AFAIK the front structure of the GT3 comes from the 4S body structure. That is the reason why there is room for the lift but not on the GT4.

 

^^ Very good point

 

Being from California, I think there is more money up there

 

To add a bit of info here...our tracks are probably worse than most in the conti USA....yesterday we had a track day. I was the only GT4 but at least 6 GT3/RS. Two of them are tracked pretty heavy (riding over curbs) and so far no failures. Owners are getting a bit nervous now as this thread is making a lot of people aware of the problem and came to our pit to talk about this. Of course we only have 1 track day per month so probably way less miles and time on track than stateside cars...BTW, after the hurricane our roads are also a mess so you can add that to the mix. Since there's no way of pointing to the cause of this we are keeping our finger crossed.....very bad from PAG for not addressing this issue as GT products are supposed to be designed to handle the abuse of a track..

 

This is indeed an unfortunate situation. I guess if it should ever happen to me, I know to drive off the track premises, find me a pothole and then call the toe truck ;-) ........no seriously, this is a Porsche issue 100%. I am not one to sue, have never done so in my life, but I think I would give it a try if it came to that. There is no other car in the world that has these failures, AND Porsche sells these cars as track cars. On top of that there is more an more data to make a solid case. I would have to insist that Porsche refunds me my money or fixes the car 100% with no cost to me, plus loaner car during the fix.

Long term, I don't think they can ignore this issue. This is only going to get worse with cars ageing and being (ab)used more. They need to look at the long term effect and manufacture an insert and recall all GT4's and maybe GT3's.

 

Rick Deman is making Front reinforcement pieces which are then welded I believe.

 

Database has been started and can be found as a sticky. I'll start going through this thread shortly and adding data.

 

I am no kind of engineer and really don't know much about vehicle dynamics (which may be obvious from my comments here), but I wonder if it happens consistently on the right side because most tracks run clockwise. Please don't shoot me if this is completely illogical.

 

True that

 

Through 38 pages of this thread, and 5 failures. There are approx. 4-6 others that I've requested info on. I've also seen 3 reported GT3s but I don't have any data.

 

Here are some detailed photos of a tower failure due to an on track crash. I don't know the crash details but this was a fully stripped down 981 car with a cage so I'm sure this was due to a racing incident. There was a ton of other body damage to the chassis that I didn't document.

All of the normal accessories that block the view of the tower structure have been stripped out.

Hopefully this will help the engineers on here further analyze the cause and potential solutions for this issue.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmxoyu6N

 

Most tracks I run are CCW

 

Thank you sir, I think this can only help in the long run. It truly sucks this is something we have to deal with as 981/991 car owners. I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but as the miles pile up over the next few years, we may find the non-GT cars start seeing this failure mode, so just because one doesn't own a GT car, one may benefit from the gathering of this information. I'm confident there are Porsche engineers and managers lurking on Rennlist. Hopefully sometime in the next few years a recall will bring in cars for installation of a reinforcement cup inside the front shock towers. I think the safety concerns will push this at a corporate level at Porsche. Of course there are all those examples of Porsche design issues that never got recalls (IMS, coolant lines, etc.)......

 

To support the worldwide market, probably should have a column for "Driver Side - Left/Right" and "Failure Side - Left/Right". Will eliminate ambiguity of failure side being listed as driver's side or passenger's side when that can be a different side depending on the car being UK or USA market, for example. Failure side choices could also be "Driver/Passenger" if the Driver side of the car is defined in its own column.

 

I'm no materials engineer, but that piece of cast aluminum looks terribly thin.
Not something that you'd expect to see in a GT car.