Running Report 1 - November 2001

The Owner

I live in the Netherlands, am 31 years old, and work as a consultant in ICT.

My name is Jan-Willem Hubbers. As my first name is a bit on the long side, and nearly useless in an international context, most people tend to call me JW. I respond to the English pronunciation of Jay Double-you, as well as to the Dutch form, which (in English) sounds a bit like Jay Way.

Previous Cars

Sporty cars have always had my interest. My history of car ownership started with a second-hand, very red Honda Civic (90HP, a little over 900kg, short gears, and great handling). The Honda was replaced by a black Alfa 146 1.8 (144HP, lots of understeer, but great fun to drive and a magnificent engine).

The next car was an Alfa 156 2.0 Selespeed (only marginally quicker than the 146 in a straight line, but great road holding and a brilliant gearbox. The only serious point of criticism is that it only had 5 gears.) which I crashed in a parking garage because of the combination of a stuck throttle and no clutch pedal.

Thanks to the Dutch tax climate which makes car leasing rather expensive (in my case, 25% of the original value of the car is added to my taxable income every year)

I went to Plan B: drive a cost-effective lease car used solely for company trips and get a real car for my private mileage. This means no extra taxes, which should pay for the gas of the real car quite nicely.

First-hand introduction to the 911

I've always admired Porsche cars. A drive in a 22-year old 911 Targa, courtesy of a colleague, introduced me to the experience of driving a 911. I didn't fit behind the wheel (I'm 1.88m), the car is full of switches whose purpose is entirely unclear, steering and brakes are heavy, and the gear change requires a lot of feeling and some patience. You either love it or hate it, and I loved every second of driving it.

Selecting a model

The first step of Plan B called for a thorough examination of funds. Owning a Porsche is not much fun if you can't drive it. I got some estimates on maintenance costs, running costs, insurance costs, and road tax, and went looking for the 'right' Porsche.

Finding a suitable type wasn't much of a challenge: given the money I could realistically spend, it would either be a 911 with the G50 gearbox, or an early 964.

Colour: preferably something dark. Model: coupe. A Targa is great fun on sunny Sunday afternoons, but not so great if you want to travel from the Netherlands to Vienna in one night. Fitting into a 3.2 Carrera proved cumbersome, whereas I fit quite comfortably in a 964.

Finding the car

A few months research in the used car market identified possible sources: the Porsche dealer and a handful of independent Porsche specialists. The original idea of importing a 911 from Germany myself was soon abandoned: finding a really good one proved too much.

As a professional Porsche importer put it: 'Germany is almost empty with regard to decent 911s'. A close watch on the relevant websites and regular calls to the independents and to the Porsche dealers gave me a good idea of prices. The final issue was: C2 or C4? I decided to go for the lower weight and somewhat more entertaining ride of the C2.

At one of the official Dutch Porsche dealers I found a 964 C2 from 1991 in Amazon green. 161000 km on the clock, which was a bit on the high side. Decided to go for a test drive anyway, as the price was (just) within my budget, and the car was in good shape: accident-free, no rust, no apparent oil-leakage, Porsche service history. Not surprisingly, the car drove great. Some fading to the right under heavy braking, and some minor points such as a burnt-out bulb in the dashboard, and a rubber strip in the right-side skirt coming loose.

Negotiations resulted in a price within my budget, which included fixing of the cosmetic defects, fitting of an immobilizer, and, more importantly, a new clutch. An offer I couldn't refuse.

The Car

I picked up the car on Monday 8 October. Why pick up such a car just after a weekend, you might ask. Easy: the preceding weekend was spent making its garage accessible. The previous owners of my house had built a rather large flowerbed right in front of the garage, augmented by a barrier across the short driveway with a door that is about two meters too narrow to let a 911 pass through it.

Details of the car can be found in the 964-group on www.smartgroups.com. It's a left hand drive Amazon green Carrera 2 with a black interior and manual transmission.

The mirrors are the original rectangular ones. The wheels are 17" cup wheels with 205/50 tyres in front and 255/40 tyres in the back. Apart from the wheels, the car is basic: no sunroof, no cruise control, no onboard computer, no sport seats, no full leather interior. It does have aircon and a comfort seat on the driver's side. The suspension hasn't been modified.

First Impressions

My first impression of the car can be summed up in a not very original 'Wow!'

Acceleration is awesome when using the right rev range, there's loads of grip when cornering or accelerating, very good feedback from the steering, the brake pedal is very high and firm, clutch is smooth and not too heavy, gearshift is rather heavy when compared to your average family saloon. The steering position is not great: the steering wheel is offset to the right, and there is little room between steering wheel and pedals. I haven't found a way to heel-and-toe yet, whereas most cars allow simultaneous operation of brake and accelerator pedal quite easily. The car is surprisingly quiet when cruising on roads with a decent surface. As soon as the surface gets rougher, the tires make lots of noise.

Things to get used to:

Things to be done in the near future:

Things to be done in the not-so-near future:

Running Report 2 - May 2002

Intro

The previous six months of Porsche ownership had a bit of everything in them. Overall the car has been running great, causing lots of big silly grins. A few visits to the dealer were necessary to get some issues sorted. I spent some time getting to know the car's behaviour better on a number of day trips, most of them to Germany. To top it off, I managed to secure a place on a driver's education event organized by Pon, the Dutch Porsche importer.

Work done

Most of the work that was pending at the time of the previous report has been carried out. All the lights in the centre console are working again, the strip with the rear fog lights and reversing lights has been fixed, the rubber seal of the right side skirt was replaced, the brakes have had an overhaul and are doing a great job, the radio is hooked up the right way, radio reception is okay (thanks to Mark Snowdon for the tip; somebody had indeed forgotten to connect the antenna amplifier), I know where to buy Mobil-1 0W-40 in my area (Esso filling stations have it), the driver's side door sill is fixed, the car has had an alignment, and I adjusted the tire pressure to 2.5 bar all around.

In addition to these things, I replaced the rear deck speakers and the front mid/bass speakers with something better. A friend of mine had some spare front speakers taking up shelf space, and the local car audio shop ordered some Kenwood KFC-4075's for the rear deck. They're a drop-in replacement if you either remove the rear windscreen or use a very short screwdriver. I opted to use a very short screwdriver :-) The Kenwoods come with their own cover, which is handy as I couldn't see a reasonable way of re-using the original covers. Now I can understand what people on the radio are saying. Most of the time, anyway.

Storage space being at a premium inside the cabin of the 964, I followed up on a tip from Jeff Curtis (you'll find him and many other helpful people on the Rennlist 964 forum) and removed the grating from inside the ashtray, converting it into a miniature lighted storage bin. Very easy to do. The dealer replaced the not very useful cassette holder behind the handbrake with a general purpose storage bin for free (thanks guys).

Some more brownie points to the OPC: they took apart the gearbox and re-adjusted everything (free of charge, under warranty). This makes a world of difference when shifting. The difficulties of finding a gear after moving the gear lever laterally (say, from 3rd to 2nd) are gone completely, except when the gearbox gets hot.

Finally, upon hearing that the black 911SC from a friend of a friend of mine had been stolen I decided to swap my immobiliser for a full-fledged class-3 alarm system.

Memorable events

A few weeks after writing the previous running report, I heard some metallic noises coming from the back of the car. Called the dealer, who couldn't tell what it was and told me to come in after the weekend as the sound disappeared when the engine had been stopped for a little while. I didn't make it to the garage though, as shortly the noises stopped, but not before climaxing into a big bang :( I stopped the car and found that the belt driving the alternator had broken. Not good. I limped the car to a friend's parent's house where it could stay safely until the insurance company could fetch it and transport it to the dealer (I think I've 'won' back all the premiums I paid for the entire year in one go). Diagnosis: a seized alternator and damaged pulley. Those are the times when you're glad the car is still under warranty.

Another memorable trip was much shorter, more pleasant, but just as exciting. It was a glorious winter morning. Cold, sunny and a blue sky with a few clouds thrown in for contrast. Snow was forecast for later in the day, but I figured a visit to a colleague of mine should see the 964 back in its garage before the snow would start to fall. To make a long story short: it didn't. We were having too much fun, and his wife had never ridden in a 911 before. Of course I was happy to oblige with a quick trip. As a result I was late getting back, and halfway home snow started to fall. Quite a bit of it. Enough to make me wonder if declining an offer to buy winter tires was a wise decision after all... Anyway, the ride home was pretty much uneventful, except for the last 50 meters. Upon turning into my street (at about 1000 RPM in second gear, neutral throttle), the back started to come round. Which at that speed isn't much of a deal in a FWD car. Just feed in some opposite lock, and all's well again. Not in a 911: pushing in the clutch was necessary to get things under control again. Welcome to the world of RWD!

 The low point of the past six months was caused by a stupid bugger who managed to prove the saying "If you drive a Porsche, the question is not how quickly you can stop, the question is how quickly the guy behind you can stop" by running into the back of me (at low speed, fortunately). Just some superficial damage to the rear bumper, more hassle than damage actually, but not the most pleasant of experiences. Of course the guy didn't have his driver's license or his insurance papers with him, so we had to wait for the police to take some statements and run his plates. His insurance company reimbursed me quickly, though.

Naturally, when I got the car back again, the first trip was to Germany to see what the top speed really was. I'd had 275km/h on the clock before, but didn't have my GPS with me. This time I did, and it showed a real top speed of 265 km/h (281 indicated) before bouncing off the rev limiter. Incidentally, that 281 came up in both directions on the same segment of Autobahn. I've done that speed a few times since then, so it's safe to assume it wasn't a one-off fluke :-)) What impresses me most is the ease with which the car rockets you to those speeds. You're doing 250 before you know it, and 260 isn't long in coming. 260 to 265 takes a bit longer, but hey, that's faster than the factory said it would do when it was new :-) It does use a bit of oil at those speeds, though, and the gear change gets sticky: moving the gear lever laterally takes a lot more strength than when the gearbox is at 'normal' temperatures.

Somewhat surprising (to me at least) is the stability of the car at those speeds. Let's face it, it's still a RWD car with no weight on the front wheels and lots of weight behind the rear wheels. Yet there is no vagueness in the steering and the car goes where you want it to go. Even medium-sized bumps don't unsettle the car much. It's more relaxing to cruise at 240 in this car than driving 120 in lots of other cars.

Nürburgring

Another memorable event was a visit to the Nürburgring in Germany during Easter. The Nordschleife to be more precise. The Nürburgring is situated in the Eifel mountains, which makes for some great winding roads and nice scenery. Add some sunshine to that, and life is great. I didn't take the 964 out on the Nordschleife because it was way to busy. Besides, I don't know the car well enough yet, and the Nordschleife is not the place to learn it. Leaving the track almost always means running into the Armco. I did take some nice pictures though, and I went round as a passenger in a smoothly and quickly driven Porsche 968 (thanks again, Ben). On the way back, a rabbit tried to cross the road in front of me (when I was doing about 255km/h), resulting in a slight misalignment of the front spoiler. To fix it, I built an improvised ramp, loosened the black plastic lining at the bottom of the spoiler, bent it into shape, and screwed everything back together again.

A stark contrast to the great trip to the Nürburgring was reading the announcement of Adrian Streather of the death of his 17-year old daughter Natalie on the 964-forum on Rennlist the evening I got back. This tragic event made a big impression on many Rennlisters, myself included. I was touched by the many warm reactions from fellow Rennlisters, which shows the true power of the Internet. So far, I haven't met Adrian in person, but we've corresponded on several occasions, mostly related to 964s, some related to his book about the 964. He's always prepared to help out or answer questions. We have a provisional appointment to meet in Switzerland this summer for an impromptu book signing. It'll be a three day trip: drive up there on day 1, have a chat with Adrian and any other 964-owners that might turn up on day 2, drive back on day 3. In the meantime, I wish him and his family all the best.

 Last but not least was a day of driver training at Lelystad. I took the owner of the white Targa (introduced in the previous report) along as a co-driver. Not only is it much more fun to share such an experience directly, it also saves you from mumbling to the windscreen while analysing what you just did on the track. A training such as this one I can recommend to anyone. Spending a day on a circuit with 19 other Porsches is a lot of fun all by itself. Getting pointers from a pro like Gijs van Lennep (he's won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976, for example) makes it even better. Add to that the opportunity to start to get a feeling for where the limit of your car is and how it handles there and I think it's money well spent.

Exercises included a slalom, laps around a kart circuit (big fun to drive a car around a track which is that narrow), correcting understeer, correcting oversteer, playing with power oversteer, ABS braking, avoiding an obstacle at speeds of 80 to 95km/h (very cool to do it successfully at 95 in a good old 964, and see a 996 with its Porsche Stability Management switched off go into a huge spin :)). To be fair, I did spin out as well, but that was at a little over 100 km/h. Almost caught it, but almost doesn't count. I even managed to knock over a cone that the guys setting the course had figured was unreachable. They'll put it back a bit further next time :) The last exercise was driving single laps on a short circuit, with Van Lennep rotating over all the cars and setting the pace. Experiencing the way a real pro drives your car shows how much more the car can do, and that I still have a lot to learn about driving cars :)

As a bonus we did a number of laps on the testing oval. The turns have a 60% banking. My first thought upon entering the first turn was "we're going to slide down". However, the second was "nah, there's a 30-year old 911SC before me, and that didn't fall down." It's a neat feeling to go through a turn at 120km/h without having to actively turn the steering wheel. It's a pity that not everybody followed the instructions, which were to keep a constant distance to the car in front. There was a 996 in front of us that was really scared of the turns. Even when approaching the turns at 130, he braked! Nutcase. The aim was to go round with a constant speed of 170 or 180. As a result, the 996 was trailing the car in front of him by about 50 meters instead of the instructed 15 to 20 meters. Furthermore, to be able to take the turns at the intended speeds we had to drop back on the straights, and accelerate through the turns to about 160, and braking after exciting the turn to avoid running into the back of said 996. I never figured out why that guy didn't just drive off the track to donate his car to the first person (with or without a driver's license) to walk by.

Things that still need sorting

For the moment, the only interesting thing is the stiff gear change when the gearbox gets hot. The OPC thinks it's not normal, so they can have a go at solving it. I wouldn't know, because I haven't driven any other 964 that hard.

A bit annoying is the fuel gauge that gets stuck at the 'full' position after strong acceleration with an almost full tank. It returns to normal behaviour after turning the ignition off, though. So far the sender has been replaced, but that didn't solve it.

To be done sometime in the future

Apart from the gear change and the fuel gauge, the following is on the agenda:

Running Report 3 - November 2002

Intro

Another great six months of driving the 964. The only downside of driving is that sometimes you need to park the car. For some reason, that's when people seem to grab hold of even the smallest opportunity and run into it. Apart from that, the car's still running strong: it has had it's yearly service which turned up nothing out of the ordinary. In short: lots of fun. I even have some decent pictures of my car in action now.

Memorable events

Thanks to lots of good weather there were lots of memorable events. The first is described in more detail on a separate page: it's an evening at the track at Zandvoort. The group was a mixed bag of veterans and rookies. Ditto for the cars: the oldest car was a 911 3.2 Targa (very nice), there was another 964 (a C4 cab), some standard 996's, a 928 and at least one 996 Turbo. To liven things up a race-prepped 3.2 on slicks was thrown in.

The session followed the standard pattern of getting to know the track section by section, alternately following an instructor, sitting in the passenger seat next to the instructor, and finally driving with live comments from the instructor sitting next to you. Instructors were Gijs van Lennep again and Hans Deen. All this was finished off with free driving. Highlights from this evening: having the back step out big time with van Lennep in the passenger seat (because I still couldn't operate brake and accelerator at the same time), van Lennep showing me that thanks to his shorter legs he had no problem double clutching, and managing to keep up with van Lennep while he was driving the 996 C2. Admittedly he was taking it easy, but still interesting to check the rearview mirror when entering the final straight and not seeing the rest of the group there.

In June I went to the Nürburgring. Highly recommended if you want to drive your car in the way Dr. Porsche intended. A thorough preparation before driving on the track is a very good idea though. The Ring is long. It's very long. Your average Formula One track is about 4.5km long. The Nordschleife of the Nürburgring is more than 20km long and contains lots of corners (73 is the official number). Then there's an altitude difference between highest and lowest point of the track of 300m. Add lots of blind crests, lots of blind corners, and a chronic lack of run-off space, and you get the idea.

However, all these ingredients combined give the most challenging, most impressive and most beautiful track in the world. There are very few things that compare to driving the Ring fast. The G-forces are impressive, and so are the speeds. In a 964 you'll be able to hit 220km/h in three places. All the info you might need about the Ring is at the site of Ben Lovejoy.

Another word of warning: once you've driven the Ring, you'll want to come back. Which I did in July, August and September. The trips in July and September were particularly impressive: lots of good weather and lots of good company. Unfortunately, the fantastic time on and off the track in July was overshadowed by the death of Jørund Seim who crashed on the Ring on an oil spill Sunday afternoon, shortly after I left. He will be missed sorely by many people.

The September weekend was a memorable one. I drove lots of laps, managed to meet up with Rennlister John Boggiano and his wife Paula on Sunday and followed them for two laps to make a video of their car in action.

Icing on the cake was a group of 17 very fast Swedish Porsches that had made its annual trek. As a thank you for taking some pictures of their them in action, I secured two passenger laps in well-driven GT3's (from Ulf and Anders). Awesome! Much as I like my 964, those rides confirmed one of my deeper fears: I want a GT3 some day...

Fortunately, driving a 964 is very entertaining too. A bit too entertaining sometimes, resulting in a high speed spin without hitting anything (small miracle, that).

Detailed reports of all my trips to the Ring can be found on my Nürburgring pages.

One last memorable detail: before the September weekend I had my front brake pads replaced. The yearly service was scheduled just after that Ring weekend. Within hours of dropping the car off, the mechanic calls me to ask if I'd realised that half the pads they'd put on just a few days earlier were gone again...

Work done

The alternator that was replaced during the first 6 months of ownership wasn't charging the battery properly. This resulted in a number of flat batteries, and my buying a trickle charger. 964's tend to use quite a bit of current anyway, particularly with an alarm system installed. The new new alternator seems to be doing its job properly, but I keep the car plugged into a wall socket anyway to keep the battery topped up at all times.

My experiences at Zandvoort strengthened my resolve to create a decent steering position. A bit of research and asking around yielded a number of different solutions, all described on this page of my website. In the end I went with an original three-spoke 993RS steering wheel on a custom-made extension of the steering column. It looks good and works perfectly. The difference in drivability is huge: at last I have room under the steering wheel to operate the brake properly. Matching revs during downshifts under braking is no longer a problem either. Definitely the best money I ever spent on a car.

Driving quite a few kilometers on a racetrack isn't the most economical way of covering distances: you just go round in circles and consume lots of brake pads, brake discs and tyres in the process. Well worth it though, in my opinion. As a result the running costs have been quite high, but that's mostly thanks to 4 new tyres, new rear discs and new pads all around. The front discs are marginal, but they'll be replaced together with the front pads after the first Ring weekend next year.

The yearly service didn't turn up any out-of-the-ordinary items. The alarm had stopped beeping when arming/disarming (fixed under warranty), the front wishbones need to replaced next year, and the heatshields near the cat were loose and have been welded. Other than that the parking damages have been repaired.

The stiff shifting when the gearbox is hot seems normal: Gijs van Lennep didn't notice a difference between my car and the other 964 at Zandvoort. At the Ring it's not much of a problem, particularly when you get to know the track. Most of the time it's 3rd or 4th gear, with a handful excursions into 2nd.

The niggling problem with the fuel gauge still hasn't been solved: by now everything except the wiring has been replaced, and still the needle sticks to full after filling the tank. Switch the ignition off and on, and it points to the correct position. Weird. They've now replaced the gauge with one from a 993 that is known to work. I've no idea if that's cured the problem yet. I'll have to fill up the tank and do a nice long drive immediately afterwards. Those are the hardships of 964 ownership ;-))

To be done sometime in the future

There are two big things that need to be done:

The rest is minor stuff:

Running Report 4 - May 2003

Intro

The 964 didn't get much exercise during the winter months. These quiet months were put to good use by upgrading the suspension and fixing the airconditioning. The new suspension was put to the test at the Nürburgring. A side benefit from testing at the Ring was that I have some more nice pictures of my 964 in action, thanks to Alexander and TrRRish.

Showtime!

To provide some entertainment during the dark winter months when the Nürburgring is closed, Ben organised a Beer & Video evening at his place near London. Courtesy of Easyjet and two friends to ferry me around I made the trip, packing a sleeping bag, a camcorder, some video tapes and a bunch of CD-ROMs with Ring videos on them. If you want to get a feel for what it's like to be surrounded by a large number of petrolheads, fuelled by beer and exciting videos, take a look at this impression. Several people had brought in-car videos, and quite a few featured 964's. A selection of my own videos is available online courtesy of the RingBunny.

Yet another trip...

Despite having no plans whatsoever to do another Ring visit in 2002, I was weak-kneed enough to be persuaded to do just one more trip. It was an expensive trip in the sense that it confirmed that the shocks were well and truly worn: a bit of suspension work would be necessary to be fully prepared for the 2003 Ring season.

Reliving the first minutes

By now you might be wondering if I ever drive the 964 to other places than the Nürburgring. Actually I do: in December I did a rather fast trip to Düsseldorf with a friend who'd never been in a Porsche before. It was very entertaining to see his reactions when he felt the acceleration push him back into the seat for the first time. It brought back some fond memories of the excitement I felt when first driving the car. Driving it is still exciting, but you tend to get used to the performance. Going through a bend in Autobahn number 57 at about 250km/h was a completely novel experience for him, one that duly impressed him with the abilities of the car. Grins all around :-)

A side benefit of a trip to Düsseldorf is that you can leave a 964 parked on the street without worrying about it. In that area, 911's are used as runabouts, and a 964 is "just another old 911" :-)

Suspension upgrade

Still, even a Porsche suspension is susceptible to wear and tear. After nearly 180.000km the shocks were worn. In addition to that the left front wishbone was showing signs of needing replacement sometime during the next 20.000km. I decided to replace both the left and right wishbones, change the springs and the rear sway bar, and add a strut brace for good measure.

The initial idea was to use 964RS springs in combination with yellow Koni adjustable shocks, but as it turned out that combination couldn't be made to work without a lot of work: the RS springs are too short to fit in a C2 using the Koni shocks.

Problem number two was that substituting the standard C2 20mm rear sway bar for an 18mm 3-way adjustable 964RS turned out to be a potentially dangerous idea. Naturally I made sure it wasn't fitted on my car.

The easiest solution to the spring problem would be to get hold of the Eibach equivalent: Eibach used to make springs that are comparable to the original Porsche RS springs, but with a greater length. Of course, these springs are no longer available. Therefore I went to Plan B: use H&R Sport springs for the 964 Turbo instead of the RS springs. Jeff Curtis uses this setup and likes it a lot.

Naturally somebody messed up: despite my providing my OPC with the correct part number for the Turbo springs (which are Red) they managed to install H&R Sport springs for the C2/C4 (which are Green). At least this gave me the chance to compare the Green springs with the Red springs first-hand.

During a long weekend at the Ring I got to know the Green springs pretty well. Initially the front end felt a bit nervous over bumps, but that was easily solved by softening the front dampers. If I hadn't known of the existence of the Red ones, I think I would have been very happy with them. Turn-in was better than with the old springs, and there was less body-roll, dive and squat. On top of that the combination wasn't too uncomfortable on normal roads.

Easter Sunday (!) a company near the Ring swapped my front brake pads for new ones (I always carry a spare set of front and rear brake pads when going to the Ring) and checked the rear pads for how much life they had left in them. Apparantly they know their customers well, because I didn't get a rather useless answer of "5000km" or some such, but a much more practical "20 to 25 laps". Perfect :)

Immediately after Easter the Red springs arrived and were fitted in time for a test at the Ring the following weekend. My first impressions of the difference between the Red and the Green springs were confirmed: the Reds feel quite a bit firmer, keeping the car much flatter when cornering and turning in sharper. Of course there is less squat and dive too. Going through the compression at the bottom of the Fuchsröhre or the banking of the Karussell didn't present any problems: no bottoming out. The Reds do rattle your teeth a bit when you go over a sharp ridge that's perpendicular to the direction of travel though. The ride height is the same for the Greens and the Reds.

Here are "before" and "after" pics:

A more detailed description of how the upgrade process went is available on this page. Many thanks to Adrian Streather for his help.

Expenses

Thanks to not driving much during the winter, expenditure has been very reasonable. Apart from the suspension work, of course. In addition I had the aircon converted to R134a coolant and had it checked for leaks. Other than that, I didn't need to spend any money on the car except by putting in fuel and an occasional drop of oil. With the opening of the Nürburgring season the consumption rate of things as fuel, brake pads, tyres and oil have gone up considerably, but that's something for the next report.

Future work

Now that I've started to go a bit faster on the Ring, I would like to upgrade the brakes. My 1991 964 still has the 2-pot rear calipers instead of the 4-pots of later years. Also, the front discs tend to warp. This is something I can work around by learning to drive better, but bigger brakes with better heat dissipation would be nice anyway.

Other than that, there's not much that I want to do with the car. The fuel gauge seems to work now, the aircon keeps my head cool, and if all goes according to plan I can write about a trip over lots of Alpine passes in my next running report.

Running Report 5 - May 2004

Intro

May

Two weeks later it was time for another trip. On the first day I was there, Friday, the track was reasonably quiet. To start off I did some laps following others, with the camcorder running. The lap behind Sir Bastard in his stripped Golf GTi was particularly entertaining as he was experimenting with his tyre pressures...

Depending on bandwidth usage, this video may be online at the home of the RingBunny in the "Full Laps" section.

Saturday started with meeting fellow 964-owner Arjan (active poster on the 964 forum at Rennlist) at the filling station near the Ring. The afternoon was a bit less pleasant. Having done some good laps I went out for 2 laps with Euan as passenger. The first was pretty decent, the second started well but ended badly. Schwedenkreuz went nicely, about as good as it gets with my rather large margin (about 170km/h indicated, accelerating through the turn to about 180), on a good line into the braking zone for Aremberg, hit the brakes, pedal goes down about the same amount as it always does (with the same pushing effort), but only delivers about 30 to 40% retardation. Release pedal, brake again, same story, pushing harder doesn't help much.

At this point we're about 20m from the turn-in point, and I tell Euan that the brakes are gone. By then he had that one figured out for himself, I think. Speed at the turn-in point is probably about 30 or 40 km/h more than normal :(

I figured there were 2 options: either say "to hell with braking, let's turn in anyway" or go straight, try to reduce as much speed as possible and try to turn to the right a bit.

I didn't really think of it at the time, but went for option 2, as option 1 in a 964 would automatically result in a total loss of control for me. Losing control at that point of the track would probably have resulted in going sideways into the gravel, and I didn't much fancy rolling the car at 100+ km/h, or going backwards into the armco at that kind of speed.

Option 2 worked reasonably well: the gravel didn't slow us down as much as I had hoped (Euan told me later that he was already bracing for a head-on impact with the armco), but I did manage to alter course slightly. The grass verge between the gravel and the armco was almost wide enough and provided enough grip to get away with it without hitting anything. Keyword being "almost". We hit the armco with the left rear, but somehow I managed to avoid hitting the armco with the left front. Came to a stop about 40m after hitting the armco. Got out, examined the car, left rear bumper section FUBAR, center section looked pretty bad, right section fouls the exhaust, tiny armco mark on the left rear quarter panel, gravel marks on left side skirt, but no dents in the bodywork, seams around the rear lid not distorted, engine still running, nothing leaking out, didn't hit the left rear wheel, just the bumper.

The boys at Ring Racing did a quick repair by straightening things, allowing me to drive home without melting the bumper.

June

Initially I had planned on not taking the 964 to the Ring for this visit, but use the C-Car instead. The C-Car is co-owned by 8 people (I'm one of them), Ring-prepped, and intended to be used as a backup for those cases where your personal car or bike isn't available to be used on the Ring.

However, the best independent Porsche specialist I've found so far is Kaul & Will, which is near the Nordschleife. I haven't found a reliable independent in the Netherlands yet and I don't fancy using my own 964 as a Guinea pig to see how good a particular independent is.

Upon arrival Frau Kaul directed me to the garage, where everything was ready to fix my car. A few hours later the bumper was fixed, and a verdict about the brakes was given. The short version: OEM pads are nice on the street, but don't cut the mustard on the track once you start going fast. As mentioned in my previous running report, upgrading the brakes was already on my mind, for the simple reason that my 1991 C2 has those tiny calipers in the rear, and nobody makes racing pads for them. It was therefore time to bite the bullet and upgrade the rears to 1992 and later specification. I made an appointment to have this done by Kaul & Will during my next Ring visit.

August

As arranged I arrived early at the doorstep of Kaul & Will for the brake upgrade. This upgrade is described in more detail on a separate page, but here are the highlights:

The final visit of 2003 to the Ring in the 964 promised to be interesting: the Swedes would descent on the Nordschleife again, like they do every year in September. This means that there are lots of Porsches, all of them driven fast or very fast. Unfortunately the fastest of them all hadn't had his GT3-RS delivered yet, forcing him to make do with a Mercedes C200-Kompressor. At the end of the weekend he came into the parking lot after a hot lap with his brakes literally on fire...

Another issue that detracted from all the fun was the sheer volume of cars and bikes. There were less full weekends available in 2003 than in 2002, resulting in the biggest crowd I've ever seen during tourist hours. At times there was a queue of dozens of cars on the final straight, all waiting to get off the track. Quite a few people cooked their clutch during this weekend. By going out during the quiet hours (very early or very late in the day), I still managed to do quite a few decent laps despite the traffic.

One of the high points of the weekend was the midnight bike run. Some people had come up with the plan to ride a pushbike round the Ring at night. Figuring that it would be much more fun to take some pictures instead of going on a torturous 21km ride with lots of hills to climb, I met two Danes in an E46 M3 at the first photo location.

As soon as the bikers had passed we went to the next location in convoy. This was one of those drives to be remembered fondly during the winter months. Picture a fine mountain road with lots of twists and turns ranging from long sweepers to tight hairpins, both uphill and downhill, lots of camber changes, and a total absence of other traffic. Now add a driver (and passenger) in a 343bhp car. This driver knows the road very well, and he's leading the two-car convoy. Fortunately I know that road equally well, and despite having "only" 250bhp and headlights that produce decidedly less light than the M3's I managed to keep up nicely.

This is something I've noticed before: despite the big power disadvantage the way the 964 puts the power down makes it possible to stay with more powerful machinery surprisingly easily. For example, on one occasion this same M3 floored it on a quiet Autobahn, accelerating from 150km/h to 230km/h with me on his tail while I was only very slowly losing ground. Suffice it to say that in this case again we had loads of fun braking into tight hairpins, heel and toeing into first gear, and accelerating flat-out up the next bit of straight, into second at 6500rpm, and hard on the brakes again for the corner ahead.

By the end of the weekend a screeching noise started to be more and more apparant when pulling away with low revs. At first I thought it might be the clutch itself, but after a little more experience with the sounds produced under different circumstances, I think it's a bearing somewhere. Anyway, the noise only happens when slipping the clutch. The clutch continues to grip just fine, and it's a smooth as ever. Which was good, as a vacation to the UK had been planned almost immediately after the Swedish Weekend.

September - UK

In the UK we went from Dover to Wales, where we met with a Ring-friend (Trish). The 964 got a day off as she ferried us and her son John around to see some of the more interesting sights in her Audi A4.

The last of these was the school of her son. It was on the way to the Lake District, so we followed Trish and John. The drive included some of her favourite roads, which resulted in some spirited driving from Trish in the A4. As we didn't really know where the school was, I thought it a good idea to keep up with her, which was good fun over the hills and round the sweeping bends. Until that moment we had mostly been cruising around, apart from the odd full-bore take-off, getting used to the outline and placement of the incredible amount of speed cameras. The school run was a different kettle of fish altogether, with lots of short full-throttle stretches and hard cornering. The kind of drive that makes you appreciate the capabilities of a 964 all over again. Not to mention that it puts a grin on your face.

After saying our goodbyes at John's school Trish went back south, and Helen and I went north.

We had booked a Bed & Breakfast in advance, somewhere near Troutbeck. According to the GPS there were two Troutbecks in the area. Naturally we found the wrong Troutbeck first. The B&B turned out to be excellent: a very hospitable husband-wife staff and excellent food. At Hadrian's Wall I couldn't resist taking another picture of the 964.

Having explored the region to our satisfaction (within the limits of a 10-day vacation, that is), we travelled eastwards to York, stopping along the way to have a look at some castles. From York it was down to the London area, where Ben Lovejoy was hosting a Beer & Video evening. For some reason most people were drinking Coke rather than Beer, but the videos were as strong as ever: lots of in-car footage of cars going round the Nürburgring. Highlight of the evening was a compilation tape with lots and lots of near-misses, skids, crashes, and silly moves.

After all this excitement we had some quiet but very entertaining days in the Dover area (including a visit to Dover Castle; highly recommended). On the day of our departure the weather took a turn for the worse: great timing. All in all a very nice trip with ample opportunity for me to indulge my picture-taking habit.

However, because of time-constraints we didn't manage to meet everybody (excuses to John B., Jocke, and Tony): I guess another visit is in order, if only to tour Scotland and do the famous Evo Triangle. Despite the large turning radius the nimble 964 proved to be very well suited to the narrow British country roads: I look forward to the next trip.

Future work

Second on the list is to replace the fuel filler neck: it's starting to leak when accelerating hard.

Something else on the to-do list is reading Adrian Streather's excellent book on the Porsch 964: Porsche 911 - Enthusiast's Companion - Carrera 2, Carrera 4 and Turbo 1989-1994 to give it its full title. In case you want to know, the top picture on page 529 is mine, and so are the pictures on page 532, all taken during my suspension upgrade. :-)