tcsracing1

Earlier this year i purchased a RS from a fellow rennlister along with various racing parts from other rennlisters. My goal was to get to know the car and to use it across canada each summer for various track events and even a tarmac rally, the targa newfoundland rally.

never having driven a p-car before and only getting the car two weeks proir to the rally i managed to get through quite easily.

basically, for the rally, i had to do the following:

-remove front splitter
-raise suspension and alignment
-add rally trip computer
-clubsport full roll cage

I had no crew support, and basically no problems anyhow throughout the 2500km drive.
Competition was strong in my class, with Steve Millen in a GT-R claiming 1st, Subaru canada getting 2nd with their STI and 3rd going to me in the RS.

If i had not intercountered heavy rain on the last day i could have nabbed 2nd from Subaru, however toyo 888 tires would hydroplane at 90km thus i conserved.

The event was alot of fun, well organized and very exhausting. A true challenge of ones motorsport ability.

Running no mufflers and CUP pipes made for a crowd favorite too.

Here are some photos and soon i will have video too!

tcsracing1

RS

tcsracing1

RS

Polarporsche

Well done, the car looks great. Nice to hear the Porsche has the reliability to go the distance.

gt38088

great job. you are going to find this a new addictive passion and will be coming back for more and more. Pretty soon you will be looking at heading downunder for targa tasmania and/or targa nz. keep it up.

tcsracing1

Oh, and by the way..... @ the saturday charity autoX after the rally the car had the fastest time of the day

AllanJ

Hey Tom, if Targa Canada West goes ahead next spring, are you coming out with the RS?

tcsracing1

you know it!

my RS will be back in whistler next month for winter slumber.

do you know of any good race shops in B.C that know 997 cup cars?

roberga

a lot of them come down to Seattle. Greg Fordahl,Collin Cantrell and Chris Powell. Greg was chief engineer for Alex Jobs foe a number of years and he is a 5 time SCCA National AX champion. . Collin is involved Rolex and has a large storage area in the shop. Chris has been around a long time. Back in the 70's built 935 for the Champion #59.
another option for storage: http://www.lemaymuseum.org/page.php?id=77

Targa Tim

Congrats, we need to see your car when you're back in BC.

AllanJ

If you don't want to do Seattle, bring your car to MB Euromotors in Vancouver. They also make the trek to Daytona each Jan for the Rolex 24 hours with their 997 cup car.

Let me know when you're coming to Vancouver. Beer is on me.

Cheers,

P.J.S.

awesome... just awesome...

Carrera GT

Congratulations again on the successful finish (and just plain bringing it back in one piece!)

Close-up photos of wear-and-tear would be really useful and generally interesting (especially the nose and body around the wheels, the chin, etc.) Did the headers survive? Any bottoming at all? Presumably some scrapes underneath aside from that rear wheel incident.

Did you monitor tire or pad wear? Did you bleed the brakes? Any noticeable change in the "character" of the car? (suspension softened up, steering alignment out, cabin noise, creaking, rattles, squeaks, noise from the roll bar)

tcsracing1

Actually, no unusual wear-and-tear. The nose was completely untouched and so was the underbody. Headers were completely safe too. The rear wheel got a scuff and a bent lip but no body touch at all. I had the car at max ride height which resulted to work well, even in full compression. Very surprised and impressed.

I got airborn in the car. Multiple times actually. even at 180km. Watch for the video on speed tv during this winter.... i have a feeling it will show one of my jumps The car did them very easily i might add.

The car never bottomed and the steering alignment stayed the same. The steering wheel is still straight even after a few hard pot hole hits. The car still feels super tight.

Suspension was in sport mode full time and never softened. ( i suffured a PASM error before the race for some reason and still have it in default mode which is sport unfortunitly. I did find it a little bouncy and stiff, to the point the car would "jump" in grippy corners -bare in mind i was also at max ride height-Im still trying to figure out how to fix it as it is the Bilstein B16 damptronic and i would really liked to have tried soft setting for the race.)

The brakes appear to be fine but will have to inspect the pads. I have not bleeded the system. (when should i bleed it anyhow?)

The lock nuts for the front bilsteins back off mid week, but with an impact gun that i used from a crew on the road fixed it very quickly. (one thing i would like to mention was that the access openings for the coil over tops are too small to get a wrench on, especially since my coil overs were all the way tilted in for the height. Anybody here ever cut out the openings??)

I encountered no sounds or stresses to change the character of the car.
Although, the foam padding on the roll bar touches the interior pastic panels above the passenger windows which squeaks, especially in the cold.

The roll bar during body flex over uneven terrain creeks a little too as to be expected. However the body feels super stiff. I have a picture of my car three wheeling into a turn. There are no "new" noises as i am happy to announce.

I will get pictures of any battle scars i can locate once the car is on a ramp.

Carrera GT

Thanks for the detail in your reply. If I were you, I'd probably still be catching up on sleep and sleeping off a gi-normous celebration hangover!

For the struts, the tool vendors have special narrow sockets (Spam-on, SK,Matco, HAzet, etc.) Or you can get a friendly machine shop to turn down a socket until it clears the fender. There's not a lot of torque on those nuts and even if the socket eventually dies, it's $25 and you make another one. I suggest using a "pinch" nut for the lock nut or at least a dab of loctite blue. Then hold the first nut with an open wrench (aka "set spanner") to torque down the lock-nut. If clearance is an issue, a couple of washers (if there's enough thread on the shock shaft) helps separate the two nuts to get the tools on. Always keep an Allen key in the shock shaft to make sure it's not turning. I'd generally say using an impact tool isn't a great idea on struts, but to punch down the lock-nut, it's no problem.

Removing the rib on the edge of the strut top of the fender is a no-no in m book ... that's part of the chassis of the car. Maybe if you had a pro fabricator cut it and plate it, you could end up with a good result. Even so, if you ever want resale value or if you want to compete, it could have rules implications to modify the chassis or be seen to be potentially altering the geometry of the car or whatever arcane points system might put a street car up against bespoke race cars. I don't pretend to have first-hand knowledge in this case, but when I encounter situations like this on late model 911s, I try to look at a Cup car to see what they did. If you know people, you can look at the teams that campaigned grand-am cars, etc. They'd know every trick and every pitfall.