Porsche 993 Twin Turbo front Big Brake Kit is installed, a set of 5mm spacers and hub extenders from Turner did the trick as far as caliper/wheel clearance goes. I ended up having to grind a good deal off the end of both control arms, otherwise the rotor would rub on them when the wheels were turned. Seems that the kit was designed with 96+ suspension geometry in mind.
The good news is that the BBK works great. I actually have a firmer pedal now than I had with the 90k M3 brakes, SS lines and solid guide pins. No vibration on the highway, though the Hawk HPS pads do squeal a bit, to be expected. And the rotors and calipers look great peeking out of my 17" wheels.
The pictures were taken in Orange County, at WheelPower, a stop on the convoy route to Santa Barbara and Bimmerfest 2005. Was a fun day, lots of very cool cars and people, and well worth the four hour drive each way. Got some nice complements on the car too, which is always a warm fuzzy.
Carbon fiber hood installed, but its total crap. Besides being wavy in spots, it just doesn't fit well. Unfortunately, I had to cut up my old (equally crappy) OEM hood to get the hood shock mounts, so I can't go back to that either. I'll live with this POS for another month or so until I can get a good (VIS or MAShaw) hood and have it painted. Moral of the story, you get what you pay for, and being in a rush to do something can cost you.
The reason I'm not replacing the hood right away is that I have another expense coming up...
I'm installing Schrick 258/264 cams next week, along with updated retainers, new valve springs, a MLS head gasket and ARP studs. The cams should be good for at LEAST 15 more RWHP, and it just makes sense to update the valve train while I'm in there (my build date has the "weaker" retainers"), and the headgasket/studs are insurance with the boost I'm running. When it's all done I should have a pretty bullet-proof top end, and S50 bottom end is already pretty strong, able to handle more HP/boost than I'm putting out.
The final touch is a set of Jet Hot coated OEM OBD1 exhaust manifolds that I gasket matched on the ports. The Jet Hot coating should drop under-hood temps a good bit, and I should pick up some flow benefits from the internal coating (not as good as a extrude honing, but helpful). The porting I did will help a bit as well. And the coating is nice bling.
I have a set of stainless OBD2 manifolds here, but there is no proven flow advantage using them, about the only reason to change is to save 10 pounds and they don't rust. I can live with the weight of the OBD1's, the cast iron sounds better, and the thermal coating will solve the rust issues. I decided against aftermarket headers, the ones that are worth having require hacking up the cat pipe (or removing the cat). At least with the OEM units I know I won't go "backwards", and frankly I think that with coating and my porting they'll probably help as much as any aftermarket short tubes out there. If I ever decide to "off road use only" the car, I may rethink long tube headers, but for a California street-legal car they're not worth the money in my book.
Sometime in June I'll be making another trip up to RMS. He has a front mount heat exchanger (fills the lower bumper cover opening) waiting for me, that I'll use in concert with my current heat exchanger. The two working together should drop my intake charge temps a few more degrees, which can make more power, and with twice the water capacity, it'll make it nearly impossible to heat-soak the system. I'll also have to come up with a new oil cooler solution, since the front mount VPD cooler I'm running now has to be removed to fit the front mount heat exchanger. I'll probably end up using the cooler core from the Euro M3 setup, with adapters and the VPD oil filter cap.
Oh, and I have CF eyebrows coming, to match the hood better, and thinking REAL hard about getting one of those CF sunroof delete panels (saves 40+ pounds off the top of the car). It looks cool, and I almost never open my sunroof. It'll also allow me to use the non-sunroof headliner, which will give me some extra head room, important when I wear a helmet on the track.
After that, I think I'll be done....
Maybe.
