Saturday, August 26, 2006

Time for the snow tires to go!

The car handled just fine but the tires are Bridgestone Blizzak studless snow tires. Not exactly the most performance oriented tire for a performance oriented car. It needed to be changed.

After spending a fair portiong of the week specing out 205/60R16 and 225/55R16 tires from a variety of sources I decided to get the same tire I used on my Miata. The Hankook Ventus R-S2 Z212. Armed with checkbook and ready to spend it was off to price out the local tire shop.

Upon arriving I made a rather grim discovery. My car did NOT have the stock wheels for a 1990 C2 instaleld but instead.. 17" turbo twist wheels off what I think was the '91 C4 AWD version. Regardless.. all my research became moot since this also meant I had much larger tires than I have originally thought.

After a couple of hours at the shop.. thinking about the upcoming winter driving season and how few auto-x events remained.. my focus shifted to more rain oriented tire, and they just happenedt to have a full set of one option in stock. Not wanting to deal with this any further I ordered them installed and went and grabbed some lunch.

A couple of hours later I was rolling out of America's Tire with a set of Yokohama ES-100 tires in 225/45R17 front and 255/40R17 rears.

Handling did not seem to change adversly despite the harder compound of these tires compared to the Blizzaks previously installed. Ride is quiet. There may have been a slight decrease in understeer from the car but most of that problem, I believe, is due to imporper right height and old shocks. Both of which to be addressed soon enough. Next weekend, is that autocross so it's hoped these tires hold up to the punishment!

Sunday, August 20, 2006

First mod - Alpine CDA-9856

First mod to the car, add a CD in-dash player with real-time iPod control. For this I chose the Alpine CDA-9856.

Just a few days prior I had placed an order for the CDA-9857 to be installed in the Cruise Missle with an install date of 9/9/06. This unit is the little brother to the more fully features 9857. The nice part will be the ability to swap the head units between the cars if I find I'm driving one more than the other during summer/winter.

More about this mod to come!

Saturday, August 19, 2006

A New Begining...

A new begining. After many years watching these enigmatic cars on the highway and the race track, I finally found my way into a possition where I could find out for myself.

That day came on Saturday, August 19th, 2006. The day this little gold beauty appeared on my weekly auto sales watcher. The price was right, the year was right and the type was acceptable (a Targa would have been preffered by even more difficult to find). Later I would discover that the Couple, althought less expensive by far, was the superior car for my needs which included weekend racing events.

I think it's obvious that I'm quite pleased with the purchase, and it's a great addition to the stable populated with a European motorcycle and one of the fastest Cars Mercedes shipped to the United States... The 500E supercar.

What is an interesting fact about these two cars is they were both cars spent time at Porsche's Stuttgart plant (the Mercedes is a rare hand-built model made in collaboration with Porsche). So.. althought of vastly different Marques, they share history. Plus.. both are incredibly fun to drive in thier own rights.

Stablemates:


The purpose of this blog will be to document the experiences (good and bad) with the Porsche Carrera 2 (aka 964). A 250 HP dual-spark 3.6L air-cooled opposing 6 engine, fully independant suspension and an very nicely appointed interior including A/C, leather heated seats and a dashboard to die for!

I hope you find this blog interesting as well as informative, and above that, thanks for taking the time to drop on by!

- David