BRAN's - 986 - Seal Gray Anatomy

[BRAN]

omg....an artsy 986 pattern

photoshoped to get an impression of a possible layout, has a damascene vibe sort of.

BRAN signature is for real

[BruceH]

I love the BRAN signature

[BRAN]

Finally time to say good bye?

front suspension, oil drips on engine (IMS/RMS/valve covers) ... TÜV said NEIN! You shall not pass!

[BRAN]

After being in a loooooong waiting line for a service/repair at a PZ (Porsche center), I brought the Boxster back home supposedly fixed.
Major rattling noises the next day made me take this precaution...bringing it back. An unbelievable story, too long to be told.

But it has TÜV approval now.

[BruceH]

UGH! That is a bummer

[78F350]

Glad you got TUV approval, hopefully Porsche will fix it all the way this time. Some day when you do let it go, it should go to the Porsche Museum.

[BRAN]

Haha...your collection deserves to be shown there. nice photoshop job

Next project was on hold for months now, since my Boxster found a new home in the PZ dungeons. I wasn't too happy with the phone functionability of my Pioneer unit.
So it was time to rip it all out to make space for a final solution: PCCM+


And oh boy that thing is a competitor for the so called car audio brands. Designed in Germany and manufactured partly in China, it shows my Blaupunkt, Pioneer and Boss car audio systems the backlights. IN EVERY ASPECT. I could not believe it! I thought that was all marketing BS when it was introduced. I was absolutely wrong.
Overpriced? For sure.
Cheap china knock off quality? For sure not

1st impressions after a brief test (before I noticed that it needs to go back to the hospital): 9/10 points

1. Works out of the box. No additional adaptors (like all the other brands) necessary. Wow! Thank you for less cable chaos and head scratching, Porsche. OEM brown ISO plug, click...OEM black ISO plug, click. Done.
2. Radio-antenna. I have spend my fair share of blood, sweat and money, to get my radios in an accaptable working state. Especially the DAB+ was troublesome. After 3-4 different antenna solutions, I had it working --> non-splitter/DAB+ only.
Porsche solution: FM/DAB+ splitter. 1 cable needs to be attached to the windsreen antenna cable, that is it. I was like....say what? That solution was considered from all the antenna specialists as non-working or sub-par.
Forums were full of comments, "you cannot..., it won't work.." AND THEY WERE RIGHT. It doesn't not work properly with any non-Porsche radio. BUT IT DOES WORK FOR THE PORSCHE OEM PCCM+.
Best FM/DAB+ radio reception ever! With my old windscreen antenna and just 1 cable...I was almost crying in disbelief. I completely deleted the old oem FM antenna amplifier. No wonky looking 3rd party solution. THANK YOU PORSCHE.
3. GPS antenna and directional mic. Installation of the GPS antenna in the OEM GPS compartment and routing the cable was easy peasy. I remember non-oem solutions, where I needed to mod/dremel the GPS cases, so they would fit somehow. OEM PCCM+ = snug fit and superior quality. THANK YOU PORSCHE.
4. Sound (very brief test without any major specific adjustments in the equlaizer settings). I thought, I had a very good setup with my Blaupunkt and Pioneer car audios. Troublesome was the difference in speaker OHM (dash 3ohm, door 4ohm).
PCCM+ takes it like a champ and blows a compact sound, that I thought was impossible. Even a subwoofer would not be necessary, but I have my tailored Kenwood solution now, so I will integrate it somehow.
BEST sound ever out of the box. Thank you Porsche.
5. Menu options. Not overburden, thank god for keeping it as direct and simple as possible. Thank you Porsche for keeping my attention on the road.
6. Display 800x480. I had my doubts, really. But the fonts, the menu and the icon designs are perfectly crisp. I was rubbing my eyes in disbelief, that this is not a fullHD setting. Cristal clear and super fast response. Just wow, what they did with that display.
7. Looks. Undisputed OEM look, especially in the horseshoe setup.

What do I miss to give it a 10/10:
1. Direct cinch subwoofer support (can be easily cured)
2. Direct backup camera support for the 996/986 pccm+ (technically possible though)
3. Direct radar front/rear support (impossible to integrate)
4. Wireless carplay support (can be easily cured)

sneak peak:

[Smallblock454]

1. Nice hood design! Love it.

2. PCCM+ i had some customers that had problems with popping noises and a kind of white noise while the PCCM+ is on and also off. Seems to depend on what amp config you have. If you use the internal amps the problems seems to be not present. But to me that's no wonder because the PCCM+ needs to work with +2 to +6 Volt inputs, hight-out inputs – so completely different impedances and also with the MOST bus amps. So there is a lot to test and to consider.