Paul,
do you still use farenheits in UK? I thought you changed to Celsius long time ago. I know the metric system might be difficult for UK people

We are in the middle of heat wave, it's only couple of minus degrees Celsius. About a week ago it was even here in southern Finland about -26 celsius. In the Northern part of the country they measured -39,9 Celsius, which is this winters lowest so far.

 

No we use Celsius here in the UK too, but as i was posting on a US based forum I thought I'd talk in fahrenheit just to avoid confusion. -26 celsius is too low for my brain to comprehend I think the lowest we have had this winter was about -5 celsius so I had to put a sweater on that day

 

Paul even your paint would bloom at the temperatures Olli mentions!!
Paul we only use the celsius term in labs! on the weather forcasts it is always centigrade and farenhight. Of course we have been known to use the Kelvin scale too!
Olli as you have already detected we Brits like our outdated Imperialist measurements like MPH not KMH, HP not KW, Gallons not litres etc etc and Pounds not Euros's. It took this country the best part of 20 years to get used to decimalisation post 1971! Remember we walk around the streets in bowler hats and pinstripe suits with umbrellas and we all go to lunch with the queen!!!

 

yes i know what you are talking about. I spent almost 1 ½ years in Liverpool in the late '70's when my father was rented to British Midland Airways with one DC9 (my dad used to work for Finnair) and i spent almost every weekend and school holidays there. I suppose one girl has something to do why i hopped up so often there....

 

I suppose one girl has something to do why i hopped up so often there....

I think I know what you're saying here Olli? You naughty crazy Finnman!

 

Paul, any word mate on the Vitesse PB being installed or tuned yet by Jon? We are all anxiously waiting to hear the progress. And if you can, take some pics of your current guage lay-out so we can see what it looks like in that stealth car too.

 

+1

 

Based on my information from yesterday, the PB is to be installed today.

 

Yep I spoke to John on Tuesday and he was finishing off the work on my car today before doing a little testing (and maybe a dyno run) and I should be picking it up on Friday. I have a trackday booked for Saturday so will hopefully be able to get you some nice in-car footage (though the forecast is for some nice slippy rain at the moment )

Good news for all you whooshing and popping lovers. We haven't done any sound reduction yet, so I will get some interior sounds from the turbocharger and BOV

 

I wonder how much louder the turbo, MAF & BOV are on UK cars with the glove box on the left side of the car. I imagine the glove compartment amplifies the sound. Some call it music, some call it noise

 

I've got an 88 951 here in Oz, with a MAF delete and 3" exhaust. It doesn't seem that loud, but then I'm used to loud modified cars !!

 

Well it's been a long time coming, but hurrah I have finally been back out on track. Funnily enough my last trackday was an evening at Bedford in April 2005 so it was only fitting that the return should be at the same place. LIL has spent the past two weeks down at Indi Jons having the Vitesse Piggyback system fitted to the MAF kit and I picked her up on Friday evening, getting back home at around 10pm to hurriedly pack the car and get some sleep before a 6am rise

Saturday morning dawned extremely wet as the weather man had predicted but undeterred I set off with my track tyres nicely packed in the boot just in case it dried out later which was also forecast. I made the decision to run at very low boost (13psi 0.85bar) I also limited myself to 5000rpm as this was a shakedown day after a long rest. Due to the extremely wet and slippy track this was also a good idea

First part of the days proceedings was the obligatory static noise test measured at the exhaust pipe. Saturdays limit was 101db but my car passed that easily recording only 93db at 3/4 revs (4500rpm). When the track opened it was very slippy and many people could be seen slipping and sliding their way round through many sideways moments and the occasional half spin. My second lap out rewarded me with a slow speed (30mph) half spin at the first hairpin as my slumbering feet were trying to remember how to trail brake into slow corners Luckily there was only one stoppage all day when a BMW M3 wandered into the gravel trap, this only took 5 minutes to extracate. Just before lunch the track was dry enough to start overheating my road tyres and promoting a rapid wear rate, so with the help of my son we changed over to the track tyres and prepared for the fun to begin

The car performed faultlessly all day (well she was hardly stressed ) and for the first time ever I didn't have to top-up the oil after any of the sessions. We all know this is a regular and VITAL process with 944 Turbos as they do tend to use oil on track and if you let it get low there is a large risk of damaging the No.2 main bearing in the engine The extreme low down grunt of this 3.2 engine combined with the very short straights at Bedfords West circuit meant I only needed to use 3rd and 4th gear all day long. Very relaxing and very lazy. I did try 2nd in the two hairpins but it was too much hard work trying to control the wheelspin in the damp and 3rd gear was quite happy from around 2500rpm anyway.

The only downside to the whole day was as I started to press on in the afternoon, the amount of noise from the turbocharger and the dumpvalve set off the drive by noise limit of 87.5db so I got a black flag and a warning that if I did it again I couldn't go back on track. We worked out that it had happened because I had started changing gear just slightly earlier down one of the straights and the huge WHOOSH from the dump valve was happening right next to the microphone. A new limit of 4500rpm and gentle gear changing down that straight saw me through to the end of the day (today I shall be experimenting with Dynamatt sound proofing in the engine bay)

I had my bulletcam rigged up in the car so here is a 3 minute taster of LIL's return to the track. The yellow 968 CS in this clip is a gorgeous supercharged 3 litre built by NineMeister racing here in the UK

 

Hi there,

Thanks for the video. We still have to wait couple of months until our track season starts in here..

Jarmo

 

Nice one Paul and well done for finally making back on track after so long. It must feel like a reunion of sorts. Maybe like an old girlfriend who's blossomed into a big sexy woman. Ooh Err. Anyway it sounds a lot better than I'd thought although I know you were only going easy on her. My god, who owns the Ninemeister 968? Saw that in an article and it sounded very nice. Pity about the chaps lines but never mind. He made you look even better lol. Lil seemed to pull on him pretty comfortably and on less than 1.0 bar. From what I remember you have mostly stock suspension too, yes? Well done. Lot's to look forward to. Nice clean footage too. Keep it coming.

 

The 9M 968 has only just recently changed hands so I'm pretty sure the new owner was still getting used to her as well, but he certainly started to try pretty hard and got a little, errrrr, how shall I say, scruffy whenever we came near Yes, my suspension and brakes are totally standard Koni M030 (though everything has been freshly rebuilt) as this is a predominantly family road car. I do have the KW V3 on my list, but it will be a while before that gets added.

Even at only 13psi the car was definitely too fast for my rusty skills (that will change ). The last time I drove that circuit I only had a TiAL and some Guru chips running at 1bar and there were two fast corners that were flat out in 3rd and 4th gear respectively. Both of them were a big lift and a feather of the throttle yesterday, even when it was dry and I had the R rated tyres on.

I have no idea how you high HP guys drive flat out in your 400HP plus cars. Big respect