Having fun again with my Carrera
07-04-2012, 11:30 PM
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Having fun again with my Carrera
Forgive me for cross-posting this, but only some of us visit both Porsche forums regularly, and honestly I'm still not up to creating a unique version of this report for each forum.
As I struggled after Cindy's death in April to accept being alone, friends began inviting me to activities designed to get me away from the house so I'd quit mourning and resume life. They have partially succeeded. (Mostly they succeed because Cindy wanted it this way. We had a very happy fifty-year marriage and neither of us wanted the other to blight that memory by hiding in a closet after the first of us died. It happens that she was the one to leave, while I was the one left to grieve. But the oath implied that from the beginning for one of us.)
I have taken a trip to San Diego and I plan another to San Francisco. The 997.2 Carrera is every bit as good a touring car as the compliments we read here. But I have managed to find a limitation in track work. At Streets of Willow I was able to run with GT3's from the previous generation and the car's performance impressed me a lot. I briefly considered trading up to a current generation GT3, but couldn't see enough marginal benefit for my uses. I have managed to find the limits in track work though.
This last weekend, I went down to Pomona to get my PCA instructor certificate and teach my first student. It sounds like a good way to get myself out of the house. I've always enjoyed teaching but I have no patience for returning to a campus at my age. Teaching in fast cars sounds about right. I ran my own car during sessions for my group of course. Saturday was fine, but Sunday I noticed something was wrong with my car. I kept overrunning the braking zones at the end of straights. The plan was to get a good launch off a slow corner, get up to 105 to 115 depending on the straight, and then late-brake fifty yards beyond where the earlier models manage, just as I had at the Streets and in those laps on Saturday.
That was fine, but Sunday I ended up struggling and repeatedly had to pick a path between cones to run off course and get turned around for re-entry. Fairplex is a perfect track for instruction by the way. The old Pomona track from Dan Gurney's youth is still there, but now it's a separately paved path across four giant parking lots used for the LA County Fair. No chance of a student getting hurt, and a perfect place to push the brake points to the utmost, student or expert. Only the famous bridge offers a chance to get hurt and you'd have to be pretty zoned out to hit the abutment there.
At first, I attributed the overruns to the hotter day and the green asphalt bleeding slippery compounds. That was a factor, but not the real problem. I adjusted my braking points and was ready for the time-trial runs at mid-day. The real problem was waiting to pounce. The laps on Saturday were pretty mild since we were taking turns role-playing as novices and had been asked to keep it down to six tenths. Sunday, we were back to our own selves, no role playing, and driving more like eight tenths even on casual laps. In mid-afternoon, we came up on that time trial segment. I don't really compete, not being motivated enough after all these years, but I did want to get a lap time so I rented a transponder. And of course, a timed run calls for ten-tenths, right? Nine point five at least.
Warm-up lap, two flying laps timed by transponder, and cool-down lap. Started out in my warm-up, came to the second straight and when I began to brake, my dash lit up like a Christmas tree. I didn't have my reading glasses, so all I could read was the one word 'BRAKE' but I saw exclamation points and lots of text in red letters. Oh great. Timed run with questionable brakes. I made a quick decision that I might as well continue. The track offers those enormous run-offs, so if the brakes failed completely I had plenty of room to stop the car by spinning and I might as well consider it a challenge to see how fast I could go pretending I had the brakes from a Kia Soul. I just doubled all the braking zones in my head and pressed on regardless.
Now, I have to admit I'm going to edit here. I don't teach race techniques over the internet. I'm perfectly willing to discuss what should have happened next if you meet me at a track, but I won't publish a note that can be seen by complete novices around the world. Let's just say... No, I won't tempt anyone. Let's just say that on Sunday, I found that I could not drive my normal racing-derived style.
No chance. If I had [edited] I would have spun or plowed off course. I almost did that twice on the first timed lap. Finally, I settled for [a milder style]. We could say I drove it like a race car from the fifties or sixties with drum brakes.
I believe what happened is this. The message had been something to the effect "Service BRAKE requires attention. Schedule service." (I had someone read it before I shut down after those timed laps.) These really are road brakes, not designed for intense track work like those on the GT3, but they hadn't failed. The warning just meant the pads were approaching the end of their service life. They were down to four millimeters and that old fifties course has an unusual number of high-speed straights. When I began pushing them from very high-speed on five corners, I believe the relatively skinny pucks overheated badly. I once set fire to a set of road pucks, so it is possible, though I saw no sign this went that far.
With the material thickness down so thin, they were acceptable for road use, but bringing 3200 lbs down from 100+ five times in each lap gave the pucks no time to cool. At that point, with the pucks fully involved and my using very high pressures, the rotors began to heat unusually. Then, for lack of the heat shields that we put on race-prepared cars, the fluid in the hydraulic lines nearest the wheels began to overheat as well. The feel of the pedal suggested I may even have boiled the fluid, though I don't assert that. I do know the pedal felt 'soft', but human senses aren't entirely reliable at such times. Presented with the need to force the brakes to work even partially, I may well have been pushing a lot harder than it seemed. Adrenalin will do that. Maybe the pedal didn't get 'soft', my leg just got hard.
On a course that puts heavy demand on the brakes, the full press of a few racing laps will find the limits of Carrera street brakes. It's the classic sequence of events and I'm surely not the first to report this, but I figured I might as well describe the effects as a lead-up to the real conclusion:
I had a hell of a good time driving this car as if the brakes were gone. Effectively they were perhaps half-useful, but I couldn't be sure of that since I couldn't read the red-letter message that included the word "BRAKE". They might have failed completely at the end of any straight for all I knew. Instead I drove very conservatively: different lines into the corners, backing down early off those five straights and changing the turn-in appropriately and using cornering loads to slow the car for the apex speed. And it was still very enjoyable. Even without the intoxicating high-g braking we normally enjoy, these Carreras are delightful cars to drive fast. The laps were not as fast of course, but I wasn't competing with anyone but myself, so that doesn't matter.
In a later session, I gave my student a ride to let her see how we drive fast with limited braking power. It's an old skill that is rarely needed with modern brakes, but she seemed to enjoy observing it. I wouldn't risk frightening a true novice with a fast run, but she was a fast intuitive driver herself and I had promoted her to solo runs by the lunch break.
Good car. Good time. And I met a couple of our fellows there as well. Wish we'd had more time to sit and talk.
Gary
As I struggled after Cindy's death in April to accept being alone, friends began inviting me to activities designed to get me away from the house so I'd quit mourning and resume life. They have partially succeeded. (Mostly they succeed because Cindy wanted it this way. We had a very happy fifty-year marriage and neither of us wanted the other to blight that memory by hiding in a closet after the first of us died. It happens that she was the one to leave, while I was the one left to grieve. But the oath implied that from the beginning for one of us.)
I have taken a trip to San Diego and I plan another to San Francisco. The 997.2 Carrera is every bit as good a touring car as the compliments we read here. But I have managed to find a limitation in track work. At Streets of Willow I was able to run with GT3's from the previous generation and the car's performance impressed me a lot. I briefly considered trading up to a current generation GT3, but couldn't see enough marginal benefit for my uses. I have managed to find the limits in track work though.
This last weekend, I went down to Pomona to get my PCA instructor certificate and teach my first student. It sounds like a good way to get myself out of the house. I've always enjoyed teaching but I have no patience for returning to a campus at my age. Teaching in fast cars sounds about right. I ran my own car during sessions for my group of course. Saturday was fine, but Sunday I noticed something was wrong with my car. I kept overrunning the braking zones at the end of straights. The plan was to get a good launch off a slow corner, get up to 105 to 115 depending on the straight, and then late-brake fifty yards beyond where the earlier models manage, just as I had at the Streets and in those laps on Saturday.
That was fine, but Sunday I ended up struggling and repeatedly had to pick a path between cones to run off course and get turned around for re-entry. Fairplex is a perfect track for instruction by the way. The old Pomona track from Dan Gurney's youth is still there, but now it's a separately paved path across four giant parking lots used for the LA County Fair. No chance of a student getting hurt, and a perfect place to push the brake points to the utmost, student or expert. Only the famous bridge offers a chance to get hurt and you'd have to be pretty zoned out to hit the abutment there.
At first, I attributed the overruns to the hotter day and the green asphalt bleeding slippery compounds. That was a factor, but not the real problem. I adjusted my braking points and was ready for the time-trial runs at mid-day. The real problem was waiting to pounce. The laps on Saturday were pretty mild since we were taking turns role-playing as novices and had been asked to keep it down to six tenths. Sunday, we were back to our own selves, no role playing, and driving more like eight tenths even on casual laps. In mid-afternoon, we came up on that time trial segment. I don't really compete, not being motivated enough after all these years, but I did want to get a lap time so I rented a transponder. And of course, a timed run calls for ten-tenths, right? Nine point five at least.
Warm-up lap, two flying laps timed by transponder, and cool-down lap. Started out in my warm-up, came to the second straight and when I began to brake, my dash lit up like a Christmas tree. I didn't have my reading glasses, so all I could read was the one word 'BRAKE' but I saw exclamation points and lots of text in red letters. Oh great. Timed run with questionable brakes. I made a quick decision that I might as well continue. The track offers those enormous run-offs, so if the brakes failed completely I had plenty of room to stop the car by spinning and I might as well consider it a challenge to see how fast I could go pretending I had the brakes from a Kia Soul. I just doubled all the braking zones in my head and pressed on regardless.
Now, I have to admit I'm going to edit here. I don't teach race techniques over the internet. I'm perfectly willing to discuss what should have happened next if you meet me at a track, but I won't publish a note that can be seen by complete novices around the world. Let's just say... No, I won't tempt anyone. Let's just say that on Sunday, I found that I could not drive my normal racing-derived style.
No chance. If I had [edited] I would have spun or plowed off course. I almost did that twice on the first timed lap. Finally, I settled for [a milder style]. We could say I drove it like a race car from the fifties or sixties with drum brakes.
I believe what happened is this. The message had been something to the effect "Service BRAKE requires attention. Schedule service." (I had someone read it before I shut down after those timed laps.) These really are road brakes, not designed for intense track work like those on the GT3, but they hadn't failed. The warning just meant the pads were approaching the end of their service life. They were down to four millimeters and that old fifties course has an unusual number of high-speed straights. When I began pushing them from very high-speed on five corners, I believe the relatively skinny pucks overheated badly. I once set fire to a set of road pucks, so it is possible, though I saw no sign this went that far.
With the material thickness down so thin, they were acceptable for road use, but bringing 3200 lbs down from 100+ five times in each lap gave the pucks no time to cool. At that point, with the pucks fully involved and my using very high pressures, the rotors began to heat unusually. Then, for lack of the heat shields that we put on race-prepared cars, the fluid in the hydraulic lines nearest the wheels began to overheat as well. The feel of the pedal suggested I may even have boiled the fluid, though I don't assert that. I do know the pedal felt 'soft', but human senses aren't entirely reliable at such times. Presented with the need to force the brakes to work even partially, I may well have been pushing a lot harder than it seemed. Adrenalin will do that. Maybe the pedal didn't get 'soft', my leg just got hard.
On a course that puts heavy demand on the brakes, the full press of a few racing laps will find the limits of Carrera street brakes. It's the classic sequence of events and I'm surely not the first to report this, but I figured I might as well describe the effects as a lead-up to the real conclusion:
I had a hell of a good time driving this car as if the brakes were gone. Effectively they were perhaps half-useful, but I couldn't be sure of that since I couldn't read the red-letter message that included the word "BRAKE". They might have failed completely at the end of any straight for all I knew. Instead I drove very conservatively: different lines into the corners, backing down early off those five straights and changing the turn-in appropriately and using cornering loads to slow the car for the apex speed. And it was still very enjoyable. Even without the intoxicating high-g braking we normally enjoy, these Carreras are delightful cars to drive fast. The laps were not as fast of course, but I wasn't competing with anyone but myself, so that doesn't matter.
In a later session, I gave my student a ride to let her see how we drive fast with limited braking power. It's an old skill that is rarely needed with modern brakes, but she seemed to enjoy observing it. I wouldn't risk frightening a true novice with a fast run, but she was a fast intuitive driver herself and I had promoted her to solo runs by the lunch break.
Good car. Good time. And I met a couple of our fellows there as well. Wish we'd had more time to sit and talk.
Gary
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07-06-2012, 03:20 PM
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