The engine has seemingly loosened up, revs quicker and the car has got quicker. Lol at the manual tranny complaints of not being sporty enough. Rear wheel traction is virtually non existent now if you want to have fun and nail it in first two gears.

RE: Tranny complaints

First thing I do when cranking it up is put it into sports plus and it's always in manual. I never shift beyond 4th or 5th even when on the interstate. I would rather have a manual and used manuals in my daily drivers since high school, except for my last Porsche twin turbo that had pdk and a brief moment with an M3 that had smg.

Do those complaining about normal mode shift characteristics or econo mode really even want a sports car to begin with???!???!!! Funny part, is I was the first on here to say it needed a remap, but quickly found problem solved by manual mode.

It really ain't that difficult to shift gears with paddles or the shifter in manual mode, especially when no clutch.

BTW, I down shift pretty aggressively in normal driving. Curious Yoder how the tranny holds up.

RE: Reliability

Only issue so far was spoiler stuck up. Kind of wish I would have left it stuck up as I like the look better . . . No other issues and just had 15,000 service done last week.

Definitely not a Bimmer in terms of reliability and minor annoyances . . .

 

Haha Doug I remember reading about your concerns a few months back! I would have to agree about the car "warming" up and responding and feeling faster after some time with it. I also do the same driving in regards to Sport + and manual mode at all times. Even though this is in my RC350 F-Sport, I can still relate to what you're talking about and now that I'm thinking about moving into an RCF, its good to hear similar stories from a true enthusiast!

BTW how did you already hit 15k miles?!?!

 

Great to hear Doug, WHERE have you Been lately?

 

Thanks for the great update!

 

Another 100% manual mode guy here (have had manuals all my life until the GTR and now the RC-F). But have news for you on the above statement: the tranny shifts just as quickly in sport or sport+ when in MANUAL mode, FYI. So you can choose between fake or no fake engine noise. I almost always have it in sport, especially now that I left the intake flap open all the time. It's almost as loud as the fake noise, but now it's 'natural', as in made by the engine, not a synthesizer. He he. I also like the steering a bit less artificially hard on sport than sport+. Hope this helps.

 

Sport+ seems to have better part throttle response, also I have 7k miles and in expert mode if I floor it in 1st off a red light at 4k it just pegs redline and spins until 2nd then keeps spinning lol, lots of fun and not much noise I am sure it's about 10-20$ per time and I do it 1-2 times a day lol.

@ Doug did it seem to get better after 7k miles? I thought it was in my head but it does seem to keep getting faster lol.

 

It does. I am actually used to much quicker and more abrupt acceleration. I have to say that the RC F really seemed to loosen up a bit here in the last 3,000 to 5,000 miles. Instead of getting used to it, it is actually getting more fun. Lol, rear wheel traction is a thing of the past. My four year old daughter loves it when I drift it. She, however, usually tells mommy on me that daddy was having fun again.

Johnny Reb: Been crazy busy. How have you been?

FR500 GT:

I have several clients and cases 100 plus miles away. This car is my commuter.

 

Not so much a noise thing as I fully understand that silliness, but I am going by the assumption that there were more differences than just sound between sport and sports +. Lol, never cared enough to look it up. Besides, I like the display better for sports + so that cool enough for me to use even if same engine mapping and steering and suspension settings.

 

Maybe, but I'd have to try again by switching modes while accelerating. The difference is very obvious from normal to sport, and the car surges forward when switching those modes. But sport to sport+ is minimal, if at all. What I don't like about sport+ is the heavy steering. The bad news is if you want to drive like a hooligan, sport+ is your only choice. With that aggressive throttle mapping and heavy steering, you have to be careful if you turn all nannies off. Since I don't want to ruin my expensive tires, I don't go beyond 'expert'. I already did enough hooligan crap on an RC-F executive demo with a salesman friend of mine (that's what sold me on this car), so I'm not curious anymore. Besides, expert mode allows plenty of fun while still being relatively safe. Lexus got it right in that regard IMO. Just wish this car had independent steering and throttle mapping settings, like on BMWs.

 

I am a hooligan and I detest power assisted steering on a sports car.

I want to feel front tire grip and road surface as much as possible so I can give tiny, precise steering inputs or controlled, tiny weight transfers just enough to increase grip at the onset of understeer. I grew up driving and racing 911s since the early 80s. Pre 964 steering and clutches . . . now those were heavy in traffic and around town, but a joy to drive at speed. 964s and 993s were about perfect. The new 991s have a bit of a filtered feel, but they have a great turn in. I would still much rather have no power assist at speed and a manual with a clutch pedal in any sports car. The art of heel toe, rev matching and double clutching is a lost art form.

 

Amen to that brother. But as you know, no-power assisted steering is heavy while stopped or slow, but quite light underway, especially when losing traction. Therefore, you know exactly what the tires are doing, and it's quite easy to transfer to the wheels what you want them to do. What I HATE Is artificially numbing the steering even more by making it heavier, pretending that's the 'sporty' thing to do. I loved driving my brother's Cobra replica with a 450HP big block in there. The engine was heavy enough to give the manual steering the perfect weight, stopped or running. Car was brutal, but was fun to drift and catch it almost without provocation. On these cars with artificially weighted steering you just can't do that. I much rather have it light and communicative. Hard to describe the feeling, but hope I'm making myself understood. The best steering nowadays is found in cars I don't enjoy much to drive due to very awkward driving positions, and that would be Ferraris. People complain the steering is super light... and it is. But only at slow speeds. It remains quite light under way, but you can tell it has little to no assist; just the way it should be IMO. Americans expect their freaking cars to track straight while they drink their coffee on one hand and text with the other... unless a 50-lb force is applied to the steering wheel. Ha ha. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but European cars are not like that. Porsche has the best electric steering now IMO, but for that statement to be true for me, you need the European version, which is an option here called 'power steering plus'. THAT is sweet compared to the RC-F and almost every other car. Haven't driven a Ferrari with electric steering yet (that'd be the 488), so curious if they're going to best Porsche on that too or not. I doubt it though, as Porsche has been perfecting it for years now. I'm seriously thinking about trading the RC-F for a new 911 GTS with a manual (the 2015 7-sp is crap, but was reengineered for 2016), but don't know. Can't justify that much money for a little better car... but man, that manual tranny on a departing NA engine is now or never, as 2016 production ends in Dec... and all new Porsches will be turbos now. Will drive my RC-F to Austin next week, and that trip will help me determine if I dropped the idea, or put a Tanabe touring exhaust and keep it for a while. I really hope it's the latter. And yes, plan to drive a GTS in Austin. What I don't like one iota is there's no local dealership, and that's the reason I've never owned a Porsche before. This might be the last chance to own a new one, as I'm not interested in a turbo and/or automatic one (and even less both). The value is simply not there (Porsche has the highest profit per car for that reason). Debated buying a Cayman GTS over the GTR (less money for the Porsche, even fully loaded), but 3K rpm in 6th at just 70 mph is absolutely ridiculous. And too small, plus no manual 7-sp there. So bought the GTR instead, but it was a mistake, and traded for the RC-F (lost my a$$ on that one).

 

I poked around online a bit, and didn't see anything on how to leave the intake flap open. How did you go about doing that? Do you give up anything by leaving it open all the time, like power or heat soak? I'm very interested and would love that sound all the time like you have it setup.
I saw one video on the IS-F and somebody made a comment that you lose power. So I just wanted to confirm with somebody else that has done it on the RC-F.

Cheers,

 

Wow I am impressed that coming from a 997 turbo PDK you actually like this transmission. That's a great sign considering the PDK is one of the best auto-clutch transmissions ever made.

 

No power loss at all... but it's not summer. It's obvious there'd be more heatsoak with the flap open than thru the intake opening (coolest air you can get)... but above 3,600 rpm it opens anyway, which is not great for performance in summer. There should be a separate switch for this gimmick IMO. I'm probably going to put it back to stock. As far as now that is cool, the flap is before the air filter, so no power lost or gained. It's just there to create noise, and bypassing it makes it progressive, not all of a sudden. Very easy to do and reverse though. Try it, and let me know how you like it. You don't need the vacuum plugs I used, but looks cleaner that way. All you need to do to try it is disconnect that little hose from the actuator (red arrow to the right in the pic below), and stick a wooden golf tee and go for a ride. If you like it, I'd buy the vacuum plugs I put for a OEM look. I carry the little hose in the glove compartment, to reverse at any time (like on a trip, if undesirable). You can also disconnect the connector, but that throws a 'soft' code, so I rather not do that. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for posting that up. I'm going to give it a try, because I love that sound! Thanks again!!