Performance for £3,000?

Well, this is my second post 😃and I am completely new to the world of Porsche! I am planning on picking up a 987 Cayman and plan to take it to a few tracks once ths sun shines! My question is this...what would you prioritise to change on a stock 987 with a £3k spend budget (let's pretend mechanic fees are £0 for now) ?

1) Spend money to protect the engine (deep sump, etc.). Lots of articles on this board about that. 2) Upgrade the suspension to allow for greater negative camber. 3) Spend the rest on training to improve your driving skills. There is no use in spending huge amounts to gain 5 or 10 horsepower when you can trim seconds off your lap times with better driving! Good luck and have fun!

I second racergreg's advice regarding a deeper sump with a X-51 center oil baffle. Then maybe GT3 style LCA's for front. Max the camber for both the front and rear. You may end up with close to -2.4 f and -2.0 r. Then a set of lowering springs and stiffer adjustable swaybars. Brake pads and big brake cooling ducks front and rear. You will want to run 10W 50 oil to help protect rod bearing #6 from scaring. Change oil often and cut open the oil filter to see any deposits, both metal and plastic. Watch you shift points carefully. 7000 max. I use Motul 300 V Competition 5W-40. Seems to work well for me the past couple of years without any particles in my filters.

Thanks, I am excited to get this sorted for when the weather warms up! I'll take a look for deep sumps, are there any you have used that you would recomend? Driving lessons are definately a good shout!

Class response, thanks. The shopping list is growing! 😅

Deep sump, mine is LN 10.5 Qt with the X-51 baffle and windage plate. What I found is the windage plate without any oil slop dams (just a flat plate) allow the return oil to slosh back and fourth across the plate and up the side walls. This causes a strain on the OEM AOS . I then upgraded my AOS to the Porsche Motor Sports 987.1 AOS and no more issues. The mods are a slippery slope as many times their interaction produce startlingly results. Without the windage plate, the sump oil certainly climbs the walls away from the engine oil pickup and finds the AOS vacuum in the roof of the sump resulting in #6 rod bearing scaring and/or breaking the AOS .

A spin on oil filter adapter with said spin on filter seems to be suggested by some also.

Yep, I have that filter system. The funny thing is the motor is quieter than the OEM paper filter. Just seems that the lifters do not rattle, the timing chains are less noisey. My guess is the oil pressure is just a little higher with the spin on filter. I found also that you need to snug it up pretty good so it does not back off. MrChris give this video a look. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjrrMuZ4a_8AhWVGTQIHefIClgQz40FegQIExAt&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRNMBFGCWR1E&usg=AOvVaw2HG-BzobGKAcqAix6PgPqM

Contrarian viewpoint- If you are just a beginner track event guy (I assume High Performance Driving Events are what you are looking at), you will suck up 3000 pounds in about 4 weekends of HPDE action (BTW, where is the British pound key on a standard keyboard). And trust me, as a beginner on street tires , most of the things suggested above will not be necessary. This is assuming your car is in reasonably good stock condition. Nobody mentioned brakes but I would personally "baseline" the brakes with new stock pads (Stock! Textar or similar. You do not need or want track pads) and new rotors. Do spring for a competition grade oil. Unfortunately, if you use the car as a daily driver, the best policy is to change to the competition oil before the track event and then drain it and go with your "street oil" until the next event. It seems like a lot of lightly used oil is generated but until someone fully understands oiling issues with these cars, it seems to be the best insurance for the least money. Charles Navarro at LN Engineering gets into this in more detail Dedicated track cars should have their oil changed after every event. Mixed street/track use cars should run race oil for the track event and change immediately after to a street oil. What motor oil is best for my Porsche, classic car, or high performance engine? - LN Engineering LLC Learn why using the right motor oil is critical to preventing catastrophic engine failure in your classic car or performance engine. www.lnengineering.com 9 out of 10 folks begin their track time with stock Caymans. They are great cars right out of the box. I own two!

Harveyf - I like the way you think. Unfortunately after 2000 posts here and a good number of likes, I have found that a good many of the owners that have bore scoring never thought it could happen to them. Many ended up selling a roller, not being able to afford the new rebuilt engine. So, you assessment of the car is a good one if the owner can keep his foot off the throttle in long high G corners, even with street tires and let the engine warm up properly. Just one event can start the rod bearing scar and it will develop from there. The bore scoring is aa different matter altogether with guys getting on the gas way to early in the warm up process, So yes, you are correct for you, but what about the guy that just watched the street vs track of the Porsche vs Toyota and thought, great I can afford the $34,000 car and I will just show up and give it a go. Just happens that the track is a long high G force track with threshold braking and turn in features. The coaches are not there to be mechanics, rather to instruct on how best to get around the course safely with enough speed to keep up. I'm talking to the other end of the class that wants to push the throttle down hard and brake hard as well.

The motor oil thread from LN is very good, one we should all read, The following post about Zn and Moly is even better. Unfortunately the M-97 engine with its matrix cylinder bores and plastic type piston skits do not have the correct type of scrapping effects to keep the bores smooth. Rather the ZDDP adds mountains and valleys of laydown material. The plastic coating on the piston skits wear away trying to smooth out the bumps, causing the start of bore score at the very bottom of the bore. The good news is ZDDP may be removed from the additive formulations due to its film buildup on the catalytic converters. My idea is to keep the plastic piston skits smooth, which the Motul ester formulation seems to be doing. I do change oil fill often, (10.5 qts) every 6 months or about 3500 miles with the Motul V300 Competition 5W 40.

Hey @Apex1 I said it was a contrarian view, which would pre-suppose that everyone won't agree with me The oiling issue is complicated. I am assuming that @MrChris is not only new to Porsches but new to track events. And I assume he wants to keep his car as a street legal driver. I just felt that all the responses were weighted a little too much to performance improvements and were very light on safety improvements. And there are reliablity improvements. If I had 3000 pounds to throw at it, I would baseline the brakes and get a Stilo carbon fiber helmet, to reduce the inertia mass on one's head when one hits something. A big step up but probably already beyond his budget would be supportive seats with cutouts for a 6 point harness, a 6 point harness, a harness bar, and a Hans device. Do the oil change thing discussed by LN Engineering. You may be an instructor so you probably would admit that green group drivers rarely can acheive the cornering limits of street tires, so I would consul him not to worry about bore scoring and rod bearings quite yet. Hopefully the track bug will bite and he will mortgage his house and sell a kidney to support his habit. Or not!

harveyf- Who knows the result of these threads as most newbe's never respond unless there is difficulty. If you have been on P9 lately, you may know that the junkyard supply of M-97 engines is running low. Seems, more are blowing up than are wrecking.