2003 Porsche 911 Turb-OOOOH

Well the Bose/MOST adapter finally showed up today.  Took 1 day to get from China to LAX, then 10 days to get from LAX to Denver.  Sheesh. 

Had an auto-x with the PCA today.  Mission -> annihilate old Toyo R888R tires was in effect!  Tarmac was really slippery today, so I was playing with a lot of slip angle, plus I was able to launch hard out of the starting gate and spin all 4.  Woot!

Probably did a top 20 finish, my last run I did my best Drift King impression.  I'll upload the video in a bit, hopefully my tach signal wire worked, the butt joint popped out when I was plugging it in today so I had to twist the wires together and electrical tape them.

When I got home I did a proper solder/heat shrink affair.

Swapped the pins around on the Metra stereo wiring harness to match up to my car.  Put the latest firmware on a thumb drive along with a nice Porsche crest pic for the radio. 

Friend coming over in about 40 minutes to help me with the install, he put the exact same radio in his '01 996 Turbo, which is the same as mine except the Bose/MOST adapter box.

Ok, well that was kinda more work than I expected.  My friend Paul has put this exact same head unit in his '01 996 Turbo and he came over to help me out.  His help was much appreciated and this would've taken far, far longer had I done it solo.

First off, set the volume on the stock radio and make sure all the settings are where you want them.  Then pull out the radio, it uses the same radio keys that the older VW/Audi's used.  Unplug all the harnesses.

Time to take everything apart.  Pull out the horseshoe and then remove the 4 torx screws holding down the surround.  Remove the 4 phillips screws holding the hvac controller in place, then unplug the two harnesses.  Pull out the top hvac vent bit.

Pull off the two covers on the bottom part, the leather wrapped on and the carpeted one.  Now pull out the bins or cd holder, whatever you have down there.  Pull off the batwing.  Now you're here.

Take the two hvac harness plugs and route them to the bottom of the stack.  Removing the hvac vent underneath the drivers side makes this easier, make sure you take out the 1 phillips screw holding the vent into place that's above drivers right knee.

OK, now take the Metra piece and start modifying it.  You need to cut out the center bar, down the sides plus the tops off the corner screw holes.

OK, lets mount the stereo in it.  Here's where things kinda stink if you have a 2003 or later 996.  Metra used to sell a kit specifically for the later cars but discontinued it, they only sell the older kit.  Problem is they didn't engineer a way to make the kit work with the later cars, nor did they change their instructions to tell you that you need to engineer something.

Basically you need to make a wedge to go in between the surround and the plastic retention brackets they give you.  Paul used a piece of plastic cutting board, then covered it in duct tape.  It's totally secure now.

OK, time for some wiring.  Since I have a '03 I have the fiber optic network, so $129 later I have an adapter box from China.  Connect it to the factory fiber optic harness (orange), then wire in the switched power, ground and constant power.  You need to rewire the Metra wiring harness adapter too.  I de pinned it to remove the things I didn't need.  Basically all you need is ground, switched power and constant power.  So you can piggyback it with the MOST adapter.

Grab switched power from the unused car phone plug, the wire you want is green with a black stripe.  Everything else you can get off the stock radio harness plug.

Ok, lets connect the hvac headunit in its new home.  Connect the two harnesses and reuse 2 of the stock phillips screws that held the hvac headunit in above to mount it.

Now install the Metra surround.  I grabbed one of the rubber mats from my stock cubbies to put in.  On the stock ones Porsche used "dowels" in the rubber mat to hold it down.  I thought about drilling/cutting the holes in the Metra piece but decided to just cut them off the stock rubber mat and use double sided tape to hold it on.

Here's where I installed the Rennline phone mount kit.  I also put the hands free phone mic in and ran the USB for the Apple Car play.  Tested the radio before I buttoned it all up and it works.    Time to put everything back together again.  You need to slide the upper hvac vent into the radio surround FIRST, then slide the entire assembly into the dash.  Use the 4 stock T20 screws to hold it into place.  Now reconnect all the harness plugs in the horseshoe and snap it into place.

Ok, now reconnect the hvac vent underneath the steering wheel and put the phillips screw back into place.  Now snap the two covers into place on both sides, the leather wrapped one and the carpeted one, snap the "batwing" back into place.

Here it is all completed, I think the Metra surround looks pretty darn good.  You can see the mic on the upper left corner of the cubby.  The car is so small reception should be fine there.

I'm not happy with the way the Rennline phone bracket pushes the trim piece out.  I can't see it if my phone is there, but otherwise it's not flush and drive me nuts.  I may modify the stock trim piece a bit to get a flush fit.  I was surprised the head unit didn't import my contact list but its possible it just needed more time to work.  Apple Car play is working fine.

The sound quality seems better but that may just be in my head, since I retained all the stock Bose amps/speakers from before....

OK, here's some video from the auto-x.  Embedding doesn't seem to be working, so here it is.  This is my fastest run, I ended up 22nd overall, which I'm happy with.  I was a fart away from a top twenty finish, not so bad on 7 year old Toyo R888R tires!

https://youtu.be/kBwAnEsmNHo

Here's my last run of the day, played dorifito king.  Not fast, but lots of fun!

https://youtu.be/Mz-FnbYJU1U

Car sounds great and the trackmate is fun to watch!

In reply to OjaiM5 :

Thanks!  I'm looking forward to hitting High Plains raceway in a few weeks for a track day.  hopefully I've got the tach signal working so the tach will show on the Traqmate stuff.

I also scored a Simpson Hybrid, so I'll have a head and neck restraint that works with factory 3 point belts.  Found it on rennlist, guy never used it but the price was right!

Great video!

Very cool Auto-X runs.  What are you using for camera / mounting?  Your videos are much steadier than mine and less nausea-inducing.

In replyReply to TVR Scott :

It's a GoPro2.  I'm using a suction cup mount attached to the windshield that has a RAM arm on it.  I wish I could mount it off the seat but since the Porsche seats don't have headrest bars I can't.

In reply to docwyte :

Could probably 3D print a bracket / mount that would clamp onto that round tube-shaped part of your seat.  I'd help you work something up if you want.

In reply to TVR Scott :

There are no round tube parts on the seats.  The Porsche seats have integrated head rests, the upper part of the seat is all 1 piece. My drivers seat does have harness holes in it but there's no good way to grab ahold of them.  Since I don't have a rollbar/harness bar I don't have anything there to grab ahold of either...

I was thinking these spots looked like they could take a simple plastic clamp:

Connecting aluminum tube could go behind the seat and above the seatbelt.

In reply to TVR Scott :

Ah, that would work, thanks!

In other other news I need to check the mounting of the Rennline phone mount kit.  A few people who have it have told me that their trim panel doesn't have the gap mine does. I figured out how to resize pics, so I want to swap out the wallpaper on the radio to one that fits better.  Lastly I must not have hooked up my garage door opener last night as the factory switch neither opened/closed the garage door nor lit up.  Will handle these three things tomorrow morning between taking my daughter to school and picking her up.

Ok, played with the car again yesterday afternoon while my son was at a friends house.

First I figured out why the rennline bracket was pushing the trim.  It needed a relief cut made in it to go around the "nub" on the Metra surround.  Some quick work with a dremel and the trim fits about as good as its gonna get with a bracket sandwiched in there.  Much better.

Then I uploaded a properly sized picture to the stereo to use as wallpaper.  I wanted something with a dark background since the icons are white.  I think this looks quite good.

Lastly time to play with my garage door opener.  I pulled off the horseshoe and everything was attached properly.  Huh???  Played with the buttons and the doors worked.  Um...  Put the horseshoe back in place, now they didn't.  In, out, in, out, in, out.  Did that several times until I finally got it seated into a place where the switch is happy and the doors are working.  Yippee!

Next up is swapping in my PFC brake pads as I'm hitting the track September 21st.  I may do that this morning.

Ok, well weirdness happening with the radio.  It works great when I'm streaming music from my phone but if I have it plugged in and Apple Car play active I lose audio feed after a few minutes.  It's done this twice now when I had Waze going along with playing music stored on my phone.  Not sure if it's my phone or the radio?  Any thoughts?

I got the PFC track pads in the car and then it sat around a bit.  My friend also has a 03 996 Turbo (In guards red, which I'm lusting after, the color I mean) and he asked me to help him install coilovers.  Ok, so this past Friday we went to it.  Should've been the same as my car but his car was just more persnickety for whatever reason.  Part of it was Porsche, part of it was his car.  The brake lines go from a hard line, to a small flexible line, to another small hard line that goes into the caliper.

Despite being really careful with the calipers and ziptieing them out of the way, the hard line going into the drivers front caliper basically snapped off.  Doh!  Luckily the line was all of $14, but overnight shipping bumped that up to $55.  We got everything installed Friday but had to leave the car on my lift.  Yesterday afternoon we installed the line, then went to bleed the brakes with my Motive.

I'd bought new tubing for the Motive but hadn't installed it yet.  Yup, tubing split and brake fluid sprayed everywhere.  Luckily I have a hose right there in my garage and we flushed it all off his car.  I replaced the hose and we successfully bled the brakes.  Then the front passenger axle didn't want to go back into place.  Play with that for a bit.  Then torque everything down and get the car off the lift, done!  Much more of a journey than mine!  Wow...

Hit High Plains Raceway yesterday, it was the PCA Club Race/Solo DE.  So only experienced, solo DE drivers allowed, two runs groups, Blue and Black.  I was put in Black, which had all the Cup cars etc but a good mix of street cars too.  Stock brakes with PFC08/11's, 7 year old Toyo R888R's that are NOT sticky.  At all.  Not even in the slightest bit.

I had my Traqmate installed but for the first three sessions it wouldn't recognize the start/finish line so didn't work and give me any lap times/data.  Don't know why?  The last session it seemed like it finally cycled the GPS sensor and worked.  I'll add the video from it tomorrow when I get to work.

Car ran flawlessly.  I know I've said it before but this is the ONLY car I've ever had on track up here that runs stone cold water temps right out of the box.  I don't think I saw over 185F yesterday in it.  Amazing. 

I was taking it easy, I don't trust these tires as they have basically no grip.  My goal today was have fun, bring the car home in the same condition it arrived in and destroy these tires.  LOL!  I was braking around the 5 marker on the back straight but that was still hitting 130+mph.  Every lap I told myself I could go a lot deeper into that corner and through that turn much faster but I still gave myself the room.  Brakes held up the entire day but these were 30 minute run sessions and the pedal was getting a bit soft/long towards the end of each session.  If I track the car more I'd like to swap on the GT3 6 piston front brake calipers and go with 350mm brake rotors all the way round.  Unfortunately sourcing those brake calipers used is $$$.  More than likely I'll just do the 350mm brake rotors and maybe switch to Castrol SRF fluid.  I doubt I'll track this car a lot, this was the only day this season I hit the track.

The grip was what I expected, it wasn't there.  I was 4 wheel drifting the exit of all the fast corners and lighting up the rear tires coming out of the slow corners.  I had PSM traction control off but turns out it doesn't really ever turn completely off.  I could feel it cutting power on corner exit and at times the traction control light would flash away.  My friend had warned me about this and recommended unplugging the PSM completely.  I may do that next time at the track.

My first session or two I landed in a good spot on the track and had a clear session, only getting caught by a few race cars.  The rest of the day was a bit frustrating dealing with traffic, people simply weren't watching their mirrors and giving courteous, fast passes.  For whatever reason I kept getting stuck behind the same people, all driving Caymans, who wouldn't let me by.  I had to hot pit a few times each session.  Argh!

Last session my Traqmate was working and I did a 2:10 on these crappy tires, not really pushing, in the hottest part of the day.  Pretty happy with that!  There's a 2:05 here pretty easily, on fresh tires and pushing a little harder.  Had a code brown moment tho, I was hounding a Cayman to let me by and as we came up out of turn 7 I saw a big dirt cloud.  I got hard on the brakes, as did he as it was obvious someone went off ahead of us.  We slowed to maybe 30-40mph but couldn't stop where we were, people behind us could hit us.  So I drove through this enormous cloud of dirt, with ZERO visibility and prayed that the car wasn't on the track in front of me.

They ended up black flagging the session and rolled out the ambulance.  It was an older air cooled 911 that was totally race prepped and had an LS swap in it.  I don't know how but he spun completely across the track and ended up against the flagging station on the inside of the corner.  Hopefully he wasn't hurt.  I do have it on video, I'll post that too.

I had a great day at the track hanging out with friends, the car ran great with the exception of going through a huge amount of fuel.  This thing is a PIG on track, I think I burned 25 gallons yesterday.  I'm happy with a 2:10, the tires definitely are toast but to my annoyance they look basically new still.  Can't wear out hockey pucks I guess...

Ok, turns out my Traqmate was recording after all!  I did a best of a 2:09.5 in the first session of the day, when I had totally clear track.  This was taking it easy, braking at the "5" marker on the back straight and not pushing the corners since I was on 7 year old Toyo R888R tires.  I'll do a 2:07-2:06 with the same conservative brake points and being more aggressive there's a 2:04-5 there.

Evidently my tach feed still isn't working, argh!  Not sure if it's the cheap OBD2 cable, whether I tapped the wrong wire off the OBD2 cable or what.

Here's the video fast lap...

Turns out my QuickTime isn't working to edit unless I pay/upgrade to Pro.  So no way to post it unless I post the entire 26 minute video...

Your Metra kit fits wayyy better than mine did for the CR-V.  The gap between the XAV-AX100 and the included surround was so big that you can fit a phillips head in there and remove the mounting screws easily.

In reply to sobe_death :

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the fitment of the Metra kit.  Was kinda pissed I had to modify parts tho, they could've updated their instructions for the later 996's.

My Apple Car Play has been acting wonky tho, it works great for a few minutes, then I lose the audio feed.  Initially I thought it was the adapter box but now I think its my phone as I noticed it did the same thing in my golf R.  I've updated to iOS13, need to see if that takes care of it.

Yesterday I swapped back to the street brake pads and street wheels/tires.  Also gave it a much needed bath to get all the track grime off.  While I had everything out I also washed the Golf R plus my mtn bike.

Tried out my new Griots Garage wheel brush and micro fiber towel.  Both worked great, I love the towel in particular, lets you dry the car all in one go without having to wring it out.

Well, I upgraded the iOS on my phone and initially I thought that fixed the no audio feed issue with the stereo.  Then it happened again last night when I was on my way home from a PCA event.

I tried a few things, unplugging CarPlay and seeing if it worked just streaming from the phone (no) then just trying the FM radio (no again).  I also didn't hear any alternator whine like I do when I'm getting an audio feed.

Which tells me that the Bose amps aren't getting power, which means that the MOST adapter box isn't working.  I emailed the vendor twice with no response.  They're in China but I decided that enough time has passed between the 3 weeks it took to ship to me, the delay in installation and then the delay in diagnosis that I just started a Paypal dispute right away.

I don't want to wait and then not be able to dispute it through Paypal because the time limit has past.  I'll order another one on AliExpress for $50 less, which looks exactly as the same as the one I bought and hopefully get a refund from Paypal for the one I currently have.

Found a way to order the 997.2/GT2RS intercoolers for about half price from a parts house in Germany.  I asked a friend if he wanted a set so we could split shipping.  He agreed, then pulled in another friend, who then pulled in *another* friend.

This is where things got complicated as that guy was very high maintenance.  I'd already put in the order for the original 3 and everyone had paid me, then I had a long email string with the vendor about trying to add another set, then ran into German mentality of those parts don't fit your car, do you really want them?  Then I added the guy and the vendor got back to me that the right side would be supplied by a different OEM manufacturer than the left and Oh, shipping will be more.

So friend 4 then decides he doesn't want to stay in the order anymore.  Argh!  So now I'm emailing the vendor trying to see if I can get him off the order and a refund.  To my surprise they call me this morning and we work it out.  We get the shipping worked out and get friend 4 off the order.  I am looking forward to the upgraded intercoolers, they've been shown to be markedly more efficient and fit with a little trimming of the stock shrouds.

Lesson learned, either just order my own stuff or only involve my direct friends. 

On the continued front of OEM+ upgrades, I scored a set of 996 Turbo S PCCB calipers.  They're 6 piston front, 4 piston rear vs 4/4 for my stock ones.  They use much larger brake pads and fit directly onto 350mm (vs 330mm rotors now) rotors.

I won't be buying the ceramic rotors/pads as they're obscenely expensive and not what I want to do.  So I'll just use 997TT steel rotors/regular brake pads.  All of this stuff is a direct fitment onto the car.  Seller says they need a rebuild, which is why I got em cheap, however one of the local 996tt track rats says he's never had to rebuild a set of these and unless the color is really faded due to temperature, chances are they're fine.

These look good cosmetically in the pics but I'll have to inspect them carefully when they show up. Racing Brake sells everything I need to rebuild them, so no big deal there...

Well, I realized why I got the calipers for so cheap.  A few of the caliper pistons are missing the zircon pucks.  You can see the pucks in the picture I posted above, they're the yellow things sitting inside the pistons.

Apparently these pucks are NOT available to purchase individually, only as part of an entire rebuild kit from Porsche Motorsports for a rather obscene amount of money.  The dealer doesn't sell rebuild parts at all, they can only sell you a completely new caliper.

So, calipers arrive on Friday, I'll pick them up on Saturday, measure the piston sizes that I need the pucks for and then start searching.  Good news here is the off season is basically here so I've got time...

Sent the call out on the mothership of all things Porsche, Rennlist.  Got an answer that DemonSpeed sells replacement pucks for these calipers and at a very reasonable price.  Score! 

Calipers look like they'll be here Friday, I changed the drop off address to a local Walgreens so I can grab them on Saturday and not worry about not being home to sign for them.

Plan is to see what pucks I need and order them along with the "spider clips" that retain the pucks in place and away I go.