Running report 4

Running report 4 - Nov '02 to Apr '03 - 182,236 km

My 964

Running reports
Intro
Report 1 (Fall 2001)
Report 2 (Spring 2002)
Report 3 (Fall 2002)
Report 4 (Spring 2003)
Report 5 (Fall 2003)
Report 6 (Summer 2005)

Trip reports
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Lelystad (15-4-2002)
Zandvoort (25-4-2002)
Stelvio (July 2004)
LiÃ¨ge (27-11-2004)
Rennlist North Wales Run (15-7-2007)

Ring trips
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
Swedish Weekend 2002
November 2002
April 2003
Easter 2003
May 2003
May 2003
June 2003
August 2003
September 2003
April 2004
September 2004
March 2005
May 2005

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2003
2004

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2002

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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.

Me at Hocheichen (Picture Alexander Neurohr)

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 somesuch, 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.