Babalouie's 911 - start on p7

[Babalouie]

East Coast Suspension and/or Racetige have a fair amount of experience with Porsches.....

Yeah, I'll go see my mate Nick at Racetige and get the car cornerweighted and all that jazz. Also tempted to chuck in a set of KW V3 coilovers, just to overkill the solution as well :D

[itsnotagsr]

Any more info on the WRC rolla? I assume it was Neal Bates'?

[Babalouie]

Any more info on the WRC rolla? I assume it was Neal Bates'?

Yes. Apparently it was a rolling WRC shell that was used by Toyota Japan for promotional purposes back in period. After the Corolla's WRC career finished, this display car disappeared, only to surface many years later in the USA. Bates Motorsport bought the car and started to source the parts needed to make it a runner, and they said that it was 100% authentic WRC, except that it has a dog box instead of the sequential XTrac.


So it isn't the Bates rally car that was used in that period (I can't remember if it was to WRC specs or not).

[Uncle]

Looks like you have a heap of rear toe in?

[GTV]

Your high speed oversteer seems largely due either weight transfer when it happens early or excessive power application when it happens late (yes, your car has 2 ways it is trying to kill you).

You got it right in your analysis, you need to brake sufficiently before the turn in so that you can immediately pick up the throttle on initial rotation (do not even think of trail braking into a quick corner) and not, under any circumstances, come out of the throttle throughout the corner, or things start to go backwards again.

It should be a progressive increase in throttle percentage as the steering lock unwinds from the initial point, and if you are agressive enough with the power, you will totally unwind onto opposite lock as the tail comes round. Small amounts of sliding is what you want as with the pendulum effect, it will quickly get out of hand.

However, if you don't use enough power, and have carried a good deal of entry speed, you'll get understeer and run out of road on exit (oh joy, a 3rd way to die, those germans think of everything).

This is the 911's narrow window of operation, and if you stay in it, almost nothing can compete with the combo of entry, mid corner and exit pace (which is why they persist with the arse engine thingo). At least you have a car you won't just dominate in a few track days and then get bored with.

Anyway, that's what I've learned from driving my Ruf on GT5.

[T99]

Hey Kev, looks familiar actually. Problem I always found with the 964 was that the steering feel sort of goes away if you are not "on it" the whole time. Its like it senses your trepidation, and tells you that if you are being soft with it then drive slowly. I felt that a lot had to do with the amount of weight transition that goes on when the loud pedal goes down. Nose goes all light, and sometimes it feels like the front is not biting so you go for a bit more steering lock. Of course with that, a little bit less accelerator happens, and then there is just a bit too much steering lock on for the lateral grip available so it starts to slide. If I had an example of it, it would be like driving an AWD or even the old DC2R. You just knew that you don't pull any more lock on when it starts to push a bit, but stay in the throttle and it will pull itself around. Hard to do on the 964 because it gives you sooo much steering feedback most of the time, that you start to think that any less than that is actually understeer. Does that make sense?

Another thing is that you have the RS rims and offset on there. Do you know if the RS had very similar spring rates or at least front/rear ratio? I do know that the 964 felt very different on the original rims to the RS offset type rims.

Love your quick lap in there though, car is dancing well in there.

[rowdytoot]

very entertaining viewing Kev..

bit more commitment and you'll be rally driving full styleee- Back it in, gas it , and keep on it.. :D

WRC 'rolla is teh awesome

[BigMuz]

You Porsche guys sure do use a lot of words to say 'diabolical'. Isn't this car basically standard?

[irsa76]

Should have asked Daryl(?), the bearded bloke standing next to Neal's cars, if he had any tips on setup for Porsches. Iirc they looked after Rick's historic/classic 911 gravel/marathon car, which I've spotted running around Canberra recently.
And that yellow Corolla next to the WRC car looks like it's a BMSC member's car, name rings a bell.

[Rona]

Fuck me the Rolla is quick 1:03.6 on natsoft, your 964 did alright too. 1:12 is pretty solid considering how much of a handful it looks to drive.

[Babalouie]

You Porsche guys sure do use a lot of words to say 'diabolical'. Isn't this car basically standard?

Suspension is pretty basic, Bilsteins and Eibachs, so quite possibly it's too low and too soft. If it's getting on the bumpstops too early in the corners, then an extra half inch of ride height might make it more fluid, but what fun would that be :D One good bit of my setup tho is the RS LSD, which is really nice.

Hey Kev, looks familiar actually. Problem I always found with the 964 was that the steering feel sort of goes away if you are not "on it" the whole time. Its like it senses your trepidation, and tells you that if you are being soft with it then drive slowly. I felt that a lot had to do with the amount of weight transition that goes on when the loud pedal goes down. Nose goes all light, and sometimes it feels like the front is not biting so you go for a bit more steering lock. Of course with that, a little bit less accelerator happens, and then there is just a bit too much steering lock on for the lateral grip available so it starts to slide. If I had an example of it, it would be like driving an AWD or even the old DC2R. You just knew that you don't pull any more lock on when it starts to push a bit, but stay in the throttle and it will pull itself around. Hard to do on the 964 because it gives you sooo much steering feedback most of the time, that you start to think that any less than that is actually understeer. Does that make sense?

Yes, that does make sense. Once thing about my driving I had to modify, was that I had to pick sighting markers much further down the track than usual. Like say going into that fast downhill right sweeper (where I had that big tank slapper), I usually sight the end of the inner ripple strip on turn in, because it's sorta a late apex and I want to pull the car in, but with the 911 that was making it all tense, and so I was sighting the apex of the second corner further down the road, so mentally you let the car walk around a bit and do its settling thing. Seemed to help, and after a few runs it was a lot more comfortable.

The last 911 I drove at Wakefield was a stock 993 twin turbo, and I found that much more difficult to drive on the limit. The tail walked around a lot under braking and so you tended to get a lot of turn in oversteer (I guess my RS LSD is tighter) and mid corner when the boost hit, the nose pops up in the air and turn in oversteer turns into heaps of exit understeer. So that seemed to be best when you hung back from the limit a little and just used the torque to mooch it along. With my car it seemed a lot more possible to get stuck into it, and get a nice fluid slide that lasted the whole corner.

Another thing is that you have the RS rims and offset on there. Do you know if the RS had very similar spring rates or at least front/rear ratio? I do know that the 964 felt very different on the original rims to the RS offset type rims.

Love your quick lap in there though, car is dancing well in there.

RS has MUCH stiffer rates. IIRC stock is about 180/200 and the Eibachs I have are about 250/250, but RS rates are more like 310/500. So I could certainly go up in spring rate quite a lot, I think.

This is the 911's narrow window of operation, and if you stay in it, almost nothing can compete with the combo of entry, mid corner and exit pace (which is why they persist with the arse engine thingo). At least you have a car you won't just dominate in a few track days and then get bored with.

Yes that's very true. Usually at trackdays I just do a couple of runs, and once I get a laptime in the bank, I get bored and bugger off into Goulburn to get lunch, but I did over an whole hour of track time in the 964, couldn't get enough. Once you get it flowing along and it's just drifting from point to point, it's fantastic. Can't wait to get it back to the track.

Looks like you have a heap of rear toe in?

No idea what the specs are, but it did get a recent alignment at Autohaus Hamilton.

[Cal]

Anyway, that's what I've learned from driving my Ruf on GT5.

[da9jeff]

Have you tried keeping your hands on the wheel and driving it like a arcade game? (ie not feeding it hand to hand) It might feel tank slappy because your letting it snap back/correct by itself (drifto style) but IMO gets the pendulum going too quick. I would try hands at 10 and 2 or a touch lower, and keep your hands there while correcting, that way you have both hands on the wheel and can set the steering angle with more control.

Just my armchair opinion of course, been almost 12months atleast since Ive done any motorsport

[Babalouie]

My first runs were feeling a bit tank slappy, because as T99 says, the 911 tends to move around a lot and take a set going into a corner. And it tends to feel like it's understeering going at the apex, whereas in reality it's actually doing the opposite. So the thing to do is just to relax, and let it do its thing and sort itself out, and on the fast lap vid you can see I'm a lot more comfortable with it. If you try to react to it's little dancing thing in the first part of the corner, it all goes pear-shaped.

This is another vid, I think it was the 3rd run of the day, and I'd got most of it sussed by then

[31GUN]

Those Focuses (Focii?) have a bit of snort in a straight line.