Friday test day:

Jerry, John from EASY (European Auto Salvage Yard) and myself attend the Friday test day.   John volunteered to be our crew chief and brought a van full of 944 spare parts for the race.

Because the car was not running when we bought it, the registration and smog had long been expired.  We were not able to drive it on the streets after we got it running because of its registration status so the Friday test day at Altamont raceway was the first chance we had to push the car hard.

The engine seemed fine, the suspension was what we expected from a 22-23 year old car with its tired stock suspension, very soft and exhibits lots of body roll.  Our pennies were so pinched, we did not have enough left to even buy fresh stock replacement shocks.

We can deal with the body roll because this was still a Porsche 944 with its excellent 50/50 weight distribution.  However, the lack of grip from our crappy street tires was a problem.

Even though the tire budget was not limited by the $500 for the car, we spent zero dollars on tires.  Our team members just donated their assortment of street tires which in turn were mounted on a hodgepodge of 15" phonedials, cookie cutters and 16" BBS wheels.  We should have spent some money on tires.

There was a lot of vibration downshifting from 3rd to 2nd.   We thought the clutch was going out.  There was nothing we could do about it before the race Saturday and the solution was to keep the car in 3rd gear and just let the engine bog to save the clutch.