Ownership Verified: Equi’s Track Car

I don't believe the NTN people are doing the @SXSW public event anymore, unfortunately. I don't remember the exact details of why it stopped, though.

The 996 is set up and ready for its drive to Houston and weekend at the track. Conveniences like a cupholder (oh, the shame) are added. They all will easily come out when the car isn't going on these long trips, it's still track focused. It's just good to have a cupholder and a phone mount in a car without nav on a long trip!
Oh, and it has a TXTag, the thing that facilitates toll road use in Texas. Vroom.
 
Nugget said:
Equi will be in Angleton this weekend with the 996. I'm missing this event, instead choosing to be in Austin for SXSW.
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...WILLINGLY?
 
equiraptor said:
I don't believe the NTN people are doing the @SXSW public event anymore, unfortunately. I don't remember the exact details of why it stopped, though.
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Either SXSW or the city (can't remember which, but someone) wanted us to all get foodservice licenses to keep doing it, and it just wasn't feasible. :( We had tacos anyway last weekend at Cowhouse, though. Should've come!
 
As noted, I was at the track over the weekend. I had two full-time students, so didn't have much energy for driving myself. I still managed to drive 3-ish sessions, but not really "full" sessions.

I went out the first session on Saturday and what did I do? Why, I immediately broke the car! Well, mildly broke the car.
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I ripped off the front lip on some curbing. It's a very mild front lip, not particularly important at the speeds I'm going on street tires at this track. And it's a very flexible lip, with the push-pins holding it on being what failed, so no actual damage-that-needs-repair. I just lost some of the push-pins. So the lip stayed off the rest of the weekend and is now sitting in the back of the 996, waiting for me to put it back on. I'll do that... one of these days.

The car is both far more understeery than our 997 (even with the front lip still on), and that it's far more stable under heavy trail braking, too. I'm still adapting to the car, increasing my boldness with corner entry speeds. But this difference in handling balance and rotational behavior (oh, it's a bit more gradual about rotating when it rotates, too) explain how the prior owner was doing some things while essentially pointed at a wall that I didn't dare do in our 997. Sure, I probably could have pulled it off, but probably. I'll save those "probably pull it off" for the corners without a wall at corner exit.

I do wonder, too, how much of these differences are due to setup and how much are due to the generational change. The 996 and 997 are very similar, but also have some significant differences. I really like the behavior of this 996 and I wonder how close we can bring the 997 to it, if Nugget wants that.

It'll be fun exploring this car, comparing to the 997, getting things sorted, figuring it all out. Also, I drove home on US 90 Alternate, a 2-lane highway that runs through small towns, instead of taking the more typical I-10. It was a bit slower, but 17 minutes on a 3.5 hour drive, with almost no traffic and even fewer idiots. A good tradeoff. The aggressive track alignment on this car leads to strong tramlining, but I find that sort of behavior keeps me engaged in driving and focused on the road, rather than drowsy or distracted. This car definitely isn't a great street car regardless, but it's absolutely usable on the street and worth the annoyances for the track behavior. It's absolutely fantastic on track, a beautifully sorted setup.
 
I saw the lip laying on the ground and wondered what happened. Some good times were laid down last weekend, I was in the car with Chris when he did the 1:39X in this ZL1
 
Aaaaand the frunk struts have failed. They went from "Seem fine" to "Oh, can't hold the hood up" rather quickly. It was something like 4 openings ago that I first noticed, "Hm, something seems not right", and now I have to hold the hood open the whole time.

Parts are cheap. I don't know how tough replacing them actually is, yet, but it shouldn't be a big deal. I'm mostly noting it because it's interesting to see what fails on a ~20 year old track rat car!

Also, spent yesterday at H2R going counter-clockwise. H2R is quite bumpy currently, enough that I'm changing my line in a couple of turns to adapt to it. I can (if I want) get tires off the ground in at least 2 places in a lap (and I do not want tires off the ground). Despite the very stiff springs the 996 mostly handles the bumps well. There's a big bump on the apex of 7 that is just unapproachable, stay no closer to the apex than mid-track. At mid-track, it still kicks the back end out. The car power-on oversteers out of the turn beautifully, though, very controllable and not stressful or a worry.

From exit of 7 to close-to-5 there's a series of moderate bumps. I'm on the throttle, hard to full throttle, through this and they are not an issue. The car bounces around, but I just keep soft ands and it bounces around. It does feel like I'm in a clothes dryer or a rock tumbler, but meh.

On entry to 3, the far outside (right) of the track has a large bump that will throw the car into the air. Mid-track is moderately harsh and the left side is a bump but tolerable. I cut diagonally across the track, turning 3 into a diamond. I have to ease off the brakes a bit over the bump, but it's not all that bad with this line. With the heavy trail braking this car allows I can still dive into it pretty fast, use trail braking to rotate (making that diamond shape), then back hard on the throttle.

The bumps make for fun an interesting line puzzles, and the 996 is rising to the challenges they present. I'm really having a lot of fun figuring out this car.
 
Track cars do track car things. When we tried to head to MSR Houston a few weekends ago, the check engine light came on. Thankfully it happened at the house, so we just put the 996 up and headed there other ways.

When I had time, we read the codes. There were a bunch of stored errors, and three codes that looked possibly relevant. There was a secondary air bank 1, secondary air bank 2, and a catalytic converter efficiency error. None of those are particularly high risk to the engine, so we cleared everything to see what would come up again. I started using the 996 for daily errands and a few days ago the check engine light came back.

P0491 & P0492. Text is: "Porsche fault code 80 - Secondary-air system bank 1 Below minimum threshold – insufficient flow". Bank 2 has essentially the same text except 208 instead of 80 and bank 2 instead of 1.

There's a very helpful person who comments on a lot of forum posts about these codes with a list of potential causes. It's not short and it looks like a PITA to go through. The catalytic converters are not on it. The replies on some of these posts mention having these errors and the cause being bad cats. And we reached out to Sharkwerks, and they also noted that 996 GT3s really love to chew through cats and can throw these codes as a result (we hadn't even given them the codes yet, they guessed which codes it was). Add in this car's life as a track car and that prior (not repeated... yet) catalytic converter efficiency error, and the smart money is on bad cats.

I enjoyed using this car for errands. This 996 is a lot more streetable than our 997 3RS. Both are modded, so this isn't a stock-car-to-stock-car commentary, but the exhaust note, the way the car is jiggly, the things I have to live with, this one annoys me less on the street. Or maybe it's just the shiny new thing. When we first got the 997 I loved it on the street, too, and maybe in time I'll find all those little annoyances equally annoying. Time will tell. After we fix this check engine light.
 
samulis said:
Did you come up with color for the wrap? Go with Rubystone red. Best RS color ever.
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I hadn't made any forward movement on the wrap until, well, today! I'm planning on pale violet (somewhere between lavender and periwinkle) for the base color, with dark violet decals similar to the 996 & 997.1 GT3 RSes. I started talking with a wrap shop about it this afternoon.

On the check engine light / error codes: I would have loved to have solved this myself, but I saw the huge range of potential causes. We had a track day coming up and other plans, and I decided it was better to send it to our favorite Porsche shop. This way I could trust it'd be ready for the track day. It turned out to be a vacuum leak that the shop struggled to track down. If the pros were struggling with it, I'd have found it ridiculously tough, so I'm glad I sent it off for a fix... this time.

The 996 is back home, no check engine light, no error codes, everything behaving well. I'm not getting out to the track as much as I'd like, but I'm being dragged away by livestock and other fun things, so it's not exactly bad news. Hopefully I'll have post-wrap photos to share soon!
 
equiraptor said:
I hadn't made any forward movement on the wrap until, well, today! I'm planning on pale violet (somewhere between lavender and periwinkle) for the base color, with dark violet decals similar to the 996 & 997.1 GT3 RSes. I started talking with a wrap shop about it this afternoon.
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Sounds puffalump inspired :D
 
Those have been my preferred colors since before Puffalumps were made! It was a happy coincidence for me that Stef wanted colors I loved so much on that Type 3.

That said, this car will end up looking a lot like that Type 3, between the shared shape and the shared color theme. I liked the look of that car, and I liked how easy it was to spot on track. Somehow it was more visible than the bright red and bright orange cars! I'm looking forward to the distinct look.
 
I'm looking forward to photos of this.
 
I spent some time talking with the guys at the wrap shop today. They really like purple, and they like 996s (one had tried many different purple wraps on his 996, until it was totaled).

They don't have any pale violets from wraps that they know and trust. They know of some pale violets, but they don't know the quality of those specific brands/makes of wraps, so can't promise how durable they'll be. They're also not absolutely confident about which exact shades those are, but sample pieces can be ordered.

There are darker purples from a number of wraps that they do know. I do like one of the shades, a medium metallic purple. If you know Porsche's Viola Metallic and their Viola Purple Metallic, it seems to be between the two, but closer to the Viola Purple Metallic. On my current monitor it looks extremely close to the Viola Purple Metallic, but in other contexts this wrap would be a bit darker than it (I believe, hard to be sure since I'm looking at a little card, not an entire car). The color could look really good on a 996, I think. The metallic fleck in this wrap color is silver, and it could look really great with silver numbers.

What I'm unsure of is if the stripe on the side and script like the Carrera RS and GT3 RS work in the dark metallic with light metallic decals. I've nearly always seen them in flat glossy, and typically with a lighter body color and darker decal (though there are the black w/ orange cars). I don't like the 997.1 GT3 RS in silver w/ orange. I think that just doesn't look good. But is it the colors that don't look good to my eye, or the metallic with decals over it?

Also, one of the things I really appreciated about the fluffy bunny car was how visible that pastel was from across the track. This shade of purple may actually be light enough to still be super visible, and it'd definitely still stand out. But it wouldn't have that, "Oh, look, a soft pastel!" and then "Wow, that thing's super visible!"

So I'm torn between trying to find a light purple/violet and seeing how long that unknown wrap brand lasts vs. going with the darker color. The car has other obligations until after November 12th, so I have some time to ponder it. What do y'all think? Is it worth trialing a different wrap to stick to the original vision? Would metallic purple with silver decals be appropriate for the Carrera RS style script, or is that too much metallic, the wrong colors, too far away from the original idea?
 
equiraptor said:
What do y'all think? Is it worth trialing a different wrap to stick to the original vision?
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I don't know about you, but I would forever ask myself how it would have turned out, so I'd say go ahead and give it a try.
equiraptor said:
Would metallic purple with silver decals be appropriate for the Carrera RS style script, or is that too much metallic, the wrong colors, too far away from the original idea?
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I am not a fan of silver decals in car other unless it's black/dark grey, but that's just me.
Maybe Viola Purple Metallic with pastel decals, inverting the original color scheme? (Forgive me if I misunderstood what the original intent was).
 
I was thinking about this last night and thought of a similar setup, the Viola Purple Metallic with a lighter purple accent stripe or sill accent. Or you could lean into the retro look with the Viola Purple Metallic and maybe a baby blue accent? It might be too 90s, but I think it would look pretty good on the 911 given the timeless design of the car.
 
Blind_Io said:
I was thinking about this last night and thought of a similar setup, the Viola Purple Metallic with a lighter purple accent stripe or sill accent. Or you could lean into the retro look with the Viola Purple Metallic and maybe a baby blue accent? It might be too 90s, but I think it would look pretty good on the 911 given the timeless design of the car.
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Funny you mention baby blue... It's not quite Viola Purple Metallic w/ baby blue (both the purple and blue are a bit darker), but many years ago I made this mockup. I'm not actually super fond of it. It's not the Carrera RS style stripe with script, but it at least gives a basic idea of the colors. There's also a dark purple with pink and a Puffalump/FluffyBunny color variant.

I did make some attempts to further edit the example car I was using before. It's white with red stripes, though. Turning a light color dark and a dark color light always looks a bit awkward, so temper expectations a bit. This also is a flat color, not metallic, so again, this doesn't look quite like what the wrap would look like in the final. But it's probably enough to at least get an idea of colors for everything except the metallic purple w/ silver (that looks nothing like holding the wrap samples together in the light).

First thought, shop can't promise durability of wrap and we haven't figured out just which colors:
Porsche-911-GT3-RS-10.jpeg


Darker with pale violet decal. I'm not sure numbers would stand out enough this way:
Porsche-911-GT3-RS-10 (3).jpeg


Darker with blue:
Porsche-911-GT3-RS-10 (2).jpeg


Darker with grey (because I don't have the skill to make the flat car with flat decals look like a metallic car with metallic decals):
Porsche-911-GT3-RS-10 (1).jpeg


When I was holding the samples in the shop, the metallic medium purple looked best with silver. The "photoshop" just doesn't do that pairing justice.

I still think the first variant looks best, pale body color and dark decals. I do think the not-quite-viola-purple-metallic and silver could work. I don't like dark w/ pale violet or dark w/ baby blue. Not that it's bad, it just... doesn't strike my fancy. And every variant of this going to be starkly different, unlike anything else on the track on any given day, I think.
 
The dark metallic with silver would be pretty sexy and would tie in nicely with wheels that are alloy or have polished accents. It would certainly pop in the sun and you'd have no trouble standing out in a field of traditional red/yellow/blue/white/black track cars.

I could even see doing the roof in the silver, or maybe the spoiler or mirror caps just to give it a little more interest if you wanted to go that way.
 
We actually talked about a printed wrap with a color change somewhat like that while I was at the shop. That's not what I want this time around, but it seems like a good excuse to try a wrap of unknown durability. Do the pale violet w/ dark violet decals, and if it ages poorly, oh no, now I have a chance to try a printed wrap!
 
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