What body part is this and can I delete it?

[armandodiaz]

This is from my 911 GT race car build. It is located under the rear quarters, right behind the front door jam. The one side is fine but the other side is rotten. So I'm wondering if I even need these?

I am also planning on running my custom oil lines behind the rocker panels, so I'm wondering if someone has a picture of this same area with oil lines running through.....

[armandodiaz]

pics...

[yel911]

That's the jack support. It's above that square tube that is used to jack the car up. I believe.....

[armandodiaz]

thanks for the reply, but the jack "tube" is a little further forward. This is the only picture I have right now of the 2 places....

[962porsche]

that piece boxes in the area to give the chassis more rigidity .
so do you need it ?
well porsche would not have installed them on the cars if you didn't .
there is no weight saving to speak of by removing it and because the car is just sitting there bare bones i would just buy the piece and weld it in .

[yel911]

That piece was listed as "Jack support".
962, Do you think he needs it with a full cage like that?
I think armandodiaz wants to route the oil tubes close to the body in that location.

[armandodiaz]

Correct, it would be nice to cleanup that area, for the oil lines. I was also thinking with the roll cage, that little bit of rigidity, might not be needed.

[E Sully]

Check again. It is actually listed as Rocker Panel Support, not Jack Support. It adds to the rigidity of the car. You're tracking the car, do you want less?

[962porsche]

we have built god knows how many race cars to date there are some thing we try never to do one of the big ones is to remove the true structure of the car beforew the cage gets welded in .
there are some cases were we may even add to it a little .
ok so you have to ask your self why you would want to run the oil lines thru the inside of the rocker ?
you will need to cut out the front and rear rocker caps to do so and by doing so you will lose some of the structural rigidity of the rocker it's self .
so is that worth it just to run oil line ?
then what type of lines are you looking to use hard lines , OE style rubber lines , braided stainless steel ?
how will the lines get supported in side the rocker as to not have the lines chafing on each other and the inner rocker ?
then you have to think about if the car gets hit were the lines run thru the rocker what will happen ? will they get crushed and maybe split open ?
most of the time were porsche runs there oil lines to the front of the car when the car gets hit in that area the oil line get pushed out of the way with no damage to the lines them selfs because there is nothing for them to get chushed up against .
does having the oil line on the underside of the car hurt the aerodynamics of the car ?
well yes but you will not see any differents in the lap times by putting the lines in the rocker .
there are so many other things that ruin the aero of the 911 chassis than just the oil lines .
will the oil lines get damaged if i have a off track excursion ? 99.99 % of the time no never .
the lines should be up out of the way and there are many other things to get damaged 1st .
again this is also why porsche tends to use soft lines . they don't chush and stay that way when they do take a hit .
how you could run the lines inside the car but to pass tech they will have to be hard lines .
and hard lines will add weight and it will also add more heat inside the car as the hot oil passes thru the lines . is that some thing that's a plus ?
all and all porsche thought about were and why they run the oil lines were they did . i tend to think they did a good job with using the right materials . what is that saying if it's not broken don't fix it .

[armandodiaz]

Thanks for the info,

My main reason for running the oil lines through the rocker, was to protect them. I was planning on customizing straight aluminum hard lines with -AN fittings, then finishing it up with steel-braided hose. Definitely, don't want them in the cab, I'm racing in Florida and don't need any additional heat in the cab. Even planning on painting the inside white.
My original factory configuration had hard lines running on the outside of the rocker. I thought they looked vulnerable and could easily be crushed even by hitting a tire wall.
As for rigidity, might be my inexperience, but I kinda thought once the car has a full cage, the body panels are kind of cosmetics? For this reason I was going to drill out the spot welds for the rocker and use flush screws to fasten it. So I can "service" the oil lines, if I have to. Again, that's my naiveness talking.

Thanks for your input.

[962porsche]

when it comes to roll cages and the body panel being cosmetic that's a yes and no answer .
it's not a tube chassis just a cage and it depends on were and how a cage is built . if you have any of the pickup points of the cage just mounted to the things like floor pan of other single walled panels like that then you do need and would want to keep as much of the cars original structure .
thats not to say you can't change out the bolt on panels to some thing like fiberglass because that is not the main structure hell even the rear QTR's on a 911 chassis or not a big part of the main structure of the car this is why you can cut 2/3 of them away and install fiberglass QTR's .
so as you know a cars chassis has to work under 3 axis pitch roll and yaw all three of them put force loads on the hole chassis in different ways . now if you remove the strenght of say the 4 foot long boxed rocker section and want say the 6"x5" floor plate for the front leg of the cage to do all the work of the rocker will it ?

[armandodiaz]

Gotcha! You make a lot of sense.
Before the demolition of my project I had a bolt on roll cage. When I decided to become serious with the car, I went ahead and took it out, rewelded the holes on the floor pans and had a professionally installed roll cage (pictured above).... 6 points are welded to the frame, while 2 points going to the front wheel wells. I just added a brace tube to the front strut towers and tied it to the roll cage.

Thanks for the info.