Have talked with a bunch of founders about how they are using LLMs as part of product development and engineering. Maybe the most succinct comes from Kyle Doerksen at Future Motion “Anything you get from an LLM, needs to be verified via another source”.
This makes a lot of sense and it’s where I’ve wound up for a lot of the decisions on the 924.
Most of the time so far has been spent on things that will hopefully make the car more reliable. Things like belts, hoses, seals, etc all with the goal of cutting oil leaks in particular.
Roughly we expect to sell about $1k of components from the 924s, so that’s the budget for non-safety add-ons like new oil cooler seals or a new-from-PYP coolant expansion tank that isn’t leaking.
So we got down to some of the go faster bits, which will mostly be suspension and aero versus HP.
The suggestion from our master mechanic, Claude.ai came back with some variations for rear helper springs and/or bigger torsion bars. 924 has torsion springs and they can be upgraded, but used torsion springs are seem tricky to find in larger diameters like 30mm and the starting price for new is $300. Bit too much budget for a $500 car. But there are some VW Beetle parts that will work for $99 or maybe even less. Also MK2 golf.
But the LLMs also come with a range of proposals like needing to weld a different fitting to adapt some of the proposed systems…turns out consulting a few forum posts suggested this isn’t necessary and also doesn’t seem like a common approach. And VW Beetle and Golf parts are almost a direct bolt-on. Will know more in the coming weeks when we actually try to make it work.
Anyway, think we settled into a good rhythm where Claude.ai is good for bantering quickly through ideas to get budget performance upgrades. But before getting too excited, some extra work is necessary to consult the humans of the internet and get a second source. Trust but verify.
So far I’ve been super surprised by the amazing community and resources because this certainly wasn’t as clear when we started. There have been a LOT of folks trying to make 924s/944s go faster on a budget!
Outrun Carbon 