coolant and steam. It had finally happened. At 91000 miles, my first coolant pipe had popped. This was only a few weeks before Car Week, so we did a quick fix on the one that popped, with the intention of dropping the motor and fixing them soon after. At the same time, I picked up a set of 997.2 Cup 380/350mm brake calipers and 997 Turbo offset Girodisc rotors from Freddy Lewis. They were in a pretty brutal condition so I had them refinished and repainted to Guards Red, though not much worse as you can see than the stock turbo rotors that I removed. I installed the new calipers with OE 997 PCCB adapters, opting out of swapping to the 997 GT brake master cylinder because there had not yet been a proven solution for the PSM/ABS failures that had been occurring during the swaps. With the coolant pipe fixed and the new brakes on, I took off to Monterey. On the way there, I learned that the intercooler duct body pieces can get brittle over time. In a moment of near-instantaneous karma, my driver duct flew off at an irresponsible speed, leaving me to drive around Car Week with a missing duct for the entire week, which wouldn't have happened if I wasn't being a jackass. On the way home I developed a bit of a wobble, which by the time I had gotten home had turned into a lot of a wobble. My driver's side tie rod had a partial failure, which ended up destroying a front tire at around 6000 miles. The rears, which at this point had about 4000 miles on them completely toasted as well. I replaced the tie rod ends with ERP adjustable motorsports style arms, as well as fresh inners. It was at this point that I had determined that much of the rubber parts on my car were starting to near their end. I had had various random coolant hose related tears, and so decided that I would start to prepare for a pretty big overhaul. I also decided that I was completely over spacers, so I purchased some brand new BBS lips and barrels from John Sellinger aka pwdrhound for the rear wheels, leaving me at a new effective offset of 18x12et38. It is pretty aggressive for a 996 Turbo, but having already clearanced out much of the rear, I didn't have any issues. At the same time, I also purchased from him a pair of brand new OE 997 RSR forged monoball rear control arms, OE 997 Cup front inner control arms, OE GT3 Cup solid caster bucks, and OE RSR rear toe arms. I also purchased some 996 GT3 control arms to install in the front, as the load on the front control arm is much less than in the rear. This would not matter ultimately, as I would later pick up a set of 997 Cup front control arms. The difference between the 997 RSR and the Cup control arms lies in a pretty trick solid Vascomax trunnion pin that attached the outer lower control arm to the wheel carrier for the RSR part, whereas the street GT3/RS and Cup feature a stiff rubber pin at the same location. Both the Cup and the RSR arm use a monoball inner control arm, which is adjustable for caster with different shim thicknesses. The 996 and 997.1 arms use a rough casting, while the 997.2 and RSR arms are all forged. There is a pretty negligible weight difference between the two but there is a large visual difference. I also took this downtime to install a combination of 996 GT2 and 997 GT3 underbody panels and fender liners. The 997 GT underbody panels allow for some increased brake ducting to the rear, as well as a wider and longer profile of flat underbody coverage. The mounting locations for much of the panels is the same, but the job does require adding studs to certain places on the far outside panels to get them to be properly seated. I also utilized this downtime to swap in a 997.2 GT3 shifter, replacing the B&M unit that I had always felt was a bit notchy. It made a world of difference, and I felt that the slightly longer throw was putting much less wear on the gearbox as I was performing much cleaner shifts. At the same time, I added OE 964 RS engine mounts and a new 997 transmission mount, after surprisingly finding my OE trans mount completely blown out. You can also see that I have picked up an OE GT2 roof, which I snagged just to finally do the sunroof delete. I have had the OE headliner for almost 5 years sitting in a box, so I figure now's as good a time as any. The experience of driving a full-monoball and well-sorted GMG WC-GT3RS really sort of changed my dynamic and goals with the car and made me realize just how much I had left on the table. There is a picture below of the RS, what a stellar car the 997 is. Yikes... Saving some calipers... They're beautiful Sticky tires = sandblasted paint. I don't really drink anymore but a cold Bud Light on a hot day of washing cars is never too bad. My Mexican friends rarely drink anything but American beer. Weird, that. ERP Tie Rod Ends and OEM 996 Inner Tie Rods 996 Cast GT3 Control Arms A comparison of the GT3 control arms (left) and RSR control arms (center). RSR rear toe arms are to the far right. These are the newer pinch collar design. Some shots of the new underbody panels. It may not look like much, but the car feels much more stable with clean aero underneath. Some goodies from pdwrhound show up. Time to get busy. Paint marking every bolt after torquing it to BBS' specs (155 in/lbs or just under 13 ft/lbs if I remember correctly). I have grown meticulous and prefer to do all of this work on my own as I do not trust others to operate at the same level of meticulousness. New 3.5" lips, up from 2.5". Barrels jump down from 9.5" to 8.5", bringing effective offset to 18x12 et 38. This is a tad more aggressive than stock GT2 sizes, and I would not try it if you are not comfortable trimming things. And success. Fitment is absolutely perfect along with a brand new set of 265/35 and 315/30 Yokohama Advan A052. Random shot from Car Week so we'll just leave it. OE slicktop roof. They're cheap enough, and I'm weird about carbon roofs without a cage or support. 997.2 GT Shifter. Nice piece, probably about as good as the old 996 Cup shifter. Too bad those are a hassle to get a hold of anymore. Rear fitment after the rebuilding of wheels. More Car Week 2019 stuff, though it is a bit out of order. You can see just how big the 380mm brakes are under 18" wheels. That 997.2 RS was such a gem to drive. Seriously special stuff. Again, this post has become extremely long. I will add a third post soon about where the car sits currently, and how things have progressed. It's a bit of an up and down tale, but I've learned a lot on the way...

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Quotes source posts: 16758529, 16758026, 16758545, 16758565

Thank you! Keep an eye out because it's only gotten crazier from here. Just make sure you really get a shop that cares about getting the details right. My car is far from perfect, though I will never say I regret the decision. Ironically, I almost picked up a Speed Yellow car originally, but a now-friend beat me too it. And then sold the car not much later haha. Haha thank you, I very much appreciate it.

You have done a ton of work and it looks good. This is a interesting Thread I will be following it. just a side question I see your living west coast but I take it you are from Ohio, but where abouts, Akron area for me.

I hope youre gonna track this thing, otherwise i dont understand the megabuck suspension pieces

I painted my 77 C3.0 Mexico blue in my garage years ago. Love that color. Nice work, you should be very proud of the outcome. It went from a car to a piece of art IMO.

Simply stunning, great work!

My 944 S2 is a real beater that needs a full repaint. Somedays I wonder what it would look like in such a cool color or if it�d be smarter to redo the factory india red.

Sick car and progress. Proper build.

Quotes source posts: 16760185, 16760842, 16761050, 16761690, 16761721, 16766019

Cincinnati! I'm actually here working on the car currently since I decided to avoid the Cali COVID mess all together. Many don't understand, which is normal. Track time is in the plan, but I refuse to put cheap parts on my car anyway. Thanks, I still adore the color, though sometimes I wish the car were a bit more understated. Thank you, I appreciate it. Just depends on what you want out of the car. If you aren't permanently attached to it, standard color is almost always the right move unless it's just a horrid and undesirable color. If it's a forever car, then by all means I say paint it whatever your heart desires. Thank you! More to come soon

Wow, what a car!

Gee Whiz.... I thought I had lost of my mind! You are really going at it for a car that was not initially to your liking. I am letting the cat out of the bag here as I have not mentioned it to anyone but I am going to have my Black Metallic C4 painted Mexico Blue. Actually keep flip flopping between Mexico and Gulf Blue. I starting thinking white instead of the gulf blue because it's so light... I saw a 1973 Gulf blue 911S in the junk yard in Sicily in the 80s and I still think it was the S___ but I ended up painting my 911S white. I think Mexico blue is the coolest blue.. not to dark and not too light. Never seen a photo of a Mexico Blue 996 Mk1 on line... I'll post when completed. Next week I take it to the body shop... like everything else in Sicily they have been closed since the beginning of the month. I'll have my all original Aero kit painted and installed. Should look good. Love the effort you are putting into your Turbo!

A bit of an update. In April I had the car shipped to Cincinnati where I am currently "hiding" out from the terrifying COVID pandemic. I planned on bringing the car here to drop the motor and fix the coolant pipe issues since I had a pipe pop out last fall and wanted to do all of them at the same time. I dropped the motor and trans myself in our garage and it's a good thing I did, as two of the other pipes were precariously loose, basically held in from the pressure of the hoses. I also found a fair few worn-out coolant hoses and my fuel hoses were also looking worse for wear. I decided to use this opportunity to replace most of the soft parts, seals, gaskets, etc as I have incurred no cost in removing the motor. It was a great learning experience, though a frustrating one. I managed to drink more coolant than I could ever want, an experience I'm sure many others can relate to. The car has sat the entirety of the fall and winter with the motor and trans out, waiting on parts and better weather. I have also used this as an opportunity to do the 997 GT3 brake master and am also doing the proper OE GT2 clutch slave conversion. The gearbox is also getting 997 GT2 1-3 and an OE Cup LSD installed. I have been fortunate to pick up a great deal of new or clean parts for very generous prices due to COVID. In the time that the car has been down, I picked up a set of 997.2 Cup forged lower control arms for the front, and sold off the 996 GT3 arms that I hadn't yet used. I also picked up the fixed-length 997 Cup upper control arms, as I was not interested in the RSR adjustable units. I prefer these fixed units as the rest of my parts leave plenty of room for a proper alignment. I also sold my Ohlins DFV and picked up a set of Moton Clubsport 2 ways off of a 996 GT3. Naturally, these don't work with the 996 Turbo front wheel carrier, so I had John Sellinger source me brand new GT2/GT3 wheel carriers, which recently became available in very small batches. I was also extremely fortunate to get my hands on an OE GT2 front bumper and wing, two parts that I have lusted over for years. Finally, I decided to replace my Wagner intercoolers with some GT2RS intercoolers, as the passenger side had gotten damaged from a rear -nd bump. I am excited for the spring as the car will be fully repainted ( a long story best shared over a good beer) and then the parts will start going back in. A friend of mine has also offered to machine my rear subframes to 996 RS spec, which I think will really round out all of the OE motorsports parts going on to the car. John also helped me with a new spring and top hat setup for the Motons, which should be great on the track while still being at least usable for the street. They are receiving a full rebuild at Moton HQ, and will be glorious when they go back on. There are a few more pieces currently in the works, but I will save those for when they actually happen as I hate jinxing myself with things like that. For now, enjoy some pictures and dont go too hard on me :0

killer build ! now i know you picked up the oem gt2 spoiler !

I'm glad I venture into this forum still or else I would have missed this. Great build.

Very nice build and the pics are extremely well taken.

Great build!! Hope to see this at Cars & Coffee around Cincy

Just a quick update. Picked up a set of these Manthey carbon street doors recently from John Sellinger and very pleased with the quality of them. Weighed in at 14.1 pounds each, and my bare OE doors weight in at just under 37 pounds each. The doors fit exceptionally well, I had them fitted and lined up quite nicely in about an hour or so each. Body shop experience probably helps, but still a fairly easy process IMO. They will need some bodywork to be perfect in my eye, but the weave and composition is pretty incredible all things considered. I also picked up some new hubs (991 part number these days) for my GT wheel carriers and had them installed out here at Wright Motorsports. While I was there I checked out one of their spare 991.2 GT3Rs. These cars are absolutely mental on the surface, but there is so much to be seen under the skin that makes those cars very special. Lots of inspiration there for sure, and was nice to chat with John Wright about my build and the direction I am taking the car. At some point I had picked up an oem slicktop headliner and a spare oem wheel, so sent that and a few other parts out to my upholsterer in San Diego to have everything redone in Alcantara. I don't have a ton of Alcantara in my car, but there are a few pieces that have bugged me enough to get done such as the sun visors, the e-brake handle, and the spare steering wheel. The wheel will just be OE RS style, with the vinyl center airbag as standard. I also picked up some monoblock front BBS RG from Japan, but they don't quite clear the 380mm Cup brakes to my liking so I will most likely end up selling them. Anyway, enjoy the photos!

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Haha yep! Been eyeballing it for many years now. There are definitely some nuggets to be found every once and a while! I appreciate it. Thank you, it's a hobby that's occasionally paid for some of this build. Enjoy doing it for work, but not enough money in it to be full time unfortunately. Perhaps, though it's looking like I'll be back in California sooner than expected so its road presence here may end up being very limited.

I was wondering what happened to this build, beautiful work you have done.

I haven't been following this build but I did drop in for a look-see, and while admiring your exquisite photo's something jumped out at me. The damage on that Tial Turbo is serious !!! I can tell your very detail oriented so please tell me you know about the issue and have corrected it (and the missing shrapnel ) , but having seen it, I can't un-see it, So please post up the photo of the new/repaired Turbo , so I can sleep at night..

Wow this is a fantastic build! I might be interested in the RG's if you decide to let them go.

Incredible work - well done! Now I want to just drop my engine so I can clean it

What an amazing build! I like the vision and that is being accomplished by a hobbyist. Incredible photography too

Sweet jesus

This thread is where expensive ideas come from...sigh... Epic build.

Fantastic build. My new favorite car!

Damn, thanks for bumping this thread up. I don't venture in this part of the forum but glad i did. This was a great build. Reaaallly glad he changed out that gigantor wing from when it was first painted blue. I think when it was blue with black wheels and GT2 kit was my favorite iteration. Also, I have a GT2 kit on my 996 as well and it's such a pain in the *** because it hangs so low (twss).

Super!

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sir you have a very special talent. Whoever bumped the thread provided a few hours of enjoyment for me. I�m not sure what your current employment situation is, i read you were deployed so thanks for your service. you May well be the next singer or whatever the other company is that does the other one car off, they have focused on the air cools, you could be the 996 guy. I love blues. I really love fords velocity blue, I�m on my third f150, this is the second blue. Saturday at cars and coffee here in Houston they were 8 gt cars. 3 were weisech 4 RS and one just Gt3. One of the Weisechs was Miami blue with the carbon fiber . Then this shark 🦈 blue 22 with 500 miles came in what a car, manual transmission. Black leather with yellow deviated stitching, yellow seatbelts, yellow brake calipers, the wheels looked like black power coated but had a matching shark blue line all around. Since I also saw a cobalt blue 07 turbo. I believe now I like that shark blue best. Maybe the carbon fiber on the Gt3 makes me not like the Miami as much. You are extremely meticulous that�s super important for high end customers. Please show us a few pictures. Cobalt blue. I wanted my turbo or an S in this color, however I wasn�t able to find a good deal. My turbo is black, however the paint is in awesome shape. This is the car. What a beauty. We had 40 cars Saturday. Spoke with the owner and I told him sir definitely best of show in my mind. My photos are nowhere as great or good as yours, that�s another talent that you definitely have. That lava orange really stands out. Gt2. If this ever was to happen I told my wife over lunch yesterday , I�ll be getting me a shark blue car. Happened at triple digits. You see a bit of the trucks velocity blue color.

This is an incredible car with incredible care and attention. Well done sir!!

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the other builder I was referring to is Gunterwerks

It took me few days to read the entire build thread. So much info, work and attention to detail in this build. Incredible car all together. Very well done Ryan. Keep up the good work. Let's bring this thread back up!

OMFG - I just parted with my MB 997.2 yesterday and am already looking for its replacement. You've done everything right and awesome with yours. You Tube

Hey man, was trying to buy some of your front flares from the Bay, but you have ended it. Finally installed my GT2 front bumper, was hoping for this to be my next step. Please let me know if you'll sell me some either way. Thanks! Joe J joeyjanko36@gmail