Talk:Porsche 917

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Sports Car Racing, an attempt to improve and standardize articles related to various sports car racing series throughout the world. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

Contents 1 Comment 2 Racing car template 3 Would like more info on video game appearances 4 Mythic stories that need substantiating 5 Stability Solution

[edit] Comment

I deleted my previous comment because I misread the article and had mentally transposed 917 and 512M

[edit] Racing car template

I've had a stab at a template for racing cars (see template:Racing car) to summarise the usual data. I've used the F1 templates as a starting point and applied it to the Brabham BT46 article. If anyone's got an interest in this, please have a look at the template and modify or suggest changes as appropriate. After a few people have had a go at it and we have something we're happy with we could start to use it more widely. Note that it's not meant to be specific to F1, by the way. Cheers. 4u1e 10:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Would like more info on video game appearances

I posted the initial listing of Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, but would love to find other games where I can drive this car.

Rag-time4 18:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mythic stories that need substantiating

There are a couple of things I've heard about the 917's racing history that I think are worth repeating but I can't find references for them.

One I read years ago in Motorsport magazine about the 917 at Monza. Apparently the torque from the motor was so large that it could temporarily warp the frame and make driving the car ina straight line difficult. I might have parts of this confused with a story about Monza also being the place where the width of rear slicks hit their natural limit whereby rubber movement through the parabolica (in e.g. Formula 1 cars) resulted in the tires having a slightly conical shape by the end of the corner also causing crabbing down the main straight.

John Allen's 'Porsche 917 Superprofile' mentions that chassis flexing was originally thought to be the cause of the car's poor handling, but tests disproved this theory. Halmyre 07:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The other rumour (on the www.project917.com page) is that the aluminium (and prsumably magnesium) frames were prone to cracking and that to calm driver fears Porsche devised a method where the entire frame was pressurized. With a tire pressure gauge they would check for leaks, indicating the frame had cracked.

If either of these can be substantiated they're worth putting on the page.

It's true that the frame could be pressurized. The frame was prone cracking. Pressurizing the the frame and checking for leak with a tire pressure gauge was a test procedure. But Gérard Larrousse reported in Automobile Historique that the Martini racing 917s had a presure gauge on the dashboard to check for leaks during the race. I have to check for complete reference. Ericd 17:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Paul Frere's 'Porsche Racing Cars of the 70s' and John Allan's 'Superprofile' both mention the pressurised frame, but neither mentions a dash-mounted pressure gauge, and none of the cockpit shots show such a gauge. There is a famous Frank Gardner story relating to his and David Piper's shared drive at the 1969 Nurburgring 1000km. One of the Porsche engineers showed Frank a pressure gauge and told him that if it went to zero he was to drive back to the pits 'with care'. Frank's response was that if it happened he wasn't driving anywhere 'with care'; he was going to park the bastard, walk back to the pits and collect his wages. Halmyre 07:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I've read the article again. In fact it's in "Rétroviseur" and not in "Automobile Historique" in fact what Larrouse said is unclear. I'm not sure there was a gauge on the dash. Ericd 09:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

At http://www.1-18scalecars.com/0Porsche_917K_(1970_LeMans_winner).htm they state there was a pressure gauge on the dash board. Ericd 09:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stability Solution

The article claims that the stability problem was solved by John Horsmann, but The Making of a Winner by Larry Pihera, J.B. Lippincott Co. '72 claims that it was David Yorke. Yorke noticed that there weren't any splattered bugs on the car's tail and thus an indication of an absence of downforce (p 113). As the article doesn't provide a cite for the Horsmann claim, does anyone have evidence that is was Horsmann, not Yorke? Tac27 (talk) 21:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)