Sport Chrono - Pretty Cool - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

lexuspilot · 07-19-2005, 12:42 PM

I drove a 987S today. It was a reps car that had some 5k miles on it, so I felt not-so-guilty flogging it.

But the real story was I got to really use the "sport chrono". The salesman, a friend, had spent the past couple weekends really trying all the features of the Sport Chrono in a CS.

What it does, besides adjust motronics and PASM, PSM(we already all know that part)....

Using the computer stalk you can start and stop time and do lap time, and compare to a reference lap you saved.

If you also have PCM, with the big screen, you get a display that shows your referance lap and your progress, wether ahead of time-ontime-or behind. It used a graphic that looks like a CD that fills up like a pie chart to show where you are versus your referance time. It also shows how many laps left in your fuel tank. It has memory for two hours worth of laps. You can type in names for these laps such as "drive to work", "county road 22" then pull them up when driving that circuit again and measure your time against your best. I guess this was meant to use on a track, but can easily be used on the street applying rules. If you were at a track it would be easy to save a whole track event worth of laps on there.

It also displays them as a bar graph, and this is where you select the keepers, or assign names, or delete them.

And the analog timer matches all of this as well.

I didn't have my camera with me to take pictures.

Anyways, I thought it was cool that he took the time to show what all this option does for the car. I thought I might pass it along as well.

eslai · 07-19-2005, 01:51 PM

The problem with using the Sport Chrono for any real lap timing is that it requires human input, and worse yet, from the driver.

If you're trying to get any accurate lap times, you cannot do it in this manner. Especially silly is the fact that the timer measures into the hundredths.

The fact that it take input from a driver is the most useless part about it. If you're driving 9/10ths or 10/10ths out there on a track, the last thing I want anyone doing is fiddling around with a lap timer. You're supposed to be concentrating on driving. In a hobby/sport where improvement is measured in hundredths of a second, you don't have time or energy to waste on activities such as these.

Anyone who's really trying to record their laptimes will be racing with a transponder on their car that works with a lap timing system that can accurately tell you your lap times--yes to the hundredths. At the very worst, you'll have someone standing at a fixed point on the track with a stopwatch, timing you against a perpendicular point as you pass it.

The Sport Chrono is useful for timing how long your trip to the grocery store took, or how long you got delayed by rush hour traffic, and that's about it.

Rail26 · 07-19-2005, 02:59 PM

Elapsed time to the grocery store is very important!

rickhuizinga · 07-19-2005, 05:40 PM

With PCM, doesn't the sport chrono learn how long the lap is (based on wheel spin & gps coordinates) so you only need to use the stalk for the first lap?

If you have to use the stalk each time, it is pretty useless.

lexuspilot · 07-20-2005, 05:54 AM

I did feel they didn't go the distance and put a simple sequence button on the wheel that starts or stops the count.

The fact that it take input from a driver is the most useless part about it. If you're driving 9/10ths or 10/10ths out there on a track, the last thing I want anyone doing is fiddling around with a lap timer. You're supposed to be concentrating on driving. In a hobby/sport where improvement is measured in hundredths of a second, you don't have time or energy to waste on activities such as the

Have you ever seen Schumacher's wheel. He re-arranges the configuration of the car for every single turn, while driving. The number of dials grows like x2 from season to season. And it is done manually not pre-programmed.

Well maybe that is why people catch him now. You may have a point.

lexuspilot · 07-20-2005, 06:04 AM

The Sport Chrono is useful for timing how long your trip to the grocery store took, or how long you got delayed by rush hour traffic, and that's about it.

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Some people's drive to the grocery store is like being at a track. Not everyone lives in the desert.

As a matter of fact, we were on some of the twistiest roads around here, just outside of Barber Motorsports park, and we passed a grocery store, and a river, and a cop.

I think Porsche's steering wheel options may be why they left the control on the stalk. If it had a simple button to push, just like a tiptronic button, it would have been spot on.

eslai · 07-20-2005, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lexuspilot

Well maybe that is why people catch him now. You may have a point.

Hahaha, well he has all of that so that he can adjust the engine parameters on-the-fly based on what the on-board telemetry is telling the guys back in the pit.

Anyhow, I just don't find it very useful, anymore than I find a G-tech or other such device to be very useful. And for the aesthetic impairment it provides to your dashboard, I am especially negative about it.

lexuspilot · 07-20-2005, 05:19 PM

My question is why tie that in with the "sport" mode. What does one have to do with the other?
Maybe it has to do with EPA mileage or something.