Mirage 911 RSR+ project pics.

[ted]

Originally posted by livi
Looking at the pics of that car, I am starting to think it would be worth the trip for a fanatic newbie like me just to get a chance to see it in the metal.

Originally posted by Joeaksa
Wish I was closer. This would be worth the drive over to the left coast to watch in action. Beautiful car and excellent work.
Joe A

Originally posted by al74911s
It's good to see your goal made into reality Mike. That is one sweet ride! Probably the nicest I have seen.
Alonso

Good seeing you the other day Alonso, next time hopefully I’ll have more time.

Thanks guys, after we test at a couple track days I’ll get the passenger seat and intercom installed.
Then if you like you can join me for a track session.

[DW SD]

Mike,
Sorry about the change in plans for the weekend. Does Mocal make a -16 thermostat or do you have to adapt -12?

Doug

[ted]

Originally posted by DW SD
Mike,
Sorry about the change in plans for the weekend. Does Mocal make a -16 thermostat or do you have to adapt -12?

Doug

Yes Mocal does make a -16 thermostat.
Jae got one a while back.
We decided to not use it as the ID was very small, not near at big as the 20mm ID on the -16 lines and fittings.
From what I have been told even with the thermostat restriction our decision to use -16 line over smaller -12 is still valid.

Many race cars run no thermostat, but from now on mine will have one.

[DW SD]

Can you "port" the thermostat IE open it up? I guess it would have be sonically cleaned afterwards. Not sure, but do the Mocal thermostats come apart? Can't remember if mine comes apart.

Doug

[KobaltBlau]

is that a B&B cooler? Why can't that cooler handle it when other race cars run with no thermostat?

Looking Good,

[CBRacerX]

I did a similar number on the front cooler in a no-thermo RSR that I built. Cure was an aircraft ball valve that returned the oil to the sump or sent it to the cooler (driver responsible for changing the setting). I also plumbed a mechanical oil temp guage that read the "post cooler" oil temp just before the sump, and replaced the clock with this gauge.

Quite a neat project, enjoy!

Chris

[ted]

Thanks guys, all great ideas. Very helpful.

Originally posted by KobaltBlau
is that a B&B cooler? Why can't that cooler handle it when other race cars run with no thermostat?
Looking Good,

We are sending the cooler back to B&B, perhaps they can tell us more.

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by KobaltBlau
is that a B&B cooler? Why can't that cooler handle it when other race cars run with no thermostat?

Looking Good,

I work with aircraft and we always use a thermostat. The cold oil is VERY thick and upon startup the smaller tubes in the cooler just will not take the pressure and the weakest link breaks. This is one of the reasons for the thermostat in the oil system, to allow the oil temp to come up, then allow the thinner oil into the cooler system.

Full blown race cars in many cases do not use thermostats but they heat up the oil before start, so its not needed.

That said, the older versions of 911 engines used a engine mounted cooler that received oil immediately upon starting. The tubing sizes are a lot larger and stronger than those normally used on remote mounting applications.

Will be interesting to see what Mocal says. Bet that Mike was less than overjoyed when this happened at the track!

Joe A

[klaucke]

Re: my earlier post on mud flaps: Craig 911 posted this pic in a different thread... it shows his mud flaps which work to prevent stone chips on the rear turbo fenders.

[Kevin Stewart]

actualy i did a turbo wide body in steel two days later the rear fenders looked like they were sand blasted, after looking at a 1994 turbo (my car has the bumpers also) i noticed a factory mud flap, go figure, repainted the rear fenders new mud flaps no chips, i do catch stuff about the flaps and no one believes they put them on at the factory but they did, Kevin

[KobaltBlau]

how are the flaps attached?

[ted]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
Will be interesting to see what Mocal says. Bet that Mike was less than overjoyed when this happened at the track!
Joe A

Yeah I'll end up buying another B&B cooler. Again good info.
When the cooler blew it deformed a right to left row on the cooler.
Several racers thought I had run into something with the cooler.
An embarrassing mystery as all I did was to take the car out of the trailer.
Imho it was the lesser of two evils for me (and my buddies) to realize I had not ruined the cooler from hitting something.

I like Craig's mud flaps, good idea considering this car's 10.5 wide rock throwing front slicks.

[ted]

Just a quick update.
B&B fixed the cooler and a Mocal thermostat was installed.

Recently the widebody spent 3 days at the track running up 400 miles.
Engine, trans and brakes operated satisfactory.
Overall pretty good for 3 days in a new car.

Soon we will dyno the engine with the adjustable fuel regulator and hope to eek out a couple more hp.

We did a lot of suspension tuning. The car has a bit of a push that needs to be resolved.
We tried spring rates from 550/800 on the front and 1000/1500 on the rear.
We also fine tuned shock valving and can pressures, alignment settings (toe/camber), sway bar size/adjustments along with ride height adjustments.

It ran a bunch of 1:32s at Big Willow which is what it ran before all the mods.
The difference being in T2 the longest right hand turn on the track the car was pushing and I had to modulate the throttle costing some time.
T5 and T9 also suffered from the understeer as well.
I think the car will run in the high 20s once we find the sweet spot.

Today the car is at Mirage getting the once over twice.

Wednesday we go out again with several Pelican 911 drivers.
Here is the thread with the event info, if you can make it join the fun!
Click here for the Pelican track day thread.

[ted]

Wednesday test and tune day.
4 track days in 6 days.
We had a fun opportunity to test and tune mid week at Big Willow so Jae Lee from Mirage and I went for it.
Our objective was to first optimize mechanical grip then work on the aero grip.
So starts the 24 hour car thrashing common to 20 year old racers, 25 years younger than me.
Jae wrenched on the car Tuesday from noon till 9pm. We then loaded up the rig and set sail for a hotel in Lancaster. 70mph through the center of Los Angeles (you save hours missing the peak LA parking lot commute) and 3 and half hours later we arrived in Lancaster at 1:30 am.
Last track day I had stayed at the Inn of Lancaster during the weekend, when the place was empty. At the front desk we find the place is sold out, on a Tuesday night! Note Lancaster not a weekend vacation destination, but can be a beehive mid week with D.O.D. and Military. So our buddy Johhny Riz has a room so I call him from the front desk hotel phone to see if we can use the couch/floor for 4 hours.
Since I was gonna screw up his REM sleep I had to have a little fun.
John answers the room phone and I inquire,,,¨Sir this is the front desk could you please confirm that you will not require a morning wake up call?¨ He said no and after a short pause and then something like, f/u Mike. So John let us crash his room and even gave us his last two sets of ear plugs. Jae and I slept great, my snoring didn't even keep me a wake. Not bad sleep for couch pillows on the floor.
Thanks for the room John, next time I'll bring you some ear plugs.

Back on topic.

Jae and I were going to methodically and deliberately tune the 911 RSR+ suspension.
A little background since the car pushed last weekend. The front tire wear pattern indicated it needed more camber so Jae set the camber at -4.5 in the front, the rear was fine closer to -3. Last weekend we had done a spring scan from medium to firm with little success. This time Jae installed the softest springs he had.

Jack Olsen scored me a wrist band that allowed us to go out at anytime, making the testing process go much much faster. Thank you Jack!

We started with 450 front and 500 rear.
We disconnected the sway bars and proceeded to do a spring scan.
Did 5 laps got the air pressures right and did another couple laps.
Car pushed, installed 600lbs rear springs, test it pushed again so went to 700lb rears, tested it and it was getting better but not there yet so went to 850lb rear springs. Car was neutral but skatey. (Later after lunch consensus was my used slicks were dead)

Next we did a shock scan with rebound, compression and can N2O pressure adjustments. After several laps and an hour or so we felt in the ball park with the shocks.

Then we reconnected the front and rear sway bars adjusted to the full soft position. Car pushed a bit and we tighten the rear bar a little.

It was time for lunch. We had gone through the testing process and the car basically still was not hooked up. On the pyrometer the front tires never got much over 100 degrees. These were used slicks, we wondered if the tires were bad or did we have too much front tire? We decided it would be best to try another set of tires, although all we had were more used slicks with us.

After lunch I asked Jim Copp if he had any scrubs mounted that I could try for couple of test laps? He gave us some Hoosiers he had run a 29 recently, he ran a 27.4 that day on a newer set of
Hoosiers! So we tried his Hoosiers and the car felt much better.
Jae and I wanted to test more on the used Hoosiers so we asked Jim if he would mind selling them to us.

Jim was amenable to selling the used Hoosiers, 4 for only $50. But I had to agree to take all 8 used Hoosiers for $50, this included the use of his BBS rims for the afternoon. Then he threw in 2 Macanudos to sweeten the deal. NICE! Thanks Jim!

At about the same time Cary the owner of ERP arrived. Cary is a bit of a genius with JRZs and car set up. Besides his business of producing 935 style 911 suspension components he spends his free weekends as a race team engineer for Grand Am and Speed Channel sports car teams.

With the used Hoosiers and Jae and Cary calling the shots I just drove and gave feedback to the brains on the team. Every time Jae and Cary adjusted the shocks that is the rebound, compression and can pressures performance improved till the end of day where it felt like it was on rails.

We had learned a lot about the car and we were far from optimized. The front still had 4.5 camber where the Hoosiers needed a degree or so less. We had sprung the car for the dead slicks and not the used Hoosiers. The used Hoosiers were actually almost 3 inches narrower all the way around than the slicks the car is designed for. We never got a chance to improve the aero, the car was loose through T9 killing our T8 momentum and costing us a second or so. Maybe a 1/2 inch wickerbill on the wing would be nice. Like any decent race team we have several decent reasons/excuses.

As Gump might say used slicks are like a box of chocolates.
From now on I"d rather not suffer the inconsistencies of used slicks.

So basically the car shows potential, the engine and gearing were very well suited for Big Willow. Now we need to decide what new tires (710s or slicks$$) we'll run and then repeat all the steps above.

ARCA the event sponsors and the other racers were great, we were surrounded by 911 drivers and just had a blast!
2nd to last red run session I think we had 6 911s in pre grid! Many more in the other run groups too.

Time to take a week or so and figure the plan of attack for next year....

[ted]

Just a couple of shots Chuck took at the Pelican track day.
Here is a link to a video than Jim lowyder took of the early cars.
Has a quick clip of me taking a point by into the brake and downshift zone of T1.

Click here for the video.

On the air jacks during the rear spring scan, going to stiffer rear coils.
The dead slicks still on the car.
Sitting next to the car is a Dead 27x14 rear slick, that's a lot of dead rubber. sheezz.

Here it is with Jim's BBS wheels and used Hoosiers.
Jim I'll get those tires off and rims returned asap!
thanks,

[village idiot]

Wow, looks like you guys were having a blast!!! That red car with the white stripe was pretty loose a coupla times And when ted's car went by the camera car on the front straight I coulda swore I saw some of the camera car's stickers trailing along in his jetwash

[911-32]

I have a question! This isn't a criticism, just an honest question, so please don't shoot me!

With such a wide body and so much rubber and wing, don't you need more than a "close to stock" 3.6 to get the full benefit? I don't know what you got the lap times down to but your earlier post said they were about the same as pre-RSR+. I am sure they got quicker as you dialed in, but how much.

I guess I am prompted to ask because I remember talking to my old Porsche mechanic about a car he prepared. It was more or less an IROC style replica with a carbed 3.2 producing circa 300hp. It was sold and the new owner bought a whole lot of bodywork in the widebody 993GT2 style complete with high wing and big front bumper/splitter plus bigger wheels. My mechanic made some comment about it being a total waste of money and predicted it would be no faster. Sure enough, he was correct. It was a little quicker thru the corners but it was slower on the straights. Really tough to race as well as the lack of straight line speed made it easy to get held up and hard to overtake even if in qualifying it could post a half decent lap time.

Now I appreciate you are doing a much more thorough job - hence I don't want this to read like a criticism or attack. I just wondered what your views would be. BTW, I genuinely hope your results speak for themselves and prove me 100% wrong. I have really enjoyed following the buid-up of the car.

Cheers,
Richard

[Stutgart46]

More video please.
That is just too much fun to watch.

[lowyder993s]

Try this:

http://videos.streetfire.net/player.aspx?fileid=83BD6E40-0207-47CD-AB93-99EE33087995

More video please.

More of #59 divebombing too.

911-32: I was just about to do what your mechanic's customer did. Thx for the heads up. Gonna try to keep the car as skinny as I can.

[CBRacerX]

You do have to adopt more of a momentum style with a high downforce car that does not have huge horsepower (ask me how I know..). But racing in your class should not be a problem, and certain tracks will be much easier than others to be competitive with cars that are perhaps classed higher than yours. Since I am in the NE I can't comment on which tracks those are out your way, but if you can relate to the difference beween Lime Rock and Bridgehampton I'm sure you get the point...

FWIW, I found that softer springs (especially on the front of the car) made my RSR replica handle much better. I did not need huge anti-sway bars, in fact I ended up with a 20.5mm front bar. Spring quality matters, I used Hyperco's with excellent results.

Pile on the aero and don't slow down too much