If you break an axle shaft or something it's not going to do much of anything later.

 

Obviously Porsche didn't care about the 0-60 too too much on this car due to the tall gearing. I think with more "normal" gearing the car would be running a much lower 0-60 (probably high 3's). But again, this car is tailored for the track, as it should be; not the drag strip!

 

This car was tailored for a track (Nordschliefe), not the track generally. For any other track (road course), the gearing will be too tall.

 

yeah the gearing is ridiculously tall and alot of reviewers have commented on that. If they gave it ideal ratios it would probably out accelerate a carrera gts and nipping on a gt3's heels at the track.

 

How do you figure that, i.e., that a tall second gear is good for the Ring? How many second gear corners are there on the Nuburgring? If anything, I've read commentary that it actually hurt the GT4's posted time at the Ring, as Gephart used second in a few corners observers thought he should have stayed in third.

While the gearing isn't ideal, I think people are stretching a bit thinking it's really having that big of an impact on the car, 0-60 or otherwise. As if it's some grand conspiracy by Porsche and different gearing would magically turn it into a GT3.

 

You can use 5 of the GT4's gears at the Ring. On some tracks only 2 (and occasionally) 3 will be useful.

If I were to gear the car for my local track, the GT4 would be slow at the Ring (redlining way below vMax on Dottinger Hohe).

Stock gearing works ok in 2 places: Autobahn and Nordschliefe.

I hope to verify that in 3 weeks

 

But that's not unique to the GT4, so I'm not sure why it would be 'tuned for the Ring'. Nor is the fact that a lot of cars only use 2-3 gears on tighter tracks.

 

My current two track cars use 4 gears each on my local technical track.

Whether the GT4 was intentionally tuned for the Ring or not, its gearing is much better suited to that track than any other road course that I know.

 

I learned from he e36 m3 not to underestimate the power of gearing. The U.S. Spec had much less power but much shorter gears and diff. So it traded a lower top speed for quicker acceleration (my US M3 cruises at something close to 4k rpm @ 80mph in 5th gear. That speed for acceleration trade off brought its 0-60 much closer to the 76hp more powerful euro spec car than it had a right to be.

Euro 236 kW (321 PS; 316 hp) 5.2 s 155 mph (249 km/h) (electronically limited)
U.S. 179 kW (243 PS; 240 hp) 5.5 s 139 mph (224 km/h) (electronically limited)

Stands to reason then, that shorter gears on the GT4 could make it devastatingly quick.

 

Absolutely right. Remember that gearing, through multiplication, determines torque to the wheels. How do you think a 4.8L engine would feel accelerating in second gear? That's the same effect as changing that ratio to 65 mph (at redline) from the current 82. Everybody will notice 27% more torque across the entire rev range.

 

Here is the output of a simulator I wrote in excel. I wrote it a long time ago to argue with the E46M3 folks about whether you spend 3K on a diff or weight reduction...but, here you can see the impact of different pinion gear, and compared to .2RS (based on my Dyno curve). Most parameters were what was published by Sport-Auto. Wheel spin, aero, rolling friction, all kinds of fun stuff....

Something obvious, though I didn't really think about it until I saw the data, is that the old 3.8 Mezger is actually a little down on torque at lower RPM compared to the MA1, and it's very similar until the MA1 (in what ever derivative you call it in the GT4) runs out of breath. The Mezger keeps pulling.

accell_Test_gt4_2.jpg

 

Porsche was just trying to move parts and save R&D money. Need we forget this transmission was already designed and being used ( way before the GT4 ) in lesser 981 variants. IMO it had nothing to do with a certain track it was all about the $$$

 

While that is most certainly true, keep in mind that someone had to sign-off on those ratios originally, for a car with 10% less displacement.

 

I totally agree. You don't think Porsche was doing this to drive the sale of PDK transmissions do you? The GT4 makes this transmission bearable and I personally would not buy a 981 other than the GT4 in manual. I realize MPG is a factor but they did not have to make the ratios that bad.

As far as 0-60 I could care less as the GT4 can take turns at 60 MPH that would make other cars scratch their tail pipes!!