Patrick's 1986 944 Turbo by 333pg333

14 minute(s) of a 264 minute read

Just to clarify, the seat is an actual OMP raceseat. Not a stock road style thing. Had a full 5 piece harness on too. I tend to agree that they should be ok but for the price, not worth skimping on. I'll replace them. As for the seat, I want a Halo, but there are some that have a open part to the Halo which I'm sure will make life a lot easier. The downside to these is that they somehow 'appear' flimsier. Any thoughts or experience?

5/14/12

We will do all the measuring once stripped down. It doesn't make sense if this will be the case though, unless they sold me the wrong shocks by mistake. I did have them dyno'd and they were described as being pretty good in most readings. I'd have to dig up what was said but they were deemed as sufficient for the task and we could tune around them. Not sure that this covered potential droop issues though.

We also have the actual data from the suspension pots which is why the engineer is sure it’s to do with the rear droop and lack of shock travel. To counter this it does seem strange looking at the type of constant radius corner and how little I was loading the suspension? Having said that, I was going pretty fast and perhaps there were other mitigating circumstances which when added to the suspension travel caused the sudden loss of traction. Having watched video of a few different tracks I’ve driven on and seeing how it doesn’t convey things like speed and road camber / conditions, I also think that perhaps this might cloud the issue when dissecting the incident off video alone.

5/15/12

Oh, just to add to this. There is a particular fast road/track 951 which was put into the hands of a suspension analyst who suggested to go with the 850lb front springs that he should increase the rears to 1200lbs and even 1400lb on certain tighter tracks. I believe it was largely based on matching front and rear spring rate frequency (which as most readers would note doesn’t get much of a mention in these pages). This was not on a race car but as I said, a fast road / track weapon. No aero to speak of and running on R spec rubber. 

It will be interesting to see how this progresses.

6/23/12

Just a bit of an update. Things have been moving slowly for one reason or another but we did some basic measurements today. Putting all the 'stuff' in a pile, shaking it up and seeing what results, I think the reason I came off the track was due to the inside rear wheel having minimal or no contact at times during some cornering. This I believe was due to a sort of domino effect. Bear with me. 

So back when we decided to change the car from a road / club car to pretty much a race car I flip flopped about trying to decide what to do with the bodykit in that I wanted to go up to a wider track. So in the end due to not a lot of choice I went with the B/foot GT2 kit and as things happen, I also sort of ordered the Fikse wheels at the same time as they were running a special on them through B/foot. My intention was to do some door to door racing and I was restricted to 44" total wheel width. So I went for 10.5" / 18" fronts and 11.5" / 18" rears. Fikse said fine and that they knew the right offsets as they'd worked with B/foot before. B/foot says that you can run 11" / 12" with their kits also. So anyway fast forward 18 months and we're readying ourselves for the first track outing. The builder had done his best to get clearance for the front wheels and in the end had to raise the ride height a little in the front. So of course the rears got raised similarly to maintain balance. Anyway, enough backstory. 

So today we measured the ride height and rear travel from resting ride height to jack-it-up droop. So the droop was only 15mm or 0.6". To me this seems very little but I'm learning that we work in smaller increments the more race oriented suspension we move to. We also found out that my car was sitting 170mm off the ground at the front (measured to midway through the bolt connecting the A-Arm to subframe) compared to JET's 145mm. The rears were 275mm from midway through the bolt connecting the trailing arms to the T-tube carrier compared to Sean's at 245-250mm. He also said that his similarly measured droop is 25mm. 

So...I know it doesn't sound much different but it would seem that due to not having the clearance for the front wheel/tyres to turn sufficiently at a more desired ride height, we had to raise it and ergo, wheel lift. Tough lesson!

So, my next choice is how to replace the body work. I have bought another set of B/foot GT2 flares but there's no point repeating the process. I'd like to go for a more complete widebody but it just doesn't seem like there is a good quality off the shelf kit available. Waiting to hear how Tony G goes with his new kit that he bought from B/foot. I'm tempted to go for some of the same front fenders that he used from A.I.R. that are an inch wider and then put the GT2 flares on. The rears could do with a little padding too but I don't want to have the flares on the front only. I actually quite like the look also. So we might massage the rear metal guards before putting the flares back on. Anyway, I'm seriously hoping that the extra clearance will allow us to drop the ride height and regain sufficient droop.

6/24/12

Prof Fred (industry lurker) requested a pic of where we were taking the rear ride height measurements from. Fronts were mid point of the bolt that joins the A Arms to the sub frame. 

Be interesting to know other people's ride heights??

5/30/13

Plenty going on at the moment but nothing to say just yet. As opposed to releasing weekly (+/-) updates I’m just going to wait until it reaches a point where it looks pretty smart. It will look very different to the last iteration though. Besides, my build pales into insignificance against Tony’s & Dukes amongst others. Nevertheless, hope to have something to show by about end of July which is when we’re aiming to be testing. Fingers crossed!

I think the only stock panel on the car will be the roof (which has a slight alteration), pillars and rear licence plate/lights panel (whatever that part is called). While we've added a few bits and pieces to the car, we've also removed quite a bit also. The old car weighed just over 2600lbs wet with no driver. I'd guess that we can get this down to 2500lbs, maybe less. Not as light as some but getting down there.

9/21/13

Hi All

It's been sometime since I've made a post in here. Sometime since April 2012 that I had that crash which at the time and for ages afterwards really got under my skin for a number of reasons. So now we have GO952 v.4

Well it's only GO952 in name as the car is clearly not a road registered vehicle anymore. Just to touch briefly on the accident as it ties in with the current version, apart from any driver faults, fluids on track, bumps, lack of downforce...whatever...the main reason was that we ran out of suspension travel in the rear. The inside rear wheel was lifting off the ground and the car was super twitchy. So we knew that we needed to get the car lowered and for that to happen we needed more wheel/tyre clearance. So I went through quite a long process of talking to Mike from I.F.C. who produced the new front 1/4 panels. This not only allows us to lower the front of the car (which obviously gives us more rear travel as we can now drop the rear also) but allows heat and pressure to escape through the top and rear of the panel. Win on all levels.
I also wound up using some rear GT Racing fenders which are 2" wider than stock. So we have tons of room for most size rubber. To add, we have added a bump steer kit which has helped us a lot with the front geometry. Also we have the 95ONE rear T-bar delete bracket (2" x 3" version!) for the rear which also affords us a better roll centre with the raised pickup points...well that's the theory.

So much has changed in this car even since last year. Perhaps a list might be in order but it's going to make this first new post too long. I think a few pics and video might do for now. Remember this car has been built for Time Attack. So it's all about downforce. We are off to the track on Tuesday for the 1st shakedown. It will be a chance for us to start sorting through the new chassis changes, aero, springs and new horsepower/torque. Ahh, yes, I didn't mention that we finally have the 3.1L 8v motor in the car now. We've only just done the first tune and while they're hitting a brick wall at about 6000rpm, the power to weight is going to be quite sufficient for a rusty driver. With a bit of luck we will have a new intake on the car before the event in mid October. We feel that the stock intake is really holding the head/cam/headers/turbo back. To think that we haven't even tapped the sweet spot in this motor yet is pretty cool. From 6000rpm to 7500rpm this motor will shine. All in all 505whp at 22psi isn't to shabby for a starting point. I don't have the tq or ign charts yet. Once I do, I'll show them too.

Anyway, I hope some of you guys enjoy it in it's latest version.

Oh, here's a bit of a walk around.

Still waiting on the Tq and ign Sid. We're hoping to put together a new intake before the event. Am looking at Corleone's for inspiration and packaging. This turbo is pretty big so we have to work around it a little to get the stock intake to fit. Going with a re design with the centrally located entry should work pretty well I believe.

For the record. The car last weighed in at pretty much right on 1200kgs / 2640lbs wet. Since then we've added dry sump system inc all the plumbing + tank & housing, rear wing/struts/internal bracing, front splitter w/ thick alu supports, rocker panels, roof scoop, air jacks and plumbing, and all the custom front end cooling system. Not insignificant additions as you can imagine. However with the removal of all the underbody insulation, addition of carbon fibre doors, lexan rear hatch and removal of all the metal quarter panels and replacing them with f/glass...we are now down to 1140kgs / 2500lbs wet. Considering we've also lowered the car a lot...incorporated longer A Arm pins plus bump steer kit and replaced stock torsion tube housing with the 95ONE 2" x 3" version. We should have way better geometry and we've gained a lot of droop (which is the main reason for all of this!). On top of that we've added a 3.1L racemotor in place of the former 2.5L mostly stock motor. When I look at the old video of the car back in 2012 it was still pretty damn quick in a straight line. Disregard the suspension issues, it moved forwards at a decent pace. Now we've improved everything (except the stock intake) so I imagine that this car should feel somewhat different yet again!

Shall report back.

Video from April 2012 session prior to crash. The car is pretty fast and it only has 360whp. I can hear/see now why I came off the track back then but I remember how it leaped through the gears. Brain is doing somersaults trying to imagine what it will be like now!

Thanks for the kind words guys. For some reason I've been inspired by these forgotten little cars that not many are aware of and even fewer care about. Have been inspired by many on this Board and hope to fly the flag for the front engine transaxle water pumper for some time to come.

A real photographer is taking some pics this week.

First track day tomorrow. Stomach is currently in permanent Butterfly mode...

We’ve basically just gone up about 230lbs in rate both front and rear. So the ‘feel’ should be the same. Bit of guesswork in terms of specifying the new springs based on the extra downforce. The issue we had before was of the inside rears lifting off the ground. I mean, perhaps the setup was taily as well but I don’t believe the springs were why I came off the track. I will be taking things slowly and Paul will do the first session. He’s an accomplished driver and will be much more efficient than me dealing with the setup. Whereas I anticipate going down the straight for the first time and feeling 500whp kicking in, screaming like a little girl and covering my eyes with my hands!!