Getting your track wheels to the track - the great trailer debate

Once again, it has been a long time since I have posted a blog entry. Yeah, yeah, guilty as charged. No excuses other than I have been busy writing for 9 Magazine, Planet-9.com and trying to get The Driver Book III finished. No big deal...

I did my first track event this year. It was a Mustang Fest down at Texas World Speedway (TWS) in College Station, TX. Other than a huge off and getting stuck in the mud, I held up the Porsche end of the bargain. But one thing is tugging at the back of my mind. My two track buddies are looking beyond doing track events. One has his car for sale and the other wants to dial back events so he can focus on his start up business. Each of these guys has a big Ford F-250 diesel and a trailer to haul their race cars. That also means space, as in they have the space to haul my track tires, tools, floor jack, jack stands, air can, tools, etc. Bottom line...there is a lot of gear that needs to be hauled to a track event and their trucks do the heavy lifting (pun intended...).

So where does that leave me? I have two choices. One is to buy a truck and trailer to tow my Cayman S (CS) down to the track. The other is to figure out a way to install a trailer hitch on the CS and tow my own track gear to the track. You can imagine the response I got when I outlined my options to the lovely Ms. Turner. Ahhh, the truck / trailer option isn't gonna happen. So I did my research and found out it could be done. There are ways to install a hitch on a Porsche, none of them are "sanctioned" per se by Porsche, but they seem to do the job.

Here is the other point, I already have a trailer. Back in 2008 I bought a set of tires and it came with a trailer. At the time I had a Porsche 968 and we figured out a way to build a trailer hitch. My Brother in Law bulit it up for me. I actually used it a couple of times, but the 968 went away and the hitch I built up was not a part of the sale.

I still have the all the parts for the hitch so I have a lot of steel that can be used to build up something new for the CS. I spent the past couple of weeks reading about what others have done, I think I have a pretty good handle on what it will take to build up a hitch for the CS.

So to make sure I still had a trailer to use, I went over to one of my race buds house (where the trailer has been sitting for a couple of years) to see how bad it is. And I am glad to report, it looks pretty good. I do plan to repaint it, refinish the wheels, put new tires and safety chains on it to give it a new lease on life. But overall? We have the technology to make it better...

Next up? Take off the rear bumper cover and remove the bumper itself and see what we need to do to make a hitch work.

I will post up in the next couple of weeks to report how the integration of the hitch is going. And I promise...there will be pictures.

And on that exhaust note...until next time.