Exposed!
Yep I got the car up and running under it’s own power and snuck off to the track with it. I was going to post just a lap time and go to bed but this would leave out some people that seemed to show up and help out at just the right time as things went along. Before I blather on, How is it that you can spend four years building something and still be working on it last minute? Work expands to fill time allotted.
With wheels and right size tires in hand it was time align and corner balance the car. I measured and set the suspension components up all the same as I wanted to use corner weights, caster and camber numbers see how much the tub was out of true after getting cut up and caged. I did not use a pro frame jig to hold the tub true while I welded in the cage and triangulation tubing and wanted to see how much the tub was torqued. My hope was to be inside the range afforded during alignment. It dialed right in to 49.7% / 51.3% cross weights after 1.5 turns of a single spring seat. The cross delta ended up at one pound. The numbers were so good I spent some time trying to figure out what was wrong with the scales. After 3+ years of wondering I finally got to see if I bent up the tub or not. Not.
Now that I had actual corner weight numbers I could see that my springs were likely too weak. At lunch the day after I balanced the car I drove by Intersport and guru of go fast Charlie Murphy was out in front of the shop. I gave him the existing setup numbers through the window of the truck and his words were “Why so wimpy?” Thanks to a drive through setup consult I confirmed the need more spring. Tony Kelly to the rescue. He had been tinkering with a small project of his own in the shop while I was stringing the car and was also strongly of the mind that the spring rates were not up to par. He offered up an extra set of 700# springs that he just happened to have on hand. I installed the existing rear springs on the front and Tony’s 700s on the back and the numbers worked out just right. Each corner is sprung with a little more than 100# per corner over what the true weights are. Final line up and toe adjustments, pack the truck and head off to Summit Point.
The 09 Club Race DE had been a time target for some time as it would afford me time to test and sort and there would be plenty of good minds to pick when problems arose. There were plenty of good minds, thankfully not so many problems. After some day one shake out the car ran great. After cleaning and testing the fuel pump two years ago I put some clear packing tape over the ports to keep shop frass out. I left the tape on the intake side hose barb during mock up. (You already know where I am going with this don’t you?) Yep, left the tape on after mockup. The pump was able to go cross-eyed and suck in enough to run the motor under 3000 rpm but any amount of right foot down time and the fuel pressure fell of. I though I was looking at a bad pump. Alan Harod gave me a ride over to Billy Ring’s shop and Billy lent me a spare 911 pump. I pulled the hose off to replace the existing pump and discovered that the pump was OK and I was stupid. Mr. Ring got his pump right back unused. Now that the car ran at more than 1/4 right pedal I found that under cornering it would stumble with anything less than a stuffed full fuel tank. When I took the used tank apart to clean out and reconfigure it I oriented the pickup in the right place. Months later while installing the fuel cell I realized that I had made a fuel plumbing change and the tank pickup and return were backwards to how the fuel plumbing had ended up. Easy fix, I turned the cell 180 deg and hooked it right up. Only now the pickup was front left and in the proper location to come up gasping for air in corners like T3 or under long high G accelerations. Did not think about this in the shop without gas in it. Flipped it back trackside and had almost illegal and immoral levels of fun for the rest to the weekend. Along with a shopping list of changes and tweaks I need to add a fuel surge tank system to combat the cornering G’s.
I made no suspension adjustments at all this weekend. Some of this stems from my inability to read and translate the finer nuances and some from the car working well right out of the box. The car feels good in the corners with a slight a bit oversteer in the slower corners but flat and neutral in the higher speed corners like T3 and T10. On Friday I was thinking that I needed a brake bias valve as the back wanted to step out a bit under hard braking but after the pads soaked into the new rotors this largely went away. BTW I can feel the aero enhanced grip falling off under braking deceleration which is a new concept for me. At full speed you can stand on the brakes and this is going to require mental adjustment on my part that I have not been able to do just yet. This is the first time I could feel aero grip and tell it from the mechanical grip.
I think I might take a .5 deg camber out all around based on tire temps. To improve the expected brick like wind resistance I plan to lower the car to track height from “test, tune and spin without gutting it” height, take some wing angle out, add a gurney and start looking at other ways of making it more slippery.
The picture of me behind Jazzbase does not give him proper credit. The white car has gobs of cornering down force and grip but at the cost of not being able to drag race other 3.6 911s, well driven ones like Jazz’s even less so. He would give a point and a needed lift and I was back to the nirvana of T1 to T10.
Ok I made you suffer through enough two martini blather so on to lap times. With Toyo 888’s and a 912 drover clinging to the wheel the car pulled out a 1:22.22 on Sat (which greatly pleased the drover when it popped up on the dash) and then put together a string of mid to high 1:22s that afternoon. I ended my last run on Saturday by turning in a bit early in T3, not correcting enough right away and looped it into the kitty litter. Pumped the brakes to make many little flat spots rather than 4 big ones while heading up and off. No harm no foul other than getting to sit facing counter race and smile at the rest of the gang as they passed by under a local yellow until I could drive it out onto clear track. The Jeep like ride height might have helped a bit. I must like looping it up the hill in T3 as this is the third time I have but the 912 never had enough stored energy to carry itself off the pavement.
On Sunday I backed out a little and started to deconstruct and attack one corner at a time as I used to do in the 912. Pick one, focus hard on it, hit it just right as many times in a run as I can and give up a little in the rest for concentration. 1:23s are easy no pucker driving in the car as is. In the hands of a capable driver I think it is close to or a sub 1:20 car on 888s and better yet on sticker tires or slicks with the aero cleaned up. Sub 1:20 is the next goal. I think, scratch that, I know some coaching is in order to get the driver up to par.
The car has exceeded my expectations to say the least. Tools down, martini glass up.
For the time being