Car Tech Stuff

Used Porsche Race Cars

2008-12-08T13:33:00.000-08:00

I've started a new thing with Porsche race cars. So far it's a lot of fun.

Take a look at this new blog.

Richard

Brake Pictures

2008-10-20T09:13:00.001-07:00

Brakes are Good

I really love brakes. I don't use them often enough, or even hard enough. It's like last week at Sebring I decided to try the line that the Audi LMP1 cars use on turn 17.

I now know what it's like to use all of the brakes. I didn't touch the brakes until I saw God. Amazingly the damn car slowed down enough to take the turn and put me back on the front straight intact. I discovered the reason I'm not a professional driver. They can do that lap after lap. It took me until turn 2 to realize I was still alive.

At any rate here are some brake pictures.

Corvette C4 Front Brakes

GT2 Corvette Rear Brakes

Corvette GT2 Front Brakes

Indy Car Rear Brakes

Indy Car Front Brakes

Porsche 911 Front Brakes - Vintage

More Early 911 Front Brakes

Lou G. runs the ALMS

2008-10-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

This is an article that I wrote for Corvette Fever. Before we could get the article into print it was all over. One of the problems with print media is there's not a lot of room for history. Lately there hasn't been a lot of room for anything, but I'm not going there.

Lou has told us what he was spending and while it's a lot of money for people like us it's nothing for the factory teams. The GT1 budget for LeMans is 17 million dollars. That's right folks $17,000,000 for one race.

Once that race is over the Corvette will go to GT2. Doug Fehan is already try to lower expectations for that effort. He's probably smart to do that. GT2 won't be the same cake walk that they've had for the past few years.

This is Part One of the article. Part Two will appear tomorrow - I hope.

Richard Newton

Lou Gigliotti Plays With the Big Boys

It was time for Lou Gigliotti and LG Motorsports to step up and move to the next level. Gigliotti started working with Triumphs decades ago. He then did some driving in Formula Super Vee which I think is pretty neat since I have a restored Lola. (Lou - we have to talk about that era sometime.)

Eventually Lou moved to the world of Corvettes. Lou has set the standard for Corvette racing. In fact the SCCA tried to penalize him because he was too good of a driver. Someday I'll tell that story, but not right now. Just keep in mind that LG Motorsports was penalized for being too good at SCCA racing. The obvious answer was to head over to the ALMS series. At least it was obvious the time.

Right Rear Corner

Lou decided to step up with the big boys. Hell, he decided he was going to take on both the Porsche and Ferrari factory - at the same time. That almost defines courage - or insanity. I'll let Lou talk about that at some point.

The American LeMans Series has four classes. Three of them (LMP1, LMP2, GT1) have very few cars. The Corvette factory team in GT1 has been racing against itself for the past few years. That's about to change but I'll deal with that in a later post.

While the GM factory boys pretend they're racing against each other the real action is in GT2. GT2 is the toughest class in the American LeMans Series.

Last year The Porsches and Ferraris literally beat on each other for race victories. At the end of some races the cars looked as if they had just finished a NASCAR race at Bristol.

Porsche and Ferrari have invested millions of dollars in the GT2 class Both factories offer tremendous technical support. They also search the world for the best drivers. GT2 is no low budget operation.

Lou Gigilotti for some reason decided to step into this battle. Keep in mind that Lou was going to go where GM wouldn't go. This could not have a good ending. Like all racers though Lou forged ahead. Hell, he had no choice he had sold off his World Challenge cars to get this new GT2 car. If he was going to race at all in 2008 it was going to be with an ALMS GT2 Corvette.

Porsche and Ferrari get their crew members from MIT and Cal Berkley. These are the sorts of guys who are not only computer geeks but they actualy know how to use all the functions on their cell phones.

Lou had his old group of friends from the days when he was in high school. This merry band had won races at every level they tried. Never underestimate old age and treachery. It's a winning combination.

Restricted Intake Plenums to Even Things Up

The actual car was built by Riley Technologies in Charolette North Carolina. Riley may be one of the very best race car constructors in the world. They've had outright victories in the past three Rolex twenty-four hour races. Actually it would be easier to list which race series they didn't win than the ones they have won.

This GT2 was a huge deal for Lou. Lou was going to the big show. You either win at this level or you go down in flames and your bank records are totally trashed. When you put your 401K on the line you're really really serious about racing.

Sebring Pit Lane

Your Corvette Dash may be a little different from Lou's.

One of the very important factors was that Lou got no help from GM. Hell, he didn't even get a "Good morning, how are you doing?" During the 2008 ALMS season GM had no interest in a guy from Texas racing a Corvette.

They weren't even too excited about Lou racing in the World Challenge series during 2007. GM had spent a lot of money on the Cadillac World Challenge effort. That last thing they needed was some guy entering a really good Corvette in the series.

In the troubled world of GM no one ever directly confronts you. They just ignore you. At the St. Pete race Lou was pitted right next to the GM Corvette team. We might as well have been a Porsche team. I've been frozen out of things before but the GM freeze is really something to observe.

Left Rear Corner

The GT2 Corvettes breath through 2 of these restrictors

Pit Lane at Sebring

Tranmission

Left Front Corner

Left Rear Corner

Porsche Choices

2008-10-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

Some Choices to Make

The car is a 1973.5 911T. It's not stock and it'll never be stock again. First, a previous owner removed all of the CIS. I have no intention of finding a CIS system and actually installing it. Life is too short for that crap. The Webers work just fine. Stock restorations are just not all that important to me.

The headlights are the real deal. They're French. These aren't painted yellow, or some plastic headlights. These are real and they're illegal as hell. I've even got a ticket to prove that. Well not actually.

One morning the Florida Highway Patrol pulled me over and gave me a ticket for driving with no headlights. I started to explain ( a bad move) when he quickly pointed out that headlights are clear and fog lights are yellow. Hell, everyone should know that. Now I was just another stupid ass Porsche owner.

Since I was driving with only my "fog lights" on I was violating Florida law. It was obvious to him that I should have had my clear "Through The Grille" driving lights on. Those were my real headlights, not those yellow fog lights mounted to the front fenders.

I shut up real fast and took my ticket, along with the points. I learned it's best not to argue with a state trooper who was convinced that he knew the difference between Porsche headlights and fog lights. I just owned the damn car - what did I know?

I now drive at night with the whole damn front end lit up. I may be a slow learner but I'm not stupid.

Harvey Weidman did the wheels. Hell, he's done a bunch of wheels for me over the years. For the past several years I always seem to have a set of wheels at Harvey's. I was originally going to have an RSR finish on these wheels. A friend of mine had that done to his Fuchs wheels and after watching him trying to clean RSR wheels all the time I told Harvey to just polish the damn things. I'm not going for the racer/rallye look anyways.

I have 6x16 on the front and 7x16 on the rear. The tires are 205/55 all the way around.

A few years back I got rid of the huge black ugly bumper guards that Porsche installed on the 1973 911s. I was originally going to replace them with body colored bumper guards then I found a chrome set that was in really nice condition. They were just too nice to paint. I love them.

The crack in the dash going to stay in place. I've heard from too many people about all of the bad dash reproductions being sold by Stoddard and Just Dashes. I don't think anyone is making a decent dash pad today. I'm not even willing to let Tony at Autobahn repair my dash. It's just too much aggravation. Besides the crack is really about adding character to the car.

This is a 917 shift knob. I love it. I think I love it because no one knows what it is. And, I seldom tell anyone what it is. People just don't need to know. It's better that way.

I guess if I can polish wheels then a polished shifter housing is no big deal. Actually a polished shifter housing is a lot easier to take care of than a set of polished Fuchs.

What's strange is that I really hate bling. I guess I just don't consider this shifter to be bling. It's a cool look. Right?

These seats are going to stay. I like them and they're comfortable. I've had my share of Scheel and Recaro seats over the years and the stock seats are wonderful. I have Sparco seats in my race car and I love them. I just don't want to be in an aftermarket seat for more than an hour. Porsche seats are just fine for daily driving.

Here's the first decision. Do I replace this door panel with a stock panel, or do I install the RS door panels? I don't need the speakers since I no longer have a radio. I don't need a radio since I no longer have any sound deadner in this 911.

With a total lack of sound deadner anyplace in the car, and with no air filters on the car, you can't hear a damn thing. I love it that way.

Should I keep the armrests? Or, should I get the RS door panels? Let me know your thoughts on this. If it helps any the interior is going to get the lightweight RS perlon carpeting.

Wheel Lug Nuts

2008-10-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

Keeping the Wheels Attached to the Car

More Than You Want to Know About Lug Nuts

The single largest concern here is that you have adequate engagement between the lug nuts and wheel studs. The picture above is what you shouldn't have. Notice how the studs don't stick out past the lug nuts. These wheels studs are simply too short. This might very well be a good example of where the engagement between the nut and stud is marginal. This is not a good thing.

The general rule is that the number of engaged threads should equal the diameter of the wheel stud. In other words if your wheel stud 12mm in diameter than the lug nut should engage at least 12mm of thread.

The Southern California Timing Association, which governs the racing at Bonneville, requires at least 5/8 inch of thread engagement. The SCTA also prohibits the use of closed-end lug nuts.

This Mustang is a great example of closed lug nuts. We simply don't have a clue about what's going on with closed lug nuts. It's difficult to see how many threads are actually engaged. A worse case scenario though is where the wheel stud bottoms out on the inside of the lug nut which would lead you to believe you're tightened the wheel properly.

Even though you tightened the wheel (so you think) the wheel would still be loose on the hub. Most sanctioning bodies simply don't allow this sort of lug nut. Since this is a Mustang running an SVRA vintage race we have to assume someone messed up. SVRA is usually pretty good on safety standards.

This is the way your race car should look. While it might seem the studs are a little long that's simply not a problem. It may look a little strange but these longer studs make it easier to put the wheel in place on the hub and there's no problem with having a little too many threads showing.

We never think about wheel studs and lug nuts. They just exist. When you start changing the wheels around on your car you really need to pay a little more attention to these items. The wheel above might be a good example of how it should be done.

Notice in the Porsche wheel above that open wheel nuts are used. Even more important they're made out of steel. The stock Porsche 911 lugs nuts are made from aluminum and have a closed end. Most race sanctioning bodies won't let you use the stock Porsche lug nuts. They require that you use this type of steel lug nut.

Car of the Day

2008-10-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

Since I have thousands of car photos I've decided to share some of them. This was taken at the Rennsport event in Daytona Beach last year.

Project 911 is Back

2008-10-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

Project 911 Returns

It's been a while but we're back. This 1973 911 was a Project for European Car magazine in 1991 and 1992. During the course of several years we played with the car and turned it into a respectable track day car. We actually did this before we even had track events. At least track events as we know them today.

During those two years we made a bunch of changes to the car and we kept a couple of advertisers happy. Automotion helped us a lot with the car and provided parts. Most of those parts have been long since removed in an effort to get some ride quality back into this 911. I'll have more on all of that later.

I also got to hang out with Derek Bell for a few days as he drove the car and suggested some improvements. Derek also tried to teach me how to drive a 911. That may have been one of his least successful activities.

Since that time I've made a few more changes to the car and got rid of some of the things we did for the magazine articles. Over the past few years I've driven the car at a few track events while I tried to decide what to do with the car. I've been back and forth with several ideas. At one time I even thought of making it an RSR replica but I couldn't afford the good wheels. Oh well.

These pictures are from Homestead last year. The car still runs nicely but not the way it did with the big sway bars and the DOT tires. This car is actually a whole lot nicer on the street than the car we tested at the old Bridgehampton road course out on the end of Long Island. It's just not as much fun on the race track any more.

One of the major decisions I had to make was whether to make this a true track day car or a car that could be driven on the street in comfort. I've opted for ride comfort over performance. OK I've heard of dual purpose cars, and I've even tried to create some. It's never worked.

A car has to have a priority. You have to decide what's most important to you. In the case of this Porsche I'm going back to having a nice street car. The car runs great right now so most of the issues will be cosmetic ones.

There is an issue regarding the alignment on the car and I'm looking around for a shop that actually knows what they're doing with a Porsche. The last time I had the car aligned it cost me $250 and the car still pulled to the right on a straight road. The shop was called Golden Wrench and is located in Naples Florida. I would avoid them at all costs. They have no clue.

This is going to be a lot of fun. It's also going to be about a lot of choices. Stay tuned.

Richard Newton

Track Day Cars

2008-10-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Car and Driver Blows It

Sometimes the big magazines just don't get it. The November issue of Car and Driver is a very good example. The have a huge article on track day cars. The only problem is that every single car in the article is a damn street car. They're also cars that are sold by companies that buy advertising.

Ok - so they threw a few oddballs into the mix like the Mosler. Has anyone ever actually seen a Mosler being driven at a track day? I've seen Bugattis and I've seen Ferrari Enzos. I've never seen a Mosler.

I've never seen a Lexus either. Car and Driver thinks it's a great car to use for track days. They also really really like the size of the Lexus advertising budget.

I'm starting to encounter a lot more sports racers like the car below. These dedicated track cars are really getting popular.

You don't see a lot of single seaters since they're pretty damn hard for the rest of us to see. I also think it takes a certain type of person to drive an open wheel car.

Porsches are one of the most common track day cars. Where the hell was a Porsche, any Porsche, in the Car and Driver article?

Ok, so according to Car and Driver people are using Cobalts for track days but not Porsches? And they wonder why the circulation is in the tank? Instead of bending over for the advertising buyers they should actually talk to a reader once in a while.

One of the most popular ways to enjoy track days is to locate a used race like this Panoz below.

You can get this Panoz a hell of a lot cheaper than most of the cars in the Car and Driver article. It's also going to be a lot more fun than the Infiniti they talk about in the article.

The two most common track day cars are Corvettes and Porsches.

Post Sebring

2008-10-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

I'm finally getting around to posting after Sebring. I've still got some cleaning left to do after the Sunday event but it's starting to look like the end. I can't believe how much tire rubber you get on your car from track days.

The rear suspension worked great. I would like to tell you how great but my G-Tech but its becoming a pain in the ass. The set-up time is unreal and the thing is a general pain to use. What's even worse is that even when I finally get it fully operational it won't work on my Mac computer.

The thing is strictly for the PC folks. So much for the rest of us.

I would really like to find a decent data logger for under $500.

Here are some pictures from the Sebring event.

Here are some pictures of my new rear suspension.

Hopefully I'll be back with some more stuff tomorrow.

btw - I'm still looking at various data loggers. None of them are as easy to use as my Garmin and not a single one is designed to work with Apple.

Richard Newton

More Alignment Stuff

2008-10-01T03:26:00.000-07:00

More Alignment Stuff

Yesterday I talked in general about the alignment. Now let's look at some specifics.

LF RF

Camber: -1.4 degrees -1.3 degrees

Caster: 5.3 degrees 5.3 degrees

Toe: -0.01 degrees -0.02 degrees

LR RR

Camber: -2.6 degrees -2.6 degrees

Toe-in: 0.11 0.11

Total Rear Toe: -in 2.3-degrees

Thrust Angle: -0.01 degrees

Keep in mind that all these measurement were taken with the car sitting still on a lift. I call this a static alignment. The hope here is that as I go around the Sebring track I'll have most of my tire tread in contact with the pavement.

Even though my left rear tire has -2.6 degrees of camber sitting in the pits I'm hoping that it will be 90 degrees to the pavement when I go around Turn 16. In other words I'll have 0 degrees of camber in Turn 16.

Take a look at the left side tires in the picture below.

Notice how the left side tires are at almost 90-degrees to the pavement even though the right front tire is almost off the ground. In this situation I want as much of the left side rubber on the ground as possible.

If I start out with the tire leaning in at the top (negative camber) I end up with the tires like this in a corner. That's a good thing.

Richard Newton

2008-09-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Alignment Saga

I finally got my alignment finished. It took 2 1/2 hours to get the whole thing done. That's not as unreasonable as it might first might sound. Remember that I rebuilt the entire rear suspension with a bunch of Vette Brakes and Rippie stuff. That meant every alignment setting in the entire car was off.

This is the replacement rear tie rod assembly sold by Vette Brakes. This is strictly a track item and I can't suggest that you use it on the street. The idea behind this Vette Brakes assembly is to reduce any play that you might get with the original tie rod ends.

This whole project started out with some new brackets from Doug Rippie. The idea is to change the angle of the rear control arms. I'm trying to get rid of some of the anti-squat that GM built into the C4.There's an inch difference between the stock holes and the Rippie holes for the Spindle Control Ams.

This shows the stock bracket in place. The paint stripe allow me to quickly check to see if any of the bolts have loosened.

The biggest problem with the alignment was that the tech had to keep going back and forth to get the settings correct. When you change the camber the toe changes. Then when you change the toe the camber settings change.

This means you have to keep adjusting until all of the settings are where you want them. That just takes a whole lot of time. If you find a tech that will go through this frustration make sure you tip him $20.00. That means you might be able to bring your car back before your next track event.

Getting Ready for Sebring

2008-09-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

Why is it I always have a bunch of stuff to do just before it's time to go to Sebring. I'm scheduled for an alignment tomorrow. I'm going to back off a little on the alignment specs for this event.

Front Camber - 2.0 degrees

Front Toe - 0 degrees

Front Caster - as much as they can dial in and keep both sides even.

Rear Camber - 2.5 degrees

Rear Toe 1/16"

I'm also going to drop my tire pressure down to 27 in the front and 26 in the rear. I'm trying to get the HOT tire temps equalized. So far that's worked out pretty well for me. Up to this point I've been having good luck with lowering the tire pressure. I guess I just have to push the limit a little more.

Richard Newton

Track Car Work

2008-09-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

My traveling schedule is done for now and I have to get back to actual writing. While attending Funfest I met with the various editors of Corvette magazines and decided to go with Corvette Fever magazine.

I'm going to do a series of articles on building a C4 track car. That's the car in the picture above. The goal is to cut the weight of the car to something around 2,700 lbs. We're at 3,100 lbs now so we have a little bit to go. I think I'm going to be close though.

Today I'm starting to rebuild the rear suspension. I'm going to use some parts from Doug Rippe and Vette Brakes. The idea is to take a lot of the flex out of the rear tie rod ends. I'm also going to change the anti-dive geometry of the rear end.

2008-09-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

I'm finally back at it now. I just got back from the Corvette Funfest in Effingham Illinois. Mike Yager puts on the largest Corvette show in the world every year. The fact he owns some really large tracts of land in the middle of the world's largest corn field makes this all possible. I can't think of another place in the country where you could park 15,000 Corvettes.

The highlight of the weekend was watching a GM engineer get busted for doing 120 mph in a 45 mph zone. Mike Yager had to cash is a lot of good will chips to keep this engineer out of jail. The fact this GM engineer was able to go back to work at GM today was because Mike has been a good citizen for over thirty years.

I was really surprised how little interest there was in the Corvette Challenge cars. I just love them. Most people just walked past this display with their eyes glazed over. They had no clue they were looking at one of the epochal moments in Corvette racing.

Trailer Wheels

2007-12-11T14:22:00.000-08:00

Alcoa wheels are some

of the best in the industry

Trailer tires are something no one really thinks about. Hell, i sure didn't. Then I had to write a book called Wheel and Tire Performance Handbook for Motorbooks International. They must have liked the chapter on trailer tires because I ended up writing a whole book about trailers called The Complete Trailer Handbook. One whole chapter is on trailer tires and wheels. This is more than any rational human needs to know about trailer tires.

Steel wheels are just as serviceable and a

lot cheaper. They're just not as pretty

Don't use passenger tires on your trailer

The rules here are really simple. The tires and wheels should match the load capacity of your trailer. In other words you can't use cheap little tires on a really big trailer. Got it? Now believe it.

Before we get to the tires though we need to think about the load capacity of the trailer. How much weight is your trailer designed to carry. Most of you can simply look at the metal placard on the side of the trailer for this information.

If you guy the sort of trailer I buy that placard is usually long gone. I normally end up buying someone's left over trailer that has seen a very difficult life. After all how hard is it to buy some new tires and some paint. Sometimes I may have to buy new fenders but that's no big deal. Remember the main structure of a trailer seldom wears out.

I just love the ramps on this high end trailer.

One really good rule of thumb for determining the load capacity of an old trailer is to count the lug nuts. The number of lug nuts on your wheels will give you a rough idea about the strength of your trailer. Lightweight trailers have only four lugs nuts. That means the axle can only hold about 2,000 pounds.

Now look on the side of the tire and look for the load capacity on the tire's sidewall. Multiply that number by 2 and you have the total load capacity of your tires. It better be more than 2,000 pounds.

This lug nut trick is pretty handy if you own the type of trailers I own. I'm talking about old trailers that have no markings about where they were built, or what the hell sort of load you can carry on them.

Axles that have 5 or 6 lug nuts for each wheel can generally handle up to a 3,500 pound load. Trailers that have 6 or 8 lug nut wheels can generally handle over 6,000 pounds. This is just a rough idea, but it's better than some wild ass guess, or loading the trailer until it breaks.

Car Tech Stuff for You

2007-11-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

Cars should be fun. Let's not get all involved in the crap that's going on with the green thing. We already have too much of that. Let's even skip the multi million dollar cars that none of us can afford. I mean what's the point? Let's talk about the cars we own and the cars we might want to own. Cars we can actually afford.

I'm going to just talk about things that matter to us. How do I fix things. How can I make my beater car a little better? Oh, and what the hell is up with some of the things your can buy at the local parts store?

I really have to admit that I have no clue about where the hell all of this is going but it's going to interesting. I'm going to try to put new stuff up here several times a week. Some of it's going to be useful stuff you might all ready know. Some of it will simply be rants against all of the bullshit out there about cars. The main idea is to make all of this an interesting ride. Boring things really suck.

Richard Newton