by John Glynn | Sep 27, 2014 | Porsche Cayenne, Project Cars
I drive my Cayenne S as the makers intended, which frequently means doing fairly high speeds while approaching roundabouts, junctions and the rest. You sit high in the Cayenne, but the PCM radio screen position is low in the dash, under the dash vents. So checking the sat nav display on the head unit could be dangerous in the wrong situation.
It’s not a huge issue if you retain PCM, as the display in the centre of the clocks gives arrow indications of directions ahead, and Cayenne models later than my 955 have a beautiful multi-colour sat nav screen to play with. However, PCM does not readily integrate iPod/iPhone music support, or postcode navigation, or Bluetooth for phones, or DAB radio. I wanted all of these, so I upgraded/updated the PCM 2 supplied with my Cayenne as standard and fitted the Kenwood DNX4210DAB instead.
With iPhone control, superb Garmin navigation, DAB+, 3 2v RCA preouts and an interface for the multifunction steering wheel controls, the 4210DAB has proved almost perfect to use. But by switching to an aftermarket unit, I’ve lost my dash direction display, and frequently find myself looking down by the gear lever to check my GPS speed, position and route ahead. I don’t like this on unfamiliar roads, and definitely would not be a fan on foreign motorway journeys, a few of which are already pencilled for next year.
So I’ve sold the Kenwood 4210 and replaced it with a Kenwood DDX4025DAB: has all the same features as the 4210 including DVD player and so on but without the navigation. The screen is not quite as nice, but the sound is great. I am looking at ways to integrate my separate Garmin 2595LM navigation unit into the dashtop or add one of the latest head-up displays for smartphone GPS navigation into the Cayenne.
I’ve recently picked up an iPhone 6 Plus 128GB, so it could be that this with the Garmin iPhone app and a head-up link is the way forward for my in-car navigation. Would be interested to hear from anyone using head-up displays in their car. It looks to me like the 955 Cayenne dash will not allow head-up directly in front of the driver due to the screen angle and depth of the dash binnacle, but I am going to see what I can get my hands on to try out. It’s pretty easy to get used Cayenne dashboard parts on eBay to cut up for trial fit.
by John Glynn | Sep 14, 2014 | Modified Porsche Hot Rods, Project Cars
Caught up with fellow ImpactBumpers.com forum member Alex this week, to discuss an agreed insurance valuation for his Porsche 911. Alex’s car is a 911 3.2 Carrera, but runs a 3.6-litre engine transplant: a 964 engine, rebuilt with some 993RS trickness. The car is light, so performance is “adequate”:
One issue with the 3.6 transplant cars is the exhaust: what do you do with heat and silencer under the rear of an impact-bumper car, a chassis that has less space available than the later models? Alex’s solution is the best I’ve seen yet: all titanium and all home/hand made. Alex explains:
“I liked the first version transplant exhaust on my car: a cheap, simple set up that worked well but with a few limitations that were increasingly bugging me.
“The first system used reasonably priced 1.75″ dia headers going into a 14” Magnaflow rear box. It sounded great if a little on the noisy side, particularly on a long run, so I made up some inserts, which made it quieter without costing power. This made me wonder why I didn’t just use smaller tubes in the first place.
“The lack of heat, low ground clearance and drone over long journeys sent me back to the drawing board. I decided to follow other transplanters down the 993 heat exchanger route, then build a similar system to 993 Cup cars off the 993 exchangers.
Titanium Exhaust Porsche 911: Akrapovic GT2
“My first system followed a few tuners to through-the-bumper exhaust outlets. I was undecided before doing it, and it was interesting when done, but the novelty wore off. Eventually, finding a titanium Akrapovic exhaust silencer/muffler on eBay from a 997 GT2 sent me down a route I thought would be more in keeping – albeit lots trickier.
“One question was X-pipe or not. Some silencers are x-pipe inside and don’t seem to hurt the 911’s power, but others believed more power would come from a non-X-pipe system. I had already manufactured quite a complex system using the X-pipe idea, but the muffler also had an internal X arrangement so we decided against using two crossovers.
“The first work on version two was to finish my cheapie 993 heat exchangers. With the flanges cut off and jig made, they needed rotating, welding back on and linishing flat. The other side needed patching and a new pipe cobbled together. The steel on these is very thin and although stainless, it’s not the best grade so can corrode.
“Then it was a case of making jigs, which other transplanters were a great help with. Twisting these tight-fitting pipes can be tricky, but a fellow IB’er helped with a fitment guide that worked really well. I bought some more titanium tube, including many bends and had quite a bit prepared by a local water-cutting firm, before my welder friend came around to do the final assembly on the car.
“There’s always a few bits you think I could have done better and there’s still some finishing to do – I may do double slip joints in two places and the tailpipes are just bits of tube at the moment – but it’s on and sounds good. It’s still quite loud, although much quieter than the Magnaflow, but it now has a real rasp to it and makes a racket on overrun.
“With the new exhaust I think the car is now running a bit richer but haven’t done enough miles to really get to know it. Fingers crossed the bumper doesn’t catch fire!”
Awesome work by Alex – so many hours and for sure a pricey system, but if you’re going to think outside the box, then expect some of the costs to live there too. Read more about Alex’s car and many other Porsche 911 hot rods on the Impact Bumper Porsche 911 hot rod forum.
by John Glynn | Sep 10, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
So my 912E has finally arrived in the UK. Bought unseen from San Francisco Craigslist, the car was also advertised on Pelican and a few other places frequented by Porsche fans, but no one wanted it. I did a good deal with Bob the seller and had it trailered away by a good friend out there.
It lived with some friends in SF for almost a year, before it was trucked down to Long Beach to sail with a Tuthill 356 and a collector friend’s 911s. The container cleared customs on Monday, got trucked up to the West Mids and was unpacked on Tuesday morning. I had notice of the unboxing at 9am. By 10am, I’d arranged a car transporter on Shiply to same-day trailer it to my classic Porsche home-from-home: Rob Campbell’s Racing Restorations in Pershore near Worcester. It arrived there later that afternoon.
I am tied up on other stuff all this week, so I won’t get to see it until the weekend, but Robert’s had a good look this morning and says the shell looks pretty solid. It’s had a really rough paint job in the past, but that will blast off easily enough and reveal the original Arrow Blue.
1976 Porsche 912E Project
I purposely bought a 911/912 with no sunroof, as roof panels on pre-galv cars can go nasty, not to mention floors soaked by leaking roof seals. Seems the floors are solid so that is good. Little bit of rust in the front and rear window apertures, spot of surface rust under the parcel shelf. The kidney bowls look OK, but the latch panels are messy. The front wings are rough, but there’s a pair of good ones in the car – not that I am using either. The rest looks reasonable apart from a holed front pan, but that would be coming out anyway as they love to rust: an easy repair job for Mr. Rob Campbell.
What is the plan? Currently aiming to backdate it, keep it simple maybe run it kinda ratty for a while. Not easy to run something with no engine in it, so I plan to fit the classic Subaru Turbo transplant with a flipped R&P and the WRX 5-speed. Still flat four and I’m a Subaru guy. I’ve got a set of Subaru workshop manuals, am not into Beetles and who can be doing with the price of flat sixes these days! 😉
by John Glynn | Aug 29, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
My US-purchased 1976 Porsche 912E roller is about to land on UK soil. The car is coming in alongside some imports by a collector friend of mine, so he emailed me the customs forms today to get the clearance put through ASAP.
Tuthills are shipping a really beautiful 356 Roadster in the same bundle as mine and they want to take that to Goodwood Revival next weekend, so while I have no clear date on landing, I expect to be unloading it by this day next week and sharing pictures on the blog soon after.
Plans for the 912: we’ll trailer it to Rob Campbell’s Racing Restorations, have a poke around on the ramps, see what the body looks like and decide what parts can go on eBay as surplus to requirements. I’m sure I’ll at least be listing some impact bumper front wings, as my plan is to backdate it – most likely in steel. More 912 news later.
I still have my 1976 911 Carrera 3.0, the 924 Turbo and all my other cars. Buried in a variety of projects lately has left little time for project fun, but I have been busy on eBay, buying stuff under the duvet late at night. Many website building projects and delays to our long-standing building programme here at home left me with a bit of spare cash, so as I’ve always had a soft spot for Merc SLs, I started looking at those again.
I’ve owned four different Mercedes models, and always enjoyed their solidity. My last experience with a Mercedes SL was to help shift a friend’s R107 SL (chrome bumper one above) from the South of France to the UK and then on to Croatia. That was a 560SL: the US-Canada smog beater. Utterly beautiful, but I’ve always preferred driving the later R129 models.
Good job too, as my £3k in spare cash wasn’t going to buy much of a 107, but it would buy a together example of my target car: a 300SL-24 from 1990-1993 in a good colour with low-ish mileage and big history file. I was OK without a V8, as the Cayenne ticks all my 8-cylinder boxes and the 300 is a nice grand tourer for weekends away with Mrs G. I was not looking for another sports car.
I’m fine with doing a little bit of work as long as the pricey stuff works: i.e. central locking, air con and the electro-hydraulic convertible roof, so I set up an eBay search for SLs under £4k, and bid on a few six-cylinders. A few days into the process, up popped a 500SL that caught my eye just minutes after listing.
£3995 asking price for this very tidy 68k-mile 1992 V8 SL was an excellent price versus my research: being sold cheap for a quick sale. Malachite Green with beige leather was not my first choice, but not too unattractive: I quite like green cars. I rang the number in the ad, spoke to the interior designer owner, she had owned it for four years, mileage supported by MOTs and everything worked fine. Ten minutes later, she had my Paypal deposit on the full asking price and I was arranging insurance.
I collected the car last Friday and all is good: I’ve been doing some more research since. Mercedes built 200,000 R129 SLs from 1989 to 2002, but less than 800 V8s of this generation are still known to the UK registration authorities. Numbers have been falling since the start of the century, so nice to save one from destruction.
A plate transfer has held up the registration transfer, and I have bought another private plate for it, so it will be an extra week or so until it is taxed and ready to use on the road. First impressions: it’s had some paint while it lived in London, needs some help on trim and we got a few quid off for cracks in the plastic soft top windows, but it drives very nicely: exactly as I remember them.
Superbly comfortable seats, beautiful M119 V8 as fitted to the Porsche-fettled Mercedes 500E, the earlier and much maligned 4-speed transmission is still a joy to use and pre-93 has none of the aggro that goes with the later electrical looms or transmission fluid wicking up the wiring harness. I love the gentle styling, that classic front end and the hardtop that transforms the car into a beautifully together sports coupe.
A comparable 911 of the same vintage – so a 964 Carrera 2 Cabriolet – would be over £30k now, and is it ten times what I bought? Ask me in ten years.
by John Glynn | Jul 21, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
Some great pics and video have just arrived from Mark at EB Motorsport, who supplied many of the replica Porsche parts used on this Rennsport Porsche 907 recreation build by RMS Porsche in Theix, near Vannes, France.
As a big fan of Brittany, I’ve been to Vannes a few times: wish I’d known RMS were based there. A quick look at the RMS Porsche Facebook page shows some very interesting projects, including running Tom Dillmann at Le Mans in Porsche Carrera Cup France. Anyone into GP2 will know Dillmann: no slouch in a single seater.
Suffice to say that RMS know their stuff on Porsche racing, although this 907 build has me scratching my head a bit. Introduced in 1967, the 907 initially ran a Rennsport 2-litre flat six. Far from being underpowered, it could hit 190mph in a straight line. Porsche then added a 2.2-litre flat eight engine, which took the 907 to Porsche’s first-ever 24-hours win at Daytona in 1968.
Superceded by the 908 later that same year, the 907 was quite a rare build and is not too common in historic racing. One giveaway of the 907 body was the nose, which had a rectangular centre grill with oval slots either side. The 908 went to an oval centre intake with an oval to the left and a mousehole-shaped slot to the right.
This recreation has that mousehole slot in the nose, but obviously does not run a 908 3-litre flat eight engine. The naming may just be as simple as that: 907 can show with a flat six. The replica bodywork looks modelled on Porsche 908K – like Cameron Healy’s 1968 908K (below), which I enjoyed photographing at Rennsport Reunion in 2011.
The RMS guys have also made this video of the first start of their replica. Initially reluctant to fire, it soon gets going and sounds great through the megaphones. I am intrigued to see the car running: no doubt that flat six engine will be making great power and the chassis will weigh next to nothing. Nice job, RMS.
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by John Glynn | Jul 20, 2014 | Porsche Cayenne, Project Cars
“What’s that smell, dad?” asked youngest daughter as our Porsche Cayenne stormed away from a t-junction on a recent morning school run. The odour seemed familiar, but took a few hours to recall out what it was.
At first I thought the acrid, slightly burnt aroma was from the car in front, but when I heard the heater fan seizing up as I arrived in a car park later that morning, I remembered the smell when my 911 blower fan failed in the south of France on the 2010 R Gruppe Bergmeister Tour. Same thing.
The Porsche Cayenne is known for blower fan failure. These cars are big inside, with only one fan controlling the climate, so of course the fan is going to need replacement at some stage. I’d known it was getting weak for a while, but not been too anxious to change the fan as it’s a Porsche-only item and suitably priced. Now it was time to sort it out.
Some people spend hours repairing the heater fans (with unknown reliability), but that’s messing around I haven’t got time for. Chris at JZM recommended changing the heater blower resistor at the same time as, having been under increased current draw for such a long time, these usually fail soon after the blower fan is replaced. There speaks the voice of experience.
Once the parts were in stock, I set a Saturday morning aside to fit the new fan. Fitting the fan was easy: take out the glovebox, undo the wiring and seven hex screws, swap the fan over and put it all back together. The resistor is two screws and right in front of you when the glovebox is out: it’s a Volkswagen part, of course.
With the new fan fitted, the Cayenne is now cool & composed inside. Total cost was something like £300, but I’ve yet to see the parts bill. It’s a small price to pay for the pleasure and comfort with outside temps topping thirty degrees C ambient this year.
My next problem is a water leak: small but enough to annoy me at circa 750mls in 5k miles. The coolant pipes have already been done, so my first port of call will be checking the water pump. The Cayenne is due an oil change anyway, so we’ll have a look when that gets done.
