1 SIK VW

2004 Speed Yellow Porsche 996 GT3

2009-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I no longer own the car, but I'm happy to say that it went to a very enthusiastic driver near DFW (where I lived when selling it) who will use it as designed!

This site actually gets a fair amount of traffic and I continue to receive lots of positive feedback, so for now I'll leave the pages in place for references and to describe some of my experiences with the car.

Tires: 18" Michelin Pilot Sport Cup (235, 295)
Wheels: CCW C10 anodized 9" (19 lbs) and 11" (22 lbs)
Exhaust: Mufflers removed
Steering wheel: Momo quick release Mod.07
Seats: RECARO Pro Racer SPG HANS
Brakes: PCCB converted to steel rotors with Performance Friction pads
Belts: Teamtech five-point harnesses
Rollbar: Porsche Tequipment bolt-in
Rear wing: GT3 Cup wing and deck lid (explanation)
Decals: Cut vinyl (explanation)
Data acquisition: Traqmate Complete (GPS & accelerometers) (explanation)
Tach, shift lights, and ECU display: AIM MXL Strada
Audio: Earmark Car Audio, Addison, TX (details)

I run a video camera (explanation) and data acquisition unit (explanation) when I drive on the track. The video and data can be merged together (here's how) to create the videos seen here.

Lots of photos here or by clicking below...

Audio System

2008-01-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

"You put a stereo system into a GT3?!!??!" I've seen the eyes roll. I know it's a sin to add weight to a car which was engineered to be light. I don't care. I drive this car on the street and the puny stock radio just wasn't doing it for me. Besides, the weight of the system is roughly what I ought to lose from my gut. In reality, even with the extra weight, the car is plenty fast for DEs and track days.

So I went to see Joe Parker at Earmark Car Audio in Addison, TX. I had looked around online for some local recommendations and his shop consistently had positive comments from Porsche owners. I asked him to propose a setup and promise me I wouldn't be disappointed. Long story short, I'm not. At all :)

Here's what we wound up with:

Head unit: Alpine CDA9885 with iPod interface/controller

Tunes: iPod Classic 80GB (currently half full i.e. >8000 songs)

Mid amps: Alpine PDX4.150 (150x4 Watt digital)

Subwoofer amp: Alpine PDX1.600 (600 Watt digital)

Speakers: Boston Acoustics PRO60, NEO-M

Subwoofer: JL Audio 8W3V38

The system is absolutely out of this world...in terms of both sound and price. One other remarkable thing about the whole setup is the installation. Earmark's Josh built some beautiful custom fiberglass enclosures for the doors and covered them so they look like they came from the factory. The subwoofer cabinet is custom built to fit the car (right under the rear window) and couldn't be more subtle. The whole thing took a couple weeks to do, but the results are second to none.

The digital amps are great because they're tiny. They fit under the race seats, which is perfect.

Alpine is a leader in their iPod integrations, but I'm still not blown away by their solution. It's nice to be able to stick the iPod in the glovebox and then totally forget that it's there. Controlling via the Alpine head unit is very doable (browse by playlist, artist, etc) and they even have solutions for dealing with large music libraries (you can jump 20% forward or backward in any list). The problem is that with 8000 songs, 20% granularity still leaves hundreds of title to scroll through and it takes a while. My other complaint is that you can't rate tracks like you can on the normal iPod interface. This may sound silly, but since you can't delete tracks from the iPod interface, I use a rating of "1 star" to mean that the track is crappy and it should be deleted next time I hook it up to my computer (i.e. I can use iTunes to group all the "1 star" tracks and then wipe them away). If I can't rate the track, then I can't remember which ones should be removed.

While he was installing the system, Josh also hid my Traqmate inside the console (i.e. under the head unit in front of the shifter) and put the Traqmate's GPS receiver inside the dash. I couldn't have asked for a more elegant solution.

Track maps

2007-12-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

These designs are free to use if you want to make stickers or statics for your car or whatever. You can have any or all of them cut by Sharon (or anyone else for that matter) in any color and size for just a few bucks. The catch is that I've only done my local tracks...sorry :) Or the folks at trackgraphic.com have done the same thing and sell pre-cut stickers, too.

Track maps available:

Eagles Canyon Raceway
Texas World Speedway
MotorSport Ranch - Cresson 1.7
MotorSport Ranch - Cresson 3.1
MotorSport Ranch - Cresson 1.3
Hallet Motor Racing Circuit
Texas Motor Speedway
MotorSport Ranch - Houston

Click the image to see a larger version on your monitor then download the actual .svg file. If you want to edit the designs (break them apart, change the text, etc), use Inkscape.

Video editing, formats, and conversion

2007-12-03T16:34:00.000-08:00

From my video camera, I transfer the .avi files (which use the strange M4S2 codec) to my PC. They need to be transcoded to something before anyone else can watch them (since nobody would have M4S2). I use QuickTime (for Windows) for this purpose. It cost me around $30. I suppose Windows Movie Maker would do the trick for free if I could get it to understand the raw .avi files from the camera. Ironic that it doesn't considering that M4S2 is a Microsoft concoction.

Here are some example conversions of a few seconds of track footage. I suspect some won't play on your PC depending what codecs and players you have installed. This clip was about 5MB from the camera.

QCIF MPEG-4 .mp4 file @ 384kbps = 0.35 MB
Cinepack .avi file @ medium quality = 7.4 MB
MPEG-4 .mov file @ medium quality = 1.7 MB
H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) .mov file @ medium quality = 1.5 MB
H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) .mov file @ best quality = 10.4 MB

Which formats do you think are "worth it"? Also, anything uploaded to a web sharing site will be seriously downgraded in terms of quality. Some sites are better than others. YouTube is among the worst.

Why the Volkswagen reference?

2007-12-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

The Volkswagen Beetle was designed by Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of Porsche AG. The first Porsches (the 64 and 356) and many other Porsche models borrowed heavily from elements found in the original VW Beetle. Among these are the air-cooled engine, its location in the rear of the car, and the "bug-look" headlights.

Over the years, the underpowered Beetle has evolved into several generations of beautiful, high performance marvels from Porsche. The two companies have collaborated heavily over the years and today Porsche AG holds just over 35% ownership of Volkswagen AG; VW is a subsidiary of Porsche Automobil Holding SE.

Plus I've had a bunch of Beetles and this is the latest addition to the fleet.

Cut vinyl lettering

2007-12-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

I was initially reluctant to put "stickers" on my car, but it turns out that cut vinyl works really well and doesn't damage the factory paint at all. I get all my vinyl from Sharon Johnson of Lone Star Lettering in Lewisville, TX. I do the design work myself (or select a font if it's just simple lettering), send her a vector file to "print" on her cutter, and she does the rest. A pair of 12-inch "23"s for my car costs less than $10 and she'll do them in pretty much any (single) color, size, font, etc. She did the big Porsche logo on the wing down to the little tiny track maps and helmet lettering. If you're in the area or you want to do an order by mail, call her at 972.355.0951 or email cougars1@aol.com.

If you want to pay 2-4 times more, go to Kinkos or Fast Signs.

I learned that there are different manufacturers and types of cut vinyl. Some are easier to remove than others, but none I've tried was terrible. My favorite is apparently made by Oracle. Any time you're removing anything from a surface you care about, always peel back at a 180 degree angle (instead of pulling it "up" away from the paint). The different brands all seem to go on about the same

Tip - bubbles
There's a trick to eliminating bubbles when you apply the vinyl. It's not really a big deal with small decals, but if you put something like 12" numbers straight on your car, you will get bubbles. The way to avoid them is to apply the vinyl wet. Dedicate a spray bottle to a magic mixture: half water, half rubbing alcohol, and a drop or two of dish soap (depending on the size of your spray bottle). If you have extra money, you can buy application fluid (that does exactly the same thing) commercially for $10-$20 per bottle.

Spray the surface moderately (it doesn't need to be soaked), apply the decal, then squeegee the vinyl to get the water out from underneath. Then wait a couple minutes before removing the backing.

This method works really well - especially with a rigid plastic squeegee from the Lowe's wallpaper department (I cut my squeegee in half to make it a better size for the width of the numbers). The best part is that you can nudge the vinyl around or even peel it off within the first few seconds and reposition it. If you put them on dry, there are no second chances other than scrapping the vinyl and putting on a new one.

Tip - vinyl removal
When you remove the vinyl, you'll almost always get some residue left over. You can get rid of it with Goo Gone or things like that, but something you already have around that works just as well is WD-40. Yeah, really...and it doesn't damage the paint.

No brainer - temperature
Don't try to apply vinyl at the track when it's windy and 34 degrees in the morning. Do it in your garage the day before. You won't get a ticket just for driving with numbers on your car.

Do you know other tips and tricks?

Mounting the video camera

2007-12-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

I use a suction cup device to mount the camera inside of the windshield. I love it! It's called "The Gripper" and is available from http://vacuummounts.com for $85. These are the same suction cups that are used with industrial robots to move huge panes of glass. As mentioned here, I actually use a point-and-shoot pocket camera as my video camera and this mount is total overkill for my little camera. I don't know how it would hold up with a bigger camera, but the mount is really beefy.

I mount my Gripper on the windshield just to the right of the rear-view mirror, so it doesn't obstruct my view at all. In that position, the camera is less susceptible to wind noise and is easy to turn on/off.

One of the things I like about this unit is that I can tell when the suction is getting weak (there's a vacuum plunger that eventually rises up and a red line appears). In my experience, it has appeared after about a week. Generally, I guess there's no reason to keep it attached and the unit probably lasts longer if you remove it. The point is that it works fine for a weekend at the track. Plus, the unit is tough; I'm sure my rear view mirror would break off with far less force than this thing.

Also, this unit comes with a very adjustable camera mount, so it's easy to position it correctly.

The first camera mount I had was from i/o port racing and it attached directly to the roll bar. It's arguably the most popular camera mount. The problem I had wasn't with the mount at all, but rather with the position. If it were attached near the A-pillar on a roll cage, then it would be great, but mine was on the roll bar behind my head. There are all sorts of problems having the camera behind you. You're usually recording the interior (which can actually be a good thing for studying steering inputs) or zoomed in, but it's hard to aim the camera, start it, or even tell if it's recording from the driver's seat. As a result, you may record 5-10 extra minutes of nothing prior to your session, which just makes for larger files and shorter battery life.

One problem with the suction mounts is that there's no good way to add a secondary securing strap to the camera (or at least you'd have to be creative about it). This would definitely be an issue with larger cameras and also with regulated races.

What have you found to work well?

In-car videos with overlayed data

2007-12-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

This is done using PC software called Trackvision. It doesn't produce results in real time. Instead, you have to take files from your video camera (here's mine) and data logger (here's mine), do a little massaging, and then feed them to Trackvision. The software then produces a video clip in your favorite format. I usually use MPEG-4, but you can see a comparison of various formats here.

Most interesting thing to do with a video? Share it. There are lots of sites to do this (YouTube being the obvious one) and they accept videos uploaded in many different formats. Unfortunately, the loss of resolution is dramatic.

For example, here's a clip embedded from YouTube (very lossy compression and low frame rate):

Same clip embedded from blip.tv (about the same):

Same clip embedded from Vimeo (best quality and frame rate of any video sharing site I know of currently):

Vimeo also supports HD videos if you have those.

Even with videos that are less than HD, it takes forever to upload the original files in their native resolution because they're dozens or hundreds of megabytes in size. This also means they're generally too large to email as attachments. One workaround for this: if you post to blip.tv or vimeo.com, they offer the original file for easy download in addition to the Flash version embedded in the web page. At this time, Vimeo requires you to create an account (trivial) in order to download the originals. Here are the direct download links for comparison: on blip.tv and on Vimeo.

I've learned that it takes some time to create these merged data/videos and the result doesn't return a lot of value other than the "wow factor" when showing it to friends. To make large improvements to your driving, get a coach. To make optimizations, get a data logger and analysis package. It's nice to have a camera onboard (you can catch incriminating things like this), and the videos are fun to watch, but combining the data and video together doesn't help that much.

Data acquisition

2007-12-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

I use a data logger from Track Systems called Traqmate. It's not the most popular and it's not the most deluxe, but as a first-timer, it suits my needs. The system is composed of the sensor unit which has the accelerometers and brains in it, an external GPS antenna, and a display unit (which doubles as the data storage device). It also includes PC software for analyzing the sessions, so you can see all the braking, speeds, segment times, etc. The whole system is about $1000.

In my car, the sensor unit (the size of a small paperback) is stashed inside the center console below the radio head unit. There's a somewhat friendly access panel to that area on the passenger side. The GPS antenna is hidden underneath the dash board at the bottom center of the windshield.

The only thing visible in the setup is the display unit, which is attached with Velcro just forward of the shifter. The unit can be quickly unplugged and then connected to a PC using a USB cable. The PC software then recognizes the unit and transfers the data files from the display unit to the PC. Depending on the sampling rates used, this can take up to a couple minutes per session.

The system's ultra easy to use. Turn it on, start recording, and press a button at the start/finish line is. When you record the session, you (obviously) only get a recording of where the car was on the track and the applied forces over time. What you don't get is a map of the actual track. It's not a big deal, but if you really want to see where you're driving relative to the pavement, here's what you can do.

Next time there are low-speed parade laps, go out with the data logger turned on. Do a lap driving at the absolute left edge of the pavement all the way around. Trace that edge a bit beyond where you started just to be sure you got it all. Then move to the other side of the track and do the same thing for just over one complete lap. Don't relocate your GPS sensor or hang it out the window to try to catch the actual pavement edge (since you won't do that during your sessions). With this method, you're creating an approximate map of the track on which you'll later overlay your session data. But that session data assumes that the car has no width and this track map you're creating will actually be one car width narrower than the physical pavement. When you overlay the data, you see the relative position of your car on the track.

The low-speed session that maps the track can be imported into the Traqmate PC software (called Traqview) and chopped/trimmed to create the track map. Another technique would be to trace the track from a satellite view and then massage the data into some acceptable format. Note that your position dot wouldn't ever get to the very edges of the pavement and you have to hope that the satellite coordinates are exactly the same as your data logger's.

The Traqview PC software (even the new version) is pretty imperfect (they all are). But it does work and there's a lot to be learned from the data.

What is the wing?

2007-12-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

It's the standard carbon fiber wing (and deck lid) from a Porsche 996 Cup race car. I wanted something a little less girly looking than the stock GT3 wing and I love the Cup car uprights (with the "GT3" logo cut out in the middle). We actually bought the wing from a race team who had taken the wing and deck lid off their Cup car when it was new (in order to put on an even bigger wing for Grand Am racing). I love the look, but I have some buyer's remorse over the price. I did some profit-taking on our stock (which was soaring at the time), so I claim Nokia as my "wing sponsor".

Note that the stock GT3 uprights are molded into the deck lid, so in order to replace those, the deck lid needs to go, too. After it was painted, I had the "GT3" logo done from cut vinyl (details) on the new deck lid.

Some practical issues came up that affect everyday use on the street. First of all, the rear-view mirror is almost totally useless now. One solution to that would be to position the wing flat every time I leave the track, but somehow I never actually do that. Second, the latch hardware is obsoleted by pins, which is just a touch less convenient for everyday use, but oh well. Third, the fan and ducting doesn't fit with the new lid, so that had to go (as well as the rear air filter cover. It's not a big deal, but it means putting the lid up after every session and using a little extra care when washing the car.

What kind of video camera do you use?

2007-12-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

I record videos in the car using a Casio EXS770 Exilim digital camera. Yeah...really :)

It's a simple, mid-range, pocketable, point-and-shoot 7MP camera with digital image stabilization (very important as described below) that can be had for less than $200. The video recordings I get are VGA (640x480) at 30 frames per second. I use a suction mount in my car.

The standard battery and an 8GB card (available under $50) is plenty to record all the day's sessions. For track videos, the Casio EXS770 Exilim records pretty consistently at 29MB of data per minute. For reference, that's 580MB in 20 minutes or 726MB in 25 minutes.

The recordings are stored on the SD card as .avi files and they're encoded with Microsoft ISO MPEG-4 video V1.1 (aka M4S2) codec (although I often convert them to other formats). It's not standard MPEG-4, so it's necessary to download a codec to your PC to play the raw footage. I use ffdshow and libavcodec...you can grab that from http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm and I use Winamp to play the clips simply because I like the 5-second forward/backward skip hotkeys (left or right arrows). I'm not sure about Macs. Try this link.

The link from the camera to the PC is USB, so it'll take a few minutes per video to copy over. However, if you jump off the track and quickly want to show someone a video on your computer, just hook up the camera and open the video clip directly from the SD card (i.e. without copying it to your PC's hard drive). The USB connection is fast enough to play it back almost normally. One note is that there is no USB connector on the camera body. The USB cable plugs into a small dock (included) and the camera plugs into that. It's sorta stupid, but at least you don't have to plug in the power cable to the dock to transfer the files (of course you do if you want the camera to charge).

Back to the camera choice...it was deliberate. I originally bought a Sony Hi-Def video camera with a hard drive. What happens to a hard drive when you shake it? It shuts off. Bad solution for an in-car camera. I returned that for a Canon HV20 Hi-Def video camera which uses miniDV tapes. I paid a fortune for those cameras and was expecting top-of-the-line results. Tapes are sub-optimal because you don't have a great way to transfer the files to your PC (fine if you just use the camera as a player), but the real kicker was vibration (independent of the camera mount setup).

Every digital camera you can buy these days comes with some kind of image stabilization and all the reviews tell you to go for optical (vs digital) stabilization. My experience has taught me otherwise. Optical stabilization (aka "steady shot") detects the movement of the camera and counteracts that by physically moving the sensor or optics inside the camera (a little bit). This works great for most real-world applications, but when the camera's mounted to your car, you're dealing with large, high frequency vibrations that are significantly different from the (relatively) gentle swaying of your hands when you're recording Jimmy's recital.

So digital stabilization use a technique where there are some extra recording pixels on the sensor around the normal area where the image hits. Using digital signal processing, when the camera notices that from one frame to the next, part of Jimmy's violin moved off one side of the normal sensing area a little bit, it will (try to) capture that frame by recording those "extra" pixels off to the side (where the whole violin is still visible). When it puts all the frames together, it appears as though dad wasn't junked up on caffeine.

The key thing here is that when you physically move something, it has inertia and it takes real time to be repositioned. Then, before it gets into position, it needs to be somewhere else. The digital technique also requires real milliseconds to process, but it's negligible when recording at 30 frames per second.

At least this was my experience. Feel free to share yours.

..Kev