New tail... opinions?

wastintime · 05-16-2005, 08:56 PM

Hey everyone,

Well, I just got my new spoiler back from the paint shop. I'm thrilled with the paint job, it's amazing. It was done for me by two of the painters who used to work at the Porsche PDA facility here in Charleston. What's funny is they probably worked on the car when it first entered the country.

I'm really not thrilled with the tail itself. I bought it from GT-Racing. It was apparently a nightmare to prep, the carbon fiber wing is really fiberglass with a "CF look" overlay on the lower wing surface, it came missing some parts, and with extras I didn't need, no instructions at all. The fitment is also dissapointing. It fits ok, but not perfectly. All in all, I'm not sure it was actually worth the money, but oh well. It does look good I guess.

I snapped a few quick pictures of it in my garage. thought I'd see what you guys think:

Before:

The new tail:

Hayabusa · Hayabusa's Garage

I like it. I'm a big fan of the carrera type spoiler with narrow bodies. But you were obviously after something more.

Did you ever consider the European RS meltdown as an option or were you set on this one?

RSBob · RSBob's Garage

Umba, umba! SCORE!!!

wastintime · 05-16-2005, 09:35 PM

here's another pic from behind... i'm not crazy about the base... they say that's what the stock 3.8 tail looked like. i.e. without room for an intercooler, but I'm not sure. I'll have to look at a friend of mines who does have room for the intercooler tomorrow and see if there's a big difference.

I really liked the carrera style tail that came stock on the RSA, and with the early turbo rubber, it made a ton of downforce. This was both a performance/looks upgrade. I've never really heard of anyone testing the difference in downforce between the two tails, not the two cars (knowing Porsche... pre 1999 I would imagine it's equal if not superior), but it definitely makes less drag, and weighs about 35lbs less. And it was correct on the 3.8 RSRs, and since I've got a 3.6 RSA of the same year I at least got to stick with the right period.

wastintime · 05-17-2005, 02:19 PM

Well, I had some friends today tell me that they thought the tail simply looked amazing, and some very picky Porsche owners couldn't tell how badly it fit until I pointed out the problems to them, so... I guess it looks pretty good. I still can't decide if I'm happy or not, but I think if I can just get the damn wing element swapped out for a real carbon fiber one, that will be great... that and get some hood stops on it, and I just don't feel like drilling and cutting fiberglass right now.

Christien · Christien's Garage

If you get a chance, post some close-up pics of the areas where you consider it to fit poorly. It looks pretty good in the pics above, considering that a FG or CF decklid almost never fits perfectly.

wastintime · 05-17-2005, 08:01 PM

Christien,
I posted the pics of the good side. It's hard to show in pictures how it fits badly, and most of it you probably would say is me being to nit-picky, but the big problem that I don't like, is no matter what we've done to it, the right side fits perfectly with the body, and the left side doesn't, and if you get them both to line up, then you can't close or open the decklid. Playing around with the hinge adapters just seems to make matters worse.

vs. the right side:

89911 · 05-17-2005, 08:11 PM

My brother had a body-shop work for almost a week making that bumper look right. And no, your not being too picky. Whenever we look at cars that have aftermarket bumpers, tails, or fenders, you can see the ones that look like the were just mounted and painted and the ones that were custom finished to fit. It is the difference between a car looking like it came of the assembly line and one that had some parts added in a garage.

jpahemi · 05-17-2005, 09:51 PM

Fit on the after market copies always seems to be a problem; why not go with the real thing. Yes it will be more expensive, but it will fit..
j.p.

Christien · Christien's Garage

Andrew,

I see what you mean. I don't think you're being nit-picky - I mean, it passes the 5 foot test, but I know what you're thinking. I've got an aftermarket FG ducktail which fits in a very similar way, although opposite. The left side looks fine, but the right has a gap that I just can't close. Luckily, mine was sitting too low, so I was able to fix it somewhat by just adding spacers between the hinge and the lid.

As for aftermarket vs. the "real thing", often the real thing is prohibitively expensive - if I wanted to put a real factory ducktail on my car, it would've cost me at least 4x the price I paid, and that's assuming I could even find one for sale.

Chris

wastintime · 05-18-2005, 08:05 AM

Oh yeah, an original 3.8 RSR tail... if you can find one is like $4k at least... so with paint and any other stuff that might come up, it's almost $5k. if I had that much to throw away on a spoiler, I'd probably just buy the 3.8 RSR. I mean, I'm pissed that I've spent a total of $1700 on it so far, and that's with me getting two big discounts for working in a shop and it doesn't look the way I want it to.

wastintime · 05-18-2005, 08:52 AM

Another hour of mm by mm adjustments later and I think it's looking better, at least the sides are getting closer together:

wastintime · 05-18-2005, 08:59 AM

Brian,
lol, yeah... problem is there's only so much I'm willing to do this nice of a limited production car. Now if my old C2 hadn't died... that would have been a fun project.