Has your 944 ever "Bitten" you ?

[Neil Haughey]

The cars can take a hell of a hit on either end, back end especially and can be repaired from that position ok as the crumple zones take the impact without touching the middle of the car. Sadly exactly the place I am in after yesterday morning, took a hit on the rear quarter but the car still drives and tracks fine, seems that the tyres, suspension and all pick up points left undamaged by the impact.

 

[964RS]

I was 2 cars behind you on the Cooper Straight when you went off and managed to avoid your car when it bounced back onto the track. The conditions were appaling with rain and standing water. I backed off after witnessing your incident and decided to not risk a similar off. From what you write is seems that the damage is not as bad as it looked on the track. Wish you all the best to get your car ready for Oulton. I'm happy that you're okay.

See you at Oulton!

 

[944 man]

Im sorry to read about this Neil. Hopefully itll repair without a great deal of expense.


Simon

 

[PSH]

First of all sorry to hear of Pat and Neil's mishaps and hope you both are well and get your cars sorted ASAP.
I can't claim to have been bitten but have had a heart quickening moment, I suspect like some here I drive my car as fast as I feel is safe for the road conditions of the day but never beyond my abilities which fall far below the cars so I feel fairly safe. However there is always that unexpected incident when you rely on the car to be able to handle what your forced to ask of it. One such occasion was while returning from work coming onto the M40 at junction 1 heading into London. I'll freely admit that I drive fast, on a daily basis I will use all of the BHP that my car has to offer especially in situations like this when coming onto a M road, I will add though that such bursts of acceleration are short lived and I rarely cruise at too high a speed. Anyway as I'm coming up the slip road I noticed white van man in central lane shoot past at I would guess between 90-100mph. No problem I tell myself accelerating to join the motorway and checking what else was coming, answer being nothing for at least 400 yards and so I get into middle lane still accelerating catching up with white van man. I can't say what my speed is now as I'm concentrating on the road and the van ahead getting ready to pull out into the outside lane to overtake him, however I never charge past another vehicle as I see that as a dangerous move and tend to approach probably close to their speed allowing them to see me and then I overtake. Well I was gaining on the van to perhaps a 100yards from him when my eye caught movement of something dropping from below the van, everything then went to slow motion as this large lump of exhaust box bounced along the central lane at my head height towards me.
So I react again at what now seems in slow motion but I guess your talking fractions of a second, I remember it clearly, first checked my mirror ( habit, I never manoeuvre without doing so), swung the nose of the car to the outside lane noting that the debris heading my way was now going to hit my rear quarter still bouncing at head height. To avoid it I swung the nose the other way hoping the car would hold the road at this speed, with only a hint of wagging its tail the car straightened and I viewed the mayhem behind me as other approaching cars tried to avoid the danger as they came upon it. As I said this all seemed to go in slow motion and take a long time but I would guess it was all over in 2 or3 seconds. That for me was the closest to having a mishap and I put it down to the car and it's setup that I drive rather than my driving ability to avoid a very dangerous situation.

Safe driving guys...

Pete

 

[Neil Haughey]

Thanks guys. The really gutting thing is I had just got to grips with the conditions and started to open up a bit as I had the banker laps in, I had figured out where I could go much quicker in Druids and Mclaren/Surtees so my focus and confidence was right up. The back end was breaking free about 3 or 4 times just in Clearways alone so it wasn't like I wasn't used to catching the car and driving out of it. Two laps previously I had a snake on in the same place going from 3rd to 4th so on the next lap took the gear shift a bit more easily and had no problem. On that lap did the same thing got into 4th no drama, was just squeezing the throttle down got it about 2/3rds down and the back kicked loose like I have never felt before. Tried to catch it but the car was already sideways doing about 80 in the wet in the worst possible place at Brands to go off. Once on the grass I knew I was going into the armco so tucked my legs up, head down and arms/hands up to the belts. 2nd hit was the biggest after the first spun the car round. When heading back across the track I had a little look, couldn't see a car on that section so let it roll across with my foot on the clutch towards the marshall's post. At that point I put my faith in you other guys not running into me and thankfully no one did. I can say that the relief to get out without even the slightest injury was a massive relief, I didn't even hit my helmet on anything other than a tap into the HANS back rest. Definitely without doubt the HANS is utterly brilliant, didn't feel a thing in my neck and today I feel fine too. Paul Seagrave who was following reckoned that something had broken on the car as it snapped round so violently and of course no one expects to spin off on a straight. It went straight back up to EMC, they will be going over the car and investigating a few things as I don't ever want an experience like that again.

Fundamentally the Michelin cups are just plain evil in the wet, the guy I was with on Friday had Dunlops on his green S2 and was literally peeing all over the Michelin shod cars in the morning and that was just a bit damp. Loosing 20 odd seconds a lap in the wet on a short circuit is nothing short of a joke situation, decent tyres will be no more than 3 or 4 seconds slower.

 

[944 man]

It certainly sounds like a mechanical failure.

 

[Mr.FixitNorm]

Hi Neil,

Sorry to hear of your mishap, main thing is you're ok. Guess that £20 for the sunroof will come in usefull !![]

Norm

Ps - gave the sunroof a t-cut and polish and put it straight in !! - colour match is perfect and even with your original seal it seems to be better, but I will change the seal soon.

 

[Neil Haughey]

Thanks Norm, that seal is the original one btw, I bought a replacement but will fit it to the 968 when its back here. Will be selling our Panda though to get me some money.

 

[George Elliott]

as I suppose it's interesting to some

Yes, very interesting as (All IMO pls note) your incident has more data which you have kindly shared than would normally be the available.

Sorry to hear about it Patrick, Neil, & everyone else too.

The background for me is:
Well modified Car, rigid shell, good track day components, tyres, brakes etc
Confident driver inputs, consistent laps, competent wheel man
parcel of oddball scrap in the way ahead but quick enough to be difficult to pass, and a distraction for various reasons - i.e. "this 951 should sit with that thing through here" - but the feeling of the car was otherwise / not there...
semi-proven setup following recent work
the laps feedback were not increasing the drivers confidence in the car - my "feeling" from observing, and the data

Key data is:
at 4min 20/1sec there was a seat of the pants unease with the car's feedback

the G meter was higher and less consistent than previous laps

the throttle position was reduced as a result

(I can relate to all that, it reminds me of a very sad day at Tamburello curve)

What Happened then?

a combination of the higher G intermittently bound the outside rear wheel travel, the trailing throttle acted on the diff unfavourably, the weight transfer was different to other laps, the car did not settle to the bend, the Right rear wheel could not hold on (G & Skid forces), after that it was a choice between what happened or a super drift into the gravel followed by a barrel roll out over the tyre wall & barrier.

If you could make an adjustment pre rerunning that lap, it must be the suspension

Knowing the effort you must have made to build such a car Patrick, the repair is well within your grit.

George
944t

 

[Diver944]

Really, really sorry to hear this Neil [&o] It seems like a few 944 guys around the world are having mishaps at the moment. I hope they damage is very minimal and that EMC can get you back on track again soon.

 

[Neil Haughey]

It needs new rear quarter, rear panel, rear bumper and drivers side rear lights. The front bumper can go back in the mould. Will have to do something different with the front tow strap, the front bumper was hanging off as the tow truck ripped out the strap and yanked the bumper. Also needs pulling out in the rear quarter area. Total cost will be circa £2K, I had insurance but the excess on that is huge as its only really to pay out if the car is totalled (£20K with £5K excess).

On the good side the car felt better than ever on Friday, I was nowhere near getting the maximum out of it and was building it up incrementally. Complete opposite to Silverstone last year when the car was a real handful to drive and plainly was just not right in many ways.

 

[nicksonmsport]

neil if you need those parts i have all of them apart from rear panel! including a rear 1/4 (pass side), pm me for details if needed
cheers

 

[944 man]

Costly Neil, but it could have been worse...

Am I correct in thinking that even though your car is an S2, that it uses early pattern wings and a Turbo look-a-like nose cone which is fastened on with plastic bolts, with the original bumper bar removed?

I had a similar arrangement on my old grey car and I drilled through the GRP to access the internally threaded bumper mount. If you fit one large mount ontot the chassis leg nose, then with one hole drilled youll be able to screw in a standard towing eye, or a collapsing ring type.


Simon

 

[Neil Haughey]

Cheers Nick, EMC will be handling it all, I will mention you have parts. Simon the front alloy cross member is all in there as its needed to tie the front end together. The GRP bumper is really just a direct replacement for the factory one and is only lighter due to being one piece rather than having a separate valence bolted on and all the other junk in there. I am sure they could be made much lighter but its amazing how little damage it has considering the hit it took. The pattern is an odd one as all those front end components were patterned on the 2.7 rather than the S2/turbo which is bizarre. I have/had a 2.7 factory badge panel on my car to get it all to match up. I think the pattern oddness dates back to the stillborn 944 series Kevin was involved with many years back as those cars were 8v 944s with turbo/s2 style front ends.

 

[944 man]

Yes, essentially a GRP 951 look 'PU' which fits directly into a normally aspirated car. These parts were available for years, for a cheap tart-up or crash repair and I think that Kevin simply used what was available.

I presumed that the alloy bumper was removed, because Kevin told me that he held them on using plastic bolts and did away with the original bumper/PU mountings.

If the original bumper is still there, why arent you using the towing eye position in that?

 

[Neil Haughey]

It was but for whatever reason the new style tow strap ripped apart from the bolt. I think in the future I will use one of those swanky redline tow hooks that screws into the hole. I used to use a short S2 screw in tow hook but some of the scruts don't like the tow hooks sticking out.

The most gutting thing after this weekend is that the car drove and handled better than ever by a wide margin and my confidence in it was really starting to come. I could have just cruised round in quali I suppose but you know what its like, if you have confidence in the car underneath its more or less impossible not to get into a rhythm and push it.

 

[Cater_Racer]

Hi Neil, sorry about your off.

Monday was much better, 9.00 am qualifying was a bit hairy (still very damp) in places Paddock Hill was scary as usual. But got round Ok.

Our race was 12:30 and the track was dry, managed a 59.05 so much better than last year.

Hope it wasn't you that left their lunch and drinks and tissues all over the floor in pit garage 17.

I had a moan to MSV about it.

BTW can you help on my starting problems? See thread.

Gerry

 

[Neil Haughey]

As is EMC tradition (or so it seems), we had garages 5 and 6 down by the club trailer. Glad you had a good race, I was with Graham on Friday testing with the green S2. You missed Poly-Anna and that bald bloke from the Gadget show on Thursday night [] but otherwise I think we all would have traded for some better conditions. It was the cold as much as anything almost too cold for the tyres to work.

 

[Eldavo]

Polly-Anna Woodward YES PLEASE!!!

 

[Neil Haughey]

Paz reminded me via an other thread that the TOG on duty captured pretty much all of it, sequence starts from here
http://www.newworldmotorsport.co.uk/index.cfm/page/galleries/listid/6/title/Brands%20Hatch%20Qualifying/id/487/image/33943

With that much spinning its surprising I wasn't dizzy when I got out. The impact with the armco on the rear quarter also shows how scarily immovable those armco barriers are.