Macca

Sorry not known to me but looks like a nice example otherwise.

Pop into Stefan at Haslers and ask if he remembers the extent of the damage. If they didnt fix it might have been Evans. I remember seeing two that had had mishaps. One was the iris blue one and the other I cant recall the colour but it has been pushed from behind essentially someone behind had left their handbrake off and it had rolled forward into the car in front so fairly minor/light damage. That was back in 2003-4 IIRC. Stef repaired both of those so may remember.

gt38088

The one I remember very clearly I 2012 was the BMW in the Tour off at Cop corner on the Fielding stage - went straight ahead and down the bank but still on its wheels so recoverable. The corner is not sighted when you need to start braking and you can't see the apex until its too late and its a T junction left over a bridge, usually with gravel on it. It's the stage where the famous pic of Mike Lowe in the Abarth on 2 wheels about to roll over was taken.

Macca

Ahhh. Thats it. Cop corner!

Macca

Ok. Not sure if I posted this already.

If anyone has a car they are not using and wish to make some cash from between 20 December 2014 and 23 Jan 2015 please let me know. Its for Jo. We will be travelling in the 911s for a few weeks over that period and she generally only uses the cars we rent for visiting friends in town or going to the shops so modest mileage and shes a very careful driver. Doug is a valid referee. Our budget is around $800-1000 over this period (modest I know).

Just putting it out there. I need to sort something out in the next few weeks. Have been very tempted to pick up a cheap (14K) E60 530d on TM for her for our NZ trips but trying to resist the hassle of a third car to garage, WOF, Insure and Rego+service!

993 Targa

Apparently it was repaired by Precision I think but I haven't got a time frame of how long ago yet so it could be too far back to remember. I will try and extract more info from them. Are then any NZ new 996.1 GT3s that weren't accident damaged?!

Macca

Ok. Ive met the guys there on my last NZ trip. Good shop. The owner has a genuine speedster which is on display there and they increasingly do CCS repair work. If it were precision it would likely have been in the last 4-5 years as the relationship has really only started building in that time.

There were a fair few NZ new 996.1 GT3s delivered and most remain unmolestered. I believe there were 14 996.1 GT3 delivered NZ new. I imported the second speed yellow car from Singapore in 2005. There may be a UK import or two floating around. I do not know personally of any Mark 1 that have had significant damage although I believe at least 3-4 have probably seen the panel shop for very minor repairs.

The 996.2 GT3s there were fewer (10). The table below reflects the Mark 2 variants. I know of at least 3 additional imports (1 ex Sing and 2 ex UK). Of the original 10 NZ cars I personally witnessed I think 3 having panel work done over the years. One was silver and one Lapis blue (I said Iris earlies but was mistaken). I cant recall the third. The ex Sing one has led a rough life. Matt owns one of the ex UK cars. There may be others.

Macca

Another interesting fact. The figures above combine 997.1 GT3 and 997.2 GT3 production.

There were only 8 x 997.2 GT3 imported new to NZ. There were 8 x 997.2 GT3RS - so unusally there are as many RS and non RS variants for the Mark 2 997 GT3 officially imported! This is very odd. Reason was GFC in 2008 when GT3 was launched which eased up by 2010 when RS was launched.

Only 1 x 4.0RS remains in NZ. Id imagine it will go offshore soon.

The highest number of any variant of GT3 produced to date imported to NZ was the 997.1 GT3 of which 17 NZ examples were imported. I know personally of two additional units imported from UK (Lapis Blue and Orange). I believe there are an additional 2 UK imports down south. That would make 21 cars.

The 997.1 GT3 is probably the best hunting ground to find a nice low miler NZ new. If acquired around 115K after haggling I should think it will serve as a fair investment. There are still low mileage examples around.

By teh way I was provided these figures indirectly via PCAustralia so I cannot vouch for their ultimate accuracy. I also have all the Aussie figures and these are fascinating too but the numbers are much higher (90, 120, 140 units etc).

It will be interesting to see how many 991 GT3 and 991 GT3 RS end up in NZ. I believe 8 units delivered to date and 6 more on the way. These numbers include mine which was first registered in Zurich Switzerland. CCS say they have good demand for RS variant with 4-5 takers. Im not sure they will get more than 3-4 allocations but I do expect in 2015/16 we will see around 7-8 991 GT3 RS registered in NZ.

gt38088

Here is the Crown Range stage, by this stage we were thinking that we could catch up after Kim had spun into a fence on day 2 losing us the stage and time penalties for a dnf. No mechanical damage just superficial. Kim's son lives in Wanaka so a bit of local knowledge handy so we were 8th fastest through the stage just behind the Dodson gtr. Note we didn't catch the 911 turbo in front of us but we did catch the next 2 cars in front of him

Not sure if Doug has any Tour video but be interested to hear his comment re speed restriction by lead car and the speed diff in this stage - if the shift light comes on and Kim doesn't change then we are doing 200kph. Note also the brake lock up on cold tyres at the second hairpin and slide exiting it-we had gone off on cold tyres on SS9 so me telling kim to calm down

Macca

Brings back some memories! IMO the climb up the hill is pretty tough, not easy too keep smooth anywhere there with 15kmph hairpins. The additional torque would help, but its always a constant fight between over and understeer. What camera set up are you using in the car Graeme. Have you thought to use a Aim or Vbox set up with a CAN ECU bridge and thus full data overlay. Probably overkill as you are infrequently every repeating stages year to year and conditions change but for those moments when things dont work out as planned may give some useful data on steering angle, throttle position, gear selection, rpm, speed and brake force (all four wheels can be measured at 20-100 hz+ resolution on most of the newer systems. You could use a Aim Chrono 4 as the logger (its a dash instrument replacement console) and hookk up to smartycam HD 2.0 (just released) which supports external mic and with the third part adaptor (a mic box)would allow your in car communications through....just a thought...

John McM

Will look at that tonight when on wifi.

Btw tender has closed on the 964 C4 at Turners. I didn't bid. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

gt38088

John
I think a shift light is worth fitting - just means you can pick up out of peripheral vision without looking down at revs

gt38088

its a Radcam HDpro bought through a targa deal a few years ago via the Black magic guys but I think actually sourced from a firm called Race Recall

gt38088

Pencil cam with a separate control unit which can be mounted in front. I record at 720p so that we can get the whole day onto 8gb sdcard. I did think about maybe a more sophisticated system but always find other things to spend budget on ...

John McM

Thanks Graeme. The B18C motor redline is 8,000 rpm and peak power is close to that. How do you set the shift limiter? Peak revs, or where it will be peak revs when reaction time is taken into account?

Penguinracer

That stage brought back memories of many years ago when the Crown Range road was entirely gravel. I was making a fast run back to Queenstown after a day's skiing at Treble Cone or Cardrona - hanging the tail out on most of the corners in my trusty Corolla SR in pursuit of some other equally irresponsible young man only to have the brake pedal sink to the floor with minimal retardation as I rejoined the Gibbston Highway at the bottom.

With some rapid down changes, judicious use of the hand brake & a quick swerve I managed to stop before the Highway & narrowly avoid the back of my quarry!

Macca $NZ250K for a Nurburgring 24H effort (split three ways) doesn't look as bad as it first seems when I consider that a nanny & nursery three mornings a week for our two-year costs us £50k pa. The craziness of London life!
Tim