I enjoy reading your post.

There are a couple videos out there of a 302S with a similar exhaust we did.

http://youtu.be/nI3QEhbs_h4

And here's a video of the Vorshlag Mustang with the new exhaust.

Vorshlag Laps With New Exhaust.

Project Update for March 5, 2014: After another extremely busy and record breaking month for the business, another 4 weeks has passed without a Mustang build thread post. I haven't had much "internet time", due to a lot of service/race prep work on customers cars. It got so backed up that I had to pitch in back there a few days, which is never a good sign. I hastily wrote this post, finishing it around midnight after a 12 hour work day, because this is the only time I can go more than 30 seconds without being called on by an employee, customer, PM, text or phone call. We've made some key changes to our red 2011 Mustang, the 2013 Mustang finally sold, and we are in the beginning stretch of 6 straight race weekend stint, including 3 days of racing this coming weekend. That means I will be writing at a furious pace with fewer edits - so if I sound a little loopy, and make some grammatical errors, that's due to the late hour and my compressed writing schedule.

2013 Mustang Finally Sold

Hallelujah! After 6 months of trying (or more? I'm afraid to count) the black '13 Mustang GT sold to a buyer out of state. I don't know if it was the latest of many price drops ($25K, ouch!) or the time of year was just right, but a mere 12 days after I lowered the price on January 31st the phones just all of a sudden lit UP. During a 24 hour period I had the car sold over the phone to an out of state buyer, sold and shown to a local buyer (first back-up), and then after we had 3 additional backup buyers lined up on the phone that same day - and the phones kept blowing up for another 24 hours. We finally just told the rest of the people that kept calling it was sold, before it was gone. We even had people offering $1000 over the asking price after I had accepted the first verbal offer, but we don't play like that, so I sold it to the first person who gave me confirmation and just waited for him to fly in and pick up the car a few days later.

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The buyer loved the car when he arrived, then wanted to upgrade it to the full Bilstein StreetPro struts, shocks and camber plates. We had what he needed in stock, got them installed in a couple of hours, took care of the sale at the bank, and then he drove it 1400+ miles home through an ice storm that hit the east coast, with a smile on his face. Weirdest thing... so many buyers appeared during a 48 hour period, I thought I was being prank called at one point. I guess I won't ever try selling cars in December or January again, that's for sure. Probably the magic of Tax Return Season.


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Was sad to see this one go, but with 8 personal cars and projects I needed to reduce the fleet a bit and this one just wasn't being used. Now it can be driven and appreciated by one of our S197 Mustang build thread's long timer readers, and with the new suspension and brake upgrades he should have a lot of fun on track.

Rear Flares Finally Happened!

So if you have been reading this Build Thread for the past 4 years you will know that I've complained about the 315mm tires we have run at all four corners are a bit on the small side and lusted for MOAR TIRE. While the "315s are skinny" statement sounds crazy to many of you, remember: we have been racing at 3770 pounds (with driver) in NASA TT3 class, and the "weight-to-tire" ratio isn't all that great with this many pounds and only a 315mm tire.

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Typical TT1 C6 Z06 rear tire is a 345mm Hoosier, and these cars weigh around 3150 pounds stock, not 3550+ like our Mustang

Remember: the typical TT1 classed C6 Z06 Corvette (above) in Time Trial is on 18x12" wheels and 345mm rears under stock fenders, with the same power levels (440 whp) or maybe a tick more. And with a 400 (or more) pound advantage to our car, their "tire-to-weight" ratio is very favorable. We cannot run that light without removing large portions of the chassis, and bumping up classes, but have been making due with 315mm tires on a 3770 race weight, with similar power numbers as a stock Z06.

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2012 SCCA ESP and NASA TTS wheel/tire set-up on 315/35/18 Kumho V710

Let's back up and cover the tire and wheel upgrades we've made since ditching the 18x9" then 18x10" wheels and street tires of our first 2 seasons, when we were building around STX/STU autocross classes. After a switch to ESP and TTS classes, we started running the 315mm R-compound DOT tires back in 2012 with a Forgestar 18x11" front and 18x12" rear, both of which just fit under the stock fenders (with some tricks out back to clear the 12's and 3 degrees of negative camber in the front to keep the top of the tire under the fender).

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Early 2013 NASA TT3 wheel/tire set-up on 315/30/18 Hoosier A6

We have since perfected the 18x11" wheel fitment at both ends of the S197 and realize that, for most racers, a 295mm-305mm tire works and fits best with that wheel size. Fewer tricks are needed to fit the 18x11" rear wheel and that tire width, compared to the 18x12". But for our "ballasted up" Mustang making 420-430 whp, and with as aggressively as I drive the thing on Hoosier A6 tires, we were overheating the 315s within 2-3 laps. So I bought a pair of the widest DOT radial tires made by Hoosier: the 345/35/18 Hoosier A6. They fit the rear 18x12s "well enough" and looked liked they fit the car without any fender mods (but didn't really).

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I did four autocrosses with these big 345 rear tires: a Pro Solo, a National Tour and two local autocross. It looked like it almost fit, until you started cornering and loaded up the read axle, and then they rubbed like mad and made billowing clouds of tire smoke. It was rubbing so badly on the rear inner fender sheetmetal that the car would bind up on the tires. It would start to load up in a corner, the tires would rub and slow down the car, unload the suspension and free up, lurch back into cornering then rub/slow down/lurch - rinse and repeat. But man, the traction off the line at standing start events was EPIC, and it cornered VERY WELL right up to the point where the rubbing started. Putting the 315s back on the car was a huge let-down, and I was determined to get them on this car again, eventually.

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Failed experiment: 345 Hoosiers made tons of smoke from excessive rubbing under stock rear fenders

Back then we were using much softer spring rates (450F/175R) on the AST 4150s and a panhard rod, which of course doesn't control the rear axle location as well as a Watts Link. So why didn't we try the 345 mm tires out back after we went to the Whiteline Watts and upped the spring rates 3 different times on the Motons? Because it still wouldn't have worked on a road course. We noted that as hard as we pushed the car on TRACK with the 18x12" wheel/315/30/18 tire we still had a little whisper of tire rub, both inboard and outboard. It may have worked in a parking lot speeds, but no way would it have been safe on high speed road courses with long laterally loaded corners and the added speeds/downforce we see there. There's a big difference in some tire rub at 20-50 mph for 30 seconds at a time and then from 60-150 mph for ten minutes or more on track. We played with spacers and got it to a "pretty dang good" compromise spot with very minimal rubbing on the 12" wheels and 315s, but any addition of tire or wheel width would go back to the rub/lurch/unload scenario, which was terrible. And at road course speeds that would quickly destroy a tire and potentially cause a catastrophic failure.

continued below

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Ugly cut front fenders at Hallett 2013 clear the now wider 18x12" front wheels

Before the June NASA Hallet event last year we cut the front fenders (a replacement pair of OEM units - the stock front fenders are in my attic, along with the OEM trunk, front bumper cover and hood) to clear a new wider 18x12" front wheel, to make the wheel set-up more "square". We ran it this way for a couple of months and in August of 2013 we finally made over-flares for the front. We made these in our shop using a vacuum formed ABS plastic material just before NASA Nationals last season, and made them big enough to clear a 335mm tire. But with stock rear sheet metal we kept all four corners at 315/30/18 sizes.

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"Ugly but Functional" front flares. We say that phrase a lot, I know...

They were not the prettiest things to look at, but they were functional and aerodynamically correct - you want to COVER the entire FRONT of a spinning tire, as that reduces drag, and you want to EVACUATE the rear portion of the tire by leaving it UNCOVERED on the back side. This helps pull air from the wheelwell and undercar areas, increasing brake cooling + engine cooling and reducing lift. This is a trick used in sedan car racing and was easy enough to emulate.

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Testing the mega-splitter at ECR, August 2013, days before making the front flares

We added a MASSIVE front splitter to the car at the same time and integrated the front flares/wheel spats into it. I had wanted to flare the rear wheels at the same time, and switch to the 335/345 tire combo before Nationals, but we simply ran out of time (and Amy said NO!). After Nationals I wanted to attack that at our shop, as we've done steel flares as well as wide-body conversions in steel before, such as these cars below (but Amy said NO!).

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Left: Boxed flared E30 we built. Right: Widening the OEM flares on this Pikes Peak raced 2005 Subaru STi at Vorshlag

Problem was we just got too buried in customer fabrication work, plus Amy absolutely REFUSED to let us "cut on her car". Yes, even after we made the ducted hood, massive rear wing and mega front splitter... Every other thing we had done to the car for 3 seasons could still be unbolted and replaced with the OEM sheetmetal, but cutting on the unibody was verboten. Plus it would take away our technicians from paying service work, and when you are trying to save $$ to buy a building, every dollar counts. So we had the new front areo and big flares, but no additional tire... we raced it like this at Miller in September on skinny 315s, and TWS in September, and ECR in November, and MSR-Houston in January, and Cresson with the Club Trials in January. ...I simply had enough...

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This is just some of the custom bodywork Shiloh has done for us...

When we realized late last year that the all new 2015 Mustang was going to likely be delayed until Fall 2014, and decided to keep the 2011 GT and race it in the 2014 season, I REALLY wanted to do the Big Tire Upgrade. RIGHT. THEN. AND. THERE. But we were too busy to tackle the rear flares, so I called Shiloh at Heritage Collision in Sherman, Texas, who had done such an amazing job on the custom flares for McCall's Z3 LS1 project (above). He worked the rear fender contours to clear that car's massive rear tires, then made front flare sections that he integrated into a carbon fiber hood, then made flared lower fender sections to blend it all in, and even fabricated some little splitter sections for the nose. That car looked AMAZING, so I took him the 2011 Mustang...

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Dropping the car off at Heritage Collision in early February - 345s installed and spaced out 1/2"

Amy was NOT AWARE that I had done this, of course, as I knew she wouldn't approve. I figured it would better to ask for forgiveness than permission in this case. So it was done during a very hectic time in the shop, hoping she wouldn't notice the red Mustang being gone for a couple of weeks during the ~5 week break between Race Events we had from Jan 31st until March 8th.

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Our shop guys (Ryan, Kyle and Olof) had blown apart the front splitter, front grill block-off plate, bumper cover, and rear wing uprights to have all of the aluminum bits blasted and powder coated (no more rattle can black paint or raw metal), as well as the Gloss "White" wheels (which were to be blasted and powder coated Anthracite grey with a semi-flat clear coat) then we loaded the car in the trailer and I dropped it off at Heritage. I discussed the timeline, budget and look we wanted with Shiloh and he said it would take a week or two. Well in 2 weeks we had our annual Open House and SCCA Tech Day, and I wanted this car to be there, so that was the absolute latest deadline we agreed upon.

Behind The Scenes : Making Custom Steel Rear Flares

Trust me - you don't want to see this kind of bodywork being done on your pretty car. Here's are some pictures that Shiloh was texting me while the rear flare work was ongoing, and my near mental breakdown that ensued. At first he showed me a method (these two below) that might have worked with a narrower tire, if we didn't need the extra clearance for lateral movement of the axle (even with a Watts there is some movement + tire deflection).

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Before and After - this was just the outer panel separated, moved out and massaged. "Looks great!"

Continued below

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But by now Amy was getting suspicious, and I couldn't keep her out of the shop every night she came in (after her day job) to do our accounting work. Luckily, with end of year bookkeeping she was pretty busy and somehow never noticed her car being gone. Now I never lied to her, and if she had asked "where's the Mustang?" I would have fessed up immediately, but I dang sure didn't volunteer the information! :p

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We took it down to the wire, as Heritage needed the full two weeks we had before our deadline to get it bodyworked, painted and buffed. They even painted the ABS front flare sections for us, as the red vinyl wrap job we had done was not sticking well and starting to peel off. Shiloh really wanted to make steel front flares for us, and I wanted him to as well, but we simply didn't have time.

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As it was, I didn't get back to the shop 5 pm on Friday, with the car and the many powder coated aluminum bits picked up from Crosslink Powder Coating on the way back (another great resource run by another real car guy). We needed the car assembled for the Open House the next day at 9 am, and still needed to clean up the shop - which was a disaster! Our fabricators and techs have been working nearly around-the-clock on customer race projects for weeks and we had to clean until the wee hours that night.

Meanwhile, as I'm taking the trailer back to our remote storage lot Amy drives up to the shop right after I left. CRAP! I ducked down and hoped she didn't notice me... in the giant red F350 dually with 36' enclosed trailer behind me. See, I was hoping our guys would have a chance to reassemble the wing and front end parts before she showed up and noticed the massive rear flares and missing rear graphics. Nope, she walked right into the shop while four of our guys were standing right next to the Mustang, which had the front end exploded apart on the floor (below) in front of it...

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They all looked innocently at the pallet racks or stared at the ceiling while she asks them "Where is Terry going with the trailer???" It took her about 30 seconds to notice the new J-Lo booty on the Mustang, then her jaw dropped. Luckily she really liked the work, but that didn't stop her from calling me and giving me grief. 10 minutes of expletives began, and she really lit it up. I thought was in the dog HOUSE, I tell ya... I was thinking about sleeping in that trailer that night. Finally then she cracked, started laughing, and I could hear the whole shop rolling on the floor. She told me it looked great, and let me off the hook. WHEW! Two weeks of panic and stress were lifted in seconds.

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After I got back from dropping the trailer the entire shop was in full "CLEAN MODE". We still had to re-arrange all of the "Stuff" and throw out junk (the scrap guy came by three times and was all smiles), and we cleaned up for many hours that night. I had to help sweep, scrub and mop the floors in the shop, too. Somehow we managed to clean up the messy floors, get most of the ongoing project cars shined up and presentable, get the lobby looking good, and got a few hours sleep before I had to be there at 7 to get ready for the Open House the next day.

Vorshlag Open House + SCCA Solo Annual Tech Day, Feb 22

Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Car-Show...use-2014-SCCA/

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This Open House event went even better than the two previous years' did, and we had 100+ people through the shop that day. Dozens came for the SCCA Annual Solo Tech, which saves them 15+ minutes during each of the 9 autocross events that Texas Region SCCA SOLO holds each year.

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Lots of our customers came by, and we had tons of food and drinks. Breakfast was kolaches and donuts and lunch was catered Mexican food by Ryan's mom's place, Ojedas. MMM, mmmm it was good! We also had cake, cookies, chips, queso, salsa, and lots of beer.

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I never sat down from 7 am until 5 pm, when it all wrapped up, and I talked so much I was hoarse. Lots of people looked at the Mustang's new flares, the C4 Corvette cage we had just built, the Scion FR-S and NB Miata LSx Alpha projects, a customer E36 M3 LS1, among other projects underway.

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One of our customers, Tyler, brought his Unimog out that day and rolled up in line for tech. The SCCA tech guys just shook their heads and laughed. He then proceeded to drive up every incline in the surrounding property in front of our shop, giving rides.

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All of the Vorshlag crew (9 of us) were there at the Open House, except two. Ryan was sleeping in after pulling a string of all-nighters at the shop the previous week, and Jason was co-driving the vintage 1963 Saab 96 rally car at the 100 Acre Woods Rally that weekend.

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Left: Jason at 100 Acre Woods rally - Photo by Alex Wong of Emotive Image. Right: Kyle reassembling the TT3 Mustang

continued below

During the Open House Kyle stayed busy all day, when he re-assembled the Mustang's splitter and front end, installed the wing, and then worked on a customer's Corvette race car - all while the rest of our crew was eating food, drinking and goofing off. Nicely done, Kyle!

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To be fair, Olof helped him for the Mustang front end, and mounted the 335 tires on the newly refinished 18x12" front wheels. Of course Brandon was busy taking pictures all day and we were all busy talking to folks and giving tours of our little shop, too.

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Just want to give a shout out to all of our crew here at Vorshlag for a job well done, after the two busiest months we've ever had. It was good to kick back and take a day to eat, drink and bench race with our friends and customers.

New 335 front 345 rear Hoosiers + New COBRA Seats

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So the whole point of (last year's) front and (new) rear flares was to house these wider tires. We knew the 335/30/18 Hoosier A6 fit up front, and I had a pair of scrubs that were mounted up for the Open House. The rear got another set of scrub 345/35/18 Hoosier A6 tires, which I have about 10 of (from the pair I purchased earlier plus some more I acquired).

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The sticker set got here today. So the plan is that we will have the Mustang loaded in the trailer on the four scrubs, with the sticker 345s mounted on the spare 18x12" rears and the sticker 335/30/18s loose in the trailer. Blast out to MSR and test in the afternoon on the 1.7 mile course on the scrub tire set.

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Then take the front wheels off and mount the sticker 335s trackside at PST (since Amy busted one of the extra pair of front 18x12s at MSR-H and the replacement isn't here yet). That Friday night I'll mount the sticker front and rear wheels onto the car after I'm done testing.

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The old seats that came out of the 2011 GT. These will be for sale on our Clearance Page soon.

While we were getting the car cleaned up for the Open House I noticed how faded the COBRA seats have become. The passenger seat, a narrow ("normal width") Suzuka kevlar fixed back composite racing seat, is from 2005 and with nearly 9 years of use in two of my cars without tinted windows, that often get parked outside during the day (to make room in the shop to work), is fading fast. And it is a bit narrow for most folks, so my passengers have had to suffer (it is really made for folks under 160 pounds). The driver's seat is also a Cobra Suzuka, but the "GT width" version (wide, which fits 90% of the people in the USA) from 2009. The fabric is perfect on that one, but the outer left side edge has seen some sun fade also. It isn't noticeable unless you sit it next to a new set, though.

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But with an event in March that will be televised (USCA) I wanted to put in a fresh pair of COBRA seats, and get that narrow passenger seat upgraded to a wide version, that will make it easier to give rides at track events and autocrosses. So I took the Cobra Evolution GT seat from our lobby, and another Cobra Suzuka GT we had in stock, and had Olof and Kyle put them in the Mustang. They had to modify the (fixed) bracket on the passenger side, but it is all good now. We routed the OEM seat belt through the head protection section and down through the lap belt hole of the Evolution seat, and it fits across my shoulder and hips just like it does on an OEM seat. So yes, a racing seat can be safe in a street car, if you keep the stock belts and route them properly... I had a whole article written about seats, roll bars and harnesses (for autocross, track and street use) but it needs some more edits. I'll post it in a week or two.

Call Vorshlag For 315mm Scrubs!

So now that we've finally made the switch to 335/345 tires, we've got a shop full of my used Hoosier A6 (and even six R6s) DOT race tires in 315/30/18 that we need to move. They have been stored in our climate controlled shop and all are less than one year old. These are all my TT scrubs, and I've been saving and hoarding them from last season - I think I used 32 new A6s last year, and most of them are still here. They'd all work great for autocrossers, even track guys - if you don't mind the fastest TT laps have been taken on each set already. These cost $376 new, selling them for $100-125 per tire. Call us and see if we still have any left. I'll be moving the 335 and 345 Hoosier scrubs pretty soon as well.

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And of course we still have several sets of new Continental 305 and 320/650/18 racing slicks. All of these are either in our Clearance Page now or will be soon.

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Getting Ready for NASA @ MSR Cresson March 7-9th

Amy is out of town so "Team Vorshlag" will be just me, driving solo this weekend. The signups were a little light for this event in TT, and TT3 only has 4 cars right now. That means: nobody can win tires. It also means that we only have 27 in TT, not enough to warrant the extra track length (and 3 extra corner stations) of the 3.1 mile course that TT normally runs at MSR (the race groups and HPDE always have smaller run groups and just run the 1.7). Most of the TT racers are bummed about running the 1.7 mile course, but after that 1:18 lap time in January, I'm not! I had one of my best drives on the 1.7 five weeks ago, and that was on worn out 315s. What will the car run on sticker set of 335/345s? Who knows but I doubt it will be slower.

Continued below

Here's the old NASA TT track records on both the 3.1 mile and 1.7 mile courses (NASA TT hasn't been run the 1.7 since 2010):

My 2:22 record for TT3 set last year on the 3.1 is probably a little soft, so I could have worked on improving that if we were to run the 3.1 mile course, assuming I could get a clear and unobstructed lap (which never happens on the 3.1). But it seems we're running the 1.7, and my 1:18.6 from January slots in there quite nicely in the old lap records. Of course nobody has set a TT record on the 1.7 in 4 years, so I suspect all of those old 1.7 TT records will fall. Hopefully, maybe, fingers crossed we can set the TT3 record on the 1.7 this weekend? That's assuming everything goes according to plan, which it almost never does. ;)


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This is the 1.7 mile course everyone will be running this weekend with NASA

Weather could play a major factor, and rain is in the forecast this weekend (but it changes by the hour). We've seen days as recently as this week where it was 80 degrees and sunny in the afternoon one day and then 16 degrees and sleeting the very next morning. Totally psychotic temperature swings, with 4 freak ice storms this winter season - unheard of in Dallas. So it is anyone's guess how this weekend will go.

The Car Guy Show

So in my last update I mentioned that we went to Cars & Coffee in the red T3 Mustang in February. Amy drove out on the 315 A6 tires and I drove out in the 2013 GT. The weather was COLD but the crowds were HUGE, and out of the 1000+ cars there that day a film crew for a new TV show was on site and interviewed about 6 car owners. One of those was our red car, with my goofy ass standing in front of it - wired up for sound, talking to the host and answering questions on camera.

The first show of this new series aired March 1st in the Dallas TV market only (so far), and somehow they used about 2 minutes of my interview in the pilot episode, spread across 3 different segments. This wasn't scripted; it was just some questions they asked and my answers given off the cuff. Pretty cool that this made it on the show. The on-track segments we filmed with this crew December 28th might get re-shot soon, once they get their filming schedule opened up, and they might even shoot a bit at our shop. We'll see.


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You can watch the pilot episode of The Car Guy Show at the link above

This show airs on KTXD Channel 47 Saturday's @ 11:30am with encore presentations Sundays @ 6pm and Fridays @ 1:30am. This is a Dallas CBS affiliate network, but the show is supposed to make it to more TV markets in the coming months. So its not a nationwide show, and not a huge deal, but was a nice surprise to see that I made this show's first episode. The promo video they made for 30 second commercials for the show has in-car footage from our TT3 Mustang, shot at the December 28th film shoot.

Cars and Coffee Dallas, March 1st

While the pilot episode of The Car Guy Show was airing we were at Cars & Coffee Dallas once again, bright and VERY early Saturday morning, parking with the SCCA Solo folks to promote their events. We drove out on the Hoosiers, this time the 335/345 scrubs that I will test with on Friday. The crowds flocked to the car even more this time, as the rear fenders were fairly obnoxious looking. The Car Guy Show crew also brought out a couple of cool cars, including this Viper and this Mosler MT900, which parked next to our Mustang.

Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Car-Shows/Cars-Coff030114/

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They filmed some B-roll out there and a few brief "we'll be right back" segments with some folks. Vorshlag's Ops Manager Sofi rode her Cafe themed Honda motorcycle (that she hand built) and also parked with us. The weather was PERFECT and the lot was jammed with 1200+ cars and thousands of people.

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At about 10:30 who walks up? None other than Aaron and 5 of his guys from Gas Monkey Garage. Even though he hates Mustangs, Aaron stopped and talked to me about the car for 20 minutes, and we realized that one of his crew was someone I knew that used to work at a shop we dealt with a lot. Then the subject of his '63 Falcon came up and the Pikes Peak 2014 race, which Aaron is entered in. We've supported racers at this event in the past, and Vorshlag's head engineer Jason has crew chiefed there 4 or 5 times, and will again this year.

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Left: Me chatting with the GMG crew. Right: Aaron's recently purchased 63 Falcon is sweet!

We talked a bit about the tricky nature of this treacherous hill climb event, the altitude and prep you need to tackle. Aaron is going to be getting more seat time in the Falcon at NASA events, a Bondurant school, the upcoming Goodguys autocross, and the Ultimate Street Car Association's event at TMS this month as well. Our own beared wonder Jason spoke with Aaron at the PPIHC event last year, and I suspect they will trade some more Pikes Peak stories at one of the events we will see the GMG guys at in the coming months.

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Left: In Texas we have everything from Exotics to Bubba Trucks. Right: Yep, that's wood grain on an Audi R8

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After C&C we went and had breakfast with the SCCA Solo peeps Brad and Jen Maxcy, with me and Amy plus Brandon and Sofi from Vorshlag. Best breakfast ever = the Chicken and Waffles at Whiskey Cake Cafe. Bacon is infused into the waffle...!! And After four mimosas it was nap time for Terry, and Amy drove us home. Then we switched cars and went to some Irish Festival all afternoon, where I had plenty of Irish beer and ale. And that was my first day off in about 4 weeks, which was epic.

I drove the Mustang to the shop the next morning, with a healthy hangover, after the temperature dropped by more than 60 degrees. It began raining then sleeting on my drive in, of course. Oh well, the defrost and wipers worked just fine, and the DOT Hoosiers had enough grip on the slick roads to where I didn't even notice the slick conditions (left the traction control on, just this one time). Worked about 7 hours while it continued to sleet and I drove another vehicle home, towing an empty trailer in much worse road conditions... passing inexperienced winter drivers on the highway. Good grief, Texas drivers on ice are terrible.

Dyno Retune Finds Some Lost Power?

Yesterday the tuning gurus at True Street Motorsports in McKinney, TX made time for us in their busy schedule and we got them the 2011 Mustang for a re-tune and dyno check-up. We have changed the exhaust (added the lighter Magnaflow mufflers and dumps) and needed a re-tune and NASA Time Trial Dyno Certification Form for this season. We don't plan to make any more changes that would affect power.

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Dyno pulls from 3/5/2014. Left is STD correction factor, right is SAE correction factor (which NASA uses)

So in the past ~8 months we had been making from 419 whp to 421 whp and around 402 wtq, right before Nationals and again in a late December dyno test. That's the number we used to get to that 3770 pound TT3 race weight, which we used to ballast up about 45-85 pounds to meet (depending on fuel load and driver). Well this new dyno pull kind of threw a kink in those numbers.

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Left: New TT3 classing sheet, page 1. Center: New TT3 classing sheet, page 2. Right: Dyno Certification Form

The 442 whp and 429 wtq STD corrected numbers were a little shocking, until I realized that the SAE numbers were only 432 whp and 419 wtq - SAE numbers are what NASA uses to get to the correct power-to-weight for our TT class. I've included the updated TT1/2/3 classing sheets as well as the dyno certification form. I did the calcs and it looks like the bump in power was only a modest bump up in minimum weight, going from 3770 to 3802 pounds with the new power boost. This was helped by the fact that at 3801+ pounds we get the highest bonus possible from weight, +0.6. The non-OEM aero penalty is -0.4, taking the 9.0:1 base TT3 ratio to 8.8:1. Then if you do the math... 432 whp x 8.8 = 3801.6 pounds, rounded up to 3802. While it might seem backwards how we came up with these numbers (and it is opposite of how the TT sheets have you calculate it), this is exactly how the NASA TT National Director (Greg G) showed us how to do it at the 2013 NASA Nationals.

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I asked Olof to modify the existing weight box bracket to make it a bit more robust ballast, to hold additional weight. I never liked the old one (it was the black 1x2" tubing that bolted in at 2 points/4 bolts), and the new design is a "T" shape with two more mounting bolts + an all new thicker/stronger M14 bolt to secure the weights with. Please don't over-analyze this brace - you can lift the back of the car from that bolt and brace.

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We figured the new flares and especially the much wider (and taller rear) tires would add some weight, and boy it did. With nearly a full tank of fuel and me sitting in it (210 pounds, been eatin' good!) with my helmet and the new weight box bracket we're at 3822 pounds sans ballast, so that is overweight now by a solid 20 pounds. And that was after removing the rear seats today (33 pounds) because it was way over minimum an hour earlier. Granted it has about 80 pounds of fuel in it, and it can probably go down to 1/2 tank on this course safely, but dang this car is heavy. Those new tires added some pounds, but a lot of added width - should sill be quicker, I hope? We will see soon enough.

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Olof and Kyle did a ride height change in the rear - Shiloh had it "tucking some tire", which looked cool for pictures but it bottomed out on the street a bit much. Then they did a corner balance adjustment to get the cross weights even.

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Getting a quick corner balance done on the car after some changes. It was at 48.2/51.8% cross but we got it to 49.9/50.1%

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And yes, for TT2 we're still WAY too heavy (even without ballast) and WAY down on power to hit the power-to-weight ratio limit for the class (for us it would be 8.0:1 -0.3 for weight = 7.7:1 at 3500-3600 pounds). We'd have to drop nearly 300 pounds and gain another 30 whp to hit the 7.7 ratio (3500 pounds and 454 whp) to max out for TT2. I think we've found the limit of power for this car with a bone stock engine from throttle body to exhaust port, and I don't want to dump time and money into a built motor and gutting the car to get to that weight. Not even going to entertain that idea.

What's Next?

This weekend we have the NASA TT event, plus testing Friday. Then the following weekend is Goodguys at TMS. If you are near DFW, have some 200 treadwear tires, and have a domestic car or anything "domestic powered", come out and join us on Sunday. Its only $40 to run the tightest autocross you will ever see. It will be a good test for us for the following weekend, which is the BIG event we've been waiting for since last Fall...

USCA @ TMS March 21-23 - Mention Vorshlag to Save $200!

This is the big event in March I am really looking forward to. This is the 2nd round of the all new series from the Ultimate Street Car Association, which will be a TELEVISED and consistent 3-day format competition event leading up to the Optima Challenge in Vegas after SEMA. All cars must run on a 200 treadwear, and there is no restriciton on makes and models - you can bring anything from a Civic to an EVO to a late model Mustang to a classic muscle car, as long as it is street legal and meets a few basic requirements to prove that. The treadwear rating of the tires are the great equalizer, too.

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This USCA event at TMS is going to be very similar to the Optima Qualifier we ran over in 2012 (and even run by the same crew) where we did the speed stop and autocross at the Horse Track in Arlington, then did a 70 mile road rally (to prove these are street cars) to Eagles Canyon, where we had a time trial event and a 5 lap shootout. Our Mustang did pretty well at that event, 3rd fastest in the time trial, winning the autocross and taking 3rd place overall (I tanked the speed stop event - long story).

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That Optima Qualifier event was a BLAST and we got to run our Mustang against some serious machinery from all over the country. And we got on TV - everyone did. So, what are you doing March 21-23rd??? Why don't YOU come join us at this event???

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I have heard from a lot of folks that the $500 entry fee for this 3 day event was too much to stomach. The entire event is held inside the oval at Texas Motor Speedway, with the autocross and speed stop held on some big parking lots and the Time Trial on the 1.4 mile infield road course. This course is a blast and we ran that with Global Time Attack in 2012 and the local Texas Region SCCA Solo group runs it every year for their one road course autocross.

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I talked to Jimi Day of the USCA and he wants to get more LOCAL TEXAS RACERS to enter this event, so we worked out a deal to get the price down for you by two hundred bucks. Here's the deal: Go to this link and sign up with either Gold or Platinum entry ($500), then note that you are WITH VORSHLAG somewhere. You will then get a $100 refund after you sign up. Next, come to Vorshlag with your car (not your buddy's car) within the next 6 months and get $100 Credit towards service work at our shop, effectively bringing your price down to $300 instead of $500. Of course if you are out of state this $100 service credit doesn't do you much good, but I am trying to get LOCALS to support a race in our back yard. That service credit can be used for fabrication work, repair work, race prep, parts installation, whatever.

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That $300 price gets this 3 day event in line with a typical 2-day HPDE or Time Trial, and you will get a FREE MEAL Friday night after the road rally, a FULL DAY of autocrossing and speed stops (Saturday), and a FULL DAY of laps on the TMS Infield Road Course. That's a lot of seat time for the money. So please, if you have anything with 200+ treadwear tires, PLEASE COME JOIN US! :)

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I'm calling you out, Texas Region SCCA Solo people! You've run this road course and tons of autocrosses on this pavement at TMS. We need you to REPRESENT! And I'm calling you out, Texas NASA Time Trial racers! This is a chance to get on TELEVISION! Get your TT car on some 200+ street tires and come REPRESENT! Just remember to say you are with VORSHLAG to help save you $200 off the $500 entry fee ($100 refund + $100 service credit at Vorshlag). Nobody else is getting this sweet of a deal...

USCA Rules: http://ultimatestreetcarassociation.com/usca-rules/
Sign Up Here: http://ultimatestreetcarassociation....x-march-21-23/

That's all I have for now, more next week.

I find it funny that Aaron hates Mustangs so much, but yet his Ford Falcon is the Mustang in sheep's clothing. :lol:

I love those early, rounded Falcons, and looked into building one for performance rally. But everything I saw pointed me towards Mustangs. The '65 Mustang was 4" wider, which helps a lot, and the '67+ cars were much stronger and had more engine bay room.

But, if you are in love with the shape, or are entering an event restricted to pre-Mustang cars, a Falcon will work.

I wish I could make this event for the HPDE and Auto-X, but I am running the TX Mile that weekend. Bummer, so many good events going on in TX in March...can't choose them all.

Don't get me wrong, that looks like an absolutely beautiful car, and I know Aaron built it right. Aaron is really the only reason I like and watch the show, because of how he mods. Simple and factory appearing, but with an extra bit of "in your face" performance.

Terry/Jason,

Did y'all have plans to add a flare to the side skirts in front of the rear tires? THat way the lines match up and flow more air around the front of the tire.

Yes, we intend to build a modified rocker that kicks out below the rear flare. Just never enough time.

Cool. I was just curious. That will definitely finish the look and be mean as hell too. :headbang:

Project Update for March 20, 2014: As usual this started out as a "quick update" but grew into a monster, and it only covers two weeks worth of events and car prep. We had a great time with NASA at Motorsports Ranch Cresson March 7-9th, so I'll go over that race weekend. Then I'll discuss the last nagging problems we're having with the car, which slowed down the lap times once again (AdvanceTrac faults!). We stripped all of the graphics off the red Mustang in preparation for Goodguys and USCA events as well as installed a set of BFG Rivals. We also got a chance to install the new BMR "UTCA033" spherical Upper Control Arm for the 2010-14 Mustang as well as a new set of Cobra seats (Monoco) in one of our Tester's GTs. Then we get ready for USCA this weekend.... let's go!

NASA @ MSR-C, March 7-9th, 2014

In my last update we went over the modifications and rear flares that were involved to the rear fenders to clear the big 345/35/18 Hoosiers back there (see below). The front flares we made last August were always intended to clear the 335/30/18 up front, and this was the first event where we got a chance to run this new tire upgrade.

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Mmmm..... big flares.... big tires.... NASA @ MSR means it was time to finally use these in anger!

We drove at MSR track in January with SCCA Club Trials to a 1:18.675 on used 315mm A6 tires, so I was hoping for a 1-2 second time drop with a sticker set of the wider Hoosiers on the same 1.7 mile course... if we even ran the 1.7 course. You see the NASA Texas Time Trial group is normally too big to fit on the 1.7 so we normally use the longer 3.1 mile course - and have done so for the past three years (2011-13). We've had as many as 47 cars enter into TT group at our events, but this time we only had 26 signed up about 4 days before the event, so Dave B made the call, "TT will be running the 1.7". The cut-off for minimum TT entries to run the 3.1 was 32 cars, and we just didn't make it in time (but we did by the end of the race weekend!)


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The 1.7 mile course everyone ran at the NASA event Jan 8-9th

The main thing I lacked at the Club Trials event in January was simple, SEAT TIME. I almost never run the 1.7 mile course at MSR, and have a lot more seat time on the (seldom used) 1.3 and 3.1 courses. I only drove the Mustang at speed for two sessions on the 1.7 mile course in January and put my best laps in early, in the 2nd session. Amy co-drove with me that day and drove in the last two sessions of the day, when it was warmer (it was very COLD at the start of that event, in the 29-35°F range). Well for this weekend Amy was at a wedding for a cousin out of state, so I was going to get to run the car as much as I wanted. Instead of learning the new tire set-up (and this track) during the four daily TT sessions on Saturday and Sunday I decided to head out to MSR on Friday afternoon to get some laps in at the "Test-N-Tune" event normally held the day before any NASA Texas event.

Friday Test and Tune at MSR

MSR is fairly close to our shop and after trying a new route (thanks Google!) I got there in under 1.5 hours. Problem is I didn't leave the shop until after 1:15 pm, as the guys were thrashing to get the car prepped and loaded. And normally I bring along one of our techs for each day to these local events but all of our guys had something going on that weekend, so I went out by myself. So no crew, no Amy, no Brandon (our photographer) - what could go wrong?

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I had planned on getting there a bit earlier to reserve good paddock parking for my trailer and 2 others (Matt and Costas), but when I rolled up after 2:30pm the place was PACKED. NASA has commandeered the covered grid area for tech/scales, so they moved grid area to one of the parking lots normally used for paddock - which made the remaining paddock spaces disappear. I got the best spot I could find, unlaoded the car quickly, and went to the clubhouse sign up for the T-n-T event. Only $100 to run in the afternoon, but for all MSR run member and test days you must wear a fire suit and full race gear. No worries, I always bring my gear bag. They said that with our TT3 prepped car with the times it runs I could run with either the "race cars" (W2W prepped cars) or the "sports cars" (mostly HPDE and TT folks). There were 6 sessions left (30 minutes each), so I hopped in the car, set-up the new AiM SOLO DL, and went out to drive.

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One of our testers Jamie Beck was there with his AST/Vorshlag/Whiteline/Cobra equipped 2013 Mustang GTs (above) to run in HPDE3 on Saturday and he was nice enough to snap these pictures of me driving - the only pictures I got all weekend of our car (I shot pics of TT cars in sessions that I wasn't driving on Sat/Sunday). We had just rebuilt his rear axle (diff bearings were shot, swapped in a new Torson and 3.31 gears from 3.73s - he loves it) and had some new gauges, a shift light, Ford Racing Sparco wheel and some "blip shift" device he was testing in HPDE3. He also borrowed my "loaner" AiM SOLO timer, which came in handy. So I went out Friday on the 335F/345R scrub set I had picked up for this car and was going to do just a couple of shake down laps, but once I got up to speed and scrubbed off the old rubber the car was flying around the track and I was having a blast.

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I came in after 10-15 laps and hopped out under the "Tech shed" area to take a quick look and make sure nothing was leaking or rubbing. Well don't you know that the underside of the back of the car was dripping in gear oil. WTF?! I took a peek and thought I saw the problem... drove to the paddock spot, shimmied out of my driving suit, got the back of the car in the air and yep, the differential vent line for the vent/catch can system we built long ago had popped off the fitting on the rear axle. That was an easy fix. I cleaned up most of the leaked fluid, which looked like much less than a pint, and got back out on track.

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After that was fixed I drove in two more 30 minute test sessions with the race group and got a TON of laps in - more than I normally get in several TT weekends. Fine tuned suspension set-up, tire pressures and worked on my driving lines. Adjusted the new seat a little bit - took the bottom seat cushions (they are Velcro'd in place) out of the new Cobra Evolution seat and got a lot better seating position, but then the submarine belts were too long, and the belts I have in the car aren't very good (I have new Schroth Profi2 harnesses going in today).

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Since I was on scrubs and normally mired in traffic I was just out there getting seat time and learning this track better - something I have lacked in the last few events (I didn't know the 1.7 course well at the January Club Trials nor the MSR-H track in that direction at the January NASA TT event). Put a tank of fuel through the car, had a lot of fun, and used up a good bit of brake pad material. The scrubs were A6s so they got greasy after 4-5 laps and times would drop, but the Mustang seemed to be passing everything out there and I never had to worry about anything crowding the mirrors, which wasn't what I expected.

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continued...

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The best lap I saw was a 1:19.2 but that was with passing 2 cars on that lap, so I didn't worry about it too much. I came in at 5 pm, even through there was another session I could have run it. I got the front of the car in the air and pulled off the front wheels, which I needed to re-use for the new tires. Then I quickly moved the trailer (to leave room for Costas), unhooked the truck, and hauled the two loose wheels to PST. I got there by 5:20, whew. But... they closed at 5. Doh!

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They said they'd get the tires swapped first thing Saturday morning, but they opened at 8 am and I also had a TT meeting at 8 and had to be ready to leave the grid at 8:40. I told them I'd be there early and hope for the best. Got back to my paddock spot, changed the rear wheels for the other pair with fresh 345mm A6 tires mounted, checked the fluids, and then wrapped up for the day by 6:30 pm.

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Jamie joined me for dinner and we met Marc Sherrin and a bunch of other TT drivers at the "Rib Shack", which was a literally a shack out in the woods, but they had some good BBQ. (this is the first of 4 BBQ meals for the weekend)


Saturday March 8th - NASA TT Day 1

Arrived at the track Saturday morning at 7:30 am, stopped at the gas station in front of the track to get ice for the cooler. Noticed the line into the track was 30+ deep so I went ahead and ordered a bacon and egg breakfast burrito from On The Brazos BBQ next to the gas station. Best breakfast burrito I've ever had in my LIFE! This thing was HUGE, and chowing on that $3.50 burrito made the wait for the front gate go by quickly. Once signed, wrist banded and inside the gate to my paddock spot. Costas had arrived at some unholy hour and was already unloaded. Our single-trailer width paddock spot grew to three trailers stuffed in there with Costas' 28' and Jamie's 24' trailers jammed in front of our 36'. Their cars plus the Mustang, Toth's Audi and Cody's E36 M3 were all parked together next to Glen's CMC Camaro over the rest of the weekend, too.

After I got inside the gates I raced over to PST to buy a freakin tire gauge (it wasn't loaded in the trailer), and they had my two front sticker tires mounted and balanced by 7:45 am - they rock. Thanks AJ! Ran back to my paddock spot, mounted the front wheels with sticker A6 tires, checked all the fluids and put a tiny bit of oil in it.

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Which is all I normally need to do to this car - just keep it full of fluids and drive it. This Mustang is a TANK, I tell ya. Bled tire new tires' pressures down to where I thought they needed to be in the 36° temperatures we saw in the first TT practice session - 29psi front, 27 psi rear, shooting for 33F/31R hot (it overshot that goal by a good bit, as each tire grew by 6-8 psi). First session for TT was of course early and cold, so the track was very slick.

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Wind chill put ambient temps in the high 29-30°F range, brr! So I figured there would be no grip on track. At least - for once - I had plenty of seat time on the Friday before an opening TT race session and felt pretty good about the set-up, and I hoped I could drive better than I did in January at the SCCA Club Trials. I have watched my laps from that event, plus many others, and knew I was leaving time on track just in my driving (braking too early, lifting in corners that I should take flat, and being "smooth"). Even after 27 years of autocross and track experience I still have plenty of areas to improve with "the nut behind the wheel".

As I was installing the front wheels I was farting around with the front spacers - something just didn't look right and had the front wheels on and off a couple of times, getting the wheels to fit right. I was confused and knew something on the car needed to be changed with respect to the spacers when I ran the different set of wheels (one pair of 12's has very different offsets from the later set of 18x12s). We had a quick TT meeting in at 8 am, and I was very rushed all morning. I then got the car to grid but something was nagging me.. ballast! I drove back to my paddock spot and looked for the 35 pound plates, but they were still at the shop. I had like 2 minutes to spare so I grabbed a 25 pound plate and hoped that would be enough. Bolted it on and drove back to grid. I ended up getting there as the one minute warning whistle blew. Crap! Go go go!

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I am belted in and look over to the passenger seat and see... the harness belts on the passenger seat were unlatched and the seat cushions were sitting on the floor - all of which which would fly around and be a huge distraction on track. I had to get out of my harness, get out of the car, go around to the other side and secure the belts and cushions. Long story short - I didn't make it out in the first grid spot as planned for the first session and had to rush out and catch the field once I had all of my crap together. Not having Amy or anyone else from the shop with me this weekend was a constant struggle to make it to grid on time and get the car checked over between runs. I had some help from Jason Toth and Paul Costas but they had their own cars (and students) to attend to.

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Went out dead last in TT, about a minute after they had left, so I blasted out of the grid and caught the back of the field on the formation lap then scrubbed the sticker tires a bit. Costas snuck out there in his GT-1 car late as well, but held back and left a half lap gap to me, so he had all sorts of clear track on his first couple of laps. Smart! I caught a ton of traffic on every lap, of course, but everyone was cool and I was passing 3-4 cars per lap. Worked my way up through the field and took five laps, which is a lot for this car in TT (normally overheating the tires by then).

I can smell and hear a tire rubbing and smoking, and eventually I figured out that the right rear is rubbing inboard badly. Then I finally remembered which spacer I was supposed to change - the rears! I really needed to get a sub 1:20 lap so I took a few more laps even though I saw and heard the tire rub. Needed a fast lap to get up the grid for TT session 2, so I wouldn't be mired in traffic and slow all day. That was probably a mistake, as when I finally did come in I had damaged the tire a bit more than I figured.


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Did manage a 1:20.4, which was 4th fastest and moved me up the grid. Way better than I thought I'd get with that much traffic and these cold temps, so I guess it helped after all. We ended up having 29 cars for the day after 28 signed up, some didn't show, and then we had several new drivers get check rides from HPDE 4 and move up to TT. I came in, pulled the rear wheels and put the correct spacers on back there. Checked the tire, despite the rub, it was still OK and had not cut all the way through the outer rubber and into the carcass. Made quite a big "tire baby" out of the shaved rubber from the right rear. Oops.

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I also wanted to note that as badly as the Traction Control system has behaved it has mostly only happened to me and Costas when driving this car - Amy is a much smoother driver and it never faults on her.

We will test this new ABS/Traction Control module at the USCA event this weekend (on street tires) and at the Track Guys TWS track event the weekend after (on sticky tires) and I will report back with results after autocrossing and tracking this new M-2353-CA module with those vastly different grip levels.

Back to Saturday's TT Event...

So after the AdvanceTrac issues in TT session 2 and 3 and with the weather getting much colder, I sat out the 4th and final TT session on Saturday. Ended up being a good call as very few folks set their fastest in that session and we saw lots of "offs". I took pictures of the TT group, watched the AI/CMC crash-fest races, and took pictures when Costas was out in the Blitz group. Troy Messer eeked by my best time in his 3rd TT session in TT1, and I ended the day with the 2nd fastest time out of 29 cars in the TT group. And I think it was the 3rd fastest time for the entire day of all NASA race groups, with Costas getting a 1:17.3 in qualifying for the SU race (he was on some 3 weekend old, harder compound tires). That was weird and lots of people thought so as well, but I guess it was just a good day for the 3800 pound pony car. What was funny was I put two stinkin wheels in the dirt on that lap and the AdvanceTrac was going bonkers! I was excited about Sunday, hoping to beat that time - but who knows what tomorrow brings? Would the faults and CELs get worse on Sunday? Would it rain and slow us all down? No idea.

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We had a great dinner provided by NASA Texas for everyone that night with killer BBQ cooked by one of the CMC racers, but it was SO cold we had to move indoors to eat. NASA Texas had a new thing that night where they handed out trophies for wins that day and track record certificates when a record was broken.

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I picked up those trophies and print-outs for the TT3 win and new TT3 track record as well as for several of our friends/customers who couldn't stick around for the party.

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Costas won TTU, set that track record, won both Blitz races overall and won SU class both times on Saturday. Vorshlag customer Eric Johnson won TTE and set the class record, his first class win, so he was very happy with that. Long time Vorshlag tester but first time NASA TT racer Doug Worth did his first TT event in his E36 M3 and won against the "E46 Mafia" in TTB by a couple of hundredths and set the TTB track record, but days later it was taken away after his classing sheet was rechecked came up one point short for TTB class. He has since received a dyno re-class and with 10 more pounds on board is TTB legal for the next event. Bummer.

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It was close, and I didn't find out for about 5 more days, but there ended up being a car moved from TTB to TT3 class (sorry Doug!) so we ended up with 5 in class for Saturday, which meant I scored two Hoosiers for that day's win. Whew! That was good news, because I pretty much ruined one of the brand new (and expensive) 345mm rear tires in that spacer snafu. Not having any of our crew or Amy there made it more stressful than normal, and I really missed all of them that day. After a a couple of plates of food and few beers I made it back to the hotel and tried to get some sleep.


Sunday March 9th - NASA TT Day 2

Sunday dawned with Daylight Savings giving us more light but stealing an hour of sleep. I was at the track by 7:30am, got ready for TT for the day but skipped TT session 1 because it was 29°F indicated - stupid cold and well outside of the A6 tire's performance envelope. I went out in TT session 2 gridded in P1 at 10:30, and the sun had just started to peek out of the clouds. I had some nice clear track in front of me and with temps in the 40s I ran a first lap of 1:18.2 and a second lap of 1:17.310. As usual the AdvanceTrac was faulting BADLY the entire time, turning itself back on and applying brakes in that first lap. I think the car sees the g-loading and my spastic driving and calculates "Danger! This car is crashing!" It was blinking lights, applying brakes and FREAKING out. The last 4 corners on my best lap of the weekend and the damned REAR BRAKES were on the whole time. The engine was straining but I kept the throttle matted and cursed my way through that 1:17.310 lap (see in-car video from those two laps, below).

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That time was a half second quicker than Saturday's best and a second and a half quicker than the January SCCA Club Trials lap on 315mm Hoosiers, so the new tires were working despite the AdvanceTrac system fighting me the entire time. Frustrating laps, but I was happy to reset the track record (the car's 10th standing NASA TT3 track record) and ended up being fast enough for another win with 7 in class that day.

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Indicated 470°F front and 350°F rear brake caliper temperatures were a bit alarming

The brakes worked well this weekend but I got them REALLY hot, as shown in the Alcon caliper temperature indicators that we placed on each caliper. This is a standard data acquisition trick, but I learned the value of it from Costas in January at the NASA MSR-H event. So I picked up a packet of these adhesive strips and the results were a bit startling. The 470°F degree front caliper temps were the most alarming and we will need to address this before our next high speed track event. Again, we were running with driver and ballast at over 3800 pounds (much higher than most S197 racers) and seeing speeds and lap times that are probably atypical for this chassis.

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Like many S197 racers we are using a single a 3" brake duct hose coming from the fog light openings right now but we had just re-routed and lengthened these hoses to avoid the 335mm wide front tires at full lock (see new routing, above). I fear that the new cooling hose routing (now located inboard of the splitter's rear mounts) with tighter bends in the hose is causing some additional airflow restriction we weren't seeing before. The rear calipers even saw over 350°F, which was a tick higher than expected. We will replace these Alcon indicators for each event and monitor the max temps reached on each caliper and possibly add a second 3" hose (or move to a 4" hose) up front and maybe even add some under-car ducting for the rear brakes. I have an idea for that which will tie into the new rear bodywork nicely and discretely.

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We've run multiple brake cooling hoses to the same corner on other cars we've built before, like this C4 Corvette above. That one used a massive inlet duct, air passed through the frame rail then was diverted out into two duct hoses: a 3" hose routed to a custom brake backing plate for the inside of the rotor and a second 2" cooling hose pointed right at the caliper.

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This system worked very well and in that car's first 12 hour of racing the pads barely wore halfway, but the rear brakes (uncooled) went through two sets of pads. We might try this "dual cooling" set-up on front of the TT3 Mustang, or a single 4" hose to the rotor, or a dual 3" hose to the rotor. And a ducted rear rotor set-up is coming as well.

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The front brake pads are wearing more quickly than we like (again, 3800 pound car + lots of brake heat), as shown above. We just put a new set of front Carbotech XP20 brake pads on the front Brembo calipers for the USCA event and will address the brake cooling needs soon. The old pads (shown) wore down tot he last 1/16th of an inch of material and are only good for "emergency use", to make one session or a drive home from the track for someone that had a pad failure.

In Sunday's TT session 3, the car didn't even make through the first hot lap before the AdvanceTrac faulted heavily. I barely ran a 1:18 lap and it was only getting worse, as was the traffic. I didn't even try to make a 2nd hot lap, and with the start/finish line just before the pit entrance road I just dove into the pits and did a little cool down drive to the corner gas station and back, to get the brakes and systems cooled off before parking the car for rest of the day. The ambient temperatures were getting warmer and a few guys went quicker, so I ended up only 4th fastest in TT for the day after skipping the 4th TT session. If the AdvanceTrac wasn't faulting I would have gone out and could have dropped time. After the car had cooled off I hooked up the truck to the trailer, loaded up the car and our gear, then helped Costas put his car back together (windshield, bodywork, and wheels) after he fixed a nagging brake light switch issue that was a bear to access. Once he was ready for his last SU race, where he won the class all 4 times, I headed out a little early.

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That 2nd session 1:17.310 time was good enough for the win (7 cars in class) and reset the TT3 record. A Radical SR8 ran with us in TT on Sunday and was stupid fast, but its a SportsRacer and that's to be expected. Troy Messer found a lot of time in his TT1 Corvette in the 4th session and ran a 1:15.8 and Vorshlag customer Corey Wells put in a fast lap with a 1:17.290 in his TT1 classed ZR1 (street car!) as well.

All in all this was a great weekend and the Vorshlag Mustang really came alive on the bigger Hoosiers I have lusted after for the last three years. Just as I predicted, it dropped a lot of time AND I was able to get in 3, 4, even 5 hot laps before the tires got overheated and greasy - unheard of when running at this weight on the 315mm A6 tires. The extra grip probably caused these additional AdvanceTrac faults and one CEL issue, so we're installing a new ABS/TC module that hopefully eliminates all traces of factory traction control once and for all. Again, I really missed having Amy and our crew there, and the only pictures I got were with my Nikon that I took, and the only shots of our car on track were those that Jamie Beck shot with my camera on Friday in practice. I watched all the video and saw plenty of driving mistakes so there's no telling what this car could have run without the AdvanceTrac faults and my hack driving. I know a 1:16 was possible without the brakes being applied by some stupid computer when I wanted to be WOT. Maybe next year NASA will run the MSR 1.7 course again. I sure hope so, as this course was more enjoyable for me than the 3.1 mile course we normally run in TT.

Making Weight by the Hair of My Chinny Chin Chin!

One little scare I had on Saturday was after TT session 2. I came after running that 1:17.7 lap and was sent to the scales. I wasn't too worried, as I had thrown a 25 pound ballast weight plate into the trunk mount moments before the session began, after I noticed a somewhat lower fuel load than I had wanted (normally I was going to grid with 7/8ths to a full tank). I made weight that time by 2 pounds!!!! And that took two tries...

The first time they put the car on the scales after that session it was 8 pounds light. As per the rules, that would have been technically legal on my first weighing of the day (10 pound grace on first weighing) but I knew that weight couldn't be right. I asked them to roll me off, make sure the scale pads were under all 4 tires all the way, and we rolled it back on. That time it was 3804 pounds on a 3802 minimum. Whew!

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I went to the paddock and immediately threw 20 more pounds of ballast and a full tank of fuel went into the car for each successive session all weekend. I was weighed a couple more times; once it was 3835 and another it was 3853 pounds! So getting spooked by that "close call" 2 pound weight check made me run too much ballast all weekend. I'm sure with our crew here I wouldn't have overshot that so badly, but oh well. It was fully 51 pounds overweight on my 1:17.310 lap Sunday.

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Jason Toth (the Alpha LS1 Miata owner) made his TT debut on Sunday in an Audi A4 (loaner, shown above left) and had a blast. He borrowed my spare AMB so he graciously ran in TT3, which made for 7 in class. Hoosier pays all the way down to 2nd place so Jeff Tan won a tire that day in 2nd and I won 2 more in 1st. Which was good, because I blew my tire budget all to pieces with the new A6s for this event and BFG Rivals for Goodguys/USCA. I'll save the newly arrived 4 tire winnings for April's NASA TT event and use 3 of these 4 tires from this weekend as my Friday test set if we go down there a day early. Gotta get a replacement 18x12" wheel so we have two complete sets - running around and getting tires swapped and mounted minutes before my first TT session Saturday was a bit too hectic. Congrats to Mike Patterson (shown above right), who won all 4 AI races, reset the track record for that class in the low 1:20 range (on the new Toyo RR tires running 18x9.5" Forgestar F14 wheels he bought from Vorshlag), and ran in TT3 both days as well. He also works as race director for another race group, so he was a busy man!

Official Results: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/N...Cresson_March/

Vorshlag Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...SA-MSR-030814/

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Left: Saturday's NASA TT results. Right: Sunday's NASA TT results.

Decal Removal + New BFG Rivals + Prep for Goodguys & USCA

We had to steal a tiny sliver of shop time to get the red Mustang ready for the next two "street car" events, so we took it. The guys made sure the car was street legal and re-attached the horns and double checked all of the street car systems like the wipers, lights, signals and the rest. We ran out of time to get the car reinspected (it was a few months out but it just got re-inspected today) but they got it all street worthy and up to snuff. On Thursday March 13th the set of BFG Rivals I found a couple of weeks earlier (TireRack was out of stock on the 335s) arrived in town and I went out to an undisclosed location to pick them up.

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On the Friday before Goodguys Olof got the 315/30/18 pair mounted to the front 18x12 wheels and the 335/30/18 pair mounted to the rear 18x12s. Once mounted on the car they were swallowed in the massive rear flares and even the 335s looked small.

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Another change we made was to remove the current "livery", which we've had on the car since 2012. The crazy stripes were Amy's idea, and the vendor decals were there to show what we have on the car that we sell. Some of the parts shown in decals are about to be removed (more on that in my next post) and almost all of the vendors we use aren't "Goodguys/USCA" sponsors, so they had to get toned down a bit.

Street Car, Race Car - What's The Definition? Who cares?

The number board, NASA decals and race numbers/class letters make this streetable car look more like a race car than it really is, and I didn't want to put the wrong impression for Goodguys or USCA - because this really is a very streetable car that we often drive around town for various events, unlike some cars that show up at those street car competitions. We have had a few folks complain publicly about how our Mustang is a "race car" showing up and beating "street cars" at NASA events, Goodguys, and other competitions, but I just chalk that up to internet whining. It is even funnier when folks with "street cars" that have gutted interiors, no radio or air con, built or boosted motors and/or wildly illegal emissions systems make these claims about our 2011 Mustang. This really is a full interior car (back seats are reinstalled as of last week), with the OEM air bags, big honkin' radio, touch screen sat NAV, a satellite radio subscription, air conditioning, power windows, all of the OEM glass, OEM seat belts, and a bone stock engine from throttle body to exhaust port. The suspension is refined for competition, but it's still quiet and uses bushings in most of the arms and links.


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A ducted hood, splitter and big wing don't make a car a "race car" or really much less streetable than other cars - but these are visible exterior mods that look "racey" and some that don't understand the function of them would even say "ricey". And at the events we race in, this Mustang is usually the heaviest car at the entire event (3802 pounds) and almost always competing against much more radically prepped cars. Is it my fault if someone shows up to NASA TT in a bone stock car and gets beat? Should they expect to win in a totally stock vehicle? Sometimes a fairly stock-ish car can do well in NASA Time Trial, but most of the time these entrants are making significant modifications to otherwise OEM vehicles to be more competitive. When there are contingencies on the line (like free sets of tires for the winners) you better believe I'm going to look at the rules and do what I feel is most beneficial to lowering our lap times. At the 2013 NASA Nationals our car was one of the only ones on the TTU-TT1/2/3 grid that was a registered and inspected street car, and once again the heaviest car on grid.

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Just know that everyone has their own definition of a "street car", and your's might not sync up with mine. You should see some of the street cars race in Hot Rod's Speed Week! The 80 mile road rally we have to drive on public roads this Friday at the USCA event will separate the street cars from the race cars, and I'm confident that I will have no problems on that drive. In fact I'll probably have the A/C on and playing Channel 51 on Sirius blasting through the 1000 watt stereo, burning 93 octane pump fuel and having fun.

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Back to the decal removal. So we left the car out in the sun for a couple of hours to help soften the adhesives, then I started to yanked off the stripes and most of the decals myself. Kyle finished removing the decals and then washed the car. After that I removed the adhesive residue with the Goof Off Heavy Duty spray remover I like (not the Goof Off Industrial Strength, which can sometimes affect the paint - the "heavy duty" version is much safer). Finally, Ryan used his detailing skills and tools to buff and wax the paint. HE wasn't around when Brandon took this picture below, so I stood in for him and pretended to do real work, heh.

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Some of those decals have been on there for about 2 years but luckily we use good vinyl and they came off well. Nothing was brittle and tore except for a few printed decals that came from vendors or race events. One of those left a HUGE glob of adhesive that took a bit of elbow grease to get off, but it all cleaned up well. Some of these stripes and decals went onto VERY fresh paint (due to time constraints) but Shiloh's paint work held up perfectly. Once it was all buffed and waxed it came out nice.

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There's the old livery at left and the new "naked" look at right. We had planned on doing some simple black stripes and a few vendor decals but the weather started to turn and we ran out of time. That's going to happen soon, so it won't stay "naked" long. Yes yes, it looks better with a simple red paint job, but this car is a marketing tool for us and it has to show the parts on it that we sell, so they have to go back on at some point.


Goodguys Autocross - Sunday March 16th - TMS

A Goodguys weekend consists of 3 days of car shows, swap meets, and autocross competition. The typical customer for these shows is the 1972-older domestic car or truck owner, and they tailor most of their many events around these folks. The g-machine muscle car scene has taken a strong foothold over Goodguys and the Friday-Saturday autocross competition is chock full of these 1972-older American cars.

Event website: https://www.good-guys.com/slsn-2014

Luckily they also welcome the "late model" 1973-newer American cars on the "All American Sunday Autocross", which we have entered once before (last October, where I got 2nd place by .02 seconds - and lost out on a free set tires from BFG!). Last October we went to the Goodguys event at Texas Motor Speedway for our first time and ran on a used set of 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s and I was introduced to their autocross course layouts. I had heard they were tight, but this was an eye opener.

With 90% of the course run in 1st gear, several super tight 180° turn-arounds and running through major sections of the course multiple times, I'd really call this more of a gymkhana than an autocross, but that's how they set up all of their events and more power to 'em. Not knocking it - just different from your typical SCCA course, in case you attend one of these. And you should - it is fun and you get to see some serious machinery! I learned what to expect back in October (about the course as well as the unannounced goodies you win for first!) and so when the next Goodguys event was scheduled in Dallas (they do 2 events a year at TMS - Spring and Fall) I signed up. This time I was there for two reasons: first, to get practice for the following week's USCA event (more on that below) and second, to win the fat loots they give to the winner.

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The prize package for the winner of the All American Sunday at a Goodguys event is no joke!

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Ya see, back in October I didn't take the Goodguys autocross that seriously because I didn't realize they had such good prizes for the winner. I lost that event by two hundredths and only after the event was over did I realize that there was a free set of BFGoodrich tires on the line. So for this March 2014 Goodguys I came better prepared, with a fresh set of BFGoodrich Rivals and more serious driving attitude. :)

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We luckily knew the entire "Goodguys event" drill this time. Since we weren't allowed to bring our truck and trailer inside the Speedway on Sunday we got to the race hotel at 7:20 am to register (for the Sunday autocross event you have to sign up the day of, or become a Goodguys member and sign up about 3 weeks in advance), got to the TMS assigned trailer parking area outside the Speedway, and quickly unloaded the car from the trailer. Yes, it was on street tires and we still trailered the car, but mostly because we are trying to keep these BFG Rivals FRESH and avoid unnecessary heat cycles on them. The more times you drive on any set of tires - where they start out cold and then get hot and then cool off again - the more heat cycles they take. Heat cycles can "age out" a set of competitive tires before the tread is gone, even these Rivals. And at $1300 a set I'm going to SAVE THESE TIRES. Not to mention that Texas Motor Speedway is also about an hour away from our shop, and we had no spare tire.

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The weather started out in the low 50s when we left the house, but a cold front had swept in the day before (and brought MASSIVE winds and rain that night), and temps were dropping into the lower 40s and the wind was BRUTAL. The winds was blowing so hard that everything was flying out of the trailer - pieces of wood (which we use with the trailer ramps), papers, and anything not bolted down. This did not bode well for the rest of the day. We bundled up in several coats, tossed our helmets (didn't need em!) plus an air gauge in the trunk, and we drove to the Speedway entrance. Once we got inside to the area where the autocross is held we got in line and I went to walk the course.

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I realized quickly that this was the same course we ran in October. Exactly the same, really, but one of the Pro drivers (the Fri-day-Saturday group is broken up into groups and the shops and drivers that go to most of the Goodguys events and do well get assigned into the "Pro" category) said it was different by a couple of feet here and there. Regardless, having run this strange layout in October was a big help, since I knew I wouldn't get lost this time like so many did at that event. I walked it one time and got back into the Mustang to stay warm!

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When the event finally got underway around 8 :30 am the Pro class drivers went first, which they are allowed to do. They park by the announcer and put on a good show for the crowd, but they aren't competing in that day's events. Many of the 1972-older domestics that ran Friday-Saturday also take runs throughout the Sunday, but they also aren't in competition - just making fun runs. A little frustrating for those of us that are competing in the All American Sunday (1973-newer) event, but they paid their money and they get their runs. It makes the day more interesting, as just late models autocrossing can be boring for this crowd of spectators - which was a surprisingly full crowd all day, considering the weather.

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I had one of my student's from Sunday's SCCA Solo School where Amy and I instructed who was at this event, Lloyd in the red Boss302. His son was with him and he wanted to get a ride in our car, so I took a rider on my first run - and only on this run. Last October I took riders on all of my Goodguys runs, but when you lose by .02 seconds you begin to get paranoid. I knew this first run would suck, and it did. The BFG's still had visible decals and mold release and it felt like driving on ice. He had fun and I got that awful run out of the way. You can see in these pictures that we were wearing helmets, which I'm so used to doing, but nobody else was because it isn't required at Goodguys.

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And while the course ran very near fences and concrete barriers it doesn't seem to phase anyone at these events, so I just went with the flow and drove my laps. My first lap was a 77 second run, which was terrible... but after the first round of runs it was in 1st place somehow. Then I made a second run of a 74.4 second run, which was painfully slow and I had wheelspin everywhere, and now I was 4 seconds in the lead. Huh?

The lines were heavy and growing all day and it was taking about an hour between runs, but I was used to this from the October event. By the time I got to the line for my third run it was around 11 am, and they said they'd pick the fastest time run by 11:30 and call them the winner. I pulled up to stage and the guy is plastering decals on the car for "Autocross Winner", and I hadn't even made my last run. "Nobody is close" he said, and then I was told to report to the timing tent after my last run, shown below.

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That run felt a little better, and I made all of my 1st gear downshifts shifts smoothly. The wheelspin was more controlled than my other two runs but there was still VERY little grip on this still wet asphalt in these crazy cold conditions. The BFG Rivals apparently don't do as well as the Falkens in cold temps, and Brian Hobaugh was stupid fast on Falkens in his gorgeous orange 2nd gen Camaro, running several seconds quicker that day than me. But he and the rest of the Pro class drivers were in the 1972-older series and luckily their runs didn't get compared or counted with ours'. Next weekend at USCA those cars are in the same class as me, so I am hoping with warmer temps and better driving I can get closer.

AAS...Terry Fair............2011 Ford Mustang............74.124
AAS...Bryan Mills...........1994 Ford Mustang............76.059
AAS...Lloyd Collins.........2012 Ford Mustang............76.684
AAS...Greg Scherer........2002 Pontiac Firehawk........77.788

I copied the first 4 results from the 23 entered in the "AAS" class and it turns out there were two driver's that improved a lot on their last runs and got within 2 seconds of my final time, including my student from the Solo school the day before (nice driving, Lloyd!). Didn't know until the results were posted earlier today.

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So after I won the autocross I was told to park in the Winner's Circle area with all of the car show class winners and previous day's autocross SM and PRO class winners. Lots of people came by to shoot pics of the big red Mustang, which was fun but weird to watch. Honestly the this car had so little to do with the win, at least within this class - it was mostly about getting through a painfully tight course as cleanly and close to the cones as possible. I think I could have done as well or better in a rental automatic Mustang, and I got beat last year by one of the Pro driver's in his wife's automatic and stock 5th gen Camaro convertible. These Goodguys courses are super tricky and don't emphasize the car's performance all that much.

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Amy and I parked the car in the car show area and ran into the Fuzzy's Taco Shop that is inside TMS. We ate some good Tex Mex and warmed up, then went around and talked to some friends we saw also parked in Winner's Circle area, like Stuart in his GT500 SuperSnake and Wade in his 32 Ford. They told us the whole awards presentation was moved up an hour due to the weather, so we hopped in the car and got in line, then drove past the bleachers and announcer tent to get our winnings.

Official Results: https://www.good-guys.com/slsn-ac-14
Vorshlag Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ocross-at-TMS/

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Left: Amy was not pleased when I took this picture while she was thawing out from the cold. Right: The Goodguys goodie bag was immense!

A nice trophy accompanied the awards packet (linked at the beginning of this section). Free set of tires from BFG and gift cards and deeply discounted certificates from other sponsors - nice! Can't get Rivals with this but it will help ease the pain of that $1300 set of tires (again - ouch!) that we got to run this and the USCA event. After that we followed the mass exodus leaving speedway, loaded up in the trailer, and headed home by 1 pm - which has to be a record early end time for us at any given autocross. The other event we would have been at if not for Goodguys, the Texas Region SCCA Solo #1, had 193 entrants and ran for most of the day in these same miserable conditions, so we lucked out on our early departure that day!

Some Random Mustang Work

We work on a lot of cars in our service and race prep shop, and one of those recently was Vorshlag Tester Mark Council's 2012 Mustang GT, who is also the OKC Region SCCA Autocross Chairman. We've already swapped his car from 3.55 to 3.31 gears, which he really enjoys for autocross and track use (no 2-3 shifts in parking lots and fewer shifts on track as well). This car has Forgestar F14 18x11s, AST 4150s w/550F/250R springs, Vorshlag plates, Whiteline swaybars, and a Torsen T2R.

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We had installed a Cobra Suzuka GT kevlar racing seat into his car a while back, using the custom S197 bracket we make to go with the Cobra slider and Cobra side mount brackets. He loved the new Corbeau S197 Harness Bar, new seat and 6-point harnesses and raved about how much more control he had gained with this seat. He drives the car to events from as far as 5 hours away, and does a lot of track and autocrossing in the car, on both street tires (295/35/18 BFG Rivals) and R compounds (315mm Kumho V710s).

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He loved the new driver's seat so much he went ahead and sprung for a passenger seat upgrade, which any track instructors or passengers will greatly appreciate. If you do one seat you really should do the other side as well. To save a bit he went with the steel framed fixed back Cobra Monoco seat on the passenger's side, which was about half the cost of the kevlar Suzuka. It only has about a 2 pound penalty in weight over the composite seats, and being a Cobra product, it still looks great and has very high quality construction and materials (I ordered some more of these seats for inventory). He skipped the slider on the passenger side and we just mounted the seat fixed to the bracket, fairly far back and lower than it would have been with a slider - which is what we often do on the right side seat.

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Another change he had in mind was a new rear Upper Control Arm assembly. After reading what we had to say about poly bushings, Del-Sphere and all of the other variations on the upper arm and mounts he went with some brand new "ultimate" UCA from BMR, shown below. The instillation was straightforward, but still time consuming. You need a lift, removal of the back seat, and a BIG torque wrench for the main bolt (which should be torqued to 250-300 ft-lbs, depending on the brand - see your manufacturer's instructions) to tighten the mount to the chassis. The pinion angle also has to be adjusted, and there is even a second set of holes in the chassis mount for potential geometry changes.

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The upper control arm is one of those places where a spherical seems like the right choice, as this bushing has to pivot much more than the LCA bushings do. And to match the new upper arm's spherical he went with a Steeda spherical bushing replacement on the axle side of the UCA arm axis also, per our suggestions.

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Getting the OEM rubber bushing out of the axle side is a real B!TCH of a job. The instructions say to cut out the old bushing, but if you make a tool to press it out you can re-use that to press in the new Steeda assembly. Then when you go to tighten the 58mm (?!) hex nut for the new spherical you might need to make a tool for that as well...

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After finding a massive 58mm socket for around $35 we had to chuck it up in the lathe to machine the outer diameter down for clearance, otherwise it would not fit in the space between the axle housing and the bushing mount. Really fun job, that one, heh. After all of this work was done I drove this car around our Test Loop (bumpy road we use to listen for creaks, pops and noises plus to test ride quality) with Mark in the car and we both agreed that it makes a LOT more noise inside now. We had previously rebuilt his entire axle with all new bearings when we did the 3.31 gear swap, and the rearend was silent as a church mouse just hours before, but after the double spherical UCA set-up was installed it was much LOUDER inside the car - and he still has the back seat installed. Just know that this particular UCA set-up adds a lot more NVH than you might expect - you will hear all sorts of noises from the rearend that were masked before. Mark said he likes the feel of the new set-up but needs more seat time to give a full review. You can read his build thread on s197forums here and he talks about the new seat and the BMR UCA in post #262.

Another Vorshlag Tester is Jan Maher, who was the first S197 Mustang owner on MCS TT1 coilovers. We've installed all sorts of goodies on her 2012 GT including the reclining Corbeau seats, shown below.

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At the recent Texas Region SCCA Solo school, Jan had entered in her 2012 GT, while one of her two daughters that race, Shannon entered in her 2011 GT. They were both brushing up on some autocross skills to use in the many track events they enter - always a good idea to learn things like car control and LFBraking in a parking lot, where the only thing to hit are cones. Amy and I both worked with Jan that day, and while Amy was instructing in her car I happened to be riding with another student and noticed a broken wheel stud on course. I'm sort of OCD about finding and removing "FOD" on an autocross course so I hopped out of this car, stopped the course, and ran out to pick it up. It was a broken OEM wheel stud with what I recognized as one of our Vorshlag lug nuts on it. That narrowed it down to about a half dozen potential cars at the event, and I quickly found a missing stud on Jan's front wheel.

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I took her the broken part and let her know the bad news - she wasn't racing in Sunday's autocross with a busted wheel stud, so she co-drove in Shannon's GT instead. With over 50K miles on Jan's car and lots of track miles it was probably a good idea to replace the front wheel bearings anyway (they are a known wear item - usually they make noises and clunking when they are bad), so we brought in a pair of new hubs using the M-1104-A Ford Racing kit, which come pre-installed with "longer and stronger" (insert joke here) ARP front wheel studs, are pre-greased on the hub face, and include two new spindle retaining nuts.

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We've installed these FR hubs before (our 2011 GT is on the 3rd pair in 4 years - again, the hubs take a beating from lateral load and brake heat, and it is a known wear item), but noticed that this M-1104-A kit now comes with new front hub retaining nuts, which we used to order separately. This monster spindle nut has to be torqued to 250 ft-lbs and is a "torque to yield", one-time-use piece of hardware. Make sure you have a torque wrench big enough and rated high enough for this torque level - it took all of my weight plus a lot of arm strength to get these nuts torqued today. After a brake pad swap, some new brake fluid bled, and a full HPDE tech inspection at our shop Jan's car is fixed up and ready for USCA this weekend.

Getting Ready for USCA

We're running at full throttle around here getting our car and 5 others ready for the Ultimate Street Car Association event this weekend. We have multiple sets of tires to mount (Rivals, Rivals and more Rivals!), the hubs and pads on Jan's car, some brake repairs on Shannon's car, and much more to do. My Mustang is finally getting Schroth harnesses installed today before we load it onto the trailer. One of our customers has a couple of Miatas and he is bringing one of them to compete int he "under 3000 pound" class, with Rivals.

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And at the end of the day today we have a company dinner at a German place where we will get together and raise a glass to toast Ryan, our head fabricator who is leaving us in about a month to go back to school full time. Really sad about that, like losing a member of the family... but he has great things ahead and we wish him the best. I've already hired a new shop foreman (Texas Region Solo RE, Brad Maxcy!) and we'll have a listing up on our jobs page soon for the fabricator position that opened up. If you have lots of automotive race prep and fab experience, love long hours and low pay, this could be the opportunity for you! ;) Please send your resumes to [email protected], thanks.

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Hoosier tire winnings from this weekend stacked up next to a new set of 225/45/15 BFG Rivals for Mike M's Miata. Wow.

This weekend's 3 day USCA competition is looming heavy and I'm hoping more people will sign up at the last minute. Once again the Dallas area racers seem to find nothing but excuses when a big event like this rolls into town and I fear that we might not get another one if the attendance stays low. We lost the GTA event in Dallas after a dismal local turnout in 2012 and I've been calling people all week to try to get them to enter USCA this weekend. I worked out a deal with the organizers for a HALF PRICE entry ($250 vs $500). Use the word "SCCA" in the order notes and you will receive a $250 refund on your entry fee. Please feel free to call me at Vorshlag today if you are interested in going but have questions: 972-422-7170. I'm not associated with the USCA and neither is the SCCA, this was just a discount code hoping to grab local areas SCCA autocross racers and Time Trial entrants.


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I'm pretty excited about this event. Rolling out there tomorrow at 11 am to set up the trailer, get their event decals installed, and start the 80 mile road rally. We have our car inspected, tagged, and all legal-like for street use, so I'm not worried about the Friday street drive. The weather looks good for the weekend so I'm hoping we can have another strong showing in the autocross, a better showing than last time in the speed stop (fingers crossed that the new ABS unit works!) and of hoping I do well on the "1.04 mile" (aka: 1.36 mile) TMS infield road course on Sunday.

Until next time...

Project Update for April 2, 2014: This post covers the first day of the 3 day Optima Street Car/USCA event at Texas Motor Speedway March 21-23. We ran on 315/335 BFG Rival 200 treadwear tires on our 2011 Mustang as well as tested the Ford Racing M-2353-CA "Boss 302R" ABS/TC module, but left our existing Hoosier A6 suspension parts and settings untouched from the last TT3 event and Goodguys. I will split the event write-up over three different days.

What is the Ultimate Street Car Association?

The USCA was only created late last year and announced at SEMA. I hinted at it in my October post after Goodguys. Basically this is the new series created for the qualifier events for the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational, held every year the weekend after SEMA in Las Vegas. This series includes 3 days of competition in streetable cars on 200+ treadwear tires. Drivers go head-to-head in autocross, Speed Stop and road course time trials. You also have to prove the street worthiness by driving your car for 50-100 miles on an assigned route. The last part of the scored competition includes a Design and Engineering segment where 5 or more judges score each car with a number of categories that include various street equipment, craftsmanship, and creativity.

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The video above is a good preview of what the series is about. This was a promo for a show that covers the 2013 Optima Invitational event, which is airing on MAVTV now. Getting an invite to this event is a big deal for most shops and amateur racers like ourselves and guarantees you a spot in the SEMA show the week before as well.

If you have been reading this build thread for a while you know that we have entered 3 of these Optima qualifiers before. The first Optima qualifier was an ASCS "Run To The Alamo" in Feb 2012. That event was supposed to be a 3 day/3 event format with autocross, speed stop and road course times. They didn't check to see that this track (Harris Hill) didn't have a paddock or parking area big enough for the speed stop and autocross, so those 2 events were cancelled. During the road course event they had timer problems but I ran all day, in the pouring rain. We left after about 6 hours, soaking wet, about 30 minutes before they were supposed to stop running. I was in the lead. They ended up keeping the track open until dark, the rain cleared, the track dried off, I got beat, and didn't get an invite.

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The second qualifier we entered was the OPTIMA FACEOFF AT HOT ROD POWER TOUR in June of 2012. We fared a little better at this televised and much more organized 3 day event, winning the autocross and coming in 3rd in the road course portion, but I got 14th place in the speed stop. I finished 3rd overall and didn't get an invite. At some of these Optima qualifiers they weren't even inviting the overall winner, but instead just picking people for their "spirit of the event" to invite to SEMA, as happened here. They later came back and offered an invite late in the year to the winner of the June event, local NASA TT racer Todd Earsley in his then yellow EVO.

Last but not least was the GOODGUY'S ALL AMERICAN SUNDAY autocross at TMS in October of 2013. This was an Optima Qualifier but only had the autocross, and was one of Goodguys super tight "gymkhana" courses. I got 3 runs, was in the lead, so I was taking riders... ended up losing that event by .02 seconds - stupid mistake. They picked another car that didn't even place for the SEMA invite anyway.

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I learned a lot about these Optima qualifiers over the past three years. Most qualifiers were being hosted in different series, sometimes with wildly varying competitions - some road course only, some autocross only, some had 3 day Optima style events, and others were random things like High Speed Open Road events. Not a consistent format. The event we did at Hot Rod Power Tour was more like the Optima Invitational, but we didn't take the event seriously enough and showed up on the WRONG tires: 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s. What I quickly found out was THESE TIRES ARE NOT GOOD, and we quickly overheated them in the road course event. We also arrived at that event with a poor brake pad selection (Hawk DTC-70) that were too hard for slow speed use, and a leaking power brake booster fitting that killed the vacuum assist. I used the same set of 295 Nittos last October at Goodguys, and that didn't help my chances.

USCA Rules: http://ultimatestreetcarassociation.com/usca-rules/

Probably due to the old Optima qualifier inconsistencies, USCA was created to host consistent and competition based events, and all 10 of their events on the 2014 calendar are hosted at notable road courses which can hold all 3 driving formats: autocross, speed stop and road course. They are run by the same group of people that host the Optima Invitational in Vegas, so the events are more representative of the "big show" held after SEMA. For 2014 the USCA has kept one "spirit of the event" selection per event but offers an Optima invite to the winner of each of THREE different classes: 3000+ pound 2WD, under 3000 pound 2WD and AWD. This means 4 invites go out at each event, and 3 of them are going to be somewhat serious competitors that won out over a class of entrants. I like that - awarding the winners instead of mostly "spirit selections" made at previous events. Good move. The three class format also separates the lightweight and AWD cars from the traditional heavy RWD pony cars, which meant we might have a better shot in our 3550 pound Mustang.


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Last but not least, they have a TV contract for all of the USCA events. The Optima Invitational has been filmed and aired almost every year since its inception but the qualifiers rarely were. In 2012 about half a dozen of the qualifiers were televised, and we got some TV exposure at the June 2012 event. All ten of the 2014 USCA qualifiers will be televised, starting around August 8th on MAVTV. So you get 3 days of racing, good food, some swag, television time, and 4 people from each event get invites to Optima/SEMA? That's a lot of value for the money! Yes, the entry fee is higher now than at some past events... but let me tell you now: IT WAS WORTH IT!

We had SO much fun at this USCA event that I can barely put it into words. And anyone can enter... it doesn't take a "pro" driver or a $200K car to win this thing - I'm living proof of that: I'm admittedly a hack autocrosser in a heavy Mustang with a stock motor and still won an invite to Optima Invitational! with the overall win. We are super excited about that, and want you readers to really think about finding a USCA event nearby and checking it out. At least go out to WATCH, but if you have a streetable car and 200 treadwear tires, you should ENTER. This three day event was the most fun I've EVER had with my clothes on!

USCA at TMS, Friday March 21st, 2014

Before we get started, a note about the pictures: There's a LOT of them. Some of these were copied from other people's posts on Facebook and are credited. Anything with a Vorshlag watermark is something that either Amy or I shot with our Nikon, or one of our cell phones, or that Brandon shot with his gear. If it is a GOOD picture, just assume Brandon took it.


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Brandon took some of the best pictures from one of our events we attended... ever. That means this series of posts is very heavy on the photos, and each one with a Vorshlag watermark can be clicked for a higher rez version. Sadly he was only able to come out on Sunday (road course and final awards), so all of the autocross, speed stop and road rally pics were ones that Amy and I took. There's over 530 pictures from this event in the gallery linked below - I can't show them all, but many are worth looking at!

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You can get the "original" rez pics from there and save them for things like PC background wallpapers. And no, I won't even pretend to think that our Mustang was the most photogenic at this event, ha! There were some seriously cool machines there and he took some amazing pics of them. Several folks that attended this event have gotten in touch with Brandon about getting some enlargements and poster sized prints: you can reach him through his website brandonlajoie.com.

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Vorshlag Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...te-Street-Car/

The Ultimate Street Car Association held it's 2nd event for 2014 at the Texas Motor Speedway in Ft. Worth, Texas. By Friday morning they already had all of their big sponsors on hand already set-up and ready, including the massive "Optima Prime" trailer that the picture above was shot from. This massive 3 story trailer expands out like a Transformer and was their HQ for the weekend as well as the awards stand and announcer perch.

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We got to the track with our trailer and car around 11:30 am and was told we could pick any garage spot we wanted. Yep, the NASCAR garages were open for our use and at no additional cost, so we all got an unexpectedly nice upgrade for the weekend. With the winds and weird weather we saw, this was a welcomed surprise!

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Some of our Vorshlag testers will be featured in a "women of USCA" segment (left) and more Vorshlag folks parked in the garage

We didn't take over the whole garage but a good quarter of it was Vorshlag folks. The event was a bit under-attended by local drivers, due to a few factors: 1) Not many folks knew what USCA was or knew the rules/classes. 2) The entry fee was a little steep. 3) There were several other racing events going on that same weekend that drew potential entrants away, including: inaugural WRL race at MSR-Houston, Texas Mile, and BMWCCA at COTA. I got a call from one of the USCA principles a week before the event and we worked out an even better deal where local folks could get $250 off their entry fee + I threw in $100 service credit at Vorshlag for a $350 in savings. I then made a number of phone calls to customers, got another 7 folks to join us, ordered several sets of BFG Rivals, and then there was a flurry of safety gear outfitting at Smiley's that week. All told we had 8 entrants that had "Vorshlag" on their order form, out of the 38 signed up, and I'd like to thank ALL OF THOSE FOLKS for stepping up: Jerry, Jan, Shannon, Heather, Michael, Jon, and Marc!

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7 of the 8 Vorshlag customer entries at the TMS round of USCA

38 doesn't sound like a huge number, but considering the early date for the season (Texas Region SCCA had just kicked off their season the weekend before) and a long drive for many of the Pro Touring "regulars", that wasn't bad. I hope that next year we can help them get 100 entrants in Texas - and after you read my post, I hope YOU will get the bug and want to join these folks at another event in 2014 (see the ten 2014 dates here). It only takes 200+ treadwear street tires, some safety gear, and a car that has some nominal street car provisions.

I've been telling my other racer friends that missed the TMS event about the new USCA/Optima series - how it includes multiple driving competitions, how all of the events are held at renowned road courses that also have parking lots big enough for a proper autocross pad, about how there are 3 classes this year and ALL of the class winners get an invite to SEMA/Vegas Optima Shootout - and now have half a dozen folks BUILDING THEIR CARS for this series! Yes, it was THAT much fun, is infectious, and it is accessible to virtually anyone with a car with street tires. I'll cover more of the classing, tips and tricks to doing well in this 3 day event as we go.

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We arrived Friday and we had a naked red Mustang (see above) - and yes, I prefer it that way as well. We were going to try to "tone down" the Vorshlag and race car graphics a bit, but they still had a gaggle of event and sponsor decals for us to add, so Amy got to work.

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As our other Vorshlag customers and friends arrived Amy was drafted to install many of the bigger "event decals" as well. And then someone wanted big Vorshlag decals, which we had a limited supply in our trailer, so those started going on cars ... including our own.

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Amy also showed some folks how she installs big decals, both wet and dry, and passed along some knowledge. Once Shannon saw Amy's decal tricks she started helping her sister and mom with installs on their cars, too. Yep, two sisters and a mother all entered this event in their 3 track cars - they all did well and snagged a lot of camera time, with about 4 special interviews sessions. Look for a side story about Jan, Heather, Shannon, and "the women of USCA" in the episode that will air for this Optima Challenge event! (sometime around August 15th on MAVTV, the Lucas Oil channel)

I was reluctant to "over-Vorshlag" our Mustang, as this event was about street cars and I wanted it to look the part - well, as much as possible with a giant wing, flares and splitter. So we put some simple black Vorshlag decals on the rear flanks, which are much smaller than we normally run. We also kept the white Vorshlag.com windshield banner, and added some small decals for our main products: Whiteline, Forgestar, MagnaFlow and Maxcyspeed.

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To show BFGoodrich some love we got a BIG Rival "R" decal from the BFG rep on site. This was added to the hood and two small "R" decals went on the front flares. Marc followed suit in his red C6 Z06, and we all added the Optima windshield banner, Redline oil rear window banner, the giant Optima door panel decals, the numbers we were assigned, and the tall strip of sponsor decals for the sides.

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Doing that many decals on 8+ cars carefully enough to avoid bubbles, wrinkles and tears took Amy and everyone else a few hours, and we cleaned up some exteriors as we went also (some folks still bring a dirty car to an event that is televised, ha!). We all got registered, teched, had all of our safety gear checked (more on that in the Sunday Road Course section), and met a bunch of cool folks who were also arriving.

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We saw Todd Earsley again from MyShopAssist, which is the customer service work software we use here at Vorshlag. Todd entered his NASA TT prepped EVO, which he added an interior to for these events. He also brought out his dog Violet, the sweetest puppy you'll ever meet. She quickly became the event mascot. Mike from Dusold Designs in Lewisville was entered as well, and his twin turbo 7.0L LSx making 1000 whp was a LOT of fun to watch - and he's been kicking butt in the Goodguys events, too.

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Left: Todd and Violet are regulars on the NASA Texas TT circuit. Right: Marc Sherrin is a NASA Texas TT1 racer and a real character!

There were also lots of famous folks from the Pro Class of Goodguys and Optima Street Car events. Kyle and Stacy Tucker from Detroit Speed and Engineering had their transporter full of cars and they both entered. Infamous autocrosser and road racer Danny Popp entered in a wild 5th gen Camaro prepped by Lingenfelter. Bret Voelkel from RideTech was there in his Camaro, and autocrosser Cheryl Herrick from JetHot had a Nova that was absolutely beautiful inside and out. Ryan Mathews, a former NASCAR truck series driver, was entered in a race prepped 5th gen Camaro from DSE that had big aero, no interior and a full cage. Last but not least, 2013 Optima Challenge winner Brian Hobaugh was there in a really beautiful and monstrous 2nd gen Camaro built by Maier Racing - who builds epic autocross cars from Detroit iron.

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There were so many AMAZING cars! Detroit Speed had several that most people would give a right arm for. So did Ride Tech, and many other Pro Touring shops from around the nation. It helped to have the Goodguys event the weekend before, so many of these shops that normally wouldn't have made the trek to Texas brought big transporters full of cars and ran Goodguys, flew home for a week, then came back for the USCA 3 day event.

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Dallas area's Aaron Kaufman from Gas Monkey Garage was entered in his 1963 Falcon (which he is taking to Pike's Peak this year), but he only ran on Sunday in the road course event. From what I heard there might be a conflict with his Discovery channel TV contract, so he and his car probably won't be shown on the episode that was filmed at this event. Too bad, the car looked great - but Brandon got a lot of good pics of his car.

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We spoke again at this event with Aaron and a couple of the guys from the GMG shop - all super nice folks. Marc even tried to get Aaron to co-drive with his team in a ChumpCar race at Daytona in May, in his "Poorvette" C4 Corvette that we caged. That car is a riot!

Detroit Speed Road Rally

The only "competition" on the Friday of this 3 day weekend was the Detroit Speed sponsored Road Rally, which was to be a 90 mile street drive "poker run" event, used to prove the street worthiness of the entrants. To show that you made all 90 miles of the drive each car was given a playing card at each of 5 checkpoint stops, and our hand was turned in at the end for some extra door prizes (based on your poker hand). We had a driver's meeting around noon and Jimi and Dennis of the USCA introduced us to the series, outlined that day's events, and handed everyone their Rally notes and maps.

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This was the only portion where all entrants that completed every stage (5) of this competition could get the full 25 points towards their overall score - the other 4 competitions were to be weighted scores based on finishing order, with the winner getting 25, 2nd got 22, 3rd got 20, then 18, 16, 15, 14, etc. So all we had to do was make each checkpoint and finish, but not everyone did. A few folks skipped this event due to work obligations on Friday (and got 0 points), and someone missed one checkpoint and only got 20 points, but everyone else got the full 25. It was more of a "Pass/Fail" sort of deal.

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I wasn't worried about the street drive in our car, as we've been driving it on the street for years, it is street legal and everything worked. The weather on Friday was exceptionally nice, sunny and warm. By 1:30 pm we were told to stage outside of the garages and given a heads up that we would be making some laps of the 1.5 mile, 24° banked oval, driving in single file, to start the rally. This wasn't originally in the plan but we were glad it was added. We drove at "mostly highway speeds" and had a good time chasing Marc Sherrin's C6 Z06 Corvette in front of us.

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Left: Jimi Day of the USCA ran things smoothly behind the scenes. Right: Show host Chad Reynolds of BangShift.com was always making us laugh

We were told to take two laps then to line up and everyone would stop at the Start/Finish line for pictures, then proceed out of the infield via the south tunnel and then follow the route on the rally instructions and map we were given. We tried to get our Vorshlag folks to all stick together but we lost most of our group by the first stop light. It wasn't a hard route to follow, and with nearly 40 cars all stickered up in Optima graphics it made it easy to see someone from this event no matter where you ended up. I was lucky enough to have a navigator (Amy) riding shotgun, but of course, like the stereotypical married couple, we had to argue over the instructions the ENTIRE time!

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The first couple of miles of the route were on highway 114 right outside of the Speedway, but the route quickly diverted to secondary roads and even some residential streets. We got to see some beautiful homes in the city of Trophy Club, went through a school zone (the school kids went bonkers seeing all of the classic muscle cars go by!) into Grapevine, skirting around Grapevine lake. We drove through Flower Mound, Lewisville, and into my hometown of Plano. All of these secondary roads are concrete with expansion strips, and going slow you could feel every one in our Mustang with stif 800# springs. As the temperatures crept up into the 84°F high for the day, we rolled the windows up, turned the air con on, had the Satellite radio playing and the nav screen showing us the upcoming turns.

Amy and I have thousands of miles experience doing "TSD" rallyes, so the route instructions would have sufficed, but they gave us all detailed colored maps with the checkpoints clearly marked. They even had marks for what we quickly noticed were Optima film crews along the route, so we'd smile and wave for the dozen or so locations where we saw folks with tripod mounted cameras situated in medians and on road sides (some competitors said they never noticed them!). Having a navigator definitely helped, and we picked up more than a few strays - solo drivers trying to drive on unfamiliar roads while looking at a printed map - along this series of city roads that we had mostly driven on in the past.

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We drove way across the Dallas metroplex and all the way east to Plano, then headed north to Frisco. Mike Dusold from Lewisville had made this route for the USCA folks and he did a fine job of keeping all of the competitors on real streets with the normal street car challenges and bumps. With the shocks turned down on our Mustang it really wasn't that bad. One of the 5 checkpoints was at Pole Position Raceway, an amazing indoor kart track facility in Frisco. I hadn't driven at this Pole Position yet and I knew I had to give these karts a spin!

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About half of the competitors were too hungry to stop for karting and instead stopped for lunch along the route, or wanted to get to the Holley Welcome Party dinner at the race hotel's final checkpoint. But at least 20 of the entrants stopped in for some karting fun. These were decently quick electric karts (45 mph) on a slick concrete surface in a climate controlled building, which was nice because it was a bit warm outside that day. Mike had arranged for a killer deal - half price races at $10 each - and I ended up buying 4 races. Each race is about 12 minutes long and they can have as many as 20 karts on track at once. I got into a decent kart my first two races and had the fastest lap times in each race. My next two races I ended up in two stinkers, with no front tires left and no top speed, and was 1-2 seconds slower on my best laps and got 4th and 5th fastest laps, ugh. So even the rental indoor electric karts can be as inconsistent as those of the gas powered variety, heh! Still, it was a lot of fun.

Amy had a spring pollen/sinus induced headache and sat out the karting, which she normally enjoys. She instead went to get some much needed food for about 7 of the competitors that were there - a real life saver. We scarfed down Whataburgers and fries between races and by 4:30pm we had burned enough of the day at the kart facility and got back on the road, as we still had two more checkpoints to meet before dinner. By now we had three playing cards and a pair of fours, so my "poker run" hand was looking more like a foot. Marc Sherrin was already giddy with his budding hand of 3 eights, but we had no idea what the prizes would be for the poker hand at the end (not part of the points competition, of course).

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Left: The cars in the road rally stopped traffic everywhere. Right: First street drive with the new ABS computer - lots of lights, as expected

In the next leg we noticed a ~2 mile section of road on the route that was under serious construction and made a slight detour, not saving any distance just avoiding a traffic clusterfox, which worked beautifully. Thank you, Ford Sync Nav system! This construction detour we made (and were followed by a few others in the road rally) lopped off some time, as we made the next checkpoint ahead of people that left the kart track 20 minutes before us. The final stretch was a route along an old highway that was little more than a 2 lane road with a bunch of stoplights, which ran parallel to I-35. We could have taken the Interstate, and that was tempting, but we were worried about straying too far off the route and any consequences we might see. Unfortunately there were none, and we found out later than many competitors got to the party hours ahead of us by just using highway and tollway routes instead of the surface streets that made up the rally route, going directly from one marked checkpoint to the next. Oh well, live and learn... we waved at all the camera guys along the actual route, at least. :)

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Holley Welcome Dinner

We finally arrived at the final checkpoint around 6 pm and the brakes were howling on our Mustang. So much stop and go traffic on XP20 Carbotech track worthy brake pads and the noise and dust that ensues. One thing we noticed immediately after starting this road rally was that the front rotors were WARPED. These had been on the car since just after Nationals at Miller, lots and lots and lots of race weekends, and they were worn thin. It takes a lot to warp Centric Premium 14" front rotors, but the surfaces were covered in micro-cracks - an indicator that they were too thin. I called ahead (via the Sync systems in-car bluetooth!) to our shop and had Kyle snag a pair of fresh Centric front rotors that we keep in stock, for a Saturday morning swap.


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Jimi Day handing competitors their final card at the Marriott hotel checkpoint, right before dinner was served

Our warped front rotors paled in comparison to one competitor (who shall remain nameless) who lost an alternator on the road rally and had to stop and get 4 car batteries, which he swapped out when each one would die. Towards the end of the 91 miles of heavy traffic driving he noticed high coolant temps. They had to change a head gasket that night, and coupled with a complicated alternator swap they finished work on the car at 5:30 am Saturday morning! Long night, but he made it to all 5 checkpoints and raced Saturday and Sunday and drove it home, too.

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The USCA folks had us all park for pictures and video at the Marriott race hotel, where the Holley Welcome Dinner was held. My final playing card given to us at this stop made for a terrible poker hand, but Marc ended up with FIVE EIGHTS! He was showing everyone his cards, and they explained that ten decks were used at the 5 stops, so the five of a kind was possible, however unlikely. He figured he had the poker run cinched up, until Danny Popp whipped out five KINGS! What are the odds, that out of 38 hands there would be two people with 5 of a kind??? It seems that this winning hand was the end of Danny's good luck for the weekend. They both got to pick from the door prizes that USCA had paid out, and all of us got a new Optima battery tender in our goodie bag after completing this event, as well as a USCA TMS event T-shirt that was pretty nice.

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Left: Marc with his "five eights" hand. Right: Chad announcing the door prizes and talking about the events on Saturday

Dinner was burgers and sides in one of the Marriott ball rooms, and we had fun telling stories of our road rally driving, karting, poker hands and bench raced a bit for the next day. We got back to TMS to park in the garages that night by about 8 pm, tired and ready for some shut eye. Since we live only about 50 miles from the track we just drove home. I left the truck, trailer and Mustang in the garage area - Amy had followed me out to the track Friday in her long wheelbase BMW 740iL, which we call the Couch, and Marc Sherrin and his dad Carl rode back to the far side of Dallas with us.

Tune in next time for my Saturday USCA event coverage - the Autocross and Speed Stop competitions!

Project Update for April 8th, 2014: This post covers the second day of the 3 day Optima Street Car/USCA event at Texas Motor Speedway March 21-23. I also have some "house cleaning" clearance items that are Mustang related to post and talk a little about Pro Touring and SCCA's CAM class.

House Cleaning!

As happens around here a lot, we change parts on our Mustang "test mule" from time to time. And when we pull anything off one of our cars we sell the used bits on our clearance page. I won't get too salesy here, but if you see something you or one of your buddies might like, check it out.

We recently installed our 4th different set of shocks onto our Mustang - a set of MCS RR2 shocks that I will show in one of my upcoming posts - so our old Moton Club Sport remote reservoir double adjustables are now for sale. We bought these new in May of 2012 and they have proven to be very rugged, have a large rebound and compression damping adjustment range, and we've set a lot of track records and notched up a lot of wins on these.

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What you see here is for sale, just as they came off our TT3 Mustang a week ago

Lots more information can be seen about these used Motons if you click the pictures above. A winning set-up, real-deal remote reservoir Moton doubles at a big discount. If you don't see them listed on that page then they have sold.

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Next we have the last of the used Cobra Suzuka Kevlar racing seats from our Mustang. This is the "normal width" (aka: narrow) Suzuka, best suited for folks under ~175 pounds. We had this on the passenger side of our car for several years, and it has of 2005 build tag. It is in decent shape, with no tears or rips in the fabric but it does have significant fading of the material. It basically went from Dark Black to a Slightly Less Dark Shade of Black. We replaced this and the driver's side Suzuka "GT" width seat about a month ago with a new set, to better show off the current Cobra models we sell. The used driver's side Suzuka seat lasted exactly 48 minutes after we posted it for sale on our clearance page, so if you want this click here and buy it. Once its gone, its gone.

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Last but not least, we still have multiple sets of the new 305 and 320mm Continental DP racing slicks as well as a many pairs of used Hoosier DOT racing tires we need to move. Stacks of tires are all taking up far too much room in our overly crowded but climate controlled shop. The Contis are normally about $2000 for a set of 4 but the we have dropped the price on these brand new race tires to $550/set, below what we paid for them.

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All of the used Hoosiers listed right now are 315/30/18 sized A6 tires, which until very recently was the tire we used on our TT3 Mustang. I normally hoard my old race tires, but since we moved to the 335/345mm tire sizes on our Mustang, the crew here is grumbling at me to move out these 315s. Each Hoosier has some tread left, and we have listed each pair currently for sale with pictures of the actual tires being sold and DOT date codes from the sidewalls.

Happy bargain hunting!

A little About Pro Touring Cars + SCCA's CAM Class?

Before we get started on the 2nd day of USCA coverage I wanted to back up and cover the PT "movement" to explain some of the cars that were at this event or seen at other events nationwide - and to state that not all Pro Touring cars are created equal. The typical cars that run the Pro Touring series of events - Goodguys, USCA, ASCS, Optima - are 1972 and older American made muscle cars, with a smattering of old Corvettes and even a couple of wild T-buckets (or kit cars) and Cobras (or kit cars). The typical Pro Touring car has some modern wheels, brakes, and big 200 treadwear tires. Most nowadays have big LSx motors, and the Pro guys all seem to have built 7.0L+ LS7 based engines that make 650-700+ hp. It has gotten crazier as the years have passed and these events have gotten more popular.

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This Pro Touring "movement" has been around for a long time, and there are disputed stories about which was the first Pro Touring muscle car. The car I remember first, and that those of us that have been around HOT ROD magazine long enough remember, is the Gottlieb 1969 Camaro called "Big Red". This was more of an "Outlaw" top speed event car, but it had the look that Pro Touring adopted. This car even has its own Facebook page and it's own website. Built in 1987 (when I was but a wee lad) this car became a semi-tube framed "silhouette" car with a giant 540ci V8 motor that made 750 hp, wild and crazy and very little of the 1969 Camaro was left. It started out radical and nuts. It was built to run the La Cararrea and Silver State Classic open road races, and the car had just enough of the look of the classic Camaro to be allowed to run those. It was an over-the-top build that is chronicled here.

The cars that followed, like the Camaros from famed Pro Touring builder and GM Engineer Mark Stielow, were still packed with crazy powerplants and modern suspension, but more often than not today's PT cars are still mostly based on factory unibody structures and much tamer builds compared to Big Red. These are more streetable cars that were entered in One Lap of America events, and later beget the Goodguys and Optima "Pro Touring" scene. These latter events were made to allow pro built show cars to have a place to show that they were... more than just show cars. Show them being driven in competition.

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A pair of 1st gen Camaros built by Mark Stielow, which both ran in Optima Invitationals

As these competition events have grown in number and popularity, more radical Pro Touring builds have been built and they are fast approaching the Gottlieb car - and in many ways have surpassed it, at least in suspension sophistication. These PT cars have more and more radical mods: extreme lightening, lightweight and big race motors tamed just enough for street use, and modern, uncompromised racing suspension designs. The popular front suspension for a 1st or 2nd gen PT Camaro includes narrowed hydroformed frame rails with aluminum spindles, modern double-A arm suspensions, and a narrowed set-up that allows 315 or 335mm tires to fit with the outer track unaffected. The transmissions are increasingly more racey (Jerico, G-Force, etc) to take the power of these big LS-V8 engines. And rear suspensions have gotten beyond solid axles, with fabricated tubular IRS set-ups going under classic Detroit Iron.

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Even the "iron" component is becoming less evident, with engine blocks mostly in aluminum and sheet metal going over to composites & carbon fiber. There are Pro Touring cars with 4 pound fiberglass doors, Lexan windows, CF front ends, and big aero, with exotic materials and methods creeping in. And why not? There are essentially NO RULES in most of these series - even fewer than the admittedly open NASA Time Trial "numbered classes" (TT1/2/3) that we here at Vorshlag campaign in. On top of that PT cars usually have show quality paint, bodywork, interior coverings and more. You can spend a lot of money building a fast Pro Touring car, and the arms race doesn't seem to be slowing down. With top name street rod and race shops building these cars, price tags in the $100-200K range are not uncommon.

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A Pro Touring Camaro being built with an LS9 engine, custom crossmember and firewall, modern suspension

I'm not saying they should change anything in Goodguys, ASCA, Optima or USCA, not hardly. More power to 'em! These cars are beautiful and fun to watch, and these groups all put on helluva show. I'd give my right arm to be able to own one of these Pro built cars, or to have clients that trusted us enough to let Vorshlag build one for them. But that's not what we do, and the PT type scenes is really not what the SCCA is about, either (more on that in a second). Sure, the 200 treadwear tire limitation does ultimately put some limits what you can do that really matters, and the 3000 pound minimum weight for the main class in USCA is a good number, but these series and the PT cars that enter them are going to get wilder and less recognizable as time goes on.

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A classic Camaro built around SCCA Solo rules looks almost nothing like a PT car underneath

Why do I bring this up? Because the SCCA created a class explicitly to attract Pro Touring cars called Classic American Muscle. And this class has the fewest rules of any class SCCA has created in the history of Solo. Jason Rhodes deliberates on the many problems with the ruleset in CAM. Jason built the 1967 Camaro Z/28 shown above for STX class, only to have it moved to a less competitive STU class a year after its debut. If you look at the CAM rules from a racer's point of view there are some crazy things that you could build. And in typical SCCA style, the rules makers haven't thought this through very well, and when (not if) these wild creations show up there will be a series of TAKE BACKS and rules changes the likes of which have never been seen.

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Brian Hobaugh's Pro Touring Camaro ran in C Prepared class at the Solo Nationals, and did very well

We always complain about rules, and some of us have wished for more unlimited rulesets... just be careful what you wish for. Instead of fixing the issues in STX and STU classes, with respect to the modern Muscle Cars, the SCCA punted all pony cars into STU and seem to be ignoring any requests for allowances because "they can just run in CAM". But CAM is not a National class, and probably never will be - at least with the wide open rules it has now. I think creating CAM was a mistake, in this form, and removes all impetus to fix the pony car problems in STX and STU.

That being said, I'm going to be doing some autocross testing on street tires by running some SCCA Solo events in CAM class (and in our region they have split it by years, so we will run in MAM or Modern American Muscle). This will hopefully help us tweak the set-up and improve my driving to get ready for the Optima Invitational in Vegas. I actually renewed my SCCA membership last week (shocking!) and have already signed up for an event this weekend at TMS bus lot. But that doesn't mean I'm "building for CAM", no no no. If I was, first I'd ask someone to smack me over the head. Next, it would be a dedicated build along the lines that Rhodes laid out, but that would be a spending war that I wouldn't want to be a part of 2 years form now when the class either blows up and gets a rules re-write, or dies away from lack of attendance.

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We tilted at windmills in SCCA's STX class for 2 years, and briefly in STU. I'd rather not be a part of the Solo Circus again

Anyway, I made that brief foray into the history of Pro Touring just to see how it has evolved and relates to the STX/STU/CAM/MAM classes within SCCA, which I honestly don't have any heart to fight for anymore. SCCA Solo is going to do whatever it is going to do, and I'm not going to get involved more than casually entering a few local autocross events to use for practice for another series. I caution anyone looking at CAM as "the answer" to the woes of the pony car drivers that may have formerly run in STX/STU classes. CAM might never take off, and if it does, be prepared for MAJOR changes when the rules makers figure out what they have left open to exploit. Enjoy!

USCA at TMS, Saturday March 22nd, 2014

Now that the house cleaning, PT history and SCCA rules discussion is out of the way, let's cover the Saturday series of events at the USCA qualifier at TMS on March 22nd! On this day we were to compete in two of the toughest competitions: the Speed Stop and Autocross. I will discuss each event separately, but we were running these both concurrently off and on all day Saturday.

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The USCA driver's meeting (left) was held after the ChumpCar driver's meeting (right) in the same garage, an hour earlier

We had a driver's meeting early that morning at 8:30 am, right as the 12 hour ChumpCar race that was being held Saturday on the infield road course had started. We were told that the last digit in our assigned car numbers would determine which group we were in, "Odd" or "Even". We were given some time to walk both courses, and I took it, walking the large autocross course 3 times and the speed stop twice.

Ride-Tech Autocross Course

I will start with this Saturday event first, since I was in the "Odd" group that started out on the Autocross course first, and then we switched about every hour between this and Speed Stop. Towards the end of the day both courses were open to anyone, and lots of people had stopped running while others kept taking lots of runs.

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Before we got going I took my walk-throughs a little more seriously and jogged / walked briskly by myself two times after walking it once with some friends, to get a good look at the autocross course. Chatting with others is normal on your walk-thrus but I've learned that I absorb a lot more of the course when I walk by myself, without distractions.

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The course was set-up by an experienced SCCA autocrosser and it looked good, and nothing like the Goodguys gymkhana course. This made me very happy, as it would more suit a "normal car" and not the strange gearing and insanely tight turn-arounds that the Goodguys courses focus on. It wasn't an "easier" course than the weekend before, per se, just more flowing and with higher average speeds. Gone were the worries of another "1st gear only" course and as I walked the site it felt like a perfect 2nd gear course for our 3.31 geared Mustang - and it was. There were a LOT of cones and they even lined the course with white chalk, so it should be hard to get lost. If you did make a mistake I could see where there would be a lot of cones to collect.

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Left: The man lifts used for filming were in the middle of the course, out of the way. Right: The world's biggest video screen, recently added to TMS

They had video camera stations and Man Lifts set-up inside the course, and the layout had one crossover, but it made for a much bigger layout. If you look at the map in my previous post they had a LARGE area for the autocross to run in, much bigger than Goodguys used the week before. This is where SCCA normally has the paddock when they do the TMS Road Course autocross events, and it was BIG. There were a few "gotcha" sections the designer put in there, trying to make it challenging, but nothing that someone with 25+ years of autocross experience couldn't see past, heh.

Event Results: http://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us...dds-four-more/

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Left: The Autocross course was overlooked by the Optima Prime trailer. Right: Dennis Pittsenbarger was announcer all weekend

There was a slight delay while some timer issues were worked out. The USCA folks had a brand new timing system, but the wireless lights were apparently interfering with another signal. The Texas Region SCCA folks working the course and instructing helped them diagnose the issue and it was found that the 3+ TV cameras around this course were stepping on the signal for the lights, so they fixed that after a bit. Before they did Jimi Day sent our group to go make one run on the speed stop course, while they fixed the issue. I'll talk about that in the next segment. Also, the weather was super sketchy. Rain was in the forecast (not if but when) and the temps had fallen, with winds whipping up all day. You'll notice dark clouds in many of the Saturday pictures, and that's what we ran under all day - a constant threat of rain.

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Once the Autocross course finally went hot around 10 am I got in a fast first run. I was lucky to have Amy, Kyle and Jason spotting on the course, listening for times, and helping with tire pressures and getting me ready before each run. I made a few more good runs in the first session by the time we were told to switch events with the "Even" group. At that time I was temporarily in the lead for the Autocross. We came back to this area 3 or 4 different times that day, and I quickly found out that my early leading times had fallen. I was in the low 43 second zone in the morning but the big gun drivers were already in the 42s and Brian Hobaugh was in the 41s. Yikes! I stepped up my driving and worked the tires hard, trying to maximize rear grip.

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The rear tires became the limiting factor in everything on the autocross course that day. Yes, even with 335s on the back the car struggled to put the power down from this stock Coyote 5.0 (433 whp SAE). I was pushing the car to the edge of the cones, and picked up more than a few cone penalties that day (often just stepping on the cone bases, which is verboten in USCA). The event announcer (Dennis Pittsenbarger) was noticing my quick-ish times but was quick to also point out my penchant for cone penalties, and dubbed me The Conekiller, heh. He had nick names for lots of people, like "Cookie Monster" for Jon Miller - who had won a big bag of cookies in the Poker Run - and "Five Eights" for Marc Sherrin. He kept all of us informed as well as entertained all day, standing atop Optima Prime announcing.

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I earned the Conekiller name, of course, but luckily this wasn't a "3 and done" sort of event. I kept making autocross laps until I could get a faster time clean. Then I'd push in another area and run until I had it clean and faster. Rinse, repeat. Over the day I made close to 20 autocross runs - more than most but less than a few. I worked my way into the 42s, then the high 41s. At one point I had a 41.7 second run but that wasn't good enough for the win, as Hobaugh had his orange Camaro down to a 40.900 second run. Brian Finch and Kyle Tucker both had 41.7 times a hair quicker than mine, so I was in 4th. I didn't think I could catch Hobaugh but was so close to Finch and Tucker that I kept making runs, looking for a tenth...

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Side note: everyone was supposed to stop in a stop box after the autocross Finish timers, but I quickly noticed that most of the Pro drivers blew that off, as it wasn't manned like the stop box in the Speed Stop event. I kept killing my brakes to try to make that stop box, and it was TOUGH. But the new Ford Racing M-2353-CA" ABS/TC module worked brilliantly and our Mustang was definitely stopping well, considering the hefty weight it was carrying. All of the weirdness I've noticed when autocrossing on street tires was gone - with this ABS module I could go from wheelspin into full ABS braking without it missing a beat. It never once let me down all day - success!

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Left: Our latest ballast weight rack, now with MCS remote reservoirs installed. Right: Our Mustang on the autocross course

We had the TT3 ballast plates removed (above) but the Mustang still pushed 3550 pounds, then add another 200 pounds for me. Many of these top Pro drivers were in purpose built muscle cars and were much closer to 3000 pounds, which was the class minimum weight for the "GT3" class - the class we cared about.

Towards the early afternoon, after we had stopped for a lunch break and got going again, I was making autocross runs and the the fuel level got very low on the Mustang. I was parked in grid at the autocross course, strapped into the harness and ready to pull up for another run, so I asked Jason and Amy to go back to the trailer and grab the fuel jugs then get them filled at a nearby gas station with 93 octane. There were no active fuel pumps at TMS that day, but the gas station was about a mile away. I would keep making runs while they were getting fuel.

Strangely they arrived back to the paddock with a 5 gallon fuel jug and dumped that into the tank while I was strapped in. I figured they found a competitor with some 93 octane and would replenish that next, but I asked them "Where did you get that fuel?" They said, "It was in our trailer". "Uhh.... that's not one of our fuel jugs. You need to find out what you just poured into the car, please."

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E85 ethanol fuel is becoming popular with racers running boosted engines, for the high octane rating yet low cost compared to race fuel

I don't think anything more of it and I'm in line about 4 cars back from the start line, ready to make a run, when Jason runs up and says, "Shut off the motor, that was E85!" Oh crap. I pull out of line and get out of the car. He explains that a friend of ours put his fuel jugs in our trailer overnight, after I told him he could stash his stuff in our trailer. He runs E85, didn't mark his fuel cans, and they just put 5 gallons of corn juice in my tank. CRAP! I kind of... lost my temper. I wasn't so much mad at them but mad at myself for watching them put "unknown fuel" in our car. I should have stopped them. They went to go get our fuel jugs both filled, and we talked about ways to get this fuel out of the tank. Kyle had already left for the day and we didn't have the Ford quick-connect fuel line tools needed to make this easy. The weather was looking bad and we knew we might get rain at any minute. The only dry runs left for the day were about to happen in the next 10 minutes. CRAP CRAP CRAP!

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I did some mental calculations... I had about 2 gallons of 93 octane in the tank (fuel light had come on) when they dumped 5 gallons of E85 in there. There was not enough time to dump out the tank and no tools on hand to do it easily. We'd need to run to town, get the tools, dump the fuel, refill it with 93, and that would take an hour or more. By then it would likely be raining and the day would be over. I needed to make some more speed stop runs as well. Instead of all of that I decided we would DILUTE the E85 with a lot more 93 octane, but before that I'd take one more run. I was so mad, and so far back in the standings (4th place would cost me a lot of points in this event) I just didn't care, and needed just a tenth of a second better to make 2nd place in the autocross.

I got back in line, strapped in, and made this run below. Click that image for the in-car video, some commentary about the E85 fiasco, and go to the 720P for the best resolution.

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I don't know why I was faster on this run, maybe since my head was somewhere else (E85 dilemma) that it let my subconscious drive the car? I wasn't thinking about driving at all, I just drove. Jason said I was smoother and cleaner than I had been all day, not hanging the ass out for the camera, and he knew it would be a faster run before I even crossed the finish line. This 41.581 second run ended up being my fastest lap of the day and moved me up to 2nd place, just squeaking ahead of Finch and Tucker (shown below). I never got close to that time again in the half dozen laps I ran in the hours after the rain had come and dried back up.

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My 41.58 run still was pretty far off of Hobaugh's best, and he backed up the 40.9 with another 40.9. Nobody had anything that could touch him in the autocross competition all day, but even being almost 7 tenths back my 2nd place finish was good enough to net me 22 out of a possible 25 points, which made all the difference in the end. After we quit switching courses between the even and odd cars we were finally able to run together, so and I could watch Tucker, Finch and Hobaugh run. Wow, those guys were hailing some tail.

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Left: Hobaugh's Camaro was in a league of it's own. Right: He took a lot of autocross and speed stop runs! Each of those papers is a time slip.

All of their cars looked great but Hobaugh's Camaro was so hooked up I cannot describe it. Here is one of his runs on video, below, which is obviously much faster than any of mine - or anyone else's. He dominated the Goodguys autocross event the weekend before (on Friday/Saturday) by an even larger margin.

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That Camaro is hooked up and Brian had no driving mistakes. Very well done. Agian, he won the Optima Invitational last year in his dad's 1965 Corvette, and he has been autocrossing for something like 28 years, so he is no stranger to these events. Looking at his video, I'm going to have to step it up driving-wise as well as make some fundamental changes to our TT3 set-up to work better on these street tires for the Vegas Optima event. I had enough little driving mistakes but for the most part my run was right on the cones and on the limit of the tires everywhere.

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I might never catch Hobaugh on any autocross course, and I don't think with 100 more runs that Saturday that I would have caught him. That car is seemingly tailor made for the tight stuff, and I was very happy to pull off 2nd place at this event.

Saturday Breakage

Our Mustang was a tank all weekend with nary a hiccup, but that couldn't be said for everyone. When you are making 700+ hp and taking dozens of runs in a row, things can break, even on street tires.

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One of the more popular builds was this vintage Volvo built by "Swedish Ops". This had an LSx V8 swap and a manual transmission. Apparently they lost a McLeod hydraulic throw out bearing and had to snatch the transmission out to repair it. This was one of 2 cars in the "under 3000 pound" class, which it ended up winning. It barely made weight, as you had to weigh under 3000 pounds to run this class.

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Saturday was also a bit of bad luck for the DSE crew. Kyle Tucker's 2nd gen Camaro munched a clutch, one of the multi-disc variety. His crew had the transmission out and the clutch changed in a little over an hour, and he was back out there making Speed Stop and Autocross runs.

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Last breakage that I recall on Saturday was Danny Popp's 5th gen Camaro. We heard it go "BANG" on course after it had blown a CV joint in the rear halfshaft. Without any spares he was out of the event and didn't get to make a lap around the road course on Sunday. That sucks, and I hate seeing a top competitor like this get his weekend ended early. I'm sure we'll see Danny at another USCA/Optima event soon, and it looks like on Facebook that he's testing this Camaro on the BFG Rivals (he was on 305mm Goodyear Supercar tires during the USCA weekend).

There was one more key competitor that broke on Sunday, which I will cover in that series of posts.

Wilwood Disc Brakes Speed Stop

The other Saturday event was the Speed Stop, which has been a tough event for me in the past. I was bound and determined to NOT place poorly in the Speed Stop this time, no matter if I had to take 30 or more runs to do it. I ended up getting 3rd quickest and it only took about 28 laps to pull that off, heh.

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The course layout was simple, and it was held in the smaller lot that Goodguys normally uses for their autocross. Again, in my overall satellite map of the TMS site you can see the area where it was held, and it had about half the space there as the Autocross site. It was still plenty big, and allowed for a pre-grid area, starting box, and a straight long enough to top out 2nd gear for me (around 70 mph). After the straight we had a big braking zone into a tight ~150 degree turn (the one with the 4 cones lined up, above). Not quite a 180, but darn close to that. That corner was still bottom of 2nd gear, luckily, and this led immediately into a tight 3 cone slalom (optional direction to start) then right across the finish lights and into a 40 foot stop box.

Event Results: http://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us...dds-four-more/

Seemed so simple when I walked it, but I fought this course all day long and it took far more runs than the Autocross course to sort of master it. I drove it so many different ways, but it was all about limiting wheelspin, going slow enough in the turn-around, staying on the throttle through the cones, and braking as late as possible - down to the inch.

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That video has 3 of the Speed Stop runs in it, and each run is around 11-12 seconds, so it isn't too long. You can see my frustration there, after I kept running over the same cone in the slalom, lap after lap, and as I found out even touching a cone was a penalty - you didn't have to knock it down or move it out of the marked box. That is their rules, I just needed to learn them. The USCA had good spotters watching this course, mostly from the Texas Region SCCA.

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I knew this SCCA crew well: Wayne Atkins was the starter, Brad Flak was the stop box spotter/flagger, and Brad and Jen Maxcy were running the timers and handing out time slips to competitors. Even though I knew them, they they cut me zero slack. They did give pointers to me and the other entrants about how much room we were giving up in the back of the stop box or how far off of the cones we were. I had Amy and Jason spotting for me on many runs as well.

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Stuart from Maxcyspeed came out and gave me some pointers for the shocks, and we made some time up after his damping suggestions. We also tried all manner of tire pressures and the car stopped best with the pressures we had dialed in on the autocross course, with about 31 psi up front 315s and 33 psi in the rear 335s. We changed shock settings for the speed stop and autocross, however, and made more shock changes for the Sunday road course. This event was the last time we ran the Moton Club Sport doubles, and now we have to re-learn the car on the MCS doubles (luckily they are very similar in look, construction and function).

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My first speed stop was in the 12.4 second range and I spent the entire day working on my driving, trying different lines, tweaking my braking points, and just flat out beating on the car to get every tenth we could. Hobaugh and Finch were once again leading the charge and I chased them all day. I spent all morning mired in 7th place, then worked my way into 6th, then 5th. After a brief rain shower that took a good long time to dry off of the speed stop course I went back and was "hot lapping" this course with Bret Voelkel, Brian Hobaugh and Danny Popp. Some of the guys were doing big, hairy burn-outs to try to increase starting line traction - there was just very little grip in the starting box.

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I didn't bother with burn-outs, but would instead just keep working on my launch, shifts, brake points and cone distances. Marc Sherrin and I kept swapping back 6th place, first in the 11.7 second range than in the 11.6 second range. I was confused about the different classes on Saturday and kept an eye on Todd Earsley's EVO's times all day - and even through his times didn't end up counting against mine we pushed each other. He and I have a friendly rivalry at these events + NASA TT, so when I looked and saw him missing for a long time on the autocross course, I asked Amy where he was. She had someone spotting the Speed Stop and came and told me "Todd just ran an 11.53!" So I ran over to that area and made laps until I had an 11.52, heh.

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Towards the end of Saturday afternoon I happened to be making laps when only 2 other cars were there and the camera crew and show host Chad were interviewing me after every couple of passes, since they seemed a bit bored. After a string of runs touching the same cone in the slalom 4 times in a row I finally got a clean run, and nailed the stop as deep in the stop box as possible. Chad ran up with the the camera crew and stuck a microphone in my face and said, "Wow, you really got it deep in the box!" and I replied, without thinking, "That's what she said". They laughed pretty hard at that but I doubt that will make it onto the show, heh.

This event is hard work, and emphasizes more of the car aspects than driver skill. You still have to really PUSH the car to get your best lap and nail everything to the inch to minimize your time. I watched Hobaugh make a lot of passes and he really beat on his car to get down to that 11.0 second run. Eventually I had a bit of a break through with my driving and got down to an 11.2 second lap, after a string of 11.5s and 11.4s. It all came down to pushing the braking zone as late as possible, getting the brakes WARM, and waiting a foot later on the binders to save a tenth or two - or push you right out of the box and into the Red Flag territory (essentially a DNF).

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As you can see, Hobaugh won this event once again - two in a row for Saturday - but Finch was right on his heels at only .01 seconds back! I was 2 tenths back from the two of them, and my 3rd place standing netted me 20 out of a possible 25 points.

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At this point on Saturday it was looking like Hobaugh had this whole weekend sewed up, but I knew one thing these Pro guys didn't: the TMS Infield Road Course. With a couple of hundreds laps under my belt here in 2012 with GTA and 7+ years of SCCA autocrosses on the same layout, I had a little course knowledge over anyone else in attendance. Would knowing the course be enough, since everyone would get 6 fifteen minute sessions on track Sunday? I had no idea - only Sunday would tell. I was worried about being down on power to virtually all of the top 15 cars, too. But one thing that really helped my overall standing was the last "competition" that happened on Saturday: the design challenge.

Lingenfelter Performance - Design and Engineering Competition

During the middle of one Autocross session they pulled me over to the Optima trailer "to be judged". There was no Judge Dredd there waiting but instead 5 industry icons picked mostly from the company owners from the event sponsors who would evaluate each car. This judged event was also worth a total of 25 points, from a ranked score. The judges first scored each entry on six categories of "street car amenities" (things like air con, door glass, lighting, and such) and then on another series of things such as the paint, interior modifications, engineering changes, drivetrain, and the fit and finish of the car. I was really worried about this because our Mustang is far from a show car, unlike many of the Pro cars. But, also unlike many of those, our Mustang is really a street car - with a full interior, air bags, air con, and all of that. And the unique and custom aero and wheels look the part, and then some.

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Prepared to be judged....

Turns out we didn't do so badly, and the judges noticed that I had all of the "street car points" in the 6 categories they were looking for. We maxed out the 15 points that made up these streetable things, while many others did not. Some of the Pro Touring entries here were barely disguised race cars, and they did poorly in these street categories by not having things like HVAC, real doors, side door glass, interior materials, or a radio.

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The other 10 points of the 25 point score were subjective numbers based on a 0-100 scale from each judge. They threw out the high and low judged score on this subjective scale, average the remaining three numbers and divide that score by 10, then added this to the 15 point scale from above. Sounds easy, right? Looking at the score sheet above helps it make more sense. On the subjective 0-100 scale we scored a 61 average, better than many others. That meant I got 6.1 points out of the subjective 10 point part + all 15 points for the 6 street car amenities categories for a total score of 21.1 out of 25.

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That the 21.1 points wasn't my final score in the this category, of course, as this was only used for the overall class ranking yet again. The car's score here was good enough for 4th overall in class, so I netted 18 out of 25 points in this event, not the 21.1 points scored. Follow?

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Cheryl Herrick's beautiful Chevy II (above) from Jet Hot won this event, and if you had seen it up close you'd know why. That car was amazingly well prepared and scored a 72.2 score on the 0-100 judge's subjective scale (7.2 points) and she also netted the maximum 15 points for "the street amenity score". Her overall score was really only a 22.2 out of 25 possible points (only 1.1 points better then our Mustang), but since she ranked first she got the full 25 points in this category. That ranking thing is how they do it in all categories, and it really pays to win as many events as you can. Finch scored one place ahead of me here (by a 0.2 point scored margin, doh!) and netted 20 out of 25 points. He also beat me on the Speed Stop by one place, but I nudged him on the autocross by one place. So, unbeknownst to me, I went into Sunday 2 points behind Finch and what I thought was a huge gap behind Hobaugh. But his Camaro's Design score was hurt by the lack of a some street car parts and the resulting ranked score was only a 6.95, which hurt him.

End of Saturday

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Jason and I checked the car over at the end of the day, fueled up again for Sunday morning, and we left the car parked in the garages for the night. The BFG tires looked EXCELLENT at this point and I felt like we'd get several more weekends like this out of them, at this rate. I was tired - between shuffling back and forth from the Autocross and speed stop events I was rarely unstrapped and out of the car most of about 6 hours that day. We did get a nice lunch break and the rain delay for about 90 minutes, so we relaxed in the garages and shot the bull with everyone during that down time. We had a BOATLOAD of fun that day. I have never taken so many autocross runs in a single day, and never had to work course - sweet!

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They had all of the events wrapped up by about 4:45 pm and we buttoned up the trailer and loaded bodies in the BMW to head home after a long day with lots of wind and cold, some rain, and a mix of frustration and elation. The E85 fueling mistake ended up not being a big deal after all, as we had been diluting the tank all day with more and more 93 octane. By Saturday evening we had it virtually purged of ethanol (well, other than the 10% that most Texas gas pumps include, for a normal E10 mix).

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My mind was spinning about how badly I got beat in the autocross (in raw time, 7 tenths is an eternity) and what that could mean for what Hobaugh had in store for the road course? While I was still hopeful Sunday would be the one event I could possibly still win, my thoughts of an overall win for the class/event and SEMA invite were nil (at that point I had no idea what any of the Design scores were). I was resigned to maybe place in the top 3, which would be a good placement with these Pro built cars and top drivers in attendance.

But Sunday was a whole new game... :D

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Click image above for a "fly by" video on the main straight of the TMS Infield Road Course

More next time!

Project Update for April 21st, 2014: Time to play catch up on the build posts! We've done yet another event since USCA, this time an autocross with the Texas Region SCCA in their new "MAM" class - in addition to the TrackGuys event at TWS last month. I've written and posted two job listings here at Vorshlag this week. I've also written and posted the mega-sized Vorshlag Scion FR-S LSx Alpha Project build thread since my last S197 post, and I need to update the Alpha Miata LS1 thread as well, too. So before I get any further behind I'll try to catch up on Day 3 of the USCA/Optima Qualifier event held at TMS March 21-23rd, 2014. This is where things got... interesting.

A Brief Look: GTA @ TMS, Sept 2012

First, let's back up just a tick. If you've been reading this S197 build thread since we started (2010) you might remember that we ran our red 2011 GT at TMS on the infield road course back in 2012. That year was a turning point for this car: we had finally switched form running on 265mm street tires in SCCA's STX class to running 315mm R-compounds in SCCA's ESP autocross class and NASA TTS in time trial. The move out of STX was long overdue, as we fought badly for traction in this heavy (3440 pound at the time) car on those super skinny 265mm street tires. Every event was like driving on ICE. When we moved up to 315mm R-compound tires the Mustang CAME ALIVE, so we quickly did a single autocross test - where we made some set-up changes based on measured lap times - and took the Mustang to the SCCA Solo Nationals to run in ESP class against the best pony car autocrossers in the nation.

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Left: Our brief foray into SCCA ESP class in 2012 was decent but under-developed. Right: Our NASA TTS set-up in 2012 also worked well enough in GTA

We did fairly well at that 2012 Nationals, scoring a 3rd out of 47 cars in ESP and winning ESP-Ladies, after almost no changes to the old STX suspension set-up. Looking back now we know this was a very compromised set of spring rates, among other items. The suspension then was still on AST 4150 singles with soft-ish 450F/175R rates, which worked great for street tires and daily driver use but left the car under-sprung for foot wide wheels and uber-grippy tires, in autocross and especially road course use. The car had LOTS of body roll that we couldn't tune out with the swaybars (we had the massive Whiteline bars at full stiff on both ends, which our one test day showed to be fastest).

We entered this Global Time Attack event at TMS a couple of weeks after the 2012 Solo Nationals on a lark, mostly to help bolster the entries for this event so the GTA series might come back in the future. We never hoped to beat the top cars prepped for this series or even get in the top 10. The turn-out by locals was somewhat poor, and even with a couple of dozen series regulars attending they couldn't afford to risk it on a low turn-out again and GTA has not returned to Texas. This is what prompted my series of calls to try to support the USCA event locally - we didn't want to lose a big event again. I'll talk about the SCCA Texas Pro Solo at the end of this post, because we need local entrants to sign up to this one, too!

Anyway, 2012 was our first year to dip into R-compound territory and we used the following winter to test a better suspension set-up for the wider tires that led to a string of wins in TT3 for 2013 - where we won 13 of 15 NASA races and set track records at every track on the NASA Texas schedule. We still had a relatively poor showing at NASA Nationals (3rd) due to a poor rear aero set-up for the speeds seen at Miller, but we finally have a better solution for that coming in the next week or so (see details in my next S197 build thread post!). So 2012 was a "building year" and the crude TTS/ESP set-up we had was somehow still good enough to win Unlimited RWD class at this GTA round in Texas and set the 5th fastest time of the event.

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Some laps from GTA in 2012. Look at how much high speed understeer the car has! (with the old plastic LS front splitter)

Still, that event was riddled with mistakes: 1) I drove erratically (as usual) and was constantly over-driving the tires. 2) I forgot to plug-in the wired AMB transponder before the best track session on Sunday, when it was 78°F. That was a huge mistake, as the on-board AIM Solo lap timer showed several sub 40 second laps in an early Sunday session, with a best of a 39.8, but with our ghetto-wired transponder left unplugged it was all for naught (we have since added a lighted switch on the dash to show me when the transponder is on!).

I had to make up for that missed session of times by driving like a wild man in a nearly 100°F session late that afternoon, where I barely eeked a lone 39.975 second official lap time, using all of the track surface and then some. The 315mm Hoosier A6 tires were overheating but I kept pushing and found that time in the closing minutes of the event. It was nerve racking to know I left more time in the car, but it was all I could get in those circumstances. With our current aero and suspension set-up, plus the wider 335/345 Hoosiers, what would the Mustang run there now? No telling... but probably a good bit faster. We found 1.4 seconds just going from 315mm tires to the wider set at MSR this year, about one month apart. Bigger is better!

Anyway, at that event two years ago I logged two days of lapping on this 1.1 mile TMS road course, but on very different tires and a softer suspension set-up. It wouldn't hurt knowing the various corners and pavement sections of this track, of course.

USCA at TMS, Sunday March 23rd, 2014

So as you've read in my previous set of posts covering the USCA event above, we rolled into Day 3 of this weekend not knowing exactly where the Vorshlag Mustang was placed. We were doing somewhat OK after having scored a 2nd in the autox, a 3rd in the speed stop and a 4th in the Design challenge - but we didn't know any of that. I thought my ranking was about 4th in the autocross and 4th or 5th in the speed stop, with no idea of how the design challenge went, so I was a bit pessimistic about our chances at the win in the GT3K class. I really wanted that invite to the SEMA show/Optima Shootout, but at this point I just wanted to redeem myself and try to pull out the win at Sunday's BFG Hot Lap event. I had no idea that I still had a real shot at the overall win...

Event Results: http://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us...dds-four-more/

BFGoodrich Hot Lap Challenge

We got to the track Sunday morning early, cold and tired, but I was still looking forward to this Time Trial portion of the event. Even if I didn't have a snowballs' chance in hell of the overall win, I was damn sure going to try to win this ONE single event. Sure, I was down 500+ whp to some of the entrants and had NO idea how these guys would do on the road course, but I knew this track. That was my one advantage. Would it matter after each competitor had their 6 sessions of 15 minutes each? That's a lot of track time to learn and master this little 1.1 mile road course.

Maybe our "wild aero" - which did virtually nothing for the car at autocross speeds nor in the speed stop, except make the car wider and grab cones - would finally show it's worth on the TMS infield course? We ran the same APR rear wing (mounted higher) back in 2012 at GTA but then we had the much less effective plastic Laguna Seca OEM front splitter and none of the other tricks we've since added, such as: the front wheel spats/flares, ducted hood, blocked off upper grill, and full depth splitter. We also have nearly doubled the spring rates on the suspension on both ends, so maybe that could allow the BFG tires to stay flatter and work more efficiently? We had the same Whiteline bars, control arms and Watts link, then as now.

The question was: Could I approach that same 39 second GTA lap time on 200 treadwear street tires? I sure hoped so, because this group of Pro Touring competitors looked fierce and I knew that a 40 second lap wasn't likely to win it.

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You can see the layout of the 1.1 mile, 7 turn road course above.


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It looks fairly straight forward but there are actually some very tricky spots on this track. I've seen a few too many cars crashed out there, as this course is lined in concrete barrier walls in many places. A few corners also have some run-off areas that you don't want to get out into (Turn 1!). And while it looks totally flat, it is far from it - some corners have a tick of camber that works in your favor (Turn 1), but one corner is off camber (Turn 7) - especially if you go wide, like the textbook line would lead you to think - and others have lower grip asphalt, which makes for a very slippery situation.

Vorshlag event Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...te-Street-Car/

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We had another driver's meeting that morning and the USCA organizers told us that there would be a yellow C7 Corvette "camera car" out in many of the sessions. We were told to "ignore this car as much as possible", as he would be making passes and/or pointing cars by to set up shots with both forward and rearward facing cameras. Turns out the driver was none other than local LGM business owner and former Pro racer Lou Gigliott. The C7 Corvette was one of his own test mules equipped with his coilovers, aero and headers, among other bits. That should be fast, especially in Lou's hands, and I mentally noted to be on the lookout for this Corvette - as I was always trying to ham it up for the camera! When you run a business you gotta get in the free marketing whenever you can, you know?

USCA Rules: http://ultimatestreetcarassociation....Rules_v7-1.pdf

They had us split up into 3 types of run groups on Sunday based on previous road course experience levels: Novice, Advanced, and Expert. The differing groups had slightly different safety requirements as well, which are explained in the USCA rules. For the Expert group I was slotted into, we had to have the following bits of safety gear:

• Helmet – SA2005 or better
• Neck restraint – Hans style, or SFI certified neck collar
• Properly mounted 4 or 5 point harness
• SFI 3.2A/1 rated single layer fire suit or better
• Nomex fire retardant gloves
• Fire retardant shoes

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A lot of the local entrants we motivated to sign up had to make some hasty purchases at a local circle track supply house (Smileys) - to get racing suits, Nomex gloves, fire proof shoes and neck collars. One such entrant that had to get "geared up" was Shannon (above right) and her mom and sister, who both also entered. But like I told them, some HPDE groups and tracks are starting to require a full driving suit to run their events; I know MSR Cresson requires that sort of gear for their member days and at any other weekday track session, so their new gear wasn't a wasted purchase. And as cold as it was Sunday at TMS most of us stayed in our suits all day and were glad to have the warmth. Luckily I had all of this safety gear already, except a HANs, so I used my $25 SFI neck collar. Maybe not the smartest choice, and my helmet is already set-up for a HANs (which I've borrowed for LeMons racing) but I have yet to use one and not limit my ability to see laterally, so I haven't pulled the trigger on a HANs system yet.

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Please don't use my example of safety gear choices to influence your choices. But please DO realize that there is more to using and picking a HANs device than just "swiping your credit card". There are many variables involved in the various brands, sizes and model options, plus other things that need to be checked, like shoulder harness and seat compatibility, and tethers vs quick releases. Its not a "no-brainer" choice to pick a HANs device. On a race car with a limited door opening in the roll cage (see above), or especially with the door closed and a cumbersome window net added - try to get out THEN when you have a big HANs device strapped to your back, while the car is on fire. Many variables... but then again, ripping your spinal column out of your brain stem can also ruin your day (aka: end your life).

At this event I knew the track had lower speeds, and the fact that there was going to be a good bit of passing, so being able to turn my head fully was more important - this time. But yes, I know, it is more dangerous than w/o a HANs in a big crash. I'm going to reassess my own safety equipment later this year and at the very least step up to a better fire suit than the inexpensive off-the-shelf Simpson suit I have now (we're a dealer for Puma, Sparco, OMP, Momo and Alpinestars suits) as well as possibly adding a real neck restraint system of some sort.

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They had us go out briefly before our official run groups began for a lead/follow teaching session where we all followed along single file, to "learn the line". I went out with Marc Sherrin and Jerry Cecco behind me and I drove the line I remembered from before, at about half speed behind the lead car. Those 8 or so slow laps didn't show me much, but we came back in and waited for everyone else to get their reconnaissance laps in. We next lined up in our proper run groups, but in a random order for the first session. There were more expert drivers so they split us into two sessions, for a total of 4 run groups.

For the first timed Expert session I got to grid after some other cars had lined up, so once on track I was stuck in traffic. I made several passes, but after 15 minutes on track I never had a single clear lap. We were also playing with shock and tire settings in the hot pits. In this session my AIM Solo lap timer would show a fast lap but would always get held up at some point. I tried building a gap on a few laps but the session was packed and there were a couple of cars that were well off the pace. Best time I could manage was a 41.325 second lap, passing someone on that lap.

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The fastest car in that Advanced session was Ryan Matthews in the white, DSE-prepped 5th gen Camaro race car. Yes, I said race car, as this one had a full cage, gutted interior, big crazy motor, big aero and big tires. Nobody else would argue that term on this one. Not knocking their entry, just jealous. ;) Ryan (a former Pro NASCAR circuit driver) went out first in that session, and with clear track and clean air he knocked down a 40.990 second lap. He was the car everyone was talking about all morning as the car to beat, and one of his buddies saw me in the hot pits following this first session and said "You don't have a chance of beating him... you ain't got the power!" I smiled, agreed about not having a lot of power, and just waited until the next run group to see if I could get some clear laps.

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While Ryan's 40.99 first session best lap was quicker than my 41.32, I had to deal with massive traffic throughout the first session. Amy and Jason were watching live timing via the Race Monitor app and I came in halfway through that session to check on everyone's times, while also trying to find a gap. I went back out and immediately got stuck caught in another pack. After the 15 minutes was up it felt good to only be 3 tenths back from the lead, considering I never got an unobstructed lap. The other Expert group then ran and was led by Marc Sherrin in his Z06 with a 40.336 and followed by Kyle Tucker with a 41.049 second lap, so I made sure to keep an eye on them as well. The Advanced and Novice groups ran, and while there were not any eye opening laps from those groups yet we still watched them all day.

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Fellow TT racers Marc Sherrin (above) and Todd Earsley (below) were getting quicker all day, and we kept an eye on each other from our friendly NASA TT rivalries. Marc started out fast and lead everyone after the first sessions. He was on only 315mm wide Rivals in his TT1 prepped C6 Z06 (he normally runs a 345mm Hoosier) while Todd was on 265mm Hankook RS3s in his TT1 prepped EVO, and both of them knocked down very respectable laps. Todd has been practicing for this event this year, running NASA TT1 class on his RS-3 street tires just to work on his USCA set-up. That's dedication.

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It was a long day, with laps from 10 am until 4:30 pm. Our Mustang struggled with rear grip all day and the car was very easy to step into power-on oversteer. And they had cameras out on course which of course encouraged me to drive like more of a jackass than normal. It felt a little like driving in the wet, but with 447 whp on street tires and a solid axle, what can you expect? I don't know how those guys with 700-1000 whp made do out there - this course definitely took some serious throttle restraint with 200 treadwear tires. Most of the corners were fairly low speed and we didn't have much aero advantage in those. The "switchback" (T2-T4) in the middle of the back section was maybe the only place where our little rear wing was working. Maybe also in the big high speed offset (T6-T7) just before the start/finish line as well.

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Fly-by video from the start/finish area. The bark of the Magnaflow exhaust sounds good!

I guess this paid off with the highest trap speeds into the braking zone of turn 1, according to someone who told me they were checking speeds with a radar gun. You can see the cones on the apexes of each turn in the fly-by video above, and the USCA folks also laid cones down in walls to denote brake markers into the big high speed braking zones, of which there were several. They said we were entering T1 at 117 mph (our GPS data showed 114). The next fastest entry was Marc Sherrin's Z06 at 116 mph, also at a power deficit to at least a dozen cars in attendance. What's amazing is there were much more powerful cars in attendance not hitting the same terminal speeds as the two of us - and at least one competitor was SPRAYING NITROUS OXIDE on the straights. You heard that right - Nitrous is allowed in USCA. This is the only series I've ever run on a road course that allows that type of power adder. Crazy, and it gave me some really BAD ideas for future events!

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Mike's stock motored Miata (left) didn't need nitrous to best his LSx powered GT2 class competitor on track (right) by 1.5 seconds

One of the tricks I had learned running here in 2012, and that I do regularly in Time Trial competition (and many W2W racers do in qualifying sessions) on certain tracks where it works, is where I would throw away every other lap by taking a very different line into the last corner. This would add distance but also allow for a super late apex which then helped set-up a faster corner exit into the next lap, and this paid off with a savings of a couple of tenths each time this was used. I also knew where to use the curbing, and how much - many competitors surprisingly kept a wide berth of the curbing, which was a "chopped" style of FIA curbing, but was still usable with decent dampers on the car. It didn't even touch my splitter, so the curbing serrations weren't that tall. The USCA was smart and set-up cones to denote the track limits, and we used the curbing to full effect where we could but I stayed out of the grass where they hadn't. I didn't want a corner worker to call in a DSQ after fighting with wiggling cones in the Speed Stop on Saturday.

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Todd Earsley started out in his first session at 42.131 but ended up with fast laps in the 40.xx range for sessions 2-6 and easily outpaced his AWD class competitor in a GTR on the Hot Lap Challenge. His best was a 40.268 sec lap on the 6th and final session, and I got well out of his way on his fastest lap. He bested his AWD competitor in 2 of 3 driving competitions (Speed Stop and Hot Lap) but lost in the autocross and design competition, and ended up tying for the lead on points. USCA settles all ties with the design score, so he ended up in 2nd overall. He's not giving up and will be at another USCA qualifier to try to get that SEMA invite!

Full Event Results: http://ultimatestreetcarassociation....ll_Classes.pdf

Marc Sherrin ended the day in 2nd place in the Hot Lap challenge with a 40.236 second best, and that was after only taking laps in 3 of the 6 possible sessions due to a front rotor that came apart. It was a 2-piece StopTech rotor that got a little too thin and showed a massive crack and split apart in his 3rd session. Up until then he and I were battling for the Hot Lap lead in the GT3K class, after he led after the first session. If we would have been able to get him 335mm Rivals (which were on National backorder) and with more laps available he could have fought for top time. His strong showing in the Hot Lap challenge (20 points) and solid finishes in Speed Stop and Autocross (12 points each) led him to a 6th place finish overall in GT3K class, with 82 points. Not too shabby for an otherwise stock Z06 with a built LS7 motor!

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So I mentioned that first session, where I was mired in traffic. Luckily they used our best times from that session and each successive session to grid us in order, just like we do in NASA TT. So I started in P2 behind Ryan Matthews for the 2nd session and after a couple of laps of dogging the big white Camaro he pulled offline and pointed me by. Then I laid down a series of 40.xx laps with a best of 40.115 seconds. The cool morning air was working for the rear tires, keeping them from overheating too quickly.

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Terry playing around with Lou in the Camera Car C7 during Session 3

In Session 3 I got a little quicker before spending the latter half of that session goofing around with Lou Gigliotti and the camera car C7 Corvette. I had already banked a 40.052 lap but that boiled the rear tires, so after I came back out for the second half of the session I was 2-3 seconds off my previous pace when I was lapping with Lou. I spent time both in front of and behind the C7, trying to get some on-car camera time, and pushed the Mustang's very hot tires as hard as I dared - which you can see in the video above. Almost drove off track on two occasions and our lines were so different that I kept running up on the back of Lou in a couple of corners and had to back off. This is probably where I damaged the rear tires a bit, but like I've said, shove a camera in my face and I drive like an idiot, heh.

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Left: This truck had some SQUAT in the rear on corner exit. Right: Doing some lead-follow with Lou's C7 camera car


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The sun came out and drove up track temps in session 4 and I slowed down to a 40.166 best. Session 5 was much of the same but I got a hair quicker with a 40.026 best, only 3 hundredths quicker than session 3. I was beginning to think we'd never break out of the 40 second zone, but the AiM's predictive lap timer kept popping up with a 39.9 every once in a while, but then I'd blow it in Turn 5 - which was the toughest corner to master due to a lower grip surface and an off camber slope. I had to keep the rear from sliding too much in this corner, as oversteer would overheat the rears and they would then lose grip badly. I was also putting a lot of heat into the front brakes, but kept pushing my braking into Turn 1 later and later during each session.

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I never stopped pushing until Ryan Matthews came off track for the last time - that Camaro was FAST

By session 6 somehow I was in the overall lead, but not by much. Ryan Matthews had laid down a blistering 40.119, and that was too close for comfort (I was in the 40.0 range by then). Thanks to my faster times I was gridded P1 and out first in sessions 2-6, which let me set the pace on the out lap and gave me clean air for my first several laps. We got into a pattern where where I'd take 4-5 hot laps, 1 cool down lap, then dive into the hot pits and park, check competitors' times and let my tires cool for a couple of minutes.

I would talk to Jason and Amy, they'd check the tire pressures, brake temps, tire temps, and then wait for a gap to send me back out in the second half of the session. Invariably a big portion of the field would quit early, about halfway through each session, then I could go out for more clear laps. This was a good strategy and with such a short lap time (40 seconds) the out lap and cool down laps didn't eat up substantial amounts of track time.

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It seemed like the fastest 2nd gen Camaros in the world were all here this weekend!

I knew the car had a 39 second lap in it so I planned on trying to put in a flier on my first couple of laps in the last session of the day. The attrition had taken its toll by days' end so USCA combined the two Expert groups for our last session, but I was still gridded P1 and the first car out, and got my clear laps as planned.

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Being this event was in my home town I had lots of friends there giving me advice all weekend

Jason and I talked strategy before the last session, and he and Amy both kept me calm and my mind clear all weekend. We had a plan to use a bluetooth phone call via MySync in the Mustang to set-up 2 way comms, like we have done before in TT events - but only if things got really close and I wasn't finding any time. I was ready to take that call, but it wasn't needed because I went out first in session 6 and laid down the only 39 second lap of the weekend.

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In-car video of my fastest lap in the final Expert track session, session 6

Once I saw that 39.77 lap on the SOLO I knew our lap goal was met - faster than even the AiM had predicted. Man, I was PUMPED and Brandon had to bleep out my voice for the entire cool down lap when he edited the above video. The official lap time was 39.803 seconds, which was close enough. As soon as I saw that 39 lap I immediately took a cool down and dove into the hot pits to wait. Jason and Amy were high fiving me, but it wouldn't be over until we saw time expire and if nobody beat that time. If Ryan managed a faster lap time I was ready - strapped in, engine idling, tires cooling, and ready to go back out and look for more time. Where I could find it, I had no idea...

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About 10 minutes into the 15 minute final session, after about 4 minutes of waiting in the hot pits, we saw Ryan Matthews' Camaro come into the hot pits.... and turn left into the garage area!!! Jason looked at me and yelled, "Its OVER! You won it!" WAAAHOOO! The rest of the field came in within the next lap as well, but there were still about four minutes left in the final session and a completely empty track. Amy said "put it in the garage", but I told her that it would be a shame to waste an empty track with TV cameras looking at nothing. I went back out and took some victory laps with the ass of the Mustang hanging out so much that it was good enough for the drift circuit. I was hooting and hollering, drifting and sliding around, so excited to have finally won ONE dang event that weekend!!! We cannot show this video at all because the audio would be one continuous censored BLEEP, hehe!

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Each driver's fastest session times are shown in the chart above

Looking back in hindsight it appears that my best lap from all the way back in session 2 was just good enough for the Hot Lap overall win, but it wasn't at all obvious to us at the time, so we fought hard all day long to break into the 39s. I took close to 90 laps on Sunday hunting for that lap, but we see now that the fastest laps on these BFG Rivals were taken just like on the Hoosier A6s - they came within the first 2 laps of going out on track with cool tires, or within the first 2 laps after my regular mid-session break cool-downs.

Seems that the BFG tires liked to get their best time when semi-cool, yet the rear tires needed some "slip angle" to get the best out of them. It was tough to balance tire heat with the right amount of tire slip. We had dialed the final tire pressures in at 31psi front and 33 psi rear (hot) on our best laps and the rear wing was set at maximum AoA (about 12 degrees). We dumped the rear shocks' compression to help with corner exit and ran about -3° front camber. My driving technique was simple: keep pushing the braking zones, use all of the available track and curbing allowed, stay off the grass, don't EVER go off track or spin, and focus on keeping the rear tires on the limit of their friction circle.

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The chart above shows our placing in the GT3K class, which was quicker than the GT2K and AWD classes. You will notice on the "per session" chart, two above, that Brian Hobaugh had only one session with lap times. This was because he shattered his driveshaft about 5 laps into session 1, miring his times at 7th fasted for the class (see below, right).

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Left: Ryan Matthews' DSE-prepped Camaro was 2nd quickest overall. Right: Hobaugh's driveshaft 'sploded during the first track session, which sucks

Danny Popp had no Hot Lap times, due to a CV failure from Saturday. Attrition played a part in the overall placements and worked in our favor. Tucker and Finch ended up 4th and 5th, a half second back from Matthews and Sherrin. This Hot Lap's final ranking ended up being a huge boost for me in the overall points battle for GT3K class, but we didn't realize that until later.

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After I pulled in following my "victory laps" in the final Expert track session there was a camera crew in our garage. I apparently talked to those guys while adrenaline was still pouring through my veins, and I hope I was at least vaguely coherent. I remember nothing of this interview - these pictures don't bring back any memory whatsoever. None. I have no idea what they asked nor what I said! It was probably some Ricky Bobby "I felt like I was in a space ship" mumblings.

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Here's pictures from an interview I have absolutely no memory of - thanks, adrenaline!

After we had finished with the Hot Lap battle we waited for the USCA folks to tally the scores after 3 days of competitions. I remember sitting with Jason in our garage and trying to calm down, and I remember Sofi showing up for a while. Amy and Jason and I tried to figure out how we placed, assuming I might have jumped into 2nd or 3rd overall, based on the guesses of where I ended up on Saturday's Autocross, Speed Stop and Design competitions. They purposefully don't show everyone the rankings for each event in real time, so we tried to have spotters watching times and keeping a running score as we went, as best we could.

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While we waited Amy and Brandon set-up a group picture of the 8 Vorshlag entrants and cars, other than Marc's C6 which was already loaded up in the trailer for the tow home. This was the result, below - a great picture! Seven cars and eight local drivers who all had the times of their lives! Every one of them said they had a ton of fun at this event, even the folks not battling to win their class.

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Michael Minor's nearly stock Miata did well and tied for 1st in the GT2K class. He lost the tie on the design award score - bummer! Shannon, Heather, Jan, Jon and Jerry were all fighting amongst themselves, and compared their times all weekend. Each of them are HPDE drivers that have since found a new reason to hone their autocross and track skills and each vowed to enter USCA events in the future. Jan, Shannon and Heather got the star treatment and we will likely see their many interviews when this episode of the TV show airs - more likely than we will see mine, heh. Marc was excited to have finished 3rd in the Hot Lap Challenge with a broken brake rotor and on skinnier tires than he wanted to show up on, too. My main regret of the weekend was not finding a car for Amy to enter, as she could have fought hard for a win in GT2K or AWD classes, with a bit of luck.

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Event announcer Dennis asked to park all of the cars in front of the Optima trailer for a group picture, so after our Vorshlag group photo we motored on over and parked in a big grid. The crowd of entrants and spectators started to gather and we all anxiously awaited the final event & class results as well as the four coveted Optima/SEMA invites.


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Jimi went over the closing announcements of the event and talked a bit about the TV series that would air on MAVTV covering the 10 USCA/Optima qualifiers plus the Vegas Optima Invitational. They gave out the spirit of the event award (1 invite of 4 to be awarded) and then they started the individual class awards (1st-3rd for each competition).

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They did the GT2K and AWD classes, handing out winner certificates for each event: Autocross, Speed Stop, Design and Hot Lap. It was here that we found out that our friends Todd and Michael, who had both won 2 of 3 driving competitions in their classes, ended up both losing the overall class wins with TIES for 1st in class - due to their design award scores. Doh! That cost them both invites to SEMA, which was the suck. I figured my design score (which I had no idea of) wouldn't help my overall ranking either.

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Next up came GT3K awards: 1st through 3rd place certificates for each event, and most of these were a shock to me. I was awarded 2nd fastest in the Autocross, when I thought I had only scored 4th. A 3rd in the Speed Stop was also a welcome surprise, and that got my hopes up a little. Maybe I will break into the top 3? Then our Design ranking of 4th, yet Hobaugh's badass Camaro wasn't in the top 3?? That was a shock. The BFG Hot Lap Challenge win was already pretty well known, as they had live Race Monitor times up all day. By now Amy, Jason and I were frantically redoing the math - where did we finish?!?!?! Maybe we got 2nd overall, which would be great! They started to call out the overall GT3K class winners.

They called off 3rd place: Brian Hobaugh.

Wait... what?!?! He was third. I figured he was the winner... How in the...

Then they called off 2nd place: Brian Finch.

What in the.... I stood up and looked around at Jason and Amy and silently mouthed, "WTF?" My mind was spinning - we hadn't done the math right. I thought that Hobaugh would be 1st and Finch was 2nd, but we got their order backwards and still left out the actual winner. Who in Hell did we miss?! Did I end up taking 4th here, or did I....

No.

NO WAY!

I looked at Jimi, he cracked a knowing smile, and the only possible conclusion now became clear.

They called the GT3K class winner: Terry Fair.

BOOM! I honestly nearly fell over in shock. This was such an unexpected surprise of epic proportions! I had only won the Hot Lap competition, how did I win the whole event?? I was hoping they wouldn't change their minds while I shoved my stuff into Todd's hands and headed up onto the Optima trailer.

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