Vespa Racing Projects @ Rennlist

Welcome to my web page !

Here is a resume about me and some projects I participate to, usually with a couple of friends.

Car racing :

• Porsche 961
• Porsche 3.2 Carrera
• Porsche 911 Speedster
• Porsche 911 Carrera 4
• SportDrive CN Prototype
• Some interesting links

Few words about me :

• High performance engine parts tuning

Porsche 961 : rescue and rebuilding
sep-2003 /  sep-2007 
Rebuild the car and race

Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera : maintenance & improvement
feb-2004 / feb-2005
Rebuild the gearbox, rebuild and tune the engine

Porsche 911 Speedster : maintenance & improvement
nov-2003 / mar-2005 
Rebuild, tune and setup engine

22 dec 03	disassembly engine
jan 04	analyse intake before to tune it
21 fev 04	rebuild engine
06 mar 04	assembly everything

Owner's web site : http://speedstermotorsport.free.fr

Porsche 911 Carrera 4 : '74 RSR conversion
fev-2004 / sep-2005 
Build a fast track car with a '74 RSR body

22 fev 04	check the engine
02 mar 04	rescue of the car !
17 apr 04	assembly and analysis
16 jan 05	light it fast : remove everything
20 jan 05	electrical maintenance and analysis
26 jan 05	reception of the Schrick parts
29 jan 05	open the engine
30 jan 05	check crank and rods
24 fev 05	shipment to California

This is my 911. 
My goal is to rebuild it as a very fast track 911 with a 1974 RSR look & feel.

SportDrive CN Prototype 2005
jun-2004 / feb-2005

< articles under construction >

Owner's web site : http://www.sportdrive.fr

Some interesting links :

Pure car passion :
Vespa Racing, a performance tuning association in France, where my heart is still with my friends.
Alexei's personal homepage, also in French. He is one of my best friends, also an excellent engineer. Many info on Minis and Alfa Romeo.

Forums & associations :
Rennlist, is there a Porsche enthusiast who doesn't know it ?
Forum Autoroule is managed by a great French association. President of Autoroule is another great friend, owner of the white Carrera above.
Laseric: Passion Porsche is another nice francophone forum about Porsche cars. Great specialists inside !
Club Porsche of America, the club I became a member when I arrived in California.

Companies :
Nexyad is an applied computer research and consultancy company, providing top end solutions for the automotive industry and others.
Adobe Systems is the best company I've ever worked for. I'm working as a Senior Computer Scientist in the Acrobat Manufacturing team.
Porsche Motorsport where to find racing parts for the Porsche 911, even if I use to tune parts myself...

Culture & good time :
Les restaurants de Paris, Paris is probably the most beautiful city, it is also a great place for gourmets !
Musées de France, the Museums of France web site in English.
Musée du Louvre, probably the greatest museum.

My passion, engine tuning :

As a computer scientist with an advanced mechanics diploma, I try to use my high-tech knowledge to tune or build parts in a classic way.
Even if the computer helps us to find the good way, experience and feelings remain important qualities in engine performance tuning. I often see engines using the latest technologies, with oversized everything, resulting in a poor tork and not really amazing top end power. On the opposite, conservative engines which have been lovely assembled and blue printed by an experimented tuner can give absolutely detonating results. I could learn these unfair rules in 1997 during a stage at a famous French tuner. My mentor learned me about surface qualities and their influence on rigidity, oil vaporization and resistance. So, spending 10 hours on a rockers to make it able to work at 10.000 rpm is something I like to do. This is a challenge that a huge number of tuners, who don't accept the idea to spent so much time and prefer to polish an inlet port to make it nicer for their customers, will state at a perfect loss of time.

I think that to spend 3 hours to enlarge and polish an inlet port is definitively useless whereas to spend the same time to smooth a pair of lifters or rods have incommensurable effects for the engine performance and life duration.

Except a set of rods I had the audacity to cut and weld to make them taller years ago, I've never seen any of my parts fail.

Left to right : 

1. Racing lifter made from an OEM
2. Lighted and polished forged piston
3. Highly tuned exhaust port
4. Steel valve for a club track engine

This is how I proceed :

First, the parts is 'humanly' studied : where can it break ? How can it vibrate ? How does it flow ? What are the consequences of which kind of oscillation on it, in which direction ? Where are the turbulences ? If I can localize an oscillation, how can I drive it to disperse it at the part's surface, using it to vaporize oil ? etc... 
All these questions have to be answered, even imprecisely, to be sure the tuner understand the part's goal. Then the part is modelled on a computer (I personally use Solidworks for modelling & analysis, then Acrobat to communicate and review it) and analysis can validate (or not) the theories which have been developed during the 'human' analysis.

Once the part is perfectly understood - this can take some weeks - the long classic work of lighting, dispersing & polishing can start...

Valves, rods, cranks, lifters but also transmission parts are the kind of parts I transform to get top end performance parts.

If you have specific parts you want to tune, I'm the people you have to contact !

<under construction> 

Rennlist member : 'IrocMan'