[Rap]

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[Rap]

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[Rap]

So the first day on the track with the new(94) engine was an interesting one. Oh October. The first run was done in the pouring ran at Pocono. Gotta tell you it donna git much better than driving with rain coming in the car and getting your left side wet! The car handled fine given the horrid conditions. The next run was with no rain and a slightly drying track which allowed me to check the engine out some more. The rest of the day was on a dry track. The engine is peppy and seems to run well. But I gotta say that not have the hp and more importantly the torque was disappointing. The difference between a NA and an sc car is huge. I'm running with a BMW group and I have a lot of cars passing me. Corners are a different story of course!

Today is supposed to start in the mid 30's. It's just going to be a cold day. Layering and winter jackets will be the order of the day.

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[Rap]

So I just ran my last event of the season at Thunderbolt. You may remember that at my last event there in August I blew my engine. Saturday I didn't take my car off the trailer because it poured all day. Cold and rainy huddled under pop up tents secured to cars and trailers. A 110,000 btu heater made it bearable. Although I was roundly mocked for my winter garb wear, I was realativly warm even though I stood in water. Are we having fun yet?



Next day sunshine, 44 degrees at 8:00am and winds at 25-30 mph. First run my hands where so cold I could barely get my Hans on. Cold track cold tires, Hoosiers, can you say slippery. After that things warmed up-47. I had Rob Provost go out with me with an ex instructor in his 968 following us to watch. Rob made me come in after a couple of laps because I was making him sick. Confidence inspiring? Seems I was getting on the gas just a tad to early and upsetting the car. So then later on he takes me out in my car. He did this before at Summit earlier in the season. Wow is my car fast properly driven. Without the sc. At Summit the tires where smoking when we came in. He was easier this time and just showed me lines and footwork.



I went out for my last run, started first and got passed only once. Momentum is my point here not speed. So now I'm jonesing and have nothing but a long winter to look forward to.



So I did 11 events this year. 3 in the last 5 weeks. March to November. With the help of Forum members I was able to overcome transmission and engine failures. So for anyone who might wonder about the value of being a 968 Forum member. I can attest to it. Without the help of certain members I would have been dead in the water.



Car is now once again home in the shop. Engine rebuild contemplated ,stripping of carpeting and bottom of rear seats plus hub replacement. Any suggestions from the masses?

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[flash]

a good shrink? if not that, a good jeweler?

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[Cloud9...68]

How are the brakes? My pedal is a little mushier than I'd like, so in conjunction with replacing the fluid, I bought a new master cylinder. I figure after 23 years, it's about time.



Are you looking for more ways to spend money on the car? The possibilities are endless...

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[Rap]

Yes but after I take up a collection here!

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[Rap]

Cloud go ahead and shoot. I've incorporated your suggestions previously!

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[Cloud9...68]

OK, since you asked... First, here's a picture of my brake vacuum booster with the master cylinder removed:



   



As you can see, the paint has been removed by brake fluid that has almost certainly leaked from the master cylinder. I hope this is the cause of my spongy pedal. The new master cylinder is installed - I'll bleed the system when I replace the brake fluid on Friday.



So, I would continue to prioritize safety related items for your winter project list, including:



- In addition to the aforementioned masted cylinder, do you have a good high temperature brake fluid, like Wilwood or Motul 600 Series? I imagine you do, given that the car has been taken care of by Provost, but I thought I'd ask



- Fuel lines. At 20+ years of age, you should at least inspect them very carefully, and maybe just go ahead and replace them. Lindsey Racing makes a nice set of steel braided lines, for less than the cost of a stock set. And they look cool.



- CV joint service. I understand Porsche recommends re-packing them with fresh grease every 75,000 miles. It isn't a fun job, so it probably isn't cheap, but if you don't have any record of it having been done, you should probably consider it.



If you decide to have the engine rebuilt, and decide to keep it NA, you might want to give Racers Edge a call and have them set you up with a set of Wossner true 11:1 compression pistons, and some upgraded connecting rods. I went with Pauter Lightweights, which are forged, and lighter yet stronger than any of the stock ones. I also had all of the internal components (piston tops, combustion chambers, valve faces, exhaust ports, and exhaust manifolds) ceramic coated by Swain Tech in New York. I don't know how much if any horsepower these things added, but my car feels really fast, for what that's worth.



My final piece of advice is: Embrace the NA. I just believe a naturally aspirated 968 properly set up and lightened is one of the best possible cars to learn the craft of track driving. I know the supercharger is a great product, but having a little less power forces you the learn to take corners faster, and to maximize exit speeds, which will ultimately make you a better driver. Two weekends ago, I finally took the advanced class at Driveway Austin. There were three other cars in the class - a Mini Cooper John Cooper Works, a 2012 M3, and a comparable age C Class AMG Mercedes. The Cooper and I should have been pretty evenly matched, and the M3 and AMG should have walked away from me, and yet guess who was the fastest car/driver in the class? It wasn't even very close. Not only could I corner faster than these guys, but I wasn't losing anything in the straights, either. As much as I'd like to think it was because of my superior driving talent, I think it was actually because having a little less power allowed me to go full throttle in parts of the track where the guys with 400+ HP under their right feet had to back off. In other words, I think I was able to squeeze more out of my car than the other guys, which imho is a valuable thing to learn in the long run.



The only other thing that comes to mind is to try chipping away at that list of items I emailed you to lighten the car. There's also a thread on the 944 Turbo and Turbo S forum on R.L. about lightening that had some more ideas. Good luck.

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[flash]

i'll take that line of thinking one step farther. the best car to learn in is probably a bone stock 944. no frills. no track tires. no lightening. the lowest power to weight ratio possible. that will teach you momentum driving. you will quickly learn that you can all but forget about the brakes, and learn to steer with the gas. worked wonders when i was running the mgb. then, you stay in that car until you make no more mistakes, and you are going as fast as possible. then, and only then, do you consider moving up.



but, the power bug bites us all, and we all too often jump up into prepping the car, and doing it within a budget that would dictate a lot more change if we had a bigger one.

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[Cloud9...68]

Fair enough. I just find that the 968 strikes a nice balance between still being a momentum car, and therefore a great teaching tool, while providing the fun factor of being able to keep up with cars that "should" be a lot faster. But your points about a car like a 944 are valid as well. I think we can all agree that learning on a car like a Corvette or an M3 isn't the best choice, yet an awful lot of people do it.

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[flash]

i've often thought that if i ever went back to tracking that i would go with a shifter cart. much better at honing your skills, less costly, much better sensation of speed.

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[Rap]

After getting a good training run the results of the next run were noticeable to me. Yet the sc is intoxicating. Cloud pm me on the cost of your suggestions. A single person won the recent MegaMillion drawing. It wasn't me! The other thing which I'm considering is some sort of trac timer. Flash and I talked about this over a year ago and I took his suggestion to concentrate on driving and not times. Now, I believe the times will be more useful as my skill has progressed.

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[flash]

one of the worst things you can do is focus on times. it messes with your rhythm. you end up rushing to make up time and making more mistakes. one season of DE stuff is nowhere near enough to need to know lap times. 40 or 50 days of track time and maybe it would be time to start thinking about that. certainly not until the setup of the car is done. really it won't be time until you can do a full day of sessions without making a single mistake. only then will it be time to use a timer to find out where you could go faster. until then, it will only prove to be a source of frustration, which can really get in the way of becoming faster.



that being said, the ability to log entry and exit speeds, as well as G loads through a turn is another thing altogether. that information can be very useful. being able to go back and review that, coupled with a video of the run, will help point out how well you are doing at hitting your line and holding a turn, as well as setting up for the next one. it will show weight transfers and how well you manage them, which is the key to "surfing" through the course.

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[Rap]

Actually this is my second full season and I'm pretty close to 50 days. The first season I participated in only 3 DE's. Interestingly enough it's really the corner speeds that appeal to me info wise as that is were this car performs best. I use videos now to review a track before I go back and to see how I ran. It also let's me review my runs so I can see what I've done right and wrong!

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[flash]

hmmm - i thought you'd only done about a dozen events, and a couple of those DNF.



well, as i said, data can be useful. times aren't. a good data logger can be as effective as having a guy with you in the car, assuming you can figure out how to use the data. incorrectly analyzing it can be worse than not having it at all though. a gadget is only as good as the guy using it.

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[Rap]

The events that I did not finish I don't count as track days. If I got a full track day in I count it. that's why something simple would work for me!!

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[Cloud9...68]

Just mho, but I think a private lesson or two from a really good instructor, not the average Joe's they hire at the DE's, would have a bigger bang for the buck than anything you could do to your car, or any data collection device. I thought I was doing pretty well at the advanced class at the Driveway, until one of the instructors, who I later discovered was a national champion in his class in NASA, drove my car. Holy Mother Of Christmas! He was in fifth gear in places I was in fourth, and taking the turns at a rate that made me look like I was driving a double-decker bus, and with an extra 170 lb of dead weight in the passenger seat. And I was the fastest student in the class, mind you. He really showed me what my car was capable of in expert hands - an experience I won't soon forget.

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[flash]

yup - that's the thing that those systems lack. the interaction, and ability to see the data and know what the heck to do with it. with a real instructor in the car, the feedback is instantaneous and easy to understand. with a gadget, you have to figure out what happened, what caused it, and then what to do about it. not many people can do that. that's why data analysts for track teams make good money.



p.s. - danged humbling experience to have somebody do that, isn't it? happened to me when i was young and thought i knew everything. never forgot it. made me very critical of my driving, and ultimately caused me to quit racing, as i knew there were always going to be better guys out there, and i am way too competitive to settle for second.

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[Rap]

I'm very competitive and use the thought of others being better as a spur. I also realize that it is unrealistic to expect to be the best at everything I try my hand at. This is the humble in me. lol

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