Porsche Cayenne Build

[CaseyS]

I got to a point mid last year where I was in the garage and stared and had a moment. I came to the realization that I basically had two toys in the garage and no real daily driver. The H3 has been serving me well, but its not the most refined thing on the road. I was up over 420k miles around this time. The second toy was a 2003 Audi RS6. This car also served a good purpose for the time I've owned it but it had over 240k miles and had gone through two extended downtimes with suspension refresh work and recently just short of an engine pull to fix coolant leaks, a power steering pump and a timing belt job. I decided to list the Audi for sale and planned to earmark the funds for upgrades to the next garage addition.

At this point I wasn't sure what I wanted in a daily driver and went through an inventory of what was out there. I kept the search to something that was fairly modern, not older that 10 years old and reliable enough that I could treat it like a reliable daily. I settled on a Porsche Cayenne platform. The first gen Cayennes are sought after for off roading as they included a transfer case with low range. The second gen kept the lockable 4wd case but dropped the low range. This fit the mission as I do not intend to tackle much more than backroads or gravel trails if I "overland" it.

The second gen was produced from 2011 to 2018. The 958.1 from 2011-2014 and a facelifted 958.2 from 2015-2018. I decided on the 958.2 to stay with more recent model years. There are several engine options and trims including a 3.6 VR6 base, a twin turbo 3.6 v6 S model, and a 4.8 twin turbo v8 Turbo model. I found a great deal on a 2016 S model and picked it up from a private seller in Houston. Under $16k and 117k miles on the clock. Soccer mom vehicle that was in good mechanical condition but was in need of a good detailing.

Here it is the day I picked it up.

The S trim gives me a 420 HP twin turbo 3.6 v6 with plenty of guts, 8 speed transmission, AWD and PLENTY of comfort. I've taken it up for a dash to 120 and its super smooth with plenty more in it. Its not super "quick" per se, but if you lay into it, it keeps giving.

 

[atvspeed4]

Nice! I had a 2011 turbo for a while loved that car until the 8 speed started having problems. Rumor is that it was comfortable up to 167mph

 

[CaseyS]

So Eurowise is one of the best sources for parts and upgrades for the Cayenne/Touareg platform and they also support some other european platforms like G-Wagon. Some of their stuff feels a little pricey, but its all high quality and USA made.

I played around trying to decide what to build out and what I wanted out of the vehicle. I don't plan on abusing it so there was really no need for full bumpers, skid plates and rockers. I wanted to keep a simple lifted look, with beefier tires and a functional roof rack.

The Cayenne is available with full air suspension options, but when shopping for this, I knew I would be lifting it and would just be a lift and forget and really no need for adjustable ride height and adjustable dampers. This simplified the lift, as its perched on coil springs on all four corners. Lift is accomplished by simply shimming the coil perch to raise the ride height. There is a limit to how far you can go due to A arm geometry and half shaft angles. Euro wise offers a standard 2" lift and a 3" lift which involves also shims for the subframe to keep the lower arms at proper angles. I opted for the 2" lift to give enough to clear larger tires and still keep a reasonable center of gravity.

Install was decently straightforward with the exception of the rear shocks lower pivot which seemed like it would never go. It took a few hours of some excessive leverage and drift pins to get the lower joint to line up but it finally went in. The front shims stack on the top of the strut and are a 5 minute affair. The rear shim goes inside the strut between the spring and the top hat. This requires compressing the spring and disassembling the strut. This is always hairy with the rental spring compressors and its a real pain in the ass getting clearance on the compressor and grabbing enough of the coil to get all of the tension off of it. To take up the additional length, a shock rod extension is part of the kit.

Here are the rear struts dropped out. Took all of 45 minutes to get these down then the rest of the day to rebuild the strut.

Here you can see how much longer the strut grew and the pivot point that needed to get aligned