Baptised

Well after the beautiful clear conditions of the Hot Marques day the next TrackScotland day was a touch wet to say the least! It was the 7th March and it would be our first time out in the wet....it was little daunting waiting to go out but living in Scotland wet trackdays were going to be something we had to get used too!

Since the last track day we had investigated the braking issue and couldn't really see anything very wrong. The brakes were working so we left for the track confident with the wet weather that high speed braking would not really be an issue.

Well, for the second track day in a row the little pig surprised us. The tires still offered up huge amounts of grip and we were finally faster than other cars out on track, it was as if some of them were in reverse. Now you could put this new found speed down to an increased ability level......however i fear it may be more down to the fact we are not smart enough to alter our brake points or too worried about the car sliding off into a barrier :) we were braking later and harder than a lot of cars out there, carrying good speed through the bends and only really losing out on the straights.




Due to the wet conditions the pig had a little but of understeer on a few bends but was very communicative and let you know what was going on at all times, including the time i put the rear wheels on the outside kerb on turn in causing the rear to step out :)

Towards the end of the day the front brakes were shot and due to this the rear wheels were locking up under heavy braking which provide some interesting moments.....

So, we vowed that before the next track day in a couple of weeks will need a new Master Brake Cylinder and a quick rebuild of the front calipers. Great fun as always though and I cant think of a better way to spend a rainy Saturday!

Hot Marque?

Eager to try out our new improvements Nick and I noticed there was to be a Hot Marques' track day on the 7th February 09. Now this is supposed to be for prestige marks and expensive cars only........but, the pig is a Porsche, that's prestigious......right?!!

Anyway, a quick phone call by myself to confirm that she wasn't a complete dog and they let us book on - result!

Well, the day dawned and we were greeted with a beautiful crisp winters morning. Filled with anticipation and excitement we set out on track. WOW, the car grips, it actually grips....where did this come from?!!?

Previously we had a bit of comical understeer at every corner but the new tires were a revelation. The car seemed perfectly balanced, it gave masses of confidence to the driver to just throw it in at speed and wrestle it through but it could also be made to dance and flow through the bends.....oh, now this was a good idea - why didn't we do it sooner! We shared the track with some pretty special machinery including one of my favorite cars a Ferrari 360 CS, I mean we were faster than it obviously and had to slow down to let it past....but it was worth it to hear it fly past....;) (faster than it, yeah right!)

The brakes were still an area of concern, the rears would lock up under heavy braking before the fronts would, we decided to investigate later on, we were having too much fun!

One thing that did become apparent on the day (now that the car actually went round the corners), the suspension might need looking at :)



Credit to MotionImages for the pic

A new year and new ideas!

Well, as 2008 rolled into 2009 we set to work on the 'pig'.

As identified previously the first low cost, big reward part we wanted to buy were tires. Nick swiftly placed an order for a set of Yokohama Parada Spec 2 tires, which were fitted by an oh so suspect center in Dundee which we will never ever use again due to their complete incompetence. Anyway, we would be unable to test them out until February when the 1st track day of the year occurred, they did look the dogs danglies though :)




Another small but beneficial change was the purchase of a much smaller suede covered steering whee. The OEM Porsche one came from a cruise liner and rubbed on poor Russ's knees and was generally a bit tosh. £15 from eBay secured a nice second hand one and Nick went to work attaching it to the car. The result was immediate and positive a resounding improvement!

A quick service was the final act of love bestowed on the pig with the oil and air filters changed, and the brakes bled (once we had paid a man to replace the bleed nipples). There she lay parked up ready to attack the track.........

The first outing

So, we had the car, we had the bravery we had the skill (actually as it turns out, that last part not so much!), we were ready for our first trackday in the 'pig'

We decided to pop our cherry on a 4hr TrackScotland day on the 1st November 2008. The day went great with only two notable exceptions:

I had the ignominy of almost spinning the car at the end of the 4hr session. The almost part is important to note here as it was only due to my immense skill in catching the slide (ok, ok pure luck in catching the slide which i myself caused) that we never had an accident:





However by far the biggest issue of the day was the brakes. We somewhat boiled the fluid resulting in little or no braking power. This would be an issue which we would spend some money and man hours on trying to get to the bottom off throughout the winter.

The initial trackday was done on original spec tyres, the first port of call post trackday would be more track oriented rubber. All in all though we all agreed it was a splendid way to spend our free time and that the sesaon of 2009 could not come soon enough.

That as they say was that for 2008 :)

In the beginning

Hi,

Welcome to our blog about our 1983 Porsche 944, hopefully it will be interesting, well maybe not interesting but it should be entertaining chronicling all our mishaps!

First a little background about how we came to be:

My name is Mark Russell, a games designer for Realtime Worlds and passionate about cars. During one karting trip myself and a couple of like minded colleagues (Nick Barrett, QA Manager & Russ Flaherty, Lead Level Designer) discussed how much more fun it would be to actually take a proper car on track. One quick trip to the pub later and the RTW Porsche Syndicate was formed!

After agreeing on what type of budget we wanted to spend the search commenced, resulting in us picking up a nice 1983 Porsche 944 2.5 LUX for £1200 (largely due to Nick's cockney wideboy haggling techniques :)

This is to be our vessel to fame and fortune as we climb the ranks from trackday addicts to F1 superstars (ok maybe not F1 super stars!):