New 996 owner... a journey through a canvas of unlimited modding potential

Having always been a car guy, the one non-negotiable part of the family budget has always been vehicle spend. So when we moved to Tokyo... the first thing (well, after sorting out living arrangements :P and before the family moved) that I decided to get was, well, a car. I went through long discussions with my (arguably) better half about why we needed a car in Tokyo what with the amazing public transit and all that, and I don't think, to this day, that I won that argument - I think some shortcuts were taken - but a fragile agreement was reached. The next argument revolved around the size and practicality of the car; my (still, arguably) better half insisted on small and practical to navigate narrow Tokyo streets and to ferry around for groceries and so on. My solution was simple: an AMG C55. It was reasonably priced (considering my posting in Tokyo is of a limited nature, I didn't want to blow an inordinate amount of money on a fancy new car - and since I may be moving to Canada later, I wanted to get something that would pass import laws there, so 14-15 years was the perfect mark, since they would be mostly exempt from anything). Of course, a lot of oohing and aahing ensued, because the C55 is about twice the size of the R56 Mini we (still) had back home, and considering how beloved that car was, an ultimatum was put forth to me: a Mini, or nothing. Quite obviously, I couldn't agree to that, because where's the fun in moving halfway across the world and buying the same car? (not to mention that I'd be missing my coilovers, my monochrome Union Jack theme, my engine and exhaust mods and my buckets of carbon fiber. In my wife's car.). So it was back to the search. A week went by and I had a solution. "I have it!" I exclaimed. I was ecstatic. I solved the riddle. I found a car that was small, fun to drive (my only real criteria, though you would have to agree, that's a very extensible definition), it fit four people (this caused an immediate panic. FOUR?!?), and it had a trunk ("why are you even mentioning this as a feature?!?"). A Porsche. There was silence on the line. "I knew I shouldn't have let you hang out there by yourself, this wasn't going to end well." As was the case with all previous cars we owned, though, I think she felt that this battle was lost before it even really started. I have this certain tone of voice when I found the car, and somehow it becomes an exercise in narcissism, where the opinion of my counterpart becomes entirely perfunctory, and is only considered as a pure necessity, without carrying any decision-making weight. It was the case for our 335 (chosen above other, more "family-friendly" options), our Golf R ("It's *HOW* much for a Golf?!?!?"), and so on. I started by looking at Turbos first, but then considered that that's a bit too much money to spend for a car I might not end up taking back with me, so I parked that. I looked at Carrera 4's, but that was very short-lived after I opened the frunk and realised that the only thing that would fit in it is my wallet, and possibly, a child; but considering I already sold the "four seats" idea, there was no need to put one in the frunk. So I decided to go for a regular Carrera. Hey, I figured, for a first Porsche, it's not too bad right? So after some looking around... I, err, "we", ended up with a black 2001 Carrera with 55K kilometers on it, which I thought was pretty damn good. It had all the features I was looking for: PSM (because I'm a wussy, I track my cars, and all I've ever tracked were front engine AWD cars; RR is new to me, and judging by a good friend's experience with his GT3RS and walls, I really want traction control and a cool head); seat heaters (leather + cold climate = bad), xenons, parking sensors, etc. I didn't want a rear wiper and I did prefer an aerokit, but that was not to be; I would have also wanted better mags, but I figured the moment aero and mags are added, who knows what the history of the car is, so I was happy with OEM equipment. A Porsche dealership gave it a clean bill of health (the most they were able to find was that the tires should be changed - no s..t, Sherlocks, considering fronts were Bridgestone and rears were Nexen; they seemed quite disappointed that they couldn't find any thousand-dollar work to do otherwise), so I went with it. First pics (and yeah... I'm vain as f., so that license plate *does* say 911). The interior was very decent for a 14 year old car. One of the owners must've been a smoker because a faint smell was present, but a) it's basically impossible to buy a non-smoker Porsche in Japan (because smoking is completely ubiquitous, and any man driving a Porsche would more than likely be a smoker - image and all), and b) it was faint enough that I was sure I could get rid of it with a bit of effort. As far as I could tell, the only modification this car had was a (very bad) stereo with a faceplate that was bordering on falling off. Considering the penchant of the Japanese towards full-blown navigation systems, I was a bit surprised this car didn't have one, but that was a good thing to me - this meant that it didn't really move around too much (or the owner had a hand held one, because the windshield didn't have any suction cup markings). Quite obviously, although I appreciated the previous owner's somewhat purist approach to the electronic subsystem, I wasn't buying this car to keep it stock, and anyway, not being a local in Tokyo, the absence of a navigation system is akin to suicide. If you've never driven in Tokyo, there are no street names (in 80% of cases), and streets are rarely orthogonal or sensical in any way - they just go wherever (except in Kyoto, which was actually built following a plan). So out went the crap radio, as well as the whole centre console - I had also recently bought the AC control relocation kit (and obviously a satnav unit, as well), so I was all set. By the way - this was day 5 of ownership of the car. The only time I was modding faster than this was when I got my Golf R and I was replacing the OEM ugly tail lights with euro spec LEDs before the license plates were on. Heh. My mod policy is doing my own mods as much as possible. There are certain things I cannot do, like exhaust and suspension work; but as much as possible, I try to do everything myself. Back home I had a garage, which made work much easier; here I am in a condo, and I thought that if the rules are anything like the last condo I lived in where the security ***** gave me trouble every time I so much as changed my wheels, I'd be in trouble; but I think between the fact that it's a Porsche, I'm a foreigner, and it's just completely outside the "norm" that I am taking my car apart in the garage, to this day the security guys have said not a word. I think they're literally too shell-shocked to care. So they mostly leave me alone. Here it is, mostly complete (the hanging wire is for the radar / speed camera detector), still waiting for the replacement shelf module. Now that I was going full throttle with this Porsche thing, I had to get my hands on an appropriate t-shirt, as well, which I did. One of the things I loved about the car when I got it was the engine start. Besides the ignition being on the wrong side, the sound of the engine turning over and starting is just mind-blowingly addictive. One of the things I _didn't_ like about it is that there was pretty much nothing after that. So I resolved to do something about the exhaust note. Being in Japan, there's not exactly a wealth of options for exhausts - so I kept an eye on the forums and a Fabspeed exhaust came up for sale at one point when I had a business trip to the US planned right around the same time. Awesome! I quickly reached out, set up a meet with the guy in LA, and flew over. I figured I should get a proper car to ferry a proper exhaust, so in my endless wisdom, I did. Thanks Sixt. Yeah... stuff "sort of" fit. That's a Recaro child seat in the trunk; it took me FOREVER to find a compatible one, and I trolled many a forum before I did. Damn pseudo-rear seats! Flew the thing back to Tokyo, went to my favourite Porsche shop to install it. Favourite because they do individual customers' cars as a front to keep the shop running, but their real business is race cars... so there's always some eye candy parked around there. I love how Takata sponsors this one... The before and after on my (admittedly, less ridiculous) ride. Recaro fits well. I removed the entire rear seat assembly (well... calling it a "rear seat" is like pretending that it seats an adult, so let's just call it "rear padding"). Another thing I did is borrow the shop's PIWIS to activate my temp sensor. I was planning to get the control stalk and so on, but for now, I just wanted the thing active. The dialogue with the shop mechanic was pretty amusing: - Hey, you have a PIWIS, eh? - Yep. - Umm ... can I use it? - For what? - I want to activate the OBC. - The uh... what? - You know, the onboard computer. - Uh .. really! Yeah, sure, no problem. But umm, I don't know how to do that, and I don't want to poke around your car, who knows what's up. - It's ok man. Just look the other way while I do it. I found it in the menus, showed it to the guy, he seemed somewhat impressed; he clicked around a bit (the damn unit was in Japanese, and worse yet, in all katakana, so it was a complete nightmare to try to read it) but once he clicked Write to Car, bam! The temp sensor came up. I was so happy! (and yeah, Japan is freaking hot in summer). On this trip, I picked up more useful stuff. Focal speakers, a Porter Cable polisher, and some compounds that people have recommended. Focal speakers going in first: And at this point... I had an epiphany. One of the things you will never find in Japan is any variety of colours or individualisation. Because of the general group mentality where conformity is norm and the epitome of luxurious success is the Toyota Century , a car that is "is acquired through persistent work, the kind that is done in a plain but formal suit." and whose main differentiating aspect is that it has remained almost completely unchanged from the outside for the last 40 years (despite obviously being on the cutting edge of technology inside), people tend to limit themselves severely in the flamboyancy of vehicles that they own. For instance, most of the Porsches for sale are either black, silver or navy blue. Sometimes, you find white ones. But sky blue, orange, etc? Nope. Even the GT3RSs on the road are mainly white. White!!!! Not orange, not lime green - white. Hell, even Lamborghinis are completely bland: this Huracan parked not far from where I live is silver. Matte silver, incredibly tastefully done, but just silver nevertheless: (I absolutely LOVE that sticker) Anyway, I digress: so back to the epiphany. I decided I didn't want to have the same black Porsche everyone had. It was just wrong. I am a foreigner in Japan; I see absolutely no reason to try to fit in. I already do enough of that at work and in social circles; I see no reason why my car should have to follow. Anyway, somehow, that logic made sense at the time; so I reached out to the guy at PorscheDecalShop.com. My insane idea was on; and one could argue my sanity very quickly fell off the cliff, but I didn't care. Hell, I've always modded my cars inside, and maybe a little bit on the aero end. Enough! Three weeks later, this arrived:

So yeah. I had this completely insane idea of turning my car into a real-life Martini advertisement. I've always loved the Martini (and the Gulf) livery, and I find that Martini works best on white cars; I was honestly not sure how it would turn out on black. If I had a light blue car, I'd have gone Gulf; as it stands, I took a risk. The decals were extremely well done. Major props to the PorscheDecalShop guy. They weren't pre-cut, though, which is a bit of a downer; considering I'm a turd and I don't know wtf I'm doing, I knew I was in for a tough ride. What I didn't know was just HOW much of a tough ride this is going to be. I completely understand now why people charge money for this, and next time, I'm absolutely certain I'm going to pay. Anyway, I would only find this out later. For now, I was excited to get to work, and so I did. I figured I should dive head first, because really, when you're learning to dive off a ten foot board, you go head first, because you know, smart. So I went straight for the hood, and the Martini logo. Bam. No monkey business. I'm not going to post all the pictures of the process because I think my frustration and the R rated nature of most of my exclamations transcend the photo medium and they would probably get me banned on the forum for swearing through photos. Suffice it to say, though, that EVERY SINGLE PIECE was ... well... a single piece. At least the Martini logo's letters were all together, otherwise I'd just as soon have shot myself. Guns aren't legal in Japan, but I'd have found a way, because really, this was a MASSIVE PIA. This took me like three days to do, and as mentioned above, this completely exhausted my vocabulary of swear words and any desire to, you know, live (and I obviously still had the roof, the sides, and the tail to do). So I said screw it and went on a road trip. One of the things Japan is very famous for is its insane mountain passes. Any fan of Initial D and the like will know all the racing stories - and believe me, they are completely true. So I wanted to go on a little road trip to experience this, and also see if the newly applied racing stripes will fall off somewhere in the mountains of Sendai. I took a route through Fukushima and up to Sendai (and by the way, Fukushima is essentially a province - so besides probably picking up some errant rads while driving through it, there wasn't really anything going on as far as nuclear disasters, Blinky the Fish impersonators, or other harbingers of doom). Here's my happily functioning navi showing the route I was about to take: And here's the car in the woods of that road: I will say this. This was a completely ridiculous drive. I didn't know what I was in for - this was NOT a two lane road by ANY STRETCH OF IMAGINATION. The picture above shows a very wide section of the road. If you're bored, here's a three minute video of the experience. I stuck my phone onto the dash, and took a segment of the road. Midway through there's some oncoming traffic. By the time I was done with this segment (it was something like 30km of road more or less like this), I found out that I had a fuel tank leak. That, or my OBC and fuel gauge was broken. Reason for this? Well, the car smelled of gasoline inside out, and according to the OBC, I averaged something along the lines of 30 L/100km (that's about 8mpg for folks from the US or Burma). I couldn't see any obvious leak, though, but I figured I should get the car checked somewhere. For now, I finally reached the mountains of Sendai; so here's some pictures of those. It's a fairly surreal landscape. It was really rather impressive. I spent some time gazing at something a lot bigger than us puny humans, then hopped in the car and drove to the city proper. The car no longer smelled of gas, and my gas consumption dropped to the much more normal *highway* usage of 10 L/100km (23mpg), so I started thinking that maybe I didn't have a hole in the tank - maybe that's just the price to pay for a fun ride through the woods. Hmm. Worth considering. So in reality, there was another reason why I drove all the way to Sendai. Sightseeing was one; frustration with the decal install was another; but also, I needed new wheels. I previously mentioned some things I absolutely HATED about my car. They were: the exhaust note (fixed), the wheels (coming up), and the suspension (despite being a Euro spec car, somehow, I was still in jacked up SUV mode). I can only tackle one thing at a time, so this time I was about to get a new set of wheels. I found a guy selling a set of Enkei NT03s with a set of gently used Federals on them, so I figured that'd make a good road / track wheelset (remembering that I live in a Japanese apartment, so I need to fit those wheels somewhere, and also fit humans into it as well - so I had to get a set which would do double duty). At first, I wondered how I'm going to get the wheels home (as did the guy who sold them to me - he loved my Martini decal, but he was profoundly suspicious of me being able to fit anything more than a single wheel inside the car). I patiently explained to him that the Internet never lies, and I was greatly inspired by this post here on RL that I actually took a picture of so that I would just reference it every time anyone doubted me. So sure enough, four wheels fit just fine. I also forgot to leave the child seat at home, so had to figure out a way to store that there as well. Quite obviously, I wasn't willing to wait any amount of time to get these wheels installed (it didn't help that the sh.tty Nexen/Bridgestone combo vibrated and pulled sideways at anything over 100 km/h), so I ran to the nearest tire shop and put them on! Last shot of the OEMs... I'm getting used to seeing my car without wheels or on a lift. Hah. Oh god, that ride height. It's even more pronounced with these new wheels. I *must* do something about this... Some more shots of the car on the way back: I headed back to Tokyo at this point, and refreshed and resolute, I got back to gluing stickers. The sides got done, the roof got done, the security guards learned a whole lot of new swear words, and the world was mostly right once again. Was the job perfect? Hell no. Far from it. I learned that cutting vinyl while pulling on it is A. VERY. DUMB. IDEA. I also learned that while you can't glue vinyl on a dry car, over-watering the car while gluing is A. VERY. DUMB. IDEA. Also, draping your car in Martini livery by yourself is A. VERY. DUMB. IDEA. But anyway, all this is in retrospect vision. Obviously, I had no choice but to charge ahead. Also, I figured, since I drive like an idiot maniac most of the time, people will never have time to notice the imperfections. The goal of this car was to terrorise the locals: a retarded-looking foreigner in a flamboyant Porsche, and an expected roll of the eyes and a comment on "those foreigners" was what I was looking for. Sort of. Found a neat cousin when parking at Haneda airport, too. With the stickers complete, I started looking for something else to torture in the poor car. I forgot one more thing that I found profoundly annoying: the steering wheel. I had the default 4-spoke one, and I have to say - I've never driven a bus, but if I were to, I would think that that steering wheel would have prepared me well for it. It was massive, and I couldn't even bend my knee and turn the wheel - my hand would not pass. It was really completely unreasonable. And those Tiptronic switches... seriously, I can understand the marketing appeal of "fingertip + electronic transmission = tiptronic", but you don't HAVE to take life so literally! Why couldn't there be at least a flick of the shifter? I'm honestly curious: has ANYONE ever been able to use the Tiptronic switches for anything other than a prelude to insult the world, and particularly, the Porsche engineers? I don't think I've seen a more flawed design of anything, and in this list I'm including oddities like the Reliant Robin, the Transportation Security Agency, and the whole concept of eating in the dark ("au noir"). Anyway, so I needed to do something about it. Some forum trolling later, and something to the tune of 1,400� later, I had a nice Raid steering wheel from Gert Carnewal - together with proper paddles, FINALLY. I just realised I don't have a picture of it, so I should probably get one, but here's the picture of the old wheel off, and the instrument cluster in pieces. Old vs new steering wheel: there's like half a meter of diameter difference! And it's obviously thicker and so on. Took the opportunity to get my HDMI wiring connected so I could uh, obviously not watch movies while I drive, because that would be wrong, but you know. So that I'd have the possibility to. Decided it was a good time to replace the headlight bulbs, too: everything was so yellow it felt like the car was from the previous century (oh wait... it almost is. Ha.) I got a bunch of PIAA H7 4500Ks, and some LEDs for the city lights, and bam, Bob's your uncle. It was time for another drive, so I went up to a place called Ashinoko Skyline - a private road in the mountains near Mt. Fuji best known for - you'd never guess it - views of Mt. Fuji. Of course, as luck would have it, it was cloudy that day, but trust me when I say it - that's Mt. Fuji in the background (and those donuts ain't mine). At this point, I was running out of ideas what to mod. Suspension was still in the plan, but I didn't see anything good for sale, and I refused to spend $3K for a brand new set of KWv3s (despite me believing that they are basically the pinnacle of suspensions - after I had a set on my Golf R, I think I discovered nirvana - without needing to measure it out by the gram). I also resolved not to modify the engine - I did the orange bottlecap mod, I don't think it did much, but I was too lazy to take it out. I bought a K&N air intake... but after reading reviews about how it possibly burns the MAF sensor, it's sitting in my closet, unused. So I was a little bit stumped ... until I started browsing Yahoo Auctions, and realised, there is work yet remaining.

So here we go. While looking for ideas on what I could mod on the car (considering I've decided to basically not touch the engine, since the dollars invested vs horsepower gained ratio is terrible, since nothing is blowing anywhere), I thought maybe I should add a lip. Japan is known for some extreme bodywork on cars, so I came across some absolutely inane stuff. Consider this godawful mediocrity, for instance: Yeah. Widebody indeed. Anyway, to borrow a clich� so overused (especially on car forums) that it's almost shameful to overuse it, beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and I'm entirely cognisant that my ridiculous stripes are not everyone's cup of tea, so some claim may be made to that effect, as well. (I had a guy tell me "I wouldn't do that to my Porsche", to which I couldn't resist but ask, "Oh, do you also have one?" - "Well, had I had one." - "Oh, well, come back to me when you do."); but I think I'm staying clear of anything as obnoxious as the work of art above. Anyway, I just wanted to get a lip. Of course, a huge multitude of various lips are available, but all are ranging from excessive to outright grotesque - and I have a Porsche, not an Integra Type R, so I wanted to stay reasonable. It appeared that the OEM lips were actually fairly nice; but the process got very complicated very fast, because there is the Cup lip, the Supercup lip, the Aero lip, and there's like four or five different part numbers, and to make things worse, I have the non-aerokit front bumper, so only the base lip fits... and it's ugly as death. I have a car with Martini stripes. I'm not going for subtle here. So I went and got me a Supercup lip. This time, I did my research: the overarching opinion of The Internet was that the Supercup lip fits fine on either the Aero bumper, or the Mk2 bumper. I had neither of those. But I had a good drill, a lot of tape, I was empowered with my success gluing stickers, and really, I was ready to take on the world. So the bumper came off. I broke a clip taking it off, but I was smart and I ordered at least a dozen and a half replacement fasteners, so I was prepared for it. The security guards have given up on me at this point, so seeing a Porsche with no headlights, or no bumper, or whatever, no longer surprised anyone. Nor did it surprise anyone to see me in the elevator with, uh, a bumper (with a license plate attached, no less). I dragged the beast home. This was a good opportunity to figure out what was going on with the insert - it was oddly discoloured, and looked very strangely white. The bumper and the Supercup lip looked great. Out of the 13 or so holes on the lip, one aligned, and it wasn't even the centre one... it was just a hole somewhere along the way. But no worries! Out went the drill, and a few stressful moments later, out of the 13 holes, now almost 12 lined up! However, I didn't plan for one thing - the holes were one thing, but the shape of the bumper was another. It was a) not sufficiently flat for the lip, and b) the perimeter was too short, so the lip stuck out by a good inch into both wheel wells. But hey, I wasn't about to get a piece of plastic ruin my day - out went the file and the Exacto, and several sweaty minutes later (actually, it took the better part of two hours, because I tried to follow the ancient Russian maxim, "measure seven times, cut once"... it was still futile (see above re: 12 holes), but I tried. I really did.). Anyway, eventually, I wrought it into a shape that somewhat matched the bumper. Success!!! Sort of. Sadly, the fasteners turned out not to hold it too well, but between 3M double-sided monster tape and the fasteners, I managed to attach the thing on. For reference, I'm going to replace the rives with bolts - I already got a nice set of bolts with washers and rubber grommets to prevent damage, and then the damn thing will hold like no tomorrow. The end result turned out surprisingly okay, as a matter of fact - although you can see some space now (as I write this, a few months later), it's going to be fixed with the above-mentioned bolts, and otherwise, it's absolutely great. Definitely adds to the look of the car without being obnoxious. Right around this time, another great thing happened. I got a call that a freight package arrived for me to Narita airport... my GT2M wing from Misha Designs came in. Quite honestly, I never liked the trunk spoiler. I found it too tame for the car I was building, and I felt I needed something a bit more extravagant. I considered the Cup wing... but I thought that that would be maybe a bit tacky for a car that still mostly lives on the street, and I just couldn't find the authentic GT3 wing anywhere (and I wasn't going to deal with Chinese fakes - it would probably completely not fit, or be crooked, or fly off, who knows). Misha seemed like a great compromise: people spoke very highly of him, and the wing looked just about exactly right. Sadly, it wasn't adjustable - I actually wanted an adjustable wing - but you have to cut corners somewhere. So I went to pick it up. The box took me by surprise: although by now I have become somewhat confident of just how much stuff I can stuff into the Porsche (more on this later), this was nevertheless far beyond feasible. Fortunately, though, unpacking the box revealed excessive protective material, and the wing itself fit ... sort of ... inside the car. Phew. Off it went to get painted! Except we were heading out to ski, so I couldn't put the painted wing on. D'oh! Instead, I went to get a set of winter tires for the OEM wheels (!), and off we went into the snowy wilderness of Nagano. I'm quite sure neither the Porsche nor I expected to wind up in snow lands like this, but hey, here we are. This time, those donuts ARE MINE. Look at that snow kingdom!!!!!!!!!!!!! And here, I must point something important out. Everyone knows Japan is a clean country. You get used to it, and become complacent, and take it for granted. But it is moments such as this one where you realise just to what degree it is so. The following two pictures are at the end of our trip: we drove just over 500 kilometers (300 miles for our American and Burmese friends), we drove on roads like you see above, and I even did donuts in the snow. The following two pictures are taken the moment I drove into the garage. I did not wash the car (it's the middle of winter - this picture is from January). I didn't fake the pictures. I literally got out of the car and took these two shots. My mind was, quite honestly, blown. The car was almost cleaner than when I left. Anyway, by now, the painting of my Misha wing was done, and it had arrived to my house! I obviously had to stick Martini stripes on it too, and I was all happy because I felt I would nail the bastard, because well, I don't have to do it in a dark garage.... but guess what, I was wrong again. The curvature of the wing was such that there was just NO WAY to do a proper job (for an incompetent gluer like me, anyway). I initially wanted to do a 360 degree wrap of the wing, but I realised I couldn't get it to align. So, after a variety of failed attempts (thanks to Roy for including extra striping...) I skipped most of the pain once again, but basically, I had to give up the full wrap idea and I decided to just cut it somewhere underneath the wing. I couldn't quite decide how deep I'd go, but I figured as long as MOST people can't see it, then I should be OK. Because I couldn't do a 100% clean cut that would line up to a perfect straight line (because of the wing's shape), I had to improvise. It occurred to me that I should consider the logical sequence: what I am trying to hide is a slightly uneven edge. I have several things playing in my favour: 1) car is likely to be in motion, 2) people will be distracted by the noise and bright stripes, 3) it's hidden underneath the wing. So likely about 70% of the attention has been dissipated. I needed to hide another 29%, and I could live with the eagle-eyed hawks of the last 1%. Then it hit me: LETTERS. I'm normally not a fan of writing stuff on the car - I've never been fond of the typical front fender riceboy sticker parades; my favourite example of that was this particular Civic Type R: The level of schizophrenia on this vehicle is absolutely stupefying - leaving aside the fact that there are tuner houses mentioned that don't even tune Hondas, there are even conflicting manufacturers of the same components! (ie wheels -- none of which even match the wheels ACTUALLY on the car). Anyway, I wanted to be careful with letters, but I figured, when a viewer's attention looks at the overall car -- focusses on the rear part -- focusses on the wing -- focusses on the stripes -- focusses on the inner fold ... let's hit him with letters so he stops trying to figure out if the edge is straight or not. So MARTINI RACING... here we come: The lettering is actually very, very slightly crooked to follow the curve of the wing, so the optical effect actually works out fairly well when you look at it from behind. Finished product: Oh yeah, and by the track decals, y'all can probably figure out which side of the world I'm from. It was time to hit the ski slopes once again - this time, Hokkaido, so we had to fly. As I mentioned previously, I have been progressively fitting more and more stuff in the car - I needed to prove to the world, and to myself, that this was a reasonable family tourer. I brought a wine cellar back from Costco in it (though I forgot to take a picture). I brought four wheels and a child seat. This time, I brought - ready for this? - a set of skis, two snowboards, three suitcases (one's missing from the picture) and three people, one of which in a child seat. Eat that, naysayers. Next up - the final set of mods that bring us to today!

So now my car was looking a lot more along the lines of what I wanted. But the SUV ride height was still bothering me tremendously... and what do you know. Right around the timing of my next trip to the US, a set of PSS9s came up on the forums here - with sway bars, no less. I jumped at it, because they were decent-mileaged, very reasonably priced, and hey, I just couldn't justify dropping $2.5-3K on a set of v3s which I otherwise consider the best invention since the remote control. And since I was in the US anyway, I picked up a set of Techquipment exhaust pipes; mine were getting rusty, and I wanted something a little bit nicer. Score! Of course, since it would be a waste to just get a suspension and exhaust, I also got a set of Torque Engineering engine mounts and a 987 Boxster engine mount (---> transmission mount on the 996 Tiptronic). Funny backstory though. I didn't want to pay a fortune in shipping, and the seller of the suspension was in south-western US, so I had this spectacular idea of getting them shipped to a UPS Store for pickup. I was in Canada for work, but I figured hey, all I need to do is route my return ticket via LAX, give myself a few hours there so I can run out of the airport, pick up the suspension, check it in, and be on my way. The plan was perfect, as all my plans are. The execution left a bit desired, as all my plans do. First, I was late for my ex-Canada flight. Not because of me, obviously, but because of the world. I showed up at my usual T-65 minutes or so, except BAM. It was a Monday morning, which is a God's given day off for US CBP, so there were two guys who were half asleep, and about a thousand people itching to fly - probably more, since the capacity of the two half-asleep guys was a lot lower than a Monday morning air commuter intake is. So within a very short amount of time, I start getting this sinking feeling that I'm not making the 7am flight; which throws the rest of my trip into complete havoc. By 7:20, when I'm approaching customs (and I really did get in line at 6 sharp, and it usually takes a half hour at most), I'm on the phone with American Airlines Executive Platinum, trying to find a reroute. She happily tells me, oh hey, no worries, I'll put you on the 8am to Chicago, and you'll just connect, and be on your way to Tokyo. I go no! no no no! I must route via LA! She was very puzzled why I'd want to add an extra five hours onto my trip, but fortunately, found a way to put me on, and off I was. Flew, rented a car, etc etc etc, got the packages, arrived to checkin counter... bam. Suspension passes, but sway bars exceed the 65" combined dimensions, so it'd be an extra fee to check them in. I'm not paying $200 to check in a set of $200 swaybars. Argh!!!!! And obviously, there are no Exacto knives in the airport, because you know, everyone is a terrorist. Fortunately, packing tape has not been declared anti-American... so I grab a huge roll of AA tape, and head off into a corner. I found a relatively sturdy pen in my backpack, and went at that package like an small-town butcher with an axe to grind. I discovered the the packing was actually quite good, in the sense that there was a lot of needless packaging... so half an hour later, I was covered in styrofoam, there was styrofoam all over the Tom Bradley International Terminal, my pen was completely destroyed, but I had a package which was 64". The agent looked more proud of me than I was and she took all my baggage in. Woohoo! In retrospect, I should really have taken a picture of this. Oh well. So off I was to my favourite Porsche shop again. More eyecandy was to be found, such as this 964 with an insane bodykit that literally ran on tractor tracks: More racing cars on display: And this beauty: GOD I LOVE THIS CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway. Since I was doing a ton of work in one go, I asked the guy if I could have a loaner. He told me I could; but when I showed up, he was nowhere to be found, no more so than the loaner. A mechanic at the shop called him up, and as it turned out, he didn't know what time I was coming in, so he went out, and took the loaner with him... but no worries, he said, he'd give me his own car, just be nice to it. Sure, fair enough. This is what he had for me: The first thought in my mind was: "The cobbler's children are the worst shod." This is a "kei-car", which is a Japanese econosh.tbox with a sub-compact class of cars whose engines are capped 660cc, 63hp. As a result, they tend to be small, light, and basically garbage in most cases, because they neither have the oomph to go, nor the drivability. There are obviously exceptions - the Autozam AZ-1 is probably the cheapest gullwing car you can buy, and there are some other pretty cool ones, like the old Honda S600, the all-new S660, and so on. Anyway. To make a long story short, this was a Daihatsu Move, which is none of those. It's a family mover, with ample storage room, and the promise of a better life thanks to infinite mobility. That's about all it has going for it. Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled to make the jump from my 911 into this ... manifestation of Japanese ingenuity (and if this doesn't come across as sarcasm, I think I need to work on my englishes a little bit). The car had 120,000 kms on it, the bumper around the exhaust was coated with soot, and I figured, this thing is going to die on me any moment. So I got in, started the engine, and left. Driving up to the main road, I had a panoply of thoughts bothering me. Am I going to have enough power to drive out into traffic? How long do I wait? I've never driven anything with less than 200hp before (excluding the family 1992 Ford Taurus, but that thing tended to blow the coolant hose under heavy acceleration, so I could never even begin to accelerate in it), so I didn't really know what to do. I waited for a very, very large opening in traffic, and floored the gas, hoping I was going to make it safely. I was completely taken aback (literally, in fact). Basically, the thing had a) a massive turbo, b) a LOUD blow-off valve, and c) it pulled like a freight train (I mean, okay, this was still not 900hp worth of thrust out of a twin-turbo 911, but this is a car whose body panels bend if you look at them sternly with dedication, so there's a limit to how far you can go). Basically, if I ever had a "don't judge a sh.tbox by its cover" experience, then this. was. it. I took the long way to work, and I can't tell you just how much fun it was. It was a really simple pleasure: press gas -> HUGE turbo spins (there's pretty much no sound deadening even when stock, because you know, 63hp is about what an angry drunk man has in him after a few tequilas, so you need to reduce that unsprung weight) --> blow off valve goes KSSSSSSHT, and everyone is happy. I was actually really sad to let it go when I had to return it. An unexpected friendship formed. It also cost me pennies in gas, so the ratio of fun:gas used was unexpectedly brilliant. Anyway, then some pictures of my car came in. PSS9s on the far right. See my rusty exhaust tips? They just HAD to go. Winter tires came off (oh yeah, I didn't mention this, but I got a set of winter tires to go on OEM mags to go skiing...) - and oh, that Alpina B6. Torque Engineering engine mounts are in... H&R swaybars are in... PSS9s are in... Tequipment exhaust tips are on... H&R swaybar, another shot... PSS9s, another shot... And so the assembly is completed! I was pretty pleased with the result. I asked the shop to set my suspension at exactly GT3 settings, and the shop obliged. Camber, ride height and so on were all set to GT3 (well, as close as they could, without camber plates). The alignment cost me $400!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oddly, that seems to be the price Porsches pay for alignment here - I called around, and the answers I got were either "OMG, a Porsche? Sorry!!! We don't touch those", or "sure, $500 or so." And so, this brings me up to date with the current state of the car. I took something that was already fun to drive (with the exception of the shoddy tires and a quiet engine), and made it flamboyant, somewhat loud, and supremely fun to drive. Now I have to hit up some race tracks... and I guess, do the IMS (people could argue why I didn't do that as the first thing... but the real reason is I need clarity on my next steps with work, so if I have to sell the car, then I don't want to bother with doing the IMS, because the chances of it blowing up within the 10K miles or so that I will have driven the car in two years are pretty low, I figure). As a footnote, when I originally had an image of what I wanted to build, my inspiration was the 991 S "Martini Edition" that came out last year or so (right around the time I got fired up about the Martini livery). This was my inspiration car: I think it would be sacrilege to say I succeeded, as I'm nowhere near those wheels, or the quality of that Martini livery, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out. So this is what the car looks like now: So finally, what's on the car? (considering how impossible the whole thread is to read with these mega photos): - Enkei NT03+M wheels with Federal 245/285s front/back - Fabspeed Maxflo exhaust - Tequipment exhaust tips (which stick out a bit too much for my taste - an Mk2 bumper would fix it, but oh well) - Orange cap mod! - Porsche Supercup lip - Misha GT2M wing - PIAA 4500K light bulbs - random LEDs all around, interior included - Raid Cavallo with shift paddles - OBC stalk mod - H&R swaybars - PSS9 coilovers - Torque Engineering engine mounts - OEM Porsche 987 engine mount adapted to a transmission mount - fancy Kenwood 2DIN navi Still have: - K&N intake system (can't decide if it adds anything or not, forum threads seem to suggest it's pure snake oil) - Aluminium kick panels (I really, really, really want to install them, but I can't fathom how I'm going to rip off the OEM ones - I tried, and they won't. budge.) So that's about it! I'll keep the thread alive as I end up in more random locations in Japan with the car, but I think I got it to a state that I'm very happy with, and I don't think I will mod anything else - unless I come across a cheap Recaro seat or something. Oh, and the IMS. Maybe.

Looks like fun! Congrats on the new purchase of an amazing canvas of unlimited modding potential.

Nice! Looking forward to hearing more of your story.

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This is *very* good. So good that I updated the post title

[Image-only post; no author-written text. Original image references:] https://rennlist.com/forums/graemlins/bigok.gif

Great thread - congrats on the purchase!

Posts updated with way too many photos and text.

Love the martini vinyls much more than I originally thought I would when you mentioned them. Car looks like a lot of fun! Some would also call it sacrilege to put Enkei's on a German car, but I like them too.

Welcome aboard, Pseudo Nim - great looking P-car and fabulous story. Enjoy your time in Japan!

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I wasn't too sure how they (the vinyls) would turn out, but unexpectedly, I think the look works. As for the Enkeis - I went through a bajillion wheels before I settled on them... I didn't want anything grotesque, of which there is plenty in the 996 world, but I also couldn't quite dig the classic Fuchs-like look, nor the HRE/BBS thousand-spokes. I guess I dreaded cleaning them.

Martini livery looks awesome. Nicely done. Definitely gotta sort that ride height though. It needn't cost the earth - there's a set of ROW M030 over on 6speed at the mo for a reasonable sum, or new H&Rs are even cheaper.

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Hehe keep waiting for a few posts! Not to break the suspense, but I did end up getting it sorted, as it bothered me FAR too much. Curious thing though. I'd have thought my car had the RoW suspension, since it's an EU spec car. But I suppose it didn't, because all the pics I saw of people with the RoW M030 seemed far lower than mine (and plus, it looked abysmal with that ride height). Puzzling...

What an EPIC build thread! Thrilled to see we played a small part with our Maxflo system haha. How do you like the sound so far? Shoot me a PM if there is anything we can help you with

Damn that drive on those narrow two-way roads has a pucker factor of 10.

cool project, the color on your 996 goes very well with the cosmetic mods. Nice work!

I enjoyed the movie but I thought the book was better. Nicely done!

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The sound is really, really good, especially in higher RPMs. I realised the other day that it's probably the main reason why my gas consumption is NEVER below 20 L/100km (~11mpg)... Yeah... I have another, longer, video where a few times the ABS locks up when I come across some unexpected counter traffic, hah.

This is an epic post! Very well written and great photos. You do yourself a disservice by not creating your own blog and monetizing it by adding advertising. In any case, I enjoyed this immensely. Keep posting.

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Thanks... maybe I should. People tell me the same thing about my travel writing - I actually have a blog but I'm too lazy to update it so I'm like a year behind on my travel updates. I end up posting most of my drivel on forums instead

Great write-up...thanks for sharing. I for one like the Martini Stripes!

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Lol, that is fantastic to hear! I just went from 21mpg to 15mpg after putting on my Race Headers

Ok well. Just in case y'all thought I left it at what it was at ... well, so did I. Until some classifieds came up on the forums... and down the hill it went again. I always hated the audio system of this car. Though I didn't mind having gotten the base audio since I figured I'd eventually upgrade it or ditch the car, well.... as usual, I couldn't pass up a good deal. Having already replaced the speakers and gently improved the audio stage, I was still sorely, sorely lacking bass. To upgrade the bass I had to drop in an amp... and what luck, a forum member posted a set of Audioson LRX 5.600, a footwell sub, and some carpet to cover the whole thing. One thing I was absolutely adamant on was saving as much space in the car as I could... it already is pretty tight, so I wasn't willing to replace the rear shelf and so on, and the footwell sub seemed like a very good idea. So I got these: XB90ILb.jpg lawOctw.jpg YJE1KHc.jpg lFh9vAq.jpg I walked around the car like a hungry lion, test fitting them, and feeling around for space... and all was relatively well, until the passenger that typically occupies the space into which the subwoofer was going to go informed me that it was more or less of a choice between the subwoofer and the passenger. That and I couldn't find a hole to screw it into, and it was not covered with carpet, and I was lacking skillz to actually get it done. Rats. Just around then... a recycler in my neighbourhood came up with this auction item. PspKhW3.jpg (basically, a rear shelf drop-in sub). I would normally not consider rear shelf replacement, but it looked relatively well done, and it came with a sub, which was definitely something I could appreciate. I went to see it, and it turned out that it fit perfectly behind the rear seats and not only did it stay in place rather well, but the seat backs helped further hold it in place. This thing was really not going anywhere. Sadly, it was finished in an anonymous grey carpet, which meant I still had to rip and replace... but at least, this was a relatively square arrangement, and I had far more confidence redoing this one than the Bill Jehle enclosure, which is far from square. Installation was a breeze. I'm kidding. It completely wasn't. After previous experiences of alternator whine, I had to make sure I didn't screw this up, so I decided to do it "right". The RCA cables would run along the centre tunnel, and the power cables would run along the door sill. Easier said than done. First, the seats came out. Well, the rear left passenger. The rear right passenger's been replaced with a child seat a long time ago anyway. U9TTRDA.jpg You'll notice the rear shelf was also removed, to run wiring. I must say; leaving aside the fact that I was somewhat optimistic with 3m of RCA cables, running them along the tunnel is NOT a trivial affair. There are some pretty tight bends, and I'm honestly banking on the fact that the carpet's pretty thick and there's zero movement in the area, so they [i]shouldn't[i] fall apart with time, but I should be ready to probably replace them one day in the future. The other thing I did was get a quick-release power connector - in case I ever have to carry suitcases, the subwoofers can get damaged, so I want to be able to swap them out easily (or track days and so on). I ran the power wire along the side sill. To do this I had to remove the kick panel (easy), the door sill (so-so), and the rear trim (fkn NIGHTMARE). Seriously, I hope I never have to remove the trim again for any reason. I literally do not understand how the top trim near the seatbelt attaches - I removed it with pure voodoo magic, and I clipped it back on with pure voodoo magic, and I do not want to see ANY scenario in my life where I will EVER need to do this again. kcuyPoT.jpg You can see the rear trim removed on the right here. ctXeTUu.jpg I ran the wire up along the fuse panel. N7jUze0.jpg Finished install looks like this: MXfrG4P.jpg The overall result was VERY good. Like seriously, I basically gained everything below 100Hz, which was amazing. But the problem was... I haven't actually done anything with the stuff I bought from the forum member (except the carpet) - so I still had the Audioson sitting around. So I started trying to figure out where it would fit. After a lot of forum trolling and simply trying to fit it into various places, I discovered that the shelf behind the spare seemed to be the best place to put it. There was exactly zero spare space there, so I really had to make it work. I took off all the trim to test fit it... E93GtaD.jpg ... only to realise that the plastic piece that covers up the long transversal pipes actually has a flat piece on the bottom that would go underneath the Audioson, so I was completely wasting my time test fitting without the trim - everything had to be in place for me to try anything. I couldn't decide what mounting method to use - local hardware shops sold anything from plexiglass (tried that in the past, bad: cracks) to aluminium (too flexy) to wood (maybe) to stainless steel (ok, I don't really know how I'd cut this). I really wanted a 1mm sheet of stainless steel, or barring that, some brackets... but ultimately settled on wood, because I don't really have a workshop I can work with to cut the stuff, so whatever. After a lot of drilling and measuring, I had something going... iI2QytZ.jpg I spent a lot of time thinking how I will mount this to the car body, and one thing I was adamant on is that I didn't want to drill anything. I discovered there was a massive grommet behind the trim, and there was a 8mm hole that was usable, as well. yvdDQ7C.jpg After a lot of oohing and aahing and a lot of mental suffering, I decided the upper hole had to be drilled, because I could see no way of getting a screw in, tightening it, and being able to unscrew it later , so I made a hole and fit a 8mm x 70mm screw into it. The huge grommet allowed me a massive bolt, something like a 1/2", so basically the whole concoction would sit on two bolts. Considering it barely fit into the opening, I didn't worry too much that it would fall off or anything. To run the wires from the centre console, I decided to use the grommet that I'd previously used to run the wire to the subwoofer amp. I just enlarged the hole and ran the RCA / speaker wires. Because I'm still paranoid about alternator whine, I used an aluminium sheath for the cables... I have no idea if it will help, but it looked massively serious, so it seemed like a great idea at the time. We'll see in a few months. TajdTgC.jpg I ran this harness (it really does look like a harness considering how much wiring is inside) from the grommet, under the steering column, and behind the battery - I did not have to remove the battery to do this, just unscrewed the retainer and tilted the battery towards the back, which opened enough space to drop the audio harness behind it. This is the main grommet I will use to access the amplifier. I took a picture because once I cut the hole, the part # will disappear, and I'd like it for posterity in case I need to return to stock. qeWMFsj.jpg Here's a pic of the amp with the wooden mouting board behind. I spray-painted the board black to make it stand out a bit less. You can see one of the bolts ready for mounting. And here's the whole thing mounted up, with wires run. 9KRsxKI.jpg You can't see it well, but bottom left, there's a fuse block: I have a 4ga wire running from the battery to the fuse block, then 2x8ga: one runs to the rear amp, one runs to the front one. I wanted to fuse the 4ga wire as well, but I literally forgot to do it: and once everything was closed up and mounted, I decided that I can't see _any_ situation in which the 4ga will short - I made sure it's under no stress and it doesn't contact any raw metal along the way, so it's pretty unlikely it will rub on something and expose itself. Inside the frunk, there is also no raw metal anywhere, so I think it should be safe to avoid having to split it to fuse it _before_ the fuse block. eOvA2nY.jpg You can see my audio harness on the left, the 4ga wire in the centre of the pic, and the 8ga wire running to the rear amp up above (on the right side of the car). When I originally installed the rear amp, I fused it in the spot you see, and since there is absolutely no chance in hell I am re-running a power wire now that I have a proper fuse block in the frunk, I just decided to run an extension from the fuse. Don't see any danger of doing that. CT1IcRp.jpg And this is my poor navigation system. There is SO MUCH WIRING behind it that it doesn't really fit into the DIN opening anymore - I tried as hard as I could to shove everything to the back, but I think I've crossed a line here and that's just never going to happen. Oh well. Incidentally, I almost gave up halfway. Right before I started running the audio harness to the frunk, I started looking up feedback from people on how much difference an amp made; after all, I had bass at this point (and decent bass at that), and I couldn't see my speakers improving the sound that much, considering I don't really blast my music. Well, I must say: the sound is RADICALLY different. It's cleaner, it's louder (I don't have to go to 20 (out of 30) anymore - at 20, it's quite loud), and it just has ... more ... fullness to it. It's really hard to describe, but I really don't think it's placebo - the sound is simply significantly better in all respects. Woohoo!

Amazing read, thanks! Quick question. You bought this car in Japan, so how come it's a left hand drive?

Great write up and progress!

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Actually, there are a ton of LHD cars in Japan. There are no regulations on it, and most "elite" cars are actually preferred in LHD - there's a sort of mantra of "I drive an imported car" that makes people buy LHD Porsches, Mercedeses and so on. My logic was a bit simpler - I can't stand the geometry of RHD, it makes me lose track of my opposite corner - and I also figured on a narrow street, I'm better off on the left, minding telephone poles and such - on the other side of the car, the oncoming vehicle will care about scratching a Porsche and I can trust them to be careful

Great write up... I thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts. Looking forward to hearing more of your adventures in Japan. On an unrelated note, you still haven't posed a picture of the new steering wheel.

Awesome story and awesome car! I read all your posts late last night and I must have missed it but what part of the world are you from and what brought you to Japan? Also if you don't mind my asking how much more expensive is a 996 in Japan than in the U.S. or Europe? And for sure please do many more write ups about your adventures with lots and lots of photos!!

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Whoa! Right you are. It's a Raid alcantara with paddles from Gert, but I'll get that posted. Moved from North America for work. They're actually not more expensive - if anything, I find them to be cheaper here - so take what it costs in the US and subtract maybe around 10-15% from it..... and then divide the mileage literally by half. I got mine with 56K kms (34K miles) on it, and maintenance is usually done religiously on "elite" level cars in Japan - so you don't even really need a PPI or much history. Sure, it helps with resale value - but basicaly any Japanese car will have no rust, will have been maintained well (if only because every 2 years it has to pass a roadworthiness test that costs around $1K for older cars), and will tend to run fairly well. The other thing is that there's strong incentive in Japan to liquidate old cars: the roadworthiness test comes progressively more frequently as time goes on (it's only once every 3-4 years for "new" cars, and it goes to once every 2 for older, to probably annually for antiques), and it's not cheap - and they go over the car with a magnifying glass, looking for burnt bulbs, mechanical components that aren't looking healthy (brakes, suspension, emissions, etc), so overall, all cars are in great shape and only people who actually WANT to have older cars tend to keep them (which generally means they take more care in maintaining them because, well, they want to).