fc-racer

Was out at Mosport this weekend. Second session of the day, before I had even had a chance to get comfortable with the car or get the tire pressures set, this happens. Can you guess what happened?

80shilling

Did the Car in front of you drop Oil or fluid? If so, I have had that happen to me and there is NO WAY of saving the Car if you hit whatever he's dropping. Glad there was no damage to the Car...

Crazy Canuck

Coolant?

Drop some of your own?

Carrera GT

That video isn't linking for some reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHiXgC13QME

You mention tires, so I guess you had the outside (driver side) right deflate. Presumably over-inflated and corded the inside shoulder till it gave up. Maybe just bad luck with a mount or valve or debris? Maybe the LSD froze?

So you dodged the first bullet when you didn't check your car before driving it (and risking the life of the passenger.)

Aside from the spin, you also dodged a bullet because you:

* drove back onto the line and into on-coming traffic

* hesitated and stopped while facing backwards on the line

* thought about turning across the track ... in a disabled car ... ?

Fortunately the passenger encouraged you to exit the racing surface behind a barrier (though you still could have driven another car length further away from the track.) So you certainly dodged a lot of bullets.

So, some terrible decisions there. I know I'm being a critical bastard and I only hope you're painfully aware of all those mistakes and regretting every one of them. I'm not pretending I couldn't make the same mistakes under the same circumstances.

But I have to say, the car control and down shifts were impressive.

Next time, in a spin, bring the wheel back out of full opposite lock so the car doesn't tend to "loop" and of course go two feet in to spare reverse-rotating the engine and stalling -- two feet in is also a good time to be concentrating on the steering wheel position. Once the car is sliding backwards, if the fronts are straight, they won't be a "rudder" to spin the car.

You might also reposition the camera to have a view of the track instead of the rearview mirror. : )

The Baron

+1

fc-racer

CGT, when I say that I hadn't set tire pressures, I mean hot tire pressures. Even I'm not stupid enough to go out at Mosport without checking the base pressures in the pits. I had set the cold/base pressures at ~32psi front and ~33psi rear.

jason952

so, hot the tires were around 40? it seems there is more to the spin than that, were the revs off on your downshift?

JO

tcsracing1

something went wrong with the *** of the car. it looked totally fine and then for some reason it looked like you were on ball bearings?! WTF!?

the track looked fine as did your angle of entry into corner along with speed and shifting.

so what was it??

scott40

Are you sure that wasn't coolant on the track? Sure looks similar to some instances I've seen when that happens.

996FLT6

Is the toe in the rear out of whack? Mike

AllanJ

I've hit coolant on a track and it's like hitting ice. Not a nice feeling, especially when there is a concrete wall on turn exit.

I'm glad you (and everybody else) is ok, Farz.

[edit: forgot to mention that if I used your cold pressures of 32/33, my rears would be in the low 40's by then and on my car it's like driving in the rain.]

Carrera GT

Fair enough. I appreciate you having a sense of humor about it. Thanks for sharing the vid.

Quinlan

Any chance there was a Z06 ahead of you? I have seen THREE blow oil lines on the track in the last year!!!!

fc-racer

Hey guys, good guesses. I appreciate the difficulty in diagnosing driving through online videos, but wanted to drag this out a bit to raise awareness of a fairly serious, albeit rare, issue on our GT3 engines.

There is an aluminum press fitting that goes into the engine that is held in by nothing more than some loctite/glue. When the engine gets really hot under track use and high temps, the loctite/glue can let go and your rear tires are now covered in super hot coolant. In my case, it was the left fitting that came out which doused the left rear tire.

I was very, very lucky that there was slower traffic because I normally come down the straight at ~230km/h and enter that corner pulling >1g at 160km/h. On the lap when the fitting popped out, I was only at 213km/h down the straight and I had backed out of the throttle really early to give the guy ahead some space and was down to a very reasonable 130km/h when the pipe let go.

At the 2:45 mark on this video, this is what a more normal pace is like:

From inside the car, my initial reaction was that the Miata I just passed blew its brakes and hit me, the spin felt so violent and random. Next thought was that I missed the downshift and went into 1st, but that didn't seem plausible. It was only when I smelled the sweet burning coolant that I realized what had happened.

Unfortunately, a car behind me lost control over my coolant and did some minor damage to his car in the tirewall on the entrance to 8. I'm trying to work with one of the shops he's using to bring down the cost of the repair, given the circumstance.

There were a few lessons learned:
1. Change the coolant to water and water wetter when on the track
2. When you spin on the track, get the heck off as fast as you can (I was in problem solving mode instead of survival mode after the spin)
3. Check part no. 997.106.039.90 and 996.106.238.71 for any cracks, wear or movement

Hope this saves someone the scare I went through...

Carrera GT

This is mandatory for bikes at the track and used to be a popular tweak for other cars back in the days when real 911's didn't have coolant. : )I'll have to check with the dealer to see if this holds true on the 2010 cars. I'm afraid it probably is still the same. And the plastic fittings on the power steering let loose too, but that's right on top and usually looks like a white smoke "fire" but without the loss of traction. There are metal parts to "upgrade" these from the Porsche Motorsports parts bin, but I don't know the part numbers, they're on the 2005+ Cup IIUC.

Thanks for the warning.