Having some fun with a 997GT3RS.

[333pg333]

Despite there being quite a few things wrong with the car on the day, we still managed to give our Club President a bit of curry in his pristine 997 GT3 RS. To be fair, he will admit to not being the most talented driver out there and doesn't push the car to 10/10ths so in the hands of a pro it should walk my car on the day, but it makes for good video at least. Bottom line is that it's fun and this is what we do it for if I'm not mistaken. []

ps please excuse the odd 'grunch' into 2nd gear. Shot syncro that is now fixed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qyd6Dbmx38 part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=YX99Ac_Yie4&feature=related part 2

It only goes for a few minutes in total.

 

[homesea]

Looks like great fun, whats your setup?
I like 1:53 in video 2 []
I'm going to try to gat a few track days in this year, but need to sort the brakes and tires 1st.

 

[DivineE]

You are the lone Youtube saviour of our cars. Youtube is so full of crap when you type 944 turbo. Your clips always restore my faith about our cars where so few others drive them as they should be driven. I am frankly amazed by the traction you find each lap (from lap 3 onwards) out of the last bend onto the main straight. You really have the ballance just right either in your driving or the car (probably both) 944's often have that terrible tendancy to push away at the front. Scary brakes on that GT3 though! With him being a little bit cautious and sometimes braking unexpectedly I can see the constant nervousness you have with following him into the corners. If seperated and given free track to do some times I think you'd have been a good second or more faster than him.

Excellent video though thanks for posting

 

[Mike Pink]

What a fantastic track []! Plenty of run-off space for when your finding your limits, no imposing armco of worse sitting there begging for you to stuff the car into [8|]. Few tracks in the UK offer you that. Hope I can find time to get down there when I next go to Sydney...

(....oh , and great video by the way. Thanks for posting it..[])

 

[barks944]

ORIGINAL: homesea

Looks like great fun, whats your setup?
I like 1:53 in video 2 []
I'm going to try to gat a few track days in this year, but need to sort the brakes and tires 1st.

+1 for details on your setup. Nice catch too, reflexes like a cat!

 

[Northern924]

Car look great and so close in the home straight at the end of the 2nd vid, oh and that was a very well executed recovery []

 

[333pg333]

Thanks guys. Yes it is a fun track and all the runoff is appreciated by many who visit there I can assure you. Many people spin and just rejoin the track to continue unharmed. It's just under 2.5 hours away so it's no fun when things go wrong...which they have done quite a few times for me. It's a long wait, and longer drive home in the front of a tow truck trying to strike up conversation with a toothless bloke for 3.5 hours. []

My setup is KW 2 way race w 630lb/in front and 708lb/in equivalent rear. (Torsion bars/springs combo). 10"x18"x275mm Nitto NT01 all round. Tarrett sway bars front and rear. Big Reds front, Mo30 rear. PFC 01 f / 97 r . Unfortunately we found the rear sway bar eccentric bolt had snapped so we had to run with no rear sway bar and then soften the front right off. Also quite a few of my geometry settings had somehow gone amiss as I found out the following week so we've sorted that out. We also realised that we had been running the new Vitesse V Flex software configured incorrectly so it was basically retarding ign after 1psi !! D'oh!![]. This has been remedied. This car also has a hybrid GT3076bb Tial turbo so it spools quite well (when the timing is correct!). So all in all the car went well under the circumstances.

As far as lap times go, the guy in the RS was doing 1.10s on that day. The fast guys in their GT3s were doing mid 1.05s to mid 1.07s. I did a best of 1.08 flat on the official timer and a 1.07 flat on my onboard timer, so not too far from the pointy end. Hoping to make a decent improvement in 3-4 weeks when our next competition is held. Will get some more footage...but also I have been having a devilish time trying to get video uploading to Youtube. Just keeps coming back with "Upload failed due to unknown error" and this after 8-12 hours waiting!!! Very frustrating. [:'(]

 

[DivineE]

Do you have any pics of how you fitted the turbo? I've heard there are problems with the orientation of the exhaust outlets?

p.s. still you have to love the old 944. A car that killed giants and even now 30 years later can keep within 1-2 secs pace of Porsche's latest and greatest on a track Makes me proud.

 

[333pg333]

Hi Ben,
I do have some pics of the turbo and mount at home. If you want I will send them to you via email. Send me your email to pgarvan@bigpond.net.au There did need to be some mods done to the crossover, yes. Not sure that I have pics of that though, I'll have to look. I totally agree about our cars being amazingly efficient against more fancied opposition. They definitely need to be modified quite a bit to push up against GT3s etc but the fact that they are missing 20+ years of tech, they should be allowed these mods. I know there's a school of thought that these cars should be kept original and that's fine, but I want to drive my car hard and fast and push the GT3s etc. I hope to keep doing that for some time yet.

 

[sawood12]

You're my hero Pat! Another superb instalment. I always cringe when people slag these cars off. They clearly don't know what they're on about. People like Pat and a few others who do use these cars in anger show that they do punch well above their weight. For the money there is no better sportscar out there that has a good blend of a prestige badge, performance, robustness etc. Makes me want to get another one!

 

[333pg333]

G'wan Scott, you know you want one.[]

There's a young guy who has just bought one that comes into our garage and we're trying to get him to come out to the track with the local Porsche club. He's a bit of a menace on the road so hopefully he'll come out and get his kicks on the circuit. The thing is that he'll benefit so much from us going before him and helping him avoid a lot of pitfalls. Some of it driving, but most of it if he chooses to modify. There seems to be a few more guys looking at these little front engined water pumpers at club level out here which is good. I think the element of club snottyness against them has given up as we surpass all but the really fast guys in their cars that cost 10 times ours....no really that's true. Even the fast guys are starting to take notice. We're only a second or two off their best laps and there are guys building 3L 16v motors now, so here we come.....[]

 

[Diver944]

Keep up the good work Pat, I'm really missing my track fun and your videos help relieve the frustration (though you could argue they also make me realise how much I miss it). Work is picking up nicely here so I hope to start adding to my own video collection at some point in the future.

 

[333pg333]

Good to hear about the work Paul. I do wish more people would post their videos and not make me feel like a shag on a rock. In fact I've decided not to post any more but check out my Youtube page from time to time.

I can't wait to see more of LiL in action. Miss that sound a lot!

 

[DivineE]

ORIGINAL: 333pg333

Good to hear about the work Paul. I do wish more people would post their videos and not make me feel like a shag on a rock. In fact I've decided not to post any more but check out my Youtube page from time to time.

I can't wait to see more of LiL in action. Miss that sound a lot!

I think your videos greatly improve the forum so now that I have subscribed to your channel on youtube I will be posting them here if they don't appear

you should be proud to use your car. I wish there were more 944 owners posting such entertaining footage. I need:

a. A car with an engine
b. Some kind of camera equipment better than a mobile phone

Then I can start posting clips. I've a few friends with various quick Jap turbo toys who all want to do a track day together this summer. We're a dangerously competative bunch at the best of times, so before we all get banned from the circuit there should be an oportunity to get some excellent footage[]

I forget who posted it (Dave from Northampton I think) but someone did a brilliant clip at a Subaru track day in the wet taken from the cockpit of a 944 with a counter in the corner as he passed them all[] I would love to do something similar.

 

[944Turbo]

I'll post a link of one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi9j_3NLLU4 Paul hanging back behind a nice looking turbo

(wish I had time to edit some video together and to get back out on track, I have a credit with goldtrack since last year)

fingers crossed for later this year.

Tony

 

[944Turbo]

And a ropey one of me trying to keep up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3WWi2OAuFY was my first day with 7" fronts instead of the more usual 7.5" think I might have been leening on them a bit hard.

I Enjoy your Vids Patrick keep posting them!

 

[333pg333]

Thanks for posting them Tony. I've seen them both quite a few times but it's actually great to view them back to back and see how different the cars are. Lil can be driven much more on the torque and appears from inside to be doing it much more easily, where the tuned 2.5L has to use rpms just to keep up. Amazing what 700cc's can do!! []
I like the look of Donnington too. Looks fast and smooth with plenty of run-off.

Actually what I think would be good is if there was a sticky that people could go into and load links to their videos. Then we could just update and peruse at our leisure?

The other side of video is tutorial. I find that I can learn a lot by viewing them at home after the day. In fact I will be taking my laptop to the track in future and checking them out in the breaks. I can see quite a few places to improve and go deeper or wider when seeing the latest video so it's worth potentially quite a bit of time.

I also appreciate the kind words and support.

Cheers

Patrick

 

[Diver944]

ORIGINAL: 333pg333

I like the look of Donnington too. Looks fast and smooth with plenty of run-off.

Such a shame that a lot of it has been dug up after the Formula 1 debacle last year [] I think I read that it might be resurrected, I really hope so as it's my favourite UK track so far

 

[garyalanlane]

Here's my one having some fun around Bruntingthorpe. Not me driving but the previous owner. No gt3rs to challenge but a few of those older funny rear engined jelly moulds. No suspension mods, just MO30, standard MO30 brakes but with a Promax level 2 kit taking it to just shy of 300 BHP. Averaging 7 mpg around the track. So much fun can be had in a twenty year old car for not huge bucks compared to the money spent on modern day racers. Future mods planed, Vitesse level 3 turbo maf piggy back kit, KW's, Big Reds and diet....! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T82DnRXqOkQ

 

[333pg333]

I didn't read about that Paul. Wow, what a real shame. Looked a beautiful circuit from what I could see.

Gary, I have never driven on one of those converted Airfield tracks. Somehow I find myself looking for reference points and loosing depth perception. They're just so wide. Still, you can definitely open the car up on some long straights. Sound like a good list of future mods too.