Best Track Day Modifications for Your Porsche 911
Best Track Day Modifications for Your Porsche 911
Few cars out of the box are truly adept at, or capable of, running hard on the track, and sadly, most 911s are not the exception. Calm down, before you try to kill the messenger, hear us out. In stock trim that may be the case, but with a few strategic tweaks, you can have a very capable and reliable track day ride. Here are a few areas of improvement to consider before your next track day.
Driver Instruction
The most obvious, yet seemingly least common choice by many is receiving driving instruction when you visit the track. Driving on track is very different from street driving, and it’s all too common for inexperienced drivers to get in over their heads and end up making a very costly mistake. Whether it be through your regional Porsche Club of America (PCA) or the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), many event organizers run “HPDE” (high performance driving event) days where the goal is to get some one-on-one in-car instruction and teach you how to safely navigate a live race track. Consider it an investment into your betterment as a driver and be willing to learn anything they throw at you, you will be all the better for it in the end.
Wheels and Tires
Track work is hard on tires, and that likely will be the common consumable discussed in the paddock. Having two sets of wheels and tires, one for the street and one for the track, is an ideal way to limit compromise. Mount up a set of soft, sticky rubber to those track wheels and watch lap times plummet. No other single change to the car will so massively affect it like tires. Better tires improve acceleration, braking, and cornering, often at the expense of longevity. When the track day is over, bolt on your street wheels and roll out. In the end, this actually saves money from tire wear and reduces frustration from heat cycling out your track tires on the street, or ruining your hard street tires on the track. We do not recommend competition or "r-comp" tires for novices, however, a nice, streetable and track friendly tire like Hankook RS3 or Dunlop Direzza ZII are common choices for track enthusiasts. Competition tires can be dangerous in untrained hands, and let mistakes happen that a street tire wouldn't.
Related Content: High Performance Tire Reviews - Rennlist.com
Brakes
This is an a la carte area of improvement, where you can make individual improvements and see how each one improves performance. Most people assume that the only thing to do with brakes is upgrade the whole thing with a packaged “big brake kit,” and while that is great, that is not necessary at all when you are first starting out. For just about every vehicle, Porsche or otherwise, start with the basics: a more durable, track day brake pad and higher-temp rated brake fluid. After enough abuse, OEM pads will crumble, and OEM fluid will boil, resulting in a soft, sinking pedal, a lot less brake force, and possibly an off-road expedition when you approach the next corner and the brakes go to the floor. This is obviously a performance upgrade, but it truly is a safety upgrade, don’t neglect your brake fluid!
Related Content: Brake Pad Reviews - Rennlist.com; How to Replace Brake Fluid - Rennlist.com
Cooling
Engine oil and water take a beating on track, as the engine is spending most of the day at full throttle, chasing the redline. Coolant (water) helps cool the engine and its oil, and if that gets too hot, well, aluminum engines tend to lunch themselves above about 250*F. Engine oil lubricates and cools all those heavy, metal bits that are spinning quite quickly in your engine. Ideally, engine oil would sit around 212*F/100*C, which is hot enough to burn away any condensation buildup, or vapors in the oil. However, it’s not uncommon for cars to see oil temps in excess of 260*F. If the oil gets too hot (think 300*F), its lubricative properties are seriously diminished, oil pressure issues could arise, and excessive engine wear occurs. Yikes!
If you have an air-cooled, then it’s as simple as fitting a big oil cooler and going. For 996 cars onward, your cars have radiators, so you’re going to want to fight the cooling front on both ends: with a large, aluminum radiator and oil coolers.
Chassis and Suspension Bushings
Suspension bushings are designed to allow for flex over rough or broken pavement, to smooth out the ride. That’s well and good, but manufacturers usually go way too soft when it comes to bushing tuning, resulting in dull steering and too much compliance. Replacing the bushings in the subframes, control arms and spring isolators, among others, will limit slop and excess suspension compliance. This allows the springs, shocks and tires to work more efficiently at the limits of grip, and ultimately improve the driving experience. Bushings are a wear and tear item, requiring somewhat regular replacement. Upgrading to hardened rubber, stiff polyurethane, or (where applicable) aluminum, and/or spherical ball joints will seriously improve the driving experience when you are pushing hard.
Springs and Shocks
The factory equipped spring and shock packaged on your 911 is probably quite nice on the road; however, when pushed hard, are you experiencing severe brake dive or understeer? Picking the right spring and shock package requires driving the car hard and understanding what it’s doing: is it understeering (front tires no longer adhering), oversteering (rear tires losing traction), or is the balance front-to-rear good but the car too soft over all? When it comes to picking spring rates, a 911 will always have stiffer springs in the rear since the car is carrying more mass back there. Considering the front-to-rear spring rate ratio is important in understanding how it will change the balance of the car.
On the 911, with it’s strut front suspension, a camber modifier, like and adjustable camber plate that replace the stock top hats and bolt up to your spring and shock, will aide front end grip and tire wear and allow further tuning possibilities, though from experience, you will likely set the front end up with the maximum amount of negative camber available for track use.
Shock tuning is a bit of a black art, but when it comes to the aftermarket, pair the spring rates you want to the shocks that are valved sufficiently to handle that rate. Shock adjustability is an excellent tool for advanced drivers, as you can tune the rate of shock compression (down stroke) and speed of rebound (up stroke) to ensure that optimum tire grip is always achieved. Speaking very generally, you will want the car to be stiff enough to match the available tire grip that the car has, but soft enough to not skate over bumps or be unpredictable. With an adjustable coil-over suspension, ride height and shock damping can be tuned trackside to accommodate for necessary changes in setup.
Pictured are KW Clubsport coilovers, which feature dampers that are compression and rebound adjustable, along with ride height adjustability via the threaded spring perch, and camber adjustment from the camber plate top hats.
Related Content: Suspension Modifications - Rennlist.com; Coilover Reviews - Rennlist.com
Driver Safety
When you are first starting out, we recommend keeping the car as standard as possible, barring safety items like brakes, and if you’re up to it, bucket seats and harnesses. Whether you choose RS buckets or look to the aftermarket, these heavily bolstered seats, in tandem with a safely set up harness system, will keep you better located and free from sliding around in the stock seats. Additionally, we recommend buying and mounting a mini fire extinguisher in your car. Small extinguishers can be bought for about $30 and fabricating a small bracket to bolt under the driver or passenger seat is quite easy. How hardcore you go in this area of improvement is up to you, and we heavily recommend consulting with a race shop or Porsche specialist as to your options and what the safest options are.
Datalogging
After you have been on track a handful of times, and have received basic instruction on when to brake, how to clip apexes and when to put the power down, you will benefit from advanced instruction and guidance that a GPS-based datalogger can give you. This tool uses a bevy of GPS satellites and accelerometers to measure G-force, cornering speeds, lap times and many other metrics that are useful in improving lap times. Commonly used devices include the AIM Solo and VBOX Performance Box, which display all of this information live time and record in to an SD card in which all of the telemetry can be viewed and analyzed via computer.
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