Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

That all looks like a ridiculous amount fun.

Oh, it was. It was epic amounts of fun. So many stories and happy memories.

A huge monu-fucking-mental PITA to organise though. 30 cars, 50 people and a 7.5 tonne support truck over a 3 week tour, a secondary support van to take our camping gear to the Le Mans Classic race, at least 2 gpx-file planned routes for each day and route cards. One of the four orgnanisers dropped out halfway through the planning process due to stress-induced depression.

Still, the tour itself was awesome, though I say it myself. After I'd sorted out the mess resulting from the fact that the dickhead to whom we'd delegated booking the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander had only booked spaces for 28 cars and forgotten about the support truck...

If the engine wasn’t where a normal car puts the spare wheel and the shopping then this would be much easier, but there’s little choice for those of us with the 911’s layout.

Yep 👍 used to go when it was the bass clef for jazzy nights.
Loved the heavenly Sunday social in little Portland street too.🕺🏿

And given that the cars we were driving with tended to be tuned rather rich for performance rather than economy, you could tell when you'd had a long day's driving...

When i did the South of France in the Stag in the early 80s, we never had the top up whilst driving after leaving the UK for the whole time we was away. Pretty much my face was like that all the time. My partner, a head shorter, never had bother.

Cycliste's a bit more than a head shorter than me, and she came back looking pretty crusty after most days' driving. It was a combination of sunscreen, sweat and a 2 litre Zetec running a Megasquirt ECU with a home-brewed map erring on the side of caution in my friend's blue Fury.

Driving down to Morzine and back with the roof down I went quite red (no sunscreen) but other than that I was fine. Windows up and a wind deflector though.

Next you'll be telling us you had a windscreen too...

Guilty. I thought that the Triumph Stag also has one, unless it rusted off I suppose.

Here’s the other issue- packaging: https://www.instagram.com/p/CDD01-8F1TN/?igshid=1k4aq82g09uiz

We have very little room to play with.

(No idea how to post a photo from Instagram I’m afraid).

So the sequential box would require a whole new housing? I know nothing about it, had assumed that a conversion kit could be used with the standard housing.

Problem is that the location of the engine is fixed- no wiggle room there, and the location of the wheels is fixed, so the diff has to be in a specific location (with some wiggle room depending on drive shaft angle).

We looked at converting a G96.50 but input shaft length and overall positioning were not looking good- and then you have the cost of a G96.50 (GT3/turbo gearbox).

A sequential box designed for a mid-engines layout that could have the crown wheel location altered to reverse the drive (as you’d have to rotate the box 180 degrees) might work, but then you have the situation where you are asking a manufacturer to do a run of 3, whereas they’d like a minimum of 300.

Where is the weakness in the current gearbox?

Little bit beyond a group buy then.
By this stage it is probably easier to cut the roof off a GT3.

Gear ratios are already long, then add another 1,500 rpm and you’re doing 120mph in third. Plus the Rev drop between gears drops you out of the power band.

We need to shorten up the gears and reduce the drop between them.

Our goal is to put perform a stock 996.2 GT3.

Showing my ignorance, but can you not just alter the final drive?

That doesn’t alter the gap between gears, and also the aftermarket ring and pinion sets are renowned for being both expensive and fragile.

I suspect our engines are not going to do much below 4,000 rpm, so you’ll need to drop from ~8k to no less than 4K when you shift.

You've got deep into this. I'm impressed by your mechanical knowledge. Did you learn on the job or do you have some background?

I’m just interested in how things work, and unable to accept that the answer is “you don’t need to know that”.

I will say that there is an incredible amount of misinformation and group think on motoring forums, and amongst aftermarket manufacturers, so establishing what’s actually true is also quite interesting.

There’s also (and I find this odd, coming from the perspective of being a product director for a SaaS company) a great deal of secrecy- piston skirt profile for example, which confuses me as you can buy a piston and scan it, but they won’t send you a dimensional drawing.

Needs more low.

Also only got the fronts on as I completely forgot to get a piston rotator tool for rear calipers.

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Beefy bois!

Very chonk. Those JR5s look great

My take is that the 6 mnths extension is only valid for a certain period, any MOT that fall due after that period don't get the 6 months bonus.