Ol' Shatterhand

I was on PS4s (not PS4Ss), now on PS5s and very happy with them. I'm on 18"wheels.

You'll need secure it so it doesn't rattle. I used adhesive velcro:

In the pic below, I'm looking down to the base of the A-pillar through the windscreen:

After pushing the cable through the gap between the A-pillar and the dashboard, there was plenty of slack to hide behind the dash:

I forget if it was an SMB or an SMA connection and I notice that the one you have found Langers is not wuite the same as mine, but the dimensions look similar. 

Nice 550 anniversary btw. If it's LHD, do you have the all-red rear lights? I was under the impression all RHD 550s got the standard 986.2 lights. 

1 hour ago, Langers said:

Thanks Ol' Shatterhand, I might give that a go.

Head unit is a Continental CDD7418UB-OR Bluetooth Stereo DAB Radio CD Player USB. Was lucky to pick one up as now discontinued.

Pics below:

 

I have the exact same head unit. I never used the stick-on antenna that came with it (it's still in the box, four years on).

 I also wonder what the PCCM Classic solution is for the DAB aerial. 

I fitted this one from Halfords:

https://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/stereo-fittings/autoleads-magnetic-dab-antenna-575883.html

It can hide neatly befind the A-pillar, just remover the visor and plastic trim, install the antenna with velcro with an adhesive back stuck the A-pillar metal, then re-install the plastic trim.

I didn't do this with mine, but you might consider earthing your antenna to the A-pillar metal. 

Push the antenna cable through the gap between the dashboard and the A-pillar and tidy up the extra cable lengh inside the dashboard underneath the steering wheel.

What head unit are you getting? 

Drove it home after picking it up after work from the garage where it received 200 cel cats and a new Dansk sports exhaust, at long last. I had been waiting for this since September when the old exhaust failed and I'd only done 350 miserable life-support miles since then. The new system cost an arm and a leg, not least because four lamda sensors also had to be replaced. I had the roof down and when I put my foot down on the first clear stretch of road I encountered, it put a stupidly wide grin on my face. This spring and summer are going to be glorious. 

1 hour ago, ½cwt said:

928?? 🤔

Yeah... an even more accomplished car than the younger and still awesome E31 840Ci. 

On 1/28/2024 at 12:16 AM, ½cwt said:

I have a Leon ST as my daily company car, and also a V8 hankering, in fact that was what I thought I was looking for but ended up with a mid-engined flat 6.  Go figure.

A V8 hankering... Are you looking at TVR Chimaeras? Or Jag XKs? Or old Corvettes? 

Bought mine with 93k on the clock in July 2016. It has now done more than 150k, I have spent several times what I bought it for on maintenance, upgrades and fuel, but I never intend to sell it, especially now that it has become a garaged second car and is soon to receive a brand new Dansk sports exhaust and 200 cel cats...

I guess I'm also too proud to sell my car unless it's in pristine condition, and there's still some work to go to get the cosmetics fully sorted. 

And there are always more upgrades to look forward to. Maybe some years down the line, if I have the money, when the engine needs a rebuild I'll have a 3.7l conversion done. Most people would never justify that kind of cost when they could just buy a Cayman/997/whatever, which deep down is what they really want anyway. I am not knocking the idea of a Cayman 987 S (with upgrades to bring it to R spec or better) or a 997 C2S, they are great cars, though the 987 Boxster doesn't really do it for me, looks-wise. But the 986 captured my 12 year-old imagination when I saw the 1993 concept car, I love the looks of the thing, almost as much as I love the looks of the pure, pebble-shaped 996.1. (Yep, you read that right.) But I would only consider a 996.1 in Carrera 2 manual guise, with no sunroof and no GT3 body kit addenda either (GT3 mechanicals are another matter). Sometimes I think that's an itch I'd still like to scratch someday, but the consensus seems to be that the 986 is just as much fun, if not more.

When I was young my plan was to get an unappreciated dream car, the likeliest candidate being a normally aspirated Giugiaro Esprit, but that boat has sailed. Who knows, maybe in 15 years time, if 986 prices go the way of 944/968/928 prices and we're still able to drive ICE cars without too much hassle, I might reconsider.

Gave my car a brand new home! Here is Hatatitla in the garage (my very own garage!) where it will live a dry existence from now on:

In the process, I've made the cat beneath which I used to park it at my old flat homeless:

No more cat hair on my hood and paw prints on the bonnet! 😊

My cats and stock muffler have perished. I will be getting new 400 cell cats and a new stainless steel muffler installed as soon as I have the cash (just need to rob a bank or sell a kidney first...). I'm looking at the non-sausage OEM-style Dansk muffler. I have not been reading good things about droning ebay aftermarket mufflers and resonance killers. Not sure what the point of the Dansk sausage is, I gather it's not much lighter than the OEM-style one and any horsepower increase is likely to be negligible and offset by a decrease in mid-range torque. Besides, the sausage just looks wrong. 

My Indy asked me if I want standard or sports sound. I said I'd rather not have any motorway drone, so standard would probably be best. But then there was mention of a switchable exhaust system, operated via remote control. I know there is Spyder Performance valved muffler bypass system and Design 911 also lists a valved Dansk muffler and the vacuum valve kit to go with it. My car is a pre-facelift manual S.

Now, I know that the 996 and 986.2 had a sports exhaust option with a console operated button. I also understand the 986.2 had matte black switches while 996 had gloss black ones like the 986.1.

So I am wondering, is there a valved 986.2 system with a 996 switch I could install, and make it work with the Dansk muffler? Failing that, is there a way to make a 996 PSE switch work with the Design 911 actuator hardware, rather than have a non-OEM fob in the cabin?

Any thoughts? 

12 hours ago, TV8 said:

Thanks. Did this work for you?

Haven't had to do my seats so far, even though my car has 150k miles on it (57k of which have been under my ownership). They may very well be broken and I haven't realised, like the vast majority of original seats out there. Mind you, I have never found the original standard seats comfortable, even as a 5' 9" mesomorph. They're too narrow, do not offer enough lateral support and I wish I could sit another inch or two lower in the car. Some people upgrade to 987 seats, but they just wouldn't look right.

42 minutes ago, TV8 said:

I had the drivers seat out today as I have found myself sinking in it in recent weeks. To be honest I am probably at least 20kg heavier than the previous owners and sure enough, it looks like the mesh has stretched and the foam has sunk and cut around the plastic base towards to the rear of the seat. I have put some carpet in there and a wide zip tie and it’s pulled it all back together but not sure how long it will last. 
has anyone else fixed this problem please?

This might help:

https://youtu.be/uGSdHrU1_CQ?si=MZkS_ZzZOI5hOzQA

23 minutes ago, Ol' Shatterhand said:

Applied PPF to my headlights by hand, without a heatgun or any tool to push the air bubbles out. Did OK on the offside one, made a bit of a hash on the nearside one. Given my Fresnel lenses inside the sealed clusters have gone brown and crispy, this is mostly just an experiment (to be followed by a trial fit of LED bulbs), but when I eventually replace my headlights I think it will be a good idea to buy the same £20 kit off of ebay again, to protect the new units from stonechips and UV damage. 

Ha, finally sussed imgur image embedding! 🙂

11 minutes ago, ½cwt said:

@Ol' Shatterhand

 

Glare makes it difficult to read, but 150,000 miles, good work sir!

Yeah... Apologies for the picture quality.

Applied PPF to my headlights by hand, without a heatgun or any tool to push the air bubbles out. Did OK on the offside one, made a bit of a hash on the nearside one. Given my Fresnel lenses inside the sealed clusters have gone brown and crispy, this is mostly just an experiment (to be followed by a trial fit of LED bulbs), but when I eventually replace my headlights I think it will be a good idea to buy the same £20 kit off of ebay again, to protect the new units from stonechips and UV damage.

https://imgur.com/gallery/ACAKMIb

1 hour ago, ½cwt said:

Apologies if I missed it, where did you get the leather kit from?

And do they do door pocket lids too?

On 11/4/2016 at 12:04 AM, Blackadder30 said:

 

https://imgur.com/a/PbKCnkK

Had to pull over at a petrol station a short while ago to capture the moment Voyager 3 crossed over into the interstellar void. 

Parked it next to a Stookie (S2K, geddit?) at work:

https://imgur.io/a/ihC3mjb

1 hour ago, fizz said:

Having driven from Bradford to scunny and back in a day on the Mways steady at 70/75 i did think Cruise would have been nice to have. 

Id go cruise, larger throttle body and remap, exhaust. If i was to advise anyone else who hasnt already, 9x7 shifter and suspension upgrade as they have been the best things ive done so far to date. The shifter is the best bang for buck improvement i made on the car and its easy to DIY. 

The shifter upgrade is not relevant as the OP drives a tiptronic, but I have heard of people retrofitting Mercedes SLK shift paddles to tiptronic cars, which sounds more enjoyable than pushing the buttons on the steering wheel.

8 hours ago, brillomaster said:

£500 on track tyres, £700 on exhaust, £400 on cruise control... then the rest on trackday entries please!

Wouldn't you also want to upgrade to the X51 deeper oil sump if you're doing track days? I hear a few M96 engines have perished due to oil starvation on long bends. 

I have done the full suspension refresh plus koni dampers and Eibach ARBs. That is probably the best upgrade you can do to the car, but budget for some high quality tires as well.

I have also retrofitted cruise control, a useful upgrade if you regularly drive through average speed camera monitored stretches of motorway, Zundsport grilles so that I never have to worry about leaves rotting the radiators, and a Continental Bluetooth/DAB single DIN radio. If your Becker head unit is still functioning normally, just connect an aux-in lead to the cd changer input port and hook that up to your phone.

If you have a plastic rear window, upgrading to a heated glass window hood is a worthwhile upgrade, but you will lose even more rear visibility.

Stainless steel manifolds and a new exhaust sound like a good upgrade, but will probably not give you any performance gains, or may give you a few extra horsepower at the top end but rob of some mid-range torque. You have to be very careful not pick an exhaust that drones in the cruising rpm range.

Do you need to upgrade your IMS bearing? If you use your car often and change the oil every year or every 10k miles, you can out it off until you need to replace a worm clutch and flywheel.

Here's an upgrade to avoid: do not install a conical air filter, you will find yourself replacing your MAF sensor regularly. If the engine ever has to come out of the car, you may use that opportunity to install a 987 paper filter. 

The 3.7l build will cost four times your budget. If I had £10k to spare, I would do it, and then go looking for Golf Rs and BMW 335is to eat for breakfast.

The parking sensors on my car, the day before it went away for paint repair and detailing:

https://ibb.co/6tksFhx

Took it through a minor service yesterday, also got the deteriorated front control arms replaced (the previous ones lasted 5 years and 40k miles) and had rear parking sensors installed. The sensors had already been painted to match the Meridian metallic colour of my car and they fit very neatly on the rear bumper. They look much better than OEM and you'd barely notice they're there at first or second glance. Then I jet washed it, removed all the contents from the car, rubbed off the duct tape residue from the windscreen and bodywork from earlier in the week where I had to patch up the missing driver's window with bin liner (found the glass shattered walking to the  company car park at work last week, got it sorted quickly via my Adrian Flux windscreen cover), noticed that peeling off the duct tape seems to have lifted some more paint off the door, and this morning I handed it over to a professional detailer who will pass it on to a bodywork specialist in a neighouring unit on tha, sane industrial estate. After it gets a door mirror, bumper and front bonnet respray and some local paint repairs, it will be treated to a deep clean, headlamp polish and ceramic coating. So now I'm a pedestrian for a few days what that work is being done. Can't wait to see the final result.. 

1 hour ago, BBB said:

@Ol' Shatterhand, replacement mirror glass, with heating elements are really cheap on ebay, and super easy to fit, rather than using adhesive pads.

New mirror just ordered from ebay. Thanks!

Noticed a wobble in my nearside wing mirror at high speed. Poking it revealed the adjustable mounting plate which contains the heating element is fine, but the mirror glass is coming unstuck from the plate. Google searches did not provide a conclusive answer as to what adhesive I need (it has to be weatherproof, work across a wide temperature range, allow the mirror glass to expand and contract without cracking, and conduct heat from the heating element plate), so I went to Halfrauds. Sure enough, they stock Araldite, Gorilla glue and Evo Stik Serious Glue, but I made the mistake of asking the staffperson at the counter for advice and he recommended... double-sided adhesive pads for licence plates. So I bought a pack of these as they're cheap and any mess I make is reversible, unlike aplying the wrong kind of liquid adhesive and letting it cure. At 6mm thick, the double-sided strip is clearly not a permanent solution, but it will prevent the mirror from falling off until a scheduled service/mot booking at my indie in a couple of weeks. Bit of a bummer as I was feeling good about having succesfully replaced a broken plastic sill trim plinth (the one that houses the bonnet release switches) yesterday, with a part ordered in from Douglas Valley.