Owners guide to the Porsche 996 Carrera 4

Porsche 997 PDK clutch replacement cost

I just got a quote from a Porsche dealer on this. The parts are around 950 bucks and installed, a new PDK clutch will cost 1900 dollars. This doesn't seem so bad given it's about or less than the cost of a new clutch on a manual car and you gotta figure a PDK clutch will outlast a conventional one given the computer does the shifting. It'll be interesting to see whether it outlasts a manual clutch in practise.

Driver improving

I went to MAM yesterday, my first time since 2006 in my old Porsche 996 and happily, I'm now quicker in a car with half the horsepower. Pretty cool. Here's a comparison of two sessions, you can see that today I'm a lot faster through the turns and using more of the tire G's around turns. I'm throttle steering the car through most turns now (rotating the car by moving weight to and fro using the throttle). Anyway, it's nice to see an improvement from buying a car which costs about the same as a set of rims, tires and coilovers for the 996... Pink is lateral Gs for the 944 sp1, red is the GPS mph.

Last track weekend of the year for me

and also the second! Did nothing this year except for Bondurants 4 day school and a PCA weekend. Very sad to look at the race car in the garage building up dust. But, two days of open track on Sat/Sun this week so thats cool. May be raining on Sunday a little, we'll see.

Do I want another fast car? No, I want a ...

I'm always thinking of buying another sports car to replace the 996. The Vette is actually top of my list now. It's more car than anybody needs on the road, does a Porsche handle better, yep, but the Vette is half the price and apart from on a race track with a better driver than me (and I'm crap but still better than most untrained drivers on the road, it's all relative...), people won't tell the difference.

Trouble is, I don't want a Vette. I want a Vette with a race suspension, maybe a racing seat, harnesses, etc, i.e. I don't want a vette or any other sports car, I want a race car.

And thats the problem. Almost every normal sports car is compromised. You can buy a 911 but straight away, you upgrade the seats, maybe springs or put coil overs on it, you get the picture, you don't want a Sports car, you want a race car.

And once you get the race car, you can't drive it on the public roads anyway without going to jail so whats the point. Either buy the stock car and drive it around like an SUV or stick with the SUV and buy a track only race car which is what the smart money does.

So, I drive my GMC 2500 pickup on public roads, still thinking about buying a sports car...

Rare yellow uk 944 turbo?

My brother just bought this 1987 Porsche 944 turbo in yellow with cruise control which is supposed to be rare on a uk model.

Met another 996 owner with a blown engine.

I was visiting IBM customers in Seattle last week and one of the guys I met had a 2001 996 which was cool but the engine had just blown so not so cool. We exchanged sob stories and he's waiting to see if the extended warranty will pay for the engine. These blown engines are a major pain for 996 owners. I've no idea how prevalent they are but I personally know 3 owners of 996s whose engines died and given the cars aren't exactly common in Minnesota then that is pretty bad. If I buy one again then its a GT3 or Turbo for me as these seem to be the only models with motorsport derived engines and hence they are sorted out properly. The new 09 997 engines looks like it's getting a fair bit of testing and appears to have a real dry sump finally so thats cool. Maybe the engines in the 09 997s will be better. Who knows anyway, without statistics, I just may know the only 3 dead 996s around...

Service cost for featherlite 3110 trailer

I just dropped my 17 foot featherlite 3110 car trailer at the local featherlite dealer last week for a replacement jack, repack/grease wheel bearings and attach a registration plate. Total cost is 315 dollars which is lower than we expected. I've owned it since 2006 and this is the first service I've done on it. A friends trailers wheel bearings catching fire prompted me to get it done.
The bearing cost 180 bucks to regrease and this also included checking the brakes.
The replacement jack was 30 bucks.
A replacement tail light cover was 15 bucks.
A wheel to go under the jack was 17 bucks.

SCCA regional license arrives

I just checked the SCCA website and the Bondurant based regional license application went through so thats cool. Applying for a PCA license also now.

Bondurant Grand Prix 4 day race school review

I just attended this school in Phoenix Arizona and had a blast. Learned a lot. Check out my full review here.

Porsche 944 sp1 owners blog started

I just started my blog on owning the 944. I'll cover everything to do with owning the car including running costs etc. You can find it at http://www.trackpedia.com/blogs/billy/