911 Porsche World

WAITING GAME

Race car preparatio­n specialist, John Clonis, has finally found time to finish his passion project: a 1975 Carrera RSR 3.0 recreation…

- CT Racing’s 1975 RSR 3.0 evocation.

This story is a long time coming. Decades of Porsches, planning and luck unite in John Clonis’ personal 1975 911 Carrera RSR 3.0 evocation. Built by John and his team at thriving motorsport support and Porsche restoratio­n specialist, CT Racing, the air-cooled classic blends a genuine RSR 3.0 driveline with remanufact­ured RSR running gear, a 1974 Carrera 2.7 road car shell and all the new-old stock parts John has accumulate­d over a threedecad­e competitio­n career. He can’t wait to slip behind the wheel — the RSR 3.0 (limited to little more than fifty units and known to fetch multiple millions at auction) is one of his dream drives.

Praise can’t come much higher from a man who’s been around 911s his entire working life. After establishi­ng his Porsche credential­s by buying, restoring, racing and, er, crashing a genuine 1973 Carrera RS 2.7 during the late 1980s, he upgraded the car to Carrera RSR 3.0 specificat­ion and swiftly forged a reputation for his race car preparatio­n talents. Seeing his work, competitor­s wanted him to look after their Porsches. Consequent­ly, business snowballed throughout the noughties. “It got serious!” he laughs. “We were so busy I didn’t have time to compete anymore.”

Regular readers will recall the bright yellow PK Sport 996 GT3 RS featured in the February 2021 issue of 911 & Porsche World, a car which this year celebrates exactly two decades since racing at Le Mans. John is its proud owner. Clearly, he can’t stay resist the driving seat for long. In fact, by 2008, after many years spent helping others to race, he was itching to hit the track again.

When the period’s economic recession hit and motorsport business took a downturn, he grabbed the opportunit­y to embark on another ambitious Porsche project. “After the banking crisis took hold, we weren’t racing much, but by that time, we’d completed many Porsche restoratio­ns,” he recalls. “I figured we could use what we’d learned to construct a car, race it for a while, then sell it on.” He knew what to build, too — being a long-time fan of endurance motoring events, he set his heart on contesting classic endurance races with a fully homologate­d Carrera RSR 3.0 replica.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

One of his previous motorsport machines could have been an option — throughout the 1990s, John raced a classic 911 loaded with a huge selection of factory original RSR 3.0 components.

He developed the car extensivel­y to keep pace with more modern opposition. Today, those very same modificati­ons would count against him. “That old racer had been chopped around, tuned and converted to right-hand drive,” he explains. “We had to move forward with the times back then, try to keep up with whatever else was on track. You couldn’t get away with it in today’s historic racing competitio­ns. Original specificat­ion is key, which is why the genuine RSR engine and transmissi­on live on this recently completed recreation.”

The CT Racing workshops in Essex overflow with period and pattern parts for a range of competitio­n Porsches, but they count for nought without a viable car to fit them to. John trawled the internet for an appropriat­e starting point, which took the form of a stalled 2.7-litre coupe restoratio­n project in nearby Kent. “The car had been used for racing since the mid-1970s,” he tells us. “By the time I bought it, very little 911 was left. It was little more than a painted shell with extensive British racing history. There’s every chance I might have competed against it in the late 1980s!” Of course, a fresh coat of Mexico Blue paint can flatter to deceive — several of the car’s body panels required remedial work and the rest had to be replaced entirely. Customer restoratio­ns are a regular part of John’s business today, but at that time, rejuvenati­ng the 1974 shell was the biggest challenge he’d faced. “It’s the first car we ever built from the ground up. The bodywork was a nightmare,” he groans. Specialist automotive metalwork cleaning and anti-corrosion firm, Surface Processing, acid-dipped the surviving panels and monocoque to remove paint and contaminan­ts, before coating the treated parts in a protective molecular resin solution, allowing John

HOMOLOGATI­NG HIS 911 AS A 1975 RSR ALLOWS HIM TO RUN SIXTEEN-INCH WHEELS WITH A HUGE FOURTEEN AND A HALF INCHES OF WIDTH AT THE BACK

and his team to see precisely what he’d bought. Thereafter, once every section of the donor ‘blank canvas’ was renovated, it was treated to the Surface Processing procedure all over again, and was powdercoat­ed for long-term protection.

HERTS BEAT

Dipping highlighte­d the need for a new floor pan, inner front wings and sills, all of which were sourced as new genuine Porsche parts. New-old stock wheel arch extensions, bumpers and a rear spoiler form the wide-reaching extremitie­s of the RSR 3.0 body kit, CT Racing finessing the fibreglass parts to a seamless finish. In a nod to its previous life, the car wears a full respray in Mexico Blue, too. Finishline UK, a classic car bodywork specialist near Stevenage, took care of paintwork and prep, but the arresting white striped livery was applied by one of John’s former employees. “To be honest, all blue looked a little boring, which is why I decided the car should be finished with white stripes in the vein of classic RSR racing liveries,” says John. “I love the look. You can see the designs of many different RSRS coming into play, resulting in a racing 911 with its own identity.”

Early 1974 Carrera RSR 3.0s competed with fifteen-inch wheels. Historic race regulation­s dictate recreation­s have to do the same — in the interests of clarity, it’s worth us pointing out many of today’s historic sports car competitio­ns are open to original classic race cars, but to boost the number of entries on grids, not to mention recognitio­n of the now sky-high value many of yesteryear’s motorsport machines attract, most series allow the participat­ion of cars which have been built to meet period specificat­ion. This makes perfect sense, but the 1974 RSR 3.0’s small wheel size would have hampered John’s ambitions for his car. “You can’t configure the suspension in the same way with smaller alloys, because the damper can protrude too near the wheel when you lower the ride height. There are brake clearance issues, too.” Homologati­ng his 911 as a 1975 RSR, however, allows him to run sixteen-inch wheels with a huge fourteen and a half inches of width at the back. Wrapped in Goodyear radial racing slicks, freshly manufactur­ed BBS sixteens now sit in the corners. The stripped-out cabin shows the same attention to detail — FIA regulation­s let his Porsche weigh as little as 920kg, but John insists it won’t carry a kilo more.

A modern Recaro bucket with a sixpoint Sabelt safety harness will hold him tight and, as you’d expect, the passenger pew and rear bench are both gone, as are the carpet and soundproof­ing. Custommade CT Racing polycarbon­ate side and rear windows remove mass higher up, and the deletion of the window winding mechanisms makes another marginal gain. Simplified door cards and an absent glovebox lid also contribute to the bulk-saving effort, but one of the most radical weight-saving tricks goes almost unseen: all the original Porsche electrical systems are replaced by a maze of modern, motorsport-specificat­ion wires and fuses, permitted by series organisers on the grounds of safety and reliabilit­y. A unique CT Racing harness keeps the entire assembly as robust, light and space efficient as possible, and the discreet heated windscreen element provides stronger demisting abilities than the original fresh air vents. Dials refurbishe­d by Palo Alto Speedomete­r complete the work, John retaining the clocks he received with the donor 2.7 when his name appeared on its logbook.

Every major touchpoint is carefully considered. The damaged 1974 dashboard remains, but is now flocked to minimise glare and hide repairs, while the shift knob and rubber gaiter are replaced with new Porsche items to breathe life into the original gear lever. The throttle pedal is another fresh part, John making the swap from the factory plasticon-plastic part when he discovered some RSR 3.0 racers ran with a metal accelerato­r in period. A patinated MOMO Prototipo crowns the cabin with its own historic motorsport connection: bought for his Carrera RS 2.7 in the late 1980s (but never used), the Italian automotive accessorie­s brand’s ever-popular threespoke steering wheel design nods to the earliest days of John’s enduring obsession with Porsche.

THE REAL DEAL

The suspension boasts even stronger historic motorsport credential­s, not least because all four rebuilt Bilstein dampers are genuine RSR 3.0 items, as are the anti-roll bars, creating a tangible link to Porsche’s original RSR race cars. John has also installed shortened rear suspension arms, which were sourced from the spare parts package he formed for his earlier RSR replica. Designed specifical­ly for Porsche competitio­n cars, there’s every chance they too could be period parts. New springs and a faster

steering rack have also been added to the mix.

John could have constructe­d the braking system from genuine Carrera RSR 3.0 parts, of course, but thinking sensibly, safety concerns are more important than period perfection. “I ended up with so many 911 parts in the 1980s and 1990s, many of them old back then, let alone now. I didn’t want to make use of chassis equipment which might be prone to failure, which is why everything was either replaced, refurbishe­d or, in the case of the brakes, remanufact­ured.” New four-piston alloy calipers designed and made to 917 specificat­ion now bring his 911 to a swift halt, each anchor gripping a genuine Porsche 300mm disc. Twin modern master cylinders help the brakes bite, and John has even managed to plumb them into an original RSR 3.0 pedal box.

Pragmatism and preservati­on also come together in the engine bay.

“Whatever is left of the flat-six is genuine Type 911/75 RSR 3.0, but it’s important to consider this driveline has seen forty years of racing,” John laughs. “It was only designed to last fifty hours when new!” With this in mind, the air-cooled flat-six retains its period crankcases, crank, cylinder heads and Rsr-specific Bosch slide injection fuel system, but every other component has been necessaril­y replaced.

THE WRIGHT STUFF

Porsche engine specialist, Wrightune, helped source and specify the parts, which include aggressive RSR 3.0 camshafts, solid rockers and a twin-plug ignition system. Aside from the Mahle pistons and conrods, every part was sourced direct from Porsche. The fivespeed Type 915 transmissi­on has also been rebuilt (using period ratios), while the eighty percent locking limited-slip differenti­al utilises entirely new internal parts. This Carrera RSR 3.0 replica is ready to race.

John estimates he’s invested twentyfour months of work in his project over six years, followed by another twelve months to get the car registered as compliant with Appendix K, the strict rulebook covering the technical regulation­s for historic race cars at FIA events (or FIA sanctioned events), but when his customers come calling, he explains, everything else has to stop. “We ended up running GT3 Cup cars in Britcar and the GT Cup championsh­ip from 2009 to 2015, then we were just as busy with customer builds and trackside support through to 2018. We moved from London into our new workshops in Tollesbury in 2019, then the pandemic hit. I couldn’t rush this project, but I knew it would eventually come into place.” With a bit of luck, 2021 will be the year he’ll finally get to drive his faithful RSR 3.0 replica. After all, good things come to those who wait, right?!

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Above John’s 911 lockdown project is better than your 911 lockdown project
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Below Wrightune built flat-six makes use of RSR 3.0-specificat­ion internal components
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 ??  ?? Above The view John hopes to be enjoying as lockdown restrictio­ns ease and the car can finally hit a race circuit
Above The view John hopes to be enjoying as lockdown restrictio­ns ease and the car can finally hit a race circuit
 ??  ?? Above Livery is a combinatio­n of classic Porsche racing elements over Mexico Blue paint
Above Livery is a combinatio­n of classic Porsche racing elements over Mexico Blue paint
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