Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 15

We've made some great progress on the 996RR with the exterior almost complete. The arrival of the wheels/tires plus the completion of the bodywork allowed us to start bolting the car together. 

One of the more controversial ideas that we have is to use bed liner on the fascias and the rockers.  These areas get alot of stone impact and are prone to be damaged with canyon/track use.  This car's fascias/rockers were pretty rough and in need of paint so we chose to bed liner them instead!

I believe 'form follows function' and decided to add ventilation holes to the rear fascia where the exhaust/mufflers reside.  It allows heat to flush out the back more effectively.  I have not seen anyone in the Porsche community doing this so I suspect we may get some push back...

We first did this on the Elise by opening up the rear of the car to expose the exhaust.  This application is not as aggressive looking but still something that not all folks will like - we think over time, people will get on board with this idea.

Of course we decided to pull out the heat shielding as well to save some weight.  We lined the inner fascia with heat shielding that we have used over the years on our race car and Drakan builds.

Here are some graphics ideas that we rendered.  Final concept is TBD...

Yes, I like the Mobil Pegasus!

Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 14

Yes, the front wheel styling is different from the rear  - a bit like our Drakan!

 The Braid wheels have arrived and they look amazing.  Of course we had to weigh them.  Our wheels are 102.2lbs (all 4 wheels) vs 108lbs for the stock 18" rims.  Our front wheels are considerably lighter but the rears are heavier.  

We chose two different wheel styles as discussed in a previously post. Our Drakan Spyder was the first car that I've used different wheels - front to rear.  We chose the light weight option that adds some additional machining to the face of the wheels to shave off more weight.  

Frankly I am happy that the fronts are so light as that will help with feel.  Braid are known to produce strong wheels - which is more important to me for a car that must negotiate broken road surfaces.

Since we went with the 'inch-down' on these wheels, we are looking at tire options that will work.  I've decided not to go with bigger diameter wheels as the additional tire sidewall height provided by the smaller wheels should be enough to meet our compliance needs.  I expect the turn-in to be a bit slower but thanks to the GT3 swaybars, we should have improved turn-in response anyhow.

Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 13

 The 996RR received a few new upgrades including a new front tube bumper, fabric tow straps, mud flaps and a front fascia - with a special coating.  

We had the 'new' front fascia coated with bed liner used on trucks.  The front of most sportscars get hammered - especially when following other cars in the canyons or tracks.  Instead using clearbra, we thought we would try this textured coating.

The front tube bumper was refabbed and extended a bit from the original.  It will get powder coated black onced we finalize the mounts for the Baja Designs DOT legal lights arrive.  I'm excited about improving the lighting on the car as the stock headlights are now 26years old.  These older cars really benefit from updated LED lighting.  

The mudflaps we installed are pretty low.  They are scraping on even the slightest incline.  The noise is pretty annoying!  We will cut them back and then extend them with rubber sheet. 

 

The rear tube bumper is still a work in progress...

We also have Braid wheels on order:

• Front: Fullrace A = 17x8 ET40
• Rear : Winrace S = 17x10 ET40
• Lightweight machining on all wheels
• Lighter Gold

The offsets are 10mm pushed out from stock.  I plan to run stock diameter tires so these specs should work for our needs.  Note the different spoke count?  Influenced by the Drakan Spyder.  Yes, we like to be different!

front: Model Fullrace A

rear: Model Winrace S

Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 12

The seats are getting changed on our 996RR build.  The stock seats are worn out and in need of rebuild and reupholstery.  We also decided to replace the shifter and cables.  This was the perfect time to do both.  Of course there were a couple of surprises...

We decided to look for seat options and found some period correct Recaros.  The Cross Sportster CS seats seem to fit the bill.  They are comfortable, work on a slider and will tilt forward with a simple release.  These seats are essentially the same seats found on early Lotus Evoras so remain period correct on our 996.  Recearo seat supply in the US is very lean so we found them from a company bringing them in from Japan.

Though we sourced a bracket that should have made the Recaro slider compatible, it limits the travel forward.  This can be an issue for drivers with shorter legs that need to slide all the way forward.  We will modify the bracket to fix that issue.  In fact we will probably weld in a bracket that is in double shear so that we can make the seat belt recepticle more secure.

Recaro CS + slider + bracket

The stock seats are powered and quite heavy at 59lbs with slider.  Our Recaros with the slider and seat bracket is 48.85lbs.  Lighter by just over 10lbs each.  So that's a 20lb savings with both seats!  We'll take it.  I would have loved to have installed a race-style fixed bucket but practicality was still a requirement.

I'm especially smitten with the gear knob....😁

The Numeric shifter kit with cables has been installed and the car now shifts much better. We installed it at the mid point so the throws are shorter but not too short.  I will drive the car this weekend and will be able to make a proper assessment.

Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 9

 

We bought an inexpensive short shift kit from eBay to test out on this car as the shifter was really sloppy.  The kit arrived and appeared to be nice but after installation, we noticed the lever was oddly positioned.  We had a 996.2 in the shop and compared the two saw that ours way off.  Further scrutiny revealed the the shifter came to us incorrectly assembled.  We took it apart and reinstalled it.  The forward gears all worked, though a bit shorter than I like.  The Reverse is hard to engage.  We are contacting the Supplier to see if we missed anything on the install.

We are attempting to find wheels that will be an inch smaller diameter - from 18" down to 17".  My plan is to increase the tire aspect ratio so we could gain some additional sidewall height for more compliance.  Originally I was planning on increasing the overall diameter of the tire but have now decided to stick closer to the original tire diameter.  Regardless we will gain some more compliance if I can fit a 17" rim.

The larger diameter Girodisc is making the 17" wheel a challenge.  We bought a wheel measurement tool that allows us to simulate the wheel diameter, width and offsets.  Now that we have the Elephant dampers installed, we broke out the tool to confirm clearance.

It appears that a 17" wheel can work at an offset of ET45 vs ET55 (stock).  We plan to go with a wider rim from 7.5" to 8"  as the tire will be 225.

We bought some new tires to install on the stock rims so we can test while we wait for the wheels to be sourced/secured.  Though they will lack some of the compliance I was hoping for, they should work well enough for us to see if the suspension needs to be retuned.  The Yokohama Advan Sport A/S+ is an all season ultra high performance tire that should deliver good road manners in the dry or wet.  The treadwear rating is fairly soft (440AA A) so we should have decent life with acceptable grip.  As a comparison, the Lotus run on tires with approx 200 tread wear rating!

Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 7

We have been playing around with bumper ideas for this build. Most of the Safari-style tube bumpers are more aggressive that we want - and heavy. 

stock bumper is hidden behind the rear fascia

 Our goal is to create smaller bumpers that are effective and can support lights and tow straps. We decided to build some bumpers that would attach to the factory pistons that the internal bumper bolt to. 

The stock internal extruded Al bumpers are pretty cool.  The rear, shown above, has additional extrusions that attach to the rubber bumperettes that are visible on either side of the license plate.  The front is a bit simpler and shown on the left.  Both have threaded bungs for the factory towing loop.  The rear requires license plate removal to access it.

too big!

We tried several ideas and landed on small bumpers that I think should do the trick.  The front bumper attaches to the factory pistons and deletes the internal Al bumper.  The rear attaches to the bumperette mounts and is a bolt on solution that requires no permanent modification to the car.  Our tube is easily as strong and since it is external to the fascias, we should be able to take a bump or two without damage to the body.

We want to mount two driving lights from the bumper and hang a fabric tow strap.

The rear bumper will get a rear fog lamp and also a two strap.  The final design is still in the works but I think we are getting there...

Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 4

Wheels, Tires and Brakes are proving to be the biggest challenge in this build.  Since our goal is to create a car that will work 90% on broken pavement and 10% groomed dirt roads, we are sticking with tire sizes that favor the road.  But we are looking to add compliance through larger side walls as well overall larger diameter to gain some ground clearance.  

Most of the Safari builds run the same size wheel and tire on all four corners and the fifth which they keep as the spare.  On dirt, this can work, as grip is usually minimal.  But our car is going to run on the road so tire size will defer to weight bias.  We wrote about tire selection on a previous Blog: HERE  Since these are rear biased cars, larger tires are needed at the rear.  We will follow what is typically used for the road cars with more sidewall.  Plus our tire should be quieter than one that favors dirt.

We started with tires and then are attempting to find rims that will fit.  I used a resource on the web that will compare wheel/tire sizes and visually shows the potential impact.  The rear option is shown below.  I linked the image to the website.

We have contacted several of our favorite wheel suppliers including: Braid, HRE, BBS and TireRack to see what options we can find.  Ultimately determing clearance with the new Elephant Racing suspension will be key.  We have a tool that should help us make that determination on rim width and offset.  We will post up pix of this tool in action when we get to this stage.

One of my friends, who is Ride & Handling engineer at Toyota, and races 911s, has suggested the Conti Extreme Contact Sport 2 tires.  These seem like a great solution that come in the sizes that I am after: 225/50R17 front and 285/40R17.  

The Girodisc brakes that we have ordered are slightly larger in diameter than stock.  This is due to the fact that  the 996 has a rear (in hat) drum brake for the handbrake.  Giro needed to make the rotor larger to clear the drum and up sized the front to match the rear  - to keep brake bias the same as stock.

We ordered their caliper rebuild kit as well since these have over 100k miles on them.  We will vapor blast the calipers and replace the seals and rubber boots.  New Stainless Steel brake lines are ordered as well as 25 yr old rubber lines don't instill confidence!

We are hosting a Tech Seminar on Nov 8th to show off the build.  We plan to have the tire/wheels selected and have the brakes installed by then.

IMS and engine upgrades related to reliability are also on deck once the car returns from dry-ice cleaning of the under-carriage and suspension area.