We returned from Spa with a few battle scars and the car needing attention in several areas, It's been long winter of work - probably our biggest ever - to get into good shape for 2024.
We broke a catlytic coverter at the end of Race 2 after getting hit on the rear and front corners by faster 911 GT3 cars lapping us. The front wheel vibration on hard cornering got progeesively worse so is either a wheel bearing (difficult) or inner steering ball joints. We were also dropping a little bit of oil - where the sump had been weeping before.
On the plus side we had less wear on tyres and brakes than anticipated so will carry over those into next season.
Over what has felt like a marathon of weekends, here is the list of work we completed:
Repairs:
- Replaced catalytic converters with new exhaust clamps and gaskets to replace the broken cat from the Spa race. Whilst others have an all-in-one exhuast system if it breaks it's pretty expensive to replace so we are happy with a modular approach.
- Installed 997 (larger ball joint) front inner steering arm joints and replaced the outer steering arms. This should resolve cornering vibration and we also found one side bent!
- Removed and re-sealed Sump Plate. Whilst the oil was out we re-sealed the sump which was weeping oil through the bolt holes. There is Porsche tech article on applying the loctite sealant to cure this - there is no gasket. You have to clean all the old sealant off both faces and ensure its perfectly clean & smooth.
- Front wheel bearing was replaced as the streering joints did't cure the play in the wheel. We had to buy the bearing removal/install tool kit from ebay (£35) and used our own method to push the outer hub off the bearing.
M12 bolts to push the outer hub off
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| Hub extrator tool to pull the bearing out |
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| Winding the new bearing in |
Servicing:
- Sent the Gaz Gold shock absorbers to be serviced and installed new OEM top mounts. These have never been serviced so we thought it was about time. The old top mount was bent on one side (a re-occuring theme). There is no need for adjustable top mounts since we gain camber via the GT3 arms.
- Sent the Fire Extingisher away to FEV to be serviced. This has to done every 2 years and comes back date stamped on the label which is checked during scrutineering.
Upgrades:
- Replaced the gearbox mounts with polyurethane versions. We continue to have a knocking noise on hard cornering cornering from the rear so want to reduce the lateral engine movement which we think is part of the problem.
- Rear coffin arm and anti roll bar replacment bushes - again to tune out unwanted suspension play. Whilst the shock absorbers were out, it made sense to refurbish the lower control arms all round with poly bush versions. Removing the old rubber bushes which have to be drilled or cut out then the metal retainer was a messy and time consuming.
- Front GT3 coffin arm bushes - to reduce unwanted play and we have used the additional caster setting for more high speed corner stability.
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With all of the suspension coming off the car all of the alignment (wheel camber and toe) as well as ride height is now completely off. It's a time consuming job as changing one can affect another corner. We have got a reasonable setup for our first Track Day, during which we will need to refine it further to get back to the exact settings we want.
