Almost wrecked my 4S.

I was approaching a 90 degree right hand turn with no stop. Usually I do slow in, 2nd gear and then hard on the gas. This time I tried fast in, 1st gear and the tail flew out and I was facing the guard rail! Major pucker factor. My kean recovery skills kept me from crashing, but I learned the important 911 rear engine lesson. Boy it was a close one. I need some track time/DE.

slow in fast out my friend. take it to the track and you wont have an urge to push it on the street.

You'll still have the urge but you might have a better sense of how. Edit - that's ****tier than I intended. Especially coming from me, having been upside down and all. Definitely go to the track! You'll learn a ton and have a real appreciation of your car. I learned that I have a ton to learn, so much that I am buying a track prepped Miata to learn in.

Sounds like revs were high in first, and maybe you were coasting in, as opposed to revs being lower when you'd normally plow into the corner in second? When you lift off the throttle in a corner, weight transfers forward, off of the rear wheels. If you're also in a low gear @ high RPMS and engine braking, you're transferring weight off the rear tires AND using some of those tires' grip for decelerating instead of cornering. As you now know, the result is snap oversteer...and when it happens when you aren't expecting it, it makes one's bottom twitch like a rabbit's nose. Glad you and the car made it through this learning experience. Do you not have PSM? This is one of those situations where PSM would generally try to keep you from dying.

Usuallly PSM steps in so fast, the pucker doesn't turn into an all out ****e yourself. PSM off?

"My kean recovery skills kept me from crashing, ", no PSM did. Slow in, fast out in a 911 and don't engine brake, that will take away from the limited grip we have in the rear!

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+1. And I don't think he means this as preachy. Neither do I. I drive like a grandma on the street because once you've driven a car well around a race track, there's no way a road can compete. It doesn't hurt that, back in the paddock, you're surrounded by some of the best friends you'll ever meet, either!

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+1 DE with a 911-knowledgeable instructor. There is no substitute :-). "Pushing it" is a relative term. You can be slow and push the car beyond its limits by doing the wrong things. You can be fast and your passenger thinks they're gonna die but you know you're at maybe 50% and in no danger of losing it. Last year my son and I went to a DE. I took the first two sessions with an instructor for a thorough review and practice, and then my son for the third session. I took the very first turn out of the paddock pretty easy. He was unusually quiet.... later he told me that on that very first turn he thought he was gonna die. It all depends.

I think the second day I owned my 996 I managed to get the tail to swing out unexpectedly. I immediately signed up for Porsche Driving School. Money very well spent!!!!

I must not be cornering as hard as I think My rear end hasn't swung out once

I forgot to mention, I switched the PSM off for some extra excitement. Boy, I got it.

Haha, yeah, don't ever turn PSM off on the street. I'm going to buck the trend here and state you DON'T want to DE to learn car control instincts, you want to autocross. DE forces you to sneak up on the limits and always stay in control; autocross has you driving on the limit of traction all the time and is a fantastic tool for not only learning where that limit is, but training your muscle memory to recover once you're past it. It's also really cheap and a good chance there's one happening near you tomorrow, you should google it. There's a LOT of dynamics and weight transfer going on in cornering and it's a real challenge to learn to handle it safely. Plus, autocross/track gives you a place to drive fast so you're less tempted to drive like an *** on the street

I wish I had read this post yesterday. I decided last night to disable PSM to see if I could drift (a little) through a very familiar corner near my house. My rear tires are due for replacement and it was very wet. I have tried drifting at an IDS day and I track my car a few times a year. It was from a stop and I wasn't going fast at all. But I still ended up backwards and hit a curb. No damage other than my ego. I was shocked at how quickly the rear end can spin around after breaking traction. Big lesson was never to try that again outside of a track. And never disable PSM on the street.

You guys with psm, cup holders, glove boxes, double din NAV screens are lucky...(semi sarcasm) I'm just bitter I can't drive anywhere close to 10/10th in my 996 yet(more seat time and bigger ***** needed) as oppose to my bimmer.

Driving to 11/10 is a whole lot easier and just as much fun, maybe even moreso You don't really want to try that in an intersection, though, because you WILL spin. Many times. Also, drifting a rear engine car (well) is much harder than it looks, especially with stock alignment. What you don't see on all those Top Gear highlights reels are all the outtakes of the pros spinning.

Glad you didn't wreck your car! I agree with the previous comments. Do a DE event or an autocross event... Or do both! You'll love it.

Jesus, what are you people doing? It's possible to drive with PSM off (I do, about about a quarter of the time, if I know I'll be driving somewhere it will interfere unnecessarily), but just because the PSM is off doesn't mean you need to go full-yobbo and start sliding backwards into curbs. Sign up for a driving class that includes skid-pad time. You need to learn how the car feels when the rear end lets go in a safe environment. Porsche did a GREAT job taming the 911's classic snap oversteer, but if you decide to turn off PSM and push the car, you need to be ready for it - it happens FAST, and undercorrecting or overcorrecting when things are happening that quickly only helps determine which ditch you wind up in.

Lucky for me, I don't even have PSM, or PMS, or 4WD, or WD40 or any of that nanny stuff. So, had to learn how to drive it right away. To clarify to newer folks: PDS (Porsche Driving School), AX (autocross), and Driver's Education (DE) are not the same things. I'd vote to start with PDS.

Just a clarification re PSM. Even with it turned off, it's still monitoring everything in the background and ready to intervene (try to bring the car back inline) as soon as you hit the brake.

That only works if you hit the brake, though. If you merely lift mid-corner and try to get back on the throttle (or simply get on the throttle too hard too early), it will more than happily let you spin.

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That's correct and that's exactly why PSM also allows more experienced driver to have some fun. If you know you should and decide to get back on throttle, you're probably good enough to correct the situation yourself w/o PSM

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Best training I had was going off-track twice during DEs with my '87 (no damage, just some vacuuming work needed -- that's why I pick DEs at tracks with very little concrete and tons of runoff room). Very very clear what it feels like. Yes, it's fast and both times it happened because of a *slight* throttle lift. Then do the same turn again and again without lifting and see you can go faster, smoother, and safer. The 996 is like a gyroscopically-guided cocoon in comparison, but it can still definitely happen. I had PSM off initially on my last DE (my first one with the 996) but the instructor urged me to have it on. I did, and it never came on. It's obvious to me, at my (intermediate) skill level, that I should just keep PSM on 100% of the time.

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Yes, totally agree. Just leave it on, especially on the streets or any wet roads. Btw, here's a great article explaining PSM http://www.deter.com/porsche/PSM.html

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Yup! The PSM intervenes when the car is getting funky.....that means the driver is the issue and gave the car a wrong input. I kept it on all the time because it made me a smoother driver.

One of my DE instructors made a big deal about leaving it on if you have it (my car does not) because when it comes on it is usually because you have given the car a non-smooth input and the goal is to be smooth.

PSM is doing more than engaging to save your *** when you make a mistake; it's modulating the ethrottle and ebrake to smooth inputs and transitions to keep you from needing it to engage in the first place. It does it so well, most people don't even notice; hell, I didn't even notice until a friend wired up my car with a high-end telemetry system. Porsche doesn't really discuss the details, but I bet it's doing quite a bit beneath the hood. I leave PSM on when I'm on the track, even during time trial competitions; I know it's slowing me down, but I'd rather lose the competition than lose my car. It always stays on whenever I'm on public streets. I do, however, turn it off for autocross, because it gets in the way of some more aggressive maneuvers. Occasionally, I lose it, but eh, that's the beauty of autocross- it doesn't really matter if you spin because there's nothing to hit but cones, and nothing to damage but my ego. I've also had a few (completely unintentional) show drifts at recent events that I understand looked really cool to the spectators, though I was honestly just trying to keep the car from spinning. Seems I can only drift well when I'm not trying to. I'll often leave PSM on for very wet weather autocrosses in Sport (vice Sport+) because it does all sorts of magic to cover up my mistakes.

Regarding driving hard on the street: 2 freakin' tckets in the past ten days. First one in the new-to-me 928S4 that I was nursing home due to a timing belt tension warning light. Ticket was for 35 in a 30 mph zone (not school or construction zone either). Then on Thursday, in the 996, pulled out onto a stretch of rural highway that I'd only be on for a little over a mile. Less than a mile on the highway and I've got smokey on my tail - 66 in a 50 mph. No speed limit signs to warn me after my entry onto that highway - I assumed it was at least 60 mph limit (which is why they probably had a speed trap there). Damn. Looks like I won't be pushing any limits for a while (unless I get to a track). I hate paying for traffic tickets when I'm really just trying to get from point A to point B and minding my own business.

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Do you have a radar detector? Knock on wood but since I got a V1 (which is in the Porsche at all times) not a single ticket. That's 17 years and over 110k miles.

No. Had been 2 1/2 years since I've had a ticket. Usually get one every 3 years or so, so really didn't feel it was worth getting a radar detector. But, you know, that's a helluva idea. I think it just made my Christmas list. Thanks For the suggestion Mike.

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Porsche has spent countless engineering hours developing suspensions and electronic systems to counteract the 911's fundamental rear-engined nature towards snap oversteer. It still is not, umm, as they say... idiot proof. (Nothing personal... I've driven like an idiot quite a few times in my cars)

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on the V1. For me, it's just another data point. In California, CHP tail cars in order to catch speeders probably as often as they use radar. In the old days, funding for radar guns were sparse and required local funds, not state funds. I believe that situation has changed because I'm seeing a lot more radar than even 10 years ago.

Two weeks after I got the car. On an S turn on-ramp (before you preach to me , it was very early in the morning and no other car in sight-not that it makes it "ok") I over corrected on the second curve which swing the back end around and BAM! On hindsight I also took a "bad line" Fortunately only my front bumper broke , my radiators/hood/headlights were untouched. I replaced everything with OEM porsche front bumper, that crash beam behind the bumper and all new innard plastic trays, ect . It was an expensive lesson learned. But whatever- sh*t happens , and when you play (especially where you shouldent) your toys will get scratched. However I will not do again on the streets. (At least where there's objects harder than my car around ) My goal now is take DE classes / track day soon.

Ouch, that seems to be an Aero bumper too. ^^^

I had a close encounter taking a left turn, I punch on first, took the turn, switch to second gear, tail went to the right side, I over steer to the right then left and control it, I know it may look pretty cool on the traffic cameras, I thank autocross I didn't panic or hit the brakes, and no other car was around it was 6 am on Sunday, since that happen I understood I need to know more about the car, taking a DE first and then may be go to a local autocross, since then I drive like an old lady, also tires need to be changed and I don't have PSM.

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Whats PSM? (My 99 doesn't have it) I grew up causing havoc on lakes with my sled when I was 10 (hand me down from my brother) and later some ice racing in an uncles old beat the s**t Ford Capri he gifted me. So sideways is second nature. Although having said that... street tires on these cars, depending on the outside temp's - the tires can be like hockey pucks below 8C (46F). Its surprising how a little heat in the tires after a few minutes of driving can make all the difference when your at that temperature transition area say around 13C (55F). With the gap between race cars and street cars (performance) getting closer compared to 20 years ago, we are now seeing people in high performance cars such as turbo's and GT3's having to warm up their tires on track days before going all out. Well it's no different on the street where people are driving around at low speeds, stopping for lights and then they decide to get on the power hard onto an on ramp after slow driving and maybe sitting at a stop lights for a minute or two in slightly cool conditions. Street tires have a pretty wide latitude for grip across a good temperature range but there are limits to grip based upon power input, tire brand/compound, ambient temp's and road conditions. I like the suggestion concerning auto crossing or time attack events as a way to gain experience/skills. Practicing power slides on the street is not a great idea when you consider a slide into a curb at anything past walking speed could cost you a rim and tire at best or at worst, $10K if you've damaged suspension parts as well.

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Same here and the reason it's preventing me from even attempting to drive 10/10ths yet. That and the fact that parts are so damn expensive if you have an off. This is the first car that has actually scared me to drive flat out. But also one that is the most rewarding when you do get it right. I'm glad though I picked a car without PSM to be honest.

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I drive mine pretty hard, but aim for smoothness - mainly at Mosport. The limiting factors for me are tires and non GT3 suspension. But that's a good thing as it keeps me within the limits of the car as it's pretty predictable right now. To go faster starts you on a roller coaster such as stickier tires = new oil pan and then different sway bars and drop links and pss 10's and on and on and on and pretty soon I'm driving into corners and the stakes become a lot bigger if you make a mistake (as you pointed out) and soon the fun factor is less. I'd much rather try practicing consistent lap times without chewing up tires because I'm driving too hard looking to set a time instead of banging over curbs acting like I think I'm a DTM driver. I see guys in 944's having a hell of a good time during track days and then look at the guys getting out of GT3 RS's, 458's, turbo's etc. and they have a more serious look on their faces and some, are sweating pretty good, (its Mosport after all). Who needs that? (rhetorical question)

I made the cold tire mistake once - I was admiring the beautiful view and nearly became part of it. It's remarkable how terrible high-performance summer tires get once the temps get low enough.

It depends on the summer tire; I bet Dunlop ZII gives better grip than all-seasons, even at 20F. Others just turn into rocks.

BFG G-Force Sports turn into lunch trays below 30 degrees. I don't imagine the heat cycles from the burnouts @ the drag strip help much. *edit* The burnouts are in the Corvette, BTW - I do not have line locks on the 996.

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Yes sir it was She's good as new now though.