Chris' Cayman

The Tarett lower control arms showed up yesterday. I spent this morning getting them installed. It went pretty smooth and took about three hours.

I added 16mm to the arms and according to my digital angle finder I wound up with -2.4/-2.6 degrees of camber. I was shooting for -2.5. There's plenty of adjustment available in both directions so it should be easy to dial in.

I took a WAG and turned the tie rods out 8 full turns (1 turn per 2mm of shim). That seems to be about right. I wound up with 1/4" of total toe in. The steering feels a lot lighter. I think it had a lot of toe in before.

I'm going to get it an alignment done this week. I'm shooting for -2.5F/-2.0R camber and 0.0F/-0.3R total toe in.

For future reference the arms were installed at 60,500 miles.

I took the car in for an alignment on Wednesday. When they finished they told me that the most camber they could get on the right side was -2.1 in the front and -1.6 in the rear.  Interestingly this same shop told me the same thing about my GTI when I bought it there. I looked at the initial numbers and it was like -2.7/-1.9 in the front and -1.9/-1.3 in the rear. They maxed out the right side and made the left side match. 

My gears were grinding the whole way home. It seemed strange to me that two different cars would have almost the same exact camber offset sdie to side. Looking at the car there was a visible difference side to side. The top of the front tires were off by about 1/4". I decided to check the camber at home yesterday using my digital angle finder again. I measured with the car pointed in and then pointed out in the garage. The offset was -.5 on the right side each direction. That pretty much eliminates the garage floor being the problem.  I'm pretty sure that their rack needs a calibration. berkeley!

There isn't anyone with a decent alignment rack open on the weekend and I have a track day at Laguna Seca tomorrow. I'm SOL as far as getting another shop to take a look at it. I decided to take a look at it myself. On the rear end the left side was pretty much maxed out on negative camber adjustment while the right side was almost at the minimum. I measured the toe with a pair of straight edges and tape measures. Then I adjusted the right side so the camber and toe adjusters matched the left side. I wound up with +.4 more camber and the toe stayed the same. I did the same procedure to the front. The top of the right strut was clearly 5/16" out farther than the left. I made them match and then readjusted the toe. I took the car out for a test drive and it was dead nuts straight. I remeasured the camber in both directions again and it's much closer. Maybe .2 degrees variation L/R now. That should be good enough until I can get it to reputable alignment shop.

I think I'm around -2.4/-1.8 F/R now. It looks like I'd need to add adjustable toe links on the rear to get any more camber. 

I'll have to look but pretty sure I'm closer to -3 camber on the front of my car with the OEM gt3 control arms

I've never seen a car that has identical rear adjuster settings. The subframe is never perfectly centered side to side which skews the adjustments. I think mine are off by about 90* side to side.

docwyte said:

I'll have to look but pretty sure I'm closer to -3 camber on the front of my car with the OEM gt3 control arms

On the Caymans you can get around -1 degree stock. I added 16mm to the LCAs. That should get me to around -2.5 degrees. I can still add another 4mm if I need it.

The rear end can get to around -1.8 before you have to add adjustable LCAs and toe links. I've read that you want to keep a ~.5 degree stagger front to rear on these cars.

dps214 said:

I've never seen a car that has identical rear adjuster settings. The subframe is never perfectly centered side to side which skews the adjustments. I think mine are off by about 90* side to side.

I agree that they probably shouldn't be identical but they were almost 180 degrees out. Left was almost full out, right was almost full in.  When I measured the angles with my digital angle finder the absolute values varied by about .2 degrees depending on which way the car was pointed in my garage. Regardless of orientation the FL had .5 degrees more camber than the FR and the RL had .7 more than the RR.

I joined the California Central Coast Region PCA at Laguna Seca yesterday. The run groups only had about 18-21 drivers in each class so traffic wasn't an issue.

I bled the tires down to 24psi before the first session and they warmed up to 31psi. The car was really well balanced all day. With the new alignment I dropped 2 seconds of my previous best time in the first session. After lunch I bled another pound out of the tires to get them to 30psi hot by the end of the sessions. It took about 2 full laps to get them warmed up but they they felt really good. I managed to shave another 1.2 seconds off my best time in the third session. I had two consecutive laps at 1:49.91 and 1:49.90.

Unfortunately RaceChrono hasn't been very reliable lately and it never started timing for the last session. I really need to look at another solution. The Garmin Catalyst might be on my Christmas list this year. 

My tire temps for the third session looked pretty reasonable. The outer inch of the front tires are heavily worn so I don't think they were heating evenly:

L/R

142,155,162 | 161,154,138 Front

145,151,156 | 165,150,148 Rear

I'll get the car re-aligned before I track it again. Unfortunately it might be a few months. Laguna Seca is going to be repaved starting in early November and won't reopen until early March.

The more camber you add the less street friendly the car will get.  The Porsches I have had all love lots of camber on the track but on the street having the car chase every rut in the road gets old in a hurry. 
 

I would spend the $$ on more track time and tires and pads not on suspension mods.  
 

But you do you. It is your car. Do what makes the car such that when you are getting out of it after a drive all you are thinking about is the next drive.  

In reply to dean1484 :

I agree. I went overboard on my last car and frankly sometimes it was embarrassing to drive with a passenger especially on rough roads. This time around I don't want to ruin the on road experience. My goal was to add enough camber to not chew up the outer edges of the tires at the track. I think I've accomplished that. I purposely bought the control arms that had rubber bushings like the stock arms so it didn't add any NVH. I might add rear toe links since it basically has zero toe in the rear now. That will help keep the rear end stable under braking. I really want to avoid going down the springs/struts/coilovers/sway bars rabbit hole. 

I have 16mm of shims up front too.  I shoot for 32 hot front and 34 hot rear on my NT01's, that seems to give me the best grip.  My car, even with all the camber in it, still tracks pretty true on the street.  I feel the rear diff more than anything...

I'm really happy with the way the car is driving right now. Going to zero toe in front and very little in the rear made the steering feel a lot better.

The weather was in the low 70's over the weekend so I took the opportunity to take couple 90 minute drives with the windows down and the stereo off. It's a joy to drive.

I forgot to mention that I had the PDK and differential gear oil changed at 60,600 miles.

I usually don't buy pictures from my track days. They're either overpriced or I think I could do better myself. Gorilla Tornado Photography did a great job on these though.

Gray and reds.

Use all of the curb!

Bottom of the Corkscrew. 50mph and 1.1g.

One thing that has driven me crazy with this car is the shift paddle buttons on the steering wheel. On every other car I've driven the left paddle shifts down and the right paddle shifts up. On this steering wheel the buttons on the back of the wheel shift down and the buttons on the front (at your thumbs) shift up. Shifting up also feels awkward because you have to move your hands from their natural position. It's a common complaint and a lot of guys upgrade to the "Sport" steering wheel. That's an expensive option though since they run $800-$1500 on the used market.

I don't mind the look of my stock wheel so I decided that I'd try rewiring the shift paddles. I found a thread on Planet 9 that detailed how to disassemble the wheel and rewire the paddles here:

https://www.planet-9.com/threads/rewire-steering-wheel-pdk-buttons-2010-cayman.93521/

I had a free afternoon yesterday so I did the mod. I completely disabled the front buttons and rewired the back pair. It works as advertised. I should have done this right after I bought the car. 

The Hankook R-S4s I've been using for track days are a few years old and don't seem to have much grip. After a ton of reading and talking to other Cayman drivers I finally overcame my analysis paralysis ordered a set of Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3 in 245/40/18 and 275/40/18. They seem to have the best combination of grip, consistency, and wear of the 200TW group. We'll see.

Great mod on the shifters.  

In reply to jfryjfry :

It's made driving in manual mode much more enjoyable. I honestly don't understand why they ever thought the original layout was a good idea. 

CAinCA said:

I dropped the off at a detailing shop on Wednesday and had them color correct the paint, apply PPF to the hood and front fenders (it already had it on the bumper, headlights and mirrors), and then ceramic coat the entire car.  It looks amazing. 
 

 

 

 

 

Which detail shop do you use?

I'll send you a PM. I wasn't 100% satisfied with their work.

I had signed up for a track day on 11/11. Unfortunately my wife had a really bad cough/cold thing and I had a touch of it myself. I decided it wasn't a good time to drive 3+ hours each way and go play in the 45F degree weather.

Soooo, I had a new experience last night. I was heading down a back road at about 65mph and there was a car in the oncoming lane that wanted to turn left in front of me. I had my turn signal on to turn right so he was waiting. I waited until the last second and braked hard and down shifted into second. Right as I got to the corner he started to turn. In hindsight I think a car was coming up on him and he was trying to get out of their way. Anyhoo, I turned hard, trail braked to the apex and then nailed the throttle and got the car a bit sideways. I turned into the slide and let off the throttle a bit and kept it pointed in the right direction. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever done that on the street.  

I changed the oil in the Cayman today. While I was under it I got a good look at the tires. The rears are done. They are almost bald on the inside and have maybe 1.5mm of tread left. I think they have around 13,500 miles on them. 
 

I'll be ordering a set of tires tonight. I'm leaning toward Michelin PS4S. 

In reply to CAinCA :

I'm glad you had the driving skills to keep that under control.  Just remember the biggest danger on public roads is other drivers!  Drive accordingly.  
 

I got the PS4S installed today at America's Tire. I got home and realized that the nice aluminum valve stem caps that were on the wheels were replaced with new plastic caps. WTF? This is the second time they've done this to me. I went back and, of course, they couldn't find them. They found similar set in their box and gave them to me.  I actually like them more but as I was driving home I realized that some other poor schmuck got ripped off too. 

Anyhoo, about the tires. I was hoping that they'd be a little quieter and ride a little better. They are a little quieter but they ride a LOT better.  They are smoother and feel a bit more flexible. I guess those 6 year old MPSS really were hard as rocks. It's raining tonight so I didn't press them too hard but they feel like they have more traction too. 

It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow. Sounds like a great day to take a drive to the coast, right?

I did an oil change a couple weeks ago and refilled the oil about 1/2 quart less than the recommended amount (7 quarts). The oil level sensor still read too full. I thought that if it's over it can't be by much. I got a couple warnings after driving it hard for 15-20 minutes. So yesterday morning I drained off a quart of oil. I lowered it off the jack/stands and it was still reading too high. WTH? I took it for a short drive and checked it again and it was still reading too high so I drained off another quart, lowered it again and the oil level sensor is reading too high. Alright, WTF? I'm beginning to wonder if the sensor is stuck. It did give me a low oil warning a couple months ago about 6000 miles after the first oil change, so I know it was working when I bought the car. According to my calculations it should have about 6 quarts in the sump. 

While I was at it I changed the air filter for the first time (64500 miles). That involved removing the soundproofing and engine cover. It was a bit of a project but it was worth the piece of mind. The old filter that had ~15k miles on it but was actually in pretty good condition.

In the afternoon my wife and I took a drive to Pacific Grove (Monterey). We stopped at a couple parking areas and I was reminded why ground clearance is a good thing. These are dirt lots and the recent rain made some pretty large potholes. Even though I was driving carefully I wound up bottoming the car once. Part of me really wants to lower the car 20mm with the Cayman R springs, but then something like this reminds me that a little extra fender gap is a good thing. 

I have a 987.2 base that I recently acquired and That oil level sensor on these cars drives me nut. At least on the 987.1's you can get a reading while engine is still cold. With the .2 models you need to wait till it's warm, make sure the engine is idling, wait etc etc..

I did first oil change not that long ago, let it drain for a good number of hours while I was doing the rear brakes and put in a little less than 7.5 liters and it's showing halfway full. Will add a bit more to get 3/4 full and leave it there as I heard these do not need to be full full.