Wow, busy day yesterday out at Mineral Wells.

Tested the shocks out at the NTAXS event.

Overall a very good day, but not without some pains.

The mood of the day started Friday afternoon with Stan getting sick, and even though I don't think he got any sleep Friday night/Saturday morning he insisted that we head out.  He said that too much work has been done on it, he wanted to go and play.

Saturday was a very windy day, mostly overcast, but it stayed dry all day.

NTAXS runs a different format than a normal autocross.  They have morning and afternoon sessions.  Each driver gets 4 runs in each of those sessions.  They pull up 6-8 cars at a time and you run your 4 runs in back to back in that group.

The course on Sunday was a 90 sec long monster, very physical and very mentally taxing.

I started off first in the morning session.  The car was strong and there wasn't any obvious tire rubbing after the shock replacement and the (much) lower ride height.  Unfortunately, a noise that Stan and I had both heard on Friday made itself obvious, the collector bolts between the header and exhaust had fallen out on one side and loose on the other.

Stan lost his morning runs, the runs were replaced with a run to Tractor Supply for hardware.  During the lunch break we finished up the exhaust, made a rear sway-bar adjustment and Stan headed out for his first runs.

His first run of the day ended up being FTD for the event.  But, with the lower air pressures the tires finally rubbed.  The front tires started rubbing on the front springs, spinning the springs and mounts, changing the ride height, making it rub more.

Back to the trailer, added another wheel spacer, reset the ride hight.  Back out for 2 more runs for Stan and a couple for me.  Stan couldn't match his first run time, we both agree that we lost a little rake when we reset the ride height.  We will double check that (and lots of other stuff) before this next weekend.

Last hiccup for the weekend was on my last run the car went dead in the hard left handers on course.  Took off on the run with about 12 miles to empty on the gas gauge, when I got back it was just simply '-- to empty'.  I guess we just found another limit to the car.

After a good night sleep last night, time to put in the race seat for next weekend.  Picking up the harness bar from the powder coater tomorrow. 'Red Baron' red, just like the wheels.

More suspension installation details

Wrapping up the moton coil over installation.  New holes drilled for the reservoir hoses in the rear, and slotted upper bolt holes to gain some rear camber with the AST upper mounts.  Over 3 degrees of camber now without having to use GT3 lower arms.  This only worked because of the shortened strut, and 'flat' upper mount instead of the OEM 'tower' style mount.

The AST front camber plates are nice peices, with some useful camber/caster adjustment range when combined with the alternate bolt holes for reverse mounting.  Holes for the front hose were trickier, ended up going through a double walled section in the trunk floor, in hindsight I may have tried to route them up high into the battery compartment.  There are existing holes there that just need enlarging.

Front reservoir mounting on the tool cover.

Lessons learned from this week long trial fitting and installation 

- Bleed the reservoir gas pressure before disconnecting the quick disconnects.  They work very well, but take tremendous force to reconnect if there is much pressure in the reservoirs.

- There is a crazy amount of sound insulation in the rear engine area of the car, including some memory foam material in the carpet pieces.  Easily 20-40lbs.  Will have to see if the Cayman R uses less that I can update to.

- Since this car had the PASM electrically controlled shocks, it threw an error code once they were disconnected, and would not allow 'sport' mode to be enabled.  RAC performance was able to delete the PASM function from the cars programming using AWE's instructions:  http://awe-tuning.com/media/pdf/AWE_Tuning_PASM_Delete.pdf

They are here now!

Moton Club sports  built to Cayman Interseries/Grand Am dimensions  with AST front camber plates and rear spherical mounts, thanks to AST/Moton and Vorshlag for putting together this nice track oriented combination.  I stalled too long on spring rate selection, so they will come next week.

Otto's first stickers at the Texas Tour

It was a pretty fun weekend at the A&M Tour, after a solid thrash leading up to it to get  the headers, camber plates and sway bars installed.  Because I was not sure of tire clearance,  pressure, alignment, or wear pattern, we mounted some 2 year old A6's 285's from Su's  B stock Cayman for Saturday's runs.  

First runs were entertaining, the car had good turn in, but lots of easy power oversteer. The engine, trans, and Guard TBD diff felt great,, and what thrilling exhaust note.  Sound meter found it 1-2db too thrilling.  The handling  was a bit loose, which limited how aggressive you could be, and got worse with each run.  By the end we saw all of the inner tread bars gone on the rear tires, they were toast.  Time to mount up the new 285/315's for Sunday (our backup plan).  Handily, Turbo Todd had arranged for Goodyear tire truck support, so it was all done on site :)  

Sunday runs were a little more tame with the fresh tires, and larger 315 rears.  The car was still a bit loose, but that seemed a common theme for others on this grippy concrete surface.  Now it could pull some real Gs ... and it looks like I need more rear camber!  Times were markedly better Sunday, and we closed the gap on the leading Evo. I played with the 'sport' mode button, which modifies the throttle response in our current flash, and found I could modulate better in normal mode. It seems to only affect the first 50% of throttle travel anyway.   We can't wait to get the motons and some stiff springs on the car!

Front suspension test

After wrestling with the gt3 sway bar install over the weekend, I finally mocked up the front suspension with camber plates for tire clearance. The pasm struts add some challenges because of the wire out the top, luckily my old modified valve spring compressor socket was the right size for the top nut.

I got the camber plates used, and they came with cut down washers to allow for maximum clearance.
The tire tucked beautifully under the fender. Wheels are 18x10 with the equivalent of 45mm offset.

Ouch don't hurt me!

Just a little tough on the nerves pushing the fender roller around on a new (to me) vehicle.   Porsche seems to have great resilient paint though, I used a fair bit of heat and had no issues.  This is the first pass through, a light roll mostly in the rear, the fronts had very good clearance and a thin lip right from the factory.

More parts coming in

Fabspeed Headers arrived, they will go on this weekend. With the gt3 sway bars.

Iteration 2

So it has been too long since we have posted anything; there has been a bit of a break in the action as we ran out of parts packages on hand.

We took advantage of the lack of parts to take it out to the local ER event on Sunday to shake out the parts already assembled.  We were happy (that translates to: nothing fell off and we didn't have any leaks).

We are now 17 days our so we need to start the rest of the work, parts or no parts.

We have tires mounted up on the wheels, they mostly fit but slightly smaller would have been easy. The test fit tonight went ok, everything is close.  It is a wait and see once we get the suspension in.

Tomorrow, the sway bar comes off of my car, the rear one got delivered yesterday. 

Battery is in queue, too.  

Enough parts to keep us busy.