Another 996.1 C2 Aero Ramble

Hello I bought this in May last year and have been tinkering since. Its a 2001 996.1 C2 with factory gt3 style wheels (with grey bits i dont really like), aero kit, PSE (fitted by expensive cars of malton in 04), Sports seats, litronics and a few more trinkets. Sits on Koni sports with H&R springs and 5/15mm spacers. Rides very nicely. Came with some sort of Yoko Neoprene tyre which is fine on a track but ambitious for a cold/wet british winter. Like my last Porsche (LHD 968CS) which I bought in a car park at a cricket match in 2001, it was purchased on the spot without looking at any others. What could go wrong? Well little major as it turns out so far but there have been a few issues.... On the test drive the exhaust was a bit rattly when cold but it went away. Talk of a seam needing welding which didn't seem like a major issue. Also a bit of a debate as to what the PSE button was doing but didn't think a lot more about this at the time The drive back to Suffolk also uncovered a bit of wind noise from the drivers window and quite a few rattles from the mirror area. Having a fiddle the cover then fell off. What i did notice when i got back was that the seal was bulging out a fair bit and very hard compared to the other. Taking the mirror off exposed the front window runner which was pretty much dissolved! new v old Also the centre cubby box explodes open so fabricated a new hinge out of an old door hinge. I then got straight on and did the front discs and pads. Major f'up rounding off the bolt that holds the brake line to the NS strut.... Major f'up no.2 was drying to extract it. I drilled it ok but then the extractor snapped off - I then snapped off a drill in there trying to drill out the extractor. Using the Homer Simpson school of "if a job's too difficult, give up" I let PIE Performance sort this out for me later in the year..... The rattles had not gone away and it looked like the windscreen was a major culprit. It was a Pilkington fitted by Autoglass who were generally not interested. Having obtained a small crack, Tim from Gold Windscreens in Ipswich came and replaced with Saint Gobain. Turned out it was fitted pretty badly by Autoglass so took a bit of tidying up. Next up was the exhaust issue. The switch was definitely getting stuck in loud mode. Sometimes it would work, and then the button light would start flickering and stop. And with seams that were not quite right, it sounded awful when cold. I took off the rear bumper and all the valves were connected and going in and out, and when you applied 12v to the actuator they did what they should do. That led me to look at the relay which had been "hacked" for low speed loudness. Some of the solder joints looked a bit old so I applied my soldering iron to them. Hey presto it worked - for a bit. Since then we have migrated to hair dryer, heat gun, the oven. All have worked for a bit. Now resigned after a year to a new £125 relay....... In the meantime I was looking at fixing the seams. Stuffed some gunk in but that wasn't going to do a lot. I wanted to retain the PSE function so decided on a Spyder Performance one which sounded good and I could hook up to my existing faulty setup! It was cheap (£600 ish) and in the meantime i could get the old units sorted out if i didn't like the noise. They look pretty similar to other offerings out there. Quiet is excellent as it sounds great without being obtrusive. Loud is to loud but sounds amazing at full chat. I suspect quiet has more torque, but loud more power. Off to be repaired as they may go back on one day - or be sold.. With the 968 still to sell, I gave up for a while to beautify that and track down pictures of Walter Rohrl thrashing it around the conti-drome in 1992. I handed it over to PIE for a service in November and also (rightly or wrongly) do an IMS/RMS/Clutch, replace the rusty diagonal braces, sort my NS front upright out and replace a track rod end. Turns out the RMS hadn't been fitted properly when the last clutch was done. The IMS was a dual row on a 2001 car and was fine but got replaced anyway. I also had the geometry sorted and a new set of Michelin PS2 fitted as those Neoprene things were pretty exciting on cold wet roads. More follows

Right, so how do you post a google photo without downloading it and uploading it again? The forum code is changing it into a link for some reason and html seems to be disabled so you cant just put in

Bit of a faff trying to click each link to see the photos. You've had a gentle welcoming to 996 ownership i'd say. Spring and Shock upgraded looks decent, I fancy Koni Yellow for mine in the future. I'm guessing you have no complaints?

yes, images no idea what is going on there. The forum clearly doesnt like the worlds most popular image platform. I have tried adding -tmp.jpg on the end which works in a browser, but the forum converts it to a url in the code everytime........ Koni, I havent really had a fiddle with the settings but then i havent felt the need to. Rides much better than my old 968CS which was on m030 and 17" wheels. I have done plenty more work - all suspension arms, console & wiper delete. Was just trying to get the pictures to work before i got carried away.

Now with pictures. The only way to do it is to open a blogspot blog from your google account and start a blog with just a load of images in. If you publish it you can then right click and get image address and use in the img tags on here.

Another lovely looking 996.1 aero.. Welcome :thumbs:

Lovely 996 - if the IMS bearing was fine why replace it? did you go for a stock replacement or one of the aftermarket potions?

I went with the EPS one.

Next up was doing something about the woefully poor speakers. Despite having the six speakers and amp it really is not very good. Alpine SPG-10C02 seemed to be the order of the day although I was not going to be paying for some adapters so set about the existing speakers for front and rear with a dremel and made a bit an adapter which sandwiches the speaker to the speaker cover. I have left the door speakers alone. I did order some Alpines to replace these but these seemed a lot lighter so sent them back. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JO-zZlS9_WU/XvNm68Yt_LI/AAAAAAAAmUk/1dsQ07D7WbotWzlhmTXhFDSBIbSW8Cf8QCK4BGAsYHg/w439-h781/20200202_183437.jpg[/ing] [img]https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1P3ewIczOd8/XvNnFKXwENI/AAAAAAAAmUo/bbGU1rEH07cSObgHzhF9k-KtfzflBCgBQCK4BGAsYHg/w439-h781/20200202_214832.jpg I cut down the mounting tabs and made some corresponding slots in the speaker grills so that the ring sandwiches the two together. I then soldered the old speaker wires to the new speakers and bent the connector block over using heat. The stock head unit is extremely fiddly to use so I thought it cant be an worse than my old Alpine from the 968. It went in for about a month until the novelty of the random menus every time you pressed the volume knob wore off. This got replaced with a Blaupunkt London 470 DAB / Bluetooth / USB etc etc unit which, bar the screen colour, suits the car well and is exceptionally easy to use and has pre-amp front and rear connectors. It has a glossy surround so i sprayed that with some black plastidip. I was going to make a flat surround to replace the bevelled one but not sure it is necessary. [/img]

I also have the six speakers and amp setup and agree it's pretty poor. How would you rate the improvement with new speakers and standard head unit (Cdr22?). Did the quality improve further with the blaupunkt?

It wasn't great with the Porsche head unit. Quite a bit better with the Alpine but still not really what i would expect. I think the positioning of the speakers is rubbish as I put the Alpine in a 205 GTI I have with 4 new cheapo Alpine speakers and I would say the result was better! The Blaupunkt is better again - i would say pretty good but again not exception. I suspect the ideal senario would be ditch the amp, change the door speakers from low range to mid range and have the fronts as tweater'ish type additional speakers. I put the DAB antenna under the windscreen scuttle. Works better than on the windscreen although not brilliant in low signal areas. I am thinking about getting a VW transporter wing mirror antenna, and stuffing in the front PU.