My issue is that as time goes on, my free time becomes more valuable. As such, I have noticed that I've grown to despise doing maintenance. If I knew I could trust somebody with my cars, I would love to have somebody do oil changes, spark plugs, and all the other basic junk for me. I hate it lol used to love it.
On top of that, I have a kitchen full of upgrades for various vehicles that I'm dragging my feet on. I used to be half tempted to call in sick to work just so I could play with cars, now I just want to drive them.

 

About GT3 track running costs vs other cars, a lot of it is prolly just over charging “cause it’s a GT3”. Even if you pay to have all the work done I’m sure you can find a mechanic that doesn’t rip you off. Sure rotors are still super expensive if you run the ceramics, but other than that tires should be the biggest expense.

a friend of mine has a Viper and went to a local Porsche shop (Cantrell Motorsport), they quoted him 18k for a rear diff cooler. He ended up doing it himself, took him a couple hours to figure out what parts he needs and a few hours to install it. So if you go to a shop like that for track prep I can see running costs for a track day being that absurd…

 

The issue with porsche is you pay porsche tax to buy parts. So for example if your refreshing the engine you have to buy alot of genuine porsche bits for them and thats where the big money is. Also you need alot of specialised tooling to strip and rebuild them so theres where the shops can justify their charge rates.

Also for a cup car for example alot of the value in the cars is in the servicing history and accurate record keeping of the hours and maintenance thats meant to be carried out. cup cars that are overdue on engine and gearbox maintenance hours seem to take a long time to sell unless they are listed very cheap due to this.

 

I am with you on that. I have a whole room I dedicated to car parts since it takes me forever to install them. I currently have a decent list of stuff I need to install and no time... Plus its now cold (ok just CA cold but still been in the 30s when I have time to install) so I have had no motivation. Really thinking of paying someone to install the stuff that requires the subframe to be dropped but not sure I trust anyone.

 

In my experience, it's not worth it. I would even still do my own alignment if I still had access to a rack.

 

I mean sure, but it’s not like you need to do an engine refresh or change belts every track day, or even every season. Honestly if you do it’s a pos (the street car, cup car that’s raced is different). I can see Porsche putting a thing in there warranty that all the fluids need to be changed every track day to keep the warranty. And I can see shops like the one I mentioned charging an arm and a leg for that, but it’s not exactly something that actually justifies that cost.

this reminds me of a YouTube vid I saw a while ago, some Nurburgring regular was talking about how reliable his gt3 is as a ‘ring tool, just needs regular maintenance, just had my 100k (km) engine rebuild done and its great… yeah, any car is super reliable when you consider an engine rebuild at 60k miles as regular maintenance.

 

I guess that's why people with built engines in the Evo say they are reliable. My version of reliable is my new engine making it another 100k+ miles.

 

I mean a built engine with all aftermarket parts pushing 3x+ stock power is different... you should know what you're getting into there. but a stock unmodified engine... honestly shouldn't even need new spark plugs till 100k

 

That does sound weird. I've talked to two people that do HPDE in their GT3s. One's been doing it for 2 years and the other for three. The only things they've ever needed are consumables. Super reliable. I guess not a lot of people with 60,000 mi on their Porsches to aid in documentation of reliability as mileage increases.
I see other model 911s with a ton of miles....the turbo and GT3 are supposed to have even better engines. Reliability is the number one reason I was looking at a GT3 over anything else.

 

so what are they doing that costing them that much per track day?

 

Neither of them mentioned anything out of the ordinary to me. I'm sure brake pads and rotors are more expensive than I'm used to, but that's expected. They both ran steel brakes as opposed to carbon ceramic since they were doing track days. Tires are tires and the wheels they got for track days probably cost a little more. They made it sound reasonable, but I guess that is subjective.

 

I met a Corvette ZR1 owner this year that stated he was on his 3rd set of Carbon Ceramic rotors. Even being half the price of Porsche carbon ceramics, that is still around $6,000 each time for all four. Dude must just light bills on fire as he drives down the street.

 

most Porsches I see at the track switch to steel rotors, most vette guys too. But the people that go from a gt3 to a vette with ceramics are like wow, this is cheap, I’ll just use the ceramics.

iirc a set of 4 ceramics for a gt3 is north of 20k. 5-6k for a vette sounds like a bargain

 

any feedback on how much time they lost making the move from carbon to steel?

 

I mean we’re talking enthusiasts doing track days, not pros… difference is minimal to none. Even with pros difference is pretty small. Most pro race cars still use steel brakes… although as I write that I realize it’s prolly more due to class rules than anything else