Nick Jeffery
I have much to report since I wrote my last LTL column.
I’ve finally part exchanged the 981 Cayman S for a Jet black 987 Boxster Spyder for a start. As regular readers will know, I’ve been toying with the idea of moving the Cayman on for a while now and had been focusing on something that would be as good to drive or better but with a far greater visual impact, with added rarity and rock-solid residuals. The main contenders ended up being the 987-generation Cayman R/spyder, the subsequent 981-generation Spyder and GT4, plus dialogue around a manual 997.2 Carrera with all the right options.
In the end I opted for the firstgeneration Spyder as it ticks all my boxes, is an absolute hoot to drive and finally offers something completely different to my GT3 and GTS. In fact, it’s my first soft top!
In other news the GTS picked up a door dent on the passenger side adjacent to the door handle. Following a recommendation by a close friend (Roy!), I contacted Ryan Shakespeare at Fixadent (Fixadent.co.uk) who came back with a very reasonable quote of £135, stating he would do his best to rectify the damage. He was able to fit me into his busy schedule within a week or so and, despite the variable weather conditions that day, did an amazing job using his paintless dent removal (PDR) tools! I’m over the moon with the result, which is 100% perfect with absolutely no sign of the previous dent whatsoever, and I would wholeheartedly recommend Ryan to anyone who suffers a similar fate to their pride and joy!
After the trauma of the nearside door, it was off to North Wales for a four-day road trip including the Porsche Club GB track day at the famous Anglesey Circuit. I had intended on taking the
GT3 but the weather forecast looked grim, so opted to take the GTS instead. In the end, it was absolutely the right choice as the GT3 would have fallen at the first hurdle, as it wouldn’t have made it up the steep drive to our rented accommodation in Betws-y-coed! The GTS performed faultlessly on track and revelled in the wet conditions! In fact, it was passing far more exotic machinery on track, much of which was down to the prevailing weather and other people running on Cup tyres! Anglesey is a truly epic circuit and, if you’ve not been, I would totally recommend it!
Following the Welsh road trip, I decided, as a precautionary measure, to book the GTS into Paragon to have the PDK transmission oil changed. The recommended service interval for the PDK unit is six years, but I feel that’s too long and decided to have it done at three years. I’m really pleased I did as the gearbox is far smoother now and even more intuitive and responsive! Apparently the ECU and gearbox get a ‘reset’ at every oil change, hence the improvement! I also asked Paragon to check both bonnet struts as they were making a creaking noise when you first open the bonnet. All they needed was stripping down and regreasing. Finally, I asked Paragon to give the car a health check to ensure nothing was amiss following five 20-minute sessions out on track. The only thing they noted was the front brake pads are down to 5mm where the brake warning light will be triggered at 3mm. Given the car will be going back to Paragon for a precautionary oil change and MOT in October, and I’m only likely to cover 1-1.5k miles between now and then, I decided to defer until then. After all, it’s been an expensive month!