Mark P

2+ months ago I had been thinking about getting an A3 to replace my Golf when one day Kieran (audikp) IM'd me about a 996TT for sale. Since that day I've been casually browsing, and then more seriously searching, then got to the 'checking with insurance' stage, and finally narrowed in on a car. Here are the specs:

2004 911 Turbo, 19,xxx miles, X50 pkg (k24s), Nav, Carbon Fiber steering wheel/ebrake/shifter/speaker rings, clear bra, PSS9's

Here's the first time I saw the car in person as the former owner picked me up from the airport (Chicago):





After test-driving it, we brought it to CPT for Al to perform a PPI on it. Al came highly recommended by many and after talking to him on the phone, I was positive I needed to have him inspect the car. Indeed, he (and his guys) were very meticulous and I'd definitely recommend him/them to others.



Here's a bunch of photos in his shop:



















My possible future car had one tire down to the belts. Since I had 900 mile drive home, I needed something to drive on safely. I don't care for the black wheels, so I didn't want to have new tires mounted only to unmount/remount them again soon after when I swap for silver ones. So, after asking around, both Al and Jason (Festicle) offered me tires they had laying around at no cost. In the end, I'm still not positive which tires ended up on my car, but I thank them both for their generosity. Here are the ones that are now on my rears (Kumho SPTs):









I bought the car and here's the odometer just as I was pulling away from CPT:



During the PPI, Josh (Spartan993tt) stopped over to say hi on his lunch break, as did Jon (jwolf). Jon graciously drove myself and the former owner to the bank and to get some food while Al was mounting those tires. Later, after I drove the former owner home, I met up at Jon's house where Jay (Jay-01-S4) had stopped over as well. Later Jason showed up and I took his EPL K24/18G car for a drive. It's absolutely ridiculous. That's all I can say. I stayed over at Jon's (thanks again!) and got on the road about 7:30am. It was great meeting all of the Chicago guys who I'd only known on the forums until now. Great group of guys and hope to hang out with them again.

The first thing I saw was this intimidating Stage2 Sebring





I went to school at Rensselaer (Polytechnic Institute), in the county of Rensselaer, near the town of Rensselaer - all in New York - I don't think I've ever seen it elsewhere. So it was quite surprising to see a town of the same name in Indiana:



While driving in the middle of nowhere Indiana, I decided the lack of anything would make for some decent photos so I pulled off the next exit and took some shots just off the highway:











I had lost track of which state I was in and noticed on my GPS that there was a river parallel to the road I was on and the dotted line indicating a state boundary. I decided to take the next exit and cross over. Turns out it was Kentucky



As I was driving around the block in Kentucky, I saw a side street near the water, so I drove down it and snapped some photos with the bridge I had just crossed in the background:



I continued back to the bridge and crossed right back - Ah, Ohio was the state I was still in:





Many hours later I finally made it home, for a total of 13.5 hours of drive time for 910 miles. (EDIT: I arrived home at 11:20PM, so assuming that 8:38 below was my 7:38 start time [sounds right and I changed the time for the timezones], then the total trip was 14:40, so apparently I stopped for an hour total.) Overall I was pretty impressed with the fuel economy (21.9 avg) considering the mixed (I wasn't on cruise control the whole time ) driving I was doing and the 15/22 EPA rating. I had brought my Garmin and compared it to the inboard Nav. I had very low expectations of the Nav and it turned out to be decent. I think it's basically the same as the Audi (RS4) Nav, but I've only once saw someone use that so I'm not so sure. It has a lot of screens with all sorts of radio/Nav/trip computer info, so overall it's pretty cool. And my main interest in the Nav was that it's not the other option, the insanely boring amber lit stock radio. As it turns out, it's not listed on the window sticker, so someone must have added it along the way.



Depending on the lighting, Imola Yellow and Speed Yellow are very similar. I might be able to actually own two yellow cars now (if they were different I knew one/both would look bad). We'll see. What I know is I need to build a shed and a deck so I can get some more stuff out of my garage and then build more shelves.







When I had this house built, the land was not fully developed so it wasn't clear how high the house would be relative to the street. In the end, I got a driveway steeper than I would have desired. It also has the standard development step-up from the street. I'm dealing with both after figuring out how to get cars in/out. IE, I back the S4 in so it clears when entering from the street (see my sig pic for clearance under rear bumper vs front). Anyway, the angle at the bottom of the driveway causes the bottom of the front spoiler on the 996 to scrape. The driveway is sloped to allow drainage away from the house and towards the camera in the photo below. I placed 2x4s to illustrate the slope and visualize some options. I may fill in this area and add a drain the full width of the driveway. This will address the flow and slope together. I've found an angled way to get in/out of the garage that doesn't scrape right now, but it's less than ideal. I had planned to keep the yellow-painted lower until it gets chipped up / scraped, and then replace with the stock black one. Looks like I'm accelerating the wear on it already...



The car's storage space ("trunk"?) is minimal - it's certainly no Avant! )



and some photos after washing both cars - unfortunately I forgot to clean the exhaust tips before taking photos:



































So far it's been great. The engine is still stock and I plan to keep it that way for some time - just not how long "some time" is I see an exhaust and chip in the future - just a matter of when. After driving Jason's K24/18G car, I'll certainly keep that in mind if/when I need a clutch (a big part of the $ for that upgrade). I just realized I didn't take any interior photos, so I'll get those one of these days. It has a black/silver crest on the airbag and the owner had one on the front of the car as well, but he had swapped it back to red/gold. He's going to look for it and mail it to me as I'd really prefer black/silver. We'll see if that actually happens or not. I also realized I didn't get the wrenches for the PSS9's. Otherwise I got all the other bits: manual, keys, wheel lock key, receipts, window sticker, stock parts (suspension, amber lights, speaker rings), touch up paint, Nav CDs. He had bought the CF stuff used and it turned out that the ebrake was originally red "leather" dyed black. He bought a new black one and gave that to me as well. I expected to see a little sleeve that slides on to the ebrake handle like the S4, but instead it's the ENTIRE mechanism - CF, black leather, metal handle, base, cable connections, etc. I'll have to get that in soon. I also need to find some decent back drops to take some more photos - and then again after I find someone to swap me silver wheels...

I don't know what I'm doing yet with my 3 cars - I may put both the S4 and Golf up for sale and get something else used with low miles to complement this sports car - maybe an SUV (oddly I think the GMC Arcadia looks nice - and can take a full sheet of plywood to boot) or an A3 - we'll see. It all depends on how much I can get for my high mileage cars - in the end, it might just be better for me to hold on to them a for a bit longer...

PKmode

very cool Mark. That is the road I'd like to go down eventually as well.

RolledMySTi

Sweet car. Looks like you had a fun journey bringing it back. Although two yellow cars is asking for trouble.

Ragdoll

Fun write up. Al from CTP is a great guy. Gave me a ride around Road America in his 996TT :P

unglaublich

oh wow that's awesome!! a 996 is my next car And yellow as well! Congrats!!

Grillian

Very, very cool!! She's beautiful. Definately need to fix that driveway. Pull up that section of concrete to the first joint and replace with porous pavers. They allow the water to drain while smoothing out the slope.
Enjoy the ride!!

complacentsee

Bah, just get a new house! With a bigger garage to boot.

laissezfaire

that's a nice pair of cars - I would never get rid of those two cars.

I like the imola yellow a bit better... appears a bit more pale.

FateXer0

The 996 looks awesome! Look out for the 30K service though. When I picked up my '01 996TT, I got hit with the $2K 30K service as it is due at 5 yrs or 30K. Then 2 weeks later, my steering sensor went out and that was another grand.

But, Porsche tax comes with the territory. All in all, it's worth it!

GIAC has a sweet flash for this, btw. That's what I had and could not complain. .9 bar

audidweeb

Sweet car! If you run into the clutch resevoir issue that other 996tt guys run into, you can run the GT2 master/slave cylinder setup that eliminates it. I am really suprised at how the cheap the 996tt is to maintain. $ to upgrade, but you really don't need much to have retarded fast track beast. Here is a link to that EVOMs GT2 clutch upgrade...
http://www.evoms.com/marketplace/Vie...002C337C06B%7D