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Project Update for June 2, 2011: We dropped the Mustang off at True Street Motorsports in McKinney, TX today and they fixed all manner of things + diagnosed some other quirks we've run across. I finally found a good tuner shop (just 6 miles north of our location) that can custom dyno tune the 2011 GT via the SCT tuner we have, and they already have a great reputation. The owner of the shop also owns a 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT, which they've modded and tuned already.
Their tuning guru Sean Burt (who, as luck would have it, tuned our 7.0L Alpha car's new motor when it made 488 whp, back at LG Motorsports in 2009) started out by getting a baseline dyno run in the car with the existing custom tune + the Steeda cold air installed, which was 389 whp right at 5000 miles on the odometer. This compares to the initial dead-stock dyno pull (on the same style DynoJet 224) of 367 whp at 500 miles on the odometer (uncorrected it was 378 whp - it was a cold day) on Nov 18, 2010 (see bone stock dyno chart below). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...28_8GmRC-M.jpg This was the corrected bone stock dyno number at 500 miles back in Nov 2010 (uncorrected print-out is here) I explained to Sean in painful detail what I wanted: more control, not necessarily more power. Probably one of their only customers asking for a custom tune but not wanting more peak power. I talked about tip-in throttle, falling rate vs rising rate throttle response, and the massive power-modulation issues we were having in 1st and 2nd gear, on corner exit in autocross events. I asked him to drive the car to see if he can feel the difference, before, during and after his tweaks. After talking to some other local 2011 Mustang GT owners I was also curious why the car feels like it has a 200 pound flywheel. I made some calls earlier this week and according to the folks at Fidanza the OEM flywheel is only 21.5 lbs. They were the only place I called that had an answer - because they make a lighter 2011 GT aluminum flywheel (12 lbs) and had weighed the stock unit. We cannot use an aftermarket flywheel in STX, but I just wanted to know what the stock unit weighed to see if it would explain the sluggish nature of engine revving - it didn't. This afternoon when I went to pick up the car Sean had a lot of great information for us, as well as two new tunes loaded to our SCT unit and three color print outs of the various dyno pulls. That seems trivial but when you pay for dyno tuning you sometimes have to ask for printouts. They even videoed the dyno pull. Great service! They are also familiar with HP Tuners and other software packages, and I noticed several LSx powered cars as well as an SRT Challenger in their shop for tuning that day. They tinkered with our Mustang off and on for several hours, made some calls to some other SCT gurus, even to some folks at Ford. Here's what they relayed to me: 1. There is a very weird steering feedback issue we had noticed but didn't mention to him, as we thought it was just a bad wheel bearing (we already received a new pair to install, next). He brought this up after driving the car... the explanation he had was bizarre, but it makes perfect sense. Its possibly a programming issue (that he cannot alter), so once we test this theory to verify his conclusions I will post up about it. Don't want to spread bad information if this isn't the cause. Its something we've been noticing for a while, but had not mentioned here yet. 2. The "heavy flywheel effect" is all in ignition timing. The OEM tune adds 66 degrees of ignition advance in "engine deceleration mode" (off throttle, falling RPMs), which slows the engine responsiveness. He changed this to a normal 12 degrees and wow, what a difference. The engine response is SO much more lively! Its easier to rev match downshifts, too. I had no idea that could be in the programming. 3. Sean says they've used 7700-7800 rpm redlines in these new Coyote 5.0 engines without issue. Yikes! The dyno pulls show that the motor is starting to lose power above 6700 rpm, so it doesn't make sense to go to these stratospheric revs unless its in an autocross situation where we're barely touching those high revs, to avoid a 2-3-2 shift on a short straight. Anything we can do to avoid a lot of shifting is a win, especially after the last autocross (where I needed 4 separate 2-3-2 shifts per run!). We'll keep an eye on the harmonic balancer (check for slipping) and oil usage, but we've gone ahead and moved the redline on our car to 7700 rpm, up from our previous 7400 number, and way up from the stock 6800 redline. Zing! I'm already looking at aftermarket SFI rated balancers, for long term durability. 4. So last, but not least - the throttle mapping. Again, everything is all new on 2011s, as they can tune 2005-2010 throttle mapping easily. Sean tried to alter the correlation of pedal to throttle like I asked for, but there are something like 3 separate data tables/variables necessary to drive this interface, and he said if he altered all 3 the computer would "throw a wrench" error code on the dash. He says he has tried this on 2011s and it keeps "relearning around the tuning". He did try something very novel on our "track tune" and it might be effective - more than just running the car in a higher gear (our autocross testing showed Costas to be faster in 3rd gear rather than running in 2nd - which was such a kludge of a fix we'll try anything). Again, this tuning trick might be a flop so we're going to hold off on explaining about what he did until I can prove that it works. We will be testing the new tune at two autocross events this weekend. He loaded another identical tune without this throttle tricking tweak as our "street tune", which I can switch to in 90 seconds if the other doesn't work out. This "street tune" in fact makes more power... but again, we cannot use the power we're making in autocross situations, so this unusual "track tune" might indeed be faster. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...o-060211-M.jpg Today's final 2 tunes with a peak number of 392 whp, corrected So where are we now? 4500 miles later with one single bolt on part (cold air) and a custom tune we're at 392 whp, up +25 whp and +28 wtq on the new "street tune" over stock. That's pretty damn good power for an STX legal car with an air filter and "some 1s and 0s". A tiny part of the increase in peak numbers is the rise in the redline, as the bone stock dyno pull was just barely still going up at the stock 6800 rpm fuel cut. But the shape of both the new power and torque curves look nearly identical to stock, with the numbers up across the board, and the new power peak is only at 6700 rpm. So the cold air + the tune = a win. Talked to an exhaust supplier yesterday and I'm anxious to get their full length 1-7/8" header set-up coming. Picking that larger header primary diameter to help kill some more low end power while giving a little more on top - unless the new tune is magic, in which case I'll go with their 1-3/4" primaries. Until now, adding any power anywhere would just make the car slower in autocross, so if this new "track tune" allows us to modulate throttle and corner exit faster then we can finally go ahead and look at more power, which is there for the taking. Then we can focus the rest of the season on more suspension bits. Next up! Two autocrosses this weekend, including Saturday's National Street Tire Challenge and Sunday's Texas Region SCCA Autocross #3, both being held at the massive Mineral Wells complex. Amy and I are driving the Mustang in 2 different classes at each event, and we might even be running on different tire packages as well. We do have a strange, new wheel and tire package we're testing this weekend, which is funny looking and sure to draw some laughs, but it might help cure some of our power issues. If it doesn't work, I won't mention it in my next post, photoshop them out of the pics, and deny we tried it if asked. :D More soon, |
Project Update for June 13, 2011: We had two autocross events on the weekend of June 4-5, where we tested the new engine tuning (throttle mapping) and some new wheels/tires, with the first real promising results for the car in STX class to date. Let's start with the new rear rubber first, then cover the two very different autocross events separately.
17" Rear Wheels and Tires After the very positive results we had with some very worn and borrowed 18" Dunlops at our Tire Test in April, we wanted to try some fresh 265 Dunlops. We thought about just plopping down for another set of 265/35/18s but instead we tried something different... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC2193-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC2191-S.jpg Dunlop has the only ST legal/competitive tire that is a 265mm max width for STX in a 17" diameter. This might be one of the only STX cars that can physically fit these 265/40/17 Dunlops under OEM fenders, too. (I've seen these used on an STX classed E36 or two, but those cars had massive compromises in ride height to clear these uber-wide tires) I'd love to run 17" diameter wheels and tires on the Mustang at all 4 corners, but the Mustang's (optional) front 14" rotors and Brembo calipers don't allow this. Up front. But on the rear... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC2225-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC2274-S.jpg Hell yes! The rear brakes are small enough to allow a 17" wheel to clear, so we bought a pair of wheels and got some 265/40/17 Dunlops mounted to them. The wheels are lighter (TireRack calls them "15.9 lbs") but the mounted 17" wheel and tire (45.0 lbs) is 3 lbs lighter than the 18x9" Enkei FP01 and 265/40/18 Yokohama (48.2 lbs) but is 2 lbs heavier than the 18x9" WedsSport and 265/35/18 Toyos (43.1 lbs). The Toyo R1Rs are way too soft for use on these big cars, so that lighter tire has its drawbacks. Keep in mind the OEM 19x9" wheel and 255/40/19 tire was 57 lbs, so its still 12+ pounds per corner lighter than that. The 265/40/17 Dunlop is actually .1" taller than the 265/35/18s we had been running, so we don't lose any tire height or alter gearing this way. But we didn't go to the 17" Dunlop for "lightness" - we did it for increased sidewall height and lower cost. The dollars and cents are easy to understand: its $100 per tire cheaper to get the same exact Dunlop Star Spec in 265/40/17 vs 265/35/18. That's $400/set, and hard to ignore. But we've wasted $3K testing various tires and wheels on this car this year, so cost is pretty much thrown out. Corner Exit Acceleration is the biggest aspect we need to improve on this car (and most autocross cars, for that matter), and we had a long way to go on the Mustang. Throttle mapping was part of it but we're looking for other ways to improve this acceleration direction. The thought that a taller sidewall could reduce some of the shock load to the rear tires crossed our minds. Going to the 17" tire allows for more sidewall height and potentially less spring rate in the tire sidewall. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC2220-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG3013-S.jpg There are "rules of thumb" regarding sidewall aspect ratios and in one book (ThinkFAST) race engineer Neil Roberts (Costas' close friend, and an old college racing buddy of mine as well) claims that he likes to use nothing shorter than 40 series tires. Sometimes we don't have a choice, but this time, we did. So we tried it. Looks goofy with 19" wheels on the front and 17s on back (above left), but the 18/17 combo (above right) doesn't look quite as jacked up. We've seen other autocrossers mix wheel diameters front to back, and even OEMs do it (but usually the other way around). So I had planned on running the 17's on back during the first 3-4 runs of the NSTC event and switch to the 18s for the last half. The best laid plans... National Street Tire Challenge, Saturday June 4, 2011 Note: I've re-written this NSTC event summary several times, trying to be less negative of the course layout and the event in general. This is considerably "dialed-back" and as "PC" as I can make it. I do appreciate all of the hard work that went into putting on this event, and my main gripe is really just the uber-tight course. This is my brutally honest assessment from a 24 year veteran of SCCA autocrossing. Remember - I'm also driving in a very wide car with lots of power and limited rear grip - the proverbial bull in a China closet on a course like this - so that paints my views in a certain light. I wasn't alone in my harsh criticism of this course. 70 cars were there for Saturday's NSTC event, which was an autocross strictly for street tire equipped cars (140+ TW). Great idea for an event, as I'm a big supporter of the various ST classes and feel they are pushing racers out of dated and to some extent broken classes, like Stock and SP. For this series (4 events in 2011), run by the Milwaukee SCCA Region, they have 4-5 classes (all PAX based - my least favorite way to create a class), prizes for each class, and a free set of Bridgestone tires to the top PAX time of the event. Well.... except for any of the Street Touring Shootout class cars - they were not eligible for the PAX ranking or tires. That wasn't spelled out very well (none of the classes/rules were very clear to some) and some competitors felt a bit slighted by the way they handled that. Oh well, now we know - don't enter the PAX-combined ST class if you want to win the tires. And don't show up without an AWD car, either. We noticed some serious issues as soon as we walked the course. The course... the course was BAD. It was not representative of anything I would call an "autocross", as it was more akin to a gymkhana course, with lots of stopping, crazy tight turns. The course drove over the dirtiest parts of the event site, with 2-3' tall grass over many sections - they needed a lawn mower on this thing. Not kidding. It "walked" so tight and un-flowing, but it drove tighter than Hell. It is hard to describe how bad this course flowed, you just had to drive it. I came to a near stop about 6-7 times on each run, there were never two corners that flowed together, every slalom cone and offset was spaced/timed differently from the one before, and the course was heavily biased to narrow cars as well as AWD cars. For having 40+ acres of asphalt to play with, and for making a 100+ second long course, to never get over 50 mph? That's just wrong. It was dubbed "The Milwaukee Beast" by the Miata drivers. Yes, the Miata guys thought it was a big, long, tight, nasty mess. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...scan0144-S.jpg http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...61G00071-S.jpg After making my morning runs I couldn't understand how our local course designer JJ could have made such an abortion of a course. I found out later that JJ had almost no say over the layout this time; the NSTC event organizers walked the course and made changes to every corner, insisting that it be super tight. A good 90% of the drivers I talked to hated the course and vowed to never to go to another NSTC event. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG3019-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG3020-S.jpg The throttle mapping WAS much better, but this course made everything feel bad. A go-kart would have felt big and cumbersome in this mess. It was also very hot outside, and with such a long damned course the rear tires got greasy halfway thru the run if I allowed any wheelspin at all. I was spraying the rear tires 3 times after each run, fighting for rear traction through the many tight corner exits. It felt pretty loose and disconnected on the 17" Dunlops and almost as bad on the 18" Hankooks (which I ran up front all weekend and out back after my 4th run Saturday). I did a quick pit stop tire change after run #4 of 6 Saturday, and was faster on the 18" Hankooks, but its not a fair test - this course shouldn't be used to judge anything about any car's handling. The results from the rear tire testing really have to be thrown out, this time. more... |
continued from above
http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0084-S.jpg http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0092-S.jpg Many racers that day were so disgusted with the course that when they heard that Sunday's SCCA Regional event was supposed to run the same course backwards the next day, they decided to back out on their paid entries. We even had a large number not show up for their afternoon runs Saturday - they simply abandoned the event. Some of the local SCCA folks had to work extra corner assignments to cover for all of the missing folks. It was that bad. And it was damn hot - I think I saw 97°F Saturday. We lost more than a couple of folks to heat exhaustion. http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0249-S.jpg http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0327-S.jpg There are "Class Results" and even "PAX Results" - I guess you can call them that. The classing was all PAX based, and I'm not a fan of the black magic voodoo they use to make up these PAX factors. The problem here was that its not applied evenly, as you could only use stock class or street prepared PAX factors. Also, the "ST Shootout" cars (ST, STS, STX, STR, STU) have some bogus mega-PAX handicap so they are at the bottom of the PAX results. Just... ignore the PAX results I guess. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n5-00226-M.jpg
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG3024-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG3023-S.jpg In an astounding bit of irony, Andy Hollis won the random drawing for a free set of Bridgestone tires at the end of the event (above, right). Ha! And again, as negative as this write-up is, I do appreciate the hard work that went into setting this up, I thank the various sponsors, the local SCCA region people who spent 3+ days at Mineral Wells getting this set-up, etc. I'm sure someone liked the course - the fellow that won the tires surely did. ;) Also, big thanks to Brad and Jen Maxcy for doing so much work to help set-up the SCCA's portion of this event and for taking these great pics (more at autoxmax). I barely had time to snap any pictures at all, but here they are. Texas Region SCCA Event #3, Sunday June 5, 2011 The course designer that was unfairly blamed for the NSTC course (by me and others - sorry JJ!) announced in the afternoon Saturday that "Sunday's SCCA course will look nothing like this", and he stood by his word. With only about an hour of tweaks (and 2 hours of sweeping) Saturday night, still following the same general layout as before, the Sunday course flowed so MUCH better. The stupid tight, herky-jerky mess that was the NSTC course was completely gone. Unfortunately the Saturday event scared off many of our pre-registered Sunday racers (the entire Austin, TX contingent left, as did many other Dallas area regulars) and our attendance dropped to only 54 on Sunday. That's a shame, as it was a lot more fun running this more "normal" course and they really missed out on a fun event. But it was hotter still - we saw 103°F when we left. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n4-00231-M.jpg
I ran in STX with the usual suspects - Brad Maxcy and Chris Ledbetter in their AST/Vorshlag/Hankook equipped 328is BMWs, plus Ledbetter's co-driver Sherrie. We ran the "B" group and were running very similar times to each other, trading off the lead almost every run - we finished our 3rd runs within .1 sec of each other. I was feeling better about the performance of the car, especially considering that Amy was over 1 second quicker at a 78.040 sec run. I went to her and asked what she was doing differently - in her migraine daze she said she was smooth, attacking the offsets, stepping on cone bases, and just driving well. She also managed to do the whole course in 2nd gear, where I was shifting to 3rd in the back section. I think the excessive shifting was slowing me down, so in the afternoon I left it in 2nd and tried to be smooth. http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0411-S.jpg http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0207-S.jpg After my 4th run I was quicker by a few tenths and in the lead again, at least for a short time. Maxcy and Ledbetter got quicker on their 4th-6th runs, so I was back in my normal 3rd place by day's end - but closer than ever (.391), and Amy was still quicker then all of us, in the same car in only 3 runs, and ran the course when it was dirtier. The throttle response was markedly improved and the car was handling better than it ever has in an autocross. So I was excited with the performance of the car overall - its finally showing some promise. STX class beat STS, STR and STU that day, with Lebetter PAXing 7th, Maxcy 8th and me back in 12th. http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0157-S.jpg http://autoxmax.smugmug.com/Other/Mi...B61G0161-S.jpg So we left Mineral Wells Sunday night sweaty, dehydrated, in pain, and generally dead tired from being at the event site for 3 days. We weren't out there as long as some others, but it was still a bit of a whipping. Up next: Our new autocross timing system has now arrived (big thanks to SPS!) as well as a bunch of new cones, so we have everything needed to hold our own private autocross tests now - so expect to see some more tire testing, soon. We talked to the guys at Bridgestone and they were keen on possibly getting us a set of RE11s to go head to head with the Hankooks and Dunlops. We will see. Next event: 2-day Divisional Autocross this weekend in San Antonio. Cheers, |
Project Update for June 22, 2011: Amy and I ran the Mustang at the 2-day SCCA SouthWest Divisional # 2, hosted by the SASCA and Spokes regions, and held at the Retama Park horse track facility in San Antonio, TX. We towed from Dallas down to San Antonio on Friday, pushing through some ugly traffic on I-35, and once down there we saw an ambient temperature of 105°F that afternoon. Oh boy, summer was in full force in south Texas! We rolled up about 6:30 and the welcome party was going full swing, with a Carl's Jr Burger Bus cranking out great food (Vorshlag sponsors the SW Div series welcome parties; this sure beat cold pizza!). We checked in, teched, and walked what looked to be a rather nice course, for the size of lot they had. Hat tip to Vivek on smooth, flowing, and very different course designs for both days.
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2505-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2589-S.jpg
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2577-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2521-S.jpg First off - the SASCA club put on a great event for their first Divisional! The weather was warm but with only 82 entrants we were done early Saturday and Sunday, both. The largest class was XP with 14 drivers - with V8 Miatas and all sorts of cool rides - and they were all smokin' fast. The region put on a great Saturday night dinner/party inside the Retama Park facilities (*air conditioned!), where we put away two kegs of cold Shiner beer and lots of delicious Bar-B-Q. A huge number of us stuck around that night for about 4 hours, talking and drinking, bench racing and lying. This is why 2-day autocross events are so much fun. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2821-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2825-S.jpg So how'd the Mustang do? It was driving great, as it has been ever since we got the throttle mapping sorted. The Hankooks took the heat (with ample tire spraying after every run - especially the rears) and dug through the dirty asphalt surface fairly well. We didn't make any radical changes at this event - for once - and just used the shock and tire pressure settings we used at the last event. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2856-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2703-S.jpg So the course Saturday was a bit twisty, with 3 "turn-arounds", and walking it I could predict that the AWD cars would do very well - and they did. John Hale put a second on the STU field (and 2 seconds per day on the other ST classes) in his STi over both days... FTW (see above). The R compound and slick-clad cars also PAXed well, I think due to an abundance of big, sweeping turns on Sunday's course? Amy and I PAXed 19th and 21st out of 81, but we straight timed ST, STS, and were darn close to STR (Amy almost beat the class), so I felt the Mustang did well despite our somewhat mediocre PAX finish this time. For our class results I won STX (that's a first) and Amy took 2nd in the PAX'ed "W" class, losing by a scant .3 sec to a CP Mustang driver. Amy was faster than me overall, driving smoother as usual. We just about tied on Saturday (.04 apart) but she straight timed me on 4 out of 4 runs on Sunday, with a .3 sec gap ahead of my combined times over both days. I've watched all of the videos and analyzed the pictures (300) and she's smoother on braking inputs, throttle inputs, and maintaining more speed through transitions than I am. My runs have much more brake dive, more power oversteer, more choppy driving. I need to work on being smoother on the inputs, again. Did I mention I was hung over BADLY Sunday morning? :D That didn't help. We also we need a new data logger that we can look at driver data between autocross runs. MaxQ is out of business, so what's the next best, PDA-based (or included LCD readout), easy to view, 10 Hz GPS+Acclerometer data logging option??? http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2810-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2678-S.jpg me = too much Hooning, too abrupt on the brakes Again, due to the small event turn-out (I'm talking to you, Texas Region SCCA racers who skipped this event. We had only 7 folks from our massive region there!) we finished early both race days to beat the heat; even with 4 runs, we were wrapped at 12:30 am on Saturday and 11:30 am on Sunday. It was 86°F one day and 90°F the next after the last runs, but crept up past 103-107°F in the late afternoons. We spent Saturday afternoon in the pool at our hotel - my kind of autocross weekend. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2633-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC2601-S.jpg Dust, dirt and marbles were in abundance, both on and off-line After we wrapped up Sunday we loaded up and headed back up to Dallas, but within 15 minutes were pulled over by Texas DPS for a "road side truck and trailer inspection". They hit thousands of trucks+trailers that weekend, apparently, but we had all of our paperwork and passed easily. 2 hours later we pulled over to finally eat lunch, then I heard a big leak on a truck tire. Nail in the tread. We were parked 75 feet from an NTB and even though they wouldn't plug/patch the tire (Discount Tire did on Monday) they helped us put the spare on. A scant 5 hours after leaving San Antonio we were back to Dallas - whew! In-Car Videos http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n3-00237-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n4-00239-S.jpg
The month of July gets a little nuts for us, as after the July 4th weekend we have 3 weekends booked with autocrosses. 2 Tex Region SCCA events sandwich another SW Divisional event (College Station - on concrete), with Costas back on board co-driving in STX at most or all of these. I have a few new bits for the Mustang in-bound (JTL oil separator, not much else worth discussing) and at some point in July we're going to try to get our next private tire test in (Vorshlag's new timer system and pylons have arrived). Stay tuned, |
Project Update for July 6, 2011: Lots of little things going on with our Mustang since the last post. Apologies in advance for the pictures - I left my Nikon at McCall's on Friday (working on his Z3 LS1) so I took all of these with my iPhone. Let me catch everyone up...
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG3143-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG3145-S.jpg FCS1219311: 2011 MUSTANG WORKSHOP MANUAL @ $180.00/set The 2 volume Helms Ford Factory Manuals were finally printed for the 2011 Mustang, and we got ours last week. Now we can hopefully find all of the little fixes and tricks to maximize everything. I looked in the power steering section - zero diagnostics help. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG3139-M.jpg As you can see above we have added some underhood silliness, above... I'm normally not one for "bling" but most of this round of mods has a purpose. I'm sure the blue coil covers will get some "ricer!" grief, but oh well. So I started by removing the coil covers (they pop off in seconds), then cleaned them with soap/water, then wiped them with alcohol. Next came five sprayed on coats of Rust-oleum "Ford Blue" high heat engine paint and then a couple of coats of Rust-oleum "High Performance Wheel Paint" clear coat. It was super easy to get these off and on, and only took about 30 minutes of work (plus drying time). This blue matches the 2012 Boss 302. Yea, its just flash, and all of the guys here at Vorshlag were hating on this mod, as was my wife Amy ("What next, a Superman cape?!"), but its an authentic tribute to the new Boss 302, so screw you guys! :) http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3052-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3053-S.jpg Next up was the JLT oil separator catch can kit for the 2011-2012 5.0 and Boss 302. We picked the the "Passenger Side Kit" ($119) and it installs in literally seconds. Two squeezed clamps (which you can un-snap by hand) to remove the old vacuum tube, then the kit pops on in place - the hose from the intake to the passenger side valve cover. During high RPM use (and really the subsequent "high vacuum" period on engine deceleration) it will catch the oil vapors (separates and traps it in the catch can) instead of burning it inside the engine. I've seen guys track these 5.0s start pushing oil out into the air cleaner, but its usually people that live on the rev limiter. Last up is the Redline Tuning Gas Strut hood lift kit, which I also got from JLT. This simple to install $84 kit comes with all of the goodies to replace the stupid stock hood prop rod. If you park into the wind and leave the hood up (which we do often at the drag strip, road course events and autocross events) the hood can rattle and flop around, even fall off the prop rod. Now that we have real hood struts, these issues are resolved. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG3140-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG3141-S.jpg Last up, the video of the "Electronic steering shudder" feedback issue we've run into on our car: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...ringtest-M.jpg This video describes what we're seeing and shows in in great detail. If you know anyone at Ford and would like to send them this link, please do! Also, anyone road racing the new Boss302S (with the same electric steering) - have you seen this? We're not trying to blame Ford for a poor design, just want to find the sensor or broken wiring or whatever is causing this horrendous cyclical feedback in the steering. Its actually pretty dangerous... once it happens you have to pull over and almost come to a complete stop to get it to stop. And its getting worse; it happened to me yesterday twice, on the highway, going perfectly straight. Yes, we might have inadvertently done something to cause this - I'm looking for the solution, and I'm willing to pay for new parts if its our fault. We've pulled out the "excessive" negative camber up front (that someone suggested as the cause), and zero'd the front toe, but so far nothing has fixed it. Any suggestions or "its happened to us too!" experiences are welcomed. Thanks, |
Mini-update for July 8, 2011: Just a few pictures of the first prototype S197 Mustang, D-Force/Vorshlag, 5-spoke 18x10" wheel shown on our 2011 Mustang GT. This is the first stab at getting the offsets right, and we know we might be going back and tweaking the numbers slightly. We wanted to get a grasp on weights (18.7 lbs) and caliper clearance on this first 18x10" set before we ask for changes to the molds.
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3120-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3119-S.jpg They clear the front Brembo 14" rotors and calipers by a huge margin up front, and it looks like the offset we have might just work front and rear. Its hard to tell without tires mounted, and just slapping them on at full suspension droop. On Monday we'll mount up some tires and post more pictures. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3131-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3132-S.jpg The rear can go inboard another inch, and we might move the wheel inboard 5-7mm to gain fender clearance out back. Again, we'll know more when we get tires mounted and have the whole set on the car. If they fit we'll start street/track testing them right away. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3124-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3126-S.jpg So far I'm very happy with the initial test fit - stay tuned for more information about this wheel. And yes, we're trying to make it fit GR chassis Subarus as well (which shares the 5x114.3mm bolt circle). Costs should be "affordable" (read: sub-$350) given the quality, light weight, and somewhat narrow market range for a 10" wheel like this, with ETA for production at 12-24 weeks. This is an exclusive D-Force wheel offering that will be stocked and sold by Vorshlag. Cheers, |
Project Update for July 13, 2011: Just some minor updates here, and last weekend's autocross report. Let's see, we had the car at an SCCA Texas Region autocross event last weekend, this time with some real STX competition again and a good course design.
Competitive drives put in by Brad Maxcy in his 328is and Chris Ledbetter and Brian Buchanan in Chris' 328is gave us some solid times to compare to. Costas co-drove the Mustang for the first time since April, blowing out the cob webs and trying to learn the new throttle mapping - with some other fun, new "challenges" to drive around. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3212-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3213-S.jpg I get to the event and unload the Mustang from the trailer (scraping both the nose and the tail on the trailer ramp - new 74" long Race Ramps ordered from SPS and should here by this weekend), go to set the shocks at our normal race settings, and... one of them is stuck. Damn! This can happen to any shock if its dropped, which might have happened last week when removing, reinstalling, or taking the shocks to be dyno'd (explanation why at bottom). This should not have been found while at a race, of course, and we had a talk about "checking all shock settings immediately after they are installed" in our Monday morning meeting at Vorshlag. So we've got a single rear shock stuck, either full soft or full hard. How much could that affect the handling? This sounds like a great test in the making. :) http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3136-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3180-S.jpg It turns out, it affects handling a lot. Reinforces my "Shocks matter" mantra. Remember, this shock was still functioning properly, just with the adjustment stuck, as it turns out at full hard (stiff) in the Rebound range. The lateral grip was very different left to right, as a result. Made it a challenge on this somewhat tight autocross course today. Watching Amy and Costas drive through a particular offset compared to the 328is STX cars was dramatically different. Left turns were just a royal b!tch all day. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3253-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3254-S.jpg We also had a LOT of tire heat to deal with, especially Costas and me running back to back in STX class in heat 3. You see it was 100°F, and Amy ran in heat 2 by herself. She sprayed the tires after her 1st, 2nd and 3rd runs, to keep the tires within operating temperature for her next run. After her 4th run she was in 2nd place, a scant .053 sec behind Jen Maxcy, both running STX cars in the PAXed "W" class. She didn't spray tires - why would she? She was done for the day. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3231-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3261-S.jpg Immediately after her last the final run, heat (3) of the day started, and it was an abnormally small group. This meant that the 2 driver cars had little to no time between runs. Well the tire sprayer decided to die that day - it wasn't holding pressure and water just dribbled out of the spray tip. No jokes, please. So we started with hot tires and couldn't ever get the tire carcass or tread cool enough to even touch, and with just 2-3 minutes between 1st and 2nd drivers it was a thrash just to get the driver and numbers changed, much less splash a little water on the tires. So from our first runs on, we had boiling hot tires - especially the rears. Makes putting 392 whp through 265mm street tires on a sealed asphalt surface that much more impossible. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3189-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3195-S.jpg Costas and I both also heard some hideously LOUD noise in one turn, which spooked us both, so we had to investigate. We took a 1 minute "mechanical" to peek underneath, but we didn't see anything at the time. It wasn't leaking or obvious, so we drove thought the noise. Turns out we had two issues with things rubbing. First, a tire was rubbing on the inner fender well at full steering lock and full cornering load, which we saw in one corner only. No big deal. Second, the OEM end link bolts were dragging on the inner frame section at full droop, which was LOUD. The Eibach front swaybar we used was the 2005-2010 bar, so maybe the ends are slightly more inboard than the 2011? Whatever, we are fixing that in the shop now. And the steering shudder was ever present at any corner above 35 mph. As you can see in the STX class results, I started out "in the hunt" after Run 1, just a few tenths behind Ledbetter and Maxcy. I found some time, but Brad Maxcy found a lot more (and PAXed #3 for the event), and had me by 1.3 sec at day's end. Ledbetter and his co-driver (2nd and 3rd in class) also got faster, and were in the same second as me after 4 runs, but still well ahead, PAXing 10th and 11th, with me in 15th in PAX and 4th class. Ugh. Costas was trying to learn the new throttle/power parameters of the car after 10 weeks away from autocrossing, and eventually managed to put in a time good enough for 5th (with a scratch time that was closer). more below... |
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We were not happy with the day's results, at all. You can hear that at the end of my Run 3 video. But when you add up the comic amount of things going wrong - steering shudder, the full stiff rear shock, the massively overheated tires, and loud suspension noise up front - I guess we couldn't expect more than we got. We did see another data point in an ongoing trend at this SCCA event - AST shocks were on all 5 of the top 5 in PAX results, and 11 of the top 15, and these were all Vorshlag/AST testers. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...3-071011-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...2-071011-S.jpg
So we have a lot of new parts here this week to install and test, and another 2-day Divisional autocross this coming weekend. We've got to see some serious improvement in the car, and soon, or it will be a blood bath at Nationals and we might have to wait until we get the car further developed before we take it to Lincoln. But I'm not giving up just yet - just look at what's going on the car this week:
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3133-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC3295-S.jpg We've also taken the car as close to "stock" as possible this week, so we could swing by the Ford dealer to have them try to install that so called "fix" for the electronic steering (TSB 10-16-4). So we put the stock airbox back on, the stock tune, pulled ALL of the decals off, slapped on the stock wheels, and took it to the local Ford dealer. They couldn't get the EPAS program to stick on our 2011 GT, and then we found out this TSB's software update only works on the 2011 Mustang GT500's EPAS module. They also "couldn't duplicate the steering shudder issue", and left the car with all sorts of AdvanceTrac fault codes lit up (that they cleared, after I pointed them out). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3262-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3263-S.jpg De-stickered and back to "stock", at least for a day Frustrated, I brought the car back and did some more digging. It appears the "new" EPAS programming issued in TSB 10-16-4 will never fix this issue on our GT at all - from what this article says, this TSB is simply turning the "Active nibble" programming ON for short build run of 2011 GT500 Mustangs that inadvertently had it turned OFF at the factory (see more here). I'd rather have this active electronic nonsense in the power steering turned off completely, but that's a fight for another day. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...T-071211-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG3171-S.jpg Steering Shudder Test #2 - click for video In the mean time I did some more road testing and now can make it go into "shudder mode" at will, and made another video showing this on the way back from the dealership (their techs were all at lunch when I picked up the car). I sent them this video (above left) and hopefully they can get to the bottom of this. Again, this is the only problem we've seen on the Mustang, nobody else with a 2011 GT has had it do it this badly, and we may have done this inadvertently, ourselves, while performing other work on the car. This seems to be a problem unique to this car, at least to this degree. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC3312-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC3316-S.jpg Header install is easier with the entire K-member out of the way Since we had the stock airbox and tune on for the day, we did WOT and 45mph drive by Sound Tests with that set-up, then 2 more with the Steeda cold air and custom SCT tune back on. We'll do another 2 tests with the new headers on, later this week or next, then I'll post up all of those Sound Test videos/results. I'll throw another update up soon, maybe after we have the headers and tune on and have more dyno numbers to report, or after this weekend's Divisional - depends on how busy we get. The long tube header install is well underway, with the K-member completely out of the car to gain access to the stock headers. Supposed to be a "5 hour job", but we'll see. Thanks, |
Project Update for July 29, 2011 (1 of 2): Go grab a drink, pull up a chair, and get ready for a long update on the Mustang project. Some of this is a bit tardy, as I've been buried in demolition and construction work at the new Vorshlag shop (we should hopefully be moved in there by mid to late August), and there's a lot of ground to cover so I'm going to post two updates to cover it all. Some of the forums I cross-post this thread onto (namely roadraceautox) have post count limits, so it might turn into 3 or 4 posts on those, but so be it.
Let's touch base on the latest batch of new parts that have been added (or are in the process of going on), that was amassing before my last thread update: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC3306-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC3313-S.jpg New full length headers + cat pipe weighed 44.5 lbs; the stock bits were 49.6 lbs The ARH full length 1-7/8" primary headers and X-pipe with cats were installed, and boy are they nice - but a whipping to install. Two of our guys here were working in 105° inside our (old) shop, and that kind of heat. Still, even with a lift and the right tools it took about 10 hours to install these headers. Not the most fun job. The problem is getting access to the stock headers... we saw no less than 3 methods for this car, but the most straightforward was "just pull the front crossmember out". So the engine was held in place while the car was raised on the lift, the steering shaft was disconnected, as were the strut tops, and the K-member was lowered from underneath. ARH swears you can just "partially remove" the rear of the K-member and save time, but we did it this way instead. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC4149-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC4151-S.jpg Not much to see there, I know... but the sound is better, though still eerily quiet. I guess the stock mufflers are still keeping the sound well under control. At least it made some good gains on the dyno. We took the car to True Street Motorsports in McKinney for a re-turn with the new headers and they found some good gains. The new track tune's "404" whp peak number is +21 whp, which doesn't seem like a huge jump, but you have to take several factors into consideration: this is using the new "track" tune with the wussy throttle map, which before only made 383 whp (vs 392 whp for the "street tune" with the berserko, stock throttle map). Also, it was 107°F when they did the dyno pulls! We were pressed for time so they didn't do a "street tune" pull, but I suspect it will make another 10 whp, like before. And when it cools down? Yea... it won't suck. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC4148-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...scan0151-S.jpg Click dyno graph above for larger image It has been crazy hot in Texas for the past month, and even with "SAE correction" factors, dyno numbers still suffer in this kind of heat. He said it was pulling timing on every dyno run, due to the high temps. Picked up power everywhere above 2600 rpm. We'll re-dyno the car with the new mufflers, when temps are more sane, and I suspect we will see a bigger jump. It sure feels a lot faster. The build quality of the entire system was TOP NOTCH. If you'd like to get some American Racing Headers for your domestic car, let me know - Vorshlag is an ARH dealer now. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...WOT-87dB-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...mph-75dB-S.jpg WOT and 45mph drive-by sound tests with "stock everything" So that same week we did six sound tests; two tests (WOT in 3rd gear and drive-by at 45mph) for each of three configurations of parts. The First set-up was a re-test with OEM airbox/exhaust (WOT = 87 dB, drive-by = 75 dB ), then with the Steeda Cold Air and tune (WOT = 87 dB, drive-by = 80 dB ), then with the Steeda Cold Air + ARH long tubes and cat X-pipe + tune (WOT = 93 dB, drive-by = 75 dB ). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...WOT-87dB-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...WOT-93dB-S.jpg WOT with Steeda CAI and another with the Steeda CAI + Long Tube headers As you can see & hear in the 93 dB test video, the car is still damned quiet at Wide Open Throttle with the new headers, and we're putting the sound meter much closer to the car than the SCCA does at Solo events. The steady speed drive-by tests show no sound increase at all over stock, and driving the car on the highway, it is still absurdly quiet. I went back and looked at our February sound tests, also with the car totally stock, and it was only 82 dB. These tests were made with the same car, same tires, same sound meter, on the same road, meter located in the same location, and it was 5 dB quieter. Can't explain that one. Later this year, possibly after the Watts Link is in (because it adds new exhaust routing challenges), I'll build a custom axle-back exhaust. This will shed some pounds, un-cork some exhaust flow, and probably sound a good deal better. Its still just... too quiet. more below... |
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We just got the custom re-valved Moton Clubsport shocks yesterday, but haven't put them on yet. I will cover that in a future update - the guys here have been working on the 330 motor swap and our massive influx of orders, and I'm buried in the new construction, so these Motons won't go on the car until sometime in August, probably after we've moved into the new shop. Any higher end shock set-up with remote reservoirs and hoses takes a bit of extra time, care, and planning to install properly. Add to that the copious pictures we'll be doing for an installation gallery. We've ordered and received the custom rear upper mounts needed for these shocks and for this chassis, as well as high-end rubber grommets bulkheads for the hose pass-thrus, but there's still a good 8+ hours of wrenching, drilling, reservoir bracket/mounting, bushing machining, and four corner set-up to perform. Never rush an install on high end shocks. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-.../DSC3066-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-.../DSC3064-S.jpg These double adjustable monotube shocks have remote reservoirs, and were customized with both new pistons and new valving from AST/Moton USA. After they dyno'd the off-the-shelf S197 Club Sports they saw the need for some valving changes, and we will work with these guys to get these set-up for autocross and track use on the S197 Mustang over the coming months (the new Vorshlag shop will be 200 feet from AST/Moton USA's facility, so that helps). The custom upper rear mounts converts Moton's "eye to eye" shocks to "eye to pin", but I'll still need to machine some bushings on the lathe to fit these mounts and upper sphericals. This is common on race car shocks, BTW. Vorshlag will stock the rear mounts and supply the custom bushings, plus the front Vorshlag camber plates, allowing customers to buy a Moton shock kit from us that more easily bolts-onto this chassis. The picture (above right) of the rear shock does not show the screw-on spherical upper end, nor the eye-to-pin adapter mounts that we have acquired. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3358-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3361-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3367-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3363-S.jpg The prototype D-Force/Vorshlag 18x10" wheels have been mounted with an extra set of (track abused but still deep tread) 265/40/18 Yokohama AD08 tires, and we've been bombing around on the street for a couple of weeks on these without incident - well, other than the many lustful stares the car now gets rolling on these big meats. They look... frakking awesome. The fit is perfect - we nailed the offset exactly. All of that wheel testing paid off! Spoke to caliper clearance is ridiculous - there's almost an inch between the inside of the spokes and the big Brembo 4-pot. There's more fender room outboard up front and inboard out back, but movement of the wheel flange in either direction would require spacers up front or cause the wheels to poke out in the rear... this is the best "bolt it onto either end of the car and it fits" offset, which most people want. Sure, two separate offsets could allow another 1/2" of width, but most folks don't want a different front and rear wheel. This allows for one wheel to fit anywhere, and easy tire rotation. Stay tuned for more information about the initial pre-purchase specials we will offer on the production batch of S197 18x10's; these wheels will be available exclusively form Vorshlag. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...almountl-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...billetlg-S.jpg Last up, the Odyssey PC680 battery. We picked up one of these 14 pound AGM batteries months back but finally got around to ordering a battery mounting bracket to help install this thing. We ordered a Braille unit for $76 from TireRack. CNC machined, black anodized, beautifully built, but it is made for a Braille battery. Didn't fit the Odyssey, at all, so we found another battery bracket from West Coast Batteries - right from the Odyssey website. $55 and it looks as good if not better than the Braille. Why we didn't see this one and order it first, I cannot explain?! That's now on order and we'll install it soon. That's it for the latest parts - the coverage of our last autocross (SCCA SW Divisional #3) is below. |
Project Update for August 2, 2011 (part 2 of 2): Sorry for the delay on "part 2", but the construction at the new Vorshlag headquarters is eating up every minute of my day. This past week the demolition inside the new space was finished and electrical work is finally getting back on schedule. Let's finish the July updates for the Mustang while I have a few free minutes.
SW Div Autocross #3 - Our most recent event in the car was a 2-day autocross in mid July, where Amy and I drove it (Costas had work stuff pop up). This was the 3rd of 3 SCCA Southwest Divisional Series events, run on a pair of Roger Johnson courses across the biggest patch of concrete around, in College Station, Texas. I went to school there (TAMU!) and ran with the college sports car club for many years (TAMSCC!), and even setup dozens of courses there myself as autocross chairman over the years. The area they had acquired for this weekend was the most prime real estate available at this old air force base, and most importantly it was our first real race in the STX Mustang on concrete , making a great test of the car, just a month before Nationals. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...scan0158-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...scan0159-S.jpg (click thumbnails of course maps to enlarge) The courses were... very narrow-car-centric, very tight, and very busy. And long - it took 25 minutes to walk the damn things. Cones frakking everywhere. They were very challenging to drive, as is evidenced by the large number of cones hit and DNFs over both days. It looked to me that the small/narrow cars did disproportionally well, due to the narrowness of some transitions (where it was a 3 transition section in wide cars, but a straight in a Miata), but "that's autocrossing". Not knocking Roger, as this is what we see at Nationals from some course designers, and he was probably just prepping everyone for what they should expect. Just can be very frustrating in a wide car like the S197 Mustang.
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3377-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3442-S.jpg This time we brought a new tire sprayer (20X better than the last!), and used melted iced water from the cooler to spray the tires, hitting the rears 2-3 times between runs - and boy were they hot, especially after my runs. Since the run order had us running close together, we had a 5 minute clock on us between runs (grid was very well run), which made driver changes pretty hectic again. I guess the car handled as well as we could expect given the course design, excessive heat, and horrific steering shudder. We had the new ARH headers and cat-X-pipe and custom tune, with 21 more hp at the wheels across the rev range for this event as well. Rear tire spin was again a serious issue, but its just another element we have to work with until we can get the Watts and a better differential (lots more fab time and testing needed). I'd rather have too much power than not enough, but if I was smarter I'd have too little weight and less power, as that is what SCCA Solo rewards. Like, say, a 1900 pound ST car in STX. That would be fast! :D http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3380-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3382-S.jpg Our regular, faster STX competitors from the Texas Region were not at this event - the Maxcy's, and Ledbetter's 328is BMWs stayed in Dallas this weekend - so we didn't have much to gauge our performance on, except each others times, STR/STU times, and PAX. Not to knock the two STX competitors who were at this Div, who were in a stone stock RX8 on the OEM tires driving their guts out; they had a lot less prep on their car for the class. My drive in STX class was bad, frustrating, and I coned my fastest runs on both days, which were 1.4 seconds quicker on Saturday and 1 second quicker on Sunday, than my clean runs. I cannot explain this huge gap in my clean vs dirty runs, other than I drove like a hack. I haven't been leaving that much time out there, even in this "difficult to drive car". This was almost as frustrating as the STU Nats win I threw away in 2005 with cones on 2 different runs (as did my co-driver). So this weekend I had 3 cones in 8 runs over 2 days (whereas Amy hit 7 over both days, but never on her quickest runs!), which was still a fairly low cone count for this event (some normally quick drivers had upwards of 3-7+ cones per run and cone counts in the teens for the two days - it was a busy course), but those cones cost me dearly. Even without those cones, and 2.4 seconds quicker times, my PAX placing would have still been "meh". I was 6 seconds behind STR and STU over both days as well - not a good finish. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3410-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3435-S.jpg Left: Terry, driving around a dirty sweeper sideways, like a jackhole. Right: Amy, driving in the same corner, was smooth and fast more below... |
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My dirty driving and her smoothness allowed Amy to "skirt" me pretty badly for both days - around .9 sec. She had me by .4 sec on Saturday and .5 sec on Sunday clean. It was already frustrating enough but then every announcer in each run group on both days had to rub that it in continuously. "Terry's getting skirted!" comments were popping up every 5 minutes, even in the 2 heats we didn't run in... Ugh. Here's a tip - don't co-drive with your wife if she's fast and you have thin skin. ;) Amy was a good sport and didn't kick me while I was down, at least. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3428-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3480-S.jpg Amy drove some solidly quick runs but still barely won the PAXed "women's class" at the event (a class we have in this Division to avoid having a dozen 1 car entry Ladies' classes), and the win pushed her to the 3 event Division Series W class championship. She had to fight for it, beating some quick drivers/cars. My STX class win did the same for me, but with the Maxcy & Ledbetter STX cars not in attendance at 2 of the 3 SW Div events, it was a hollow victory. More important - our PAX times were NOT good, slotting us well down in the 29th and 34th places. Yeesh... This again points clearly how far back the car still is, better than anything else. We weren't keeping up with the two fast STX cars/drivers at regional events, and not PAXing well at these Divisional events, so why would we take this car to Nationals? http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3489-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC3440-S.jpg Long story short - we aren't going to take it to Nationals this year. Its more than just the poor performance of the car (which has been consistently slow over 3 drivers, all of whom have trophied or won at National SCCA events) that's keeping us from bringing the red Mustang to STX/Nationals this year. There's lots of other reasons, but the lack of performance in the car with 3 somewhat proven drivers, and the wacked out steering problem we haven't nailed down yet, are reason enough. I'm also swamped for the entire month with moving Vorshlag into its new building. What I thought would be 8-10 days of construction is looking more like 20-25, including days, nights and weekends. We had to gut the commercial space to make the layout work for us, but at least now we'll have a pretty big shop - that's air conditioned. When its 100-107°F outside its still 100+ inside a non-climate controlled shop. Everyone here will be glad to get out of this crushing heat and into a well lit, spaceous, and air conditioned shop space. I could point to a bunch of other reasons, like the continued allowance of the ST>STX "upclass jumping" (aka: poaching), which is finally supposed to end in 2012. Then there's the expense of going to Nationals; we'll drop $3000+ in entry fees, fuel towing to/from Lincoln from Dallas, hotel rooms, and food + each of us will lose a week of work. Mostly its the performance of the car and the timing with our shop move. More preparation needed - Costas and I would consider the car about "half-prepped", at best. We still have the single adjustable shocks on there, and however good they may be, they are still single adjustable shocks and can only get us so far if conditions change or we need to alter the set-up. We do have the Moton Club Sport doubles revalved, and pretty much ready to go onto the car, as of last Friday - but its going to take 1-2 days of testing to get the car reliably fast, possibly including a revalve of the shocks, and we just don't have the days to attack that this month. We're out of time, and the car is just not ready. We've had a dozen people say "just slap some Hoosiers on it and run ESP", but there's a lot more to ESP prep than big gumball tires, and I'm not fool enough to think we'd keep up with Madderash, Merideth, or Strano in an STX prepped car with Hoosiers thrown on at the last minute. We're not giving up on the Mustang. I agreed up front to give it 2 years in STX, and that's what we plan to do. Next season we will have time to make a better lateral locating device for the solid rear axle, like a Watts Link, which the car needs for several reasons. Plus there are lots of rear suspension tweaks in STX, unique to a stick axle car, we can still exploit that we just haven't touched. We also never got a chance to swap in/tune/test with an aftermarket differential, which any autocrossed car with over 400 whp desperately needs, especially one that comes with a craptastic clutch-style diff like this car. The electronic steering "issue" is also pretty massive, getting worse, and Ford cannot seem to fix it at the moment. You don't take a broken car to Nationals. And the car isn't even competitive locally, yet. It's as simple is that, and all 3 drivers were in agreement for this year. We ran out of time with respect to testing and additional parts development, and just were not seeing the results we needed to see in the last 2 months of running events to then invest thousands of dollars to go get ~30-40th place in STX at Nationals, especially when ST cars were allowed to run in STX that weigh half as much as ours'. I hate excuses, but we do have quite a long list amassed this time. :D We've had several choice co-drives offered for Nationals for Costas, myself, and Amy, and as much as those are appreciated, the business construction/move work is really where we need to be spending our time this month. So we'll spend August setting up the new shop instead of last minute testing, parts installation, and a week in Lincoln. We have the $2011 Challenge to prep for in just 2 month's time as well, and our crapcan E30 V8 needs a lot of repair and set-up work to get ready for that. After that event in early October, we'll jump back to the Mustang (and also the TTD 330 with it's new motor, the E46 LS1 Alpha car development, the black E36 M3 LS1 car, and many other project cars in the Vorshlag shop). Its a bitter pill to swallow, and I'm going to miss being at Nationals this year, but I've been enough times in a row to afford to skip this year. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...2-SWDiv3-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ay2-Run4-S.jpg Click the thumbnails above for HiDef videos from Day 1 (Amy, left) and Day 2 (Terry, right) from the Divisional An opportunity popped up and we will have the Mustang in a booth at the Yellow Rose Classic car show Aug 13-14th in Ft Worth, if you happen to be going stop by and say "hi". Look for us right across from the SCCA Texas Region folks. I don't know if I'll be there both days, but the car and someone from Vorshlag will be. :) Since we won't be at the Solo Nationals, please go here to request Vorshlag decals for your car. We can make them to order in a few different colors, but already have lots of 24" decals ready to mail out in black, silver and white. VTPP Testers at Nationals need to be running Vorshlag decals, per VTPP agreements. AST/Moton will have their trailer at Nationals and will have a limited number of Vorshlag decals on hand. Good luck to all of the drivers at Nats this year! |
Project Update for Nov 23, 2011: To our USA friends, Happy Thanksgiving! After over 2 months off from autocrossing in the Mustang (GRM Challenge, a NASA track day, a Hankook Arrive and Drive, plus some other events were jammed in there) Amy and I managed to get it to the last Texas Region SCCA autocross of the year this past Sunday, the 20th. It was run at the Lone Star Park horse track parking lot, my "not so favorite" local autocross site. The site is big, less than an hour from my house, has some cool elevation changes and on-site restroom facilities, so I should love it. It just has a lower grip surface that comes apart badly. It makes for a very narrow "clean line" that you have to stay on at all costs.
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6053-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...DSC6074a-S.jpg Last 2011 Autocross Overall, it was actually a very fun day, surface degradation notwithstanding. Jarrett Jan laid out a pretty fun course that was technically challenging, plenty long (60 seconds), yet well marked. The hard working SCCA crew spent some serious time cleaning the course surface before the first runs, using brooms and air blowers to move hundreds of pounds of gravel off line. So the first run group has some clean course runs. :) The weather was looking very iffy (high chance of rain), and due to a site-forced re-scheduling, the event was moved a week back from its original date, so we were expecting a very low turn-out - but 82 racers made it out and we had a great event, running in STU and STU-W. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6078-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6084-S.jpg New Tires, Wheels, DDP pistons in AST struts So yea, if you were paying attention just then we didn't run in STX. Let me back up a bit to explain why. In July of this year Amy won a random drawing for a free set of Bridgestones at the NSTC event. One of those "fill out this survey" deals. Whatever the reason for the tires, Amy already had a great relationship with Bridgestone for several years, after winning a National Championship (STU-L) on them in 2007 and being sponsored driver in 2008. So we were excited to be running their tires again, no matter how we got them. :) They sent us a set of 275/40/18 RE-11s (the biggest 18" size they made, by the way) and a big box of decals, and we mounted them up on the D-Force 18x10" wheels on Friday before the autocross. I gladly put on all of the decals they sent - give me $1400 of free tires and I'll damn sure run your decals! http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6005-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...DSC6030a-S.jpg We've got pallets of these 18x10" wheels (5x114.3 mm PCD, fits '05-up Mustang and '08+ Subaru Impreza; I'm almost 100% certain it fits the RX8 as well - will know soon!) arriving at Vorshlag right around the end of this year ($300, 19 lbs!) so I really wanted to do an autocross and a track day on the wheels first, and fit them with something wide like these 275s - which fit the 10" wheels perfectly. Sure, a wider tire would work even better, and for a more serious STU effort we would go with a 285mm tire. It was just that the widest RE-11 was this 275, so that's what we asked for and received. We'll use them for street use, drag racing, maybe a random track day, and this last autocross of the year. Good test miles on the D-Force wheels, for sure. I was really impressed by these RE-11 - I think its just as fast and as competitive as the Dunlop, Hankook, or Yokohama. We drove that day in the cold and later when it warmed up a bit, and it was ripping up pavement. I think the RE-11's higher price and "lemming effect" of the online community has given this tire a bad rap. I'm going to start keeping the RE-11 on my "go to" list for Street Touring choices. Also street drove on them Monday in the rain and I was able to use 100% full throttle in 1st gear. That's never happened before on this car... the Pirelli's are a joke in the wet. These RE-11s are stupid good in the wet. These wider/taller tires fit the 10" wide wheels and the car PERFECTLY, with the tall 40 series sidewall making for great ride quality on the street. Filled out the big wheel openings and were only 1/2" shorter than the mammoth 255/40/19 tires it came with. Anything we can do to lessen the effective rear gear ratio (3.31) is a plus, extending 2nd gear speeds even higher - into the mid 70 mph range @ 7800 rpm. So I was curious if the wider and significantly taller tires would be a significant performance improvement, going from the 18x9" wheel and 265/35/18 Hankook RS-3s to the 18x10" wheel and 275/40/18 RE-11s. The 265 Hankooks had so much shorter and stiffer sidewalls, I felt the 'Stones would be a big improvement. And I was right. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6031-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...DSC6028a-S.jpg We also got to try out some brand new shock pistons from AST - their new Double Digressive Pistons, or DDPs, were installed into our 4100 front struts a few weeks ago. We have Moton Clubsport doubles ready to install for this car but have been waiting to try the DDP equipped (and renamed) 4150 AST shocks at both autocross and track events first, before we switch to the Mo's. I'm glad we waited! These DDP pistons are amazing - they ride even better on the street than before, but when you turn up the knobs they make some SERIOUS rebound forces. This piston is a game changer, and starting in 2012 all 4000 series ASTs will have these pistons (and a new shock name). Be prepared for a slight price increase on the AST 4000 series on Jan 1st 2012 - but the added costs will include these DDP pistons, improved top guides, upgraded seals, aluminum shock bodies, and several other innovations - all things learned from racing in GRAND AM in 2011 (where ASTs took 28 of the 30 podium positions in GS for the year!). The new 4150 is coming soon... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-...0/S/scan-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-...ddp-scan-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-..._56F6B-S-1.jpg (click 2 left images for larger sizes) This was also our first "normal" autocross event running with the additional ~30 whp from the ARH full length headers. We picked the larger 1-7/8" primary headers with their cat equipped X-pipe, and it added a very noticeable bump in power across the entire RPM range, but strangely added no additional outside noise (as measured in our WOT and drive-by sound tests - see previous thread entries here). The car feels so much quicker, but I was worried it would be even harder to control wheelspin on corner exits. more below... |
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http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6117-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...DSC6116b-S.jpg Boy was I ever wrong. The other changes (wheel, tire, and DDP pistons) must have combined to do something magic to the car - it had corner exit grip in 2nd gear like NEVER before. As long as I kept the outside/loaded tires on the clean line it was clawing out of corners, and the car was FAST. I was running in STU since it was +10mm out of spec for STX, but I still compared times to the serious STX we have in our region, with some outside region drivers arriving as well (Paul Carrig's DSG/AWD VW). So STX ran in heat #2, and I ran in heat #3, at the end of the day when the course was the dirtiest possible (there were piles of gravel just offline). Still, for the first time all year I was able to beat Ledbetter and his co-driver Brian in their 328is, and was only .018 sec behind Maxcy in his 328is STX car. That was nice, and we have still barely scratched the surface of the prep on this car. Amy won the PAXed "Womens" class, having to put an extra 1.1 seconds on Jen Maxcy in her STX car to win by a scant .075 sec on PAX, since the STU factor is so much worse (Jen won the W class for the year - congrats!). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...P-112011-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...4-112011-S.jpg Left: Terry's Run 4 in-car video Right: Amy's 4th run (timer borked). Her 3rd run is here, which won "W". So in the end, I PAXed 13th overall, which was my best PAX finish in a long time; Amy PAXed 31st, which is far from her best. She was a full 2 seconds back from my times but I think the unexpected corner exit grip, lateral grip and braking traction from the new tires/shocks/wheels threw her way off. She needs more seat time to adjust. The car just WORKED like it never has before, and my spaz-monkey driving style of throwing the car on its nose under heavy Left Foot Braking and being super aggressive on the throttle on exit finally worked for me. It was just... hooked up. I dunno. I was also extra careful to keep the outside tires on the clean line (driving on gravel with the inboard tires, and she seemed to get caught out in the marbles on one showcase turn on every run. We don't know what she ran on her 4th run (timer error) but I hand timed the video at a nearly identical 62.3 sec time, so there was no hero run lost for her. Two odd things didn't happen at this event: the steering never got into its feedback loop on me, and the brakes are completely ICE mode free, and I pushed the HELL out of the brakes. Amy said she noticed one steering shudder moment coming out of one slalom but that was it. The HP+ pads were rock solid but are getting below 1/2 pad thickness. I noticed some brake pedal squishiness in runs 3 and 4, and mention it in the video (I remind myself of these things in verbal "notes" when I am driving on camera; had totally forgotten about that until I watched it today). We will bleed the brakes soon and keep an eye on the fluid change intervals (Motul600). Still gong to keep working on a steering rack solution, which will happen over the winter (probably just buy a new electric steering rack and stick it in the car). Results and Links
Obviously an STU car should have been a full second quicker than STX, but this was still a monumental showing, and I have plenty of excuses! :D One, this is hardly maxed out for STU - I'd be running an 11" wide wheel with a 285mm tire for that class. We also didn't have the race seats in for this event (took them out for the winter), which hurt us sitting in the barcalounger stock seats. Lastly the front camber was set to minimum on one side, which really didn't help. Long story there: basically there was a very busy week at the shop and the Mustang didn't get any pre-race preparation this week except for me mounting the wheels/tires and adding Bridgestone decals when I came into the shop for a bit on Saturday, between other fires I worked on that day. We had removed one corner of the front suspension this past week to take measurements for an all-new S197 camber plate design, and we never re-set the camber on that corner. Doh. It was set on -2.0° on the RF and -3.2° on the LF, so it cornered better one way than the other. I guess we push my cars down to a lower priority due to increased amount of customer service work. ;) http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6088-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6087-S.jpg Anyway, it was an encouraging event when compared to STX and other classes with very talented drivers in them, more than the "near win" autocross in September, which was on the freagin TMS Road Course (where I should have easily won STX with the +200 hp advantage, but drove like an ass). These STX cars I'm running against are FAST, and a good gauge. We had Mark Sipe in his STX RX8 there as well, running in "X" class (with a 60.5+1), and fast STS drivers running in the 59.5-60.0 range (also in X). So we are at least "in the ballpark" of where I think we should be, for STX. If we can get the rear suspension tweaked to put power down like this on the 265s, we might actually have a shot in this big pony car pig (40 series 265s). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6097-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6146-S.jpg Oh! We finally got the 3" 304L mandrel bent exhaust bends built and in stock this week, so we're busy building our first customer dual 3" mandrel stainless exhaust with the new bits. Ryan has TIG welded up a nice system so far, and I can't wait to let him loose on the Mustang here, which still has the OEM heavy/restrictive/stupid quiet "after cat" exhaust. Once that is on I will take the car back to True Street Motorsports for another custom dyno tune, and finally get the "street" tune" we didn't have time for before. I think it will exceed 430 whp, in STX legal trim (last dyno pull was done in 107°F August temperature). It could be knocking on the door of 500 crank hp, which is pretty cool. We're going to hit the 1/4 mile dragstrip right after that, and I better see some low 12 second ETs @ 115 mph (it ran 12.9@109 mph in bone stock trim). Then we have LOTS of rear suspension development and even some STX legal aero bits to build for the car over the winter. Hankook just came out with a big 265/40/18 RS-3 that needs a look and I still have yet to test on the rear 17x9/265/40/17 Dunlops. I'll check back into this thread as soon as we have something new to show... probably December. There's also a track at at ECR on Dec 10th we might take this out for a few laps in. PRI is Dec 1-3, and a LeMons race Dec 17th.. its looking like a hectic month. Cheers, |
Project Update for Dec 9, 2011: There's an ECR track day this Saturday (ECR Toy Run) and AJ and Ryan have been wrenching this week on both our 2001 BMW 330 and the 2011 Mustang, to take these two cars out for one last blast around the track for the year. The BMW hasn't been on track or autocrossed in over a year, but its been running around with its fresh 2005 motor for a couple of months and and we've finally found all of the clunks and bangs and repaired them (the ball joints in fairly new front control arms had already sh!t the bed! Lesson learned: don't buy cheap, no-name replacement parts).
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6299-M.jpg Before we got started on the exhaust, I had AJ swap the race seats back in, then align, corner weigh and corner balance the Mustang. The weights were looking good - this was before the exhaust work lined out below. The weight above (3483) was with the trunk junk still installed; it was 3472 lbs with low fuel (autocross weight) and the junk out, so it is slowly getting lower. Not too terrible for this big pig - the car started out life at 3563 lbs w/o fuel, and we've seen over 3600 lbs stock, with some gas in the tank. The 18x10's and the 275/40/18 tires are a bit heavier than the normal 18x9/265 tires we run, so knock off another 40 pounds out for the "STX" autocross weight. And we're going to get some weight out of the exhaust, today... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6310-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6311-S.jpg The Mustang is getting a new, 304SS, 3" mandrel bent, "after-X" exhaust here at Vorshlag today. It has been running around with the ARH 1-7/8" primary full length headers, the ARH catted X-pipe, but the stock rear exhaust section from just after the X. The drive-by sound test numbers didn't go up at all with the headers, which meant the stock mufflers were choking the the exhaust noise and flow down considerably. The stock mufflers looked heavy, too, and the over-axle section and resonators are "factory crushed" with crazy crimps and "clearance" bends. Its been bugging me for months, and we finally found time to attack the Mustang after our fabricator finished with McCall's Z3M dual 3" exhaust (which is incredible). Did I mention that Vorshlag is offering custom mandrel bent exhaust fabrication now? :D http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6307-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6302-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6312-S.jpg I was right about the Mustang's stock mufflers - they are 25 pounds each! The after-X exhaust section with mufflers was 75 pounds just by itself. Factory exhausts are ALWAYS crazy heavy, and restrictive, and too quiet. We'll fix that! http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6320-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6316-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6318-S.jpg While Ryan was TIG welding up the exhaust AJ was swapping to the dedicated set of track rotors and pads, plus giving the car a brake fluid flush. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6330-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6332-S.jpg This is the final routing, above. It gets within 2 inches of a fuel filler line so we wrapped that part of the exhaust with header wrap, just to be extra safe (there was zero issue with it after 2 drivers tracked it all day). To see how much weight the new dual 3" exhaust shed, we did a quick scale check as it came down - 3442 lbs. So it lost exactly 30 more pounds just in the rear exhaust. Most of that was in the mufflers, but some was in the larger diameter 16 gauge pipes, too. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6333-M.jpg After we got home that night, before we went out to grab some dinner in the Mustang, I shot a little video (below) of Amy in the Mustang starting it up, idling, and a little blip of the throttle. It sounds pretty subdued at idle and cruising around, but at WOT it is definitely "easier to hear the engine" now. :D http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6331-S.jpg click for video of exhaust test Next week we'll take the Mustang back to True Street and have it re-dyno tuned, and finally get the damned "street" tune, that takes out our weaker "autocross" throttle mapping. I will do another thread update after the dyno runs, with a report of how the track event went (Mustang was great!), what times it at ECR, etc. Thanks, |
Project Update for Dec 21, 2011: So much has been going on with my racing schedule in the past 2 weeks, sorry for the delayed update. Dec 10th I drove my 330 BMW and our 2011 Mustang GT at the ECR Toy run on the 10th, then did a 4 hour karting enduro at DKC Dec 13th, then dyno'd the Mustang on the 15th, then drove 275 miles worth of laps in a 15 hour LeMons race at ECR Dec 17-18th. And December is usually a slow month on our race schedule?!
So the pertinent bits for this thread are the dyno number and the ECR track day in the Mustang. Yes, I said I wasn't tracking the Mustang anymore, but we had sold Amy's 1997 M3 already, she wanted something to run at this event (we both run it each year), and I wanted to get one more track day in with the new AST 4150 style DDP pistons and valving we were working with AST-USA to verify. The street ride on full soft was better than ever with the new pistons/base valving, and it worked extremely well at the last 2 autocross events. If we could get one track day in, with the knobs turned up, it would be a great data point. And not to mention, ECR is very bumpy. So I broke my promise to myself - we tracked the Mustang again. And OMFG, I'm so glad we did! :D Track Day in Mustang + BMW As I already posted about in the BMW 330 project thread, the folks who run the 2.5 mile road course at Eagles Canyon Raceway always put on a good "fun" track day every December. Its only $50 + a toy + some canned goods to run, makes for great donations to local families in need, and which brings out all sorts of casual racers that want to run on track for lower costs + a few serious track guys/racers that want to squeeze in a track event at the very end of the year. I guess we fell into the latter group, but barely. :p Pictures and videos are here. ECR put on another great Toy Run event, with 90+ cars in attendance on a cold 30°F wintery day. The track was mostly dry from previous rains and the weather warmed up into the mid 50s that afternoon, so we had a great time, peeling layers of clothing off as the day warmed up. The plan was to for me to primarily run sessions in the BMW 330 in Red group, logging its first track miles on the "new" 2005 M54 longblock, and its first miles driven in anger in over a year. Brought the transponder charged up, had sticker 285 R6s mounted (which we can just barely squeeze into the build for TTD use), so I planned on putting in a mild first session, coming in and checking everything. Then go out and pound out a lot of laps in it, steadily pushing the car and trying to put in a quick time. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6356-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6394-S.jpg Amy was to drive the Mustang in the same group all day, and just have fun. Towards the end of the day I was going to swap cars with her for the last session (each group had five 20 minute sessions on track scheduled), slap on the transponder, and see what the Mustang would do, too. I've driven literally hundreds of laps at ECR since my first NASA TT event there in 2008 (where I set the TTU record, and fastest TT time in the old E36 LSx Alpha car), so I knew the track and it would give us a good baseline for the Mustang. When we put the very-revised/DDP equipped/updated Moton Club Sport doubles on the Mustang (soon), we'll go back to ECR and re-test the Mustang with the same wheels/tires/power and see where we pick up time. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC6363-M.jpg If you wanted to, the 275mm tires could be vaporized like this all day - in 3rd gear The best laid plans... first of all they did not have the AMB timing system turned on, and wouldn't. It was a long shot, but I had hoped they would. So no "real" times. Damn it - should have pulled the trigger on that new on-board lap timer/data logger. Oh well, I figured I'd find someone to hand-time both cars for me towards the end of the day, when it warmed up and we'd be quicker anyway. So we both went out in Red, which was the very first session on track at 9 am, and it was frakking COLD. I warmed up the BMW's tires, trying to scrub them in, and put in about 9 trouble-free laps over 20 minutes in it. Never saw Amy in the Mustang - she was on the other side of the track each lap, running about the same times as me. The 330 felt fine, but there was some unusually SLOW traffic in this group (one of which was moved down to Blue group later, some to Yellow), so I just took it easy, shifted the motor early (5500 rpm), and just tried to scrub in the tires and not abuse the brakes. The HP+ pads on the 330 were fairly thin (the replacements we had ordered weeks before arrived the next Wednesday), so it wouldn't stop 100% for more than 1-2 lap bursts. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4360-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4365-S.jpg Got in-car video driving the BMW in this first session, but only ran a 2:07, with plenty of mistakes. Meh, not very quick, but that was already 3 seconds quicker than its previous best, which was a NASA TTD record. So it wasn't a totally wasted effort. Came in the pits and the BMW had developed a tiny leak at the coolant reservoir. Freak thing, where the OEM bracket flexed and let the tank rub a pulley, and didn't start to leak until I was already off track, and just a trickle at that. Long story short - it went onto the trailer. Amy had a blast in the Mustang, said it was working great, so I took the 5.0 out during the next Yellow group and she stayed running in Red, so we doubled up sessions in the same car. Car didn't care... just asked for more fuel, and more abuse! http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6405-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6424-S.jpg Getting into the Mustang and driving it on track for the first time in 6 months... man, I had missed THAT! And now the car had more power than at any other track sessions before (we had 100% stock dreivetrain/power mods on it before). Every track event I've done since driving the Mustang last were in LeMons cars, the BMW, or something else with a lot less than 430 whp. Driving the Mustang on track with the newly added horsepower (ARH full length headers + ARH X-pipe + cold air + Vorshlag x-back exhaust + tune) and 275mm grip on the 18x10s and new AST 4150 DDP pistons was a BLAST, even if it was on Amy's full street/daily driver set-up. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Instruct.../DSC3295-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6331-S.jpg The new Vorshlag built dual 3" exhaust behind the ARH 1-7/8" full lengths sounded GOOD, and we had several drivers, spectators, and corner workers walk up and tell us that "that thing is the best sounding car on track today!", and it was. Sweet, sweet V8 sounds, but not terribly loud. The sound it made from 5000-7000 rpm... oh, it made my man parts tingle. I opened the hood in grid and a swarm of people came by to gawk at the clean, tidy engine bay. Got a lot of "That thing blew by me like I was STOPPED!" comments from Yellow group drivers. more below... |
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http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4374-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4381-S.jpg So Amy and I kept taking it out in Red & Yellow and I led some "Lead-Follow" groups during a few Green groups as well (hazards on, about 60% pace, for to show the proper line to n00bs without freaking them out). All we needed for the car was fuel - but it averaged 11.8 mpg, running some hand timed 2:03 laps. Amy had some low 2:10s, and with a little coaching she'll find every ounce of speed I had. So yea, the Mustang on street tires was 4 seconds a lap faster than the TTD prepped BMW 330 on 285mm Hoosiers. Horsepower. 'Merca! Current track impressions: This Mustang probably still needs some dedicated brake cooling ducts, as I could get the DTC-60 Hawk pads a little warm if I was pushing the brakes 100% for a couple of laps, but it still STOPS. Might switch to a Porterfield pad someone has put me onto. Some added aero wouldn't hurt, as it has the ample power to convert into some downforce. The car was pretty much just flawless on track, and too damned much fun. No temperature issues at all, even with 2 drivers driving it back to back to back. I could hoon it in 3rd gear in slow corners, or drive it nicer and put down some decent laps. Played with a certain hot TT driver's E92 M3 on similar tires and the Mustang came out ahead. I had it all on video, but all of the in-car from the Mustang was borked when we looked at it the next day. Gah! It was so good, with a passenger hooting and laughing the whole time. So, I think any more power in the Mustang and it would be begging for Hoosiers... Hell, its already begging for Hoosiers. I gotta quit tracking this still too-new car. Its just so much more fun to drive than my "dedicated track car" BMW with M54 power! New Tune + Dyno Number So we had hoped to get the Mustang over to the local tuner shop we use for this car (True Street Motorsports in McKinney, TX) and have them put on a fresh tune for the car, now that its not 108°F outside like it was last August (where it made 404 whp) + we had the new rear exhaust on (which might add a little power) + make us the "Street Tune" version we ran out of time in August for, which uses all of the throttle travel all of the time (we have had an RPM-based throttle stop / traction control built into the EFI programming for autocross use for many months). Their shop was super busy and they couldn't squeeze us in until after the ECR Track Day, so we took the car by after the event. They pulled it in off the street and it made 426 whp on the old "traction control" track tune. Wow, that call got me excited! They fiddled around a bit and settled on 430 whp / 406 wtq, still with the limited throttle track tune (shown below). Didn't take much work. That's still a 100% STX class legal + street legal set-up, with cats, and mufflers. Too bad its still 3400 pounds and limited to 265mm tires for this class, which is far too heavy to be a threat there. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...g-121511-M.jpg the August "hot as hell in the dyno cell" 404 whp run is shown under the more realistic but still corrected 430 whp dyno pull This Coyote 5.0L V8 motor will RUIN you - 100% stock longblock, just a few bolt-ons and a pump gas tune, and its making 430 wheel??? It still gets great mileage, idles quietly, and pulls hard to 7000 and beyond. Its making more than 400 whp from 5200-7000 rpm. With the Boss302 intake manifold it would keep making more and more power up to 7500 (those intakes are amazing), but sadly that intake swap isn't legal in STX. But it is for ESP, if you were to build a Boss302 engined Mustang for that class. Mmmm, big grip and even more power - it sure is tempting. So TSM made a street tune for me as well, with the "crazy throttle" mapping that comes with it from the factory. I've been driving around on that, and its definitely more "frisky". This tune makes even more power than the Track map, but I don't have that dyno print-out yet (it made an additional 11 whp before on the "street" map). I'll post that up later when I can go get a copy of it from the TSM guys. What's Next in the Mustang? I'll post up more about the Mustang when we make changes, over the winter. So much going on I can't even get it all down on the screen. Still have a good plan for attacking STX next year - its all about getting the power to the ground. There are some new 265mm 140+ treadwear tires I want to test, and I have major rear suspension updates planned, with some additional weight loss, and of course - more horsepower. Too much is never enough! >:D PS: I love driving this Mustang on track so much I'm looking for another S197 chassis to build into a dedicated track car here at Vorshlag. I'll go into more detail when/if we find a car for the right price. If you have a line on a lower cost/theft recovery/stripped/drivetrain-less S197 Mustang (2005+), please drop me a line. Just don't tell my wife! A rolling chassis with no interior or drivetrain is OK, and even front end damage is fine. The stock drivetrain, front sheetmetal, hood, trunk, glass, brakes, wheels, interior, and lower K-member are all going away. V6 or V8 cars. Plenty of 18x10" Mustang Wheels Still Available for Pre-Order We are still trying to get the word out about the first batch of 18x10 ET43 wheels I ordered from D-Force for the S197 Mustang and GR Impreza chassis. It has been two weeks since we made the product announcement post and started taking pre-orders. We had high expectations for these wheels and thought they'd be met by the Mustang and Subaru enthusiast community with a warmer reception, even though this batch is being sold as a pre-order and not a direct sale straight from inventory. The reasons we thought these wheels would be more popular are:
We understand that there is a somewhat unknown economic outlook right now, and in the U.S. here there is the added pressure of presidential election news craziness, but this is still a very well priced wheel for what it is. This is the first 18x10" wheel made for this car that fits and doesn't cost over $600 per corner. It is less than HALF the price of the BBS wheel, which you cannot even find in stock at most times. The prototype set has been thoroughly tested on the street, autocross course and track. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC3360-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-...99-fixed-S.jpg If you are reading this Mustang thread then you probably care a little about what we do here at Vorshlag. We're trying to innovate, create and make better suspension & in this case wheel products that fit the enthusiast market needs. Ordering the huge number of wheels necessary to get an 18x10" direct-fit wheel made for S197 Mustang and GR Subaru chassis (and I've been told by very reliable sources this size + offset fits the RX8 as well) was a big risk for us. Future new wheel product offerings will depend on how this experiment goes. We do not need to pre-sell all of the wheels, but we had hoped that more people would be stepping up after two weeks than we have seen. Please, if you or anyone you know has a 2005-up Mustang or 2008-up Subaru STI, please point them to this Product Announcement: http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8008 Use your social media outlets as well - Twitter, Facebook, Google+. We are in love with these wheels. They are so light, so big, fit these cars so well, and I want them on all of my own cars. I can just only use so many myself, you know? Or order a set for yourself - you deserve a set of proper 18x10" wheels that do not weigh 30 pounds each! :) Thanks for your help. |
Project Update for Jan 26, 2012: Well we've been getting busier back in the shop area, performing various fabrication work, repairs and upgrades on customer cars. We have managed to sneak in some work on our 2011 Mustang since the last update, which I'll cover here briefly (we've also worked on our E30 V8 and our E46 330 recently, both of which need project thread updates). Hmm, after putting it all down there's actually a lot to show in this update - I probably should have broken this up earlier into 2 posts (and on some forums where I cross-post this thread its going to be 3 or 4 segments, so keep reading).
Exhaust V 2.0 First, the custom dual 3" exhaust we built here at Vorshlag has been heavily revised. The various 3" mandrel 304SS bends we had on hand the first time did not include a 120° bend, which is very helpful when making the over-the-solid-axle routing. Now that we stock a LOT more bends we were able to route it better and have lots more clearance at full bump travel. We confirmed the routing with the springs removed and the axle at full bump travel, then added even more room. The 3" tubes are routed over and through the panhard bar and structure with space to everything surrounding them. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7396-M.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7391-M.jpg It is crowded under there, but Ryan made it fit great and look beautiful with ample clearance everywhere. There's so much more room to the fuel line than before that this version didn't need header wrap insulation there. You can see how the left and right tubes are asymmetric - that's due to the panhard mounting and the fuel line differences side-to-side. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7354-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7355-S.jpg The two pre-axle "slip-fit joint" clamps were removed and a pair of flanged V-band clamp joints were welded in their place. This ensures a leak-free connection at this location. Much quieter now after driving the car - we will never use a slip-fit exhaust joint in this shop again. It was a test, after other shops had said they have used them successfully, but we're not going to do it again. V-bands or nothing. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6331-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7390-S.jpg The 409 stainless steel (it is magnetic so it has to be a 400 series) Flowmaster Series 44 mufflers came new with a silver painted finish (see above left pic) - it looks like the same coating they put on their carbon steel mufflers. Well of course this burns off and makes a stinky mess. While the exhaust was off for this re-work we used some Scoth-Brite pads and paint thinner to get the rest of this silver gunk off, which left the mufflers in their natural "bronze" finish (after several weeks of use). Don't know why they bother painting them - next time we use these FM mufflers we'll remove the finish completely before putting them on a car. Boss302 Leguna Seca Splitter So we've been looking at this OEM piece for some time and figured, what the hell? Let's try putting one on our Mustang and do some track testing to verify if it is working (adding downforce/lowering times). We'll use the aero test procedure detailed in Neil Roberts' ThinkFAST book, of course. These LS units sell for $700-750 and "bolt on" with the CS lower valance we added (that became optional mid-2011 model year). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7329-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7369-S.jpg Well it took some time to install it - figure 2 to 3 hours to be safe. The whole front bumper cover has to come off, more than once. The LS splitter is indeed made to fit this CS lower valance, and it shows, but the install was tedious with so many bolts/clips and the test fitting to line up the support strut "through holes". Once finished and put together for the first time, it can then go on and off in 2-3 minutes (which we might do to ease trailer loading/unloading and prevent an "oops!" on the street). We were missing 14 pieces from the hardware kit, so figure in a trip to a specialty hardware store if you get this thing. The counter-sunk mounting hardware is all M6-1.0, so are the 22 qty nut-clips they mate to; our kit was 14 clips short but Ford is supposed to be sending an extra hardware kit "soon". Zero instructions, so AJ looked online for some tips (not much help) then figured the rest out on his own. We might make an instruction guide for this in the future. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7345-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7344-S.jpg Of course we weighed everything before it went onto the car. Looks like the ABS plastic splitter itself (which is thick!) is 12.2 pounds, sticks out past the bumper 5" exactly (American Iron class limit), and the hardware and bolt-on strut mount for the splitter weighs another 5.5 pounds. So will this thing produce enough downforce to offset the $700 cost and 17.7 pounds of added junk? I don't know - what do you think? The AI class 2010+ Mustang racers seem to use this thing, as do the pro racers in the S197. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7372-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7362-S.jpg Shazam! That thing is big. But no, I wouldn't stand on it... We've street tested it today and it works fine there. Only one light scrape on a very steep parking lot entrance incline that Amy had trouble with before the splitter, so we'll be extra careful there. If she scrapes it up too much in street driving we'll pull it off and only use it for track events, and install it at the track. Its not too low for street use even at our lowered ride height, really, if you drive carefully and have half a brain. Again with an electric impact it only takes 2-3 minutes to swap it on/off now that all of the brackets and nut-clips are installed. Brake Pads + Cooling After the track event last month at ECR, AJ swapped the rotors and pads from the Hawk DTC-70s back to the HP+ pads and the street rotors. The DTCs were melted to slag and are in the trash bin. The HP+ pads don't look much better. Me thinks these Hawk pads are full of filler - it would explain their low price point, and their low threshold of abuse. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6489-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6488-S.jpg I was only getting 2-3 hot laps on the DTC-70s at ECR before I noticed significant brake fade and had to take a cool down lap. We're going to switch to a higher cost set of race pads before the next track event. PFC 01, Ferodo R4S, something. We're also going to make a brake cooling kit for the car. After reading about the issues with installation on the Ford kit, plus the added hassles of making something that is STX legal (cannot cut the fender liners for cooling hose), we're going to take a stab at it here. According to many, cooling air to the rotors via the two 3" ducts on the CS lower valance helps tremendously when used on track. more below... |
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Wait... Track Events??? Yes, track events. I am breaking my own, very sensible rule of no longer tracking this "still too new" car yet again. It just rolled 10,000 miles today, so I guess the new has worn off!! Hehe. I'm going to try to hit several NASA Time Trial events this year in the Mustang - I just had too much fun driving it on track with the extra grip and new horsepower in December. Due to the massive restrictions of the base classing that NASA levies against this car, I'm moving it out of TTB, skipping TTA completely (I added up 64 points of mods from aero, shocks and tires alone!) and slipping right into TTS (8.7:1 pounds per hp) - which is a simpler power-to-weight class. It probably won't do well against the modded Corvettes and other creations that show up in TTS but at least I won't be counting every point, taking 4 points for having no OEM wing, 2 points for the stock brakes, etc, etc. I could literally build an STX classed autocross car, still on street tires, that was up into TTS class on points alone. I know I know... those are the rules for TT, but I'm just going to bypass all of that and go have fun. With the 315mm Kumho gumballs, the current 430 whp, and the added aero bits in store we might not be that slow, but who knows until we track it? I'm ALWAYS fast when bench racing! :) The car is under the power-to-weight limit with 3650 pounds (with driver) and 430 whp - but only just. I'll have my dyno chart and classing work sheet ready at the next NASA event, in case I screw up and stumble upon a competitive set-up. Bad part is that I'm missing the first two NASA Texas events, due to scheduling conflicts, which sucks (MSR-H and MSR-C). I'm not happy about this AT ALL but these two were unavoidable. I will be at the April TWS event and should have two more track test days before TWS (TK2K12/GSS and Pro-Touring/HHR). NASA Texas has 9 events planned this year in this region so we could have plenty of chances to go have fun in TTS. 315/35/18 Tires on 18x10 D-Force If we're running in TTS we could use wider tires, right? We also had several S197 Mustang autocrossers ask if we knew if 315mm tires would fit the car on our new D-Force 18x10" wheels. I had my doubts about using a tire that wide on "only" a 10" wide wheel, but I gave it a try. Ordered a set of 315/35/18 Kumho V710 R compounds to see... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7337-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7361-S.jpg This set actually came free from Kumho - our spoils from winning the $2011 GRM Challenge (and our E30 V8 is on the cover of the next GRM mag!). So yesterday I took one of the 18x10s and mounted one of the 315mm Kumhos, which is shown above. It looks a bit squeezed on the wheel, to say the least. For me, I'd want an 11" wide wheel for a tire that big, or maybe an 11.5". But for some autocrossers, this is fine (look at some of the crazy squeezed stuff Stock class guys do). Today we stuck them on the Mustang, starting with the front and using a 5/16" spacer we had... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7368-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7365-S.jpg Monster room up front, both inboard and out, with this 5/16" spacer. It would work with as little as a 1/8" spacer, but to be safe I'm going to recommend a 1/4" spacer when using this massive 315mm tire up front with these wheels. If you stick with a more sensible 275 or 285mm tire it still needs no spacer on these wheels, front or rear. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7374-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7373-S.jpg Checked them at full lock, room for days. Now this is with -3° of camber up front, but that's not much in my book. That's what we use for the street on this car. Now on the rear it wasn't as ideal, but still "good enough for auto-x" in most people's eyes. So I would say "these tires fit" but I won't be running these 315s on a 10" wheel. Stick with 285s or smaller, as those tires fit the 10" wheel width properly - no squeeze. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7378-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7387-S.jpg I'm now pulling the 315mm test tire off the 18x10s and re-mounting the 275/40/18s. Damn, we need a tire machine here at Vorshlag. It would pay for itself in one racing season. On the prowl for a deal. So now I've got these massive tires with no wheels to use them on. So... once we get the panhard and upper control arm on later this week we'll measure for 18x11 front and 18x11.5" rear 3-piece wheels. Forgeline, CCW, something. These should fit with fairly different offsets front and back. Can't let these tires go to waste, and it sure would make for some monster TTS grip. Rear Suspension Fixes - Quick and Dirty Our first autocrosses for the Mustang are in early March, with a track event in mid-February, so we've got some new rear suspension bits to install and test before then. I feel that much our our low speed traction problems in this car center around the compromised rear suspension geometry. When you lower the car with this 3-link rear suspension the pinion angle on the axle gets out of whack. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7413-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7416-S.jpg Solid axle RWD cars have so many limitations when compared to an IRS set-up that the SCCA Street Touring rules give the stick-axle vehicles all sorts of leeway, and we're going to finally attack these issues. We did a lot of looking, thought about making our own stuff, then looked at the calendar and bought the Spohn Performance's upper control arm and panhard bar as a stop-gap solution. Their adjustable length upper control arm allows us to adjust the pinion angle properly at the lowered ride height. The adjustable panhard bar lets us center the axle relative to the car, when lowered. Each piece features their optional "Del-Sphere" joints , which allow for high angular movement without bind or noise, at least on paper. These are basically giant spherical joints made inside forged steel ends with Delrin material surrounding the steel ball joint. They are rebuildable - we bought the tool to do that. Seems like a neat little joint that could give you the best of a rod end but without the metal-to-metal street nightmares. Once these new arms are installed we will set the pinion angle for our lower ride height and do some before and after acceleration data logging. I'm hoping for some help in 1st and 2nd gear for STX use - keep hope alive! Non-NASA Track Events? The first event of the year we're trying to make is Feb 17th at Harris Hill Road in San Marcos, being hosted by Pro-Touring.com. It includes an autocross, speed-stop event, and a timed track day, with a trophy for the combined winner? At least - we think so. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it looks like fun. The problem is they have one rule - tire treadwear limit is 200 - which rules out damned near every tire we have for the car (all four sets of our ST legal stuff on hand is 140-180 treadwear). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC2193-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC2225-S.jpg The Dunlop Star Spec tires are 200 treadwear and I've had great luck with them on track before (in the EVO X, at April 2010 Tire Test we did, the December ChumpCar event, and my 265/40/17 rears that I've barely used in this car) and there are two other 200 TW tires that could be fast for this series (they use the Optima Challenge rules), including: Falken RT-615K (275/35/18 @ $275 or 295/40/18 @ $300) and the Nitto NT05 ($275/35R18 @ $213, 275/40R18 @ $202, 285/35R18 @ $223, 295/35R18 @ $243). I don't really want to spend $800-1200 on tires to run for one event (and they'd be pretty much useless for anything else other than street use - which I have the fresh 275/40R18 RE-11s for), so I might beg/borrow/steal a set. So if any of you have some fresh 275/35/18 Dunlop Star Specs or any of these other tires in the sizes listed you'd like to loan me for 2 days, please speak up! :D (I have a line on some 275 Dunlops, but they are anything but fresh) In a pinch I might use that pair of 17x9's and 265s we have for the rear, but I'd really like something wider in 18" that we could put on the D-Force 18x10s. We've still got some work to do before then, including the brake cooling, the Spohn parts, and some rear aero. Anyone have a good used 2010-up Mustang trunk for sale?? I'll post up with an update when we've tackled that stuff. We plan on a before/after test of 2nd gear acceleration on a control set of tires (probably the 265/35/18 Hankook RS-3) when the Spohn parts are installed. More soon, |
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http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...75_9VEcJ-M.jpg Gasoline is a little over 6 pounds per gallon, so that's about 60 pounds if you drop 10 gallons. Add in the trunk junk and you've lost about 73 pounds, so around 3535 or so.... but yea, its getting down there. :) If you do have a spare tire that will weigh more, of course. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Cars/201...76_hBhtv-M.jpg This was the weight of a loaner '11 Brembo GT back in June 2010 - 3605 lbs with 1/2 tank of fuel After weighing this Brembo / 19x9" equipped loaner we borrowed from a Ford dealer we custom ordered our 2011 GT with all sorts of options I didn't want (my wife - oiy!) and it came in even heavier. We ran it out of fuel, removed the "trunk junk", then weighed it at 3563 lbs baseline. I always try to weigh them with nearly no fuel, or show the fuel gauge to account for fuel weight. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...08_6Z2ki-M.jpg This is the weight on our '11 Brembo GT with no fuel - 3563 lbs sans 12.7 lbs of "trunk junk" Sounds like your '12 is a little lighter than our car - probably different options and such, or the brakes. We've been on a quest to lose weight from this S197, and here's where we have it now with 18x10" wheels and 275/40/18 tires: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6333-M.jpg Not much left we can remove or lighten and remain SCCA STX legal. Again, we're building this around two very different class rules, SCCA STX and NASA TTS, but using the SCCA ruleset when one set limits the other. Most of the cars we are racing against in STX are 2800-3000 pounds, but have the same tire width limits we do, which puts the Mustang at a disadvantage - but I knew that going in. If I could just find a "265" tire that was magically 11" wide... well, I came close. I've got one that is 10-3/4" wide. I'm not telling which brand it is though. :D Cheers, |
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http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...51_QWUFg-M.jpg The stock 14" Brembo rotors are a staggering 25.4 pounds each! Quote:
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Already installed. Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...-race-battery/ http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC4259-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC4262-S.jpg Quote:
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If you go back in this thread to post #92, I describe who's battery mount we used, and the other bracket and bits we fabricated to make it bolt into the Mustang without having to drill any holes. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...00_BrxZL-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...71_e33fu-S.jpg I have PC680 Odysseys in 3 of my personal cars. Only car I have any issues with is one of my BMWs, which has a known battery draw when parked - and draws down the battery after about 5 days of non-use (no matter the battery). We keep it on a Battery Tender and its fine. One of these days we'll chase down the voltage leak... Thanks, |
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http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...80_NqdWK-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...20_cP6xC-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...66_WeRwX-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...20_4k92m-S.jpg These pictures don't show how silly this giant, tall tire looked up front. We all turned our noses up. I get that you don't want a lot of wheel gap, and these cars apparently do respond well to running taller tires... but within reason. The stock stuff is 27" tall, which is enormous. There are no 18" tires that match the 27" tire height of the stock 255/40/19 tires. After much testing, calculations, and trial fitting we went with the 275/40/18 tire on the 18x10" wheels - that's the best fit for the car and the wheels. They look the best out of the many sizes we have tried, fit the wheel nicely, fit the car nicely, and were 26.4" tall. The closest we could get, without going over the stock 27" tire height. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6031-M.jpg Thanks, |
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http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...31_yp5KN-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...02_HtaBP-S.jpg I've been there and done that. ;) This is partly why the ASTs ride so much better than most set-ups like yours at these lower ride heights - AST shocks are shortened appropriately and thus have the proper amount of bump travel at a lower ride height. Then there's the fact that they are adjustable monotube struts with killer pistons and customized valving... so even with more spring rate and a lower ride height they usually ride as good as or better than stock. Quote:
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Project Update for Feb 17, 2012: We've been buried in work in the shop, but we took a couple of days off from customer work to attack the Mustang (while doing an M52 longblock swap on an STX prepped E36 328is, shown below). We are cutting it a little close (I leave for the track event down in San Marcos in about 4 hours) but the last few bits are going in the car now (seats and new 6-point harness mounts) and it should all be wrapped up by AJ and Ryan in time to load at 1 pm...
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7826-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7827-S.jpg Rear Suspension Updates We've installed the Spohn upper control arm and Panhard bar, both of which are equipped with their Del-Sphere joints (Delrin encased spherical). And yes, this is all legal in SCCA Street Touring - thanks to copious allowances for solid axle RWD cars - since none of these have proven remotely competitive in any ST class. Basically STX and STU have the same torque arm/upper control arm allowances as ESP. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7795-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7819-S.jpg So all of this has been installed, and yes, the non-adjustable OEM upper control arm made for a wacky 0° pinion angle at the lowered ride height. Basically FUBAR for a solid axle car. You want pinion to be at 0° under acceleration loads, so you try to shoot for -2 to -3° at the pinion at rest and at ride height (according to Spohn and many others). At the lowered ride height the fixed length OEM panhard bar resulted in axle offset, which we also corrected with the adjustable Spohn piece. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7793-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7798-S.jpg Can't say enough nice words about the Spohn UCA and Panhard hardware - its top notch. These Del-Sphere joints are super slick - they rotate and pivot with almost no resistance - so no binding - but are still wrapped in Delrin for less crashing than an all-metal spherical. Plus they have grease zerks and are fully rebuildable. I'll see how it rides with these in the UCA and Panhard shortly. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7801-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7802-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7814-M.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7816-M.jpg Weight differences between the OEM UCA and Panhard vs the Spohn hardware looks like a wash. We also used a new bolt-in UPR Products upper chassis mount - made of plate steel vs the stamped steel of the OEM bits. Yes, its STX legal - we can go hog wild on the upper control arms. I am now more worried about the factory lower control arms - they are far from parallel at ride height, and this plays hell with the Instant Center. We're going to measure that and come up with a solution to test soon (likely offset bushings). Safety Gear Upgrade I have been skimping a bit on safety for the various track events we've attended. For autocrosses in 2011 we have been using the fixed back race seats with 3" harness lap belts only - not a big deal when driving around a parking lot. We did most of the 2011 track stuff with OEM seats and seat belts (which is safe), but I admit to doing one track day in December with the race seats and lap belts. I did double-up with the OEM 3-point seat belt, but that's still pretty hinky. So for this weekend's track event I wanted something a little better... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7749-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7828-S.jpg That is a Corbeau harness bar I picked up from Stuart at AST/Moton. Nicely built piece, pretty hefty tubing used, and better than mounting harnesses on the lower rear seat belt locations. No, I'm still not running a 4-point roll bar, and likely won't ever do that to this car... don't want to mess-up the rear seats to make that fit. I'm sure some of you will reply with the "you are going to spontaneously combust!" safety concerns, and yes... I hear ya. Again, this is not the perfect safety solution... so "don't try this at home". :) But this is NOT a race car, its a daily driven street car that I don't want to cut up for a roll cage. If the only other alternative is OEM seats and belts, then I'm going to stick with my FIA approed seats and 6-point SFI approved harnesses hung from this 1.5" dia piece of DOM, and mounted to the floor with proper G-Force clip-in floor anchors. Hey, if business keeps exploding like it has been since our move to the new location I'll push forward with my S197 chassis race car plans later this year. Keep buying shocks and camber plates from Vorshlag, folks, so I can go American Iron racing in a proper race car! :p http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7830-M.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC7829-M.jpg Left: Here are the seats, about to go in. Right: All of the various pads we've got to test I put a picture up above showing the various brake pads we've got for the Mustang. Going away from the Hawk options (HP+ for autox and DTC-60 for track) and moving to Porterfield (R4 for track and R4S for autocross). The R4s are on the car now for the first time so I will report back with my impressions from Harris Hill Road's tricky little road course. We also bought a bunch of 3" high temp brake duct hose, and made some quickie brake ducting for the car that ties into the CS Lower Fascia, but its not complete so I'm not going to show all of the work this time around. Making brake ducting that is SCCA ST legal is damned near impossible - they have reworded the rules in such a way as to make it incredibly complicated to stay legal. Might just order a 2nd set of fender liners that we can modify for proper ducting installation and just swap this on/off for autocross events. Thanks SCCA! :D http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...t-021412-M.jpg click for video of 0-60 testing I did a "before" acceleration test this week. I made three 0-60 sprints on concrete with the 275mm Bridgestones and the OEM UCA and Panhard, + the AST 4150 shocks. Best of 4.41 seconds, with a 4.45 sec and a 5.0 sec first blast (wheelspin). Once the weather clears I'll do an "after" test on the same tires but with the new Spohn gear and proper pinion angle setting. I'll post that and the video from this weekend's Pro-Touring track event / Time Trial. I've got to run on these 275/35/18 Dunlops, which have seen better days. These tested great in April of last year, so hopefully they won't suck on Saturday. And hopefully it doesn't rain - I'm bringing the Bridgestones just in case. Oh! We are having an Open House here at Vorshlag on March 10th, all day. Tour the facilities, see our new capabilities, and check out some cool race cars. The Texas Region SCCA is having their annual Solo Inspection here that day as well. Check our Vorshlag Facebook page for more details about the open house. First autocross is the next day, March 11th. More soon, |
Project Update for Feb 24, 2012: It took me a week after the "track event" last weekend to write this update - needed time to get that disaster weekend behind me, I guess. This event was the first of 2012 for me, called the "Run To The Alamo", held by the ASCS / Pro-Touring folks, with the track portion of the event to be held at Harris Hill Road. The event was also a "qualifier" for the Optima Challenge, held each year in Vegas after SEMA. This RTTA event was supposed to be a 3 day competition event with a timed autocross, "speed stop event", and track day as well, but the autocross and speed stop portions were cancelled at the last minute (they didn't secure an autocross venue). They did have a car show, cruise-in and dinner Friday that I missed ("darn"). The somewhat lack of organization, problems with timing equipment, WEATHER, and a sick wife that tagged along combined to make for a full on "Charlie Foxtrot" event for me (clusterf*ck).
PICTURES: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...TA-HHR-021812/ "RESULTS": http://americanstreetcarseries.com/?page_id=751 So in my last update I covered the thrash by Vorshlag technicians AJ and Ryan. They wrenched on the Mustang for 2 days to get all of the new suspension bits installed and adjusted, brake pads/rotors on, harness bar and harnesses in, seats swapped, brake ducting built, car washed, oil changed and everything double-checked. We have been getting buried in customer fab/service work and we could only squeeze the Mustang in at the end of the week. This was the first competition event in the car since mid December, so everything need to be looked over. The crap started with loading the trailer. I sold my 38' enclosed trailer in January (and just bought another one late today) so I borrowed a buddy's open trailer for the weekend. I was trying to leave Dallas by 1 or 2 pm, in a failed attempt to avoid Friday's "leaving town" traffic. I was also worried about the splitter making it harder to load, but with my nearly 12 feet worth of ramps (Race Ramps + the trailer ramps), it just cleared. Right as we started loading the car the weather went from sunny/nice to raining... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG4869-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG4870-S.jpg And the rain didn't let up for almost 48 hours. My wife, who normally co-drives our race cars and always goes to races with me, was going to come along as track side support and to help with driving to and from the event. Since we were only taking one car, and since I'm done trying to "double up" on track events in one car, she was just along to help. Too much abuse, and too hectic, to run 2 people in one car. Friday morning she was starting to get sick, and I knew from experience it wasn't going to get better anytime soon. I called McCall, he dropped everything and agreed to run down to San Marcos with me for the next 2 days to help. When I told my wife she was off the hook, she insisted she was going to go along to help, even when I begged her to stay, so we left about 3:30 pm and McCall was off the hook instead (this proved to be a huge mistake). She had set-up a blanket and pillow in the back seat of the MegaCab and proceeded to make a cocoon and slept back there the entire way. 6 hours of driving through crap traffic and steady rain the entire way... with her coughing and hacking from the back seat (later we found out she had full blown bronchitis). Oh joy. So the drive down from Dallas to Austin/San Marcos was a nightmare, from weather and health reasons, but the truck and trailer worked fine (other than two hub caps coming off of the trailer along the way, which is $90 I need to replace now). The hotel she had reserved was very nice, full of high school cheerleaders (no joke), and we got there early enough to go out and get a real meal, but with a sick wife I stayed in and ordered room service food. She was up all night, throwing up and coughing. I almost convinced her to blow off the event and head home, since she was a mess, but she convinced me to stay. It rained HARD all night - rain pounded on the hotel window and kept waking me up, too. This all night downpour was not a good sign... American Street Car Series "Run To The Alamo", aka Pain in the Rain The ASCS guys said the track portion was to start at 7:30 am sharp, so "be there with cars ready for tech on time". We got up early and drove to the track by 7:40, just a tick late thanks to terrible directions by my sick navigator (heh!) and a "deep water crossing" we had go across at a bridge near the track (bad sign #2). We got to HHR and it was utter mayhem there, trucks and cars parked willy nilly, trying to unload cars in their postage stamp-sized upper parking lot. We finally figured out where to park (lower lot) and unload the car. It was raining pretty hard and it never much let up all day. Unloading a car from an open trailer in the rain SUCKS. The main guy running the event showed up around 8:45 (oiy!), registration finally got started about 9:30, then we sat around watching the Daytona GRAND AM race in the clubhouse and kept seeing the rain come pouring down. Track owner said it had rained for going on 3 days in a row, and even though they were "in a drought" the area around the track was super saturated and "it will be draining across the track all day, even if it stops raining" (he was right). All the surrounding land drained into and across the property that the HHR track is placed on, and it was soaked. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7839-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7876-S.jpg Around 10 am they finally started had a driver's meeting ... that became a sponsor thank-fest that lasted a good 1/2 hour. By 10:45 am we had our RFID transponders installed (more on that) and a few of us finally lined up to get out on track. They wanted to do "some lead follow" laps to "sort out the drivers into groups" (never happened), and these laps lasted for almost 45 minutes, 2 laps at a time. Two drivers spin off track and proceeded to get good and stuck in the mud, during lead-follow laps. So yea, it was one of those kind of track days. I think by day's end we had 7 or 8 cars go off into the mud, needing a tow. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7852-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7853-S.jpg Watch this "highlight video" and you can see how much the weather and track conditions sucked... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...1-021812-M.jpg in-car video showing "the opposite of track enjoyment" There was a serious water crossing on the track, where you had to slow WAY down, and it made for 20' rooster tails whenever you crossed it. There were another 7-8 "rivers" crossing the track all day. This track has MAJOR drainage issues - not the fault of ASCS but it sucked all the same. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7846-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7847-S.jpg ...see part 2 below... |
...part 2 continued from above...
The ASCS group did have some timer teething issues (with their brand new RFID track timer system they were breaking in), but Brian Finch of DSI was super helpful and worked with me several times to get my transponder to read. It took 2 transponders, moving them 3 times, re-adjusting the track side receiver, and me losing about half my laps to get it to finally work on my car. Any of you looking at RFID track timing systems, beware: they might be cheap, but they are far from idiot proof. Range is very limited and the angle of the transponder to receiver is critical, too. Maybe this Hardcard Systems unit was being messed with from the rain, I don't know - it just needed a lot of tweaking to work. By about 1:30 pm I got to where I was almost running over the receiver to make sure it read. Receiver blew over into the track surface and into the driving line once, too. Once we mounted it on the side window, aimed parallel to the receiver, it worked "pretty well". You can see the little little stick-on/disposable transponder on my right side window, below (this is the same stuff used to track groceries and other consumer goods). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7920-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7902-S.jpg On a positive note, I did finally get to see better in-car video from my 1080P vidcam, mounted properly on the harness bar, and not stuck right to the windshield with the old suction cup mount. Bad news is the rear view mirror and my ugly mug are now shown. I need to play with placement and maybe tweak the rear view mirror location, but it works better than before. I also managed to finally get my G-Tech Pro RR Fanatic data logger + lap timer to work properly in Road Race mode. I fought with this damn G-Tech thing for a couple of events last year but never got it out of the "SS" (drag race) mode. This time, after but sitting in the pits in the rain waiting to get out on track, I messed with it long enough to figure out that the "scroll wheel" is also a push button for "select", and that did it. I also figured out how to make it work for continuous lap timing, predictive lap timing, how to add segments, and even how to make a separate start and finish (for hill climb and autocross). So now this $299 data logger display finally paid off - because now it works as advertised! I need to make a "how to video" for this thing because the instructions it comes and that they have online with are terrible. It has software I can download to data mine the laps and maybe... maybe place these onto the video??? We'll see. What else... oh yea, I guess I tested the new Porterfield R4 brake pads, which worked fine on track but it was raining all day. They are still on the car now, and after a week of street driving there's very little brake dust, they don't make too much noise, and they work fine cold, so it might work for autocrossing, too (I bought R4S pads for that, though). With the DTC-60 Hawks, the wheels would be BLACK after a DAY of street driving, they sucked cold, and after a week the noise would make you want to drive the car into a tree. I couldn't tell jack squat about any "new rear grip", other than I had none. The new 6 point harnesses worked out nicely, and the harness bar was rock solid. Nobody wanted to ride in the Mustang - guess it wasn't cool enough? There was some pretty crazy hardware there, the weather sucked, and a lot of cars went off into the mud - not too shocking. This event is supposed to be run on 200 treadwear tires, which I never mounted. You see I had borrowed a set of well worn 275/35/18 Dunlop Star Specs mounted on 18x9.5" wheels, but with less than 3/32" of tread on these things I wasn't going to risk those on a wet track until it dried off a bit - which it never did. So I ran the "cheater" full tread 180 treadwear Bridgestone RE-11 tires all day, but they saw that at tech noted this on my times for the competition event portion (before they revised the results). Again, the plan was to switch to the Dunlops once it dried off, then tell them to wipe out the old times, and start my timed runs over... but with 2-3" of water running across the track in 7 or 8 spots, it just wasn't safe to run on nearly bald tires. Even with nearly full tread RE-11s it was a frakking handful. I couldn't accelerate in any gear past about 3000 rpm or it would result in instant wheel spin. Even the "straights" were a handful, as most of them were curved or off-camber, so I was short shifting and using mostly 4th and 5th, and it was miserable. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7894-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7897-S.jpg Most sane people would have just packed up and left, but damnit I wanted to wait it out and post some good times when it dried out. This was a qualifier for the Optima Challenge event, you know? One person from the "top 5 times" would be chosen from this event, plus "one more hard charger", at the series organizer's discretion. So I "hard charged my ass off" and put in over 80 laps in this slop, worked on my rain driving some more at HHR (it rained all day when I ran the Mustang here in Jan 2011, too!), and put in (according to my data logged times on the CW morning runs) the fastest times in the morning rain session. Burned a tank of fuel putting around, and getting sideways. Kept coming into the pits to check on my wife, who was sicker and sicker (running a 101-102°F fever all day), and finally at 3:30, when I wasn't getting any faster and the rain let up for a few minutes, I loaded the car back onto the trailer and headed north back to Dallas. It rained the entire way back, too. So of course, about 30 minutes after I left, there was a break in the weather right around HHR, the track dried up considerably, and lap times fell by 15-20 seconds. Figures. Again, with a sick wife and the better part of 2 days already wasted, I made a judgement call, cut my losses and bailed. Maybe if I would have stayed until dark, swapped on the Dunlops, I could have hung with the top finishers? Who knows. Should/coulda/woulda. I was in the top 1-2 in times during the rain by the time I left, so I'll have to be happy with that. Which I am not. :p http://americanstreetcarseries.com/?page_id=751 more below... |
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If you look at the results above, it shows my name but not times. Earlier this week it did show my best wet time of 1:59.2, which was still 9th quickest - not bad considering I left well before the track dried out, and these guys were driving until dark (the fastest lap of the event was the very last lap of the event, apparently). For some reason they deleted even that time, no idea why. I don't know why, for some reason them deleting all of my times now, after posting them before, is really pissing me off - especially since I made at least 2x or maybe even 3x as many laps as anyone else there. There were periods of 20-30 minutes where I was the only car out there - some guys made only a handful of laps in their high dollar Pro Touring cars. I get that, too. My time listing, before it was deleted, did have the little **not on 200 TW tires** noted, and I was ranked in order with the rest, but now my times are wiped off the results, so I guess its like I didn't even make a lap. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4893-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4886-S.jpg What a bunch of jokers. I will never go to another ASCS event after seeing all that went wrong here - not even considering the terrible weather and piss poor track drainage. They spent more time talking about what was for lunch than what was at stake from the competition. Its just... not the same as a NASA Time Trial, or something else equally as competitive. Heck, my local marquee BMW autocross club takes the competition more seriously. Even the TX2K11 event I went to last year, which was a total train wreck, dangerous, disorganized, and which I vowed to never attend again was more on the ball and had better results than this. Maybe if the track had been dry, where I would have immediately switched to the Dunlops, then they would have no basis for throwing out my times - then maybe I would have had more fun? I almost never have much fun at non-competition events, and that's what this became - plus miserably wet. But then again, I have already signed up for TX2K12... so I guess I should never say never. :D http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7915-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC7841-S.jpg Pictures I have posted from the event will show you some seriously nice muscle car hardware, and many of you will recognize a these cars from the pages of Popular Hot Rodding and the Pro-Touring scene. Neat cars, a LOT of money invested in many of the, and I was impressed with how many of the owners weren't afraid of throwing them off the track and into the mud. I can think of only one car there that wasn't driven on the wet as hell track. There was no real damage done, luckily, but it could have been ugly if a car had spun off sideways and gone shiny side down. Oh yea, the "Detroit Speed Inc" 53' 18 wheeler transporter was chock full of kickass cars, any of which I would be proud to own. They are doing something right - that transporter was nicer than some NASCAR team's units (and may have been an ex-NASCAR Cup teams' setup). The DSI owner was a super nice guy, and worked his butt off to help me get my timing issues sorted - big thanks to Brian for that. He's apparently an owner of the new ASCS series, so maybe he can help guide them into a more organized competition series. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4877-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG4878-S.jpg So, overall my thoughts on the ASCS Run To The Alamo = "meh". Needs more organizational work. Dry 0-60 Testing Of course our Mustang was completely filthy when we got it back to Dallas, from driving through that slop for the full day + towing it home on wet roads. AJ worked his magic and got it cleaned up this week, the weather cleared up, and I took the Mustang on another set of four 0-60 test blasts on the same roads as a week ago. This was to test the dry traction with he new rear suspension parts and pinion angle setting... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...t-022312-M.jpg Click for video of 0-60 testing in the Mustang with the new rear suspension bits So that was pretty much "the suck". The damn thing was slower 0-60 in all 4 tests, by 2-4 tenths. I am not a complete noob when it comes to drag racing on street tires (have made on the order of "thousands of runs" at the drag strip in similar cars), so I want to think it wasn't driver error. This testing was performed on a closed course with professional drivers driving around me, of course. It only looks like residential streets - its a TV thing. After speaking with a few more solid axle savvy friends they all think we're running a bit extreme on the pinion angle we started with (-2.5°, straight from the Spohn directions), so we're going to back it down quite a bit, do iterative testing, and inch our way to the best pinion angle. Its a grind, but this needs to be done. What's Next? Next event for this car is March 11th, which is the first Texas Region SCCA autocross. Local concrete lot, pretty tight, so its usually my worst event site for a car like this. I'm looking in the shop at 3 of the sets of 2011 tires we ran in STX class last year and none of them are fresh enough to re-use for this event, except the 265/35/18 Toyos R1Rs, which I wasn't at all happy with (these were the worst in our April 2011 tire test). Been trying to sell these Toyos for almost a year. So I've been looking at buying fresh tires this week, and I have it narrowed down to the 265/40/18 size in the Yokohama AD08 and the Hankook RS-3. The RS-3 is new to this 40 series size, and of course they are not in stock yet (I keep calling our guy at TireRack). I think I am going to hold out and wait for this one, as it handily won the dry autocross test that GRM / TireRack did last year, but the AD08 was right on its heels and fastest in the wet. If we can arrange it in time I am going to hold a private autocross test before this March 11th event, but things have been so damned busy that all of my plans are going sideways lately. New Track-side Support Vehicle The weekend wasn't a total bust. On Sunday the weather in Dallas was picture perfect... literally not a cloud in the sky, 70°F, just beautiful. Son of a B! I took this time to go pick up my new golf cart-sized "track vehicle project", which isn't a golf cart at all. Taylor Dunn, Gas powered BG-150 "utility truck". Think "Austin Powers", but not electric, and with a front cab and box on the back. The rear box is coming off for a 2nd row of seats and a flat load floor. The TD is very narrow and should fit nicely in the front section of my new enclosed trailer, next to the built in aluminum work bench and cabinets. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../IMG4896-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Cars/Tra.../IMG3026-S.jpg Vorshlag Open House March 10th Also, Vorshlag is having an open house along with hosting the Texas Region SCCA's Annual Solo Tech event, Saturday March 10th from 9 am until 4 pm. Feel free to come by our facility that day for a tour of our shop, meet our guys, see what we can offer in terms of fabrication/service/set-up work as well as products we build, stock and carry. Free burgers, drinks, etc. Join us here! |
Project Update for March 14, 2012: Last week was a hell of a lot of work and activity and this week is worse. This will be a quick and dirty update - we're about to load the Mustang into trailer and then Amy and I head to Houston later today for a track event Thursday and a National Tour autocross on the weekend. If I flub any spelling or grammar, please know that this was written quickly.
So the first track event of the year (RTTA) was a bust, what with the terrible rain, my erased times, Amy's illness cutting our trip short to the point where I missed the late afternoon dry session, and the overall level of disorganization of this event. I was hoping the first autocross of the year would avoid the rain, but I was wrong. It started raining the day before, which was when we held the Vorshlag Open House and SCCA Annual Solo Tech Party, held at Vorshlag on March 10th... Open House and SCCA Tech http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8233-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8256-S.jpg I won't bore you with all of the pictures (you can see more here), but we thrashed for weeks getting the shop and front office areas of Vorshlag HQ in tip top shape for this event. The Texas Region SCCA Solo group needed a place to hold their annual tech and we needed an excuse to have our open house party (we've been working at our new location for 6 months!). So we put in a lot of late hours and weekend days, spent a little bit of money, and we got the place looking pretty good. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8257-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8253-S.jpg A customer's engine swap turned into a 3 week mega-thrash after some front chassis rot was found and corrected. That put us a bit behind on shop clean-up, which started about 7:30 Friday night before the Open House event. Ryan (with help from Cameron and AJ) had been building tables for several days and those were wrapped up, thankfully. We were also down a man all week, as Jason was Crew Chief for Brianne Corn's rally Subaru that ran in the WRC event in Mexico last week. It was the perfect storm of variables that made Friday night a 2:15 am night... but we got the shop and front offices cleaned up and looking great. The first 3 hours of the Open House and Tech went off without a hitch, and right as we started grilling up burgers and brats it started to rain and kept at it all day. We still had over 100 people show up and 37 cars were teched, so it was still a great event. I didn't sit down all day and felt like I talked to 1000 people and gave 200 tours of the shop - people liked the place. Towards the end of the day Ryan and AJ put the Mustang on the lift, I took the 18x9" WedsSport wheels and got the new 265/40/18 Hankook RS-3s mounted (our new tire machine is still down), the guys checked out everything, re-adjusted the pinion angle a bit, mounted the Hankooks to the car, and we loaded it into the new enclosed trailer (purchased 2 weeks before) still dirty, while the rain came down. I was running around this week getting the out of state title on the trailer transferred, DOT inspection, weigh station check, and paying for tags and taxes, too. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Cars/Vor.../DSC0526-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Cars/Vor.../DSC8491-S.jpg Tex Reg SCCA Autocross #1 - First Autocross of 2012 On Sunday the 11th Amy and I took the trailer on a short tow across town with the Mustang loaded inside. This was a test of the trailer before our longer tow the following week (happening in about 2 hours), as we could have driven to the site only 45 miles away. Still, I'm trying to keep the STX autocross tires off the street and reduce heat cycles, so it will likely be towed to all autocross events this year. I'm glad we had it - as it rained all morning, and the trailer became a good dry spot to sit inside of. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8446-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8488-S.jpg Made a few small mistakes this day, such as not scrubbing the tires in before the first run (silicon mold release + wet surface = slippery first few runs!), I didn't load the "autocross" throttle map tune via the SCT (so it had the bezerko street tune map - not what we needed in the wet), we left the Porterfield R4 "track" pads on (ran out of time), and we had the loose shoulder harness belts clanking around on the back of the seats (I only use a lap belt for autocrossing - lets me move my upper body around and I can see better out the side windows, which happens when you're going sideways a lot). Anyway, we started with fairly low rebound settings on the AST 4150s and lower tire pressures, to soften the reactions as much as we could for the wet conditions. Amy and I worked the 1st of 2 heats, where it rained off and on until about 11:30, when it finally stopped. The skies were overcast and the wind was nil, so it didn't dry off much at all during our runs in heat 2, as you can see here on our first runs... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...Amy-Run1-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...rry-Run1-S.jpg Left: Amy's 1st run Right: Terry's 1st run As you can see it is not raining but it is still pretty damned wet. We both ran in STX open class, as I don't have another co-driver this year so we'll both run "open" until Nationals, where she will likely move to STX-L. Since we had a 2 driver car, had to adjust the seat and belts significantly, swap numbers, check tire pressures, and reset the video between runs, and the smaller heats made for quick driver changes, we ran 1 run each, then did runs in 2s... so Amy, then me, then Amy, Amy, me, me, Amy Amy, me, me. Even with faster changeovers we were running behind and I was one of the last cars to make my a run - and in fact I put myself on a 5 minute timer from my 4th to 5th run. It turns out that Amy stopped for a downed cone on her 2nd run, which they threw out, but she didn't know they gave her the re-run so she didn't take her 5th run. That sucks because she would have likely dropped more time. The sun had just peeked out and it was a tick drier, but if you watch my 5th run you will see that the actual driving line was still wet, due to the cars dragging water from some drainage onto the line. It was the only lap where I tip-toed the throttle and braked early, so I wasn't too surprised that it was 1/2 second quicker than my previous best. It "felt slow", which usually means its fast... you know? http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...rry-Run5-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...Amy-Run3-S.jpg Left: Terry's 5th and quickest run (37.5). Right: Amy's 3rd and quickest run (38.2) Let's see where that put us...
We had 8 cars in STX, pretty good for a wet event with only 67 entrants. Ledbetter got first in his newly restored BMW 328is... we installed a fresh longblock and repaired the chassis the weeks before this event (that was the 3 weeks of work that got us a little behind). It was his first outing of the year and with a fresh set of Dunlops and the added horsepower of the fresher motor (old motor had 230K!) he was fast, as was his co-driver (his mom) who got 3rd in class right behind me. The three of us were the only cars in the 37s, and I felt good only being .5 behind him. That BMW looked hooked-up in these nasty conditions, and this was the tightest lot we race on in Dallas/Ft. Worth - which is usually worst lot for the Mustang. Brad Maxcy (on fairly bald RS-3s) was in 4th and Amy was hot on his heels in 5th, both within tenths of 3rd place. Amy and I were both clean in all 10 of our combined runs so we didn't "cone test" the splitter yet (whew). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8471-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8406-S.jpg more below... |
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We loaded up and headed back after the event (then went to Fuzzy's Taco with the Maxcy's and to see JOHN CARTER OF MARS after eating). I am pretty happy with the results considering the tight course/tiny lot, the wet conditions, and the fact that I forgot to load the "soft throttle map". Amy liked the way the car handled after we made some tire and shock adjustments (after our first runs), but she said the throttle map was making it hard to accelerate. The new, full tread Hankooks worked admirably in the wet but we were definitely fighting serious wheel spin. After watching all 10 runs on video, I have also finally come to the conclusion that I have been creating some braking problems all on my own. The "ice mode" ABS issue that I complain about on 4 of 5 of my runs only comes when I stab the brakes as the rear tires are still spinning, from my typical over-driving. Why didn't I noticed this before? The new video camera location made for better video and easier to turn it on/off, and I took video of more runs as a result - which made the ice mode situation obvious. I am an idiot and have got to calm down and quit over-driving this car. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8396-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8375-S.jpg The PAX results were also better than normal for this car, to date. 9th place in PAX for the big, heavy, over-powered and under-tired Mustang was pretty good considering the tight course and wet conditions. We'll see if that trend continues in this weekend's Texas National Tour event, where STX has a huge class. New S197 Mustang Camber Plates + New Aero? So I had an ad out there for a new draftsman (ended up hiring 2 folks), as I was needing some drafting help to help catch up on some camber plate revisions, new designs and other product development. Since I spend too much time on forums I can't get all of my design work done. ;) Got 40+ resumes but found the perfect guy to help out for the short term. He is a great SolidWorks guru and racer; he and I worked several late nights last week and got the drawings done for an all-new Mustang camber-caster plate. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-...ssembly4-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-...ssembly3-S.jpg This one is easier to adjust camber (loosen the 4 strut top nuts and slide the assembly in-out) than before, it has 3 caster settings (like our BMW E36 design), has a pointer and hash marks for camber setting reference, and is now using an aluminum main plate and an all-new bearing holder design. A lot of work but he did an excellent job. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8513-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8503-S.jpg I took those 3D files, output them in the proper format, uploaded them to a website that makes stereo lithography parts, and 36 hours later these Rapid Prototype nylon parts arrived. Woo! We tapped the holes, pressed in a spherical bearing, installed a snap ring, and assembled the new camber plate. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8507-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8512-S.jpg We just test fit this into the 2011's LF strut tower today and it adjusts perfectly, with more camber change than before and a lot more caster adjustment than the previous two revisions. So now we will have a production batch made and skip the normal machined prototypes we normally make. Should see these in 3-4 weeks. Woo! Right about when the AST 4150s arrive for this S197 Mustang chassis (and many other 4150 models). FYI: The 25 sets of 18x10" D-Force/Vorshlag wheels for the Mustang and Subaru chassis are on the water. They should be here in 3-5 weeks. We've pre-sold over 20 sets of the 25 coming in, so if you are on the fence... ? The aero part mentioned above... I am running out of time so I will make a post about that soon. Working with a composites expert, we now have a composite splitter to fit the 2010-2012 Mustang. Looks similar to the Leguna Seca Boss 302 part that we bought for our car, but instead of the 12 pounds of flimsy ABS plastic for the element, this one is 3 pounds of high density foam core wrapped in glass weave and structural resin. Much more rigid than the LS plastic piece, too. We still have some work to do before this goes to market, but we think it will have a significantly lower cost (with the mounting kit) when compared to the $750 price for the Leguna Seca splitter. I will show pictures and talk more about this in a future post. I am running TX2K with the Leguna Seca piece so hopefully it will have a bit more front bite on this (hopefully dry) track than before. Loading Up So before we head off to MSR-Houston for the TK2K event tomorrow I mentioned some noise form the Mustang's rear end. Howling on the right side, so Ryan popped the rear cover, pulled the C-clips, and took a look at the axles. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8498-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8493-S.jpg Everything looks fine - the outer bearings, the axle shafts, the ring and pinion, no metal or shavings int he fluid - weird. The fluid smelled a bit burnt so we'll see if the fresh fluid helps any. Maybe it is the inner bearings in the diff carrier - I'll order the Wacetrac LSD I wanted to try out and new bearings and we will get that installed soon. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8501-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8499-S.jpg Before we loaded up the car it was pushed outside, put up on jack stands, and the fender wells and underside got a much needed washing. It was nasty under there. We mounted up some 275/35/18 Hoosiers A6s to the 18x10s for TX2K, so maybe it will have some grip. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8515-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8517-S.jpg The National Tour is Fri-Sunday so its going to be a long weekend and a lot of towing across Texas. And there's more events the following weekend, so I might wait until that weekend is past before my next update. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...18_T2GQJ-M.jpg We are running MSR-H's 2.4 mile course clockwise for TX2K12 tomorrow, supposedly More soon, |
Project Update for March 22, 2012: Sorry it took me nearly a week after the last double-header event weekend to get this update up, but we've been slammed at Vorshlag and with a 3 day work week last week I'm still way behind. I was also hoping that the TX2K12 folks would have some sort of results posted for the track day, but alas - the only results up a week after their event weekend are for drag racing. I checked the usual forums that have TX2K threads (which usually have more info than the Tx2K website), but they are just full of street racing stories, videos showing who had the biggest burnout at the "street meet", their "dyno day" numbers, and other things I don't care about. ;)
My pictures and videos from TX2K12: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/TX2K12-MSR-H/ http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5092-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5093-S.jpg So let's back up a tick. Where we last left off here the Mustang was being hurriedly prepped, washed, and loaded into the trailer. There was some wheel bearing noise I noticed at the Harris Hill Road track event (RTTA) and it was louder at the last autocross earlier this month. Ryan and AJ pulled the rear axle apart, yanked out the right side axle shaft, and we inspected the bearings, shaft, and differential for wear. It all looked perfect. Was I hearing the noise correctly?? I know it was from the right rear... or was it? Weird. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5095-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5096-S.jpg We had found some 275/35/18 Hoosier A6 (autocross compound) DOT tires to mount to the D-Force 18x10" wheels, which were to be used at the MSR-Houston track event held by TX2K12 last Thursday. Our newly repaired tire machine was finally ready to use for the first time... but one more little issue cropped up (fixed this week!) so we took them to Discount Tire once again. I hadn't run the Mustang on track with anything but street tires up until now so some R compounds were long overdue. I could have thrown the 315/35/18 Kumho V710s on there but... I just had a bad feeling about the event and didn't want to burn up brand new tires at this one. That was a smart move. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5116-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5117-S.jpg The 275/35/18 is super short and looks ridiculous (to me) on the Mustang, but hey, its the spec tire for the GRAND AM Mustangs so I went ahead and tried it. Meh, it works I guess, but has a ton of wheel gap at the fender. A little skinny for an 18x10" but it had some grip. We got the car loaded up, strapped in, and AJ and Ryan loaded out the trailer with the toolbox and all the track gear for the first time. First long tow with the trailer, and no spare wheel/tire to be found. Oh well, wish me luck! We left Dallas around 5:30 pm (rush hour traffic = FML) but got to Pearland around 10 pm and crashed out. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8519-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5113-S.jpg The next morning we got to MSR-H early and set-up our trailer next to Costas & Anna's set-up, right next to Track Entrance where NASA normally grids... but with only 40 cars split amongst 4 sessions, there were very few cars to grid, so it worked. Great trailer/paddock location, whatever - thanks Paul! :) We went to the driver's meeting, turned in our self-tech forms, and made sure they had our AMB transponder numbers registered. It was clear that Peter and the TX2K crew had stepped up their game for 2012; this event was better organized, safer, and more enjoyable than in 2011. Costas and I were put both in group Advanced 1 (A1) which had 8 cars, there was an A2, and we had to work with beginner (B1, B2) drivers all day. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5115-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5101-S.jpg I took a GT500 Mustang driver around the track in my first A1 track session with the 275s at all 4 corners and he had a BLAST (you can see his GT500 in the bottom right pic). He'd never done a track day, autocross, nothing - so his eyes were huge as we bombed around MSR-H on Hoosier A6s, drifting the rear out of most corners - these tires had been sitting for over a year before I bought them, so I was "cleaning off old rubber". :D Managed nothing better than a 1:49.48 lap in this session, going the ClockWise direction, meh. I was shifting around 6K to keep from hurting anything, as it makes peak power around 6200 anyway. The laps felt slow, and it was loose as hell out back. Was the splitter actually helping front grip and the lack of rear wing hurting the overall balance? All I knew was that it was loose in high an low speed corners. And the track was BUMPY... coming out of turn 10 there's a huge dip, so if I do any more track events in this car the 175# rear springs (which work great for autocross) we might need to bump up a tick in rate, to keep the rear from bottoming out on tracks like this. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5119-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5111-S.jpg continued below |
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The wheel bearing noise was getting loud in session #1 and sounded like it might be the right front tire, and not the right rear as I had thought? We came in after our 20 minute session and I took a look - tire pressures went up to where they should be but the RF wheel bearing felt tight when I rocked the RF wheel, while it was in the air. I took Amy out with me in A1 session #2 and we didn't make it 100 yards before we knew something was WAY wrong; came right back in after one lap for a better look. Click the video below and you can hear the loud WAH! WAH! WAH! noises above the wind noise, but it was VERY apparent in the car that something was BAD wrong with the TIRE now. Steering wheel was shuddering like mad - and it wasn't the electronic gremlins this time, it was the tire. Sure enough, the RF tire had grown about 3" in diameter on one part of the inside shoulder; it was grossly out of round. This happened during the half hour of down time after I had re-checked hot tire pressures and wiggled the RF wheel bearing immediately after session #1. WTF? Costas :" Oh yea, that tire has popped some cords". http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9210-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5108-S.jpg Click either pic above for in-car video and hear the RF tire doing its death howl The tread looked fine but the carcass of that Hoosier was toast; luckily I had a back-up plan and brought along a pair "vintage" 305/30/18 Hoosier A3S5 autocross tires with a DOT stamping date of 2005... so that's like 7 year old tires. I had used these early on with the E36 LS1 Alpha car, so they were good back then... but "then" was around 2007. Amy and I pulled the Right Front and one Rear wheel off, took them to the MSR "Office Shop", and they swapped on the 305s for us (sure wish I had my Taylor Dunn track vehicle up and running at this point! That was a lot of walking around with wheels and tires). We put these 305s on the back and moved two of the better 275s up front for a non-square set-up. Not ideal, but it was what I had for spare R compound tires in the trailer. Went out in session 2 with Amy riding along again (mistake!). Here's that highlight video... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-Mustang-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...18_T2GQJ-S.jpg Click for video from my A1 Session #3...mistakes and all So I had one warm up lap where I took it pretty easy, trying to scrub the rear tires in - they really did have some OLD rubber that needed to go away. Come around for my first hot lap and got sideways under braking and had a quick off and on. I managed to steer around the curbing and saved the splitter from curbing crash testing, but Amy was still pissed. This was her daily driver, she bemoaned, and "you are never tracking my car again!". Well, crap... so I took it easy for the rest of session #3 but still managed to go 2.2 seconds quicker with the old 305mm rears, running a best lap of 1:47.26 lap. The rear was still a bit loose in high speed corners but it was clear that the car responded quickly after having a wider rear tire... All of you that think I'm crazy for wanting more than a 275mm tire, well, I beg to differ. :) I do wish we had found a trunk in time to make a wing mount (I have a 68" wide CF APR GTC-300 wing sitting here waiting to be mounted to something), as I think it could have gone much quicker with some rear down force. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5121-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5118-S.jpg Left: The RF tire #2 gave its life to the MSR-H gods. Right: The 305 looked right at home So we came in after she said she had "had enough", checked the tires and found another RF tire that had been destroyed. WTF?! There was only one corner on the track where you really load the RF going clockwise, but it was the fastest turn there. Was it a combination of a bad wheel bearing and this corner? Too much negative camber? Something else? We checked the RF wheel bearing again (it now had some serious resistance when spun - took a lot of force to turn the hub by hand; not good), and the camber (-3°, right where it should be). I think we're done for the day... not going to kill a 3rd tire to maybe squeak out another second or two, if I'm lucky. The higher powered cars at TX2K12 were far quicker than I was going to get to today - Costas GT-1 car had the top spot but some race prepped big power GTRs, a couple of Vipers and Z06s, and a Supra were all several seconds faster than the Mustang. I wasn't going to make the Top 5 Time Trial shootout, so Amy and I mounted the 18x9s and RS-3 Hankooks for the upcoming National Tour on Saturday and loaded up the car. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5104-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5120-S.jpg Costas had a pretty good day - his GT-1 car ran great in 3 sessions, putting in more trouble-free laps all day than I've seen that car do in the last few events combined, where I saw it run. He was pushing the car harder each session but taking it pretty easy; he had a small deficit going into the Time Trial but was confident the car had more time in it. Sure, he had an off in session #1 on some older/harder tires, but we gave him sufficient quantities of grief. GT1 Lawn Service, "We cut your grass fast!". It was on FB before he had even un-belted; by the time he had his helmet off there were 3 more "captions" for that pic. ;) http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8738-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5123-S.jpg So his GT-1 car, 3 GTRs and a Viper went out for the Time Trial Shootout at the end of the day. 3 hot laps later a GTR was on top - wish we would have had used his helmet/pit radios so he would have known to push it on lap#3. There was some potential blocking by the first place car but he didn't mind and still had a great day - anytime you get to bust off a lot of trouble-free laps in a GT-1 car on 14" wide slicks, its a good day. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...Shootout-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5126-S.jpg Click the above left picture for the Time Trial Shoot-out Compilation Video After we left the MSR-H site we went and ate some kickass Mexican food at Los Cucos, then made it back to our hotel and crashed. We had another busy 3 days ahead of us.... ...Texas National Tour continued in part 2, tomorrow... |
Project Update for March 25, 2012: Took me a bit longer to finish this post, sorry for the delay. Went to the Dallas Auto Show Friday and was at Cobb Plano's Shop Expansion Party all day Saturday, then watched F1 Malaysia this morning... so this is the soonest I could get back to the shop and finish the Mustang update.
Let's see... we left off with last weekend's "four days of racing" and we were leaving the TX2K12 track day at MSR-Houston. The event had great weather and we had a lot of fun there, even if we did kill two Hoosiers in the process and only managed two full track sessions in the Mustang. We left our hotel Friday morning and stopped by HK Racing Engines in Houston, dropping off an aluminum LS1 block to be built-up for an in-house turn-key E36 LS1 we're building to sell. Then we went to breakfast with Erik and Gary of HK and discussed this engine as well as one for the Alpha E46 LS1, then headed to College Station while towing the race trailer. SCCA "SunBelt" (Texas) National Tour Autocross http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8744-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8747-S.jpg Once we got to the Riverside Annex we set-up our trailer and sponsor table next to the AST/Moton trailer and unloaded the Mustang once more. Already had the Hankooks and 18x9's installed so Amy and I headed to the test-n-tune course. The course was a slalom, a crossover, a 180° corner, back through the crossover, into some offsets and then the finish. I watched some other STX, STU and STS drivers' times and noted that a 30.4 sec run would be fast. Here's some practice runs... http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n2-Terry-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n4-Terry-S.jpg Left: Video of Terry's 30.4 sec practice run (low pressures). Right: Video of Terry's 29.9 practice run (higher pressures) Sure, I'm pushing the car hard, but that's the only way I have found to get the best times out of the car. The rear tires are the limiting factor to the performance of this car set-up for this class, so I'm always giving the car as much throttle as it can take (or more). As you can see in the videos, bumping up tire pressures 5 psi front and back dropped times half a second on this 30 second course. See why testing is important? Concrete => more grip => add more pressure. These 8 brief laps of testing barely scratched the surface of what is needed, too. That 29.9 time was quicker than the other STX cars I saw running at that time of the day, but practice courses don't represent a whole course. I've "won" a lot of Nationals on the practice courses. ;) Amy put in a respectable 30.1 time on her 4th practice lap as well. We took the car through tech, slapped on the decals we didn't have, killed some time, and once the Day 1 course was open we walked this 1+ mile monster twice. Oh my feet. The course was set-up by Vivek and it was very busy, with a lot of transitional elements - more than normal? The finish was painfully tight as well. "Technical and challenging" is the term. :) Basically there was nowhere for the Mustang to stretch its legs and I felt like I'd be on the back foot on Saturday. I was, unfortunately, correct. Texas Tour - Day 1 http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8758-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8759-S.jpg We arrived early Saturday morning to walk once again, then I worked the sound meter (busy - couldn't watch the course much), and Amy ran STX-Ladies in heat #2. She made her three runs all within the same tenth: 69.694, 69.649(+1), and a 69.689. Consistent! She was 2.5 sec ahead of the rest of STX-L (3 cars), but her runs looked a bit timid on video and she felt like she left some time out there. Here's her fastest Day 1 run: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...Run3-Amy-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8752-S.jpg Video of Amy's Day 1 Run 3 with an STX-L winning time of 69.689 sec She drove smoothly and consistently, but after comparing videos and times of our Day 1 runs, we both felt like she was not giving the car enough throttle on corner exit - that's the only thing the Mustang does better than the lighter cars in STX: Accelerate. Play to your strengths. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8801-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8807-S.jpg Before my first runs I was comparing the day's STX car weights. From what I can gather we had a 2650 pound RX8, a 2750 pound E36, 2950-ish pound MZ3 and '08 WRX, and a 3200 pound R32. Our 3500 pound Mustang seems a bit piggish in this flyweight field, and all of those cars except the AWD R32 and WRX can run the same 265mm width tire as the Mustang, and all are considerably narrower. Hey, at least the 1900 pound "STC" Civics finally got booted out of STX, so we weren't looking at a 50% weight handicap anymore. An 800 pound deficit doesn't seem so bad now. Still, on paper the Mustang is pretty outgunned for STX class - duh, that's what everyone has said since the beginning of this crazy plan! But do I ever listen?? No. The one thing the 5.0 Mustang does have in abundance in STX legal trim is horsepower - about double what the rest of the STX class makes (excluding the turbo cars, which are considerably closer). But we all know that in autocrossing power is the least important thing... but to me its the best part of driving - power management. :D I don't like driving "momentum" cars as much, which is just a nice way of saying "under powered", but that doesn't mean they are slower. They aren't. Driving these cars just doesn't do it for me - maybe I'm wired wrong. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n3-Terry-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8831-S.jpg Video of Terry's Day 1 Run 3 with a time of 68.743 sec - good enough for 4th So on Day 1 heat 3 I strapped in, fired up the vidcam, and went out and drove aggressively on Run 1. Too aggressively; I DNF'd at a gate to avoid plowing over a cone and possibly damaging the factory Mustang Leguna Seca splitter, which so far has only taken glancing hits when Amy has hit a cone or two. I have yet to hit a cone with the splitter installed (knock on wood... err... ABS?), so maybe this $700 plastic protrusion hanging 5" off the front of the car is a good thing for my driving? Fear is a great motivator. I drove a bit cleaner and was quicker on Run 2 and you can see my best Day 1 Run 3 video above, which was a whopping .007 seconds quicker than run #2. WTF? I was driving my ASS off and that's all I could find? Seven lousy thousandths. ...continued below... |
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Driving that car on that course Saturday was... challenging. Exhilarating? Tiring! When I looked at the times it was more... frustrating. That word pretty much sums up my feelings after 3 runs on Day 1. I was now sitting .748 sec behind Sipe's RX8 (below left), and fell from 2nd to 3rd to 4th place at the end of the day, behind Wilson in the WRX and Roberts in the MZ3. I expected to be trailing the RX8 and maybe even the E36, but I didn't see the other two until it was too late. Ledbetter in the BMW 328is had some quicker times but coned them away and was placed behind me on Day 1, for once. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9047-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8974-S.jpg All night at the (Vorshlag sponsored) Saturday night Bar-B-Q dinner, I discussed my frustration with driving on street tires and too much power. Going from 305mm wide Hoosiers on track Thursday to skinny 265mm street tires on the same car the next day was a big change - and is making me think twice about STX. It was fun tracking the Mustang on R compounds and still being almost 8 tenths back after driving to the limit of my ability on Saturday was driving me nuts. It didn't help sitting next to F Stock drivers Doug Willie and Casey Weiss as well as ESP driver Mark Madderash that night. They all drive on Hoosier/smoke the R compound crack pipe... "Go to ESP!" they all said. After that day's walloping, and several beers, I was giving it serious thought. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8871-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8859-S.jpg Bad influences from the Hoosier clad FStock and ESP drivers Texas Tour - Day 2 We woke up early Sunday morning (still dark) and drove the Mustang off site to a nearby gas station, just to add a couple of gallons of go juice. Not being on course at Wide Open Throttle to disguise it, the RF wheel hub was making a HUGE amount of noise driving above 40 mph. Oh... wow, that was LOUD. We wondered: "Do we continue to drive this car today?" and risk a wheel hub failure/wheel coming off? We gave it a serious thought, and Ledbetter graciously offered me a co-drive in his 328is. That car was looking good with the fresh motor, new tires, and new DDP pistons in the rear AST 4200s. This offer was very tempting... but I was more interested in how the car could do in class than how I could do in class, so I stuck with the Mustang for all of my runs. I re-checked the wheel hub in the paddock and it still felt tight, but there was no denying that the hub noise sounded terminal. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8966-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8962-S.jpg Sunday's course was the same thing, but backwards. Technical, busy, some very tight spots, lots of slaloms. I walked it another 2-3 times and didn't see much help for my big, tire-limited car, except maybe in a few places where cars might hit higher terminal speeds, which would then favor the Mustang's "long legs" in 2nd gear (about 74 mph @ 7850 rpm) - that proved to be true, and lots of drivers either rode the limiter in 2nd or had a lot of 2-3-2 shifts to manage. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...Run3-Amy-S.jpg Video of Amy Day 2 run 3 with a 65.945 sec lap Amy went out again in heat 2 and put another 3.3 seconds on STX-L for an overall win of 5.9 seconds over 2 days. Ouch! She looked a lot faster on Day 2, both from the outside and on the in-car video, so she found her inner bad-ass and harnessed her aggression on Day 2. Instead of being nearly a second back from me like on Day 1, she ended up barely 0.5 seconds behind me for Day 2's runs (she's beaten me more times than I care to count, so I have to savor these little inner-team wins when I can!). We had watched Day 1's videos the night before and I talked to her about driving a bit more aggressively and I guess it worked. She also listened to music coming to the line and throughout her runs, which works for her. I leave the radio off but talk to myself when I drive; its kind of funny listening to myself on video afterwards... So heat 3 rolls around and I'm almost dreading it. I felt like I'd fall back from the leader another second or more and end up with a huge deficit and a mid-pack finish, or worse. That's not what happened though. With no changes other than the course direction and a good night's sleep, I came out on run 1 and the car and/or I was just... faster. The various "straight-ish" sections drove quicker and I was bumping near the rev limiter in 3-4 spots, which probably equates to 70-74 mph into a few corners. Nothing else that I know of in STX can do 74 mph in 2nd gear, so I felt like this might be a good day for the big red boat? http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n1-Terry-S.jpg Video of Terry Day 2 Run 1. This was a 66.901 sec run with lots of mistakes Run 1 was pretty messy (see video above) but on run 2 all the stars aligned and I had another nearly perfect drive (well, perfect for a hack like me), and the announcer said my 65.468 second run put me into the the lead... Wait, the WHAT?! This is a National Tour, in the 3500 pound pig, and was .75 sec back on day 1! I was unsure of what to think just then. Suddenly I was on the hot seat and was ready for a "just kidding!" from the announcer. Amy left the vidcam on for like an hour, filled the SD card up, and the vidcam shut-off right as I got to the line, so there's no video of my fastest run, which was run # 2. Trust me, it was frakkin magic. :D http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...n3-Terry-S.jpg Video of Terry Day 2 Run 3 with a 65.827 sec lap (run 2 was best @ 65.468 sec) Well, that was short lived, as Sipe cleaned up a dirty run #1 and put down a 65.808 sec run # 2 (which ended up being his best). Hey, I was still in second and had the fastest time of the day for STX, so I was cool with that! James Wilson ended up with a fast 2nd run that was a hair slower than mine, but still bumped me to 3rd place based on his faster run from the day before. Going into my 3rd run I was hoping for a few more tenths to maybe regain 2nd, and 3/4 of the way through my 3rd run it was going great. I was deeper into the revs sooner than my fast run 2, so it was going to be faster, but with more speed in the braking zone I botched the entry into a slalom and put the car sideways, barely missing a cone and losing a lot of time. I might have been a few tenths quicker, might have regained 2nd, but threw it away. James Wilson, the last driver in STX, put down a smoking fast last of 65.384 seconds and re-took fastest STX time for day 2, with my 2nd run less than a tenth back. Gotta congratulate him on that - he made it a close race in STX with only .087 seconds separating Sipe and Wilson in 1st-2nd over 2 days. I ended up in 3rd and took comfort in my "2nd fastest on Day 2" time - gotta take the good news where you can find it.
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...esults-STX.jpg None of STX PAXed well, which must have been course dependent, as the runs I could see looked clean and quick. C Prepared driver Todd Farris (the Divisional Steward who set-up most of the event logistics) took the Top PAX honors for the event in his AST equipped 2nd gen Camaro, which was pretty cool. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8945-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC8944-S.jpg more below... |
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What's Next? So after Day 2 there were some highs and lows, and on the drive home in the truck Amy and I discussed several options for the rest of the year. We were waiting for this National Tour to see where we were and now we know. I felt like I pushed the car to the limits of my driving ability and came up in 3rd place at this event, which to me was another disappointment. But I had lots of people congratulating me for the 3rd place trophy placing, which I guess... was actually an accomplishment? We haven't placed this high in STX open against Nationally competitive drivers before, so after thinking about it for a week I am a bit more encouraged with this car once again - keep hope alive! Adding up the numbers, having an 800 pound handicap is pretty ugly on paper. Maybe ESP, with a much wider (315mm) and stickier (A6) tire, and much more similar cars in class (heavy Mustangs and Camaros), is a better place to test suspension parts for this S197 chassis Mustang? On the 3+ hour tow back to Dallas I downloaded a new copy of the 2012 Solo rules to the iPad and we made a list of all of the STX legal and ESP legal mods left to do on the car. Everything we had left that's legal for STX was also be legal in ESP, and that list is still sizable. Lots of little things but most importantly - exploiting every rear suspension allowance that we can. This could unleash some badly needed rear grip. I wish I had a team of engineers and mechanics "back at the factory" that could jump right on that, but we really only work on the Mustang when we aren't swamped with customer service work at Vorshlag. Our 2 month work schedule is on a 6' x 4' whiteboard and its pretty full at the moment, but I am putting the Mustang on the board for next month! ESP vs STX Preparation Some of the things that are legal in both classes are becoming a higher priority. We really need to make a 2-piece lightweight 14" front rotors, to rid the car of the 25# all steel anchors that are on there now. We could lose 10 pounds of un-sprung and rotating weight from the front rotors alone. I was hesitant to delve into this earlier because it seemed the STAC was about to write another Take-Back ruling and make all brake upgrades have to weigh as much or more than stock, but so far they've held off on this. Our new draftsman has made aluminum brake hats before so we will jump into that project next week and get some hats modeled and machined before they are deemed illegal, as I am not spending $800 on two lightweight front rotors (from Girodisc). I could step down to 13" rotors (as the base GT comes with 13's) and also lighter calipers, but I really like the braking feel and stopping power of the 14" front Brembo 4-pots, on track and in autocrossing, so we'll stick with 14's and the factory Brembo's for now. The rear suspension bits that have been bouncing around in my skull for over a year have got to be developed and turned into metal, as I am not buying an off-the-shelf Watts link or Torque Arm for this car. The stuff out there for this chassis looks nice, but is either too heavy (bolt-on) and/or made to work with LCA relocation brackets (not STX or ESP legal), so we will make an SCCA-friendly set-up that is lighter and weld-on where needed to save maximum weight. Some of the ESP legal bits look like FUN, though. Big R compound tires (as big as you want!), 10" tall rear spoiler (rear downforce), and MOAR POWER! The Boss302 intake manifold is a relatively cheap $430 mod (less than a cold air) that adds more top end power (I've seen dyno plots with power peaking over 7K), beyond where this STX legal set-up falls off (6500 rpm). There's all sorts of other Boss 302 and Leguna Seca-specific bits that SP update/backdate rules makes available, but I refuse to remove the A/C from this car (this is still a daily driven car, this is TEXAS and we see some HEAT). Wheels and tires are the biggest part of differences for ESP, so maybe we show up at a couple of races on the big 315mm Kumho V710s and see how we do? We have the fastest ESP driver in the country right here in town, so that's a good gauge. If we are even remotely close then maybe we go further? We'll see. Right now I'm focused on getting to the rest of the STX legal mods as well as getting the dang Moton Motorsport Doubles that I bought many months ago onto the car. Just have to make the time. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9157-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC8516-S.jpg In the days after we got back, AJ here at Vorshlag pulled off the factory center grill mounted foglights, which is both STX and ESP legal. These fogs are plastic so they don't weigh enough to matter, but pulling the LF foglight uncovered the factory engine air inlet, which was stupid of me to keep covered up for all this time. Free Ram Air! Hehehe... Ryan is making a mesh grill covering / deflector for both foglight openings to keep rocks and tire debris from smashing the evap core and he will see if we can extend the inlet to the "cold air" allowed mod a bit. More soon on that. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9256-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9257-S.jpg As soon as we got the car back and unloaded from the trailer we knew we needed to replace the RF wheel hub. The car only has 11K miles but this hub failed prematurely due to installation error back when the ARP long wheel studs were installed 10-12+ months ago. Its a long story but the tech that pulled the hub failed to torque the nut to 340 ft-lbs, and Costas and I fixed it after our first runs ("WHAT ARE THOSE LOUD NOISES!") at an autocross last spring. The Ford Motorsport kit shown above was the best bargain for wheel hubs + studs and was a perfect solution to our bad wheel bearing issue. It includes two new Timken wheel hub bearing assemblies with new 3" ARP wheel studs already installed. The $230 price wasn't bad considering that's roughly $90 worth of wheel studs and $150 worth of hubs, and it saves us the effort of pressing the short studs out and new ones back in. The kit even comes with new wheel hub nuts, which were torqued properly this time. The RF hub had indeed killed the inner race (parts of it shown above), but the other hub looked fine, so it will be kept in the trailer as a spare. So the 4 days of racing were indeed hectic, but we learned a lot. I learned how much fun it is to track this car on real R compounds, even with a blown front wheel hub - that probably slowed the car down and possibly contributed to the two RF tire failures. I learned that the car needs some rear aero to balance out the splitter, especially at higher track speeds (I don't have any good, legal options in STX thanks to the aero Take-Backs of 2011). I learned that we still haven't fixed the rear suspension / traction issues and need to keep working on that to do well in STX or ESP. Stay tuned as we keep working on this car for STX and maybe sneak in a few events in ESP, just with bigger R compound tires and wheels. More soon, |
(I am posting this on SCCA forums as well as on the Vorshlag forum)
So after 18 months of ownership we finally pulled the GIANT foglights off of my 2011 Mustang GT that we run in STX (ignore the "STU" markings in the lower left picture - with the new ST classification rules we cannot run this car in STU on wider tires any longer - its STX or nothing; I'm not complaining, just explaining). They don't weigh much, but hey, every little bit helps. Removing them uncovered the factory air inlet for the engine. Doh! That LF fog light has been blocking that opening from day 1, so its never going back on. So this would end up being sort of a "ram air" inlet... MOAR POWER! (just what this car doesn't need) http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC6410-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9157-S.jpg Now looking into this opening there's going to be more air going in via this hole. How well can I seal this to the air inlet, which is 4-5" behind the foglight opening? I mean, does the allowed "cold air" modification extend into the foglight hole? Quote:
My goal is to make some sort of sealed tube that goes into the foglight opening for some sort of "ram air" effect. Again, not critical at autocross speeds but when we're bombing around a big road course at 150mph+ it doesn't hurt. I also want to make a fog light "mesh grill" for both fog light openings, to keep rocks and track debris from smashing into the now uncovered evap core / radiator behind the foglights (this car get's tracked a lot and being sprayed with rocks isn't unheard of) This mesh would be more of a "comfort and convenience" mod, via Stock class rule 13.2.A, and not in any way performance enhancing. Right? Lastly, when we make the foglight mesh grill covers, for the RF foglight hole I'd like to make a little air deflector to direct air from that opening towards the evap core/radiator as well... but I can't see where that mod is allowed, so if not it won't happen. waiting to see... |
Project Update for April 3, 2012: Forgive me if this post is a bit incoherent today - I'm on several medications trying to shake a cold or sinus infection and can barely see straight, plus the tornado sirens are going off constantly (insane storms in Dallas/Ft Worth today). Amy and I ran a Texas Region SCCA autocross last weekend in the Mustang in ESP class. You can read more about the results and our impressions below.
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9351-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9366-S.jpg TMS Bus Lot was the site for this past weekend's autocross, which is a sealed asphalt lot very similar to Heartland Park. This is the slipperiest lot in all of Dallas/Ft Worth and on top of that there is now highway construction nearby with a 3' tall berm of soil at the southern edge of the lot (behind a concrete barrier that you do NOT want to hit). Add in the heavy rains north Texas has seen of late, washing dirt onto the racing surface, and we had a dirt covered slippery parking lot. You can see the plumes of dirt in the pictures above and we all felt it on about half the surface all day. STX Class Results http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-results-L.jpg Even though Amy and I ran in ESP, we still watched STX closely since they ran in the same heat as we did, with a large, healthy class that day. You can see the class results cropped out of the total results sheet above and they were quick. Maybe the unusually dirty surface explains the times they ran that day? Cars on treaded tires seemed to do unusually well in the PAX standings (2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th, and 10th), but the STX crew drove their butts off too. Brad Maxcy was about .8 sec back from my 2nd time for most of the day, but he dropped a lot on his 4th run and got within a tenth of my ESP time - yikes! Ledbetter was also in the same second in his STX car in 2nd. AST/Vorshlag equipped cars were also well represented in PAX results, with 1st-5th + 8th-9th of the top ten. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9465-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9494-S.jpg Sipe and his co-driver in the Texas Tour winning RX8 seemed to struggle on this surface, as did the 325is E30 (below). Maybe this was a good day for us to not run STX, as we could have been pretty far down in the standings. ;) http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9541-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9505-S.jpg How's it Feel to Have Hoosiers?? The Mustang on R compounds was A-MAZ-ING! I cannot describe how much more fun and how much EASIER it was to drive this car on sticky race tires, even on this dirty, slick parking lot. It hooked up in 1st at the launch, it was hooked up coming out of corners, it turned and slalomed like it was on rails. And yes.... "Duh!", right? Everyone has been telling me to try ESP in this thing from Day 1, and I have to admit - once you have that R compound needle in the vein, its hard to stop. Kids... Don't do drugs! http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9538-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9491-S.jpg We were lazy and left the crappy old Hoosier 275/35/18 A6 fronts and 305/30/18 A3 rears on the 18x10s, replacing the one corded 275 with the last A6 I had left. The A6s were only 2 years old but the A3s were 7 years old, so I wasn't expecting to see miracles. But even so... the car was still pretty quick, PAXed 8th, and compared well relative to other cars on R compounds that day that had solid drivers/well prepped cars, such as: ASP, BSP, CSP and SS (see my class mash-up, below). http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-Results-L.jpg So my best run straight timed the quick SS and CSP drivers, but trailed the ASP and BSP winners, which wasn't a huge surprise. I've seen 1-2 seconds gained on the same day just going from 1 year old tires to fresh sticker tires, so how many seconds in bench raced results are 7 year old tires worth? :D Bench racing is fun and all, but next time we'll have the sticker 315s on the car. Next time is the Mineral Wells Pro Solo, where Madderash and Todd Farris are driving the 7 time Nationals winning ESP Firebired. That should be a better gauge for how competitive (or not) this STX car is on R compounds. more below... |
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http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9551-M.jpg Looking at close-up shots of the tires under load it appears we were a bit low on tire pressures, even for this lot. I was guessing and ran 36 psi front, 32 psi rear. I should have been closer to 40 psi from the carcass deformation seen above. This new set-up might need some additional spring rate as well. A real test day with a box full of springs is probably needed. In-Car Videos + More Race Analysis The weather was perfect with temps in the 70's to high 80s, breezy and cloudless. We worked 2nd heat and ran 3rd (last heat), so we had the cleanest course of all heats - but it was still pretty dirty. Amy and I both ran in ESP class and alternated driving every 2 runs. She took a rider on her first run and I forgot and left the shocks at full soft, so it was 3 sec slower than her best run. I also noticed that the LF tire had corded on the outer edge by the time she came in after that run, not good. Oh well, we would just have to know it would be pushy and have less grip in right turns - luckily there was only really one big right-hander. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...2-040112-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...4-040112-S.jpg Left: Video of Terry's Run 2 (ESP winning time). Right: Video of Amy's 4th run (2nd in ESP) So the video from our best runs are linked above. Amy is a bit less aggressive on the throttle but is amazingly smooth (as she always is) and managed to get a 42.2 sec run. That's pretty good considering she was doped up on the same medications that I am now on, since she had this same cold/sinus/whatever thing that day (I started symptoms that night). So, kudos to her for driving well with a splitting headache and coughing fits. My 1st run was a 41.5, my 2nd run (my fastest - fail!) was a 41.0, and I ran 41.1 on 3rd, and a 41.0+1 on my last run. I edited and uploaded video from my 3rd run because the first sector (our region like many others has sector timers) was 0.5 sec quicker than my best run. I had a huge mistake going into the last 2 corners that blew the run - and still almost matched my best time. Combining my best sectors gives me a theoretical 40.6, which would have been 5th in PAX instead of 8th. Meh. I was consistent (running within the same 5 tenths on all 4 runs) but not exactly "Blisteringly Fast". Watching all 5 of my runs (my 1st look at the course I stopped for a downed cone + errant course worker) I am making lots of mistakes, and mostly driving the car like its still on street tires. I'm not pushing hard enough in slaloms and corners, and I'm tentative on the throttle (paranoid). There's also a front end push in steady state corners that needs to be dialed out (testing/spring rates/square tire set-up?) as well. All of the rear traction issues seem to be completely gone/hidden with 305mm Hoosiers, which wasn't much of a surprise either. The old "R compound crutch"? Yes, we enjoyed running in ESP but we're going to keep the car legal for running car in both STX and ESP for a bit longer, and keep working on rear traction improvements (which will be more evident on street tires). I will resist the temptation to add ESP-only mods for now, like the Boss302 intake manifold. Yes, it needs more power if we stay in ESP, as there there were almost no traction issues on this 2nd gear course, even with these old R compounds. After leaving the event our trailer had a blowout on a busy tollway that took out the fender and some aluminum paneling, which kinda sucked. And the trailer had no spare so we made some hasty road-side repairs to remove the bad wheel and limped on 3 wheels to a parking lot of a tire store a few miles away. Stupid not to have a spare or the proper tools to do a trailer tire extraction quickly - mistakes that were all mine. We got there right at 5 pm (closing time) on Sunday, so the only open tire store around had nothing in stock and no way to get the right tire until the next day. This all made for an interesting evening, but we managed to get unhooked and still made our dinner plans (a bit late). On Monday morning returned to the trailer with a pair of new BFG Commercial T/A E-rated truck tires. Now I'm searching for nicer aluminum 16" wheels to replace all 4 steelies with (and turn 2 into spares). Never a dull moment. Next Up? There are two big competition events we plan on attending in this car in April: The Mineral Wells (TX) Pro Solo April 20-22 and the TWS NASA weekend April 28-29. We have a 2nd trunk that just arrived so we'll make an ESP legal rear spoiler for that. Eventually we want to make wing uprights for this trunk to mount the GTC300 wing for use in NASA TTS, but I don't know if we'll have time before TWS. I'm having a coughing and sneezing fit so I'm going to stop now before I choke to death at my desk. Medic! More soon, |
Quick Update for 4/13/12: According to our latest update, the batch of 100qty D-Force 18x10" wheels is due to arrive any day now with April 20-25th being the arrival window. I know a lot of you have been very patient and we thank you... this production batch took months longer than we expected and I have clumps of hair missing, from sweating this shipment. However, these will be well worth the wait and fit both Mustang's and Subaru's (and potentially even more cars).
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...DSC3358-Th.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-...SC6023a-Th.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...DSC3133-Th.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/TechArti...DSC5896-Th.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/TechArti...2-fixed-Th.jpg After seeing how well the car responded to bigger R compound tires in ESP, I went ahead and ordered a custom set of even larger race wheels to work with the set of 315/35/18 Kumho V710 R compounds we got back in January. Obviously I can't show up and run ESP on 7 year old crap tires again - that was just a quick test to see how the car handled and get my wife on board. It worked on many levels, and everything was much improved. Driving this car was a lot of fun in ESP, too. So the Mustang will be at the Mineral Wells ProSolo in a week on a more ESP-appropriate set of race wheels and tires, that should just barely fit inside the stock fenders. We spent some hours and found every last millimeter, I believe. I'll post pics of the new rolling stock during the ProSolo event next weekend (find then "like" Vorshlag on FB to see the pics days before I update this thread again), but just know this: this set is frakkin big. So yea, I am bench racing a few other things that would be class legal if the car were to move into ESP say... more permanently. Some of you here reading this are more hooked into the "Mustang parts scene" than I am, so I'll run this one by you guys first. One car that we're already using for the "update/backdate" bits (ESP) is the 2012 Mustang Boss 302 Leguna Seca (whew, that's a mouth full). The OEM front splitter from that car is legal on the '10-12 Mustang in both STX and ESP trim, as are some other bits for ESP use. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Cars/201...kstbrace-M.jpg Need to find these bits above That next potential "update" to our car that could come from the Leguna Seca and would be ESP legal is the rear seat delete. I have come up short trying to find out more information about the X-brace, but I did see this entry online today for a "rear seat delete kit" at $149. Its made of wood (bah!) and carpet, so not a copy of the actual OEM Leguna Seca kit. The customer reviews are nearly all bad. Its 40 pounds lighter, which I cannot ignore. This $149 kit would be legal for StreetMod (where you can pull the rear seats in any 4 seat car), but not legal for ESP. To be legal in SP we would need the factory X-brace and the factory rear upholstery bits from the Leguna Seca as well. Question: Anyone here got a line on the "real" Leguna Seca X-brace and rear upholstery kit? Please send me a PM if you know, thanks. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9652-M.jpg Some SP legal rear spoiler parts just arrived minutes ago. These are some stock car parts - nothing fancy or expensive. We'll modify them a bit to use a taller Lexan rear spoiler element. This saves us time in making the spoiler brackets, hopefully. Again, only OEM update/backdate legal aero bits (none of which are worth a damn) or a up to 10" tall rear spoiler is allowed in ESP. I can't have that big LS front splitter without some sort of rear aero, so we'll get a rear spoiler installed next week before the Pro Solo event. The second trunk we got from an '11 GT matches perfectly and will be the one drilled for the spoiler. I'll post up pics of the new wheels and rear spoiler during the week after the ProSolo, but on FB during the event. More soon, |
Project Update for April 27, 2012 - Part 1: A lot has happened in the past week and a half so this might be a long-ish update. I will break it into two parts - ESP preparation work from a week ago to get the Mustang ready for the ProSolo last weekend. Part 2 will cover the ProSolo results and a list of new issues that cropped up. I posted some of these pictures below on the Vorshlag Facebook page over a week ago - I put previews of upcoming thread/blog posts on FB first, so follow us there!
ESP Rear Spoiler http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9845-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9850-S.jpg In my last "quick update" from 4/13/12, I showed a picture of some rear spoiler bracket and element parts we got from a circle track supplier, as well as some machined washers and struts. We didn't use that bracket or the spoiler elements - they were too tall for use on the Mustang trunk. The manufacturer's website didn't have any dimensions so we took a gamble and it didn't pan out. Oh well, the rear support struts and the machined washers were useful. Instead, we made an all new rear spoiler from scratch using some 1/4" thick plexiglass we bought locally and some aluminum sheet we had at the shop. If you haven't been following along, SCCA Street Prepared rules come from pre-historic times and still do not allow a rear wing, only a rear spoiler. It can be as wide as the widest part of the car (excluding side mirrors) and can extend 10" away from the body in any direction. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9915-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9942-S.jpg This spoiler was built to fit a spare red Mustang trunk we located a couple of weeks ago - one we weren't afraid to drill into for the ESP-legal rear spoiler or for the upcoming TTS/AI legal rear wing. The trunk was set up on a bench at the same angle as it sits on the car, so it could be built while it was off the car. Some of the scrap aluminum we had at the time was anodized, which made it a royal b!tch and a half to weld to, so it wasn't the artwork-like welds you typically see coming out of our fab shop. No worries - it was strong, worked great at the ProSolo, and was built to an insane deadline in only a day and a half. It looks pretty good for a prototype made out of scrap, but the next one we make will use some virgin aluminum. The spoiler bracket bolts to the trunk using four "nutserts" installed into the trunk metal with a special rivet gun. The four points are shown above, where the black lower strut supports are placed. This aluminum spoiler bracket extends past the trunk and covers the width of the rear of the car, to about the edge of the sheetmetal. It could be another 4" wider per side (to extend out to the rear fender lips), but we felt this was wide enough to make plenty of rear downforce to match the Leguna Seca front splitter. The lower sections where it overhangs the rear fenders was later trimmed out so it wouldn't rub the paint and some Xpel paint protection film was added to the fenders "just in case". http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9945-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9932-S.jpg Once Ryan had the bracket laid out and tacked up, he and the guys made a cardboard template for the spoiler element itself. It is 10" tall and laid back at about a 65° angle. The next step was transferring the template to the plexiglass sheet and carefully cutting that out. There's a trick to cutting plastic with a saw - too fast and it melts back together behind the blade, too slow and it won't cut cleanly. My cheap "one speed" jigsaw (he had to pulse it on-off-on-off) was a nightmare to work with and it eventually burned up the motor after about 40" of cutting. A trip to Lowe's produced a variable speed Bosch jigsaw that worked like a charm and cut the 1/4" plexiglass sheet like butter. Drilling holes in plastic also takes ... patience. They managed to get everything cut and drilled without cracking the plexiglass. The machined washers are placed on both sides of all bolted joints in the plexi and held up after a weekend of ~30 autocross runs. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9948-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9956-S.jpg The plexiglass spoiler element was simply bolted in place - it was flexible enough that it did not need to be heated and bent to follow the curvature of the trunk or the two "bends" at the edges, where it meets the rear fenders. The struts hold the element well enough, but we might go back and mount two tension rods to the widest points of the spoiler, with the rods attaching at the forward edge of the trunk. A little testing (and video aimed at the spoiler at speed) will tell us if that is needed. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9951-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC0045-S.jpg The rear spoiler was finished up minutes before the car was loaded into the trailer Thursday night and it definitely got a lot of looks at the ProSolo. This was the first time we'd made a rear spoiler here at Vorshlag and we learned a lot. The guys were very careful during mock-up and construction (lots of painters tape used!), there were only 4 holes drilled for this part and not a single scratch was added elsewhere in the paint. Good stuff. more below... |
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Bigger Wheels http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9581-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9582-S.jpg Another new ESP modification we added were 315/35/18 Kumho V710 R compound tires mounted to Forgestar F14 wheels in 18x11" (front) and 18x12" (rear) sizes. We had been eying Forgestar (a division of iForged) for a while now and decided to give these wheels a try for larger widths like these. We called the guys in California there and they knew about Vorshlag and our Mustang, and our propensity for using big wheels. After speaking with them for a bit, they wanted us to become a dealer. So now we are a Forgestar dealer - if you see anything in their catalog you like, we sell at their MAP price. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9935-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../IMG5469-S.jpg They did a super-rush build and made these wheels (from flow-formed/semi-forged blanks they keep in stock) in an extremely short time frame for us. These were machined to our 5x114.3 bolt pattern, hub bore, and backspacing. We have done a ton of testing to see how far we can push wheel widths on this car and we sent them our specs... and no, I'm not sharing those with you. If you want wheels that fit like these, call us and we'll be glad to sell you a set. :) It's the only piece of the puzzle we can hold onto, and we've spent a lot of time and money learning these wheel specs on this chassis. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9923-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects.../DSC9931-S.jpg Even being careful as we measured for backspacing, then calculated offset, we still missed the numbers a hair in the rear and had to add a small spacer. So ... that meant longer wheel studs in the rear were needed. AJ pulled the rear axles out and used our new 30 ton press to remove and install the studs. Now we have ARP long studs on both front and rear axles (and the front/rear studs are different spline diameters and part numbers, so don't just order 20 of one part). All of this final wheel fitting was happening as the spoiler was being built and other race prep work was being performed, all while we had customer cars coming for service and orders were being built and flying out the door. It was a hectic week to say the least. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E.../DSC9959-L.jpg That final rear spacer tweak got us to this fitment with 11's in the front and 12's in the rear. The front is too tight for 12's under stock contours, hence the 11's, but the rear has the room for a race application (I wouldn't recommend either of the above for a pure street car). I'm very happy with the wheels, which have insane amounts of front brake caliper clearance and a pretty low weight. I will talk more about Forgestar costs and weights in a future post - after we do some more testing on them. They worked flawlessly at the ProSolo and next we'll see how well they do at a banked/high speed track tomorrow - with a NASA time trial at Texas World Speedway. Delays and Improvements Now here is the part I hate. Many of you reading these posts have pre-purchased or put your "name in line" for some products we've helped develop on this very Mustang, including D-Force 18x10" wheels and AST 4150 shocks. Both of those products, which Vorshlag ordered in large quantities in 2011, are over 3 months late being built and delivered to us. We have already refunded many of our pre-purchase wheel customers due to the continuous delays. AST stopped giving me dates and we received news this week that the D-Force shipment was delayed yet again. That's after we were told that the container was already here in the USA at port! Now they're saying May 14th. I'm pulling my hair out in chunks! I just want to apologize here to anyone waiting on parts, and I did so publicly in this blog post yesterday. http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-.../DSC0200-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Product-.../DSC0205-S.jpg In that blog post I also talk about several improvements we've made to the Vorshlag branded products that we can better control deliveries on, such as several coating and plating upgrades we've made to various parts in our Vorshlag camber plates. Also, we finally received the machined and laser cut parts for our all-new S197 Mustang camber plates, which went to the electro-plater yesterday. I need these for my own Mustang and we have lots of patient customers waiting for these unique camber plates, so that was exciting. These should finally start shipping next week. So that's some good news to go with the bad. :) |
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