997/996 GT3 dynamics

[ttdan]

LaSource said:

ttdan said:

Fun trip. Christ it was hot.

I assume the heat would be played havoc with tyres?

Portimao is quite a killer on the front left.

I struggled with rear end grip all week. As Jon’s video, first and last few mins shows

[gtsralph]

LaSource said:

I assume the heat would be played havoc with tyres?

Kills catalysts too

[Steve Rance]

During the 2007 Silverstone 24 we were lying 3rd overall and I was driving at 2.30am. By then the plastic reflective markets on the trackside has all been flattened by various excursions and it was hard to see. I think that an RSR was first and Michael Vergers was second (subsequently taken out by Richard Hammond. He was not amused). Anyway, fog started to come down and by 2.00am it was really thick. I called Steve Winter who was on the pit wall, told him that I couldn’t see anything and asked the pace of P1 and P2. He said they had both just done 1.58’s and asked what I wanted to do. I said I’ll try to match them. The next few laps were the most frightening that I’d ever done in a race car. I couldn’t see the bridge along hanger straight until I went under it. All the reference points were gone. It was truly scary. Then there was a weird glow somewhere ahead to the right of me. It turned out to be a car on fire. Steve called me and told me to slow down straight away and slowly go to the grid and form up in P3. The race was paused for about 2hours until the fog lifted. I remember walking away from the car as it sat on the grid breathing the a sigh of relief. You go into a completely different zone when you are racing in those type of conditions

Edited by Steve Rance on Friday 15th February 07:33

[Digga]

Slippydiff said:

993rsr said:

You are right Pete, had both the images in the same folder.

Did you see the video of the Ferrari that went straight on there, nasty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7G-lcBkmX8

That's a proper bad day at the office Lucky he didn't take the car in front out, could have been catastrophic.

Quite, it looked like he did a sterling job of avoiding, but the car in front almost seemed to see him coming too.

Always awful to watch stuff like this.

[Digga]

LaSource said:

There is a clip of the night lap is on the Parabolica YT page. For those who might enjoy a bit of video as well (why doesn't PH have proper video embedding features? this is so last decade!)

https://youtu.be/BP9Oyn-33xQ

Yes, I can fully appreciate why there's no time to blink!

I do a lot of mid week night time mtb rides - very similar jeopardy. Impressive driving in that environment.

[LaSource]

Steve Rance said:

During the 2007 Silverstone 24 we were lying 3rd overall and I was driving at 2.30am. By then the plastic reflective markets on the trackside has all been flattened by various excursions and it was hard to see. I think that an RSR was first and Michael Vergers was second (subsequently taken out by Richard Hammond. He was not amused). Anyway, fog started to come down and by 2.00am it was really thick. I called Steve Winter who was on the pit wall, told him that I couldn’t see anything and asked the pace of P1 and P2. He said they had both just done 1.58’s and asked what I wanted to do. I said I’ll try to match them. The next few laps were the most frightening that I’d ever done in a race car. I couldn’t see the bridge along hanger straight until I went under it. All the reference points were gone. It was truly scary. Then there was a weird glow somewhere ahead to the right of me. It turned out to be a car on fire. Steve called me and told me to slow down straight away and slowly go to the grid and form up in P3. The race was paused for about 2hours until the fog lifted. I remember walking away from the car as it sat on the grid breathing the a sigh of relief. You go into a completely different zone when you are racing in those type of conditions

Edited by Steve Rance on Friday 15th February 07:33

Although I haven't done the level of racing you mention above, it does echo what it felt like driving to a lap time in reduced vision (night time) and bad lighting. You egg yourself to go faster, taking risks, yet fully aware that unlike a well lit dry track, the balance of skill vs luck has a greater weight on the luck side in reduced vision. You are a lot more likely to collect an unseen spinner ahead of you in low visibility and are relying on no one else spinning on circuit!

You also drive on 'autopilot' after a while...which is a little different to the autopilot one may do on a long day time track stint but one where alert levels are a higher.

..and when you get back to the pitlane you count your lucky stars that everything is still in one piece!

[MDL111]

just a quick update - took a while, but the nice looking 996.1 is out. so now back to searching. Might still get the 996.2 checked over as the information I received so far looks quite good.

[alfapork]

Is there a link to the 996.2?

[MDL111]

alfapork said:

Is there a link to the 996.2?

you'll have to scroll a few pages back - it was listed at c 80k euros on mobile.de

[braddo]

A bit of thread resurrection, firstly because the way that cars are getting snapped up at higher prices at the moment suggests there might be a few newish owners around these parts, who may enjoy a bit of reading about attributes of their new cars that aren't value or spec related. And secondly, because I have a new little factoid to add.

Front-end rattles - in years gone by there have often been threads about front-end rattles that owners (and garages) have struggled to diagnose. From memory the comments I saw were usually attributing the noise to any of ARB droplinks, top mounts or the dampers. Owners would say it was mostly the noise that was irritating and there was usually no ill handling effects.

A new source (to me at least) suggested to me by NineExcellence is the front brake pads.

Something like this - it is not uncommon that they can rattle around in the calipers even with the correct shims etc because the adhesive soon breaks down with very high brake temps. A way to test is have one's foot on the brakes very slightly when going over a rough surface to see if the rattle disappears. I spent a long time being paranoid that my car had some worn bushes/links/dampers, but they all check out OK and I still had the rattle after a while. Now I can get on and enjoy my car and not care about that occasional rattle.

[Slippydiff]

braddo said:

A bit of thread resurrection, firstly because the way that cars are getting snapped up at higher prices at the moment suggests there might be a few newish owners around these parts, who may enjoy a bit of reading about attributes of their new cars that aren't value or spec related. And secondly, because I have a new little factoid to add.

Front-end rattles - in years gone by there have often been threads about front-end rattles that owners (and garages) have struggled to diagnose. From memory the comments I saw were usually attributing the noise to any of ARB droplinks, top mounts or the dampers. Owners would say it was mostly the noise that was irritating and there was usually no ill handling effects.

A new source (to me at least) suggested to me by NineExcellence is the front brake pads.

Something like this - it is not uncommon that they can rattle around in the calipers even with the correct shims etc because the adhesive soon breaks down with very high brake temps. A way to test is have one's foot on the brakes very slightly when going over a rough surface to see if the rattle disappears. I spent a long time being paranoid that my car had some worn bushes/links/dampers, but they all check out OK and I still had the rattle after a while. Now I can get on and enjoy my car and not care about that occasional rattle.

Well yes, and no.
There’s no doubt that the elevated brake temps seen from track use can and does bake the adhesive to the point it’s ineffective and the anti-squeal “stickies” become permanently disconnected from the back of the pads, but it’s less of a problem on cars driven solely on the road.
A bigger problem is people leave them out altogether or try and reuse them because they’re expensive and frequently considered unnecessary.

Ultimately I’d suggest the majority of 996/997 GT3 rattles are caused by wear in the suspension components, and specifically the anti-roll bar droplink ends, failing top mount spherical bearings, coffin arm ball joints, tuning fork ball joints and worn damper rod bushes. All have been well documented over the years.

[braddo]

Yep.

Think of if it as a heads-up that if an owner notices a new rattle at the end of a day of track fun or alpine passes, for example, it's worth checking if the brake pads are the source before assuming that a suspension component has worn out during the day.

[Digga]

Good thread resurrection. Portimao is still on my bucket list.

[rrroro]

+1 nice to see a thread about driving GT3s again

I went out for a lunchtime blat in my 7.1 GT3, first semi-proper drive of the year. I discovered the joys of blipping upshifts with the new LWFW I had fitted last year, something that never really seemed to work out for me with the OEM flywheel. It was lovely to be driving around with the windows down for the first time in ages. I really missed savouring the sound of the Mezger. It sounds better than ever through the M&M side-delete which I also had fitted last year. Can't wait for proper warmer weather to return!