I'm excited to see how much faster the lap times get with a few more of those low-hanging fruits addressed.
Photograph by Chris Tropea
What’s a good alignment worth on track? How about more than 2 full seconds–at least if you’re aligning our half-price Porsche Cayman.
After a baseline test spent patiently understeering around the FIRM, we knew the Cayman’s 70,000-mile suspension needed help. And to be honest, parts are already stacking up on the shelf to improve our Cayman’s on-track performance.
But what if we didn’t need them–at least not yet? That’s the question we asked in our last update, when we used a kit from Smart Racing Products to bring our Cayman’s alignment to the limit of its OEM parts.
After some time in the shop, we were able to squeeze more than half a degree of additional negative camber from the front of the car, taking the right front from -0.6 to -1.2 degrees and the left front from -1 to -1.7 degrees.
We also added a ton of toe up front, dialing in just over ¼ inch of total toe out. Our singular goal? Get the front end to do something–anything–besides understeer.
Would these adjustments make the car any more fun to drive? And more importantly, would they make it any faster? We headed back to our official test track, the Florida International Rally & Motorsport Park, to find out.
And find out we did–to the tune of more than 2 seconds faster! Our best time dropped from a 1:25.14 to a 1:22.85, and the car finally, mercifully turned. Not like a race car. Not even like a new Porsche. But far better than it had during our previous visit. This new lap time catapults it up our leaderboard, now landing it comfortably between our E46 M3 project car and a Mk8 Volkswagen GTI and tied with a new Subaru BRZ tS.
Of course, there are caveats, the first being that the Cayman still has lots of low-hanging fruit. The shocks still feel blown, so stringing together a fast lap requires plenty of patience. The car REALLY doesn’t like it when you do something unpredictable. Managing the front tires is still a chore, too, as Michelin’s PS4S has about a two-lap sweet spot before it overheats and slows down. And because these two tests were performed on different days, it’s hard to say exactly how much time the alignment was really worth.
But it was definitely worth something, and this new baseline has us even more optimistic: Now it’s time to start installing parts on our half-price Porsche.
I'm excited to see how much faster the lap times get with a few more of those low-hanging fruits addressed.
Displaying 1-1 of 1 commentsView all comments on the GRM forums
You'll need to log in to post.
