When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Another track photographer uploaded a few photos that I liked so I paid for them. Here are the two I liked the best.
I had just passed that red GTR which gave me a small grin. The driver is a really nice guy who street drives his car everywhere and takes it out there on weekends for fun. He doesn't push it to the limits because he wouldn't be comfortable walking away from the car (which I completely understand and respect!). That seems to be one of the bigger reasons why many of us initially make the move to a dedicated track/race car.
My new Braille B14115 battery arrived. I wired it in the evening and checked the parasitic power draw. With the car off I see 8 mA with spikes to 15 mA. When I turn the kill switch it’s not measurable on the mA scale. So far things look good. It’s late so I don’t want to start the car for the sake of the neighbors. Once I do I’m hoping the alternator increases the voltage enough to convince me it’s still good. If so I just need to mount the battery securely, and otherwise I need to swap the alternator too.
I took five minutes to clamp the RSS clutch stop on the pedal and remove the duct taped washer spacers. I left it loose until I can verify it works with the car running. That's probably unnecessary but it will make me more confident I did it right. The stop is simple and looks like it will work well and never be an issue for me. In hindsight though it does look a bit like a hack to have a part clamped to the pedal. Ah well, function over form.
On the topic of form, I ordered some black vinyl from Amazon and will attempt to vinyl off the lower vertical trim line when I get bored. I may also get and add a center racing stripe.
Also on Tuesday I'll get a possibly-not-SPB-legal cosmetic part in - LED tail lights styled after the 718. I just thought they looked really nice for the car - what can I say. The performance difference will be negligible aside from the argument that a brighter brake light has a small benefit to safety. I'm not sure if PCA would care about it so I'll keep the stock lights around so I can swap over if/when needed. NASA obviously won't care and that's where the car will run most of the time. https://rennlist.com/forums/boxster-...i-ve-done.html
Well, it wasn’t the battery. The car still won’t start. It doesn’t turn over. I do hear a relay click when I turn the key to the on position but nothing new seems to happen when I try to crank.
Edit: In the garage it didn’t take long to figure out. The clutch safety switch was failing to engage when the clutch was depressed. The switch requires the back of the middle of the pedal to push a small piece of metal to an engagement point, depressing a switch. The piece of metal wasn’t ever moving far enough. I tried bending the piece of metal and found it surprisingly flexible/flimsy. If I got it working I’d expect it to fail again soon. I’m suspicious, maybe overextending the clutch repeatedly caused this component to fail.
For now I simply set the switch to “unsafe” by locking it down with a zip tie. I can now start the car until I have a new part and replace it.
I also did a cosmetic job and popped in those tail lights. They aren’t explicitly allowed, but since brighter = safer and they increase weight a bit I don’t expect any objections to running them. For now I’ll keep the OE tails to cover my bases.
Here are some photos showing it. The weight is in kg, so factory is 1.0 kg per side and these are 1.62 kg per side. Total weight gain of 1.24 kg = 2.7 lbs.
Personally I like them quite a bit, feels like a facelift for the old Boxster!
I picked up a set from rennline and today I installed them. I'm happy with them.
Next I started looking at the hardtop. Here is how it's been this last several months:
For a baseline, here is what it weighed on a bathroom scale (lbs):
I decided I'd do the really easy stuff and see what happened. I took off the weatherstripping around the perimeter. Generally I could just pull or unscrew/unbolt to get this stuff off. Here's one of the pieces and the aluminum weatherstripping support.
And after, here's what the hardtop looks like. It fits pretty well, but there's a small air gap in the back of the car where the top meets the body and had a large rubber seal. I do still have rubber on the upper windshield surround. I'm thinking to keep rubber "pads" at the left and right ends for the top to rest on and strip the rest.
The weight savings from that quick job - 3.6 lbs. The weatherstripping weight on this car adds up!
And on the same theme, I removed the upper door weatherstripping. After the photo I slipped that McMaster neoprene on the edge to improve the appearance. It looks a bit nicer in person but doesn’t show in an iPhone picture.
Got a few things done with the car. First I mounted the battery. I clamped it to the forward firewall with the standard mount included with the battery. I did this by just drilling two holes in the firewall and sliding the J hooks through them. The J hooks were quite long so I left some extra thread but cut the end few inches off with a bolt cutting tool. I then also strapped the battery vertically. The battery tray (which is quite heavy) was rather filthy so I gave it a quick cleaning while I had it out to attach the strap. Looks a lot better now, but reading between the lines, that shows I really ought to give the whole car a quick cleaning. Not today.
I trimmed the steel bar near the steering column all the way back. Sprayed a bit of black paint over as the surface rust was bothering me.
After removing the weatherstripping from the top, the white metal looked a bit out of place so I slapped some duct tape on it. I’m wondering if the flare there is nice for aero. I’ll probably never test it to really find out.
There is a bit of an air gap at the rear of the car that was previously filled by rubber.
I took a pressure washer to the wooden trailer floor. It made a big difference and the floor looks much better although I really did beat up the surface with the pressure washer. Lots of sawdust flowed out with the water. This should be good prep for the epoxy I plan to coat it with, but I wouldn’t recommend it for routine cleaning as it would just destroy the floor over time.
I also sprayed some of the exterior surface-rusted beams near the hitch and bottom rear hinges of the trailer with a rust converting black spray paint. At some point I’ll pull the trailer up on boards to get it high (and use backup jack stands for safety) to get good access to the bottom so I can spray all of the underbody with a coat of rust converting black paint. My trailer is just about ten years old so if repainting the bottom is the major once-a-decade maintenance item that’s not too bad.
I also needed an alignment. My car was tracking left at the end of the last track day so I took it in to resolve that. I forget the measurements but the alignment was the issue so it should be good now. I was driving over the gators, perhaps that’s why it happened.
They mentioned I was maxed for rear camber at -2.6 degrees but if I picked up a set of rear toe links they’d be able to get more. I ordered a set from Tarett.
i may be incorrect, but it was my understanding that you have to keep the dash, and instrument cluster pod pretty much whole for SPB? second question...why fool with the hard top at 42# when you can get a fiberglass one that is featherlight? plus benefit of keeping cg lower in the car with light top?
i may be incorrect, but it was my understanding that you have to keep the dash, and instrument cluster pod pretty much whole for SPB?
You’re right - that’s the intent of the rules anyway.
The current PCA rules clearly require the instrument pod but I feel they can easily be interpreted allow no dash. Read it closely and I suspect you’ll agree. But the historical rule set required the upper dash, the fields of cars out there today all use the (gutted) upper dash, and in an email to Walt it sounded like my interpretation of no dash required was not intended. So I’d expect that if I ran that way with PCA and talked the scrutineers into agreeing with me, a rules clarification would be issued to make the dash explicitly required (like it was years ago).
But the reason I have no dash is much simpler and more innocuous - I simply pulled it out to gut the car and don’t plan to put it back in until I have a cage installed with tabs to mount it to. I’m not sure I could mount it securely right now without making a fair number of brackets and holes in the car. For DE use I just won’t bother.
second question...why fool with the hard top at 42# when you can get a fiberglass one that is featherlight? plus benefit of keeping cg lower in the car with light top?
I go back and forth. The real answer is a combination of (a) I got it with the car so it’s handy and (b) curiosity.
While I could sell and ship it and then spend a bit more money to get a FG top, my factory top is mounted whereas I don’t have a good way to mount a FG top until I get the car caged. I continue to hear that, all in, the weight difference is pretty small if you fully gut the factory hardtop and consider mounting as part of your total weight. (And as a bonus, I was able to dump the clamshell movement hardware without replacement and the factory hardtop keeps everything securely in place.) Separately I often hear that if you can make weight, the no maintenance aspect of window glass may be worth the small weight penalty over lexan, though I could always switch over. After shipping the factory top to a buyer I wouldn’t net a big pile of money so I’m thinking it may be interesting to see just how light I can get it to settle the matter.
Factory roof can easily have the glass removed and lexan installed, be gutted for less weight, and is stronger/safer in an accident (fiberglass simply explodes). Add to that the better mounting and the lack of a roof net and I would not hesitate to stay with OEM..
I ran with NASA last weekend and had a great time. I thought my starter was having issues and left it with the shop - but apparently my positive terminal had vibrated loose and that was the issue. I had them install the toe links and realign the car so I could get something done.
Apparently I’m ready for HPDE4. I had a check ride and while I’m sloppy in chassis management with the new tires my pace and overall skill levels are where they need to be. After learning that I wasn’t going to be there Sunday and I’d miss the next event entirely they suggested I sign up for DE3 and move to 4 in the afternoon just to get myself warmed up and ready. I’m pleased - my driving goal was to qualify to get to TT this year so I could begin racing next year. I believe one full HPDE4 day is all I need to do to qualify for TT and for a NASA racing license. I’m excited!
One of the track photographers took this - probably my favorite photo of the car so far.
Two minor projects. First, I removed the factory heat shielding from the upper engine cover and replaced it with DEI reflectagold. This was pretty quick and straightforward.
I lost one of these guys, anyone know the part number?
The other project was to work on reducing the hardtop weight. I stripped most of the inner top metal. Here's what that looked like and how much I have the weight down to. I have the factory glass and the factory steel attachments. I kept some metal near the top attachment points to ensure the top doesn't lose all of the useful structure.
Starting point:
Initial trimming:
...and it's pretty good now. I could take out the attached “doubler” (aerospace term, not sure if it’s common outside of that or jargon) structure that’s left from trimming and get really aggressive around the edges but aside from those things the aluminum removal part of weight reduction is about complete. Big further reductions would probably require me to either redo the attaching hardware or replace the rear glass. It feels like those two things are where most of the weight is at this point.
And the weight is down from 38.8 lbs to 29.2 lbs - nearly 10 lbs in weight savings. It had some water trapped in the top from a quick hit with the pressure washer still so it's a tiny bit lighter than this. It's now much easier to carry solo.
I took the car out Saturday. Overall it went great and I’ve been passed off to run in NASA’s advanced (HPDE4) group and TT!
This also means I will have my NASA race license when I get the car caged. Currently I plan to do that over this winter.
I had two minor issues with the car - while it always started, the battery issue is still a problem, and with another brant new battery, over the day it had progressively weaker starts. The alternator is increasing the voltage so that’s good. After the DE I parked the car in the trailer with the kill switch cutting power, and the next morning the car wouldn’t start and the battery voltage had dropped below 12V although I forget the number. I removed the battery and put it on a tender overnight and after recharging it fired right up the first time. Because of all of this I just dropped the car off at the shop - at this point it appears to be a wiring issue (which I hate troubleshooting) and if it’s related to the kill switch install, they’ll fix it for me at no cost since they did the work.
The other issue I had was with shifting - I had a hard time getting into gear several times and often ended up just staying in third to avoid shifting more. I probably just didn’t get the clutch pedal engagement point adjustment right (too shallow this time) so I’ll move that and try again.
I may check the rules and get the GT3 master cylinder for the car. I need to work on braking points right now and I find the Alfa 4C’s pedal feel much more intuitive than the 986 - in the Alfa brake force is much more proportionate to pedal pressure than to pedal travel. I suspect the GT3 MC would improve feel and therefore help me learn my brake points a bit faster.
PCA only races here once a year but NASA races eight times, so I may be looking into reversible adaptations to give the car better local NASA classing. GTS2 is a good match for a SPB but locally it’s a very small class. NASA’s ST4 class has a lot more cars and appears to be growing. My car would be a bit underpowered for it (12:1 is the ST4 target power to weight ratio) so next year I’ll likely look into picking up a cheap set of equal length headers and a second ECU that I’d have tuned. Then I could swap the two parts to change between a basic ST4 and a solid SPB configuration fairly easily. I doubt I’d be at the limit of the ST4 rules with just that but I’d at least not be at a 14:1 adjusted power to weight ratio with everyone else at 12:1.
Since I was just signed off, I won’t need to carry a passenger for a little while. I pulled the passenger seat assembly out. That should make it easier to clean up the interior sealant and wiring.
04-08-2019, 06:14 PM
