Advans on Advans

After a pretty successful track day with Bumblestook last week on the new Yokohama Advan A052 tires, I knew I had to get a set for Kay. While the Bridgestone RE-71R is no slouch of a tire and these Advans still have to prove themselves to be better, they have a few traits I was interested in. The most important of those traits is that they likes heat. I often leave the car idling in grid in between runs to keep the engine cool and doing so keeps all four corners really warm. If the temps get even close to 70F I struggle keeping the RE-71Rs cool unless I shut the engine off. I thin on concrete at Nationals, in hot temperatures and long courses, these tires will be phenomal on a Cayman.

Advan A052 265/35/18 Rear Tires - 5-18-2019

At last week's track day testing them on Bumblestook they also proved to be quite amazing in cooler temps and even in the damp. They were very predictable and even when I got into some four wheel slides the tire feedback and response was there. I've driven on RE-71Rs on the track on the same car and I'd say both had similar grip but somehow I liked the feel of the Advans better. They felt more "supple" without losing feel, feedback, and responsiveness.

Advan A052 245/40/18 Front Tires - 5-18-2019

I was hoping they'd release a 255 width 18" tire but they stopped at 245. However, when I started to look at the specs I noticed something interesting, these tires run quite a bit wider than the RE-71R so much so that on Bumblestook I have a tiny bit of rubbing in the rear where I didn't before on the same size tire. I decided to go with the 245s in the front and the maximum STU allows, 265, in the rear. The 245s are actually about as wide an RE71R 255 and the 265 is almost half an inch wider when mounted. I didn't quite believe the spec sheet at first but comparing the two mounted tires side by side you can see it even if I don't bring out a ruler. The 245s are taller than 255 REs and also taller than the 265s but the different is about as much as when I ran 265/285 18s when Kay was in B-Street and I had no issues with speed sensors or other traction control sensors on the car going crazy.

265 RE-71R (left) vs 265 A052 (right) both on 18x10 wheels

SJF Performance, as always, carefully mounted these tires and we also put a durometer on them just to test. You can see that the A052 is a hair harder but the RE71Rs just came off the car after me spiritedly driving on them for about an hour so they were still pretty warm. What was more telling is that the durometer left a mark on the tire where it didn't on REs. These are definitely soft tires but the sidewall is surprisingly still stiff.

SJF mounting tires - 5-18-2019

Durometer on RE-71R

Durometer on Advan A052

When I was driving around on Bumblestook, even on the street I noticed quite a difference but I wasn't sure if it was just because of her suspension setup. Now that I have the same tires on Kay, I can definitely confirm that despite these having similarly stiff side walls, they are incredible good on the street. They have minimal to no road noise and amazingly absorb a lot of unevenness in the road surface. It was quite a noticeable difference driving home on these tires. I'm holding my full judgement on them until I've had a chance to race them in the dry but so far I will say that for both street and damp conditions hot or cold, these are on par with the REs in terms of grip while feeling quite a bit better.

Advan A052 on Advan GT Premium Wheels

Advan A052 on Advan GT Premium Wheels

One thing I will note though is that unlike the RE-71Rs these tires don't have an extra "lip" around the edge to protect the rim so if you street park and suck at it, you could curb your lip. It also makes it look a little "weird" in that the wheel sticks out a bit from the tire but I don't care as long as these tires perform and so far I'm one happy customer.

No "rim protector lip" on the tire

If weather holds I'm hoping to test these out next weekend and will report back some thoughts along with some suspension changes during the June lull in racing.

More P2198 CEL Woes

Well, just before the NJ ProSolo, I started getting check engine lights again. It was the familiar P2198 (stuck rich on bank 1). This time though it didn't seem to happen at arbitrary times. The moment I'd clear it, if I started the car I'd see the code was pending and by the 2nd or 3rd start, the check engine light would come on. Thankfully it didn't seem to affect the performance of the car much but I finally got the car back to Lee at Hybrid Motors today to get checked out.

New Bosch Primary O2 sensors - 5-16-19

New Bosch Primary O2 sensors - 5-16-19

This time I asked that he put in the new Bosch primary o2 sensors I bought a while ago. So far I haven't seen the P2198 pending show up, but time will tell. Unfortunately, he also noticed that I had an exhaust leak. There are leaks by the gaskets on both ends of the headers. I contacted Soul Performance about my issue and they're sending me new gaskets for free. Here's hoping these fix this issue permanently.

Maintenance Updates:

Mileage: 35,290
- New Bosch 17276 Primary O2 Sensors (both sides)

NJ ProSolo Win - Lessons Learned

Despite what was forecasted to be a pretty soggy weekend, after some Saturday morning early showers we got lucky enough to get a break in the weather and get all our afternoon runs in dry, warm conditions. STU didn't have enough drivers to make a class so we got moved into Bump Class and Kay took the lead early on. Today, with heavy downpour and the course having large amounts of standing water, the 2nd day runs were cancelled securing Kay's first "big event" win. I would've loved to have gone up against a full STU class like the Fingerlakes Tour that I'll be missing in 2 weeks but a win is a win and I'll take it.

Kay's first ProSolo victory - 5-5-2019

More importantly, I finally got decently comfortable launching the car. Turns out I needed to get the car up to 6000 rpms and slip the clutch to avoid wheel hop (though I wasn't successful at doing this each time). I think maybe stiffer engine or trans mounts might help but with no other ProSolos for me on the calendar I don't think I'll bother. The rest of the events including nationals will just be normal starts so I don't need to try and fix that now.

Kay taking the lead day 1 - 5-4-2019
Photo by: SoloMatters

SCCA NJ ProSolo - 5-4-2019

I think now that I've had a few more events in the dry, the car is a bit too stuff. I'm unable to really lay the power down in some spots especially in a wavy lot like the Meadowlands. The balance overall is good but she's too "nervous" and I'm finding myself having to breath off the throttle quite a bit to get her settled. I'm going to see how soft I can take the shocks down too without sacrificing transitional speed but I suspect either a spring rate change or shock valving changes will be required in the future to make it really work the way I want.

NJ ProSolo - 5-4-2019

For now, to make future shock adjustments easier, I finally just took a dremmel and cut out a hole in the front panels to get to my front adjusters. Thankfully, these panels are pretty cheap (under $20) from Porsche new so I can always replace them to put the car back to original condition later.

Accessible front shock adjusters - 5-3-2019

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this event. The car isn't broken and that's always a good thing after a ProSolo and I've learned a bunch. I left a ton of time out there and the my pace needs to be faster if I want to truly be competitive for Nationals this year. I've got 4 months left to close that gap. We'll definitely try out best to make that happen.

Day 1 grid - 5-4-2019

Final Practice before NJ ProSolo 2019

We're less than a week away now from the NJ ProSolo so despite the forecast for lots rain and cool temperatures, many of us braved the elements to get our final practice in. In order to try and get people dry runs, we split up two heats running twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. This turned out to work out quite well because the rain eventually passed towards the end of the morning session and the winds helped dry most of the lot.

NNJR SCCA Autocross - 4-28-2019

This meant that everyone got a chance to run in the dry for the afternoon runs so the morning times were thrown out (treated as a TnT) and afternoon counted as points. This sadly didn't matter to me because I was the only one in STU but I was mostly just in it for seat time. It's been almost a month now since my last autocross. I can't say I was too happy with my driving. I still keep hitting cones on the right side but looking at the video I'm getting really close on the left so I'm working on cutting distance at least. I also lowered the front compression one click since she seemed a bit pushy and that helped massively with making the front work better (note to self: front compression is now set to 9).

NNJR SCCA - 4-28-2019

Since it doesn't look like STU is making a full class for the ProSolo that means we're going to be moved into bump class (probably up against the karts). Between that and the car just not wanting to be launched and wheel hopping when I try, I think I'm not even going to try and launch the car to preserve the drivetrain.

Alcantara GT2 Seat Inserts

I really love the carbon GT2 seats in Kay but my biggest gripe with them is that it's all black leather. It makes it easy to clean but boy do they get hot in the sun. When I bought them a few months ago I contacted Heritage Upholstery in California. They specialize in restoring classic car interiors but as most of these shops do, they also do some bespoke work for cars like Porsches.

Alcantara GT Seat Inserts - 4-13-2019

Compared against all leather seats

I specifically wanted Stone Grey Alcantara inserts to match the rest of the interior. Unfortunately, these have become very hard to come by as a global shortage in Alcantara means suppliers only sell to OEM manufacturers. After a month or so of looking, they were able to source the material for me from Europe and about 3 months later in total, they're finally here and I think it adds a really nice detail to the interior.

Black leather left, Stone Grey Alcantara Right

Black leather left, Stone Grey Alcantara Right

One of the reasons I picked Heritage Upholstery is that they actually source factory molded cushions so I know I'm going to get OEM fitment and quality. Buying a new set of cushions was a great choice because it's obviously nice when everything is new but also because I can store the original ones if I decide to sell the seats later.

GT2 factory moulded cushion pads from Heritage Upholstery & Trim.

This completes the interior now to my satisfaction.

Alcantara GT Seat Inserts - 4-13-2019

Modified Keyfob

I'm going to start off by saying that this is a very common mod for 987.1 and even 997.1 owners. The problem is that the OEM keyfob is overly sensitive and sometimes just the act of putting it in your pocket unlocks and opens either the trunk or the frunk. At the very least this is annoying and at worst it could mean walking away from the car with one of those open, leaving the light on and draining your battery. This is why you'll see many owners hold their keys until they're far away from their car. I've personally gotten used to only putting it in my bag or in my looser jacket pockets but never in my jeans.

Ready to start the keyfob migration process - 4-5-2019

Replacement keyfobs are cheap and easily found on Ebay or Amazon. They're also a bit beefier and have the shell used in the 987.2/997.2. The first step is pretty easy, simply open up both keys, release the latch for the actual key and transfer it over and then transfer over the battery and battery terminals as well as the button circuitry.

Moving the guts over - 4-5-2019

The scariest part of this process is that you have to transfer over the transponder used by the immobilizer from the OEM key to the new key. The transponder is glued onto the OEM key shell so you really don't have a choice but to completely destroy the old key shell to get the transponder out. Doing this carefully, it took me almost all of watching the latest episode of the Grand Tour to get that done. Note: If you buy an actual new Porsche key from the dealer it includes a new transponder and you then need to reprogram it to the car. That costs a few hundred dollars in total. This method costs about $20 but is a one way process. 

Transponder extracted and ready to move over - 4-5-2019

You then just combine the two halfs of the shell being careful not to pinch the contacts so the buttons engage properly (this took me a dozen tries since it's a snug fit) and you end up with a sweet new keyfob that both looks better and is no longer the sensitive mess the original ones are.

Old keyfob (top), New keyfob (bottom)

Old keyfob (bottom), New keyfob (top)

I bought two of these new shells so I could convert both keys but I think I'm going to just hang onto it and keep one of them original just in case I ever have a problem. 

CEL Fixed

The car's actually been driving really well but ever since we did all the power adders in December of last year, I've sporadically been getting a CEL with codes p2098 and p2096 at idle which is the code for the pre-cat sensor being stuck too rich on either bank 1 or bank 2. The usual cause for this is the primary o2 sensor going bad so I ordered two new ones but Lee at Hybrid Motors took a look at the car in February and noticed that the fuel trim was off at idle and affecting both banks so he felt it was unlikely that both o2 sensors were having issues at the same time especially with the car generally running fine. I agreed to drop the car off to get it properly diagnosed at a future date but between being busy, out of town and having back to back events, I had to keep putting it off.

Finally getting the CEL fixed - 4/3/2019

First thing this morning I finally dropped her off to get this taken care off once and for all. Lee found that at idle, there wasn't enough vacuum going to the fuel pressure regulator causing the fuel pressure to be high (and remain high) when it was idling. He rerouted the vacuum lines and that finally fixed it. Fuel trims at idle and under load are all looking normal. I can distinctly hear a smoother idle and the exhaust note also changed a bit. I think we're finally sorted. The last thing I want is to have to keep dealing with is a random check engine light.

Dropping the car off at Hybrid Motors - 4/3/2019

While the car was there I also had them put in the LED license plate lights I bought a few months ago but have been too lazy to install. They're original Porsche OEM lights so they're a direct fit and easy replacement. They also don't cause any error codes that you sometimes get when you just swap the bulbs out.

New OEM LED license plate lights - 4/3/2019

New OEM LED license plate lights - 4/3/2019

New OEM LED license plate lights installed - 4/3/2019

I've already changed out every other bulb in the car to LEDs so this was the last ones that needed to be swapped out. I think they look pretty good.