I hope my thread was not interpreted as encouraging everyone to pull their yaw sensors. I'm just relaying what happened when I did mine. For sure, people should not perform this modification unless they have the experience and ability to control the car, and are willing to take the risk of a bad result. I did my first 15 years of track driving in a 944 that had no driver aids beyond ABS, so I felt confident enough to give it a try on the Cayman, but, even still, I took it easy until I was sure there would be no ugly surprises.
I fully believe that cutting out all the electronic driver aids are the best way to learn to drive on track as a beginner.
First reason is that you will most likely drive slower, because you will back off when the car start getting slightly out of shape, and then you will gradually start getting faster as you gain confidence with what the car is telling you.
With driver aids everything is masked so you get very little feedback and you fast become overconfident with your own skill set, resulting in over-driving the car and having a big off when the electronic give up on you. I have seen plenty of people with new gt3's end up in the wall on a wet track, and if the same drivers had been driving and old 996 gt3 then they would have been driving 20% slower
Lastly, you can't beat being on the edge in a car 100% controlled by the driver ;-)
I agree with that, nielsen. I drove every autocross my first year in this car with psm off for this very reason. I run with it on now, not because I need to, but because I found the performance aids packaged with psm (dynamic brake bias in particular) really do make it a faster car than with psm disabled. I don't have PASM, but pulling the yaw sensor disables that magic pasm as well and leaves it full stiff all-around.
I don't pull the yaw sensor, as for sport chrono cars, turning psm off via the button in sport+ mode really does push it WAY out of the way as it stays completely off under throttle and the "always on" envelope under braking is so wide as to be pretty unrestrictive. Honestly, even with psm on, it stays mostly out of the way in sport+. (Horribly intrusive in normal mode, though; I can see why it's do despised by those without sport chrono.)
The smaller diameter tires help close up the gear ratios which improves acceleration. The smaller diameter tires also allow a much higher top speed. The trick is to get the wider tires in 17" and get the best of both, wider tread and smaller diameter. The smaller diameter rim also negates any need for a big brake kit. Big brake kits are needed for larger diameter wheels because the tire/ 19" or 20" wheel has more leverage against the rotor compared to the 17" wheel with the wider tires
I am interested as well, but I have a 987.1S with a Wavetrac LSD. I have found that I need just a little more yaw before the PSM kicks in. With the LSD, it seems that the PSM does not completely close down the motor for a second or so, it simple retards it as it comes back very quickly now. With the PSM off, I feel that the LSD at apex will oversteer slightly, enough though to cause me to back off. The opinion of the autocross guys are to turn it off and leave it off. As others noted here, you start to rely on it. I feel that if I had a SC option installed, I could use that and then turn off the PSM. Or maybe leave both on and get more yaw which is what I am after.
I usually leave on unless it invers during an autocross (delays gas response) then switch it off. I've found few autocrosses that require it off. Maybe 1-2 a year. Of course you can go without it all the time; it's just a totally different driving style with or without. Not necessarily better just different and harder on the car. After 30 years of doing this I've found PSM will help you more than hurt you 75-80% of the time.
Augie- I agree with you that PSM is effective and of benefit most of the time. However, I am looking to modify my OEM setup slightly to include a SC software package to allow more slip angle at full power. That's the key is to keep full power available, yet allowing the LSD to give more forward thrust without snap oversteer that can occur if the PSM is off. My oversteer is not a spin, just more slip angle than needed to get the best time. This is a timed event so each 1/10 of a second counts. So, going from 8 degrees slip angle of the OEM system currently to 11 degrees with SC might be the right way to go. I will call Scott at Softronics to see if he included the software mapping for the SC/PSM interface with my race package upgrade 6 months ago.
I quite enjoy driving the car in Sports +, with the slip angles and how the car rotates so differently. However, without the delayed in freight, adjustable front control arms, the car does exhibit a type of understeer/4wheel powerslides. so I have to back off ever so slight, to get both the rotation and keeping the car on the lines