New old Porshe

[Sandbagger]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sho...readid=3371860

[ArisESQ]

That's pretty damn cool

But I gotta say, those are some pretty ugly welds. I thought the Porsche factory would have been able to do nicer than that.

[NOPANTS68]

917s are one of my all time favorite cars- the 917-30 being the ultimate. I finally got to see these things in action a couple years back. They are still capable of crazy speeds. You gotta remember this is late 60s-early 70s speed tech and they were unbeatable during that era.

[jeff jordan]

When the 917 first came out the frame flexed so bad it was very common to crack multiple welds. They pressurized the frame and put a pressure guage on the dash, when the guage went to zero the drivers were to proceed at a very slow speed back to the pits and park it. Several very talented drivers of the day took one drive in the original cars and said they would never drive it again!

[Josh69]

I've got a buddy building a 917 from scratch, I forwarded the original gallery to him for references, thanks!!

He's actually using a 914 chassis as a base, and is adapting a W12 in there for grins. He's got most of the body done, including all the plexi and headlight structures, etc.

Josh

[NOPANTS68]

Originally Posted by ratman67

diidn't steve mcqueen race one in the 24 hours? i know what yopu mean about the welds...look pretty rough...wonder if they were stick welded

yup that was a long tail 917 if I remember correctly. The tail helped with big end stability and traction. I saw one of the two left 917-30s last year at Laguna Seca as well as the famous #23 red and white car. Simply amazing to see them in person. That flat 12 is something, but the -30 has the huge turbo on top of it. We're taling over 1000 hp and a little over 2400 lbs. wet. Nuts! It's rumored to be the car that ruined CAN-AM racing.