Quote:
Originally Posted by ac27
Banning, I remember a while back you off handedly mentioned that the brakes on the RSR saved your life one time. Care to elaborate, I have always wondered!
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I can tell you this, I owe my life to Dr. Porsche, Goodyear Blue Streaks, and a fast reaction time.
One afternoon sometime around 1980 I was driving The Carrera eastbound from the San Diego Freeway on Mulholland Drive. Visibility was excellent, road conditions were perfect and it seemed no one was around.
I was driving fairly fast, about 7/10's when I passed thru "The Bumps" or "Grafiti" as it is sometimes called. This is an area just east of Roscomare where there is a running wall that gets tagged every so often, it also is an area of very bumpy conditions that can never be repaired due to a active spring coming up from below the road surface.
This area ends at a very sharp, right, blind, very nasty turn with driveways on the north side.
So here I go like some dumb fool blazing without pre-running (one of my personal rules) into this blind turn and...
HOLY CRAPP! Big truck stopped just past the apex waiting for a car to make a left turn into a driveway. I only had a second.
With all my might, down went the brake pedal. Porsche Four-piston alloy calipers gripped the drilled-out Carrera 6 rotors as tight as possible.
It would have locked up probably if it wern't for those amazing Blue Streaks and that would have been the end of me and the famous 911.
The Truck's lift gate was coming up fast and if hit, we would really have a chop top 911..or chopped top with my head included.
But those crazy tires refused to lock. Instead I made a 50 mph to complete stop, IN THE TURN, in about 25 feet distance.
For a nano-second the laws of physics fought a war between who is going to win, the tires or the calipers.
Heavy smoke poured off of the tires and billowed from the wheelwells as I came to a controlled stop.
I was engulfed in a thick cloud of burning tires while my heart pounded heavily.
No one saw me, I was basically alone. The Truck then merrilly went on it's way while I sat recovering from mental stress.
After that learning experience I drove home at 1/10th, said a few thanks, and didn't drive the Carrera for a few weeks.
To this day, I am still appreciatively amazed at how those brakes performed. Thank you again Dr.