Hi All,

I just pulled the trigger on an '01 996TT from another board member and it's somewhere across the country with Intercity right now. I absolutely can't wait for this thing to get here.

I just relocated back to the country from overseas recently and was like a kid in a candy store when car shopping. These cars (and the BMW E39 M5s) are an incredible price/performance bargain! $70K USD gets you a Suzuki Swift in Singapore, 40K USD gets you a Subaru in China.

The buying experience with these cars was pretty interesting for me. I checked out quite a few cars and uniformly, everyone I spoke with was polite, nice, and generous with both pluses and faults of the car they were selling. The person I ultimately bought the car from was an incredible gentleman.

As for the car, coming from 7 years of NSX ownership, I just can't believe how much more exciting the TTs are. The sheer VIOLENCE of the thrust when boost hits is just unbelievable. Once I test drove one, not much else was in the same league.

Anyway, just counting down the days, but here are the specs:

-2001 Midnight Blue
-GT2 nose and spoiler
-997 short shift kit and GT3 LWFW
-Unknown ECU flash
-KW V3 coilovers


A few bits of advice I'd be curious to get from the veterans here:

-One concern I do have is the flash. Since it's from the east coast, I'm assuming the tune is for 93 octane and the best we get in CA is 91. Do I need to either revert back to stock or get a 91 tune, or can I leave it and rely on the knock sensors to retard the timing if needed?

-Also, I'm also unsure of the coilovers, I'm not planning any DEs yet and I'm worried about scraping the front. This car is going to be my daily driver. Are there huge drawbacks to going back to stock suspension?

 

Get it retuned. Knock sensors are things that tell your motor the damage is occurring, dial back the timing. So they are after the fact devices. How much damage did you want the motor to suffer on a daily basis?

Coilovers can be raised and KWs are fine.

Jim

 

Welcome to 6 speed and congratulations on the purchase. I am a local bay area guy as well down in San Jose.

Talk to the previous owner about the flash on the car. What state did it come from? If you want to be safe reflash to a 91 tune but I would try and figure out what the available octane was in the state it came from just so you don't waste any money. The KW V3s are supposed to be excellent coilovers. Many members on here are running them. I'm sure you could raise the height on them. At their highest they are probably still an 1" lower than stock. Don't worry about the front lip. There is a place in San Jose (Bayson R Motorsports) that sells new lips for $100 and they are urethane just like factory ones.

Congrats again. Hope to see you around.

 

The car has been in FL, NY, and MD. As far as I know, all 93 octane states, and the previous owner didnt know what flash, just that boost goes up to 1.0-1.1ish.

The front lip is a funny story and more of a wife acceptance factor. I went through about 5 of them with my old NSX.

-[scraaaaape-snap] as we turn onto the road.
-[wife] What was that?
-[me] My front spoiler lip, we need to pull over so that I can pick it up. (Of course, we had stuff in the trunk, so I had no place to put it for disposal and had to walk a few blocks to find appropriate trash receptacle).

3 months later...
-[scraaaape-snap]
-[wife] What was that?
-[me] spoiler....
-[wife] Isn't that your 10th one?
-[me] 5th

[6 months later... NSX sold.]

[1 month ago...]
-[me] I'm going to get a practical sports car... 911, which has seats in the back for the rugrat.
-[wife, rolling her eyes] Is the spoiler going to fall off?

Anyway, likewise NorCalTurbo, hope to see you around.

 

Loved that (having been there and done that) !

 

Hope to see you out at Santana Row some Saturday morning (see NorCal thread). There are several guys from 6SP that show up there on occasion.

 

Funny! slientbob.

Your wife, my wife and I'm sure other wives too; every little noise she heard from the car... she'd roll her eyes and says "What was that?"

 

i would get it re-flashed, not to stock though, go with one of the tuners you feel most comfortable with, or get exhaust then get a re-flash

 

Do coil-overs make that big of a difference vs stock suspension, just for normal driving? I feel like this car already exceeds my driving capability by a wide margin, I'm not sure I'll get the benefit.

 

Congratulations on your new-to-you 996TT, and welcome to the 6speedonline community!