those are great photos

 

if i win the lotto tomorrow.... the first thing i will do is order an RS!! i love these cars.... then i would buy the rig and trailer to haul it down south and do every track every day!

beautiful car!!

 

Great write up and nice pix!

made you an avatar, hope you like it!!

 

what a beautiful car ... very nice photos !

 

wow! awesome

thanks for the avatar. rep points to you

this signal green really pop on the track. wife did not like it at first but love it once seeing it in person

 

once pccb is bedded, it doesn't fade. maybe it's the fluid boiled?

you cannot flip at T7, it's got to be scary T8. if you take the turn fast, on mspc or anything sort of slicks, you need to lift upon entry else you won't make it in a GT3 street car. you can exit at about 112 mph (indicated), but i was using every bit of exit berm inc some dirt. at that point, if you correct or lift, you will be history.

most ppl go off T8 not b/c they went too fast, mostly due to missed apex then runs out of track, seeing dirt coming close, they jerk the wheel or lift and off you go....

 

great picks mike sounds like you had a blast!!!

as for turn 8, isnt that the same turn where james (agean m3) lost it while i was in the passenger seat? i believe on that same day, a black NSX lost it there as well.

 

i hope it's not the brake fluid. at times i almost had to stand on the brakes to slow down ... kind of disconcerting esp. blasting down the straight before T1 at 130+ mph

it was right after T8 when he went off the exit berm then try to correct and caught the hill and flipped. i would imagine he took T8 at 100+ mph


it was sunny, 70F ... what a great day out

man, you must be pissed when James losted in T8 lol

 

I've known Bob (the instructor) for awhile now, and let's just say a good driver in a spec miata will put a $160K RS car to shame. I've even consider getting a miata to master & explore some more driving skills without the fear of destroying my dream car.

BTW, I was in the B group with a few of the boosted NSX guys on Sunday

 

Oh man! you are one of those snot kicking boosted NSX gang lol. you guys are hella fast - the only car that pass me the whole day. i usually run the mixed group but they were out of space so Doug put me in the intermediate B group.

i like Bob and esp his teaching style. he is not condescending and laugh when i make god awful mistakes. i will ask him to ride with me again next time for some tips. it's always good to learn from instructor after doing couple sole sessions

 

Your pccb issues

Many have already given you the correct information but if you search the other porsche board (rennlist) you will get lots of info but let me try and maybe explain it a little clearer.

There are actually two issues going on and they "may" interact to cause a combined 3rd issue so let me give you my take on it (i have about 40 days on my pccb gt3 and now use P50 pads)

1) First issue is that not until a PCCB equiped car has been to the track and not until about the 3rd lap or so of hard braking will the ceramic rotors themsleves get scrubbed in enough to allow the "bite-point" to fall approximately 1 inch so that the brake pedal and gas pedal now line up for proper heal/toe. As you know, when new, the initial bite point of ceramic rotors is very high under street conditions and is very on/off (i.e. terrible from a modulation perspective and from a heal/toe perspective requires some gymnatics of the right foot. The good news is now that you have "scrubbed" them in, the pedals now line-up. What you likely experienced was the lowering of the bite point while on the track and your brain (rightly so) may have attributed it to fade.

2) The stock pads that are delivered with the ceramics will absolutely when new experience a "gas release" during the first really hot session and you will likely miss 2 corners (you have to be ready for this it happens with all new pads) - it feels like you can't push hard enough and the car is not stopping. If there are no police around try your hardest to get this gas release done on the street when you put in new pads before you hit the track

3) It is possible and maybe it happened to you, that the above two things happen at the same time (bite-point lowers / new pad gas release). I'm pretty sure this happened to me 20 months ago at limerock on the first trackday in the spring of 2007. If this happens, not only is your brain freaking out because the car is not stopping but i think the computer also freaks out and believe it or not the pedal goes virtually to the floor.

The good news is that now that your initial bite-point has moved lower what is also magical is that the pedal "feel" is no longer on/off but can now be modulated (much better for the track)

I would suggest changing the brake fluid to motul or better (motul works for me)

The p50 pads are better pads, thicker (13mm versus 10mm), last longer and you may as well use them. I'm on my 2nd set, i street drive them and there is no reason to use the OE pads. These pads take two corners to warm up but they are totally unfadable - totally + they have a "slightly" better initial bite (not crazy but slightly better which i think brings the pccbs up to a world class track system) - i.e. what the Supercup Cars are using.

Hope that helps

Paul

 

Paul - How are your rotors with the more agressive p50 pads? I would think they'd wear faster.

 

- when you take your car to the track and drive at 8000rpms everything on the car wears faster, the moving parts of your engine, your clutch, LSD (oe lasted maybe 20 days), your tranny, your fluids, tires, pads, rotors, paint work from hot rubber damage, rms seems unaffected (OE doesn't work, TT works)

- i haven't noticed "accelerated" wear from the p50 pads just plain wear from trackdays
- my ceramic rotors do not look new but they have 40 trackdays on them (not 4x20 minute session days but 5 to 6x25min session days = approx 90 hours of torture)
- my guess is that the rotors are "good" for another 20days for a total of 60 days or 130hours of DE driving (mosport, Watkins, VIR) - likely could be used longer but that will be about it
- i'm guessing 60 days is maybe about 6x longer than iron rotors last so now it is just a matter money per trackday / performance

paul

 

Paul, thanks for the good information.

I'm surprise to read that the OE LSD only lasts about 20 track days...looking at your thread, track days do start to look very expensive.

 

- the OE LSD clutch stack is a known 'weak spot' by those that track hard
- all that is required to make it better is to replace the oe clutch stack with the motorsport clutch stack (the factory should have delivered it with these higher heat resistant clutches in the first place - they should have also used much higher pre-load but pre-load is likely limited by the lawyers keeping people from killing themselves on wet on-ramps)
- on a positive note most DE'ers wouldn't even be aware that the lsd stops working as the gt3 has so much rear grip that it would hide the issue for most people
- a boxster and 911s can be taken very quickly around a track and they don't come with lsds
- the people that find out there is an issue have generally riden in cars that have motorsport calaber lsds and their brain is more highly attuned to the fact that something is wrong / not working
- by motorsport calaber lsds i'm talking about high preload and high ramprate lsds by shops such as Paul Guard (100#s+ preload and 50%+ lockup rates)
- once you have taken certain corners with one of these units and can feel what is going on and then you jump into a car without one you know immediately something is not happening that should be happening
- this is how i knew my oe was not working (or maybe better said, it should have been doing more)
- when we finally looked at it, the pre-load was so low to basically non-existant that you could say that it was like driving without one
- the stock preload according to Porsche is within specs even if it has only a few pounds of pre-load and as such is so slow to react that it is effectively useless - i.e. your *** is waiting in a certain corner to feel the lsd slipping and doing its job but you feel nothing (moreover combined with low pre-load the ramp rate on accel is 28% versus cupcar rates of approx 50% so it is slow to very slow and doing less)
- again, a reasonable amount of money (Motorsport Clutch stack) can make it 80% better - or you buy a real Motorsport LSD from a cupcar, Paul Guard or other and feel the real difference (that cost more - 3Gs)
- also, stickier tires (hoosiers, slicks, etc) will reveal the problem much much faster but again you have to know what it should be doing (faster because the clutch stacks get a much harder workout and fail because they can't take the heat)
- a single session with slicks on a track with the right types of corners (entry/trail braking & exit) and a fast driver would fry the oe clutch stack no question