Yahoo Autos The Five Things I Hate Most About My 996 Porsche 911
Even jet-lagged, coming home from a long flight, I can’t help but love this weird little guy, but it’s far from perfect.
If you’ve been following along with our coverage of my 996 Porsche 911 ownership experience, you won’t be surprised to read that I love the car. It’s incredible, and it’s been everything I’d hoped it would be. The unjustly maligned 996 platform is great in stock form, and with some minor modifications, it is a truly epic sports car for the money. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and while I have no plans to get rid of the car, there are a few things I hate about it.
1. Lifting the Car
How to safely put a 911 GT3 (993, 996, 997, 991, 992, RS) on jack stands!
The first big points ding against the 911 is the hassle of getting it up on jack stands. Seriously, on any other car, this is a no-brainer. Put the jack under a cross member or the jack pad, lift and add jack stands. On the 911, it’s more complex.
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First, you should have special flat-top jack stands with rubber pads. Then to actually get the car in the air, you lift from the front side jack point, which brings the whole side of the car up. Insert your first jack stand and with the jack still in place, put your second jack (that’s right, you need two!) under the rear inboard lower suspension mounting point and lift from there. A bottle jack is fine for this. Then drop your trolley jack, and while the bottle jack supports the rear of the car, put in your other jack stand. Then do it all again for the other side.
2. Wheel Bolts
BOLTS vs STUDS
The next thing I hate is less of a 911 thing and more of a European car thing. It’s the fact that Euro manufacturers love wheel bolts instead of lugs and lugnuts. They use bolts because they believe that a bolt connection will handle shearing loads better and, therefore, will be safer. Of course, if you hit a wheel so hard that a stud would shear, you probably have other more significant problems.
What’s not safer than a wheel stud and nut setup is dropping a heavy 18-inch x 10-inch 911 rear wheel on your foot because the previous owner of your car lost the little temporary hanger stud and you’re trying to juggle the wheel and get a bolt in at the same time.
I plan on converting my car to wheel studs, which makes sense since I was going to add some spacers to the wheels anyway, necessitating longer hardware. This should make getting the wheels on and off significantly less of a hassle.
3. Soft-Touch Plastics
Clean Sticky Car Radio Buttons DIY
