Typically the Summer stretch, particularly July can be pretty quiet for WEVO, disposable income allocated to Summer Camps, back-to-school and other extra-curricular expenses result in a marked drop of product sales activity. It’s somewhat historical for us, so it never draws alarm.

July 2010 was no different, sales were predictably slow, but in contrast on other fronts it was just insanely busy. Two ALMS races for Risi Competizione, one private test with the F430 and the completion and delivery of Lola for the Peking to Paris Marathon jammed between my return from Le Mans and the end of July made for a super busy time.

My work for Risi Competizione was a productive effort, working with the great drivers on the Ferrari factory driver roster. Giancarlo Fisichella, Toni Vilander, Mika Salo and Pierre Kaffer. A 6th place at Miller Motorsports park in Utah and a 4th place at Lime Rock Park adding valuable points haul to Ferrari’s total in the Manufacturers Championship. ALMS has the tightest GT racing in the world right now with Ferrari, Porsche, BMW and Corvette all duking it out in tight competition. With three races left in 2010 the Driver’s and Manufacturer’s championships are still tight. If you are a Porsche fan you are pulling for Flying Lizards, A Ferrari fan will be rooting for Risi Competizione. Both BMW and Corvette are works efforts, the BMW’s run by Rahal Letterman Racing and the Corvettes a joint venture between GM and Pratt & Miller race cars.

“Lola” the Peking to Paris Porsche 356 was delivered to a Long Beach warehouse on July 16th. Apparently all the West Coast USA cars departed by ship from Long Beach on July 27th, bound for a warehouse in Beijing, where we will collect the car on September 8th. We crunched through the final intricate job lists – some 300+ items as were approached the departure date. We tested the car fully laden at 2480lbs, made all our alignment and ride height settings at full weight and final decisions on engine tune all at full load.

 

The spunky little 1600cc low compression motor was still able to haul the “heavy” 356 to 100mph on the GPS (not the speedo) and on 87 octane gas. Great engine work by Alan at The Stable. The car ran straight and steady at high speed on the aggresive tread Rally tires. Noise level is OK, neither distinctly loud or noticeably quiet. The installation of the full length skid under the car and the high exit exhaust system being some of the last details completed. Our final ride height measurements, fully loaded, delivered a 6″ ground clearnace under the front skid plate, about at the axle line. Whether this is enough is somewhat academic now, as this is all we can achieve with the stock 356 front suspension components.

The car was packed with most of our spares and equipment. Clothing, some of the tools and all of the “oversights” will be added to our baggage to China on September 6th. Space is at a premium in the car, without the luxury (intentional) of a roof rack, two sapres wheels in the front trunk gobble up most of the useful trunk volume. The rear seat area is partially filled with our 21lbs total, of featherweight camping gear. The balance of the rear seat area is dedicated to our clothes duffles and the first aid kit…

If this is sounding minimalist, it certainly is. It will be an interesting challenge to go for some 40 days on two changes of clothes and some extra layers to handle the cooler areas.

The final challenge now is to complete the travel logistics and obtain all the necessary 7 visa’s.

The Route Books have been issued, along with maps for the whole route. We can see now the location of the Times Stages, the length of the transit and passage stages, effectively the whole event laid out in about 5lbs of spiral bound documentation. So far I have marked up some of the special challenges – highlighted reminders intented to revoke the fog of fatigue, plus started to strategize about out fuel levels, fuel purchase locations etc.  If you visit the Peking to Paris Marathon web site, you can see the route and use the interactive map to zoom way in and speculate about the landscape and roads we will travel.

 I will be away from September 6th until October 22nd, probably without a cell phone. I will experiment with opportunities to post to this blog, but promise nothing!

Some of the cars in the event – including us in car #100, have opted to carry a SkyTag tracking device. When the event starts you will be able to follow the progress of the cars via their website http://www.skytag-gps.co.uk/. If you see car 100 stopped for excessively long periods, that is beacuse Steven either broke it or crashed it. If you see a trail of crazy circles, that is becasue I got us lost…..

Time for an end-of-May update on our Peking to Paris 356C, now christened “Lola”

The whole car has effectively been disassembled and inspected.

Not unlike a typical restoration, all the removed parts have been subject to close scrutiny. Then we made the decision made whether they have a role in carrying us from Peking to Paris.

We have been shedding weight in a very deliberate manner, with care not to diminish the civilized ride too far. Part of the appeal of the 356C was the disc brake package, the other was the relative comfort and quiet that the Porsche can offer for such a long haul.

Sound insulation is pretty heavy, and also prone to water saturation or provide fuel for a fire, so we have stripped the engine bay of all the combustible materials like the cardboard liner and the bulkhead sound pad. To balance the loss of insulation on the engine side, we have added two styles of modern, lightweight sound insulation on the cabin side of the bulkhead. The weight reduction is in the order of 10 – 11 lbs, I will have to tell you later, whether the noise level has risen appreciably….

We have also stripped the sound insulation from the front compartment, in part to lower the fuel tank a critical 5 or 6mm to allow our second spare tire to fit under the hood and in part to reduce weight and clutter wherever possible.

The rear bodywork had a bit of a trim, with a crescent of material removed under the rear bumper to improve our departure angle by a few degrees and to eliminate the effective sugar scoop the existed under the back of the car. This also allows free passage of the skid plate to raise up to the underside of the rear bumper and make a really durable mount and skid on a car with such low ride heights.

The engine has been completed by Alan at “The Stable” in San Francisco. A healthy 84hp at 4950rpm and over 100 lb/ft of torque from 2200 to 5000 rpm. These figures on 87 octane. The motor spec is no secret, just very careful build quality, 1600cc, Zenith carbs, 7.5:1 JE pistons in steel barrels and a special Elgin camshaft.

The transmission has been inspected, a couple of new bearings, new seals and a LSD installed, new mounts and a general clean up to make everything look new and clean. Plus a breather tube to allow for deep water crossing and prevent the hot transmission from gulping in water if the breather is splashed or submerged in a water crossing.

The fuel tank has been stripped, cleaned, soda blasted and painted. An AN6 fitting has been welded to the bottom to marry to the complex Enduro fuel system. Our 26 liter long-range tank has been delivered and final fitted, our twin fuel pump set-up and secondary fuel filter system installed, the primary filters/ water separators with their glass inspection sections are being manufactured now and will be the final part of the whole fuel system. The system is plumbed with Nomex braided, Teflon lined lightweight hoses, filters, valveds, one way valves, a diverter valve, switches, relays, fuses etc. It seems complicated, but in essence is necessarily so to offer the versatility of range and tolerance to dirty fuel. With a total of 78 liters, I hope we have a range of over 320 miles on unpaved roads. Testing will tell.

The brakes have received a dual circuit master cylinder from an early 911, with new rubber hoses and some new hard lines where necessary. The dual circuits require new master cylinder reservoirs – these are over size to offer some safety range if we crack a brake line and have a slow leak.

We sent seven 4.5″ x 15″ steel wheels to Harvey Weidmann for blasting, inspection for true and straight. Harvey sent them back lightly blitzed with silver, enough to look respectable, but not enough to conceal a developing crack, or make it difficult to clean for a weld repair. Our 175/70-15 rally tires arrived from the UK, with 6 now in the USA and 6 more on the shelf in the UK awaiting deployment to a tire store point along the rally route.

The car will run on stock torsion bars at elevated ride heights, the dampers are custom built Ohlins units with valve configuration that we have developed over a number of different cars and we will carry one spare front and one spare rear.

Many parts in the engine and suspension having been magnaflux crack checked before considered clear for re-assembly.

The electrical system of the car has all been completely scrutinized, with about 50% of the thicker 6 volt wire replaced with modern lightweight wire. The battery has been relocated to a position behind the drivers seat, with a short and light primary power cable direct to the starter – perhaps no more than 15″ away. The lighting system has been rewired to take the load away from the headlight switch and period style Marchal driving lights have been added to the front and a single Marchal flood light to the rear for reversing.

The engine oil cooler from ARE in Brisbane Australia, has been added to the rear decklid, along with a SPAL fan that is switched by a thermo-switch on the cool tank of the oil cooler. The engine bay is plumbed with a full flow oil cooler and Mocal thermostat, once again using lightweight Nomex braided hoses.

The interior has been stripped of the original seats, the rear seat backs and bases and the rubber floor mats (weight!) The floors will be covered in our WEVO trademark aircraft plywood style floors finished with black stain. The seats are sporty mid 70′s Recaro recliners that have been re-covered in black leather with black Mohair velour seating faces for ultimate all-climate comfort and durability. The seat bases were a day long project of their own, to allow for safe installation of the dual lock adjustable seat rails, with the option of some rake and height adjustment.

The dashboard has benefited from a Km/hr speedometer, sundry toggle switches for driving lights, fuel pump selector and screen washer pump. The passenger side of the dashboard is now mostly obscured by the mounts for the GPS and Brantz rally computer.

There are still plenty of small jobs to do,  but the car is expected to be on the ground and testing before the end of June. I dare say we will continue to refine and adjust right up until the car is due at the dockyards in Longbeach in the 3rd week of July.

It is hard to underestimate the nature of an event like this. It takes a lot of thought to find the right solutions and to deliberate on how, if at all the OE 356 systems will be deficient. I know we will arrive at the start of the event with the right preparation to deal with a lot of very predictable circumstances along the route. This is our best preparation to have the time to deal with all the unexpected – of which there will no doubt be plenty!

More at the end of June, more with photos of all these assembled systems.

March 20th 2010 marked the 58th running of the Sebring 12 hour race, for me it was only the 7th time at the event.

For a half day of racing, it has a gruesome reputation as being the event that really tests whether or not you have a “race car”, or “project”. For the Risi Competizione team, the victorious 62 car, winner in 2009 and now in 2010 demonstrates the maturity of a fully developed GT endurance racer. In fact the total of 6 consecutive wins, covers all the significant global GT2 endurance races since the 24hr race, Le Mans, June 2008. No other GT2 car or team has won since then!

The Risi version of the F430 is a carefully honed version of the product delivered by Michelotto on behalf of Ferrari. Risi then add their own select refined components (some of which are designed and manufactured by WEVO) and apply a veil of race preparation that includes some very secret attention to detail that sets their F430′s above all others.

Jaime Melo has partnered with a selection of world class drivers to sit in every one of the 6 consecutive endurance race wins. The blazing fast young Brazilian has learned the skill of bringing a fast car (often not the fastest) to the finish in first place – he does so with the support of the team who give him well engineered cars, good race strategy, quick and accurate pit stops and unbeatable green flag averages that are key to Endurance racing success.

It was a pleasure for me to be part of Risi Competizione, both in 2009 and 2010 at Sebring for the 12 hour race. I was responsible for Engineering on the 61 car, a familiar green F430 in the livery of Krohn Racing,  regulars in Gran Am DP racing. Tracy Krohn, Nic Jonsson and Eric van de Poele are partners in both the DP car and the F430 and as a team we will race the green car at Laguna for the 6hr race in May and then the Jewel in the Crown,  a career long ambition for me – the Le Mans 24 hr race on June 12th 2010.

This snap taken as the cars were rolled back to the transporter after the race shows what kind of wear and tear half a track day can take on a pristine racer. The bumps of Sebring are unforgiving, the 61 completed the race with a damaged RR damper, 7th place in GT2. The 62 car, even though victorious – finished with cracked and damaged parts that would never have survived another few hours. However, put that in perspective, the BMW’s that pushed the 62 for over 11 hours finally capitulated towards the chequered flag as the brakes on the BMW’s were completely spent….

The 6 hours at Laguna is a relative sprint in the sunshine of the California Spring time and the fantastic racing surface that comes from the Moto GP  demands of the raceway. It will be the final warm up for the 24 hour at Le Sarthe in June, a final opportunity for Risi Competizione to polish the details of their remarkably successful Ferrari F430 GT racers.

Last week – March 8 – 12, I enjoyed what is best described as pure good luck.
Although I could make an effort to deceive and pretend that it was a solution derived from hard work and investigation, that would not be true.
The result of a simple mis-strike on the keyboard delivered me with a perfect solution in a way that I can only attribute to good luck. Good luck not only for me, but also for Pete vB and the ongoing development of PVX, the rocket 912 with the GT3 Cup motor.

PVX has devoured two starter ring gears (SRG) in a total of about 200 engine starts. The installation uses a shortened 993 6-speed transmission, which precludes the use of the original 993 starter with the starter pinion head supported in double shear by a mount cast into the bellhousing (this mount is lost when 26mm was cut from the bellhousing length)

Like all parts of PVX, we started with the lightest solution we could obtain or manufacture. The lightweight IMI starter was a significant weight saving over a 911 starter. When initial starting and running of PVX lead to damage of the starter ring gear, we suspected that the cantilever pinion design of the early 911 starter was at fault, with the lightweight starter having even greater deflections that allowed the pinion gear to “climb”  out of mesh as the burden of the 13:1 compression ratio in the GT3 Cup motor was encountered.

Before totally destroying the starter or the SRG we switched to an early 911 starter and seemed to have the issue under control, but not beaten. Thinking the wounded SRG was destined to fail after the initial damage – when it did, we installed a 2nd unit, which lasted about another 100 starts…..

I was / am still of the impression that the cantilever design is at fault, with the pinion head free to deflect. What we needed was some system that had a double shear pinion head, one that could behave like the original 993 installation, after all, a 993 3.6 litre motor is 11.5:1 compression and that installation is designed to last 200,000 miles +

So my challenge last Monday on the 8th, was to find a way to emulate that design, within the constraints of the short bellhousing on PVX and execute the work quickly while we complete other tuning and preparations for a serious national event in May.

I had prepared Pete for the fact that we were looking at creating the starter system as a whole new configuration, a combination of OE parts, WEVO parts and derivatives of both to create a pinion head in double shear. Many cars use a simple shrouded pinion head, Chevy’s, VW’s all sorts of Japanese cars. A shrouded starter has the second bearing for the pinion head in the end of the “shroud” thereby needing no other pilot or bracket to support the pinion shaft.

I resigned myself to designing and drawing the 4 or 5 parts that would be needed to mount a shrouded starter. Then went to our Bosch supplier SSF to buy a 993 starter (that should work right?) as the core for the adaptation. The SSF website is great, quick to navigate and they carry huge inventory for cars like the 993 that are in the 10 – 20 years old bracket (plus many much older models too). You navigate to the product by selecting manufacturer – Porsche, Year – 1995, Model – Carrera C2, Section – Electrical, starter, alternator. From the drop down menu I select “Starter” expecting a single starter option to appear. As the screen fills, I am already clicking on the part number and the photo….

I am confronted with a thumbnail image of a shrouded starter?? – not a 993 starter as I know it?!? There in a single rushed keystroke I swept away days of design and a couple of weeks delay while expensive custom parts were made. It turned out to be a 993 Tiptronic starter. We obtained our no-core-refund part for under $300 and then crossed our fingers as we tried it into the packaging envelope for PVX, still expectant of some revision albeit reduced.

Within a few minutes we established that the 993 Tiptronic starter was a direct interchange for the early 911 starter – all the physical aspects were the same, the mount pattern, pinion projection, pinion design – all the same.

So with another new SRG installed, Brian had PVX running again 48 hours later. Fingers crossed we have now solved the starting issues for PVX, which has been the only element of unreliability since this amazing car started to accumulate test mileage in December.

Pete has started to attend Bay Area AutoX events and learn the style of driving needed to deploy the power and utilize the grip of massive tires. No doubt it is a science project and we are happy that the car has the versatility to be tuned and adjusted.

More rewarding was the unexpected gift from the Porsche parts catalogue, when by pure accident I discovered the compatibility of the 993 Tiptronic starter (have you ever looked at a 993 tip transmission? – barely looks like a Porsche product at all!) with the starter from a 1972 911.

Oh, did I mention it is just over 3 lbs lighter too?…… fantastic

In a landscape filled with wireless, mobile, handheld and remote gadgets – I did wonder, can I log onto my blog and contribute anything valuable from the console of my i-phone.
Sitting in a Fish Restuarant in Houston airport, this test is hardly a challenge like the back roads of Uzbekestan, but none the less – if a success, a hint of things to come.
So far no luck in trying to post from my phone camera to the blog……