Would Anyone Here Like To Take A Ride In My Porche?

[Shol'va]

Porches are notorious for snap spins, and this car is the worst of them all, accept for a corvair I had set up for racing. Solitary

This is correct. Porsches are one of those cars that try to kill you at most opportunities. This mostly comes from the rear placement of the engine. In a turn, if you don't know what you are doing and lift off the throttle and you entered the turn too fast, the weight transfer essentially causes the rear of the car to overcome the momentum of the nose and you will more than likely lose control. Or at least that is my understanding of the phenomenon involved, so I hope someone that knows better will correct me.

[aitm]

Porches are notorious for snap spins, and this car is the worst of them all, accept for a corvair I had set up for racing. Solitary

This is correct. Porsches are one of those cars that try to kill you at most opportunities. This mostly comes from the rear placement of the engine. In a turn, if you don't know what you are doing and lift off the throttle and you entered the turn too fast, the weight transfer essentially causes the rear of the car to overcome the momentum of the nose and you will more than likely lose control. Or at least that is my understanding of the phenomenon involved, so I hope someone that knows better will correct me.

I'm not the smartest but that is pretty much inertia. Try as you may you can't throw a dart fletching first.

[PopeyesPappy]

In NASCAR parlance she'd be loose.

[aitm]

In NASCAR parlance she'd be loose.

talk like that makes me all a horny...




say, when you coming back this way? Been a while since we tipped a couple.

edit: yeah...probably not the best sentences to string together....

[bericks999]

Porches are notorious for snap spins, and this car is the worst of them all, accept for a corvair I had set up for racing. Solitary

This is correct. Porsches are one of those cars that try to kill you at most opportunities. This mostly comes from the rear placement of the engine. In a turn, if you don't know what you are doing and lift off the throttle and you entered the turn too fast, the weight transfer essentially causes the rear of the car to overcome the momentum of the nose and you will more than likely lose control. Or at least that is my understanding of the phenomenon involved, so I hope someone that knows better will correct me.

Wrong, the Porsche Carrera GT has a mid engine placement with a weight distribution of 42/58.

[SilentFutility]

Porches are notorious for snap spins, and this car is the worst of them all, accept for a corvair I had set up for racing. Solitary

This is correct. Porsches are one of those cars that try to kill you at most opportunities. This mostly comes from the rear placement of the engine. In a turn, if you don't know what you are doing and lift off the throttle and you entered the turn too fast, the weight transfer essentially causes the rear of the car to overcome the momentum of the nose and you will more than likely lose control. Or at least that is my understanding of the phenomenon involved, so I hope someone that knows better will correct me.

Wrong, the Porsche Carrera GT has a mid engine placement with a weight distribution of 42/58.

If you suddenly slow the rear wheels, a car will attempt to swap ends as you get a yawing moment. In a high-powered RWD car like that suddenly lifting off the throttle or dipping the clutch at high speed in a corner will basically mean the rear wheels slowing down very quickly relative to the front ones and a large yawing moment occuring as a result of the already high lateral forces involved in cornering quickly. If you did this on an airfield and didn't try to correct, the car would swap ends then likely continue going, however what happens in reality is that the driver usually tries to correct this with opposite lock and gets even more oversteer (larger steering response than wanted) and completely loses control, and obviously we've just seen that in the real world, there are plenty of things to hit. This is difficult to explain in layman's terms without actually showing you any equations.

Watch this video, the car swaps ends and then keeps on going in the same direction.
[youtube:2r1s091g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbahPxpMJjw[/youtube:2r1s091g]

This is why road cars do most of their braking on the front wheels. In the UK no more than 25% of the braking can be done by the rear brakes. I imagine that US regulations are somewhat similar.

Weight transfer does actually have something to do with it as well. The stiffness of the chassis and suspension has an effect on the rate of weight transfer as well as on the amount of torsional twisting of the chassis and body roll. The amount of weight transfer remains unchanged and is a product purely of the forces involved, however the rate at which weight transfer happens certainly can and does affect the dynamic behaviour of the vehicle in cornering.

It is possible to lift off oversteer in some FWD cars as well if they are driven close to the limit, but typically it is easier to correct for it with opposite lock, and high-powered RWD drive cars are typically easier to provoke into it as well as being much more difficult to correct for.

Wrong._ That car didn't just spontaniously explode as he was driven around unwillingly.
Maybe they're both nice guys, but speeding through town in a super high.performance car not only endangers them, but anyone else close by.
You want to drive around or ride around with a maniac have fun, but crack up and get killed doing it I won't feel to sorry for you.

People make stupid mistakes sometimes. That doesn't mean that they somehow deserve to die. It is highly likely that every single person on this forum has at some point done something silly or made some kind of mistake that could have led to serious injury or death.

Don't feel sorry for him, that's your choice, however you feel this need to be vocal about how you don't care that someone who, although they made a mistake, seemed to be a fundamentally good person has died, however, it doesn't really matter because he worked in Hollywood and was lucky enough to have money, right? Nevermind that this man who did lots of charity work and didn't harm anyone made one little mistake and probably died in absolutely unimaginable agony as he burned to death.

I'm questioning why you feel this need to draw attention to the fact that you don't care about someone.

[Solomon Zorn]

Apparently Paul wasn't driving. He was the passenger. And he may have survived the impact for a short time.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/showbiz/p ... r-autopsy/

I always hated those Fast and Furious movies. But it's still tragic when such a young life is lost, regardless of the irony involved.

[Smartmarzipan]

Apparently Paul wasn't driving. He was the passenger. And he may have survived the impact for a short time.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/showbiz/p ... r-autopsy/

I always hated those Fast and Furious movies. But it's still tragic when such a young life is lost, regardless of the irony involved.

:(

[PopeyesPappy]

In NASCAR parlance she'd be loose.

talk like that makes me all a horny...




say, when you coming back this way? Been a while since we tipped a couple.

edit: yeah...probably not the best sentences to string together....

Probably be a while. I just got back to Huntsville from Corpus Christi about a month ago. There lots of stuff I need to take care of here after being gone a year and half. Then I'll probably be spending some time in Okinawa before I make it back down your way again.

[SilentFutility]

That is true with more weight in the rear, but it is still set up for racing with over steer in the car they were driving, and it will snap spin at the limits or hitting sand, gravel, or wetness on the street, and should only be driven on a race track at speed around corners for that reason. Solitary

It is technically difficult to completely cure lift-off oversteer in a high-powered RWD car with a relatively low weight, even if you try to set the car up for understeer by forcing the front end to break traction first at the limit, suddenly braking the rear wheels by suddenly not driving them (lifting off/dipping the clutch) will still cause LOOS. It can occur even when cornering really quite slowly under some circumstances.

I drive a light, 90s FWD hot-hatch with virtually no weight in the rear that will naturally understeer at the limit but even that is fairly easily provokable into lift-off oversteer, as are most stiffly sprung, light FWD hot-hatches of the era. The difference is it is far easier to catch it in a FWD car, and far easier to suddenly "brake" the rear in a high-powered RWD car already set up for oversteer.

Basically, no it isn't set up for racing just because it oversteers, but yes I completely agree that high-powered RWD cars, whilst very quick, are relatively easy to get into serious trouble in by nature if driven close to the limit.


He seemed like a nice guy, who did charity work and seemed to be well-liked by those who knew him and those who met him. Poor guy, and his family, including his daughter, must be devastated.

[Lao Tou]

I prefer flame retardant underwear to magic underwear.  They may not work all the time, but at least they work part of the time.  Magic underwear have not been approved by NASCAR,... for obvious reasons.

Maybe that's why the magic underwear seems so ridiculous. The auto racing industry stole all the magic supplied by Kolob to make their safety gear and flame retardant clothes. They sucked the life out of that star and it is no more. No wonder we can't find any evidence of the Mormon tradition, or their underwear.

Mitt is a NASCAR driver? Who knew?

Hell. If I knew that I might have voted for the sucker. Nah. Not enough booze in the house for that.

[PopeyesPappy]

Here's a good question: If you have two bad tires on your car, is it better to have them on the front or back?

I always thought the answer to this question was the back, but I've recently learned that the tire manufacturers say if you put two new tires on your car they should go one the back. Unless you only turn left in which case the good ones should go on the right.

[SilentFutility]

The car they were in was set up for racing, and any racing car has a little over steer built in. Not in oval racing probably, but it would be for sports car racing in order to come out of the corners faster. In oval I believe you would want it to be neutral, but I don't really know because I never raced oval. I had a Fiat Spider that was completely neutral and had fun racing a Ferrari through a really twisty road. He would bury me in the straights and I would catch him in the corners when he would miss gear changes shifting down. They really had lousy transmissions then. Solitary

Here's a good question: If you have two bad tires on your car, is it better to have them on the front or back?

Massively over simplifying vehicle dynamics and ignoring lots of other factors, it would be safer to have the front axle having less grip on a road car as understeer is safer in road traffic accidents and is easier to correct for. Any car with a huge imbalance of grip between the axles would handle like crap anyway though, and as long as all tyres are good and you're not driving at the limit in a road car you can rotate them to prolong life without any real problems.

As I understand it it was just a porsche carrera gt. A nice, quick car. That doesn't make it a race car, and just because most race cars oversteer slightly does not make a road car that does a race car. I've been pit crew in an international race series using super cars like this as a base. The suspension geometry was fully adjustable, had different settings all the time, and was about as far from being a standard or legal road car as it is possible to be.

Unless it was actually a specifically track-modified vehicle?

Also, oversteer does not get you out of corners the fastest, neutral-steer is the fastest. However, achieving true neutral-steer is extremely difficult and race drivers tend to prefer slight oversteer to slight understeer so circuit racing cars are usually as close to neutral as possible but erring on the side of slight oversteer, and the amount of this can be varied slightly by making adjustments to a range of parameters. Also, you can power through oversteer if it is not too bad, whereas to correct for understeer you need to lift-off, which is partly what makes it more intuitive to correct for for an average road driver.

[SilentFutility]

The car they were driving was not a normal GT, it was set up for racing.

I can't find that anywhere but I'll take your word for it.

I don't agree that it doesn't get you out of a corner faster from racing on sports car tracks when I was younger. You may be correct about it now with the tires and grip they have now, I don't know, but it was when I raced back in the late 50's.

Well maths and physics don't agree with you.  :rollin:
If I had the time, and frankly if I could be bothered, I'd show you, but currently I am studying breakfast until bedtime with a short browse of the net before bed.
Neutral steer is the fastest, however, 100%, true, complete, perfect neutral steer is impossible to actually achieve in the real world +  a setup can only be perfect for one type of corner. As this is the case, and slight oversteer is preferable to understeer, plus most race drivers absolutely hate understeer, plus oversteer definitely feels faster, race cars usually slightly oversteer. If you are doing either, you are not cornering at the maximum lateral force mathematically possible.

And like I said, my Fiat was neutral, which made it safer because I could control the back end as I wished and four wheel drift which is fun. I agree with your last statement. You are correct about the bad tires on the front but not for that reason. If you have a blowout on the rear you can't steer the rear, but one on the front you can.

That is also a concern for sure, however what I said was also correct if you're going to have one axle with bald tyres and one with good ones.

Anyway, no matter how a car is set up, you can bring the back end around if you go too fast and over steer, as you well know. If any of you young guys are interesting in racing, go to a good race driving school, and get the lowest horse power car to drive and keep timing your self. Another good thing to do is get a bowel and fasten it to your dashboard and put a golf ball in it. When the ball fly's out your going too fast, in a real race you will overheat your tires and windup going slower. This is why Willy T Ribs, and maybe Danica, (I'm not sure with her though.)  was always qualifying fastest and lost races. Sorry I got so long winded with this but I am still excited about racing even if I can't anymore.  :oops:  Solitary

I am, but I do not have enough money yet. I have worked in motorsport, including briefly in F1 when I was 16  :rollin:
I have also driven the legendary Nürburgring in both my own car and a track car.

[Jutter]

Big Hooeywood star starts believing he lives his movie parts?  It sounds like the apex of arrogance to think you can drive that fast through town and there should be no consequences. Well, there ARE consequences.

& when you are a passenger?
Just because he has died you're assuming he was being stupid, and just because he starred in hollywood films doesn't necessarily imply he was a bad person. From what I understand he did a lot of a charity work, and was in fact travelling back from a charity event.

There is nothing wrong with spending your own money on an expensive car if that is what you wish to spend it on, and doing so and working in the entertainment industry in no way make someone deserving of death.

If you've no sympathy to add, why bother adding anything at all? Seems like you're being controversial for the sake of it.

Controversial and misinformed. Newsreports state that the two weren't speeding, but trying to find out what was wrong with the car by driving it at a normal speed for a few meters. It's whatever was acting up on that Porche, that did them in.