Boxers on track?

Just wondering if anyone with experience could describe a boxer's track demeanor--fun, understeer followed by trailing throttle oversteer, good torque out of slow corners relative speed,...? any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

Ive heard them reffered to as Trucks

The 512TR is just a modern Boxer & it has awesome torque coming out of corners but my 308 will outhandle the BB & the 512TR all day long.

The trick is to get some BBLM parts in there

 

Thanks William. I love the pictures of your cars. They are fantastic. Is it the springs sway bars brakes that you can borrow from the BBLM?

Trucks...hmm high center of gravity lots of roll, big weight so bad transient responses, bouncy springs so constantly changing loads and no chasis precision...sounds pretty grim

 

I disagree.

They have immense character, and their speed is significant. I have slightly tweeked the shox internally, track brake pads and put Pirelli P7R 275/55/15 on the rear and P600 235/60/15 on the front, and find it to be as fast as most stock 355's when I drive it on track.

But it retains it's "talkative" chassis and gives fantastic feedback. I find modern cars too twitchy on the limit to be enjoyable. You can drift the BB any way you like depending on how you approach the corner. All they need is to be in good serviced condition, some subtle tweeks as described and a dose of negative camber on front and a decent wheel alignment.

 

From my few forays onto the track with a completly stock boxer. After 15 laps the tires were like used chewing gum stuck to the sidewalk on a hot day.

From 70 to 140 the car ran neck to neck with a daytona. A 355 was faster to about 95 or so he had to shift and lost it untill i had to shift into 4th at about 105, from there the 355 was a little quicker to about 115 then the boxer began to just walk away from him, he had to sift again and was then completly lost, Maybee above 150 it might have been different.

I find you can really haul down the staights bang on the brakes putting weight on the nose to initiate a good turn in pivot pour power on through the turn and blast onto the next straight. If you get it all balanced right accelerating through a turn you can get the car to slightly crad sieways at the exit, great fun on the street too. But you have to know the bend exactly on the limit a liitle too much power and you go off. If your not too far overcooked and you back off a slide can be caught in the equivalent of three traffic lanes. If you go in y too fastu and you even think of feathering it you will spin so fast that you will be 180 degrees before you even know its started.

This is with a stock car. I would be very interested to hear about the subtle suspension modifications that make for a better track car, also alignment settings for the track and hard street driving. I am looking at soem 17 inch wheels with maybee 9 in width tires.

The last area where big gains can come quite easily is in engine power. Boxers are strangled by crappy 70's tech low noise exhausts, freeing up flow increases top end rush dramaticaly. Apparently with the right cams and fueling over 400 bhp is an easy checkbook away, untill the tranny output shaft goes bang.

 

great post ! it may take some time, but i plan to make a Boxer a part of my future (this year?). thanks for painting such a vivid picture for me, i could "feel" the car i swear! great post!

 

Thanks everyone for the great discriptions. I hoped it might be like that--lots of character/feedback in a direct mechanical way but not nastily twitchy if you're careful. Sounds like you had a blast on track.

 

The nice thing about a boxer is even just cruising there is a sense of things going on. At 80 it can feel fast, unlike say a vette or a lexus, but then you can strap on your agression and concentration and blow off almost any car on the street. Realistical unleess it is a straight stretch of road out in Nevada somewhere youre not going faster in any car than is possible in a boxer, and a boxer is fun at most speeds.

Its kinda like a fast motorcycle, there is always a sense of ocassion and speed, you can go really fast if you want and there is no margin for error, maybee that was the appeal of a930 turbo, but a boxer has charisma too.

Anyway interested to hear about some of those subtle mods that make the car more trackable.

 

Ive run against several BBLM's with my 512TRLM My friend Bob Coates has a 79 BBLM, 1 of the first BB race cars, it might be 1977. It was originally a 365BB but he upgraded to a 512BB. Of course my car is a lot newer & has F50 brakes so its not a really fair comparison but Bob is a great driver & keeps me on my toes.
Ive run against Pininfarina bodied long tail BBLMs also & they ran away from me at Pocono, must be a lot lighter than my car or have more hp. But the 512M twin turbo engine should take care of that

 

I read an article writtem by Nick Mason once, he has a bblm which he timed on a track against his f40. He said the f40 felt faster but the times showed the bblm was significantly quicker, although if memeory serves correctly it still made up time by blasting out of corners and hustling down the staights, just like a bbi

William looking forward to hearing about that twin turbo 512, by the way how have you solved tranny output shaft problems with so much power in your race car. I was at bill pollards shop in ct and he showed me a bunch of broken shafts as a grafic example of the probs of putting to sticky tires on a boxer, I believe some may have come from your car.

 

LOL Yes I added a few additions to Bill's "Shop of Horrors" as he calls it. I think the main input shaft that is twisted like a swizzle stick under a match is mine

I bought a 512M Box & Bob Wallace of AZ is rebuilding it with the good stuff inside. I'm going for the basic BW race box. The Indestructable BW race box is $35k and thats over the price for the stock box itself, so I'll upgrade up to that next winter

 

Thats interesting, ofcourse F40 brakes are crap so I'm not that surprised.
The real deal would be a BBLM vs an F40LM That would be very interesting. I think the F50GT1 would utterly destroy a BBLM although Art Z who owns the only real F50GT1 told me he thinks a BBLM would be a scarey ride to him. I guess the old BBLM is still a wild & wooly ride

That reminds me of the ride I got in Joe Rosen's BBLM around Pocono 10 years ago. That was awesome.

 

I guess from this thread we can see that a bb has a lot of tuning potential, something ferrari failed to capitalise on in the 70s and then abandoned when they went to the bigger comfier testarossa. All of which makes Williams 512 so interesting, it is an example of the direction things could have taken or an example of what the platform is capable of.

For my car i am thinking of wheels tires, shocks freer exaust but not to loud and maybe a modern injection with bb cams. This should make for a high performance streetable close to stock boxer with some track fun potential. But then the rational side of me says just go for a 355, but then a boxer is a completly different and more charismatic beast. What say ye,