KarlS

I don't know about a DIY but rotors are pretty easy. The short version is: 1) remove the calipers. This requires a 10mm hex socket and a torque wrench. Hang or support the caliper to ensure the brake line is not crimped or stretched. I use a short bunge hanging off the spring. 2) remove the old rotors. Once the calipers are removed there are two phillips head screws that hold the rotor to the wheel hub. Remove these screws and the rotor will virtually fall off. 3) install the new rotor and put a little copper antiseize on the screws before reinstalling them. 4) reinstall the caliper and ditto on the antiseize. 5) bed the calipers. Some say to use old pads for this others argue to use new only. Take your pick. Karl

Sorry, Patrick, but you DID know which wing I was talking about, right? Karl

Wow, nice manual. Do they have anything like this for the 996 family? Karl

It's the "taco shell" aerokit rear wing for the 99-01 Coupe only. Karl

As long as the car is fixed to your satisfaction and to factory quality, why worry about it. You don't have to disclose anything when you sell it, this is not structural damage that can affect the handling or performance, it is purely cosmetic. Since it is cosmetic, as long as they fix it to "like new", don't worry about it. I had a BMW once that was damaged by the detailers the day I was supposed to take delivery. I was as upset about it as you, as I had special ordered the car and waited months for it. After the dealer had it repainted, I looked at it very critically and could not tell it had been repainted. I did get the dealer to give me a guarantee on the paint but I never needed it. After a few months I forgot all about the repainted fender. Cars are cosmetically marred all the time in transit from the factory to the dealers. They are repaired at the port or by the dealer and if the job is done right, customer don't know the difference. I say chill out and enjoy the car, assuming they do an excellent job with the repair. Karl

Costas, The easiest way to get the front up on jack stands is to jack each side from the rear jack point. The car is so stiff that it will raise the front up plenty high enough to get a stand under the front jack point. Lower the rear after placing the jack stand in front and then repeat on the other side. This will get the front of the car up. Then jack the rear as Don suggested or by carefully jacking on the reinforced part of the engine case. Karl

The CDR-23 in the GT3 does not have an external amplifier. It also doesn't have the MOST bus cable, so you will definitely need that. You may also need to have someone with a PST2 enable the headunit to recognize the CD changer instead of the single CD unit in the head.

Well, I'll be darned, this must a be a change for the 6 piston calipers. I just checked my car and it does indeed have a bolt for the front caliper pad retaining spring. Apparently all of the Cup cars with the 6 piston calipers have it as well. Not sure why they changed it but I assume there is some kind of issue with holding the larger pads for the 6 piston calipers and the little R-clip just wasn't up to the task. It will certainly make changing pads take a little more time. Karl

Mike, What am I missing. My caliper uses a pin, as shown in the attached picture. Karl

Bob, You can probably find a way to make it work. I know at least one pro team in Grand Am Cup that does their own wire mesh from chicken wire they get at Home Depot. The outer edges of the screens are not a foam gasket, they are some type of plastic or epoxy. I think this is done to both provide strength and maintain the shape of the screens and to provide the tabs for mounting. Karl

See my post in the DIY Forum. Bumper screen DIY Karl

(Note: cross-posted with Rennlist) OK, it's not a full DIY yet but here are the basics. Part numbers: Left 996.505.323.91 $140.20 Right 996.505.324.91 $140.20 Center 996.505.321.92 $96.70 Available from Porsche Motorsports NA. You can also get them from Gert but his prices are the same amount but in Euro plus shipping and customs, so getting them from PMNA will save about 25%. Here's what they look like, not much to them, huh? No special tools are needed other than a #20 and #30 Torx and if you don't already have an assortment of Torx drivers you have no business attempting this :P Remove the front bumper cover. If you need a DIY for this, Loren has a good one as part of the center radiator DIY. I found it easier to just remove the wheel well plastic covers instead of tying them back as Loren did. The fasteners are all philips head, torx, or plastic pop rivets that you open up with a flat blade screw driver and then pop out with your fingers. Once you remove the bumper cover, turn it nose down on a blanket and remove the long black plastic insert that is inside the air vents. Start at one end and begin releasing the clips that hold it in. These snap out easily with a small flat blade screw driver. You can discard this piece or sell it on eBay because you won't need it again after you install the screens. The bumper cover has a series of slots in the frame below and above each of the 3 air vents. Each of the screens has a matching set of tabs that fit into these slots. If your screens are like mine, the tabs don't line up perfectly with the slots, so it requires some tweaking to get them to align. I found it easiest to start at one end and get one tab above and one below into their respective slots. Then I secured them with small 4" black tie wraps to keep them from popping out again. I then worked my way along doing another top and bottom tab together and then tie wrapping them. Not too hard but this step requires some patience. Here's what they look like installed in the bumper cover. When you have all the screens installed and tie-wrapped down, you may want to run a bead of silcon sealer or epoxy along the edge. I didn't and so far the screens have held up well with just the tie wraps. It will be easy to remove them if I ever want to go back to stock or need to replace them. Then just reinstall the bumper cover and you're done. Here's a couple of pix of the finished product. BTW, in talking to guys with Cup cars, they still need to get in and clean out the radiators once a season, so while the screens will keep out most debris, you still need to keep an eye on your radiators and will probably need to drop the bumper cover every once in a while to thoroughly clean them out. Let me know if you have any questions. I'll post more pictures on my web site as soon as I can. Karl

Two for the price of one. Not only does Mike have front tie down hooks but they also double as brake duct protectors. Nice, Mike. Karl

I don't like running straps through the wheels. I used to do this with my 996 and I would consistently pull the car out of alignment. Here's what I do with my Cup car and it should work equally well with the street car. First I lay out the front straps on the floor of the trailer. I adjust them to equal length and then cross them over. I then drive the car onto the trailer and over the straps. I attach the hooks to the backside of the front jack point. The jack point is mounted to a U-shaped metal bracket and the strap hook will clip right into the backside of the U. Then I roll the car back until the front straps are taunt. The eliminates the need to adjust the straps via the rachets, which you can't do because of the front spoiler. In the rear, I run the straps straight and attach them to the chassis reinforcement bar that runs across the car just in front of the rear wheels. The hooks will clip over the bar just inside where the cross brace attaches. I've also used the Autometrics hooks which work well but my method is FREE. Karl

I think the answer is obviously yes. As a proof point, you can look at the GT3 Cup. Same engine as your street car but it has a free flow air filter, no mufflers, and a different DME and it gets around 10 more HP. Of course, as a race car, they don't have to worry about noise laws or emissions. Then you can look at the GT3 RSR. Same basic engine but with a totally different intake system, different cams, and no mufflers or cats. Around 420 HP. So clearly there is more HP in the GT3 engine if you tune without the constraints of noise and emissions, plus not worrying about a 4 year warranty. However, I think the PAG engineers have probably gotten what they can out of the 3.6 while still keeping it legal and reliable. Of course, there are lots of so-called tuners out there that will lighten your wallet with promises of 10, 20, or 30 more HP. If you are hell bent to go down that path, and you seem to be based on the questions you have posted on this and other boards, just ask for a money back guarantee based on dyno results before and after. See how quickly those big HP claims disappear. Karl

This was a big controversy in PCA Club racing last year. The rule states "The roll bar must be securely mounted to the floor and/or longitudinal members of the unibody with the top of the main hoop at least 2" above the driver's helmet when the driver is seated in the normal driving position. The mounting area of "bolt-in" roll bars must be backed by a plate of a size equal to that of the upper mounting plate with a minimum thickness of 3/16". Bolts must be grade 5 or higher." This requirement of a backing plate effectively eliminates most bolt in roll bars such as the Tequipment bar or the DAS-Sport bar from use in PCA Club racing. The factory Club Sport bar or the Safety Devices bar are legal because they both use backing plates that are welded to the underside of the car. Karl

I would rebleed the caliper that has the valve replaced. The shop doing the replacement should do this anyway, since replacing the valve can introduce air into the system. The other calipers should be ok. Karl

Best one I know of is the flywheel from the GT3 Mk 1 Club Sport and GT3 RS, only available in ROW. Karl

It will be a little noisier and a little more touchy to engage but not a big problem. Rev matching on down shifts will require more care, since the revs fall off as fast as they spool up. Karl

Good luck. I could have warned you that this bar is not a DIY project. I haven't talked to anyone who was able to install it without professional help. I spent a full week on mine and ended up cracking my windscreen and ripping my headliner trying to jockey it into place. The are two tricks that I know of to installing this beast. One is to use a trailer tie down or some other racheting system to compress the bar legs together to get it to fit more easily. It will spring back one the pressure is released. The second is to get longer bolts for the lower legs where they bolt into the door sills, as the bolts they supply almost never fit. Good luck. They should sell that thing with a big warning sticker on it - WARNING - PROFESSIONAL INSTALLERS ONLY. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! Karl

Craig, Did they say what the cause is? Is it only related to high altitude mountain driving? Karl

Hmmm, I don't know if this is related or not. But when my car was sitting in Baltimore harbor for 2 months awaiting EPA approval, I got on the phone and spoke with an executive at PMNA who is responsible for dealing with the EPA. He told me there was a problem in the Bosch DME software. Apparently, for most gasoline engine cars, the EPA requires fuel to be cut/shutoff under braking/deceleration to improve emissions. However, he told me that some cars get an exemption to this, primarily diesels and some V-10s and V-12s. He said that Bosch had errantly enabled this "feature" in the GT3 software, so the fuel wasn't being cutoff under braking. Bosch was supposed to modify the software to enable the fuel cutoff under braking (this may also explain why you can't left foot brake an e-gas car) as the fix. If this is the same fuel shut-off your OBDII code is refering to, perhaps in their rush to get a fix in for all those GT3s sitting in port, the Bosch programmers screwed up something else? Wouldn't be the first time for that to happen in a software patch. Just a thought. Karl

Perhaps it was the solar flare that hit the eath's atmosphere yesterday. It was expected to effect GPS based systems big time. Have you tried it again today? Or maybe it needs to be recalibrated as you do with a new install, since it's last position in memory is 1500 miles away from where it is now and it has no idea how it got there. Karl

I haven't seen any camber plates for the 996. One of the limitations is the size of the hole in the shock tower. You can only get about 1.5 degree negative before you run out of room. For camber plates to work, you'd have to cut out a larger hole in the shock tower and I'm not sure that would be a good thing for stiffness. Karl