996 C4 Cab, project Frankenstein

Hi, So after trying to have the rennlisters trying to convince me otherwise, I went and got a totaled 2003 cab chassis for what I thought was a decent price for a car with quite some exterior damage. Not so surprisingly, the used car salesguy turned out to be a somewhat crook and having hidden majority of the damage the car had, from broken rear axles to cracked gearbox and scored cylinders, which were probably the original root cause for car being intentionally damaged in such weird way. Anyhow, long story short, hunted all the needed parts for a decent price and sourced 997 facelift Turbostyle bodykit and sent the engine off to Hartech for a rebuild and more on that on the questions to follow. Currently, there are 2 things that I need to decide on: 1. The engine options; the original idea was to turbo tech swap this car so get some punch out of it, this turned out to be somewhat more complex than I had anticipated as I had overlooked the part of needing the turbo manual gearbox too from budgeting perspective and it seems those are harder to get than twins. The other option is the have Hartech to build this into a 3.9 refurbished engine, and I would love to hear some ideas from the members on which way to go. My personal pros for NA engine are the sound it produces and as cabrio this won't be a track monster, I am thinking the 3.9 could be just enough not to suffer too much while driving. With Hartech rebuilding it all, I am thinking it would be somewhat reliable and cost effective as well. For the Turbo, I am obviously thinking the tuning potential making this a truly fun car and would have gone this way in a heartbeat if the gearbox would fit. Having a turbo bodykit on the car sort of insists on this too.. Last option would be the LS swap, but this requires the local legistlation to chance which is currently under works but uncertain when and how it will happen. 2. The seats; I am having the whole interior redone with "vegan" leather and houndstooth pepita in classic porsche style, just wondering if the oem seats offer enough side support or should I try to find a pair of Turbo ones for accommodating spirited driving or should I go for these instead: (I never got to drive this) https://www.corbeau-seats.com/produc...g-bucket-seat/ Some pictures below.. Minor dent Should last another 199k miles And I was hoping this didn't need more than little love and caring.. Off to Hartech Broken upon arrival Opinions and experiences all welcome!

What did they do, run over stuff on purpose for fraud? The panels don't look bad unless there is damage on the other side.

Don't know the official story, but considering airbags are intact I am guessing they dropped the car on something or rolled it over with something..I was told the airbags don't deploy if the car isn't running so this could explain it. The car is already in the robot and with bit of luck we can start installing the bodykit in the next weeks.

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I could see that, which would explain the flex and cracking on the parts and windshield coming out. Hopefully everything goes smoothly.

For your motor, try this instead of an LS swap: https://www.thedrive.com/news/36845/...sic-muscle-car

I already drive a Tesla Model S as a daily, so this is the acceleration benchmark to match or hopefully beat for thrills (Non P model tho!) Also, the 35k pricetag without the battery seems pretty hefty for a budget builder like myself..

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Porsche uses a deceleration algorithm to trigger airbags instead of front sensors. That would explain this accident and why the airbags did not deploy. I've personally seen this kind of thing before personally. Of course, this is still a theory. Once, a person was backing a car from a parking space at a convenience store. This store was located on an incline next to a laundromat. Between the two stores was a ledge with little or no barrier. The fall was about 3-4 feet. The person in the car backed over the ledge and the rear end of the car slammed straight down onto the pavement below. Underneath, the rear of the car was damaged severely. Your Porsche might have also been backed off a trailer, tow or maybe a loading dock?...some kind of ledge or barrier. There are no horizontal scrapes underneath and so definitely something "punched" through the axel and suspension components. Therefore, the car had to drop off something pretty high in order to break that piece in two. The front windshield breaking is also no surprise to me. Think about it. Flying over a pothole on the street is enough to shatter a windshield on these cars. It's rare, but can happen. Anyway, best of luck rebuilding this car. IMHO, I'd put it back to the original state, not try to turbonize it. Even with forced induction, you won't achieve an acceleration level on par with an electric car like the Tesla, but more power to you.

Yes, inclined to believe it was something along those lines, but done on purpose in hopes of an insurance fraud after they had discovered the engine damage. There are a ton of near pristine 996's available here for probably less money than I have already spent on this and the whole idea of getting a wreck was to justify "ruining" it with all sorts of tacky mods that are to my liking The suspension, swaybars and brakes are already upgraded to Turbo equivalent parts, so I am thinking that even in the scenario Hartech could squeeze near 400hp out of the engine, I don't think it would not be able to break traction of the 4 wd drive (my 380 hp Audi couldn't either unless we had snow). Using my ex Jaguar XKR-S as an reference, the supercharged 550hp was just enough to bring a smile especially with the sound it made, so thinking 600 hp Turbo or especially NA LS setup could and should do the same with this chassis.. When the car puts the fear of death into you, it is the moment you the feel most alive

Doesn't a Model S do 0-6 in like 2 seconds? That is like super car level stuff.

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Yea, definitely an insane amount of acceleration, but once the Tesla S reaches a point, it flat lines and that's where cars like our Porsches fly by a Tesla. They're great quarter-mile cars, but not great in the flying mile.

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Makes sense. I think chasing after acceleration on this car is the wrong idea. At least comparing it to what OP would be use to coming from a Model S.

Should have been clearer, so I daily drive a non performance model Tesla, meaning it delivers a mere low 4 sec 0-100, which I believe should be easily doable with 600 hp and 4wd in this chassis? Our speeding fines are progressive and can go up to 300K euros based on your income, so not looking to do quarter miles or high top speeds in traffic, just quick sprints where it is safely possible and maybe an occasional trackday if I ever get accepted to the local Porsche society with this paste and glue special

in for updates =)

Minor updates, Hartech just completed the engine rebuild to 3.9 litre conversion and now I am entertaining the idea of maybe supercharging this instead of the swap, maybe. Bodywork was also completed last week so the chassis is ok now and the bodykit is going in the coming weeks. Very expensive stuff owning these cheap porsches

Lookin' good! It'll be interesting seeing this "thing" come back to life. Where did you source a transaxle from? Also, photo's of body work??? Please....

Was wondering where this was at, nice to see its moving along.

Bear with me few more weeks, the bodykit will be installed then so I will have something concrete to show Also, the custom interior work has commenced so hopefully I will be able to parade some of that towards the end of the year too, but realistically the car will be completed by March I think. Just bidded on crashed Gt2 996 Turbo for a tech swap but no luck there. Edit: Sourced all the missing parts from Ebay and Teile.com, some of them for the right price many of them not..

Raging CoviD and Brexit on top brought this into a halt for a good while, finally some progress to show. The bodykit has now been fitted (not finalized) and it is WIDE as I hoped. Upholstery is being worked on, so hopefully this will be in piece and ready for streets in March! Without saying goes this is not a top quality carbon fibre kit as those would be damn hard to justify on a carrera..

looking good

What are you doing for wheels to fill out the gap?

I will order custom wheels once the engine is put back in with the adjustable coilovers so that I can get the measures right and don't need to use spacers. I will announce the model & colours when all this is done which is probably months from now considering the covid delays on top of already long delivery times custom for size wheels, but think of flashy, wide and with small ET

Some minor updates, engine is in with the new exhaust, the new upholstery is done, next up putting the new suspension and arms in, re-painting the turbo calipers and ordering the right size wheels I think..

Wow! Looking forward to the next round of updates.

Just realised I never posted the outcome of this project here, so here you go! Purists, get your holy water ready and start rinsing your eyes In hindsight, should have and could have done so many things differently but it is always too easy to say when every mistake is already done.. Currently thinking of adding a supercharger and converting to ethanol to get some power out of this thing..otherwise pretty fun to drive!

Well, wow! Beautiful job. I lovelovelove that interior.

Thank you kindly sir!

Beautiful