That'll do
That'll do
Yesterday I attended a track day at Laguna Seca. I’ve done 12 days there in my GTI so I know the track pretty well. The MPSS weren’t the best tires for a track day but they did ok. My best time for the day was a 1:54.57. My wife, kids, and brother joined me there for the christening.
In reply to CAinCA :
Having driven a number of Caymans on track all I'll say is they are beautifully balanced cars. They may not be the fastest but they are wonderful to drive.
I agree 100%.
My daughter asked if she could use my camera to shoot pictures on Sunday. I set it up for her and then she was on her own. She got 3 excellent pictures. IMHO the first one is better than any of the shots the track day photos guys take here.
CJA_7946 by Chris Attebery, on Flickr
CJA_7896 by Chris Attebery, on Flickr
CJA_7781 by Chris Attebery, on Flickr
I saw that Pelican Parts had Schwaben tools 20% off for Memorial Day so I picked up their Professional Scanner. Now I can reset the oil service indicator.
I got video of my best lap editted last night. This is about 6 seconds slower than my best lap in the GTI, but the AR1s are so much better than these MPSS on the track. My brother said that they don't even squeal before they break loose. It was kind of like driving on a damp track.
Last Sunday was not only the the first time I drove my new to me Cayman at the track. It was also the first time I'd ever driven a rear wheel drive car on a track. Some of the things that worked well in the GTI didn't work as well in the Cayman. That and the greasy tires led to some exciting moments.
A lot of that is probably aging/overheating tires. These cars naturally are fairly neutral/pushy but they get real sketchy real quick when the rear tires are bad. Somewhat recently I test drove a totally stock base suspension base 981 with super old and dead rear tires and it was substantially looser than my 981S with 50hp more and a stiffer than stock rear sway bar.
In reply to dps214 :
I agree with your assessment.
dps214 said:I test drove a totally stock base suspension base 981 with super old and dead rear tires and it was substantially looser than my 981S with 50hp more and a stiffer than stock rear sway bar.
Mmmm it drove like a Datsun 1200 then. LOL
I picked up a used set of Apex Racing SM-10 wheels in 18x9 and 18x10. They came with Hankook RS4t tires in 245/275 40/18. The wheels are in great shape. The tires have a few track days on them and should be good for 1-2 more.
I had my first failure last week. We went away for a few days for July 4th. When we got back I was itching to drive the Cayman but it wouldn't start. I got it jumped and drove it for a while. I stopped at the HW store and immediately restarted it. So far so good. I went inside and came back about 15 minutes later and the car wouldn't start again. Wa wa waaaa. Luckily Costco had the battery in stock and my son was able to give me a jump so I could drive it home. The only thing resembling a date code said I5. If that actually was a date code that would translate to September 2015. I think it was time.
I also purchased a Carnewal GT muffler for the car and installed it last night. This is a stock muffler that's been opened up and modded internally. It wasn't hard to install, but getting the mufflers assembled and set to the correct width was a bit of a PITA. I wish I had taken better measurements of the original assembly's width before I took it apart. A couple hours later I had it installed and took it for a drive. At lower rpms it really doesn't sound any different than the stock exhaust. At higher throttle or above 5k rpm it opens up a bit. The exhaust note is deeper/throatier and louder, but not too loud. Perfect for a daily driver.
Last night I made up a set of dummy brake pad connectors, installed Porterfield R4 front and R4S rear brake pads, and mounted my Hankook RS-4 track tires (245/40/18F-275/40/18R). I was able to get it all done in about an hour.
I'm heading to Laguna Seca tomorrow. It will be my second track day in this car and the first with decent tires.
BTW: I've been doing some reading on Planet-9 and "Ice-Mode" came up. Apparently, it's not good to run the same pads F/R on these cars as it will cause the ABS to kick in under heavy braking. You really want to run a less sticky pad in the rear. Well, that's good to know. I did have a couple instances where ABS seemed to kick in at the end of the straightaway. Unfortunately, I just bought new Porterfield R4 pads for the front and rear. I called Wendy at Porterfield and she told me to send them back with a note and they'd exchange them. Not only did they exchange the pads, they refunded the difference in price and shipped the replacements out FedEx 2day at no charge. I can't recommend Porterfield enough. They have the best customer service I've dealt with in a long time.
CAinCA said:Last night I made up a set of dummy brake pad connectors,
Too fancy to just zip tie the sensors out of the way like the rest of us? 
What rear pads did you get? In my mind the R4S wouldn't be a great pairing but maybe I'm wrong. I really like the R4 other than being a little easy to engage ABS (could be some slight ice mode, I mostly attribute it to having never really run pads with strong initial bite though)
And I guess I missed your post about the muffler, I had never heard of the carnewal until a few days ago when I happened upon a 981 version on ebay for pretty cheap. Good timing as my mufflers are getting a bit worse for wear and I had just started researching replacements.
dps214 said:CAinCA said:Last night I made up a set of dummy brake pad connectors,
Too fancy to just zip tie the sensors out of the way like the rest of us?
What rear pads did you get? In my mind the R4S wouldn't be a great pairing but maybe I'm wrong. I really like the R4 other than being a little easy to engage ABS (could be some slight ice mode, I mostly attribute it to having never really run pads with strong initial bite though)
And I guess I missed your post about the muffler, I had never heard of the carnewal until a few days ago when I happened upon a 981 version on ebay for pretty cheap. Good timing as my mufflers are getting a bit worse for wear and I had just started researching replacements.
I blame the connectors on my OCD. It does make it a little easier to swap pads though because I can leave the sensors connected to the stock pads.
I went with the R4S in the rear. The R4 friction level is rated around .53 and the R4S are rated around .45. Hopefully that's enough of a differential. I ran R4 fronts and R4S in the rear of my GTI and it worked well though. I went through 2-3 sets of fronts and the rears were still in good shape.
I'm pretty happy with the Carnewal. It sounds like a Porsche should when you open up the throttle, but it's not much louder than stock if you keep your foot out of it.
The bigger concern in my mind is that those two pads seem to have very different initial bite characteristics. But if you've done it before maybe it's fine. I did a track day on R4S all around and while the rears weren't nearly as unhappy as the fronts they definitely got a lot of heat in them. I'll be curious to see how it works out for you.
I don't have to think about the connectors either, they just stay zip tied to the brake line the whole time.
Saturday was a blast. It was a 103dB day so there were a lot of big money guys there. The guy next to me had a McLaren Senna AND a Lamborghini Huracán STO. There were huge tractor trailer rigs everywhere. I was definitely a small fish in a pool full of sharks. LOL!
I ran in Point By A (Fast). I'm usually one of the faster guys in Point By. Not this time. There was a group of guys running GT3s in our group and they were all running slicks. I was consistently in the bottom 3 out of 20-25 cars. I did have a lot of fun chasing a guy in an Elise and another guy with a GR86. Both of them were on 100TW tires. The Elise had a huge aftermarket diffuser. The GR86 had 235/40/18s and camber mods. I consistently pulled the Elise in the corners but he killed me on the straights. I would pull the GR86 on the straights but he would reel me in on the corners. It was fun.
The R4/R4S brake pad combo worked out well. I got to the point that I could threshold brake and feel the fronts breaking loose occasionally but the car never went into Ice Mode. Yeah!
The Hankook RS-4 were better than the Michelin PSS, but not by much. My best lap was only 1.3 seconds better than the last day out. I ran the tires at 31PSI F/R and they seemed to be happy there. The temperatures were within 10 degrees from inside to outside. I tried adding a couple PSI for the last session and it made the car more difficult to drive. I really need to get some camber on the car. I'm only getting 1.0-1.1g in the corners.
Looking at the data my best GTI lap had 3-7mph on the Cayman at every point on the track. I was able to brake later and carry more speed in the corners. The GTI was able to consistently pull about .2G more in every corner.
RaceChrono crashed mid session once and didn't record any data for the last session. I really need to look for a better solution.
The one upgrade I really want to do on my car is install the GT3 adjustable lower control arms so I can put a decent alignment on it. I looked for a couple months but couldn't find the OEM arms in stock anywhere. I finally gave up and ordered a Cup-Series Control Arm Kit (GT3 Rubber Spec) from Tarett Engineering today.
I like the Meteor Metallic Gray but felt like it needed a little pop of color. I finally got around to installing a set of Cayman R style stripes this week.
CAinCA said:I like the Meteor Metallic Gray but felt like it needed a little pop of color. I finally got around to installing a set of Cayman R style stripes this week.
Yep. Looks good with a little color. Well done.
I have today and tomorrow off for company holidays so I decided to take a drive down Hwy 25 to Priest Valley. It's very dry, brown and not very pretty right now. The road itself long and windy and the kind of road that the Cayman was made for. The 4 mile stretch of Hwy 198 East of the 25 junction happens to be Motor Trend's test route for their annual Best Driver's Car competition.
Apparently it was let's see who can get closest to getting hit by Chris' car day. I had two coyotes and about 47 squirrels run across the road right in front of me. I also ran into something you don't see in Northern California very often. Roadrunners! How appropriate.
Look! That's my sign!
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