911 Carrera RallyCross Project

[BRAID]

We took the car up to the Sno*Drift rally in Lewiston, Michigan this past weekend. Well, my friend Ray did. I drove the van. It was the cars first long distance run so we were a little apprehensive but we needn't have been. The car performed flawlessley and was a big hit.

[BRAID]

As seems to be my style lately parts keep showing up that I don't have time to install as it's wheel season. Here's some nice Corbeau harnesses for instance:

and what's this?

Seats!

One skinny for me and one medium for a passenger. As you can appreciate, I managed to find time to install the driver's seat at least. Here's the mounting brackets I bought from a Pelican last year in anticipation of this momentus day:

Sliders mounted to the bottom of the seat

Adapter test fitted:

and bolted to the sliders:

Et voila:

We still have to install the crotch strap but the final position needs to be dialed in better first and that may depend on the steering wheel. And we gave to do the other side too of course. Not a great weight saving but I can already feel how well this seat and belts will hold the driver in place. OE driver's seat with sliders was 33lbs. The Corbeaus are 25lbs and 26 lbs similarly equiped.

Anyone want a nice pair of OE seats?

Feeling very pleased with myself I took the car home in aticipation of doing some ice racing at the weekend but the event was cancelled due to snow! yes, really. Never mind, there's a rallycross this weekend and those guys don't cancel for anything. Press On Regardless.

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[BRAID]

It's time to start thinking about tires (and wheels) for autocrossing and track days for this thing. The car will be running in SCCA Street Touring class so DOT R compounds are out. Thats good as they wouldn't survive many track days anyway.

The hot tire in this class appears to be the Dunlop Direzza ZII Extreme Performance Summer

Suitable sizes available would be 205/55-16 front and 225/50-16 rear mounted on BRAID (of course) Fuchs replicas in 16x7, ET23 front and 16x8, ET10 rear. We all know this fits the Carrera body well.


But is this enough tire to be competitive?

How about Bridgestone's Potenza RE-11 in 225/50-16 front and 225/45-16 rear?

Perhaps not as grippy as the Dunlop but a lot wider. These could be fitted to the same wheels as the Dunlops though 8" front and 9" rear may be better but what offsets are needed to clear? Surley not the ET23 and ET 10 above? I know these tire sizes can be made to fit the Carrera body but I'm not sure what offsets work.

Any thoughts?

[BRAID]

Round two tomorrow. Currently lying first and second in Prepared Rear or, as it is now known "Porsche Rear". Wish us luck. Report, pics and videos next week.

Detroit Region SCCA: News




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[BRAID]

I must say, this car is amazing. Considering it is basically stock it performs remarkably well. After all we are only in Prepared class due to our wheels being too far from stock spec ( 6.5" width) yet this thing just kicks arse. No understeer, loads of traction, plenty of power, narrow enough, short enough and fast enough. Incredible. It feels like cheating.

Detroit SCCA did another stellar job putting on the event based around a twin dirt oval in mid-Michigan. Needless to say we don't just go around the oval. See the video for a ride on course with my fellow driver Scott Harvey. (yes, he beat me)

Detroit Rallycross 84 Porsche 911 - YouTube


The challenge of this event was all about changing course conditions. With temperatures in the 20s all day were were greeted by frozen dirt for the most part. This had the consitency of sandpaper making for a very fast but twisty course. Except if the sun came out whereby the top 1/4" of surface would change almost instantly to liquid soap and prove a devil to drive on. This happened to me for my last two runs of the day resulting in them being a full 10 seconds slower than my previous runs. Never-the-less we came out in 1st and 2nd place again beating another couple of Porsches, these being 944s.

Some pictures at speed. It goes "all right" doesn't it?

There's supposed to be some helicopter-cam footage of the car too. Hopefully I can snag that soon.

It wasn't all roses though, there were a few casualties. This is what happens to a Porsche fog light when it hits a frozen solid traffic cone at 40mph:

and somehow my skinny tires on 35 offset wheels maaged to contact the fender lip and bend it down. No big deal but what's going to happen when we lower it on 205s?

The new Corbeau seat and Momo steering wheel were excellent but we did have to remove the seat cushion to stop our helmets banging on the roof. Need to figure out how to lower it before the next outing.



Only rally guys would find eating lunch outside at 20F fun.

Next RallyCross is March 10th but we might get an opportunity to do some ice racing this weekend. Let's hope the weather cooperates.


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[BRAID]

A short video from yesterday's ice race complete with "oops".


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpkRHZw6HMM&fea...[/youtube]

[BRAID]

Took these off today

and put these on

because I'm hoping for sloppy, muddy conditions in tomorrow's RallyCross. Hope I'm right.

All loaded up and ready

[BRAID]

Another successful RallyCross for the Carrera. I finished second and Scott won, again in Prepared Rear class up against tow gentlemen in a 944. Not oly that Scott managed the fastest RWD run of the day and was only beaten overall by a Toyota with an All-Trac swap running in Modified AWD. Quite amazing for a 30 year old RWD vehicle with it's engine in the wrong place.

It was perfect conditions for our Yokohama snow and mud tires.

Here's the pictures and videos:

Car hiding behind dog and pony show.

Wind assisted launch.

http://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=2998172529869


and flying finish

http://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=2998168809776


In car video of one of the morning runs. Scott Harvey driving.

http://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=2996280762576

Spoils!

and aftermath. Still, no damage this weekened.

[BRAID]

Pulled the passenger seat and started working the various heating and ventilation issues the car has.

Had my freind Ed do a PS mock-up of the new livery too.

[BRAID]

Some pictures from last weekend's RallyCross in Marshall, Michigan.

[DKO]

Very nice! 911s are my favorite cars. Keep up the awesome work.

[BRAID]

Tried to get the hot air blower to turn on. I think this is the relay that controls it. Have power at the three pins marked in gray and red. Is there something missing from the socket to the right?

I'm thinking it is bad so where does one get a replacement?


Also removed the clock because it runs slow and the speedo because the odometer is broken.

so how do I go about getting these repaired?

[BRAID]

Fixed my heating by plugging the connector back on to the engine compartment blower DOH! It turns out the wires that were cut were not for the blower. I found those yesterday hanging down by the valve cover and once I plugged them in everything worked like it should, even the footwell blowers. Lesson learned, look more carefully and don't jump to conclusions. Now I'm wondering what the cut wires are for. :confused:

I also got to install the passenger seat and harness. I didn't trim the feet on this one electing instead to not fit sliders. Still a bit high and a little more forward than I like but as my race rules require the seats bolt to the OEM brackets I'm stuck for now. Have some Corbeau side mounts on the way, hoping thay may improve the situation. Otherwise we'll have to weld in some cross members and bump up a class or two.

I also started installation of the whale tale picked up from a Pelican member. Very nice aftermarket job but it looks like it will require a bit of fettling to get a perfect fit.

Then I drove this home to shakedown the new engine. It has a flat six too!

[BRAID]

We decided to replace the rear muffler. Just too quiet for a race car.

The fasteners fought me a little. They've been on there nearly 30 years.

Didn't take too long to wrestle it off though. 23lbs of German suasage muffler.

Found a used but good M&K locally. Only 11lbs.

Ten minutes later:

This is what the car sounded like in the shop with no muffler:

84 Porsche 911 no muffler - YouTube


and with the M&K

84 Porsche 911 M&K muffler - YouTube

A lot quieter. I didn't take a stock muffler recording. Too excited.







But wait. What's that on the parts table. Why it's a Fabspeed muffler delete pipe and it only weighs 2lbs! Let's slap that on see what it's like.

Wow, that's gotta be loud:

84 Carrera - YouTube


Yes, it is kinda loud, but souds pretty good. What about on the street?

84 Porsche Carrera with Fabspeed muffler delete - YouTube

You know, that's not too bad, even with the windows open. Not even turning heads. I think we'll leave this on for the next rallycross at least.

[BRAID]

I've never been a fan of pedal covers. I always thought they were a bit bling and pretentious but when I drove the 911 in the wet and mud of a RallyCross I relised there might be something else going on. These are slippery when wet.

These are not:

The gas pedal has a spacer on it so we can heel and toe this thing on downshifts. Before the gas pedal was way too low to reach with the outside of one's right foot when on the brake pedal.

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[BRAID]

We removed the fresh air blower this week because it doesn't work any more. Last time it rotated under its own power it belched out acrid smoke. I think it's dead.

YUK! burnt stuff.

Fortunately I have sourced a used replacement from a Pelican. hould have it in next week.


Meanwhile we ordered autocross and trackday tires:

16" Direzza IIs for our other Carrera and 15" BFG Rivals for this one. Unfortunately the rears are back ordered went with 205 front, 225 rears.


As the weather was sunny and we were shuffling cars around we took the opportunity to do an impromptu photo shoot.

We will be painting the car next week. We were comitted to reproducing the Rothmans livery of the SC/RS but with a BRAID/TIM twist (BRAID logos and yellow/red stripes) but are now considering replacing the white with silver. The reasoning is two-fold: we are concerned that mimicking the SC/RS too closely will just result in an imperfect looking clone and using silver will introduce the one missing color from the TIM logo. What do you think?

[fredn]

I like the white and love the Rothmans look.

This thread is great thanks for posting.
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1982 Air Cooled Vanagon Carat Weekender Interior

[BRAID]

Got back from Europe and couldn't wait to see what progress Ice Nine Group had achieved with the car. I guess they decided to wrap it.

Er.....WOW!

[BRAID]

Big push over the next few weeks to get the car ready for the Porsche Parade at the end of June while simultaneously prepping it to tackle Autocross and track days as well as it's primary purpose; RallyCross. If there's one car that can shine at all three disciplines it's a 911.

By way of a warm up exercise we installed the repaired speedo/odometer and replaced the clock with a volt meter.

Then, onto the lowering project. When we replaced the broken rear torsion bar we set the car quite high as it had no underbody protection so was a little vulnerable. At 28" front and rear it was at least further away from the nasty stuff. Now, with skidplates etc installed and the looming track and autocross season it seems prudent to return it to something approaching stock ride height. For the US this seems to be 25.5 front and 25" rear as far as we can tell. This is measured from the floor to the top of the wheel arch.

This was measured with 195/65-15 rally tires at 32psi which happen to be the same diameter as the stock tires.


We didn't get chance to measure a baseline when we got the car as we broke the torsion almost immediately but we did measure the angle of the unaffected spring plate at 34.5* using a handy iPhone app.

so we thought we'd aim for this. Reading the workshop manual also suggests the spring plate angle for this car (US spec) should be 35* so it should produce something similar to stock ride height.


The plates were both where we set them last time at 40.7* and 39.9*

With the torsion bars having 40 splines on the inside and 44 splines on the outside we figured you could tweak the angle in increments of 0.8* by turning one spline in and one spline out. On the left side we were looking for a 5.7* change in angle. If we divide that by 0.8 we get 7.125 which should mean if we turn the bar on the inner splines by 7 then the outer end by seven in the opposite direction it should result in about 35*. In effect, you can't turn the spring plate 7 splines as you have to take it off to turn the inner splines but, if you adjust the inner to 7 then in theory you should be able to put the spring plate back on in a position that would correspond to 7 splines of outer adjustment. Even though that's a bit long winded it actually worked, on both sides of the car, almost perfectly. The only problem being that when we bolted it all back together we only got to 26.75" of ride height! This is with the dampers still unbolted and the suspension bounced a few times so it should be accurate right? Maybe the car has lost more rear weight recently than we appreciate. I think we will be dialing out some more height later today.


At least while we were in there we did get to replace our missing torsion bar end cap cover with one from a Pelican. Thanks Bob.

Possibly the most significant modification we plan isn't to the car but to the driver. Cheap too.

[BRAID]

I drove the car home last night and noticed that the voltage on the new voltmeter was all over the place. At idle it was around 14 but driving it would fluctuate between 14 and 18. This can't be good.

Do I need a new regulator?

Are they easy to source and replace?

Anything else that should be done at the same time?