analogmike

Hi,

I was reading about the Flying Lizards RSR and how it got slow after a year and they were going to replace the tub, as the tub is a wear item. I have heard from my German pro driver friends that a lot of the 996 cups get soft after a while.

I wonder how long you can race a gt3 cup before the tub starts losing you time? There are no more 996 replacement tubs... would like to get a 996 cup again for SCCA but I don't want to be frustrated with a saggy chassis.

Viperbob1

From the onset some teams send their cars to Fabcar for complete seam welding (totally striped down) to further strengthen them and to slow the degradation from the twisting.

PedroNole

Chasis is definitely a wear item. I had my old 996 Cup gone through (every seem, suspension attatchment point, etc) at the end of the season two years ago and there were a LOT of areas that needed attention. I can't say that afterward it was seat of pants considerably better but it was a bit tighter and my times were a little better. Consider that the chasis hadn't been touched in 6 years outside of repairs for specific incidents and that it had a LOT of hours on it, you can certainly see where doing it is logical.

coryf

There is a noticeable difference between an early 996 and later 996 with the updated and stiffer cage. You can also feel a 996 loosen up after a long run. (3hrs or so) The chassis feels like it heat soaks and you can feel the car getting slopy That was one of the biggest differences for me in the 997. It has a much stiffer chassis and never feels like it gives up in a long race. Our teams Grand-am car was seam welded when new and it also has a different feel than a stock chassis 997. One of the easy ways to tell how stiff a chassis is, is see how many turns on the shocks is required to see noticeable changes in the corner weight. A very stiff car will only need half turn or so to see a change in weight percentage.

analogmike

Thanks for the info, interesting about the corner balancing twisting the chassis before it shows up on the scales.

Maybe I should think about getting my '08 seam welded next winter as a preventative measure. I don't think F-L did that to my car, though they did it on the '07 and '09 championship cars (along with a lot of other things that were not quite kosher!!!).

mklaskin

Two brothers in our chapter run 2000 GT3R's. One bought the car new from PMNA, the other bought his car from Kelly Moss. The Kelly Moss car had been an ALMS GT competitor in 2000-1 and had been fully seem welded and strengthened. According to them, it's like driving 2 totally different cars.

BrandonH

I love Porsches as much as the next guy, so not trying to sound snippy. But my introduction over the last 3 years to 'real' racecars, eg formula cars and sports racers has given new poignancy to that old quote (Caroll Smith??) "you can't make a racehorse out of a pig, although you can make a mighty fast pig..."

I've come to view development of a production based street car into a racing car as a very expensive route to a still very compromised result. A close friend won the SCCA runoffs in Sports 2000 in a twenty year old Lola. Now, in the tradition of all racecars, and like George Washington's axe, much of the car that took the checker was not present when Lola shipped the car in the seventies. But that's kind of the point, you want the platform to be easily upgradeable, maintainable and tunable. Which a production car just can't be...

Surfbum

I purchased the 2007 Rolex series winning car last year and stripped it down to the tub, I had my body guy seam weld in a lot of places. According to him, it was well needed.

analogmike

Do you really need to strip the chassis down so much to beef them up a bit?

ProCoach

Actually, Matt's car was built in 1990 by Lola and was the second to last "SR-71" that was built by Steven Johnson, Bill Fralick and a few others. The car won the RunOffs in 2003 with Steven at the wheel and this year with Matt.

One of the features of the strengthening and stiffening of the the Lola to these specs was often adding an additional layer of sheet aluminum over the original. Makes a big difference!