Bought a 2001 C4- now what?

I picked up a C4 to mitigage miles and to give me time to do some work on my 964... And here we go- into the world of water....i literally have not a clue what I'm doing with a 996. So far it's a whole other ballpark from what I'm used to. But this is the new daily...and though it's an almost perfect car- it's not "just right" so I'll get to some sorting soon... photo687.jpg

Looks nice. I think I saw that one for sale and was tempted. Best of luck!

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Good looking car, congratulations.....first, what's the mileage?.....then the list of "finding out if this has been done" starts....such as water pump, oil change, coolant flush, spark plugs, air filter, serpentine belt, etc....

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Welcome to the party. There's already a few others here you will probably recognize. It's like, hey, so that's where you guys are sneaking off to from time to time. Anyway, a couple more photos please...

Enjoy!

Change oil and filters. Fill with gas and drive. Enjoy!

Could plug in obd2 reader check for any pending codes. Other than that, change oil and filter and drive it. That said I always change all fluids on any new to me purchase. I like to know it has been done and done correctly. Brakes, engine, trans. Then drive and get to know. I also always pay for a detailed PPI so car.bike is not foreign to me.

Drive that puppy!

That's the intent...but there are some things i want to correct. As to the condition- it was previously owned by a Porsche tech at a dealer. Motor was rebuilt 3k miles ago. Car has 90k. Pretty much everything has been done- so it's a pretty solid car. I'll break it soon enough. And I'll dig into things when i get there... For the moment, most of my thoughts revolve around the feel of the drive by wire, which is killing me. Had i known, i might have bough a 1999 C4 instead. The filling of the senses began with this era of car...so I'll have to sort that out. The gas pedal is like a bad lip sync...mouth moves and engine sorta follows. It's not bad, just reminds me of an Audi. The car has an oem 997 short shifter box, so I'll tighten that up. It's not terrible, but it just feels plasticy and has a little of the normal play. Maybe I'll do cables at the same time or i may wait. Gas pedal could use a rebuild. So I'll do that. Rear window seal is coming out, so I'll fixe that in some way where i don't have to remove the window. Aka glue. And though the suspension is sorta done, the car handles like crap. Pushes like nothing I've ever felt, so out will come the strings and I'll get under there at some point and make sure everything is tight, maybe add a heavier rear swaybar. And then work on the ride height and alignment and get it to handle a little better. All that said, i flew out to pick it up last Friday, drive it 700 miles home, and have commuted a few days with it. I'm on summer tires and ambient temps are very cold. So not only do i not know the car yet, but i can't know the car really until the temps warm up. So the snows will go on next week and i may do some of the basics above over the coming months, but i won't get into real sorting until the spring... It'll be a daily until then. In the meantime, i have a thread in the 964 forum called "intake madness" , and that will be the bulk of my winter- ripping into my 964 and installing the new intake and getting a bunch of stuff done there ... Regardless , I'm looking forward to just changing oil and driving for a while. This car is like new.

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Nice looking automobile! I love the wheels! By the way, I think the '99 C4 was drive-by-wire as well.

I always chuckle inside when someone tells me their new car was owned by a mechanic/technician. Many of the guys I‘ve worked with as a technician neglect their vehicles. Of course many of them buy them that way. But it sounds like you got a good one.

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Drive quickly and smile!

Congrats.

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Nope, only the �99 C2. The C4 was egas from the beginning. @Goughary what do you mean by rebuilding the gas pedal?

�Drive by wire� and �e-gas� are the same thing...

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May have meant drive by cable actuated throttle. +1 drive by wire is E-Gas.

Yes i meant cable. Aka actual lot being connected to something. Regardless as long as the egas pedal matches properly the increase in rpm, your brain won't know it's not connected...so need to fix the bad lip sync. As to rebuilding the pedal. They get sticky. And so I'll pull it apart, clean and grease and reassemble. Later I'll likely swap it for a rennline pedal.

The Rennline pedal is amazing. One of my top favorite upgrades. The hinge on my '02 was broken when I bought it, so it was a logical time to upgrade.

Sorry, afternoon before a holiday means poor proof reading! Meant: �99 C2 is cable throttle, �99 C4 is egas.

Well then I'm glad i didn't buy a 99! Lol. Anyway - now I'm sitting here researching tire sizes. What i want to run should be ok- they are under the 3% spec, but i suposed not ideal since they aren't super close. On the 964 the system is crazy sensitive to tire diameter. photo238.jpg photo115.jpg photo666.jpg Forget the offsets, i just made them the same so the line drawing would overlap. Anyway, those should be fine, and if they aren't, I'll shave a quarter inch off the rears and be done until the next set of tires get bought. These are the wheels i picked up to replace the twists... photo977.jpg The twists then will be sold. So if anyone wants a perfect dark silver powder coated set of Twists, enquire within...they are great wheels, but i just want the oem silver.

Nice, sounds like a good buy!

So I've been driving only this car since getting it home. There is a lot of good, and a lot left to be desired. I won't go into all my unabashed negativity here, since i really do like the car and I'm sure 996 problems have been discussed ad nauseum...but, since i can't leave well enough alone, i have to do a bit of sorting. The first and foremost- the one thing that has really driven me bonkers- aside from all the tactile sensibility stuff- is the throttle response...but it's not throttle response in this case- it's throttle function. Egas is terrible. And this particular egas is worse than terrible. Further, because i spend a lot of time in traffic, the pedal is constantly going limp. Then i reset, it functions ok for a moment, and then goes limp again... E'dura, 've ga' mol'... as the old man once lamented... (It's hard having it soft) And- the pedal was graunchy, so before getting to my "fix"...gotta pull the pedal and rebuild that/grease the moving parts... Soooo here we go... photo148.jpg photo751.jpg photo916.jpg photo408.jpg photo532.jpg photo793.jpg photo249.jpg photo449.jpg None of that probably meant anything...but there you go. Hard to take step by step pics in a hurry. (Garage was 33 degrees today) Pedal function now after having been cleaned and greased is super super smooth. Feels great. On to the next: So the plug for the egas pedal is up under here photo101.jpg and the bulk of getting to the plug and installing the sprint booster is blind... photo155.jpg But eventually i got it done.. photo32.jpg Went out for a drive and sure enough, check engine light, psm light and abs light - then the car sputtered and my life was coming to a quick end. I don't have time to be breaking my car... Turned out i hadn't plugged it in very well and the connector came apart- and caused all kinds of running issues- so if you install this- careful to double check that you aren't being an idiot...like me...lol. So - Drive report - once i had some time to fuddle. The car is completely transformed. Now, it has proper throttle response. Downshifting is easy, and it feels consistent so far. Aka, the pedal hasn't remapped itself again, so it drives much more consistently. I'll have to go a week or so to verify, but i am optimistic. As to the functions of the sprint booster. The two basic features are 9 settings for sport mode and 9 settings for race mode. Sport mode sucks. It's not quick and they added throttle hang for all the settings. Race mode- 8 of the settings suck. But...Race 1 is perfect (so far). It's pretty much one to one with what my foot is doing with the pedal, and the motor is responding quickly, so all the bad lip sync is gone - without adding gain to the pedal. (We plugged it into a reader and chatted the throttle position as we drove.) So all this for one setting that works. I'll roll up the controller wire and hide it behind a panel. And just leave it as is. And if the pedal stays the way it is now, i wouldn't drive one of these cars without either a tune remapping or a device like this to remap. It's a completely different car and it seems to be now a sports car - where before it was driving my bonkers and made me want to sell it. I can drive this now, so maybe I'll keep it. After i did that i raised the suspension a little as it was way too low. Here is the before. I don't have an after shot yet. photo54.jpg Now off to a Christmas party in the new ride, for a little more testing, over the river and through the woods...my favorite roads.

Interesting, my 03 C4 I cant tell its electric,, My Prior BMW was and you could barely feel some position lag but I got used to it.. Of course the PO on my C4 may have had the pedal adjusted at the dealer.

245 35 might be good w 285 30? or is that too much? MY 02 wheels will be nice on that car.