Driving CarreraLightweightRacing's 996 'CLR' (briefly)
Discussion
Almost 3 years now since cmoose did this little testdrive and write-up. Sadly I have been away from Pistonheads for sometime and with winter and a few other issues in the background I just haven't had any time with the toys. I made amends today though with a wonderful drive, in fact my first drive this year in the CLR. A few have asked for performance figures now the car is somewhere close to being finished; well this is nothing definitive but I managed to make a short video today to give a rough idea of the performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfDsbdjNDFM
Apologies if you've seen this already elsewhere: PH usually isn't overly catered for when it comes to driving threads so I thought I'd also post this up here. Although the car was never designed with straight line performance in mind, I can safely say the car demands your attention at all times. It is unlike anything else I have driven; combining it's rather fearsome delivery and early spring conditions left me a little shaken to say the least, in a good way of course.
And with spring just about here guys, get out and enjoy your wonderful cars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfDsbdjNDFM
Apologies if you've seen this already elsewhere: PH usually isn't overly catered for when it comes to driving threads so I thought I'd also post this up here. Although the car was never designed with straight line performance in mind, I can safely say the car demands your attention at all times. It is unlike anything else I have driven; combining it's rather fearsome delivery and early spring conditions left me a little shaken to say the least, in a good way of course.
And with spring just about here guys, get out and enjoy your wonderful cars
I entered into this project with the aim of purity and fun in mind and to that end the car feel absolutely alive and edgy (I call it the 3 F's: Feelsome, fast and fearsome) . I don't hang around when I drive my cars but at the same time I'm not a frequent track day user any more. To be honest Steve, it would probably take some tame racing driver such as your good self to be able to really enlighten me as to the minutiae of preventing ambifacient lunar waneshaft side fumbling
For me the car is just extremely exciting to drive; now whether that is solely due to how the front now interacts with rear in relation to what you mention above or due to one of the myriad changes I've made to the geometry and set up of the car (Hub positioning, rake angle, weight distribution, CofG, steering conversion, completely unique suspension components, vast unsprung mass changes, introduction of various Rose joints or of course the fact the Ohlins were designed with a certain design weight in mind i.e 18% more weight), is hard to tell, well for me at least anyway. Truth is, I don't have enough experience in this field or have hard empirical data to back up my perhaps perverse claims of it just being plain mental.
I made the call with all of these crazy ideas and in some cases I have been forced into compromises, I didn't really intend in the design phase. The front ARB being a good case in point. This came about due to excessive steering input required in order to overcome the torsional forces in the ARB at steering angles over 180 degrees. Now I didn't factor this in the design as I assumed the friction from tyres and other loading inputs would be far greater than the concerns with the front ARB. This whole project has been a constant battle and learning exercise but in the case of the ARB it would appear serendipity has helped me out; and on the lonely path of doing something like this alone, you take all the help you can get when it inadvertently strays into your path
For me the car is just extremely exciting to drive; now whether that is solely due to how the front now interacts with rear in relation to what you mention above or due to one of the myriad changes I've made to the geometry and set up of the car (Hub positioning, rake angle, weight distribution, CofG, steering conversion, completely unique suspension components, vast unsprung mass changes, introduction of various Rose joints or of course the fact the Ohlins were designed with a certain design weight in mind i.e 18% more weight), is hard to tell, well for me at least anyway. Truth is, I don't have enough experience in this field or have hard empirical data to back up my perhaps perverse claims of it just being plain mental.
I made the call with all of these crazy ideas and in some cases I have been forced into compromises, I didn't really intend in the design phase. The front ARB being a good case in point. This came about due to excessive steering input required in order to overcome the torsional forces in the ARB at steering angles over 180 degrees. Now I didn't factor this in the design as I assumed the friction from tyres and other loading inputs would be far greater than the concerns with the front ARB. This whole project has been a constant battle and learning exercise but in the case of the ARB it would appear serendipity has helped me out; and on the lonely path of doing something like this alone, you take all the help you can get when it inadvertently strays into your path
Edited by CarreraLightweightRacing on Monday 4th March 07:48
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