Can this be done with the car on a ramp? I understood from a supposed former Porsche tech that removing the diagonal aluminum braces somehow unsupports the wheel carriers, and heinous damage would result if the car's weight was still on the tires.

I'd rather not have to work under jackstands. Any help appreciated.

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You can place the weight of the car down on the supports without the cross-brace installed, but you will need to have the car re-aligned later on. We did this continuously when pushing our project car around the shop during the engine swap. As for a ramp, I'm not sure that's safer than jack stands - if you feel odd about the stands, then put the car up on the ramps, then jack it up and leave the ramps in place, so that if the jack stands fail, the car simply rests back on the ramps.

- Wayne

I used ramps to raise our 986 making it easier to lift it to jack stand height for clutch, IMS bearing and RMS work. Interesting note is the forward bolts for the aluminum diagonals were loose and the diagonals would not come off the rear studs easily and were a fight to get back on later as they did not align with holes. All retorqued and will be monitored as part of my winter inspection. I blocked under the wheels as a safety but was glad of the space that ramps would have taken.
Ron

Thanks for the advice. So looks like I can do it on ramps, but might have to struggle to get the crossbrace back on at the end. Fair enough.

I don't believe any of the responders said that! I think the general idea is that you can use ramps to get the car on jack stands easier. Then you can leave the ramps in place as a safety net if that would make you feel any better.

More specifically, the rear suspension carrier is a light weight aluminum part with tall and narrow aspect ratio which can get tweaked easily without some kind of lateral support on the bottom. Wayne stated that they rolled around their project car that way but remember that was a car without the extra weight of the engine and transaxle!