Pro-Touring defined?

[JoshStratton]

you see? THIS is the kind of article we need to see in PHR. Actual comparative tests. Side by side. I'd love to see guys from here put their cars up against new cars.
Sport compact or one of those mags has an Ultimate streetcar shootout. tested the hell outta the cars, and the best one, (an S2000) could barley keep up with a corvette by the numbers.

I will 2nd this! Steve, get on it bud! You can buy those rounds of beer right before they begin racing



I started one of the last threads on this topic, and after reading and re-reading the responses, I realized something. I think only the guys who invented the term should be able to define it. After all, it is their term....not that I would really care though. I will admit that I was originally attracted to the PT scene by the looks of what I was seeing (TT2s, large brakes, racing interior, etc...) but as I continued reading and learning, I realized how important those played a role in a safe and enjoyable driving experience.

I can GUARANTEE that no matter how much this topic is debated, it will eventually become more than one build type. It will branch off to something that is performance based, and into something that is more of a 'poser', as some of you have dubbed (no pun intended) it. There may be more catagories, but the mere fact that we cannot agree on a single term illustrates this.

The sad part, is that if history tells us anything, is that when this does happen, those of us with performance/poser cars will end up in rivalry with those who are against the other type. Those we now consider friends, could be in the other group that knows 'nothing' or is wasting their money on a 3000lb flashy looking paper weight (i will probably be in this group).

I really hope that these things don't alienate potential PT guys. Afterall, the more the marrier...it helps bring down the cost of parts.

[Steve1968LS2]

I will 2nd this! Steve, get on it bud! You can buy those rounds of beer right before they begin racing

Well, we do try and test cars whenever we can. This can really only be done on cars that are done locally (that we shoot at California Speedway) since we have to set up timing equipment and such. On "location" shoots doing testing is very hard because we do not have the equipment and it is often hard to find a place to do it that doesn't cost a small fortune. We have test data on a 2000 Z28 Camaro and it is interesting to see how a certain car stacks up against it. We also now have test data on a new '05 Mustang so that when I start my Stang project I will have some sort of benchmark for what I want to be better than.

Oh, and a lot of guys don't want to beat on thier cars. Remember guys that we are in the minority as far as the rest of the car hobby. Most guys just wanna polish and cruise. Just something to keep in mind.

[Damn True]

Well, we do try and test cars whenever we can. This can really only be done on cars that are done locally (that we shoot at California Speedway) since we have to set up timing equipment and such. On "location" shoots doing testing is very hard because we do not have the equipment and it is often hard to find a place to do it that doesn't cost a small fortune. We have test data on a 2000 Z28 Camaro and it is interesting to see how a certain car stacks up against it. We also now have test data on a new '05 Mustang so that when I start my Stang project I will have some sort of benchmark for what I want to be better than.

Oh, and a lot of guys don't want to beat on thier cars. Remember guys that we are in the minority as far as the rest of the car hobby. Most guys just wanna polish and cruise. Just something to keep in mind.

Here's an idea:

When you set up a date for a bunch of photo shoots in say Texas, or PA.........Have the owners meet you at an SCCA SOLOII auto-x. Granted, an ideal setup for auto-x is a very unique thing that most folks don't run. However, auto-x is a very benign driving environment and people can push their cars as much or as little as they like. There will more often than not be some car at an event that will make for an interesting comparison against your feature car.

Besides, I'd rather see a photo of Bill's GTO at full lock sliding around between two rows of cones than another formulaic "posed" beauty shot. And, as you guys pointed out in your photo contest issue, vast expanses of good pavement make for nice photo backdrops. A stadium parking lot certainly qualifies.

Pretty easy to find these events. Go to http://www.scca.org/Solo/Solo.asp?Id...8570&x=050|010&~= and navigate yourself to the appropriate region to find their event schedule, then plan around that.

....another bonus...I think this would be a great way to encourage more people to get their cars out and drive them and it really is a very easy and relatively risk free way to enjoy your car's performance.

Heck, I think an article dedicated to SOLOII itself would be a nice feature in the mag.

[TonyL]

sure, but you missed the "if they weighed the same" part. what if the wheels (hypotheticly) 17" - 20" weighed the same tires and all? (not practical I know, but for the sake of the discussion)

[sinned]

Tony, I didn't miss that part. It doesn't matter. Even if the 20's were slightly less in total mass than the 17's, they still swing a larger arc and therefore it takes more energy to slow down/change direction.


Take a 2lbs weight and hang it from a 5" peice of string. How much energy does it take to get it moving/get it to stop? Now increase that strings length to 8", did you notice the difference? Same principle.

[ProStreet R/T]

sure, but you missed the "if they weighed the same" part. what if the wheels (hypotheticly) 17" - 20" weighed the same tires and all? (not practical I know, but for the sake of the discussion)

Yes there would be a performance advantage to the 17's even if they weight the same and have the same dia tire. Moving the majority of the weight outwards increases the moment of inerita by the square of the radius. Figure the hoop weights at least 12lbs on an average wheel, move that out 1.5", then multiply that # by 4 and the inerita changes quite a bit.

Even using similar tires I would be surprised if you didn't see at least 1 sec reduction in lap times on an average 90sec road course going from 18's to 20's. And it could easily be a lot more than that depending on the car and track. Obviously crazy powerful cars won't notice the weight as much but it does make a difference.

You don't realise how much of an effect wheel weight has till you really start playing with it, cyclist know this better than just about anyone.

[Damn True]

You don't realise how much of an effect wheel weight has till you really start playing with it, cyclist know this better than just about anyone.

As a former, not current, but hopefully future, national level DH mountain bike racer and road cyclist (I don't race road though) I can attest that wheel weight is a HUGE factor....but not as big a factor as RIDER weight. A current detriment to my personal performance.

[ProStreet R/T]

As a former, not current, but hopefully future, national level DH mountain bike racer and road cyclist (I don't race road though) I can attest that wheel weight is a HUGE factor....but not as big a factor as RIDER weight. A current detriment to my personal performance.

OT thread jack- You race DH ehh? Back when we actually had races in SoCal and so forth I raced Semi-Pro for a couple years, did the norba circuit and all that fun stuff. Rider weight is subjective, i'm 6'3" 205ish but pretty lean and it works well for DH and bike handling. Definitely not a climber but thats what ski lifts are for.

I really should start riding again, kinda pointless have a couple $6k bikes in the garage collecting dust. /threadjack

[gchandler]

We are not building racecars. We are not building streetcars. We are creating something else entirely.

I am chasing a dream I had at 15 years old of rolling around in a car with a certain visual esthetic and visceral feel that makes me think of a time when American cars were the envy of the world. I don’t care if it is true or not.

My car is not realistic.

It gets poor gas mileage, the tires are expensive and only last 15k miles, it hates my wallet, it occupies my day dreams, the gas fill behind the license plate won’t hold all the modern gas nozzles in place so I have to sit there and hold it during the painful $50+ fill up. I am sure I am losing my hearing and the speeding tickets do not exactly encourage AAA to charge me lower insurance premiums.

My car is freedom.

I lost a good friend a while back. Getting in my car and driving over Angeles Crest Hwy to Palmdale and back was one of the most cathartic things that I have ever done. Before I stepped into the car everything was out of control, but once I got behind the wheel of the car that I built to handle and respond to my driving style over the last decade, that control came back to me.

There are a lot of things in life that are horrible, ugly and beyond my control, but my car is not one of those things. It is a thing that can be mastered and changed to suit my needs and temperament.

To me the reason that boards like pro-touring exist is so that we can have leverage the experiences of others when attempting to refine out own little piece of the world (our cars).

Pro-Touring is not a style of car.

Pro-Touring is a community of people.

People are not homogeneous, so it makes no sense to think that the extension of out imaginations should be. I am someone who believes that with the right mind and focus a goal can be accomplished.

It is of little help to berate or belittle someone because they do not poses the same amount of knowledge as you. Not everyone has an engineering background, or racing experience, or knows how to operate a buffing wheel, or can afford to drop mad bills on their car, but combined we have all of these things.

Lets redefine Pro-Touring as the exchange of the skills you have for the skills you need.

… and just as a disclaimer, I personally refer to my car as a Hot Rod, because that is what my grandfather calls it and I like the bond that it creates when I use his words.

[Steve1968LS2]

sure, but you missed the "if they weighed the same" part. what if the wheels (hypotheticly) 17" - 20" weighed the same tires and all? (not practical I know, but for the sake of the discussion)

The 20 would still be at a disadvantage due to the weight being further away from the center of the wheel..

[Damn True]

Do you s'pose we could all come to agreement in calling a high perfomance 2+2 Coupe a GT?

"Gran Turismo", as defined by the italians who invented the term is exactly that.....sounds like a Camaro to me no?

[TonyL]

Pro-Touring is not a style of car.

Pro-Touring is a community of people.

I like that.

[Damn True]

Very cool.

[vanzuuk1]

bear in mind that if most of us went to the track a guy with serious seat time under his belt could probably jump in a dodge neon and spank our asses.

[vanzuuk1]

And you downhill guys, I never got any good at it but I did some downhilling on the east coast, mount snow and plattekill. Its fun but my buddies were pro level and i always felt like the little ufo in close encounters, struggling to keep up.

My santa cruz mostly sits dormant in the garage and navyflier is buying my azonic.

See photo of me going over the bars for a change.

sorry, thread jack over.

[parsonsj]

Geoff,

I liked your post. Pro touring is a community. I'd never thought of it that way, but I think you're right. Maybe that's why emotions often run high on the subject as people think they are being shut out due to an equipment choice or such.

That being said, I think there is nothing wrong with definition discussions. It helps us all discover what it is (and isn't lol) that we share in common. All good.

Just back to tech for a moment: it seems to me that some didn't realize the effect of large wheels. They really do have performance implications. My take is that is the choice of the car builder, but at least understand the compromises you're making.

We covered this in the other thread (briefly), but larger rotors have the same effect. Obviously they are subject to the same r squared laws of physics. With larger rotors, one gets more brake (in theory), but you pay for that with corresponding losses in forward and lateral acceleration.

jp

[BonzoHansen]

… and just as a disclaimer, I personally refer to my car as a Hot Rod, because that is what my grandfather calls it and I like the bond that it creates when I use his words.

That is great. My 5 year old calls my 77 ‘Daddy’s Racecar’, even though there is nothing race about it. At all. Zilch. Nada. But it makes him smile, so it is now known “the racecar”.

On the topic of larger tires, at one point some years back didn’t they reduce the size of the front tires on the Vette a bit and to gain performance, especially top speed?

[TonyL]

: it seems to me that some didn't realize the effect of large wheels.

Just to be clear, I fully understood this concept. I just wanted to turn this into a tech discussion and it appears to have worked.

all anyone really needs is to play with a gyroscope. the bigger the turning wheel (like a bike wheel) The more difficult it is to make it change direction.

[Steve1968LS2]

Oh, and even though I hate definitions the act of defining pro-touring should not drive people away from the site. People should come here and take what knowledge from the site that they feel they need to make thier car the way they want. That might end up being a no-compromises pt car or a street machine that handles and brakes way better than it did from the factory.

The real job of this site is to dissiminate knowledge and also build relationships between people that share a common love of cars. I see nothing wrong with somebody running 19's or 20's so long as they know that it is a compromise in performance. What we want to prevent is someone running 20's and not being educated about what is involved. I feel our number one goal is to increase awareness of what it takes to perform well and let the individual person decided how far they want to take that knowledge.

Very few people care if they are 1 second slower on a lap since very few people can or even want to run thier car on a track..

[Jim Nilsen]

I remember the last time we all went through this. I had said that if you are here at P/T you are P/T and your car is P/T. If you can handle the discussions and feel that you fit in and you can handle what people say about your car and not leave then you are P/T. I like the idea of calling it a community and not a style. When I first came to P/T.com I didn't know where my car fit in. I didn't know where I fit in. Most everyone thought I was crazy and some thought I was stupid for cutting up a 67 Camaro and doing what I wanted to do to it. There were no aftermarket parts available and noone knew other than a few rodders and racers on how to do what I planned on doing. The streetrod people understood more about what I was doing than anyone else and they didn't put me down for it either. The racers just thought that I was putting a lot of money into a car that would never be competitive on the track with them.

The acceptance I got when I started here and I was here when it all began was the same acceptance everyone usually got here for a long time. with 3k + we now have some that want to be able to identify their car with themselves and because most still don't understand what it is we are doing they need a definition just like people need a religious denomination.We all believe in cars,but what kind of belief? Hence the need for definition. So to put it plainly it is better to be a community when ideals are attacked so you have saftey and belief in numbers of believers. This is what makes P/T real to those who have to identify with something to feel a part of the world they live in.

I will continue to build my car the way I visualize it and put things on and leave things off that just don't go with what I see my car as in the end. I have had a few look at it over the years and always say it is different. JeffS says it is very Unique. Since it was started before anything was defined or parts were available it is still one of a kind no matter how hard I would try to make it the same as other cars here.

The great thing about it all is that back in 93 if I would have finished it and sold it, I would have gotten 15k for the 20k I would have had in it. Now I will have 25k or so in it along with years of work and engineering and it will be worth 60k+. I never would have gotten others to believe it but I was always saying that one day all of the 60"s cars would be worth a lot because people would wake up to the fact that new cars cost so much and the people that buy them at 35k to 65k would soon pay more to have something classic and completely different from stock just to be able to have bragging rights over the other stock origninal cars that their friends have. After all if your P/T car can kick the but on your friends original Yenko in every way but being original these days you have a desirable car and the Mule is proof of it along with it's value.

Long live the P/T community and may we all be able to live with the vision of being open minded and helpful to all that feel like they want to be part of the spirit in which this site started with.

Jim Nilsen