On our road trip to Germany with Classic Retrofit last month, I had the chance to try my first water-cooled Ruf Porsche, with a test drive of a Ruf RT-12 currently for sale on behalf of a customer. It was an interesting experience.
My most recent run in a tuned 911 Turbo was in a Manthey M600 997 GT2. Fitted with a series of engine upgrades including Manthey’s high quality intercoolers and a reworked exhaust, this was a ballistic machine, with no shortage of torque to stick through the 2wd transmission. The car has been sold several times in recent years and a passenger ride never fails to impress, or to mildly terrify.
The Ruf RT12 is a different experience. At first glance, this 911 seems almost demure. The smooth Guards Red/Indian Red paint and those five-spoke Ruf wheels sit sweetly together, and the red-stitched interior is a nice place to be. But look a bit closer – where are the Turbo’s side intakes? They’re gone: one part of a Ruf aero package that lifts intakes to above and behind the rear arches, where they work rather better than factory items.
Other bits changed include the suspension, which goes from PASM to Ohlins. The airbox is also changed to a carbon airbox of Ruf design. Spec on this car is fairly simple, with extended leather, Bose, carbon centre console and Ruf’s green-numbered gauges a subtle little tweak. This car has the old dash (pre-PCM3), but it’s not that offensive and you won’t be looking down much in any case.
Built on a 4wd 997 Turbo rather than a 2wd GT2, the RT12 perfectly embodies this company’s user-friendly philosophy. The engine is taken to 3.8-litres and mapped to be docile at shopping speeds. But open the throttle and the beast is unleashed: 650 PS equals 641 bhp at your instant disposal. That shoots this car from 0-60 in 2.8 seconds. Other versions make even more power, and gearing changes can take the top speed from 219mph/350km/h on this car to almost 230mph. But of course, we don’t chase from 0-60 all the time, nor do we drive flat-out all day: what we generally do for an entertaining drive is to travel cross-country at speed. So how does the car deal with that?
Ruf RT12 Test Drive
Ruf’s Pfaffenhausen base is centred in farmland, with the smooth local roads set slightly above the fields and giving a great all-round view, way into the distance. For unsuspecting potential buyers to try this car on b-roads, this location is perfect, as visibility is great and the surfaces are generally excellent. I was very excited to have a drive.
Pulling away, the clutch action is solid and shift is well defined – already a step up from standard. Steering feel is excellent and the damping is beautiful: just enough front end bounce to feel like a Porsche, but not too stiff like so many tuned 997s. No tramlining to speak of either: the car just felt ready to go.
No doubt the 997 Turbo is a quick car out of the box, but Ruf’s RT12 is entirely different. My first few overtakes were fairly clumsy as I got my head around the new boost and shift points, but as we clocked up a few more kilometres, things began to gel and the joy of effortless boost was as addictive as ever. This would certainly cost me a licence if it came to live here in speed camera-land.
The chances of this happening with me are fairly remote. Price for this 55,700-kilometre beauty is ten grand shy of €200k: a big saving on the original cost of over €300k, but some way beyond my humble means. Rufs remain exclusive because sharing this incredible passion for Porsche through ownership requires considerable investment. But, if you have that to spend, you could do far worse.
Took a ride out to Snetterton last week for the regular impactbumpers.com August memorial track day, held to remember a petrolhead who was with us there one time, many moons ago.
I don’t give myself much time off at the minute and any downtime is spent away from Porsches, so it was nice to be back around 911 guys for a few hours and to remember what it used to be like when many more people (including me) took air-cooled cars out on track. Some of those who no longer track their 911s have moved on to other cars, so there was a good mix of stuff to jump in for passenger rides, including Steve’s beautiful E46 M3 and Paul’s similarly desirable RS Clio 200 Cup.
What the modified 911 group lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality. In the mix was Ben’s 3.6-litre SC, freshly remapped by Wayne Schofield. Recent mods included a custom 2-out exhaust made by Walton Motorsport, which took power to 299.6 bhp on the Schofield dyno and measured 104db at Snetterton, which means it should just scrape into 105db days.
Ben’s SC was not the only 3.6-litre present, as Henry had come along for his first day on track. Snetterton is a great place for this, as there is plenty of runoff, the days are cheap and not always packed and the layout is easy to get your head around. Henry had fitted db killers for noise limit niceness, but the car still sounded excellent. This ’79 has had the usual rust repairs to sills and kidney bowls, all carried out by the owner, who learned his welding skills on previous cars including a Triumph GT6 and a BMW 2002 Tii. Looks great now and is clearly a source of much pride.
No IB track day would be complete without Longman and his secret sauce 3.2 Carrera, which makes numbers well above standard on dynos everywhere for no obvious reason. I think it’s a 3.4 conversion carried out back in the day but IB rules ban anorak oneupmanship, so if he doesn’t care what the reason is, then no-one else is allowed to bug him about it. Except me, that is. All Longman wants to do is drive it hard and that attitude is highly commended.
There were plenty of other cool cars on track and everyone had a great time. The main thing was a great day of social and we got to drink a glass of bubbly to JJ’s health. Cheers JJ and well done to those who turned up!
EB Motorsport is now offering a full body preparation and paint service for classic Porsche restorations. With a highly experienced spray painter employed to handle car builds and restorations on its own fleet of classic 911s, the Yorkshire-based classic Porsche parts specialist has the capacity to add paintwork for other Porsche enthusiasts to its list of capabilities.
“With so many Porsche projects in progress and quite a bit of paintwork generated by our engineering services and manufacturing plant, we decided to bring refinishing in-house last year,” says James at EB. “Only the best will do for our cars, so we installed an excellent UK-manufactured Dalby spray booth and use the same Glasurit 22-line paint system specified by Porsche. The results on our latest R build have been stunning and we will use the same materials on our RSR Turbo build when it is ready for paint later this year.”
“With the motorsport season in full swing, we are spending a lot of time out racing, so the EB paint shop has the capacity to take on some work for serious customers looking for the best finish,” notes EB’s Mark. “This might include fitting EB body panels as part of a road or race build, or repainting standard cars. Our painter has a huge amount of experience and of course there is plenty of his work here for potential clients to inspect. Workshop slots are available at very short notice.”
Interested parties can contact EB via their website. I have seen the R up close and it is a very special creation – no complaints on the paintwork either.
I had an interesting visit to Tuthill Porsche at the weekend. Francis took one of his 4-cam 356 Carrera engines out of storage and brought it into the engine workshop for the team to carry out a complete restoration and rebuild, including upgrade to 904 spec (pistons and cams ready and waiting).
The 587/1 GT engine was found sitting in the corner of a garage many years ago. It had been in a fire and done a bit of damage but nothing too serious. Fran took it home and started rebuilding it with the help of a friend who made valve guides for Formula 1 engines and had rebuilt a few race engines also. They rebuilt the bottom end, bought new valves from Porsche and made a full set of valve guides (superb things to look at) but never got around to doing the top end. Now the Tuthill engine builders will get stuck into it as a special project and I am excited to follow the work.
The 4-cam engines are a bit of a minefield, but no doubt when they work they are pretty special. Ferry Porsche had a 4-cam in several road cars and put a fascinating piece about development of the first Fuhrmann 4-cams into his autobiography, which offers an excellent insight into how the factory was operating at this time (late forties).
“For some time, our total work force comprised less than a hundred men, but we made good use of the cramped and limited space (a 600m2 rented workshop in Stuttgart) and even managed to find room for a diminutive test and racing shop, which held just two cars. It was shielded from prying eyes by an ancient closet and a primitive sliding curtain.
“We knew when we started using the Volkswagen engine for our Porsches that the maximum to which we would be able to increase piston displacement would be 1,500cc. The pushrod system of valve actuation, while completely reliable, also placed limits on engine revolutions. But we had foreseen this problem, and already by 1950 Dr Ernst Fuhrmann, an outstanding engineer on our staff, began designing our future Carrera engine.
“Different technical drawings were made which examined the possibilities of driving four overhead camshafts. One method was by chain, another by gear drive and so on. It seemed to us at the time that the best method to use would be a gear train, and that the distributor could also be driven from the end of one of the camshafts; but this arrangement led to difficulties.
“Each of the four camshafts operated two valves, and as the engine gained speed, a vibration began which ended up by destroying the ignition system. We therefore had to make changes in the ignition drive – not too much of a problem. The Carrera engine originally had a piston displacement of 1,500cc but was so designed that could be enlarged to 2 litres. However, we are anticipating a little, since another five years were to pass before we introduced this famous engine into our production line.”
Looking at the myriad parts spread out across the work bench in Tuthills, I simply cannot imagine how much effort went into making this thing work reliably. It is insanely complicated – the camshafts have flywheels and each camshaft is driven by a shaft which needs two position adjustments (one at each end and in opposite directions) to alter the cam timing. Even the flywheel is complex: it is fixed to the crankshaft by two tapered spacers, which interact under torque to lock the flywheel solid, but need huge torques combined with a specific routine of taps with a brass hammer to do their thing properly.
The first Type 547 crankshafts were Hirth roller bearing assemblies that came in separate pieces. Can you imagine starting an engine build by assembling a crankshaft? There is wonderful madness to an engine designed for production that took 120 hours to assemble and up to fifteen hours to set timing on. Compare this to the 41 hours often cited as start-to-finish build time for a complete 996!
Every single piece of it is outrageously complicated, making the flat-four 4-cam engine fascinating but frustrating. It leads me to wonder how much of Fuhrmann’s love of the complex fed into the convoluted, overweight transaxle cars which he had scheduled to replace the 911 before he was eventually replaced as Porsche CEO by Peter Schutz in 1980. An interesting question that would no doubt draw many comments on engineers as MDs, and the eternal battle between technical staff and accountants.
Setting aside my musings on four-cam contribution to Porsche boardroom history, this engine build is a fascinating project and one I am really looking forward to following. For example, valve lift on the 904 spec 587/2 engine is confirmed as 10mm exhaust and 12.5mm inlet. This would be mental enough with small-ish valves, but the 4-cam valves are huge and weigh a shedload. It is simply unbelievable and wondrously exciting!
Working full-time creating content for several independent Porsche specialists has sort of drained my blogging brainpower in recent years. I began the year hoping to get out and about to meet more people and see their cars during 2017, but this has been one of the busiest work years yet, so blogging is running slightly behind schedule. I am working on it…
Anyway, the last few weeks have been pretty good for Porsche travel. I got out to Ireland following the Tuthill RGT Porsche on the Donegal Rally, then cruised down to my home town of Limerick, where another visit to Jon Miller at Classic Carreras was in order (love Jon’s approach to the life and a blog is overdue).
I came home from Ireland through Wales then and instantly headed back into Wales, again with Tuthills, to meet Federico and Lucia on the Nicky Grist Rally. The couple have been rallying air-cooled 911s this year, to earn enough signatures for their International Rally Licences and take on some marathon rallying from next year in something like a Safari car or similar. Their rally journey is super interesting and they are lovely people. That story is coming to a website near you.
These client trips are great for me, as I get to do them on two wheels: my 1150RT for the Donegal trip and the 1150 GS Adventure to Wales. Coming back from Wales, I had enough time to put the bike in the garage, pack a bag and then fire up the Polo for a run down to East Sussex. I stayed the night at Classic Retrofit Jonny’s and we set off early the next morning to catch the Eurotunnel to France and drive on to Germany. I’d planned a three-day road trip to celebrate Jonny’s three-year anniversary in business and the first stop was Bebenhausen, just south of Stuttgart.
The trip down was fantastic, hotel was amazing and that left us with two hours to cover the next morning to get to Pfaffenhausen, for a day at Ruf Automobile GmbH. The godfather of Porsche tuning has tracked Jonny’s work for many months and Alois even visited the Classic Retrofit workshops to see the research and development process for himself. He extended an invitation for Herr Hart (below with Yellowbird) to visit and discuss engineering collaboration on their new CTR project, so Jonny took me along for the ride.
Many Porsche-owning friends have experienced Ruf as part of Porsche club visits, but I don’t know how many people have ever sat in engineering meetings with Ruf and his technical team: the guys who built the original Yellowbird and who now assemble the spectacular CTR3. Well, thanks to my clever friend, Mr Hart, and his excellent electronic skills, I am delighted to say that I have now sat in one of those meetings and even made a contribution or two. That was pretty cool.
We had a great day at Ruf. I lost count of how many times Jonny and I shot each other a look that said “is this really happening?” but it was a super successful day out. Alois is the perfect gentleman and was very giving of his time. Son Marcel is also great company and a highly trained engineer in his own right. The family business is in good hands and I will share some more stories from our visit.
Once we had finished at Ruf, we had a two-hour drive back to Stuttgart, where we stayed in a nice little hotel around the corner from the Porsche Museum. Next morning, we enjoyed a short visit to the museum and shop before heading home to consider our findings. All in all, it was an excellent trip which left me with plenty of work to do – the vicious circle of non-blog activity continues!
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
