Making the 911 that Porsche were too sensible to consider

The mounting brackets were half the price of the seat itself, but critically they allow the very base of the seat to mount between the runners, so you can get as low as possible:

MCMYK was good enough to machine some bungs which I need to finish adapting some brackets - these are to allow conventional seat belt retainers to bolt in (I'm running a Porsche 964 RS bracket at the moment):

The main reason to get the seat re-trimmed is that once Higgs sat in it, it is permanently (at I suspect the atomic level) impregnated with cat hair:

I think this shows the height difference quite well:

As I said, things are a bit out of order, time-wise, I took this photo just after filling the car up with fuel to drive back home from Atherstone, after Centre Gravity had fitted the new Ohlins R/T suspension:

The reason I took the photo is that this was the first time I looked at the car and my brain said "911", which may sound weird but I think until then the car had been too high over its wheels for me to instinctively see a sports car (however humble).

Looking at that picture it does make me somewhat worried, however, as the new BBS LM's are going to be 21.7mm further out at the back than those Carrera five-spokes. I've got just over 1 degree of negative camber, so there's some room to move there, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to roll the arches, and that's likely to FUBAR the paint, which is going to end up being expensive.

I really, truly, wish that I'd rolled the arches when I painted the car. Good old hindsight.

You done a theoretical dyno run on the new motor yet? Where's the power band going to be at this rate and how are you matching it to gear ratios? You going for daily usable or aiming more towards the competitive?

Also. WEIGHT?? What's it sitting it at this point, and what might it be with the new lump?

I'll dig out the corner weighting, hang on. From memory it was around 1,450kg, but since then it's lost the OEM drivers seat, suspension, steering wheel, and spare wheel.

Power band is going to be, erm, uncompromising - probably not much below 4,000 rpm and then hauling round to 8,000 with rev cut at around 8,400.

We're having gear sets cut once we've mapped the power band as other wise it'd be a horrible miss-match, the standard box is really long-legged, and with an additional 1,000 rpm that effectively makes it even longer.

There is a lot to read here... consider this a bookmark for when I have a spare couple of hours! Looks amazing, though

Hmm, bit more - 1,492:

This is a longer post from 911uk which was a response to "WTF are you doing you idiot?"

Chasing the noise.

I was 22-23 when the Porsche GT3 was announced, and at the time I read all of the car magazines from cover to cover - this was before the Internet changed the publishing landscape and there was a wealth of tests, driving stories and reviews.

I read them all, and from the standpoint of an alcoholic architecture student who never opened a letter if it had a window in the front they were as relevant to my life as the space ships in the science fiction novels that I also devoured. However, the stories stuck with me over the years as my situation changed, and a series of seemingly impossible challenges fell one after another - I gave up smoking, then drinking, both things that an earlier me had considered to be literally impossible.

I did better at work, life became more stable and then at the age of 40, reviews of that first GT3 still in my mind, I bought a 911 of my own.

Percy was not the car I intended on buying, nor was he the car that would ever win favor with the inchoate but inescapable quorum of car enthusiasts - as despite his manual gearbox, LSD, hard-shell seats and sports exhaust he also featured the ultimate accessory of hair-dressers the world over, the convertible roof.

I didn’t care, he was a tremendous little car and accomplished a life goal, and I concentrated on bringing his condition up to a point that was arguably better than new - challenging given that he was 20 years old and had clearly had a number of owners who were less committed than I was to attending to squeaky bushes, worn coffin arms and so forth.

I also worked on how I fit into the car - changing the wheel, removing the lower console, having the seat modified until we gelled together in a way that I simply could not with a standard car. This was to become something of a theme - and soon Percy was riding on significantly upgraded suspension, newer, larger wheels, was resplendent in a new coat of paint and had a new mohair roof with a heated glass window replacing the original, and largely opaque plastic one.

By this point I’d been thinking about the engine - a sea change for Porsche in that it was their first water cooled engine for the 911, and like all most initial offerings whilst it had it’s strengths it also had it’s weaknesses. I decided on a prophylactic rebuild that would remove the weaknesses (which by this point, 20 years in, were quite well understood) whilst building on its strengths.

At the back of my mind, as ever, was the mighty GT3 and it’s Mezger engine - a unit forged in the Porsche Motorsport program, a direct relation of the Le Mans unit from the GT1 and famously carrying part numbers that demonstrated it’s heart was shared with the 964 (at least for the earliest units). 3.6 litres, 360 horsepower and 8,000 rpm in the gears, all accompanied by a spine tingling shriek that sounded like nothing else on four wheels.

For me the sensations of Motorsport always started with the noise - the rising intonation followed by a brief pause, then a further escalating shriek of the cars running on the straight followed by what to me was always the most intoxicating sound - the driver prepares the car for a corner, engine barking in repeated short bursts whilst they change down through the gears. That whap-whap-whap almost like a super-bike engine revving on the starting grid. It was the first thing that struck you as you walked into a racing circuit, then the smell of hot motor-oil competing with that of the doughnut stands, and finally the sight of the cars themselves, primary colours of sponsors logos, flaring brake discs and flaming exhausts. But ever present, the noise- spine tingling howls punctuated by staccato barks, the defining aural signature of the sport.

How could I miss the opportunity to bring some of that to Percy, the little silver bath-tub with his hairdressers roof?

Enter Mike, a man who has been involved in Motorsport for his entire life, with multiple championship winning engines having emerged from his modest workshop.

What started out as a project that wished simply to lose none of the spark and zing of the 3.4 M96 engine soon spiraled, the replacement of weak parts meant, of course, an opportunity to do better - we took the Porsche X51 version of the same engine as an inspiration as much as we did the Mezger, but what soon emerged was wholly our own. Then Martin joined the project, a fellow enthusiast who shared our passion for making the ill-favored M96 what it could have been, if the 996 Cup had been run with X51 engines rather than the race-derived Mezger.

In creating our alternate history we soon accrued a great deal of knowledge, much of it directly in proportion to the expertise and inclusive nature of the Porsche community, and the engines themselves began to take shape.

Mike was forever the voice of sanity, reining back some of our more “because race-car” thoughts, whilst giving full approval to our more sensible suggestions.

We steadily designed and made parts, sometimes multiple takes on a single unit - three intake cams, two exhaust, two different tappet chests, modern iterations on once-produced X51 specific parts such as the engines iconic additional scavenge pump and “towel rail” return line. I was particularly entertained by the repurposing of a bearing that normally sees duty in a helicopters main rotating assembly, which was soon followed by parts appropriated from the E60 V10 engine.

Through it all ran the desire for that noise, to me the epitome of racing, the sound of an engine born to rev, a weightless, effortless bark twinned with a basso growl that rapidly becomes a searing howl before dropping down to do it all again.

We’re still a long way from the finish line, two short blocks wait on the shelf at Hartech with their new cylinders fitted whilst we finish off the critical aspects of the intake system, pistons and exhaust. But we’ve crossed the mid-point now, the design is finalized as a strategy, with only tactical decisions to be made as we make progress to the engine dyno.

What will our pair of engines make, in the end? My 3.7 and Martins 3.9 will ultimately have to tell that story in Mikes dyno room, but whatever the final figures, they’ll both make the noise.

I also replaced the gear shifter mechanism with one from a 997 that had a slightly shorter throw, and then fitted a Function First extended lever, which puts the shifter knob in a much more comfortable position in relation to the wheel:

I had them fit parking sensors when they painted the car - they give a warning beep when you're about to hit something, which is somewhat handy as it's very hard to see where the car ends from the drivers seat.

What's your total spend to date?

The X-pipe is changing colour the more I drive the car:

I really like that, especially the motivation behind making an underdog engine shine.

I was a bit 'ehhh' at the beginning cos the whole ethos started to swinging towards the 'race' car, and I was wondering why you didn't just sequential and dry sump it and call it a day, then you mentioned Mike.

I like the sound of all of this. Will be interesting to see the final project yields. Big fan of sleeper-ish projects. Standard looks, exceptional performance and not just in a straight line. Usable performance.
What are you looking for from the gearbox? From 4k to 8.5k power band sounds mental. How will the weight cope with it? You looking for a corner monster or fast cruising riding the power band in a single gear?

De-catted E60 estate went past me the other day. Lawdy that metallic rasp!
Got any audio from the new pipes?

Aaron wasn't willing.

I feel this is an unfair statement. Aaron wasn't asked.

I remember the car magazine days too, likewise, that's the exact period when I was first interested in cars. And the GT3 was the standout. You probably remember the red one in the Autocar review with Chris Harris driving on the cover - he was young back then!

Where did you get the suspension work done by the way?

Yep, remember that well, it was a 996 or a 355 for me as those were the cars I most wanted BITD.

http://www.centregravity.co.uk

Ah, thanks. Did you drive up/back same day or leave it with them and train home? Bit of a pain logistically.

Wow havent yet read everything but that is some impressive project and car (and taste) you got there

With the LMs on, all it needs is https://rwb.jp/

;—-)

I drove up the night before, stayed in a very cheap but decent pub/hotel, was there bright and early in the morning. Took two days to fit the suspension so I stayed two nights and then came home.

Hoping we can avoid 993 RSR arches, but rolling looks inevitable- which may well mean repainting the rear of the car.

This is absolute madness! Look forward to seeing how it turns our and thankyou for keeping the economy going

Reminds me of someone who rebuilt a rusty old Cinelli Super Corsa from the 1970s.
He un-brazed and unpinned the joints, dismantled the frame, and rebuilt it using new tubes.

The trouble with that is that I have no technical knowledge. I simply tell my personal mechanic (my mum) what I want it to do. She tells me what to buy. I give it to her and she makes it work. Dammit obviously has an in-depth level of knowledge. I just make things look nice.