boxsey911

Colin, those latest pics taken with your daughter's new camera are superb. Now you know what to ask Father Christmas for.

ZG862

Something tells me this is not the owner's sole daily runner; I would be surprised if the time/money taken to create the car is material to him/her. Me, I'm just enjoying the chance to see what it takes to engineer & build something like this.
I'm sure when you commission yours you'll be able to negotiate late delivery penalty clauses with Colin.

NineMeister

Cheers Steve, your comments are much appreciated. The camera I used is a Nikon D3100 which she needs for her college work: she did 2 years of Photography & Media studies and now is into another 12 month Art foundation course, hence her needs are currently far greater than mine. Great little camera though, but much more to think about and play with than my old SLR Zenith!

NineMeister

No offence intended, but I think it is time to nip any slightly negative comments in the bud before they get out of hand.

I concur that based on the information previously given on the thread your comments are accurate. But, in spite of the exhaustive detail that I am posting, there is still a lot more going on behind the scenes to which you are unaware (most of which I unfortunately cannot share on a public forum) so it is wrong to conclude (in relation to this vehicle build) that 9m is neglect of its contractual obligations, from either a financial or delivery viewpoint. Within the limits of what I can say I will do my best to explain:

As you all are probably already aware, Ninemeister have been designing and building engine performance packages for the aircooled engine for over 12 years, the headline acts to this show being the 4.0 litre high lift race engine in my 993RSCS and the 3.82 litre race engine in the back of the famous 9m93RS-R. At the initial planning stage of this car the customer specified that we fit a tried, tested and proven 3.82 litre 9m Race engine to the same specification as the 9m93RS-R and similar to the engines previously supplied to Singer, i.e. circa 400+hp and capable of pushing the car as fast as any GT3. So far so good.

In business it is pretty much a given that if you stand still someone will overtake you, hence in the background of our visible work we have an GT3 engine development programme with an engine design consultant/partner, within which we have been using the aircooled race engines as a data source for some of the computer simulation models. The work done to date is really paving our way to introducing cutting edge new technology onto the 911 platform, but more of this some other time. The point is that the GT3 and aircooled engines share arouns 50% of the software model, so when initial calculations for the engine for this car were processed into the simulation it was obvious that we had a very difficult design space to resolve due to the climate to which the car was intended - i.e. hot, humid and tropical. It was now obvious that we had to rethink the aircooled race engine design strategy if we were to have the car perform as expected.

Roll this forward to today and we now have around 350 hours of computer simulation behind us which has pinpointed the areas of the engine that we need to revise in order to meet our requirements. Now we're not talking of just changins a camshaft or altering compression ratio here: as well as the mechanical engine components we are also integrating our design process to include engine management, sensors, fuel and exhaust systems. The work was estimated when we started, but then both myself and the consultant moved the design goals upwards and expanded the workload after seeing compromises in the engine design that we could not live with. So far a fair estimate of the design and development costs would easily exceed £150,000, a sum which we are sharing between us, but the results of this investment are likely to result in this car having the most technologically advanced flat-6 aircooled engine ever built and the first of a new generation of 9m Engines. Hence if anyone thinks we are sand-bagging please send 9m a cheque for £150,000, I can then tell my consultant to stop working in his spare time, drop his paying work and really get the show on the road!

Can I politely request that nobody asks for more details on the engine, until the work is done nothing more can or will be said about it. The good news however is that we have a car shakedown test with the current RS engine planned soon (subject to the weather) and are now continuously working on the car to ensure that we make this milestone.

evoderby

No questions allowed.....oh the agony! ;-)

Very interesting development program Colin!

p.s. I'd happily invest some spare time as a test driver to help alleviate your hectic schedule...:-)

911Jetta

Exciting news! I know I’d be happy just to have a basic Motec unit optimized on my 3.6. I can't imagine what a 964 4.0 with all the goodies would feel like?

Hearing 8,000 RPM in a 964 would be an amazing experience.

Also thanks for giving us a little behind-the-scenes company information. I don't understand the negativity by some, but I guess it’s a lot less around here than most forums. I appreciate having a venue like this to get such direct news. Updating this build (and others that you have done in the past) takes time. Thanks again.

Cheeksyboy

+1

Babalouie

Thanks for taking the time to share what you can, Colin. It's appreciated

mf_rsr

Defo appreciated by me! I've been to 9m a few times and its almost the best day out ever. Walking around, looking at all the great stuff they do, chatting away. Keep pushing the boundaries guys!

Madness911

loving the progress, keep them coming more !

NineMeister

Glad to say that we are closing in on the completion of phase 1 of the mega-project that is the first 9m11RS-R. Back to the trusty iPhone for phots I'm afraid...

First batch are the revised "wet setting" rear wheels which will give us more clearance to lower the back end of the car. Enjoy.

NineMeister

Next up, the front end.

We left masking take on the top of the bumper to protect the edge whilst going through the velcro on-off-on-off phase of sorting out the aircon and oil coolers. Now we're done with that the bumper top has been polished, foam sealant applied and the bumper and splitter are finally in place.

NineMeister

At the back end it's a slightly different story.

We previously had left the bumper unpainted since we are unsure of where the final exhaust outlets will be, however after a bit of working out we deduced that we could fit the stock 964 exhaust for our shakedown if we fitted a "turndown" tip off the final silencer, which is why we only now painted the rear bumper. To protect the fresh paint from the heat of the silencer Robin fabricated an aluminium heat shield across the rear, but as it turns out, we frustratingly had lacked 1/4" of clearance for the 964 rear silencer so a Cup pipe has now been put to good use for the trial. Sounds great!

Wachuko

If only I had the cash... that is so frigging bada** looking... the level of detail on the build, the quality of those carbon fiber body parts... the suspension, engine, center lock wheels, etc. Everything about this car screams!!!

Just wanted to say thank you for sharing the process and answering questions!

Porsche964FP

Looking great