One thing that has been really annoying me lately about my 911 GT3 is its tendency to scrape the bottom of the front bumper on driveways, even with the front-axle lift system turned on. Perhaps the driveways of San Francisco are just designed differently compared to those of Europe, because I’d thought opting for the nose lift would eliminate a majority of potential scraping issues. In reality, the system is no panacea against a mangled front-lip; even with the front-end raised and attacking the incline an angle, I cannot avoid scraping just exiting the carwash I frequent.
And sometimes you’re not afforded the space to do fancy angles, so you simply take the scraping as it comes, the horrible sound that plastic on concrete makes.
Ever since I had the privilege to my own car, I’ve had this weird obsession with keeping the bottom of the front bumper clean of scrape damage. This is of course a near impossible task as the cars I tend to buy are of the low-slung sporting variety, rather than tall sports utility vehicles that can go up driveway head-on without consequences to the paintwork. My first car – a Toyota Corolla – is a bog-standard family car with reasonable ride height, yet two weeks into ownership, I utterly obliterated the front bottom while pulling into a friend’s house.
I can remember being mentally devastated, lacking in the maturity to handle stuff like that as part of the experience of owning a car. Lacking in the funds to take the Corolla to a body shop – so obsessively compulsive I was that I’d actually pay money to fix damage that you can’t see at unless you lay on the ground and look upwards – I began to surf car forums to commiserate with people that suffered similar fates. It gave me some solace to see that cars at any price point, from plain sedans to fast exotics, are not immune to front bumper scraping.
So I learned to take driveways at peculiar angles, as if I drove a car worthy of the pages of StanceNation or Hellaflush. But it only takes one moment of inattention and all your dutiful carefulness is for naught. Such as it were with my Subaru Impreza WRX STI. You’d think an all-wheel drive sports sedan bred for rallying would have zero problems going up driveways without scraping, but you’d be wrong. The front bottom of the car got seriously damaged while I was pulling up into a Safelite for a front windshield replacement. I’d forgotten to attack the driveway at an angle, and apparently it was far steeper than I thought.
There goes the pristine front bumper.
After that incident, I drove the STI as it were: I had begun to accept stuff like that as part of the game, though I’d be lying if I said it was mentality easy to get over it. There’s no guarantee it won’t happen again if I get the bumper repainted to new condition.
One of the many reason I miss my old ND Mazda Miata the most is that it’s a car I never have to worry about scraping on driveways and parking blocks. The front overhang of the MX-5 is so short that it’s nearly impossible to touch it on anything because the wheels are there immediately to take up the slack. The tiny roadster also sits sufficiently high enough that parking curbs don’t pose a danger, which is something I cannot say for both the Corolla and the STI.
Obviously, I abandoned that peace of mind when I upgraded to the 911 GT3. In order to own and drive one of the finest sports cars ever produced, there’s got to be some sacrifices. Indeed, the GT3 sits lower than the Toyota Corolla with the 2-inch drop I put on it, and after not having to pay any any attention while owning the Miata, I had to go back to defensive driving of the kind that avoids hitting the front bumper bottom on things. That entails slowing insufferably down (for the driver behind me) for speed bumps, taking driveways at odd angles – when possible, and stopping the car before the parking curb stop.
I’d thought buying a used GT3 with the front-axle lift option ticked would make life easier, but after a year of owning the 911 in San Francisco, I’m not sure how much of a help the system really is. You forget to turn it on once and there goes the front lip spoiler crunching on the street surface. Even with the lift system turned on, the front-end still isn’t as high as you’d like, therefore you either scrape or have to angle the car at 45-degrees regardless. Knowing this now, if I were to do this over again and get the opportunity to spec a GT3 to my liking, I’d skip the axle lift option and save the few thousands of dollars and 12 kilograms.
Because I’m going to scrape the front-end anyways, with or without the system.
Porsche in its infinite wisdom knew the GT3’s front lip would get utterly chewed up, either by steep driveways, or at tracks with nasty curbing. So they engineered the piece as unpainted plastic, easily replaceable for a few hundred dollars. Because the front lip is black, you wouldn’t notice the damage unless you’re right up against it, which no one would be doing. It’s both functional and aesthetically pleasing, though someone needs to explain to me why am I then still OCD about scrape damage. I guess old mental habits die hard, and honestly, the scraping sound remains one of the worse noises you can hear from a car, no matter if the scarring is superficial and easily remedied.
At the beginning of my ownership period I had replaced the front lip with a brand-new piece, and one year later the bottom of that is looking rather tattered. To allay my OCD nerves, I could buy yet another replacement, but money is a bit tight to make that move. Honestly, it looks fine from the surface, and with an expensive brake service on the horizon, money should go towards functional items and not aesthetic pieces.
Another thing that’s also annoying me lately about the GT3 is the center-lock wheel hubs. I am convinced they are the most useless, needlessly complicated feature to ever be fitted to a road car. If there was an option for to get normal five-lug wheel hubs, I’d pay serious money for that because center-lock wheels are all hassle, zero benefit.
The frustration started from this past December when I took the car in for service. The rear Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires were worn down to the cords, so a replacement set was absolutely needed to get me safely back on the road. To my frustration, the dealer refused to install tires that aren’t prescribed from the factory, meaning I was unable to switch to the acclaimed Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, even though it comes in Porsche-approved ‘N0’ specification.
Under normal circumstances with a car that has the standard five-lug bolt pattern, I can simply put the vehicle on jack-stands and take the wheels myself to a proper tire shop. Fitted with center-locking wheels, the GT3 makes that task needlessly difficult. To get the tire off I’d need a special breaker bar that’s capable of undoing the 450 ft-lbs. the center nut is tightened down to. Upon return from the tire shop, there’s a delicate greasing procedure on the nut (incredibly messy) before you once again tighten it back to that huge torque number. This requires a specialized torque wrench, and a whole other person to sit in the driver seat and push down on the brakes, because you must torque the wheels while it is still jacked up in the air.
A wrench and bar set capable of the task is over $400 dollars, an expense that I otherwise would not have to fork over had Porsche not chosen vanity over utility and equipped the GT3 with the standard five-lug wheel pattern.
And it’s an expense I still have yet to pay: for the time being I’ve decided to have professionals deal with the center-locking hubs, should I require any tire service. Unfortunately, that presents another problem: finding a tire shop that knows how to deal with center-lock wheels is tremendously difficult. From what I’ve read, the typical chain store doesn’t have the knowledge – or tools – to properly reattach the wheels. With the sort of speed and performance that the GT3 is capable of, the last thing you want is the wheels not correctly torqued down to specs.
Let’s recap, shall we? For the glory of having pretty-looking center-lock wheels, you’d need an expensive wrench to take the wheels off, the procedure of which is more complicated than usual, and you’ll need a mate to help out. Should you want a different set of tires from the factory specification, you’ll have to find a specialty tire shop that knows how to deal with center-locking hubs to fit them for you, rather than simply going to the closest America’s Tire.
Center-lock wheels is the one feature I truly dislike in the otherwise splendid 911 GT3.
As expected, mileage on the car for February was tragically low. Life’s circumstances got in the way and I didn’t exercise the 911 as much as I’d have liked. I barely squeaked pass January’s mileage total, a month which I was out of the country for two weeks!
There is a small incident of note during this month: I was driving up a super narrow road up in the San Mateo mountains, barely enough width for two normal cars to pass each other. An oncoming car did not keep lane discipline, and I had to take evasive maneuver to avoid a collision. In doing so, the front passenger-side wheel momentarily dipped into the drainage rut, and the front underside of the car made contact with pavement.
Thankfully, the damage is limited to some superficial scrapes underneath front trunk pan, and one severely mangled bumper clip, easily replaceable with a $40 dollar (!) part. The aforementioned front lip spoiler took the brunt of the hit, and it honestly looked no worse for wear than before. Porsche engineered the GT3 to tackle curbing at race tracks, so I shouldn’t be surprised a little bounce off the tarmac left only slight cosmetic damage.
Chalk it up as another dose of patina for those all-important ‘character’ points. Stuff like this will happen when you put miles on the car, and I don’t intend to stop.
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Date acquired: January 2019
Total mileage: 29,497
Mileage this month: 230
Costs this month: $353.42
MPG this month: 17.58 mpg