"Gone Racing"

3 auto-x last year, 2 so far this year out of a 6 event season. I am running on my street tires and up until this last event I was running on the original 34 year old shocks with 121,000mi on them. I'm running a consistent 10% behind the leaders, pretty good for a beginner in an antique car I think, but a lot farther back than it sounds in this kind of competition. My street tires may make it through the summer, maybe. They are definitely showing some stress.

Here we are having fun on the street tires, summer '22. That's our head instructor riding shotgun to help me out. I was having a tough day. (Photo: Charles Letouzey)

Not that I am any great driver - I have a long way to go, but I know my tires are a problem. The fast cars are running Hoosiers (racing slicks) I have ridden in some of the instructor's cars with them and what they can do on the right tires is mind bending.

My gearing is an issue as well; we're running 2nd gear courses and my RPMs are low so the car is not super responsive. The 3.2 liter engine makes peak torque at 4,800rpm and peak horsepower at 5,900. These 30-50mph courses are lucky to get me much over 4,000rpm. It can be tough running against modern turbo-charged cars with lots of electronics (ABS, traction control) and so on when my sleepy old car can't even get on the cam. I actually did a few runs early on leaving it in 1st gear and winding out! Fun, but probably not a great tactic in general. Could get expensive.

Ideally I would want to

1. Lower my gearing

2. Lower the car for better handling

3. Get better tires for better grip

And as it happens, we can do all 3 if we are mildly clever without affecting its day to day practicality.

First I found & purchased a used set of Porsche 944 rims. The 1986 and earlier 944 has wheels with the same 23mm offset as the stock Fuchs on the 911. The 911 came with optional 16" wheels which are what are on my car, but came standard with 15" wheels. The stock wheels were 6" wide up front and 7" wide in the back. Mine has 7" in front and 8" in the rear, the 8's likely came off a Turbo. Net net, 7" all around will work, except that the car will be more tail happy. That sounded like fun on paper. The factory rims were an inch wider at the rear and the race cars were even wider. Anyhow, it was under $100 a wheel to get in the game and initially the plan was to find take-offs from Miata Cup cars to get me on cheap slicks but that didn't work out. New Hoosiers are spendy, but clearly effective.

I bought a "square" set of Toyo Proxes R888R (square meaning all the same) to run on. These are a tick more than 1/2 the price of the Hoosiers. They performed worse than my stock Continentals. The gearing and ride height changes were not really noticeable. It was a nice try though.

The best laid plans.

Mid July Update

The first outing with the new tires was on the 15th. I re-built most of the front suspension (not strut inserts though) and got a basic alignment done to even things out a bit.

I packed up some tools, my little jack and all 4 wheels inside the car. It was tight, but it all fit.

I used the dog's seat cover on the passenger seat.

Swapping wheels in the pits. An electric impact gun and a paddle extension for the factory jack point makes taking them off 2 at a time pretty quick.

It sits a little funny but not too bad.

The course featured a 200ft dia skidpad as it's first big turn which gave me a good chance to get used to the car with all of the changes. It was also a pretty fast course with some long straightaways and big sweepers. With close to -1 deg of camber up front and about -1.5 in the rear it is ready to oversteer before it will understeer, or close to it with the narrow rear tires. I used stock tire pressures (29/34) and it was very smooth and predictable. I finished 5th in P02 by a few tenths of a second but i was much closer to the folks ahead of me this time. I was .206 seconds behind the 4th place finisher and .334 seconds behind the 3rd. So I think we're 'in the mix' now. My class, P02 is a neat mix of Boxters, Caymans and Carreras.

September 2023

I travelled up to Ayers MA for the PCA Zone-1 Auto-X. it was a lot of fun, a huge track (close to a mile?) on an old airfield with slaloms and other course features we just don't have the room for at our normal venues. It was a faster "momentum" track, so I was running 45-60MPH in second the whole way. The Toyos just melted on the first day, never really giving much traction or turn in. That was disappointing. I also developed an oil leak which caused a bit of smoke at the end of day 1. I had started the day with a couple DNFs and I honestly did not know what I was doing wrong. The course organizers took a handful of the new kids having the same issue around slowly (following a Honda CRV) to hopefully figure out the error in our ways. This made all the difference for me and really exemplified the kind of sportsmanship the group brings to bear. The track was more than 2X larger than anything some of us were used to. I also reviewed my own video and found some mistakes at lunch. That $25 iPhone suction cup mount has really been helpful.

I ran on day 2, but left my street tires on and kept an eye on my engine temp and oil leak(s). And I shaved off 4 seconds! My Continental street tires did great. Much better turn-in, more responsive. I was still one of the slowest cars there, but as it turns out I was the only car in my class so I trophied! Hey, a win is a win. ;) And the car did great, traveling 150 miles each way getting great gas mileage (close to 30mpg!) and wonderful to drive with the re-built front suspension and proper alignment.

Photo: Paul Cantrell (yes, I purchased a copy of this(!) although this is a screen shot here) This was from Day 1, on the Toyos.

And here is what they looked like at the end of the day! (melted)

I finished up the 2023 season on my street tires and ended up 34th out of 101 cars. I am very happy about my progress from just 3 events last year and 4 this year.

Seat time is really key so I also attended a pair of car control clinics at Lime Rock put on by the SCDA. These pair wet skidpad drills (learning to drift basically) with runs on their auto-x course to work on smoothness, technique and lines. It's a ton of fun, if a little rough on your tires.

The skidpad is pretty tricky at first, and nearly everyone spends a lot of time spinning out.

On the auto-x course I gave up one session to ride shotgun with an instuctor and he was so smooth it really clued me in to where I am trying to get to. He ran down a late model Corvette, which was kind of wild. Now I feel like I can see the goal, even if I can't accomplish it yet! I can put a turn or two together; they can put all the turns together lap after lap. It's going to take a lot of practice.

Wet skidpad - leaning nearly as much as we do in the dry (above/below)

Both photos above by Vincent Nardone / Petrolhead studios (purchased for non-commercial use)

I wound up missing most of the 2024 season with personal stuff, although I did attend the final event & runoffs. In Feb 2024 I attended another winter clinic to keep working on my car control. (photo: Steven Klucik, Superride Media)

I can't recommend winter schools enough. As one instructor put it, "All the physics, and 20% of the traction".

In 2025 so far I've made every event (3) and am currently 22nd overall though I expect that to slip as the season goes on and more drivers show up. The top 20 make the runoffs. That is a goal, but probably still a couple of years off. Can a 36 year old car on street tires do it? If my driving keeps improving, I think the answer is a definite yes.

I've done a few chassis & engine upgrades in the meantime to see if I can find a bit more speed. Suspension, ignition and exhaust are wide open in my PCA "Production" class.

• New spark plugs, rotor, cap & high performance ignition wires from Tarrett racing to optimize what we've got.

• Fabspeed Euro Pre-Muffler in place of the catalyst. This is what the EU cars used through 1986(?) and they flow a lot better. It's really a straight pipe with a little chamber to take the raspiness of the exhaust note. The O2 sensor is still in use so CO is still 1% or under. I'll put the cat back in during the off season so it smells nicer. New stainless hardware and copper anti-sieze paste will make the job much easier to do. The fabspeed piece is beautifully made and fits perfectly. Chef's kiss!

• Dansk sport muffler (1 in, 1 out, 70mm outlet.) Relatively inexpensive if you don't get the polished stainless version.

• Steve Wong Chip (911Chips) to take full advantage of the slightly better breathing.

• Eibach swaybar set, front and rear so we can corner flatter and turn-in more quickly.

• New engine mount on the passenger side

The swaybars were simple to install and really helped the car corner flatter. It was time:

Lifting the inside front tire with the stock anti-sway bars. Stiffer bars should let me use both tires. (Photo: Charles Letouzey)

The ignition work is noticeable in how smoothly the engine runs; it's really like a sewing machine now. I went with Irridium plugs not because they are magical, but because they are supposed to clear oil/carbon buildup better and my engine has some bad valve guides eg: I burn a lot of oil. The engine is rough when it first fires up but then quickly settles. They seem to work.

The engine mount has had a big effect on shifting; between the mount and the ignition work it is much smoother than before. I had put off the passenger side mount because I didn't want to deal with the A/C compressor. Now I wish I hadn't waited so long.

Conventional wisdom says a chip and pre-muffler are one of the least expensive & effective engine mods you can do for a 3.2 Carrera, and they do seem to work. Throttle response is much better and the car charges like an angry bull for the redline. Low and mid-range torque feel better. Overall it feels a lot peppier, more like my old E36 M3 did. (that is a compliment). Now it is tempting me to downshift and punch it - all the time. I didn't do a before & after dyno run, although various online reports seem to claim anywhere from ~15-25hp from this approach. I may sneak in a run just to see where it is now. At the end of the day you aren't going to make more power unless you pump more air through the engine, but there are gains to be had by locking in your fuel type (I went with 91 octane since it's widely available) and other tweaks. The stock heat exchangers were good enough to use on the 964 which made more power, but the Carrera muffler and cat are restrictive. The popular (and kewl!) SSI setup is thousands more and I haven't seen any data to show that it really outperforms a pre-muffler/sport muffler setup. So the cool factor will have to wait for a winning lottery ticket. If I won the lottery I would probably want to go with ITBs, a hotter cam to take advantage of them and some nice internal work so I could comfortably use a 7k redline.

Back to reality, next up is replacing the old spring plates & bushings with some adjustable ones from Prekom. This will replace my old sagging bushings as well as give the rear end the same simple height adjustment as the front - just turn a bolt. This should help keep the rear planted in corners. Then I'll get the alignment back in shape and corner balance the car so it be ready for the next event in August.