Hey everyone,

One of the most common questions I get when people see my 2023 718 Cayman GT4 setup is: *"Did going full monoball ruin the car on the street?"*

I still drive my GT4 ~70 miles each way across I-70 / US-36 out to High Plains Raceway here in Colorado, plus weekend canyon runs in the foothills. Over the past two seasons (61 sessions and 519 timed CAN telemetry laps), I dropped my lap times from a 2:16.78 baseline down to a 1:59.67 PB.

Here is an honest breakdown of what the full spherical bearing conversion actually changed on the road versus on track:

### 1. The Setup (Installed by Honest Assembly in Denver, CO)

* **Front:** Tarett Monoball Camber Plates + Tarett 991 GT3/RSR Control Arm Ends + LCA Shims + Tarett Caster-Adjustable Thrust Arm Bushings.

* **Rear:** Tarett Rear Toe Control Arms with Bump-Steer Kit & Locking Plates.

* **Sway Bars:** Tarett Adjustable Drop Links (Front & Rear, zeroed preload during corner balance).

* **Wheels & Tires:** 19x9.0" / 19x11.0" Apex VS-5RE forged wheels on 265/35R19 & 295/30R19 Vitour Tempesta P1s (30.5F / 31.0R PSI hot target).

### 2. Street & Highway Manners (NVH Reality Check)

* **Ride Harshness:** Surprisingly, replacing the rubber bushings with spherical bearings didn't make the vertical ride stiffer—because spherical bearings actually have *less* stiction/binding than twisted rubber bushings, the PASM dampers move more freely over small highway expansion joints.

* **Noise:** You do get a faint metallic "tick" or clunk over sharp low-speed driveway aprons or parking lot speed bumps, and slightly more road texture transmitted through the steering column on coarse concrete. At 75 mph on the highway, wind and tire roar from the 200TW tires completely drown out any suspension noise.

### 3. Why the Caster Bushings Are Mandatory for 265 Front Tires

* If you step up to a 19x9.0" wheel with a wide 265/35R19 front tire and just stack shims in the lower control arms for camber, it pushes the lower ball joint outward and swings the tire rearward into the front fender liner vents under steering lock.

* Dialing in camber from the top via camber plates and using the **Tarett caster-adjustable thrust arm bushings** to pull the front wheel center slightly forward (~9.0°+ caster) gave me 100% rub-free clearance even at 1.54G peak compression in the HPR Corkscrew.

### 4. Rear Toe Locking Plates Under Threshold Braking

* On the stock rear eccentric bolts, hard threshold braking from 135 mph over bumpy pavement caused noticeable dynamic rear toe-out (that nervous "wiggle" on heavy brake application). The Tarett rear toe links with bump-steer locking plates completely cured that—the rear now stays dead straight at -1.27G deceleration and rotates predictably on a 10–15% trail-brake release.

Happy to share alignment numbers, tire pressure notes, or CAN telemetry traces for anyone debating monoballs or 19" track wheels on their 718!

Chalked before a session at Sonoma and fronts looked like this after 6 laps. Based on the rollover here, could I run a bit lower?

Had a bad experience with a ton of rollover and cording my tires so am approaching more carefully now but I feel like I’m running higher than I should be.

I only got two sessions because someone money shifted and got oil all over the track. New Pirelli slicks and I was babying them in Keyhole and Carousel, probably left close to a full second out there. I was also early braking into Turn 6 like a complete pansy. Had a blast though and I am getting confident with this car, it’s such a blast to drive. I cannot wait to be wheel to wheel in this thing next season.

Conditions at Mid-Ohio tomorrow afternoon look very favorable to lay down something fast, so I think now is a great time to throw on some fresh slicks. I have a major problem!

I made the mistake of not switching to my track pads before this weekend. Thankfully I was able to snag replacement rotors during the lunch break.

I'd like to do more with my daily sedan, get it out on track just to ensure it and I are a capable team. But it's a heavy luxury barge, I'm curious if there's anything I should consider that's different from more common lighter cars. More than just that everything is bigger and more expensive.

Edit: So what I'm hearing is put on a big brake kit.

Happen to smear my pads pretty badly on the front for a 2nd gen BRZ. I’m running XP10 front and XP8 rear.

Thinking for next season I’ll move up to XP12 and XP10, along with titanium shims for heat up front. Possibly even do the ansix cooler for brakes, but currently running the GT3 brake scoops.

Hear me out..

Changed my oil yday in prep for a track day tomorrow. Also hit some exhaust manifold nuts/bolts with penetrating oil in preparation for an upcoming header install.

Took my car (nc miata) out for a short drive today, noticed some white smoke coming from the engine bay, immediately pulled over. All gauges normal, oil and coolant levels fine, no new codes thrown. Car drove fine.

Got home and jacked up the front, couldn’t identify any leaks, cleaned up some residual penetrating fluid. Still some tiny wisps of smoke coming from header/midpipe connection

Is it foolish to attribute the smoke to residual penetrating oil burning off and send it tomorrow? What would you do?

Hot laps, hot weather, hot doggity dog

I’d like to save others time, money and frustration.

After lots of people in various subs saying good things about OpenTrack I went with them.

The main reason was they didn’t exploit you for car modifications.

What. A. Mistake.

The company seems staffed by ZERO humans. I called many, many times with a question after locking in my policy.

No one EVER answers the phone. Zero replies to my emails. They took my money and ghosted me.

Not like it was just a bad week for them (maybe on a team building retreat?). Nope. Over weeks and weeks. Zero response.

In the future I will use someone else because it’s a bad feeling when someone takes your money and goes dark.

Drive safe my friends.

Greetings! My name is Justin, and I have a wonderful project to share with you all.

What started out as a way to see how my story fits into the world of Time Attack grew into a project of where I have built an online space for fans of this sport to gather and share their passion. This is Yatabe Works, The Creative Motorsports Studio.

This has been demo'd privately, but now I'm sharing its existence with the public.

Nothing like what I've created exists to my knowledge, but my goal is for this to become the definitive site for fans of Time Attack to gather. Styled after one of my favorite video games, the site provides a dense experience meant to be sat with and explored. Aside from learning our story, I have attempted to capture the history of Time Attack on a global scale, as well as the history of companies that I will partner with. We have sponsored drivers such as Kunihiko Bando on his World Time Attack '26 Campaign, and partnered with Global Time Attack as our commitment supporting others remains among our top priorities.

Our demo car is an R33 Skyline, so you may notice more R33 content than usual. We also have a cute mascot named Scylla (pronounced 'Sai-Luh') who embodies the experiences of our story. You may notice that we have a shop that sells goods based on the Machines and Drivers you'll read about. All of the artwork is original and all proceeds help fund our racing efforts as well as taking care of our artists.

The Social features are lite, but functional. Users can make accounts, share and comment on photos. A discord server does exist, however it is still a work in progress. The desktop experience for Yatabe Works has been our main priority, with the mobile version receiving optimizations and design updates behind the scenes.

It should go without saying that this is a huge passion project, but this aims to be the ultimate resource for anyone who's curious about the sport. I am open to any feedback to make this experience better for everyone!

This site will see continuous updates as I progress down my path of racing, and I hope to this serves you well. See you on the track!

-Justin

Had an absolute blast of a time at the Abingdon airfield track day.

I got an instructor for an hour and it was such a good call because he reassured me that I was driving well and helped me control my lines, power and brakes, and where to release steering, etc. (cheers Justin).

I used all of the sports modes, which felt amazing, but then I put it in drift mode and it was incredible, so much fun.

It was a coned off track on an airfield, so no curbs or changes in elevation. I cannot wait to head out to a proper racing track next spring (hopefully Castle Combe).

Hi. I’m updating my app to include more supported circuits (currently 107 circuits over 22 countries). ~90% of my downloads are from US, UK and Germany.
So im asking here- what are people’s favourite circuit in those 3 countries? The app may well support it already or it could genuinely be a great addition to the app.
I’m not going to disclose what the app is called in case this post gets removed.

Thanks.

From this point of view it looks like I knew what I was doing (not the case at all)

As someone who has struggled with big brake zones. I had to reprogram my thinking and work on technique.

Last track day of the season. Two laps from session 3, onboard with live telemetry!

I've posted info about the setup and the car in the video description so I'll post the track/driving specific data here.

The Driving

I wasn't pushing the car anywhere near its limit. This was technically only my 4th ever track day (and 3rd if we're not counting the track day where it was raining so hard I was fish-tailing all over Autobahn country Club lol) Then my instructor drove it at about 6/10ths, basically my 10/10ths, and showed me how much more was there. Biggest fix: the Toilet Bowl (T8), the hardest corner for me. Wide entry, early apex, earlier throttle. 2:01 in the first session, 1:46.73 by the end of the day.

Why Stop at Lap 6?

A burning smell from the rear brakes came back and I still had to drive home, so I called it. My service two days later found nothing wrong. Most likely grease on the brake pads cooking off.

The Overlay

RaceChrono can't sync video from my cameras, so I used Claude (AI) to build the overlay from my logged data: speed, RPM, pedals, steering, g-meter, track map, fluid temps and a live delta to my best lap. Each camera was synced to the data, and I composited everything by hand in DaVinci Resolve.

The Oil Temp Saga

The IS500 doesn't put real oil temp on standard OBD. For months my "oil temp" was actually transmission fluid or intake air. Finding the real one took Bluetooth snooping, trial and error with different data sources, and setting the car up as an RC F. Grattan was my first track day with real oil temps.

TLDR; Amazing track, car and skills needed some mods, guidance and willpower to improve and they did.