continued from above

I was still in disbelief as I climbed the stairs. No way this is happening! Jimi Day congratulated me on the overall win and asked me if I'd be in SEMA in Novem... "OH HELL YES!" I didn't even let him finish the question. We would have a lot of work ahead of us to get the Mustang presentable for the SEMA show, tons of testing to fine tune the street tire set-up, and this meant I couldn't sell the car before November, but so be it. The weight of that huge chunk of billet aluminum that the folks at Ridetech CNC machined into the class winner trophies sure felt good in my hands. Its sitting in our lobby and I crack a wide smile every time I see it.

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The overall lead was by 7 points, so I could have slipped down a spot in one event and still won. Four solid finishes with steady top 4 placings just added up for the win. The Design Challenge and Hot Lap Challenge scores saved me the most. People were congratulating me below the Optima trailer, but I was speechless. They shuffled the class winners over behind the trailer for more interviews with the TV show's host, Chad.

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After a few takes (due to outside noises) we finally got this 20 second interview in the can and I stumbled back to the garage - to see the REAL star of this event, the big red Mustang! I cannot thank our crew here at Vorshlag enough for all of the hard work they put into this car over the past FOUR YEARS to get it where it is today. If a no-talent-hack like me can win against a field with this much talent and top dollar iron, then we must have made one helluva car!

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We came up with a package of the right parts that was just easy enough to drive, with a touch of downforce when it mattered and just enough power from the stock 5.0 Coyote engine to get it done. This set-up isn't even remotely perfected for street tires, but I guess it was good enough this time. The Mustang was rock solid reliable all weekend, even when we dumped in E85 ethanol. The brakes worked through 3 days of abuse (after we replaced the very worn front rotors that I let slip by after the last track event), and the Carbotech XP20 compound just laughed at the abuse I threw at them. The stock clutch was solid, and the Vorshlag/Moton/Whiteline suspension handled everything we threw at it and did so with ease.

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The most amazing thing was: these 200 treadwear BFG Rival street tires were fast enough that I beat my best GTA time from this track in 2012 when it was on 315mm Hoosiers! Even if you count my un-timed best 39.8 lap from 2012, we were still quicker on the BFG streets here. I guess we have refined the overall suspension and aero package THAT much to overcome a grip deficiency to gumball A6 compound Hoosier race tires. Wow. Sure, I did some damage to the outer tread blocks on the rear 335 Rivals, but most of that was done in the closing "victory" laps of the last session - where I kept the rear tires spinning through most of 3 laps, heh. We flipped these tires on the rear wheels and ran them at another event a few weeks later without a worry. Other than the outer tread wear the tread depth left over after 3 days of brutal abuse was remarkable and I won't bat an eye about using Rivals again at the Optima Invitational. Look for more street tire testing from Vorshlag soon!

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When we went to go pull the Mustang back in the trailer after the USCA event on Sunday night the battery to the winch was dead (someone left the interior lights on overnight) so we had to push it up the ramps and a series of moving wood planks we use to keep the splitter from dragging (thanks for the help guys). We've since upgraded to a set of 2-piece foam Race Ramps that are twice as long as before, so the car drives into our rather tallish trailer easily now.

After we were all loaded up the whole Vorshlag contingent of 15+ people met for dinner and Amy and I headed home, utterly exhausted yet elated. There were more events coming up and we had to get ready for them both. We had a new focus for the rest of this year, other than just doing well in NASA TT3: we had to get a second set-up tested and perfected for street tire use in USCA... because we were going to the big Optima Invitational! That is going to be SO much fun. Amy has already reserved a condo with multiple rooms for the week of SEMA and the weekend after. Lots of mods to do, lots to test.

continued below

continued from above - last one!

Upcoming Competition Events YOU Can Enter!

Our next events are fast approaching, and some are crucial for testing our TT3 set-up and/or for developing new parts to sell. Click on the links for the events below (in the dates) to see about coming out to watch, or better yet - to enter your own car!

• NASA @ Texas World Speedway April 26-27th. This could be one of the last ever TWS events, as this speedway is slated to be parceled off into residential home plots. We have this NASA event TWS in April and another on October 10-11th to set and lock down TT3 track records for TWS - possibly forever. This track's high speeds are also good testing ground for NASA Nationals at Road Atlanta in August. It will be a BATTLE as we already have a record SEVEN entries in TT3 class! I sure hope that new wing helps...
• GTA at Road Atlanta, May 9-10th. We loved running with the GTA guys in 2012 at TMS and this is the first time we will have had a chance to run with them again, at this East Coast GTA Pro / Drift event. We will be testing a new aero set-up and learning this new-to-me track for NASA Nationals while also trying to win the Unlimited RWD class at the GTA event. There are some serious GTA cars attending so we might be lucky to get into the top 3, who knows?
• SCCA Texas Pro Solo at Mineral Wells, May 2-4. Due to a conflict (below) we cannot be there one day so we did not enter this event, but Vorshlag is hosting the Friday Night Welcome Party. Amy and I will be manning the grill and talking to local and out of state autocrossers that show up for this drag-race-start, side-by-side two day autocross event. If you are local, and even if you're not, PLEASE sign up for this one at the link here.
• 24th Dallas Spring Nationals Classic Car Show hosted by the Sam Pack Ford Auto Group, May 3rd at the Sam Pack Car Museum in Famers Branch, TX. We will be at this event with our Mustang - yes, we're missing a Pro Solo for a car show. BUT... there will be a 2015 Mustang at this show, and we've been promised "a closer look" since we'll be an event sponsor there. This is a recon mission, pure and simple! Come out and see the show, and enter for only $25. More details at this link.

What's Next?

That was a big event post, so thanks for sticking with me on that massive post-race recap. It was the biggest competition win of my life to date, so that might explain the length, heh. Again, we should see the TV episode covering this event around August 15th on MAVTV, and I'll share the YouTube link for the show after its released. I'm STILL pumped about this one... :)

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The new MCS doubles are on and have been run at 2 events already. We also have a new rear wing in the works that we will show at the end of our next update, a massive 14" chord x 72" wide carbon fiber wing made by AJ Hartman Racing (formerly known as Fulcrum Aeroworks). Vorshlag is now a dealer for AJ Hartman aero products and we will be developing wing mounting packages for a number of new cars - starting with the 2010-14 Mustang of course. The set of our S197 Moton Club Sport remote reservoir doubles is also still for sale, and I've lowered the priced a couple hundred bucks. Had some solid bites but nobody took the plunge yet. We've also now got a new rear adjustable height spring platform solution to work for the S197 Mustangs, which can go with this set of Moton shocks or anything from MCS. And yes, the old APR GTC-300 wing and uprights we built will be for sale in our Clearance page soon - I'll post it up when it is ready to be for sale, so stop PMing me about it already!

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Tune in next time when I cover the Track Guys HPDE event at TWS, where Amy drove the Mustang over two days. We also competed in a local SCCA autocross on street tires... in a down pour. Lots of splashing and sliding around. And I'll briefly talk about Vorshlag Kart Fight 3 - a karting challenge we hosted recently with 38 entrants one night at Dallas Karting Complex. It was a tough fight for the coveted Kart Fight trophy, but it went to a deserving winner and fellow NASA TT racer.

Until next time,

Congrats.

Have you decided where you are mounting the blue bottle? Spray and pray!!! ;)

I love that GT. If I had more money, I would buy that car as a track toy...but then again...I am poor.

Project Update for May 15th, 2014: I am way behind on this build thread - 5 events behind and counting - and cannot seem to catch up. Instead of one MASSIVE post I'm going to break it up into smaller chunks. When I first started writing this, a week ago, we were loading up the car to head to Road Atlanta to race with Global Time Attack. That event was... memorable. Long story short: I overcooked the brakes, had a 150 mph shunt, the car and my back were a little banged up, but I will cover all of that in a forum post next week. In this installation we show the new set of MCS double adjustable shocks added and detail one track event where we tested these at (TrackGuys at TWS).

MCS RR2 Dampers Added

Due to supply problems from Moton we haven't been selling these in 2014. My goals with this 2011 Mustang include to "race what we sell" and to "actively test the parts we recommend", and until that brand comes back online (maybe by July 2014?) we needed to make a shock change. So we called up the guys at Motion Control Suspension in Georgia and had a set of remote reservoir double adjustable monotube shocks built for our S197, which we call the RR2.

After these arrived we had Stuart of Maxcyspeed & Co dyno test them. I wanted to see how close they were to the custom valved Moton Club Sport remote doubles that were coming off (shown above) and possibly have Stuart re-valve them. Stuart was the one that had valved our Moton doubles two years ago, and that set-up was working VERY well. That set of Moton dampers has sold, but we hung onto them long enough to make sure we were happy with the MCS set. He added some rear rebound before we installed them and I'm glad he did - the car feels mostly unchanged from before, which is exactly what I wanted.

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These two brands look remarkably similar, and they should - the same principles that ran Moton-USA for a dozen years now run MCS, so the products from both companies share many characteristics. Both are monotube dampers with remote canisters, both are rebound and compression adjustable, and both have similar piston sizes, housing wall thicknesses and construction. But there are some notable improvements to the MCS models.

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Left: The old set of Moton Club Sport 2-ways with remotes. Right: The new MCS RR2 2-ways with remotes

First, the rear shocks are NOT eye-to-eye shocks on the MCS set we ordered (although you can order them that way) like the Motons were, so they don't require a special rear shock mount adapter to fit the back of the S197 chassis. It might seem "cool" to have eye-to-eye shocks but on a street car with OEM upper sheet metal mounts it has downsides. Two reasons: First, the added height of the eye-to-pin shock mount adapter eats up shock stroke. Second, the rebound adjustment on the eye-to-eye shock is only accessed underneath the car via a special tool. For the past two years if I wanted to adjust rear rebound I had to jack up the car, remove a rear wheel, insert a small pin drive tool into a hole on the shock and rotate the adjuster. PITA.

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Adjusting the rear shocks is now just opening the trunk and turning a knob. Remotes are compression, rebound on the shock tops

Now, with the MCS RR2 rear shocks I can just pop the trunk, pull the trunk liner out of the way, and rotate the adjuster knob that stays on the top of the shock. That adjustment just got a whole lot easier. I've never been a fan of removable knobs or special tools needed to adjust your shocks, and the Moton needed that at both ends. The problem is the special knob or pin tool is always hard to find when you need it most.

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Moton rear shock shown with "divorced spring" in OEM position w/ ride height adjuster

The MCS RR2 rear shock and spring was left as a "divorced" set-up, just like the stock rear dampers and the old Moton set. This means the spring stays in the OEM location, not converted to be a "coil over spring" mounted over the shock. Why? Three reasons. The first is losing inboard rear wheel room with a shock mounted spring, and with 18x11 or 12" wheels we have to use every trick possible to stuff the wheels inside the stock rear fenders. Even with our new rear flares we use all that room near the rear shock to clear the big 345/35/18 Hoosier tires. We have shown time and again that you can never have too much tire on the back of an S197. As we have moved this car up from 255-345mm rear tires the lap times have dropped every single step of the way. The car gets easier to drive as rear traction increases.

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An advantage to divorced springs is ease of rear spring replacement. We can a pair of rear swap springs track side in under 5 minutes. With a coilover spring mounting it is a lot more work, and the shocks have to come off and be partially disassembled. The final downside by moving the spring onto the rear shock is the suspension loads are now moved to the OEM sheet metal upper shock mount. Ford designed this car to have suspension (spring) loads going through a different load path (in the factory "divorced" rear spring location), and only damping loads were designed to pass through the upper shock mount. The only time we recommend gong to a coilover spring on these cars out back is when you have a roll cage tied into a reinforced shock mount. Even then there is very little upside to doing all of that work... it would have a tiny bit more spring rate in roll relative to the divorced location. That's it. But less inboard wheel/tire room. No thanks!

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Up front the MCS front strut is very similar to the Moton unit that came off. The MCS units do have a slightly different lower bracket but we keep the slots pulled out to increase front wheel room. Every time we've seen someone use "crash bolts" or slotted strut brackets on a McStrut to increase front camber they lose front wheel room, which again - is a huge draw back. We use every trick in the book to squeeze an 18x11" wheel under a stock front fender, and even with our custom front flares on this car it is tight fit with our 18x12" wheel and big 335/30/18 front tire. A shorter-than-stock Whiteline adjustable endlink and Hyperco 800#/in spring (same as we used before) wraps up the front end. As you can see getting to the front shock adjusters is as easy as out back - open the hood and turn a knob. No need for removable tools or knobs that can be lost. We already had brackets to mount the remote shock reservoirs and just re-used them for the MCS units.

I was happy with the install and the guys here at Vorshlag had it knocked out in only a few hours. They re-cross-weighed and balanced the car and got the two crosses to 50/50 with me in the driver's seat + the TT3 ballast in the trunk, with a 1/2 tank of fuel (as low as we dare run it in road course use with the stock tank/slosh issues). The only other substantial change was moving from a 350 #/in rear spring down to a softer 250#/in spring, to try to increase rear bite. We wanted to test these new springs at an event that didn't affect our preferred competition series record for the year (NASA TT3), so we signed up for this...

TrackGuys HPDE at TWS, March 29, 2014

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see below

Amy and I motored down to TWS for the weekend of March 29-30th to do a little testing before the NASA event a few weeks later. This HPDE club was running the 2.9 mile course in the counter clockwise (CCW) direction and the next NASA event there in a month would be running CW, but no matter. We just needed a higher speed track event to test the new MCS dampers and softer rear spring rates at, so this event worked well for that. We signed up with Amy as the only driver, since she hasn't taken as many laps at TWS and needed more seat time at these speeds.

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Amy drove the Mustang for two days, 7 sessions on track totaling and about 3.5 hours of seat time this weekend, burning up a lot of fuel and completely used up a set of Continental DP tires in the process. She got a lot more familiar with the TWS 2.9 mile course and the higher speeds seen here after that many hours on track. The brakes did great with this much abuse, but she used up a good bit of the brake pads. American Iron Camaro racer Mike Patterson rode with her and even drove our Mustang with her in the right seat for a few laps, giving her some excellent instruction. Amy picked up a lot from Mike and she ran some 1:59 laps afterwards, dropping 3 seconds almost immediately - this is a sport that is very difficult to "self-teach".

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The TrackGuys crew had a record number of entrants for this TWS event and ended up being just barely short on instructors, so I filled in for an instructor that had trailer trouble on Saturday and arrived several hours late. I rode shotgun with two Mustang students for a couple of sessions each - one was in a '04 Cobra street car making 550 whp, yikes! Lucky for me they both did great. Since I instructed this allowed me to take a few laps in an instructor only session using our car, and I took exactly 3 laps both days. The Conti slicks felt OK but I was definitely slower than my previous laps on 315mm Hoosier A6 tires, with a best of a 1:56.2 lap with a student riding along.

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Left: Mike Patterson's AI Camaro was quick. Right: Amy in grid for the red group

We ran this event on the same set of 320/650/18 Continental DP slicks we ran briefly at ECR on Dec 28th, back when it was so cold we couldn't get any heat in the tires. These tires were now used with the above mentioned new set of MCS RR2 shocks and 250 #/in rear springs, but the rest was the same from previous events this year. We ran the hot pressures in the mid 30 psi range and they felt much better in these warmer ambient temps, and didn't have the funky feel from December.

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Matt White (at left) was quick in his ST1 classed 5.0 Coyote powered Mustang and Misty White (at right) was moving in her ST2 Camaro

According to our previous lap time data these tires were about 5.5 seconds slower than the 315 Hoosier A6 (previous best at TWS 2.9 CCW last September was 1:50.675, which was a new TT3 track record then). That seems like a lot, and maybe it is, but the A6 is a one or two lap "sprint only" type of tire and this Conti DP slick is made to go for many hours - which it did.

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Looking at the pictures of the tire wear we definitely got our money's worth on this set, ha! The fronts might have had a tick too much negative camber, as the insides are worn more than the outsides. We actually took these a into the cords and could have easily suffered a blowout - not a pretty sight at 150+ mph. We saw a Corvette do that (pop a front tire at high speeds) during this TWS weekend, and it destroyed the front bodywork and some other bits.

Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-TWS-March-29/

Amy and I took pictures so they aren't as good as what Brandon would have shot, obviously. We took video during each session but its pretty boring stuff so I'm not going to bother editing and posting up a lap.

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There were Mustangs from all eras and types: race cars, street cars, and everything in between

This TrackGuys group put on a good event, but a handful of the drivers were a bit reluctant to give point-bys in the faster run groups. Amy got stuck behind a couple of Corvettes for too many laps in a couple of run sessions - she was held up in some corners, but they had enough power on the straights to prevent a clean pass. Oh well, it happens. She doesn't push cars in front of her hard enough to really "get the point across", but she's always safe and calm on track.

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This C6 Corvette had an off in the wildflowers and we cleaned his grill, heh

Amy had fun and I got a few laps in: enough to know that the Continental DP slicks aren't going to be replacing our A6s any time soon, and also to know that the new MCS RR2 dampers feel as good or better than the customized Moton doubles we had on the car before. The new softer rear spring also seemed to put down power a bit better on corner exit as well.

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The rear definitely has some more roll, as shown in the picture above, so we might look at bumping up the Whiteline rear anti-roll bar settings. But we've driven the car several times since this and it actually feels great. Having the ability to quickly and easily adjust the rear rebound settings of the MCS shocks is a welcome change, and it allows for more shock adjustments to be made.

What's Next?

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I'm already working on write-ups for these events, which have come and gone:

• SCCA at TMS, April 13th, 2014
• Vorshlag Kart Fight 3, April 17th, 2014
• NASA at TWS April 26-27th, 2014
• Sam Pack 24th Dallas Spring Nationals Car Show, May 3rd, 2014
• GTA @ Road Atlanta, May 9th, 2014

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The crash at Road Atlanta was pretty bad - but it is all fixable

More soon,

Project Update for May 21st, 2014: So where were we? Ah, yes... April events and development work on the 2011 Mustang. First we ran an SCCA autocross in April on street tires - and all of our runs were during a downpour, so that was fun. There was an informal kart shoot-out we hosted the next week, then we created a new mount for a massive new (AJ Hartman) rear wing. Let's play catch up!

Texas Region SCCA Solo at TMS Bus Lot, April 13th, 2014

So there was a Texas Region SCCA event in April that we wanted to use for dry weather BFG Rival autocross testing with the new MCS coilovers. Amy and I co-drove in the 2011 Mustang on this rainy Sunday in April. We both ran in the first heat, in a steady rain that left little grip on for the BFG Rival 200 treadwear street tires. We both raced in the local "MAM" class (Modern American Muscle - a supplemental class to the new "CAM" Classic American Muscle class).

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The club had 122 registered entrants, which was pretty dang good for a day everyone knew would have rain. We got there and it was still dry, unloaded the car and applied the hastily made "MAM" class letters that I hand cut the night before. I had Olof mount the same set of 315/335mm BFG Rivals that we used at the USCA/Optima event weeks before. The tires still looked good but the rears were flipped and run inside mount, since I kind of mauled the outer tread blocks on the right rear in my 90+ laps on track at the USCA event.

• Results: http://texasscca.org/2014_solo_resul..._final.htm#MAM
• PAX: http://texasscca.org/2014_solo_results/tr14_2_pax.htm
• Photo and video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...CA-TMS-041314/

We had 5 runs each and Amy took 4 of hers first, then I took a couple of runs, then she took her last, and then I took my final 3. The rain was pretty hard at the beginning of the 1st of 4 heats and we still had to run the wipers on our last runs in the heat. It rained even into heat 2, stopped raining finally sometime in heat 3 and by heat 4 it dried up completely and times dropped by 10 or more seconds.

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I worked in the trailer in heat 2, announcing, and took lunch with 2nd place MAM finisher Jay Payson from HP Tuners. He was in town for business and rented a Penske Mustang GT, which he enjoyed running in MAM. Since we left the rain gear box at the shop I still goat soaking wet, while taking pictures of Amy while she drove in heat 1.

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Just a sample of the results showing how slow MAM was running in the wet compared to CAM that ran in the dry

I ended up getting fast time in the 4 car MAM class with the rental Penske 5.0 Mustang in 2nd place and Amy in 3rd. The Penske car had fresh Goodyear 220 treadwear tires and Jay said it was remarkably easy to drive. He normally races an M5 in FStreet class but he said liked the Mustang a lot and we discussed the merits of an E92 M3 and an S550 2015 Mustang for F Street at lunch.

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Normally I -love- racing in the rain but as usual, the conditions varried too much to compare with other classes/run groups. And at this particular event we were definitely at a disadvantage here, with too much power and tires with too much width. See, in the rain it actually helps to have more pressure on the tires, just like in the snow, so you want a narrower tire with deep tread voids - which we definitely did not have on the well worn 315/335 Rivals. The new, deep tread, 255mm tires on the rental car were what you wanted in this instance, as strange as that sounds.

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And Jay almost whipped me in a car he had never driven, so I felt lucky to come out ahead. Everyone else in the class ran their fastest run on their 5th and final attempt, except me. I was 3 tenths quicker on run 5 but stepped on a cone, so I had to settle with my 4th run. I had to drive on my best behavior in these conditions, which was driving me nuts, but I managed to "throttle" my normal tendency to over-drive and just did the rain dance. Tip-toeing on the gas and smoothing out my inputs as much as possible. We also ran a tick more tire pressure than normal, and dumped the compression damping on all 4 shocks to zero.

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This was the slow in-car video from my 5th run. Its not very impressive, trust me.

The rain lessened all day and by the 4th heat we heard it was completely dry and times dropped dramatically, so the PAX results aren't very representative for everyone. Heck, the only group I'd want to compare any times with was the first heat, of which I think there was one car quicker than us in the 59.8 second range (STS winner JJ). It got progressively drier in heat 2 and 3 but by heat 4 it turned into a beautiful day and was fully a dry weather autocross. That would have been fun to make a few blasts around the course, but you run in the heat you are assigned. Oh well.

continued below

continued from above

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Left: We got to slog it out in deep puddles while... Right: The 4th run group had completely dry runs by day's end

Overall this event was a bust for testing with the Rivals. Why? Well we're only testing these with tires to use at the Optima Ultimate Street Car shootout in November, which is held in Vegas. The chances of rain for the ENTIRE day of that event in Las Vegas are virtually ZERO, so wet weather testing does us no good for that series. I will say the Rivals have surprisingly good grip for as wide and as bald as they were on this day.

Oh well, we got to see a lot of old friends and drive around really slowly. At least we didn't have any tire wear, ha!

Vorshlag Kart Fight 3

We are lucky to have a world class outdoor karting facility on the East side of Dallas called Dallas Karting Complex (DKC). Virtually all of the track, autocross, time trial and karting racers in DFW know about this place and have driven their rental karts before. We had a couple of Vorshlag sponsored Kart Challenges in 2011 and I was on a team of 4 in the first DKC 4 hour enduro in December of that same year. We got really busy in 2012 and 2013 and didn't have another Vorshlag-sanctioned karting competition for those two years, but I drove rental karts there many many times.

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Instead of the structured, all day Saturday, 3-round shootouts we held in 2011, this time Vorshlag just held an informal night competition event at DKC on April 17th, 2014. This was a Thursday night and we posted up a Facebook event on our main Vorshlag page a few days beforehand just telling people, "hey, come join us from 6-9 pm, run a few races, turn in your time sheets, and the fastest time of the night gets a trophy".

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We called it the Vorshlag Kart Fight 3, as this was out 3rd karting competition event since 2011. For something kind of thrown together at the last minute we had a surprising number of racers show up. By the end of the night we had nearly 40 people who came out to fight for the VKF trophy.

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Kyle and Olof built this awesome trophy out of some broken Subaru drivetrain parts, TIG welded together and bolted to a base. The competition format was simple: show up, pay $15 a race (each race is about 10-12 minutes in length), and your best times run that night from 6-9 pm in the regular We had some swag and gift certificates for 1st through 3rd places. We also used NASA TT rules for offs and spins: if you put 4 wheels off or spun 180 degrees or more on track ALL times from that session were voided for that driver. We all spotted for each other.


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Left: I went over the driving line, as I run it, with anyone who'd listen. Right: Fastest time of the night went to Alpha LS1 Miata tester Jason Toth!

I kept getting the same slug of a kart all night (excuses - I has em!) and while I had an early lead, I never improved on my first session times and could only manage 2nd quickest time of the night, a couple of tenths back from 1st. NASA TT racer Jason Toth was the winner, and (taking myself out of the running) 2nd place went to Billy Jack Smith and 3rd place swag went to NASA TT racer Jefri Tan (who runs in TT3 with me in a red EVO). We had one guy flip his kart (no injuries) and another NASA racer who put his kart so far off track he ended up in the sippy hole, and went home sopping wet. But no injuries and everyone had smiles on their faces.

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"Helmet-Cam" Video from Marc Sherrin

NASA TT1 racer Marc Sherrin took the video above with a Go Pro strapped to his helmet, which is a compilation from about 3 sessions. As you can see we started off in daylight but it quickly got dark, and the track cooled off. They have excellent night lighting, so that made for extra fun NIGHT RACING! He even caught a glimpse of the kart that flipped in his video. We had 6 NASA TT racers, a lot of SCCA autocrossers, and various other local gear heads in attendance.

Vorshlag Kart Fight Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-Kart-Fight-3/

Five people from Vorshlag were there and Brandon managed to snap some pics while we were there. Thanks to everyone that came out to join us - we'll do it again soon!

New Massive Rear Wing on Mustang!

Let me first start off saying: I am not an aerodynamics guru. I have a mechanical engineering background/degree, and I understand some basic concepts of aero, but Jason here at Vorshlag studied hydrodynamics in college and I rely on his expertise. I also know other people are aero gurus that I listen to, and read from. So I will try to cover rear wings in this section without butchering the science of it too badly.

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We have had an APR GTC-300 "3D" wing on our 2011 Mustang for the past 2, almost 3 years? This was supposed to be a temporary fix until we found a better 2D wing, from APR or another source. At the time APR was only making 3D wings, but have since come out with their own carbon 2D design. I initially bought this 67" wide GTC-300 carbon fiber wing element to use on another car, and we actually did use it on Brianne's Pikes Peak Subaru in 2012 for the PPIHC event that year. It is a good low speed wing (PPIHC is fairly low speed, as are many of our Texas tracks like ECR, MSR-C, MSR-H, HHR, TMS and others) but is somewhat "draggy" at higher speeds, and never was meant to work at the heights we ran it with on our car.

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We designed and water jet cut that original wing mounting set-up very quickly, over the course of a few of days. The goal was to re-use these uprights with a 2D wing to be installed later that year, which never materialized. Because we had planned to use a 2D wing with these, and from my insistence, the APR 3D airfoil was mounted about 6 inches above the roof line - against the wishes of Ryan and Jason. At this height about half of the GTC-300 wing was doing nothing but generating drag.

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Testing at both high and low speed tracks showed we were faster at max AoA on the APR wing: 12 degrees at the center

After we kept this GTC-300 wing on the car for a year, and after constant advice from aero folks, Jason and others, we eventually cut down these uprights by about half to lower the 3D wing element below the roofline. It seemed to work a little better at this lower height - which is the opposite of what you normally want to do with an airfoil.

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Moving this 3D airfoil lower actually helped, due to the curved center shape of the wing

Why is this rear wring shaped this way? Answer: To meet certain class rules. This "3D" wing profile was made to help improve downforce when used in some racing classes on sedan-shaped cars that limited the mounting height of the wing element at 6" to 8" above the rear trunk lid height. This rule was made to limit rear downforce and slow cars down, so aero engineers came up with a way to trick these low mounted wings into producing more downforce at this low height by tilting part of the airfoil element upwards by 10-15 degrees right behind the greenhouse (aka: the bubble of glass and steel above the shoulder line of a car that houses the passenger compartment).

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I always look at the C5R, C6R and C7R Corvette race cars for some of the latest aero tricks - not ashamed to admit that!

So the center section of this type of wing is angled upwards compared to the outer edges, to grab more airflow coming down over the roof and following the rear window. It really only works well when mounted low, and should only be used when class rules mandate a low wing mounting height. But this became so widespread in professional GT racing and looked so "high tech" that they caught on with racers who didn't need to mount them low.

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CFD data shown on GT2 classed Corvette C6R race car (at left) and a striated smoke wind tunnel picture on a 911 GT2 at right

I've even heard other racers try to tell me that this type of 3D wing is better than a high mounted 2D wing. Which is wrong. Don't confuse popular solutions for another set of rules to mean that there isn't something better for your class. It is always worth looking at the "why" of a design.

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Here is a chart of Drag (HP), downforce (pounds) and AoA for the 14" x 72" AJ Hartman Racing wing run through CFD software

You can see the CFD data on the GTC-300 airfoil at this link. And remember to look at the same units - the APR data is shown with speed in MPH (SAE) but force is shown in Newtons (metric), so you have to divide that Force data by 4 to see it pounds of force. The AJ Hartman wing just has better data, as you can see when comparing the two.

When to use a 2D vs 3D airfoil: http://www.aprperformance.com/index....sk=view&id=176

Even APR admits as such in the article above, and now that they make a 2D wing again they are pushing that design. And yes, we could have picked up a carbon APR wing, but when we were looking for one last summer they were having supply and manufacturing problems. Its no secret where their airfoils come from, and I would rather have a U.S. built carbon wing than one from an overseas factory. So we started looking at different wing manufacturers...

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After a lot of phone calls, emails, investigations, spreadsheets, data investigations and personal inspection of various brands of U.S. made carbon fiber wings we honed in on two brands. The final decision was a close one but we picked the wing with the biggest span and chord available: AJ Hartman Racing. Their 14" chord length (the front-to-back size of the wing) and the massive 72" max width were simply unmatched by anything in this category for anywhere near this cost.

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The Fulcrum wings are super popular here in Texas and I see them used to great effect on ST, AI, and other race cars

This hand laid carbon fiber wing is molded by AJ at his shop in New Jersey. He installs the saddles (bonded and riveted) to the wing at your specified widths, trims the span to your specs and the final wing just looks amazing. They weigh 9 pounds, total, and his wings can support the weight of a full sized adult. You may not know the AJ Hartman Racing name now, but the original airfoil design and molds were purchased from Fulcrum Aeroworks, which was a company formerly based right here in Dallas/Ft. Worth.

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The retail price for this AJH wing is only $1300, which is insanely low (this airfoil easily compares to $2500-4000 U.S.-made wings), and now Vorshlag is their first ever dealer. AJ didn't yet have a wing mounting kit for the 2010-2014 Mustang trunk shape so we started designing one as soon as our first 14x72" AJH wing arrived.

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In NASA Time Trial we are only limited on wing mounting to a height of up to 8" above the roof, which is WAAAAAY up there, and FEET higher than what the 3D wings were really designed to be used at. A 2D wing is simply more efficient than a 3D wing, when mounted above the roof. This means: they produce more downforce (negative lift) and less drag at a given speed and angle.

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I spent most of a day on 4/19/14 making cardboard mock-ups for the 6 mounting pads, then making the trunk profile for the uprights

Since we weren't restricted on mounting the wing anywhere close to the rear trunk lid, we figured we would see more downforce with a 2D wing mounted at or near the upper limits for NASA TT. The higher you can mount the wing, and the farther behind the car, the less turbulent the air will be that is going over and (especially) under the wing. We had originally looked at making a wing that met NASA American Iron and NASA TT/ST rules, but they were conflicting. TT specified a maximum height but AI specified a maximum of 1.5" behind the car.

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I transferred the cardboard to thin sheets of wood, cut those out for prototype templates and then bolted up the wing

My first mockups (above) were both AI/TT legal, shown above in wood. After staring at it for a while it just didn't... look right to my engineering eyeball. It was too vertical and not swept back enough.

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If we see any trunk deformation at high speeds we will add tubing to brace to these two plates (at right) from the ballast weight bracket

So when I gave the upright layout to Jason I told him to just centrate on the trunk shape and approximate height (we pushed it up to around 6" above the roof, within 2" of the TT max height). He transferred the trunk shape into SolidWorks then moved the actual upper wing mounting portion rearward about 8 inches, which put the wing too far behind the back plane of the car to be AI legal. I kind of knew this first aluminum unit we made would be a prototype that we would later need to tweak, so we will go back and make "production pretty" wing mounting kits for AI and another for TT/ST use on the 2010-14 Mustang trunk.

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Check out the video above showing the CNC plasma cutter making a wing upright in about half a minute

After Jason had turned the trunk shape into a CAD drawing I ran to our metal supplier and picked up some aluminum plate in two thicknesses, then rushed over to Friction Circle Fabrications in Lewisville. There Todd Earsley used his brand new CNC plasma machine (see video above) to cut the aluminum I brought into the shapes from the files we sent to him. He cut the six mounting plates and two uprights in less than 35 minutes on his machine, and I was loaded up and racing back across town with the parts still hot.

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Once we got to Vorshlag the crew cleaned up the edges and started mocking up the mounting plates. We were super busy that week on customer cars and it wasn't until Friday afternoon that everything was finished, welded, painted and bolted together. We set-up the upper mounting holes with 3 initial Angle of Attack (AoA) positions: 6, 10 and 12 degrees from level. We left the wing at the lowest angle setting we made, 6 degrees, for our first TWS laps with NASA.

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Me (at left), AJ (middle) and Jason (right) posing for a quick pic with the new wing when AJ Hartman stopped by Vorshlag

A couple of weeks after we built this wing, just after our TWS race, AJ Hartman happened to be flying through Dallas after a test with a customer down at CoTA. He stopped by the Vorshlag shop to check out our prototype mounting for our first AJH wing. He pointed out a few things we could tweak to make it better, but overall he liked the set-up. We showed him two more cars in the Vorshlag shop that need to get AJH wings, and he is making those for us now.

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That's all we have time for in this installment. Tune in next time when we cover the NASA TT race at TWS with this new wing installed. This Saturday is Five Star Ford at ECR - see ya there!

Project Update for June 3rd, 2014 Let's cover two final April events - NASA @ TWS and ordering a 2015 Mustang - then get to the May events to get more caught up. We had two events on the same weekend of May 3rd - double booked! - and I missed competing in the SCCA ProSolo to be able to attend a car show. It sounds crazy but there was a good reason for that. Let's hit it...

Ordered a 2015 Mustang GT - April 21, 2014

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I ordered a 2015 Mustang GT in late April. I ran over to Five Star Ford of Plano and met with Corey White on April 21st to pick the options on our 2015 5.0L 6-speed Performance Pack GT, to get first in line at this dealership... before they even knew prices on anything. "Real" ordering started on May 20th, but they had options listed as of that April day, without prices or many stats, so we made some educated guesses and got our order staged in line FIRST! As you can see from the screen shot, there are some extra options we added to the Performance Pack, which include: leather Recaros, touch screen NAV, and the 401A interior package/equipment group.

There's one reason why we got the car a little more loaded than you'd think for a "Race Car" - resale value. As long as it took to sell the base model 2013 GT we picked up, and in case the rumored GT350 voodoo engined car comes out within the next 12 months, we want to keep this 2015 as sell-able as possible. We have no idea when we'll see this 2015 GT - it could be late July to as late as the end of August. I will post up here the MOMENT it arrives, and quickly start a new S550 build thread. Our initial development plans include wheel and tire fitment, immediate camber plate development, weighing and track testing. We want to test it against a stock 2012-13 Boss 302 at a local road course (ECR) within days of arrival.

NASA at TWS April 26-27, 2014

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The rear uprights was the last project Ryan Begham worked on - sad to see him leave us but we wish him the best of luck in school!

Once we had the new AJ Hartman wing installed the next big test for the 2011 Mustang was NASA at Texas World Speedway at the end of April. Since Amy and I both knew this track fairly well we didn't go ahead and sign up for the Friday Test-N-Tune event. With a competitive car that has recent changes you would normally do that, but NASA Texas had an 8 hour enduro event scheduled for 2-10 pm on Friday, so we would have had to arrive very early to get any testing in. Driving from Dallas towing our rig takes over 3 hours, so we'd have to leave by at least 7 am to get any testing in... and Amy didn't want to burn a day off of work (she works 2 jobs: her normal day job and also at night, here at Vorshlag) so we blew off the test day. Our replacement front 18x12" wheel also still hadn't arrived, so we only had one full set of race wheels. We mounted up a set of new sticker A6 tires (winnings from the last NASA event, thankfully, as these are $1710 per set!) and hauled down to College Station.

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With the decals still wet and backing paper drying I drove to the local Shell to fill up the tank with 93 octane. #becausestreetcar

Getting the car ready on Friday was actually pretty tricky, as we were still finishing the wing install until around 6pm. Amy, Jason and I were also having a bit of trouble with some new material purchased to use in our vinyl cutter, but we got the old TT3 number boards re-created and installed. Ended up leaving the Optima door decals on, after removing them (carefully) and moving them back about 4 inches to make room. Some Hoosier decals, NASA decals, and the car went onto the trailer and we were rolling out by around 7:15 pm. Then we stopped at a Sam's Club to get drinks, snacks and ice for the weekend which put us on the road by 7:45 pm. We got to Costas' place by 10:45 pm and stayed up late talking about work, racing and stuff for another hour and a half. Late night!

Vorshlag TWS Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...SA-TWS-042614/

Note: with no Vorshlag crew, and no Brandon here to shoot his amazing pictures, and Amy feeling under the weather, we didn't get a lot of great shots from this event. Luckily Anna and Paul Costas shot a lot of pics and I used a number of their images in this event write-up. Matt Ruiter (a local TAMSCC racer) also took some great shots, which I have used with his permission as well.

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My favorite shot of our car all weekend was this one taken in our paddock by Matt Ruiter.... Full rez version in our TWS event gallery

We got out to the track EARLY Saturday morning and dropped the trailer next to Costas and Matt White's trailers, who got a great paddock spot next to grid days earlier. Unloaded the car, topped off fuel, and got the sticker backing off, and went to a very brief TT driver's meeting where I handed our our TT maps.

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Our paddock housed: our Mustang, Costas' GT1, Matt's ST1 Mustang, Misty's ST2 Camaro, Adam's E36, Toth in a Supra, and Norm's TTD BRZ

Amy and I decided that I would drive in the first TT session, which on Saturday is always a TT Practice that doesn't count towards anything except grid placement. But that still makes it pretty important, as gridding poorly only makes it harder to get a clean lap all day. You have to earn your place up the grid, and getting stuck behind slower cars can ruin your best TT laps. If you do poorly in Practice Saturday you often spend most of the remaining 3 sessions "working your way up the grid". As driver's get faster the grid placement shuffles, hopefully to keep faster drivers always ahead of slower drivers for the first few hot laps.

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This first Practice TT session was super packed, with 61 cars on grid. Yes, not only did we have a record number of TT drivers but we also had all of the Competition school students joining us. TWS is only 2.9 miles so you can imagine that with 61 cars out there at once it was going to get crowded. NASA TT driver and instructor Jason Toth rode shotgun with me in the TT Practice, to see the driving line on this configuration before he hopped in with his students and in his TT ride later that day.

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Getting ready for that first session, Costas took off these Goodyears and ran his this weekend on Hoosier slicks

See, we can take students or others with us in TT, but if we set our fastest lap of the day with a passenger our times will be automatically DSQ'd. They actually encourage some TT drivers to take HPDE students along if we are instructing that day but we only told to drive no faster than about "8/10ths", for safety reasons. Since this was just a TT Practice it wouldn't hurt, and I knew it would be slow, so Jason rode along. We got to grid pretty early and luckily started out in 5th place. There were two TT1 Corvettes and two Vipers ahead of us, and a whole bunch of cars behind us.

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We had quite a variety of cars in the first TT practice session, with the Comp School thrown in the mix!

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Then this mess happened...

A Spin, A Wrecker, Several Passes Under Yellow and two DSQs

During the TT Practice there was a spin and a flat bed wrecker was called out on course for an extraction. There were then a number of Passes Under Yellow that were not appreciated by the track workers. Not one bit.

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If you watch the video linked above you will see that we had a front row seat to a big nasty spin by a Viper Competition Coupe from the comp school group, about 30 feet in front of me at the 3:00 mark, entering T11. See, during the entire warm up lap this driver was scrubbing his tires like mad. I commented that maybe that was a bit much, but overall I just had a bad feeling - my Spidey Sense was tingling - so I backed way off this car when the first four cars ahead of me went Green during the out lap entering Turn 3, to give this guy some extra room. And I'm glad I did, because even through all four TT1 cars in front of built a big gap on the main straight most of them braked VERY early into Turn 15, where we're all doing about 150+ mph. The big gap I left quickly vanished and I had to back off into Turn 15 then 14 to avoid catching him. No big deal, it happens when we aren't gridded up in order by times - which is why the first session is called PRACTICE, so we can get gridded up in order by the first timed TT session. :)

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Left: We have to run a nearly full tank and several weight plates to make our 3802 minimum weight

In the video the Viper slammed over the left curbing hard at T14, which may have damaged something. I pointed out the hard curb hit in the video. We caught up to him a bit in T12 then he braked pretty early into T11, and by this point I felt something was going to happen. Sure enough, the rear tires locked and he spun under braking into T11, first this way then that, on track and off. The spin was actually telegraphed pretty far in advanced and I had actually told Jason "Watch this", but the mic didn't pick it up on the video. I got the Mustang slowed down in plenty of time, and when he couldn't get going (he broke a half shaft) we threaded our way around him and got up to speed again.

Luckily I had pulled bit of a gap to the cars behind me, who probably didn't even see the spin happen, and I didn't impede anyone. The Viper pulled to the outside of the road in Turn 10 under momentum and parked - and without any halfshaft or drive, he was stuck. Everyone saw the Viper parked in T10 for 2 or 3 laps, with a waving yellow the whole time in this corner station. After getting back up to speed we took a leisurely hot lap 2 with an indicated 1:51.63 on the AiM SOLO, all while getting held up behind slower lapped traffic, making a pass, slowing heavily for Turn 10 (still waving yellow), and not really pushing it hard.

Funny thing was, that very compromised lap damn near matched my TT3 lap record time from this event in April 2013, where I ran a 1:51.530 and won TT3 both days. That best lap in 2013 was with me pushing hard, going 10/10ths on fresh 315 Hoosier A6 tires, using the APR GTC300 rear wing, the same power level, but the stock hood and the Laguna Seca plastic front splitter. Watching that old video I can see the front end wanted to push a lot at speed on corner entry and the rear was loose at speed, such as entering Turns 2 and T1 before the front straight.

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After I ran that lap and saw the 1:51.6 as I crossed the start-finish line, I backed off (as you can see above, to about a 2:00 minute lap pace) and we immediately saw a waving yellow AND an EV/Ambulance flag added at the corner station before Turn 10, located inside Turn 13. Two corner workers there were waving two flags vigorously and that got my attention fast, even when slowing down from 150 mph. In the video I noted the yellow and the newly added Emergency Vehicle flag to Jason (at the 4:13 mark) and you can see that I backed way off, anticipating something new at the next corner station. We both knew what the two new flags meant - the TWS track crew must have rolled a wrecker out to Turn 10 to attempt a "hot extraction" of the Viper, which was stuck on the racing line in that corner for the past 2 laps. The entire session of 61 cars had already driven by the parked Viper, TWICE, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. Once you see waving yellows AND an EV flag AND a wrecker on course, that TT lap is OVER, if not the entire session.

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At the 3:38 mark in the video you see the second corner station in a row with waving a yellow flag and an obvious wrecker extraction going on. With the corner worker moved out of his protected corner station next to the track waving vigorously he really wants us to slow down for the wrecker driver, who is standing on the track and nearly right on the hot driving line. At this point I backed off even more as I approached this chaos, before T11. But there were some drivers blazing up in my rear view mirror between Turn 12 to T11, and I'm looking back and wondering if they had seen the flags at T13 and ahead at T10?? Nope. They are going full tilt, nose to tail in a major battle. It wasn't until the entry to T11 that I realized - these guys are about to pass me! Between a corner worker violently waving a yellow flag outside of his protected berm and right next to a wrecker driver trying to load the Viper - which has been sitting in the same spot now going on 3 laps - onto his flatbed.

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Left: Jefri Tam drove to 2nd place in TT3 both days. Right: John Roberts placed 3rd Saturday then 2nd place in TT2 in his LS1 Miata on Sunday

I quickly pulled even father to track left, let loose a stream of expletives as the two drivers pass me going 10/10ths, mid-corner next to the wrecker, and watch as yet another driver behind these two also takes Turn 10 flat out then blows by me before we've even left the "danger zone" of this corner workers area (aka: 90 degrees from the corner station). Remember: this is a Time Trial practice session, the times during which don't even count, and nobody is racing for position. This exact corner has had a yellow flag flying and a car stuck on track for going on 3 laps.

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I got back up to speed after this corner, stayed out of everyone's way, and dove into the hot pits. Once there the TT director asked me how the session went, and I told him what happened with some colorful language to emphasize my point. Later I found out the TWS wrecker crew was furious and wanted a handful of people thrown out of the track for the weekend. It wasn't just 3 cars that passed under yellow near the wrecker, it was closer to 6. These track workers literally put their lives on the line for us, and deserve more respect from the drivers.

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Pictures in Turn 10 from another session. At right you can see some power on oversteer and counter steering going on...

There was a discussion about this incident on our local TT Facebook group a few weeks later. Some of the more experienced TT racers got pretty fired up when they saw the video and proposed some changes for the TT group. At a minimum we expect to have more post-session TT driver's meetings and hopefully some increased flag awareness from the drivers.

And Now.... Back to The TT Action on Saturday

I tried to stay focused and since I was gridded in P4 after the practice, which was good placing for the first timed session. Temperature was stable at 76°F, as it was overcast and relatively cool almost all day.

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Left: Times from the gigantic clusterf*ck TT Practice session. Right: Times from TT Session 1 that followed

Amy and I agreed that I would go out in this first timed TT session to try to put in a good hot lap or two. We were on the new sticker set of 335/345 A6 tires, which I scrubbed in during the TT Practice. I went out with cold tire pressures of 28 psi front and 26 psi rear, which gives me hot pressures of 35 psi / 33 psi. We left the new wing at 6 degrees AoA, as it felt pretty good during the practice session and I wasn't even pushing hard yet. Not too much drag, with just enough rear bite at high speed exiting Turns 2 and 1 onto the main straight.

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I had clear track and put in one good hot lap at a 1:48.440, more than THREE SECONDS quicker than our best lap here last year! That was exciting. As I crossed start/finish and saw the lap time I had the TT1 Corvette of Marc Sherrin tuck in behind and start drafting me, but I was pointing him by to pass, because I wanted to bank that lap (in Time Trial if you have a 4 off or spin on track your session times are DSQ'd). He figured it out and went on by me. Took a cool down lap and came in, figuring this would be my last laps of the day. That time went on to put us 6 seconds ahead of 2nd place in TT3, and we had 5 entrants in class on Saturday, so that meant we won 2 tires.

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Maybe I could have made an even quicker lap 2, but I figured I would just catch traffic anyway and I didn't want to waste the tires. Amy went out in an HPDE 3/4 session just before lunch, to put in some laps, learn the line and get her up to speed, then she planned on running the two remaining TT sessions after lunch. But she wasn't feeling good, with crazy sinuses and a massive headache, and didn't feel well enough to drive after lunch... which meant that I got to drive in TT session 3 and 4, if I wanted.

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Left: Saturday TT session 2 results. Right: End of day Saturday TT official results

I went out in TT session 2 at 2:10 pm and put in a 1:48.481 lap, nearly matching my time from the previous session (.04 difference). I was on a good hot lap 2 but had to abort the lap when I came upon a inattentive driver on a cool down lap ahead of me. I assume he clearly saw me gaining on him for 4-5 corners and he sort of pulled to track right, so I attempted a pass in a high speed corner (T7). In the middle of the corner he just came over on me and I had to put 2 wheels in the dirt track left to avoid a collision. This isn't the first time this has happened with this driver, and I hope he becomes more aware of his surroundings before he causes an accident. I'll just keep giving this driver plenty of extra room.

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I wanted to note that this blocking situation is highly unusual in our NASA TT group, and the vast majority of our TT drivers have excellent situational awareness and go to great lengths to cooperate with other drivers, so that everyone can get their fast laps in.

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There was plenty of carnage out at EVO Island, with one poor guy wrecking or blowing up BOTH of the EVOs he brought

The weather was still overcast and 77 degrees, but we started to get a hint of a sprinkle of rain at the very end of this second lap, so I took a cool down lap and came in. The final TT Session (4th) of the day got hot, after the sun had come out, and temps went up to 83°F. Everybody that ran this session slowed way down. We saw this coming and I'm glad we didn't go out in the session and waste the tires and brakes. With a 3800 pound Mustang you have to conserve these consumables when you can!

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By 6 pm the racing was wrapped up and NASA threw a great Saturday night party, as always. This one was special: they had a massive crawfish boil, lots of beer and soft drinks, chicken cooked on a grill, and the School of Rock kids ROCKED THE HOUSE for almost 2 hours. We had a great time relaxing, bench racing, drinking and eating with racers and friends. After the Passing Under Yellow Practice fiasco and then getting run off track only two sessions later, I was more than ready for a few stiff drinks, heh. What a crazy day!

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Left: They had an amazing spread of food. Right: I got another TT3 lap record certificate and trophy - wish that 1:37.790 lap was mine, tho!

An old college / racing buddy Chris Ramey (who is a National Champion autocrosser and who also spent several years racing wheel to wheel in SCCA) did his first NASA TT event in his red C6 Z06 and he had an absolute blast, so I'm sure we'll see him back. We had a big group at a table eating and drinking, with Marc Sherrin, Jason Toth, Adam Faust, me, Amy and Todd Earsley... then Ramey started making Scotch and Sodas and we floated a keg of Shiner. Amy was still feeling cruddy so we left early and crashed out at about 9:30 pm.

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Left: Chris Ramey was always known as Captain Oversteer - and he didn't disappoint! Right: Jamie Beck's 2013 GT has all of our goodies

This was an unusual day for Time Trial - TT1 had an astonishing 9 entries, TTB had 6, TT3 had 5, and every class was unusually brimming with drivers. I was happy to end up in 5th overall out of the entire TT group, to win TT3 and to reset our old lap record by such a large margin, which was even quicker than the new TT2 lap record. They gave out trophies and lap record certificates - and while our's had the wrong time and even Vorshlag was misspelled, its the thought that counts.

NASA TT - Sunday at TWS

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Left: Spec Miatas "bump drafting". Right: The Costas "ResQ" Supra, former stage rally car, made its asphalt debut with Jason Toth driving

We got to the track early, Amy was still under the weather and not driving for the day, so I went out in TT Session 1. Well, before that it got a bit crowded and busy in our paddock area, Amy was kind of out of it, and we brought no crew with us. So I'm doing my pre-track checks: tire pressures, fluid levels, visual inspection of tires, torquing lug nuts, and put about half a quart of oil in.... and apparently left the oil fill cap off. Someone was talking to me and I got distracted.

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I went out in the first session and felt like it was a little down on grip in left hand turns. Never saw any smoke or indication that anything was wrong. I put in a 1:48.712 lap, throwing away some time in Turn 14 where I slid the car and lost time - its obvious in the video but not worth editing and trying to match the data to. Speaking of that, Brandon is having a helluva time with the data merge and it is apparently due to the abnormal video file format that my Sony HD vidcam puts out, so we're on the hunt for a new video camera that uses the same SD cards. I don't want a GoPro, but something with a real lens and that can use a remote start/stop/off like our existing unit.

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Left: Sunday's TT Session 1, my only session of the day. Right: Sunday end of day TT official results

I tried a second hot lap in that session, it was a clear lap but I slowed down to a 1:49 and change and it was obvious the car was slowing down. I took a cool down and came in. I hopped out of the car while Amy opened the hood - "Terry, COME HERE PLEASE." She showed me that there was OIL EVERYWHERE. The oil cap, that I had left off, had fallen down in the engine compartment from where I left it. I checked the oil level and the engine was about a quart low (but we run this motor with +1 quart over full). Its amazing what a TOTAL MESS you can make with quart of oil! I fished out the oil cap, undamaged, cleaned up some of the oil mess, but it had pumped engine oil down and through the wheels all over the right front tire. This was big old mess that could have been bad. Didn't hurt the motor, never lost oil pressure, but this explains why the grip fell off in hot lap 2.

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Left: Leaving the oil cap off for 2 laps spilled a quart of oil out. Right: It was pumping through the wheel. This was my own damned fault!

Hot engine oil on a brake caliper could have flashed over, caught fire, and ended up in a very stupid mistake. It was still 77°F and overcast in that session, so we had the same conditions as Saturday. I thought about it and I could have gone out in TT session 2, but there was so much oil all over the car and I was once again about 6 seconds ahead of 2nd place that we didn't risk it. Amy still felt like crap, so after we stuck around to watch TT session 2, we loaded up and headed back to Dallas before lunch. TT1 got faster and their times dipped into the 1:45s to 1:46 range, but we just weren't going to catch them at our power levels on this high speed track. Any why should we? Those cars have nearly double the power per pound carried.

It looked like it was going to rain any minute, and sure enough, after we got 10 minutes from the track it started to rain and continued to come down throughout most of our 3+ hour trip back to Dallas. I really wanted to save this set of Hoosiers for the Global Time Attack event at Road Atlanta in a couple of weeks, so it was a good decision to opt out of the last 3 TT sessions of the day. Conserving consumables.

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We watched live timing for the remaining TT sessions and SU races via Race Monitor on the way back, which was pretty exciting. TTB was a heck of a battle with our customer Allan Page in an E46 M3 fighting against Dysen Pham in an S2000, which has been almost unstoppable in our region ever since these cars got a "dyno reclass" and essentially 12 free points to play with for mods. Allan had taken the lead early on, reset the TTB record, then Dysen switched from Maxxis tires to a sticker set of Hoosier A6s and retook the lead and got down to a 1:52.824 for the win with Allan at a 1:52.972 - close finish! Another customer of ours, Norm Wilhelm (shown above), had a dominant win in TTD in a BRZ on MCS dampers and Vorshlag plates we supplied him with. Norm ended up besting the 2nd place TTD FT86 chassis twin by 2 seconds.

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Mike Patterson won all 4 American Iron races on new 18x9.5" Forgestar F14s he got from Vorshlag, with a fastest race lap of 1:53.0

Looking back at the weekend I took two hot laps in the TT Practice (1 aborted), one hot lap in TT session 1 and two laps in TT session 2 (1 aborted) on Saturday. For Sunday I took all of one hot lap, in TT session 1. That should leave us plenty of tires left for GTA, other than Amy's entire HPDE 3/4 session she took - but since she was mired in traffic it kept her speeds and tire wear down. Our new wing worked great, even through we only tried it at one position (6 degrees AoA). We made mounting holes for 3 positions - 6, 10 and 12 degrees - but the car felt so good I didn't want to mess with it, and with as few laps as we took here we didn't get in much testing - we were hoping to do that at Road Atlanta.

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Amy running in a DE group was pretty funny, traffic-wise

We did make several shock adjustments on the new MCS RR2s during the weekend, and with easier access to the rear rebound knobs that was a welcome improvement. The dampers felt great with our Maxcyspeed custom valving, soaking up the bumpy pavement from this old track. New mechanical grip from the wider tires was evident in the slow turns and the added grip from the new rear wing helped at higher speeds. Its notable that we run the AJ Hartman wing at 6 degrees and it has more stick than the GTC-300 had at 12 degrees, and lots less drag. Last year we were "dirt tracking" through Turns 1 and 2 up onto the banking but this year the car was a lot more stuck down and confidence inspiring.

I like the car with more downforce. Unlike true "aero cars" that have very narrow speed ranges of effectiveness and HUGE downforce numbers, our splitter and wing combo seems to just make the car easier to drive, makes the brakes more effective at high speeds, and we're dropping major time from last year's lap records with almost the same set-up and power levels. We won TT3 by about 6 seconds again on Sunday and with 5 cars in class won another 2 tires for a total of 4 over the weekend. This might have been the last time NASA ever runs TWS 2.9 going ClockWise, as there are serious rumors of the owners selling the track and turning the land into a housing development. The MUD passed by the city a few weeks prior to this event, so who knows? We might be back in 2015 for a final time, but if so I think this 1:48.4 lap is more solid than the 1:51.5 lap I ran last spring in 2013.

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It was a record attendance for TWS with NASA, with 335 entrants. Will and Dave and all the folks from NASA Texas did a great job with the racing, paddock, Saturday party, and I heard the Friday 8 hour enduro was a blast. We had a good time, with two solid wins and a new track record, especially considering the strange events on Saturday.

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Costas had a great weekend in his GT-1 car, putting in TTU wins both days and winning several of the SU races on new Hoosier tires (switching from Goodyear). In SU qualifying he managed a 1:45.0 lap, which was the quickest lap recorded all weekend - nice! He had a nasty blowout at one point but it didn't phase him and he just swapped on some other tires. I can't do it justice here, so check out his write-up for the TWS weekend is located at his Witchdoctor website, which is always fun to read.

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Texas SCCA ProSolo - Welcome Party - May 2, 2014

the following weekend Vorshlag sponsored the Friday night welcome party at the Texas Pro Solo held out at Mineral Wells on May 2nd, 2014. This event was within days of the the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration that is huge in Texas, and was the theme of the event. Contrary to what you might think, May 5th isn't "Mexican Independence Day" but actually a celebration in both Mexico and the USA of our thanks to Mexico for fighting off the French, who were invading their lands in 1862 and threatening to support the Confederates in the American Civil War. The Mexicans were outnumbered 2 to 1, and the French hadn't been defeated in battle in 50 years. This battle also marked the last time any European force has invaded the Americas. The more you know...

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All that might explain why someone put a Mexican sombrero on me while I drank German beer and cooked American burgers and dogs for about 200 people over the course of a few hours. Jason went with me and talked to a number of folks at this Friday night event as well, and our shop foreman Brad Maxcy was running the event, as he does for all Texas Region SCCA Solos. Special thanks to Jen Maxcy, who helped me work the grill and serve the meats. The competition for the ProSolo was on May 3-4th, but we were double-booked with an event (see below) on Saturday, so we couldn't compete in this event. Bummer, would have been fun to run in Street Mod.

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Sam Pack 24th Dallas Spring Nationals Car Show, May 3, 2014

And this is the event we missed the ProSolo for, held on the Saturday following the ProSolo Welcome Party. Seems a little nuts to miss a ProSolo for a car show, but I had ulterior motives: they had a pre-production 2015 Mustang on display, and I was hoping to both weigh and drive this car, or at least measure a few things and sit inside of it. Corey White from Five Star Ford convinced me to enter and even sponsor this car show, so we showed off our TT3 prepped Mustang that day.

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Photo gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Car-Show...arshow-050314/

We got there around 8 am and set-up our trailer then unloaded the Mustang, just as it was prepped after the TWS event. I cleaned it up a bit on site and then set up our tables and some demo parts. We talked to about 60-70 people that day, which is good for a typical car show, I guess. Saw several of our customers there, but many of them didn't show up until after 10:30 am as there was a Cars & Coffee event that morning (these events are HUGE and draw in 1200+ cars and thousands of spectators). Having this car show on the same day as C&C was a bit odd, but hey, its not my event.

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There were some beautiful cars at this car show, like the various C2 Corvettes above. And the typical, garish, silly car show stuff... loads of chrome ding-dongs and add-ons, little turntables with model cars under hood, every other car had a supercharger, etc.

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I have to admit, this is not my scene. At. All. But we were there for a better reason than entering a car show... to see another pre-production 2015 Mustang and hopefully measure, weigh and drive this thing.

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This pre-production vehicle was locked up all day and nobody could find the handler that Ford sent with this car to get us inside it, to ask if we could weigh it, or drive it. Aaron Sockwell from Dusold Designs and I took matters into our own hands and just went over and measured a few things...

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We crawled under the car and snapped a few pictures of front and rear suspension, but they show little more than we already knew. I did manage to snap a pic of the front strut to inner wheel distance, but it wasn't much. Discouraging.

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We measured outside track widths and the front was over 2.25" narrower than the rear outside track measurement on this car, which was equipped with 255/40/ZR19 tires at both ends. That's likely going to make the car understeer more, of course. Staggered track width or tire width set-ups are almost always done by OEMs to "insure understeer". Oh well, one more thing for us to fix.

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Corey called in some excellent food trucks and we tried a little bit of food from all 3 of them, including some amazing ice cream from the truck at left. The wood fired pizza truck was a huge hit as well. We killed most of the day waiting to try to get inside this car, hoping to weigh and drive it, and saw some neat stuff in Sam Pack's personal collection with the included museum ticket that all car show entries got.

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I Look Inisde The 2015 Mustang - Video!

Finally, at around 5:30 pm, the Ford handler showed up to load the Mustang onto his trailer, and we were waiting for him. There were about 6 of us hounding the guy and we got to at least look inside the car's interior and trunk. I brought our Sony 1080P vidcam and we shot about 8 minutes worth of video, linked below. He wouldn't open the hood for us (in fact the hood latch was disabled) and refused to let us weigh the car (we can probably guess why). It was a pre-production and "very early build" car show model at that, so it had extra welding and bondo to smooth all sorts of sheet metal seams in the door jambs and trunk that would never be done on a production car. Turns out it was a 4 banger, which sounded like a vacuum cleaner when revved up, which we heard when Corey got in for a few seconds as well as when the Ford guy drove it away.

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In the ~8 minute video above, Jason and I walked around the car discussing several items on the S550 chassis, and were actually pretty impressed with some of the aero and drag reduction tricks they have done. Sure, it might gain some weight, but it will likely be the most fuel efficient Mustang ever built (esp. the turbo 4) and a lot of that is due to the hard work of a lot of body and aero designers at Ford. The clean trim work, tight body lines, divorced mirrors and some other tricks will also benefit racers like us as well. The interior room was remarkably bigger, and 6'6" Corey White fit well, and even had to move the seat up a notch. I did my "helmet test", and at 6'3" I fit easily with my full face helmet on and sitting comfortably upright.

Sure, I was pretty bummed about the lack of a weighing or test drive, but what do you do? Ford is being pretty sly with this one, and could be covering up a whole pack of lies (weight claims) or... maybe they just want to save the surprise for when these are released. Who knows? We will see soon enough.

Kind of wished I would have entered that ProSolo, though.

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By the end of this very long day they had awards to present for "class winners", and we won a 3 foot tall trophy - along with about 1/3rd of the attendees. I guess you could call it an attendance award.

What's Next?

• GTA @ Road Atlanta - May 9-10th, 2014. This is where I crashed hard on Day 1, broke my back and damaged the car. That really sucked.
• NASA @ Hallett June 21-22, 2014 - Hopefully I will be cleared by the doctors to race at this event, and I'm really looking forward to that!

That's all for this installation of the S197 build thread. I'll cover the GTA event at Road Atlanta in my next post, hopefully later this week, as well as more of my thoughts on the upcoming S550 Mustang and the rumors of it weighing "XXX" pounds over the S197 model. I won't bet the farm on the weight claims just yet - not until I see one or more of these cars on my scales with my own eyes.

Thanks for reading!

Project Update for June 16th, 2014: Been a busy couple of weeks since my last S197 post. We've had major progress on some V8 swap and other race car projects here, which I will cover briefly. Our summer intern has helped us clear out some pallet racks of "Stuff" and we found all manner of things worth selling on our Clearance page. There's a brief video where Jason and I show the tips of fitting 18x11" wheels on an S197 Mustang. My back is feeling better so we signed up for NASA @ Hallett next weekend, and are finishing pre-race prep and some additional brake upgrades/testing on the Mustang before we head out to Oklahoma on Friday. And now I'm finally covering the GTA event at Road Atlanta from May 9th, including the crash - I'll try to keep that brief. Let's get to it!

Other Projects at Vorshlag

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If all you care about is Mustangs just skip this section. Some of you only know about Vorshlag from this S197 build thread, so you might not know that we have a service and fabrication prep shop that performs race preparations and track tech inspections, some repair work, full suspension/chassis/brake/wheel/tire installation services, and more. The "and more" part is really a lot more than you'd think - we're well versed in engine swaps and we like to swap V8 engines into cars that never came with them. We've now exceeded 100 kits sold for our BMW E36 LS1 swap, our E46 LS1 swap is selling well, and we've done swaps in BMW E30 and Z3 chassis. But we do more than that...

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Our first or "Alpha" LSx V8 Scion FR-S swap development is moving along nicely and we just made an update to that build thread (on 7 forums, including at Vorshlag). The motor and transmission mounts were just completed and they look great (top right). The LS1 V8 adds barely more than 40 pounds to this little car, yet triples the engine displacement. Sound like fun yet?

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Our Alpha LSx V8 NB Miata project development has reached a milestone, with the custom tubular rear subframe and rear suspension design now completed and ready for final welding and fixtures. This bolt-in subframe assembly houses an aluminum 8.8" IRS diff housing from a 2004 Mustang Cobra, which it needs to withstand the 450+ whp that the built LS1 motor it has will put out. Our new head fabricator Ryan H, who just joined us from a Daytona Prototype race team, has done all of magic to this car over the past month. Look for an update to this build thread soon (here). Zoom-zoom....

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This Pikes Peak Subaru just came to our shop for a hair over two weeks to receive nearly 100 hours of custom fabrication work, including this new giant wing, a fuel cell install, custom firewall mods to accept a Tilton 3 MC pedal set-up and remote adjust brake balance bar, and more. This was a car we did a steel wide-body conversion on 2 years ago that our friends at Heritage Collision have now body worked and painted a few weeks before we got it. With all of the aero work completed it now looks like a million bucks.

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There's a 5.0 Coyote V8 swapped German vehicle in our shop now getting a lot of work, but we didn't do this swap. We are doing some safety updates and fabrication work on this car, mostly by our new head fab guru Ryan H. When we had the motor out for extensive firewall rework (top left) we got a chance to weigh a Coyote 5.0 without a flywheel or clutch and it was 427 pounds, or almost exactly what an LS1 weighs in the same form. Interesting...

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We have a BMW E36 LSx coupe (like above left) chassis already started, as well as an E46 coupe (like above right), a Z4 and an SN95 Mustang

Last but not least, we are doing more and more turn-key V8 swaps for customers, for both street and race cars. We're about to kick-off a new program where we take a rolling chassis we've acquired, set-up a plan for customers to pick the various drivetrain/suspension/safety options, and sell the build to the customer. This way they can choose the exact power level, suspension style, wheels and colors they want - and we build it. I've accumulated four really nice rolling chassis for this "Build a Racer" program, which I talk about more here.

Each one of these builds, and more I'm not even allowed to show, get the same type of photographs and "build thread" treatment for the owners, via giant emails. This takes a lot of time but it allows the owners to see their cars being built along every step of the way - just like our forum build threads.

House Cleaning - Vorshlag Clearance

We hired a summer intern and she 's helped us "find" a lot of Mustang parts in our shop that we have used and removed, or that some of our customers discarded after upgraded to something else. These parts are all still in great shape but just don't have a good home right now so we're blowing them out on our Clearance page. These are the Mustang related parts:

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Lots and lots of used 315mm Hoosier race tires, in A6 and R6 flavors. Amy used up 4 of these doing about 7 sessions that day at Full Tilt speed at an ECR track event 3 weeks ago, and they were still very fast. We have dozens left. I've just removed all of the Hoosier entries from the actual Clearance page (no longer willing to ship) because I lowered the price on these by 75% to only $100/set cash. This gets you a choice of the best 4 we have, but we won't ship them at that price - you've got to stop by and pick them up in person. We need the shop space more than we need the extra scrub tires for our own cars.

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Custom dual 3" stainless rear exhaust system for 2011-14 Mustang's. This is what we built using 3" 16-ga 304SS mandrel bends, two Flowmaster Series 44 409 stainless mufflers, two V-bands at the front, and with minimal work it should fit an OEM system at the "axle-back" connection. Fits better than any off-the-shelf ale back system with the stock Panhard, Whiteline Panhard or Whiteline Watts Link rear. We're blowing this one out cheap, and it could be shipped.

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The custom 10" plexiglass rear spoiler we built for our time in SCCA's ESP class has been sitting on a shelf since late 2012. I forgot we even had this until something on a shelf in front of this part was moved out of the way. It is in perfect shape and we would charged 2 or 3 times this much to hand make one like it. It is built to fit a 2010-12 rear trunk and is made to the absolute limit of the rear spoiler rules for Street Prepared category. Comes with all of the hardware needed to bolt it to the trunk (note: a handful of nut-serts will need to be added for the lower rear strut mounts)

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If that spoiler isn't your thing, maybe the big carbon fiber APR wing we used from 2012-2014 suits you better? Like the spoiler above, this also only mounts to the trunk so you don't have to cut into your fenders or anything else to add this. If you pick up a spare trunk, like we did (for $150), you can mount this wing to the spare and "swap trunks" between track days and street use.

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We acquired a brand new Magnaflow X-pipe for 2011-14 Mustangs that we're selling discounted by $100. It wasn't used on a customer's install and had been sitting on a shelf for months. It is brand new.

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This was one of the many Upper Control Arm and UCA mounts we tested in our car. This configuration is an unmodified UPR brand bolt-in upper mount with a Spohn Performance adjustable UCA with a Del-Sphere upper joint, also known as a Johnny Joint. Vorshlag customized the upper mounting bolt (larger) and made custom mis-alignment spacers. It works better than Spohn ever intended, but it makes a little noise, like many aftermarket UCAs do.

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Spohn Performance adjustable Panhard Rod, M5-105, built with 4130 chromemoly steel tubing and Del-Sphere ends. This unit worked fine and we used it until we upgraded to the Whiteline Watts Link kit.

Mustang 18x11" Wheel Fitment Video + New Sizes

When we bought this 2011 GT and started racing it immediately, in mid 2010, I was shocked at the utter lack of wide wheels that were offered to fit the S197. I mean it had been out since the 2005 model, but most folsk were still jacking around with 8 and 9" wide wheels, or worse, using 18x10 or 10.5" wheels that POKED out the fenders like mad. I bought a variety of wheels (1 of each) to test 18x9, 18x9.5", 18x10 and 18x10.5" sized on the front and back of our test mule, trying to fit as much as possible under stock fenders.

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After coming up empty handed we finally decided to pull the trigger and had our own 18x10" wheels made, which we calculated and verified would fit easily under stock fenders both front and rear. This D-Force 18x10 ET43 wheel was a success and now lots of other wheel makers have this exact same size. But I knew that we could fit more, so we did some more calcs and ordered 18x11" front and 18x12" rears, and made some suspension tweaks to make them fit with a 315 at both ends. We ran on this set-up for much of 2012-2013 before finally deciding to flare the fronts then the rears to fit 18x12s and even wider tires (335F/345R). the car only gets faster every time we up the tire and wheel width.

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Click above for Hollywood quality video showing the tricks to install 18x11's on a Mustang (hint: its not Hollywood quality)

During 2013 we decided to try an 18x11" wheel for both ends, and came up with our proprietary fitment that uses radically different offsets on each end of the car. We have sold lots of 18x11" wheels now and have all the tricks and tips and this video above explains where the clearance is closest and the best way to have maximum room for street an track use. Jason and I made this video in about 10 minutes, so its not exactly Oscar worthy, but it gets the info across. We also touch on tire sizes to use on 10 and 11" wheels.

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• 17×8.5 offsets from +6 to +50
• 17×9.0 offsets from +12 to +58
• 17×9.5 offsets from +19 to +65
• 17×10 offsets from +25 to +72

In addition to the many 18" sizes we've run on various cars, Forgestar has launched an F14 wheel in several new 17" sizes. We begged them to do this for racers that were asking for their style of "custom built" flow formed wheel process and these are finally coming on line. There is also another F14 size we've been asking them to make that is about to drop - an even wider 18x13" size. Look for this big 13" wide wheel on our 2011 Mustang soon, and we've got sets being built for C6 Z06 customers as well. Bigger really is better in this instance.

Global Time Attack at Road Atlanta - May 9, 2014

The two weeks after TWS and before our trip to Road Atlanta were extremely hectic at the Vorshlag shop. We had customer cars with insane deadlines and our guys were working extra hours to get caught up. That meant our pre-race prep on the Mustang was very very delayed.

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Since we were leaving on Thursday at 3 am, the car was quickly prepped and loaded in the trailer on Wednesday. The guys pushed some fresh Motul RBF600 fluid through each corner to make sure it was bled and clean, the same set of 335F/345R Hoosier A6 tires from TWS were left in place, 8 fresh quarts of Mobil1 15W50 synthetic oil and a Wix filter were swapped, and the car was given a good pre-race tech inspection. Shop Manager Brad noted the XP20 Carbotech front brake pad depth was only 1/2 thickness, and asked me where the spare pads were.... err... good question. "I think they are in the trailer". I went to get the trailer, no spare pads. Crap. This WAS the spare set of pads. "No worries, we'll manage", I said. We have 3" front brake ducting, so the pad won't get that hot. Ha.

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Note: getting in a rush does not excuse the mistakes I made in this pre-race prep. We tend to push our own car to the back of the line when it comes to shop time, behind paying customers. My not taking the braking system needs and consumables seriously enough led to the accident below. Our Motul rep was shocked that we were still using RBF600 fluid on this somewhat fast and heavy Mustang. "You should ONLY use RBF660 on that car!" Motul RBF600 is great brake fluid, and appropriate for 90% of our road course customers, but the boiling point is a touch lower than their 660 fluid. We've been pushing the limits of brake system sanity in this 3800 pound car and I knew that our measured caliper temps were nearing the boiling point of RBF600. Don't ignore advice from your suppliers and don't ignore the data you are taking. Learn from my mistakes.

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This Road Atlanta GTA event was the only "close" event on their 2014 schedule, and its at the same track as NASA Nationals East this year. It made sense early in the season to add this GTA @ Road Atlanta event to our own 2014 race schedule. Having never even been to Road Atlanta, much less driven it, we knew that I needed to get some track time there before going to NASA Nationals. This road course is notoriously tricky, and ATL locals tend to have a massive advantage over newbies at this track.

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Even though the GTA series is ultra competitive, we were there for NASA practice more than anything else. Our car isn't built around the GTA rules/tires and the Hoosier A6 tires we run dumped us into their top class, Unlimited RWD. Turns out that the top 2 fastest cars for the entire GTA field of 43 competitors were in this class, hurray. This was a crazy "combo" event weekend with GTA, Formula D drifting, and 3 classes of Trans Am racing all happening over the same 3 days. GTA was to run a compressed schedule with one early morning Thursday practice, then 3 timed sessions Friday (almost back to back), and three more on Saturday (also within quick succession). The drifting was off and on all day and went late into the night, and the Trans Am practice, qualifying and racing was in between. It was a hectic schedule, but our GTA bits were all grouped together.

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Todd Earsley drove the 15 hours solo from Dallas to run GTA in his street tire shod EVO

Since we had a 15 hour tow from Dallas to Atlanta, and Amy was already taking 2 days off work, we wouldn't make the early Thursday practice. We left in the trailer from our house at about 3 am Thursday morning with Amy, shop manager Brad and photo guru Brandon in tow. We drove 850 miles across 5 states, straight through and arrived in time to eat dinner near our hotel Thursday night. We got up and made it the 10 miles to the track early Friday morning to find a paddock spot and unload. Once there we found a few Texas folks in attendance, including MyShopAssist/FrictionCircleFab/NASA and USCA competitor Todd Earsley in his EVO, SPL Parts/NASA racer Sean Farrah in his boosted Nissan 300ZX, and NASA TT competitor Josh Garcia in his Toyota V8 powered AE86.

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We got to the track Friday morning with plenty of time, found the registration center and got our credentials to get in the gate, then we worked our way through the maze of infield roads trying to find the paddock. We asked directions from parking folks 3 times and were told to go 3 different places. We even found Todd Earsley in the infield maze of roads, who threw his hands up and just followed us. It was crazy confusing, and after coming back from this event I've found a map of the RA paddock areas and better understand why - there are TWO pit rows and TWO separate paddocks. The "infield" or "Pro" paddock and the "TT" paddock and pits set outside the track, across the T12-T1 front straight. If you learn anything from reading this post, it is to learn to ask WHICH paddock you need to pit in at Road Atlanta, and to NEVER underestimate this track's abuse of your braking system. More on that in a moment. They put all of the Trans Am and GTA cars in the left "TT" paddock and the Formula Drift cars were in the right or "Pro" paddock.

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Josh Garcia's Toyota V8 powered AE86 Celica is always a popular car in the pits and on track

We unloaded the car from the trailer, and while I went to the driver's meeting Amy and Brad gave the car a quick wash at a nearby garden hose. They were drying it off, applying the GTA number boards, and checking fluids when we I got back. At this meeting the GTA staff warned us that this track was pretty treacherous and that they wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple crashes and car carnage. They were right.

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Left: I'm talking with Sean Farrah in the pits before we went out in session 2. Right: Sean is a behind me here in his 300Z TT

We brought two sets of wheels and tires with us - a fairly well abused set of Hoosier A6 tires that had 2 hard weekends on them already and the semi-fresh set of 335/345 A6s that we had used for one weekend with NASA @ TWS two weeks earlier. The older, scrub set was a mis-matched mess: I had loaned out one of these 18x12" front wheels a while ago to Todd to test on his EVO, and it still had an old 315/30/18 A6 mounted to it. The matching 18x12" front wheel was brand new from Forgestar and not even powdercoated yet, and mounted with an old 335/30/18. We didn't realize we were missing the 315mm mounted wheel until moments before we left Dallas, but Todd grabbed it and brought it to Road Atlanta with him.

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Left: After the GTA Session 1 results I was in 8th overall. Right: I found a 1.4 seconds in session 2, moving up to 7th

• Vorshlag Photo and Video Event Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...tlanta-050914/
• The above photos by Brandon Lajoie, Brad Maxcy, J Deck Galery, and some re-posted from social media sources
• Results: Not yet posted so we made this Unofficial Results Sheet.

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After swapping to our "test" tires, which were terrible, we never got a chance to put on the good ones

I figured Friday's first 2 or 3 sessions worth of laps would be throw-away times, since I was a total newbie here and intended to make as many laps as possible to learn this new track layout. So we mounted the worst set of mis-matched tires and put the 315mm on the inside (RF) corner, since it would see the least lateral loading. Contrary to what the sidewall numbers might lead you to think, the 315/30/18 and 335/30/18 Hoosier A6 tires are both exactly the same diameter (25.6" tall), so it shouldn't throw off speed sensors/ABS system due to side-to-side tire diameter differences.

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They put us into two run groups sort of at random for the first session, and told us that based on those time's they would split the field in half and grid us by speeds. We got to grid early and got out first for the first session. There were a few faster cars that I let by immediately, during the warm up lap, who obviously knew this track better than I did. I tried to keep up with one of those but he checked out going over the "bridge" turn (T11). I quickly pointed by then tucked in behind Sean Farrah to follow his 300Z through this unfamiliar course. Unfortunately he was just as new to RA as I was, so it was more of the blind leading the blind, heh. We had a long first session and I ran until the checkered flag came out. The tires got greasy after the first 2-3 laps but they are A6s and I'm used to that. I still managed a 1:38.434 best lap, which was 8th fastest overall for the first set of sessions, and that put me in the "A" grid. This was one of my last laps in that long session and the tires were VERY hot by that point, so I knew there was a lot left in the car once I gained some course familiarity and confidence on the 5 or so TOTALLY BLIND corners. I had taken 11 laps in the first session

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After making 11 hot laps and seeing the checkers for session 1, I took a cool down lap and came into our paddock spot. I hopped out, yanked off my heavy driving suit, had a quick download with Brad and Amy. "MAN this track is intense!!!", I kept saying. Even through ambient temps were around 77°F it was VERY HUMID and my driving suit was soaked. My laps from this session were pretty ragged and I had failed to watch enough lap videos or practice this course in any driving simulators - mistake. I had some great track notes from TT racer Marc Sherrin, who had driven here at a Chin Motorsports event in a rental 5.0 Mustang just two weeks prior, but it wasn't gelling in my brain AT ALL and I had no idea where to turn in for T1, T3, T6, T11 or T12. Turn 11 was especially daunting, which is the uphill, blind, FAST turn over a hill as you go under the famous bridge that cross the track. I'm not ashamed to say that Turn 11 was absolutely terrifying - fast, completely blind, soaked in danger if you screw it up, and with virtually no visual clues to learn from. "Take it flat", they all said... "Are you NUTS!?!" my id replied, on every lap.

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We topped off the fluids and fuel and got ready for session 2, about 30 minutes later. I noticed zero fuel slosh problems on this mostly right hand turn track, by the way - even getting the fuel somewhat low in the long first stint I took. We checked the front brake pads and they were looking a bit worse for wear, but we didn't have any spares in the trailer like we thought. BIG mistake. "Don't worry", I told them, "I just need to take a few more recon laps, then I'll bring it in". We would then have just enough brake pad left for a few sessions of 1-2 hot laps on Saturday, if I could just pick up this layout today. Famous last words.

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The Trans Am cars were paddocked all around us. We met some nice folks with good advice about this track

Grid A second session almost got rained out, and the B Grid got some sprinkles when they went out. This time I got to the pits early again, but they lined up cars sort of in order of times and I went out in a pack of cars about the same speed as me. I think I made a few passes and was passed about 3 times, and again stayed out and made a lot of hot laps in a row. More than I'm used to doing in this heavy car, but the brake pedal felt fine. The same well used A6 tires worked great for the first two laps, then fell off heavily to a certain point and stayed there. I slowed down after lap 2, as expected, but after about the 4th lap, the longer I stayed on track the faster I was getting. Corners were finally stringing together, I was "less lost" in Turns T2 through T5, I felt like I knew what to do to put Turns T6 and T7 together, etc. Turns T11 and T12 were still kicking my ass, but I had one more session Friday and 3 on Saturday to get that right.

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In-car video from my first hot lap in session 2 is shown above. It was a 1:37.28, which was with the same very worn mis-matched A6 tires at their best temperature. More importantly I was keeping up with the blue 350Z of Sasha Anis ahead of me, which was a more powerful car and he ended up with a 1:28.0 on day 2. A lot of drivers made significant time drops on the 2nd day, with the rain gone and the track rubbered-in from the Trans Am and GTA racers. Todd dropped 10 seconds from Day 1 to Day 2 best times, as did many others.

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According to the data logger I took 8 hot laps in session 2. Then all Hell broke loose.

So after the Hoosiers fell off a bit I kept making laps, pushing 9/10ths or so, desperately feeling my way through T11 like a blind man. With walls surrounding both sides of nearly the entire track, steep elevation changes everywhere, BIG nasty curbs that could upset a battleship, and five corners that are over rises, it was the hardest track I've ever driven. Cars were dropping like flies - blowing motors, ripping splitters off, going off track, etc. By the end of day one I heard that half the GTA cars had dropped out (some made repairs and got back out on day 2). I kept pounding out laps, trying to soak it all in.

Again, in the 2nd session the car felt pretty consistent after the tires fell off about 2 seconds, after the first lap in this session. But learning the track was making up for the tires falling off and still I was dropping time late in the 2nd session. I made a 7th best lap time of a 1:37.015 with tires that we later noticed were absolutely FRIED. Down to the base rubber, zero tread left on the fronts or rears.

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I still hadn't taken turns T11 or T12 at any respectable rate of speed, since I couldn't seem to find any visual markers to "line me up"... yes yes, I had 20 people giving me advice about "go under the red light" under the bridge, or "aim for the top left window in that medical building" over the horizon. It just wasn't working and I was still very slow through these last 2 corners. And those corners dictated the next long straight past the start finish.

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On lap 8 I was on a good lap, finally seeing a 1:36 indicated on the predictive lap timer, finally with no traffic, but I wasn't pushing it any harder than I had been the whole session - the corners were just finally coming together. I was motoring down the LONG back straight and could see two cars entering Turn 10A as I went to go grab the brakes, doing about 150 mph. WHOOMP! Pedal goes straight to the floor, nothing happened. No brakes. Shit!

Most racers will mentally practice for this very situation. You should also practice a stuck throttle pedal, having a flat tire, and a few other "bad things might happen" scenarios. This way, when Bad Things happen (given enough time, it all happens) you know what to do automatically. In 27 years of driving on road courses I've had exactly one other sudden and complete loss of brakes before, in my 2013 Mustang on the OEM pads/small front rotors, I went off track after a 120 mph braking zone at ECR, and I was doing about 80mph when I left the track. I had time to downshift, pump the brakes a bit, try to use the E-brake, etc. THIS time it happened FAST and the loss of brakes was COMPLETE. I was going a lot faster here, the braking zone was steeply downhill, and the run-off area option was not very friendly. This wasn't just loss of pad material like last time, it was a total and immediate loss of hydraulic system pressure.

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Last time we saw the front end intact and all one color for a few months...

As it often happens in a crash, my perception of time Slowed Down: I quickly evaluated options. There was a wall immediately off track to my right, a gravel trap just off track ahead, and two cars negotiating Turn 10B to my left. Pulling an e-brake could shed a tiny bit of speed but potentially lock the rear tires, put the car into a spin, and likely punt me into a wall. Or into the gravel trap sideways - and flip. Going left and "short cutting" Turns 10A-10B through the grass wasn't an option because I'd likely collect one if not both of the cars slowly exiting 10B right in front of me. So going off track straight ahead was my safest option. I managed a quick 5-4 downshift, as I would normally here while braking (and even go down to 3rd gear), but grabbing 3rd at 150 mph would only mechanically over-rev the motor and lock up the rear tires. According to the Solo DL, I left the track doing 142 mph, so the downshift was good for a tiny reduction of speed via engine braking.

Now of course we always video EVERY lap of every session Amy or I drive, to catch good laps as well as bad things like this - to hopefully learn from it. But we goofed didn't pull any video off the same SD card in this vidcam for 4 race weekends in a row, and the 1080P camera filled the card during the 2nd hot lap of this session. So we have no video of the crash. Sadly I always check the vidcam before a session starts, and would have realized "oh, this won't record, it must be full" and swapped cards before the next session. Just happened to fill up during the worst session of the weekend. We still have plenty of pictures of the shunt thanks to some sharp eye'd shutter bugs.

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I hit the gravel trap and was going through it at an angle towards the bridge. There were big berms/walls on both sides of the bridge span that I didn't want to nose into, and my hope was to shed speed in the gravel, likely lose the splitter, and get back on track and under that bridge without hitting any walls or the 2 cars ahead of me. And that's what happened, but the impact LEAVING the gravel trap was INCREDIBLE. There was about an 18" earthen berm that marked the border of the gravel trap and that's what got me airborne....

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This vertical impact is what broke my back, and while I didn't know that for certain for a few days, I knew a new level of PAIN. The hit knocked the wind out of my lungs and I couldn't breath for about 90 seconds. My entire spine started spasming and it was the most intense pain I've ever felt. The left front tire blew and both front wheels bent going over the 18" vertical berm, but I still left the gravel trap with the ability to steer, doing about 90 mph, with no brakes. The momentum took the car up the hill to the bridge and I was just coherent enough to know that I was closer to the pits than a corner station - I remembered seeing where the ambulance was parked. I checked and since nobody was close to me from behind, I rolled into Pit In just past T11, rolled down and then up the pit road and pulled over right next to the Medical Building. I shut off the engine in gear to slow then stop, and was less than 5 feet from where the ambulance was parked.


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Brandon was sitting on pit wall and snapped a few pictures of me coming off track. It took him a second to realize that the car ... didn't look right. The splitter was gone and part of the lower bumper and front flares were ripped off. He saw me pop the belts, roll out of the car and lay on the ground, which I did to try to get my diaphragm working and to be able to draw a breath. He thought I was checking under the car, walked up and then heard me moaning in pain.

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It felt like someone was stabbing me in the back, and I still couldn't breath. The ambulance crew was on me in about 20 seconds and tried to immobilize me, learning that I had intense back pain. They checked me out for feeling in my legs, but by then I could breath and talk and kept trying to stand up - against their wishes. They wanted to load me into the ambulance and cart me off to a hospital but I was having none of it. I waited until the next Monday to get X-rays, and then saw the broken bones. It was a hard hit, and I think most of my damage (compression fracture to vertebrae T-11 and broken rib at T-12) happened where the pictures show me coming OUT of the gravel trap. There was about an 18" high ridge of dirt they cut into the ground for the hole for the gravel pit which launched the car about 2 feet into the air.

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After 27 years of doing this stuff, dozens of offs at all sorts of speeds, this is the first time I got hurt. I was drenched in my driving suit and badly overheated, but they got me into the air conditioned medical building 20 feet away, cooled me down, and gave me two bottles of water which I guzzled. Getting out of the drenched driving suit helped cool me down, and they checked my vitals a couple of times. Amy was on the scene pretty quickly and wanted me to go to the hospital, but I was stubborn and stupid, and walked the 1/2 mile back to our paddock spot. Well, limped back while leaning on Amy. ;)

This all happened at about 11:45 am, and while there was one more GTA session left there was no way I was driving and the car looked like crap. Brad came to fetch the car from Medical and after about 30 minutes it has SOME brake pedal and could be stopped, carefully. He pulled remnants of the brake ducts and splitter mounts off, noting some green fluid and a crushed air conditioning condenser. We don't run any anti-freeze and we figured out later it was just freon and whatever crud they use in the A/C system. Amy limped it back to our paddock spot with the mushiest pedal EVER.

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These two cars went on to clobber me 1-2 in Unlimited RWD. Somehow my limited running time still held onto 3rd place

The car was relatively fine, but I was not, and I was pissed - at myself for not feeling any drop off in braking, not feeling any warning at a total brake system failure, and ignoring the other signs (pads). Looking at the brakes after the shunt, the rear pads were down to about 1/4 thickness but the fronts were down to 1/8th, at best. While they loaded up our gear and got another tire & wheel installed I fought through pain and brief stints of back spasms for a few hours. Somehow in there I did a 10 minute videotaped interview with Whiteline, standing in front of the car. I don't remember much of that. I mostly just lied down in the trailer that afternoon, and we knew our weekend was over.

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Brad was shoveling gravel out of the car and removing the brake duct hoses - there's still gravel coming out weeks later

Amy and Brandon had called our hotel and managed to check out of our 2 rooms by 12:15, raced into town and got all of our gear, while Brad and I watched part of one of the Trans Am races. We stuck around for another few hours so Brandon could shoot some more pics of the GTA drivers and paddock, but we decided to leave early and head back to Dallas by about 4:30 pm. I was a wreck and that was the most miserable drive. We made it about 5 hours, with me downing Advil and applying Icy-Hot patches several times, then stopped for the night. We got back on the road Saturday morning and made it back by about 3 pm, and I laid on the couch for the next 36 hours.

When I got back to shop on Monday I made a doctor's appointment and the guys unloaded the car, and we saw the extent of the damage. It wasn't as bad as my back, that's for sure, and we had it fixed and back on track for Amy to drive a mere 10 days later. The actual repair work only took about 2 days and not many parts.

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I'm trying to see the good side to this event, so please humor me while I bench race a bit here, heh. Since there's not a results page up on the GTA website for this event yet I put this page (above) together from a Facebook data dump they posted. Looks like my session 2 times from Friday were still faster than about 29 other GTA drivers (14th overall) with only 19 laps taken on this course, using a very worn out set of mis-matched tires. Many drivers picked lots of time on Saturday, including fellow NASA Texas TT competitor Todd Earsley, who dropped a staggering 10 seconds on Day 2.

The TT3 track record at Road Atlanta is a 1:29.64 (linked here), so I needed to drop about 8 seconds to be competitive, yet the ST3 track record is a 1:35.3, set just this last weekend (same rules as TT3). Knowing where I typically place relative to Todd's EVO when he is racing on street tires, like he was at GTA, I think I can bench race my way there. For a few weeks after this event I was NOT going to ever go back to this track, but after a bit of time and healing, I'm now thinking... yea. Gotta get back on that horse. We'll do NASA Nationals, and the Test day before. I am hoarding sets of Hoosiers now to be able to take at least 2 sticker sets + a set of R6s to test on for Nationals at the end of August. Its gonna be hot!

Lessons Learned + Brake System Upgrades + Safety Gear

We've had 5 weeks to investigate the car, and think about what went wrong. Please learn from my mistakes.

1. Don't ever take your braking system for granted. If you are tracking your car at a road course, make sure you have adequate and fresh brake fluid. Fresh brake pads and un-cracked rotors. For heavier and faster cars, seriously consider brake cooling. And if you have one of the heaviest/fastest cars on the grid, consider MORE brake cooling.
2. Don't skimp or shortcut on your safety gear. Fires, rollovers and crashes don't care that wearing all of that gear is inconvenient, costly or cumbersome. Get a quality set of 6-point racing harnesses and make sure they are TIGHT. Wearing a Head and Neck device is a pretty smart use of safety gear, and a fire-retardant driving suit/gloves/shoes is also a smart investment.
3. If you are to the point of investing in aerodynamic aids and aero testing to lower lap times, its probably long past time to have already installed a full roll cage.
4. When going to a new (to you) track and you want to get up to speed quickly, watch some good in-car videos and/or find this track in a driving simulator video game and invest the time to learn the track before you arrive.

Yep, I know... I'm not following my own advice here, but I'm working on all of these things.

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The front pads were very worn after the Road Atlanta event. There was less pad thickness than backing plate thickness, as shown above. The front rotors were also DONE, with massive heat cracking on all of the surfaces. Those were both replaced with fresh Centric rotors and Carbotech XP20 pads and we won't do any more TT events without NEW pads at all four corners, and we'll keep full spares in the trailer (we usually do that already). The rear brakes looked fairly worn and after the first HPDE session at ECR 2 weeks later they were replaced at the track with a new set of spare Carbotech pads. The brake pedal was still mushy as crap after we got the car back from Atlanta, and the fluid looked like coffee. It had gotten HOT and boiled, as simple as that. THAT is what ultimately caused the loss of brakes...

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But why did they boil? Two reasons: 1) I was driving longer stints than we designed the car for and 2) the worn and thin brake pad material wasn't thick enough to insulate the brake fluid in the calipers from the 1000+ degree rotors. We have since upgraded the Mustang to Motul RBF660 with a complete fluid flush. The Motul 660 looks light brown right out of the bottle, not clear like the RBF600 does when new. We had just flushed another car (see above pics) with 660 and that's what it looks like, fresh.

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And even though these extended driving stints are very atypical for us in NASA TT, we went ahead and upgraded the front brake ducts from 3" to 4" on the front of the car, and plumbed the system with 4" flex tubing.

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For 99.5% of you reading this the 3" backing plate + hose kits we already make (we now have the hoses as an option) are more than adequate for HPDE or even TT use. Our shop guys are building the 4" backing plates now (below right), but we ran it with the 4" hoses and front openings at ECR already and saw a 60 degree drop in front caliper temps. This weekend at Hallett will be an even better test.

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Safety Gear Upgrades

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I already wear an SFI 3-2A/5 driving suit, but its a very heavy material (read: cheap suit) and I'm going to upgrade to a more modern style that is about half the weight, and fitted better to my body than this giant Simpson STD.19. Having a lighter weight suit will make me wear it more often, especially during hot events, and reduce my chances of overheating my body. We're not going to use a cool suit, as that is overkill for our typical 2-3 lap stints. I borrowed a Simpson Hybrid Pro HANS device that I will use this weekend at Hallett, and if it works well I'll buy it for use for the rest of this season. Wearing a HANS device wouldn't have helped with the GTA shunt, which was an unusual force vector going almost straight up/down, but it would obviously help in a head-on or side impact crash.

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I'll go with a new Alpinestar, Puma or Sparco suit soon. People might not know this, but we sell driving suits (it would help if they were listed on our website, I know), harnesses and all sorts of other safety gear - but we do. And if a driving suit comes in for local pick-up, our Operations Manager tests them out (see Sofi being a goof, above).

I've got a little bit more written but this post is getting too long, so I'll save that for another post later this week.

What's Next

• More post-Road Atlanta Repairs - Pictures and details of the somewhat simple repairs + a short video showing what worn front S197 hubs sound like
• FSF @ ECR - Track test after the car was repaired, where Amy drove the Mustang
• Gas Monkey Bar & Grill Moto GT Bike Reveal / Car show - Sofi's charity bike build was unveiled at GMBG
• NASA @ Hallett - Amy and I are racing the TT3 Mustang at the Hallett circuit this weekend with NASA and a record 41 TT competitors for this event

More soon,

Good job at hallet this weekend! Was your back a problem? Or are you feeling better now?

Project Update for 28, 2014: In this project build thread update we will be showing more details of the repairs and upgrades to the TT3 Mustang after the shunt I had at RoadAtlanta in May. Next we cover another track day two weeks later at ECR, where Amy drove and tested out the repairs and brake system improvements. I talk a little about wheel bearings and have a video of what a bad S197 front wheel bearing sounds like. We also had a car show to attend in June with our Mustang to support a Vorshlag team member's custom Cafe Racer charity bike build. Finally I'll "weigh in" with more of my thoughts on the S550 Mustang's latest weight revelations. We'll save the NASA event at Hallett for the next installment.

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Injury Report and Car Repairs after Road Atlanta Crash

When we got back from RA the car was a bit of a mess, but my back was in a little worse shape. I made a couple of doctor visits, where they X-rays and some pokes and prods, but not much else. I was determined to avoid any surgery and especially spinal fusion surgery. Both doctors said "avoid any load on your back, don't go to the gym, lets look at you again in about 6 to 8 weeks", so I've been sticking to that plan. I dealt with the pain by taking Aleve daily, used an ice pack at night to reduce swelling, wear a lower back almost brace every waking hour, and had to take Hydrocodone about a dozen times when the pain got really bad (all from my doc's advice). Never missed a day of work but there were probably a few times I should have gone home early. Pain makes me more of an a-hole than normal, but Sofi would just yell into my office "you need take a pill!" when I got too far out of hand.

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Sleeping has been very difficult, as all I had to do was roll on my side and the broken rib would spear me awake. I mostly slept sitting upright for the first 3 weeks and was getting about 2-3 hours a night. The rib finally felt like it was mended at about week 5 but the fractured vertebrae and nearby disc are taking a bit longer to heal. I don't have to exert myself or lift much weight to aggravate my back, so I keep the brace on most of the day. After 5 weeks away I finally made it back to the gym for some self-imposed physical therapy by week 6 and was off the pain pills and Aleve by then. It is week 7 now, I'm doing better, and have already completed two race weekends without any incident since the crash. It actually feels fine in a proper race seat and 6-point belts. With the next two months devoid of track events I can concentrate working at the gym to strengthen my back again.

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The damage to the car actually wasn't nearly as bad - after a lot of checks and measurements it is still perfectly straight and unbent, just taking some superficial, cosmetic damage. This level of vertical impact could have turned many chassis into a banana, but the S197 unibody is a tank. After 4 years of just calling it "The Red Car" around the shop, I think a nick-name of The Tank is more appropriate now. ;)

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The gravel trap took the splitter off, and when that left the car it damaged some other bits that were bolted to or nearby it. The bottom edge of the front bumper cover was ripped off, which is a section hidden by the CS lower fascia but still integral to its attachment. The left side's black factory "side skirt" was also mangled and half torn off, plus the lower portions of the front flares were damaged.

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The splitter we built is stout, and when it pushed back and came off it poked a hole in the A/C condenser, so that was removed and the lines capped for now. A replacement isn't costly (less than $120) but we have only used the A/C system once this year, during the Optima Street Car road rally, and it is limiting airflow to the Mishimoto radiator. One step of the repairs were to make some templates for patches of red race roll (plastic) to fix the flares. These fender flares are going to be completely replaced at some point (likely with a composite front fender that a buddy's shop is working on) but for now we just patched the broken lower edges - you can't even see the repairs at speed, not with the unpainted black bumper cover on the front to distract you.

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A new front bumper cover and side skirt were acquired from Ford, then the bumper cover was modified on the upper edge to fit around the aluminum airbox we have built to route air from the lower grill opening to the (now) front of the radiator. This detail is hidden behind the upper grill block-off plate. We had a spare CS lower fascia (that a customer discarded due to a minor scratch) so that was attached to the new bumper cover and splitter before it was all re-installed. Some minor repairs to the radiator's aluminum duct work were needed as well.

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The same splitter that came off in the crash was virtually unscathed, save a couple of rear mounting holes that tore out along with the mounting bolts. We made some new holes to move the rear mounting plate 1/2 inch forward, sprayed some paint on the scratched lower face, and it all went back on. Nobody said 3/16" 6061-T6 aluminum plate was light, but it is damned sure strong. I've seen plastic and composite splitters that came off in similar crashes, usually doing as much or more associated body damage, but the splitter is almost always completely destroyed in the process. Not this beast - it also cuts grass like a mofo!

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Of course I am determined to not have this type of brake system failure again, and we've taken measures to that end, as shown in my last post. The 3" brake ducts, while more than adequate for so many S197 track drivers and racers, were not keeping the 14" front Brembos cool enough on our exceptionally heavy TT3 car (3802 pounds with driver). The Alcon temp strips indicating 490°F temps at the caliper should have been a BIG red flag, which I ignored (and we saw the results of that). That's near the boiling point of most hydraulic fluid and was just not a safe condition to leave the brakes at. So we have upgraded to larger 4" front bumper front duct opening using aluminum tubing and opening up the CS lower fascia from the 3" foglight hole with some careful cutting. You can see the new rear splitter mounting stanchion in the picture above right, and also where the old mounting holes in the splitter were torn out in the crash. That's all of the damage the splitter took.

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The new front brake cooling duct openings were routed with 4" hoses but necked down onto the old brake backing plates' 3" ducts. We ran out of time to make new brake backing plates before the ECR track event. I was also curious to see if the larger hoses and front openings would help the brake cooling when even with that smaller restriction at the rotor. Our guys here at Vorshlag got everything repaired, new brake pads/rotors/fluid, nut-and-bolt checked, re-aligned, weighed and corner balanced, and the front brake ducts/hoses upgraded in about 2 days time, then loaded the car into our trailer to verify the repairs at a local HPDE event at Eagles Canyon on May 24th - less than 2 weeks after the crash.

Front Wheel Hubs - Diagnosis and Repair

One of the common wear items on an S197 Mustang, and all cars for that matter, is the front hubs. We recently had to replace the fronts, so I made this little video to show what bad bearings sound like, and what it takes to replace them.

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The video above shows what you should do for quick diagnosis, and should be on your pre-track check list. Every. Time. We check the hubs whenever we do any track inspections here, and we've found bad front hubs on Mustangs a number of times. This is actually the 4th set that we've replaced on our 2011 GT since we picked it up in August of 2010. As the grip levels and brake heat go up the lifespan of the hubs goes down. 4 sets of hubs in 4 years ain't bad, considering the lap times this heavy beast puts down and the brake heat numbers we've seen.

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We actually replaced these hubs after the ECR event (detailed below) but before we went to Hallett. They were fine before ECR but they weren't afterwards. Vorshlag stocks and sells this FMS-M-1104-A motorsports hub kit, which comes with the 3" ARP hardened wheel studs installed plus new spindle nuts (which are one-time-use nuts that need 250 ft-lbs of torque to seat). This kit is cheaper than buying new hubs and wheel studs separately, and they are already pressed in place.

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We also have a variety of wheel spacers for the S197 and our reduced (17mm) hex/enlarged taper lug nuts for this chassis. These are the same 1/2"-20 right hand lug nuts a Ford uses, but with a smaller hex drive to fit inside aftermarket "lug wells" with a deep socket with more clearance to the wheel. The larger OEM (19mm) hex lug nuts often won't work with some wheels with a tighter lug well (like Forgestars). These lug nuts and wheel spacers are what we use on our car, and they are located in a new section of our shopping cart we have created here.

Five Star Ford at ECR, May 24th, 2014

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We had planned on attending this event many weeks earlier and I was bound and determined to make it back out there in our car, even if I wasn't going to be doing any driving. A big chunk of the Vorshlag crew came out to this Five Star Ford sponsored event at ECR on what turned out to be a beautiful Saturday in May.

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We brought our 2011 GT test mule to test the new brake upgrades and to verify the repairs after RA. Amy was driving all day and gave lots of people ride-alongs. Our crew worked on nearly 20 cars during the day, doing a lot of brake fluid flushes (replacing crap fluid), Carbotech brake pad swaps and other various trackside repairs.

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Since Amy drew the short straw and didn't get to drive at Road Atlanta at all, this was to be her day of testing and track fun. We mounted up a set of 315mm A6 scrubs and had her on track for over 6 sessions that day - taking runs in all of the Red group sessions as well as some in Blue group.

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She took over a dozen riders that Saturday, which Jason and I kept funneling into the right seat of the Mustang - as well as funneling fuel into the Mustang's gas tank.

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I was also taking some pictures, talking to customers, and trying to help the guys work on a few cars (more on that in a second). Brad Maxcy, our shop manager and a racer himself, shot most of the pretty pictures in this write-up while working a long day fixing cars and brakes. You can see the images and video from this event in the gallery below.

Vorshlag's ECR picture and video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...rd-ECR-052414/

I was itching to drive but Amy was hearing none of it, and in truth my back wasn't up for the somewhat bumpy ECR circuit. That didn't mean I took it easy, oh no... I was seriously stupid and helped work on a handful of the 20 cars that needed brake flushes, brake pad replacements or other work that day. Fully one third of the cars at this event needed help from our crew, and I'm glad we were there with some parts and the technicians to help install it all.

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Brad, Kyle and even our sales manager Jon were busy all day wrenching on cars, from the moment we got there until we left at around 5:30 pm. We knew we'd work on a few cars but this was a bit more than expected. Luckily we brought two cases of Motul brake fluid, lots of Redline synthetics, and 4 sets of Mustang brake pads - and we sold and installed every single one. I had warned the entrants at the driver's meeting that ECR would eat stock brakes, and we always try to put the word out beforehand to warn people to upgrade at least their fluid, but it still happens. Stock brake fluid SUCKS and has no business on a race track.

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It ended up being a long day for our guys, and my back was killing me from even just working the jack or some other trivial tasks. I didn't drive or ride in any cars that day, which hurt me even worse, though. I was going nuts just watching all of these folks have fun. I am a terrible spectator and a worse patient, heh.

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Amy drove in fairly heavy traffic all day, and managed only one or two clear laps. She had riders on every session so she was only pushing the car 8- to 9/10ths but still managed a 1:59.0 on a lap shown in the video above. There's also some shots in there of Mike D spinning in his twin turbo 67 Camaro and some footage of my old ChumpCar teammates in the 1998 Firebird I helped them with for a bit before bowing out and letting them take over.

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This gutless 3.8L V6 powered 4th gen Firebird Chump racer looked pretty good out there and I was glad to see them finally get it back on track, as it hasn't run in about a year. The cage was welded in and completed by our friend Kurt at Janco Fab, using a cage kit I had purchased from Blainefab. Paul and Jason (shown above) took over the remainder of this build and finished up a lot of safety upgrades and other little odds and ends. It held together almost the entire day before the old transmission mount broke - and yet they kept driving it, heh.

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I won't give away their lap times but they passed a lot of cars and a few 5.0L Mustangs in this 200 hp behemoth. Above right you can also see Shannon's 5.0 S197 on track; she had just started working at Vorshlag as our summer Engineering Intern. Her new True Street built motor was roaring down the front straight and she ran strong all day.

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Mark C was quick, when he managed to stay on track and get a clear lap, heh. He had a quick off-and-on in Turn 11 and I barely caught the pic! Heather (Shannon's sister) was darned fast in the V6 5th gen Camaro, but she keeps burning the brakes off of this poor car. It needs a boatload more negative camber up front, as well.

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By the end of the day we were all exhausted but we had a lot of fun. Corey White and Jerry Cecco put on a heck of a good event and with 60+ drivers there were lots of smiles to go around that day. Thanks to Five Star Ford for sponsoring the lunch, too! A bunch of us went into town and ate dinner at Fuzzy's Taco Shop before heading home, which was delicious. The food was great and Jason somehow managed to keep the queso from that giant burrito out of his beard. ;)

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We had some good test data and learned that the larger brake cooling ducts in the bumper cover and the 4" hoses made a significant difference, with max temps at the caliper seeing only 430°F all day, and Amy was brutal on the brakes.

She actually finished off the rear pads we had on from Road Atlanta after her 2nd session and our guys put on a fresh set of Carbotechs to let her finish the day (and they are still on the car 2 events later). We also learned that we can NEVER bring too many sets of brake pads to an event like this held at ECR... it we would have had 4 more sets we could have installed them all for folks. This track eats brakes, and the car's wheels above were gold before the day started.

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Lots of fun and I'll post up the next time FSF holds an event at ECR. Great place to do your first event, and you'll see a lot of pony cars and other vehicles at this low key fun track event.

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GT Moto Bike Build Reveal at GMBG, June 15, 2014

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Vorshlag's own Sofi had an event we attended at Gas Monkey Bar & Grill. This place hosted her "bike reveal" where the Cafe Racer style motorcycle she and her dad hand built on June 15th, 2014. Many of the Vorshlag staff and friends came out to support this charity event, bought shirts and raffle tickets, and had a great time.

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"Texas Dave" was in town with his Pikes Peak EVO and he brought it out and showed it in the GMBG parking lot. We brought the Vorshlag TT3 Mustang and had it parked in the the small show area during the party as well. KC from the Fast-n-Loud show had his truck in the same area later that day, as he knows Sofi and came to the party.

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Sofi is our operations manager here at Vorshlag and schedules customer service work and supplies our shop guys with parts. She is also a decent fabricator and bike mechanic and races her various motorcycles as well, including her throw-back Cafe Racer style Honda (the blue one, shown above left). A lot of her friends and fans came out to support this event, and she's raised over $25K for charity with this bike build so far. We're all proud of her and respect the cause she's raising money for.

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She and one of our fabricators Olof built the exhaust for this new bike at Vorshlag a couple of weeks earlier and used the same ICE Engine Works kit we use to make custom headers for our V8 swaps.

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The bike reveal went really well and there were close to 100 people there to see the bike for the very first time. I hadn't seen it with the painted tank and trim work installed and it really came out looking amazing. This bike is being given away via a raffle, with a drawing on July 5th, and all proceeds go to St. Jude's hospital for cancer research. You can see more info about the raffle here: https://rafflecreator.com/pages/1379/gt-cafe-for-cause We all bought several tickets, and if I win it I'll do wheelies in our parking lot, then probably fall off and break my back.

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GMBG itself was actually really nice, even on this super hot day (it was well into the high 90s). There was a 90 minute wait to get a table inside but luckily for us, all of the folks who came for the Moto GT bike reveal had a private 2nd story air conditioned bar with front row seats to the bands that played on stage that day. The deck out over the pond surrounding the restaurant was also pretty nice. We ate and drank and had a great time. We've met most of the guys at GMG and they are all friendly, professional and passionate about hot rodding - and they provided the facilities for this party and raffle free of charge. He might be a little abrasive on the TV show but Richard Rawlings knows how to party and his bar and grill is a hopping place. I'm glad we could come out and bring a lot of friends to help support Sofi's charity. Again, if you want to purchase a raffle ticket the drawing is this weekend on July 5th, so good luck!

The New 2015 Mustang - What Does The S550 Chassis Weigh?

The last few weeks have been full of rumors and speculation about the new 2015 Mustang and what it will weigh. Steeda got a huge black eye when they "guessed" it the S550 would actually be gaining a few hundred pounds over the last generation, contrary to Ford's pronouncement of a weight loss. Motor Trend also had some guesstimations that were apparently pretty unflattering, and also not based on fact. Turns out Steeda never actually weighed a car, and the whole thing became an internet scandal labeled "2015 Mustang Weightgate".

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image above found on Jalopnik

The automotive car websites were going nuts, and even I got a call from a reporter at Jalopnik looking for real data - of which I had none. Turns out they finally got to the root of all of the mystery, the car gained less than 100 pounds, which was shown after Ford leaked some semi-official weights, shown below.

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image above found on Jalopnik

So it was much ado about nothing... of course the S550 didn't lose weight. That wasn't really a possibility, and few if any new car models are getting lighter than any older generations - due to rising crash standards, technology complexity, and customer demands for more creature comforts. The Mustang would have to make a radical change in the chassis goals to lose pounds (remember the Ford Probe disaster??). No, the S550 is staying somewhat the same in size and power but getting new features and upgrades - like the Independent Rear Suspension and bigger 15" front brakes - so it gained a few pounds in the process. The 3704 pound number being thrown around is still 130 pounds lighter than a stripped 2014 Camaro Z/28, a $75K track toy that comes with race tires but no air con.

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What strikes me as the most odd is the wild variety of car models that some folks are comparing the Mustang to, or trying to. Look at how much bigger the S197 is compared to a Genesis Coupe (which is fat and heavy too), a BRZ and an MX5, above. Am I supposed to believe that car people cross-shop Miatas with Mustangs? If they do, then they are VERY confused about what they want from an automobile. Even the turbo 4 and V6 Mustang will be so far removed from a flyweight 2 seat roadster like the MX5 as to be not in the same league. The S550 is really more of a new and improved S197, which itself was a RADICAL improvement over the Fox/SN95 chassis it replaced. The Fox/SN95 was based on a 1977 Ford Fairmont, and that's saying a lot.

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Of course Vorshlag will weigh several S550s when the first ones arrive at local dealerships, and our car will be here hopefully before the end of August. We have aggressive plans for track testing then upgrading the suspension, wheels, tires and more. Stay tuned for that new build thread, which I will link in this S197 thread.

What's Next?

• NASA at Hallett, June 21-22 - This event went really well, and we beat our 2013 lap record by 3 seconds, but I borked the splitter in an "off" during the first Saturday session!
• Repairs and Improvements after Hallett - I'll cover the upgrades and repairs we made after this last NASA event. My hack driving knows no limits... not even the TRACK limits.
• Lone Star Drift at TMS, June 29, 2014- Drifter vs Road Racer Battle, aka: Drifters go Derp!

As the summer gets hotter here in Texas the track schedule falls way off, to keep drivers from overheating, so we don't have any NASA events scheduled again until September (unless we go to NASA Nationals East, August 31st at Road Atlanta). The "summer track break" around here means we have some openings on our service schedule. If you need some race prep, fabrication, seating, cooling, brake system or safety upgrades you've been putting off, let us know. Several of our long term development projects for V8 swaps are getting more attention as shop time is freed up, so we'll stay busy either way.

That's all I have time for in this sitting, but I'll cover the Hallett event and the TMS road course "drift vs grip" event in my next write-up.

Thanks,

Project Update for July 17th, 2014: Wow, I'm so behind. I wrote most of this entry two weeks ago but was waiting for some pictures and got busy doing other things. It ran long so I pulled a few events out and will show them in the next update. In this build thread entry we show upgrades to the TT3 Mustang after ECR, including a new driveshaft, new tires, new brake fluid, aluminum lower rear wheel spats added, and more. Then we cover the NASA at Hallett event write-up. the car was overheating (explained below), a bit pushy with too much wing, and we got rain in final CW session laps. Then we will talk about stuff for the next entry.

More TT3 Mustang Updates + New Parts

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At long last we have ditched the stock 2-piece driveshaft and center bearing and replaced it with a 1-piece aluminum driveshaft. We used a Driveshaft Shop aluminum 3.5" diamet6er unit with a CV joint at the front, which is rated at 1000 hp.

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So, how much weight did this save us? Sadly, I don't really know. My shop guys forgot to weigh the new and old driveshafts when they did the swap - it was a hectic thrash to get ready for Hallett and weighing this was overlooked. The Driveshaft Shop website shows this to weigh 19 pounds, but you know how I trust everything I read on the interweb.

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The stock 2-piece driveshaft on the 2011-14 GT/Boss is HEAVY

The old stock driveshaft was still here so I just had our guys weigh it today. A hair over 37 pounds, so this upgrade might have lost 18 or so pounds, if the stated weight of the 1-piece unit is correct. Driving the car after this mod produced no adverse effects, or any noticeable benefits. A customer sold this one to us after we did a Tremec Magnum XL swap for the stock Getrag MT-82, so it was a cheap upgrade for us. We actually sell Dynotech Engineering driveshafts and will get them on our website eventually.

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I've spoken about the upgrade we made to the 4" brake ducts at the front bumper opening and the hoses but before we ran the ECR test we ran out of time to make the new 4" ducted backing plates. Well now we had the time, and engineer Jason had procured a new Ford part number to test with. This OEM stamped steel backing plate is a different diameter than the one we used for previous batches of 3" ducted plates (based off the 14" Brembo equipped cars) and turns out it was easier to use with the 4" hole than the smaller 3" hole, plus it had some other advantages.

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This different OEM backing plate version has a deeper dish to the hub clearance area which allows for more even flow inside the rotor ring itself, and should get more air to the hub bearing. We have tried 4 different backing plates from various S197 cars and this one fits the tightest to the rotor and has more room inside to spread air to the right places, so we've switched ALL of our S197 ducted backing plates to this new part number. We have a big batch of the OEM back plates being bead blasted this week so we'll make a run of these 4" ducted plates soon and put them in the same section as the 3" plates. The production 4" plates will have an oval duct on the backing plate, and not round like the prototypes built for our TT3 Mustang.

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Again, unless you are KILLING your brakes and already have 3" ducted fronts, the 4" plates might be overkill plus they require some additional front fascia work to attach the 4" hoses. And the stock windshield washer bottle is not possible with 4" hose, whereas a 3" will barely fits around it. Some folks do like overkill, though. And you know me - I'm a hack driver and I tend to overdrive everything, so I use more brakes than most. We checked the front caliper temps with a fresh set of Alcon temp strips at Hallett, to see if we could reduce the max temp from 490°F we were seeing before with 3" and 430°F we saw at ECR with 4" front openings and hoses but the 3" backing plate ducts, and I will talk about the gains we saw below in the race report.

Towing and Strapping Down an S197

Whether you tow or drive your car to a race track, or what your choice of tow vehicles is, are two discussion I try NEVER want to wade into. These are no-win arguments that will put people against one another looking for blood, like the Hatfields and McCoys! But if you've made the decision to start towing your car to the track instead of driving it to the track, which does relieve a LOT of stress and allows you to focus on your driving and pushing the car rather than saving enough brakes and tires to get you home, there are some new things to learn.

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When towing one of my least favorite things after a long race weekend is loading the car into the trailer and strapping it down. Every car has a "trick" or two that you might learn from someone else. Like when it comes to E30/36/46 BMWs, which I have towed hundreds of times, I tow them via "T-hooks" slotted into the 4 factory under-chassis slots (hidden under 4 plastic jacking point pucks) and I will always cross both the front and rear straps. On the S197 Mustang, it has its own set of tricks to strapping the car down safely. I've seen some janky set-ups and have learned what to do (and not) over the years by watching others' tow their cars.

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The front is relatively easy, as we use 3" ratchet straps with a C-hook end and "hook" into some big slots in the front lower subframe structure. The same "T" hook ends also work here very well. But when towing inside an enclosed trailer it takes some finesse to throw the straps under the car to where you can reach them behind the wheel and then you have to hook them into the slots blind, but once you've done it before its fairly easy.


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Left: Mac's Custom Tie-downs are my favorite. Right: I hate strapping through wheels, but these padded axle straps "could" work

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We always cross the straps up front, to keep the car from shifting laterally on the bed of the trailer. I've seen the results of a poorly strapped down car inside an enclosed trailer... it can turn into a costly mistake to your bodywork or aero, especially on a long tow. I always like to check the straps, and tighten them if needed, during our first stop heading out of town to get ice and fuel for the outbound leg of any road trip. In 27 years of racing I've never had a car come loose in an enclosed or open trailer, or worse - had one fall off of an open trailer. I've known 2 friends that had that happen to them, though!

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Strapping the S197 down at the back is a bit trickier than at the front. There are several ways to do the rear straps, but for the past 4 years whenever we towed this stick axle Mustang we have been using 3 foot long "axle straps" wrapped around the axle tubes then using 3" ratchet straps hooked to these and securing them back to D-rings in the trailer floor straight behind. This was a compromise set-up, and we had to be careful not to wrap the axle straps over or near the rear axle vent or it could get knocked off - that happened once - made a huge mess.

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Left: With a Watts Link you need to keep the tow straps from bending any tubes. Right: This is the section to wrap the axle straps around

When we made our remote axle vent catch can and hose, that hose and fitting had to be avoided with these straps also - which happened once and made a huge mess. The ratchet straps themselves have to route around, over and through the next of Watts Link tubes and rear exhaust pipes or you risk bending or at least scratching something under the car. And since axle straps just wrap around the axle tubes you can't "cross the straps" at the back, or risk having the straps slide inboard towards the "pumpkin" on the axle, which then makes the straps loose during your tow (not good). Some folks like strapping cars down by looping an axle strap through a wheel or around a wheel spoke, but that is a TURRIBLE idea and can both stress crack a wheel spoke, scratch the crap out of your $$$ wheels, or allow the wheel to rotate during the tow and loosen the car against the straps.

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So there are lots of "gotchas" on strapping the rear of a Mustang down. We have been fighting it for 4 years, but now we have a better way. We designed and built the tie-down brackets above for the S197 chassis and then tested them on our way to and from the Hallett, which was 10+ hours of towing. These new rear tow strap tie down brackets are made from beefy alloy steel and bolt to the rear lower control arm location. Olof hand cut this prototype pair based off of CAD drawings Jason drew up, but the production versions will be laser cut and powder coated red. The kit will come with a pair of new, 5mm longer, grade 12.9 bolts and nuts as well.

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These should be available from us later this summer and the 22° bend shown here will be the right way to tie down a Mustang with crossed rear straps. We will make them in flat (un-bent) form for those that want to orient the tie down straps straight back, too. Strapping the rear down went from a frustrating 5-6 minutes with my upper body wedged under the back of the car to a simple 30 second reach around behind the tie and clicking the strap ends into the new brackets. The 10 hour bumpy round trip tow was flawless, and the car didn't move a millimeter on either trip.

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Our popular GT500 rear brake upgrade kit has gone DOWN in price by $140. You heard that right.... out price on this kit just dropped over 27%. Why? We were previously sourcing the GT500 rear rotors from the only source we could find - Ford (read: expensive) - but have since found them made by Centric in their Premium line, which is the line we use on all of our race and street cars. This dropped our costs enough to be able to pass along this big savings. We have the replacement rotors available in this same S197 brake category location.

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We have our first batch of Vorshlag adjustable rear spring ride height platforms (aka: "rear ride height adjusters") that finally arrived. These were drawn up a while ago after the supplier for a similar style that we had been using dried up. Now we make this Vorshlag version and they work on several chassis including the S197 Mustang rear.

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We make these work on the S197 (at left) with a Nylon adapter and various BMWs (at right), also in the stock rear spring location

These adjustable platforms and adapters allow us to remove the fixed length, stock "Beehive" style spring (or lowering springs of the same shape) and replace them with shorter 60mm ID coilover springs, which come in infinitely more lengths and spring rates. Then we can adjust the ride height at the rear corners independently, for corner balancing. We can use these in conjunction with coilover style front strut/springs or by themselves, to work with a budget racer who still has OEM style springs and struts up front but wants to play with new rear spring rates and adjust ride heights out back.

Look for these coupled with MCS, Moton and other shock kits we sell as well as by themselves with the "Rear coilover spring kit" for the S197 Mustang.

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The last upgrade before Hallett was a simple set of rear lower tire spats. These are small little air deflectors that Ryan fabricated out of aluminum to smooth the transition from the flare to the side skirt, both visually and aerodynamically. He bent and welded this pair and made them attach to the back of the factory black plastic side skirt. These were painted black but the racing at Hallett took their toll on the finish (I shot the pics above after Hallett), so these will come off and get a stronger semi-flat black powder coating before we go to SEMA. Like everything else, the finish of much the exterior of this car will need some touch-ups before its ready for the week long SEMA show or the televised Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational event held immediately after in November.

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The guys here at Vorshlag had everything prepped before Hallett in about a day. The brake pads and rotors looked great but they pushed a little fluid through anyway, to make sure it was bled. The Carbotech XP20 pads were brand new before the ECR test day and they swapped in fresh Carbotech pads out back halfway through the day there. Car was nut and bolted, I drove down to the local Shell to fill the tank with 93 octane (and we brought 20 gallons more with us, as Oklahoma only has 91 octane for premium), and a sticker set of Hoosier 335/345 tires were mounted. This was the winnings from TWS, and I almost took a scrub set to Hallett and saved these.... but I got nervous at the last minute and had Olof mount the new sticker set.

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Why? I was worried about two things: getting beat in TT3 at Hallett -or- maybe barely winning but not resetting our old track record there. My main TT3 competitor Jeff Tan had just had new aero installed front and back, new suspension spring rates added, and a stroker 2.3 liter motor drinking E85 in his red EVO 9. Our friends at Evolution Dynamics had just put a new custom tune on Jeff's TT3 EVO that made 300whp from 3200rpm to 8000rpm, peaked at 326 whp and 410ft lbs of torque. In this much lighter car it could be a killer in this class. They use a boost trick to make constant "max power" across a huge rpm range, - and meets the letter of the TT rules. Nothing I can do about it except - build a similar turbo motor. Jeff was coming equipped for a battle! We also had 7 cars entered in TT3, including Boss302 driver John Scheier who I've known for 15 years and co-driven with at the Solo Nationals more than once. He's always fast. There were 10 cars in TT1, and I was worried about getting stuck behind some of the slower TT1 Corvettes if I didn't qualify well in the first TT practice session. And the 2013 TT3 National Champion was hinting on Facebook he might show up at Hallett, so I had all sorts of threats looming.

The last mod we made was to my helmet - adding the D-ring hardware anchor mounts needed for the Simpson Hybrid Pro I was borrowing. I wanted to test this Simpson head and neck restraint system at Hallett, and the HANS quick-release post anchors I already had installed in my helmet were swapped out for these. No, you won't find these D-ring mounts at a local hardware store, like a friend told me, they have to be special ordered. I got a pair from RaceDaySafety over-nighted after we struck out at all of the local race shops.

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I have used a HANS branded device twice before (see above right) and absolutely hated the experience, so I was hoping the Simpson Hybrid Pro would work better for me - to actually allow me to turn my head, look down more than 1 degree while in the car and strapped in, etc. As an autocrosser I'm used to having my head on a swivel and looking way ahead, sometimes 90 degrees from the direction I'm traveling. I even autocross many times with an open faced helmet, for better visibility. The HANS I used back in 2012 was not a sliding tether style that allows you to rotate your head, so that was part of the misery. At Hallett there are a few corners where you have to turn more than 90 degrees in a very short span of track, so looking out the side window to check and set-up corners would be crucial.

Still, I was determined to try to set a better example with my safety gear, vowing to run all of my sessions wearing my 3 layer suit, Nomex lined shoes and gloves; the Hybrid Pro attached and my Schroth 6-point belts secured tight. I was already sporting the back injury and this was my first event back, and I didn't want to make matters worse if I had a crash. Also, I was keeping an eye on the pain - if it got bad, I promised my wife Amy that I was going to hand off driving to my TT3 team mate (Amy). She wanted the seat time, too, so I had to watch my mouth and NOT complain unless it got really bad!

NASA at Hallett, June 21-22, 2014

Amy didn't have enough time off from work to go up a day early and run the Friday test-n-tune. That's a shame, as we both needed the seat time at this track. I had run the CCW 1.8 mile Hallett circuit all of about 15 laps that one day in 2013, and Amy had no laps at all. My friend John and another buddy of his (and MCS customer of ours) Garrett arrived on Thursday night and had a good paddock spot set-up for us outside of Turn 9 (aka "The Bitch"). TT1 racer Marc Sherrin was also on site and paddocked with them by Friday morning and taking laps, and TTU racer Paul Costas was there as well in his GT-1 Camaro.

Vorshlag Event Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...allett-062114/
Note - these pics are by me/Amy, Paul Costas, or Hallett's photographer (I bought a CD of pics)

We left Dallas plenty early at 2 pm, took our usual route north to Oklahoma City on I-35 and .... stopped. For an hour. There was massive construction traffic north of town that delayed our arrival by an hour, so we didn't get to the track until 7:30 pm. Luckily June 22nd is the longest day of the year so it was light until 9 pm, which allowed us plenty of time to unhook our trailer and... cart everyone to dinner 25 miles away. See, the Hallett Motor Racing Circuit is located in a remote part of rural Oklahoma and the nearest hotels are 25-35 miles away.

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Marc had heard of some restaurant "on a lake" called Freddie's Steakhouse that was supposed to be good - and once we found it, it was actually pretty awesome. Amy and I were joined by racers Marc, Costas and HPDE director Scott for a solid 2 hour dinner where we laughed ourselves silly. Since we drove them to dinner we took another hour of driving to take most of them back to the track, then we went off in the opposite direction to our hotel in Sand Springs, 30 miles away. It made for a long day and late night but we had a good time.

Saturday June 21st - TT Day 1

Back at the track by 7 am Saturday morning and we quickly unloaded the Mustang. Finally saw John and Garrett from Colorado, who were paddocked next to us and Marc. We did some quick checks of the car, mounted the vidcam and AiM Solo DL, then went up to the club house for the TT meeting at 8 am. We had 44 TT cars entered, which made for a huge field. We were to go out together in the first TT Practice as a group but then the TT group was split into two groups for the rest of Saturday: TT1/2/3/U in one group and TTB-TTF in another.

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There was ample coverage of the Passing Under Yellow issues we had at TWS and what was acceptable and what was not for this weekend. Dave B, Ken B and Scot Adams all put their foot down about PUY, not blocking, how to take a cool down lap without impeding, and where to safely pass at this track. It was a good meeting and I hope we can continue to have these open discussions amongst the TT drivers like this before each day of racing.

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All 44 TT cars went out in the practice sessions with me driving and Amy riding shotgun. We were on the sticker set of Hoosiers with a plan to set an aggressive lap time and try to grid ahead of as many TT1 and TT2 cars as possible, to avoid traffic in later sessions. Amy has never driven this track before and I have only taken about 20 laps or so, so it was still a learning experience. Not to mention the radical changes we had made to the car since we raced here in 2013 - new aero, wider tires, new suspension and more weight.

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This session started at 8:40 am, 77 degrees but humid, and I went out 3rd in grid (getting to grid early in these free-for-all first practice sessions is key!), behind Paul Costas TTU Camaro in front and Marc Sherrin's TT1 Corvette in 2nd. They both checked out and we were driving with a good gap in front and behind on the first lap. I was hoping I could show Amy a good line in this session without crashing, hitting a curb or going off track. Which did NOT happen, unfortunately! hehehe... I actually did go off track at Turn 6 in the 2nd hot lap.

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The TT Practice on Saturday is critical to get a good GRID PLACEMENT... which is why I was pushing so hard and went off, heh

My first hot lap was a gentle 1:26 lap and then I was stepping it up in speed for lap two. We had the rear wing set at 12 degrees AoA which was a bit too much, and it was pushing at speed. There's also no more reference markers on track, as it had just been fully repaved about 6 weeks before. I turned in a little early in T6 and just got on the throttle a bit too early and just drove off the end of the turn. Not normally a big deal, as there's some smooth run-off here, but with the new paving there's a bit of a drop to the nicely mowed grass at the edge of the track and the "Drop" caught the leading edge of the splitter and pushed it back about 5 inches. Unbeknownst to me the splitter also acted as a mowing blade and gave the landscaping a closer cut, which packed up the lower grill's mesh with grass almost completely.

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What's wrong about the picture above? The grill is PACKED full of grass! #fairslawnservice

This cuts off all airflow to the radiator. Amazingly we finished that lap and one more before it started to run hot. I was exiting Turn 9 (The Bitch) on this 4th hot lap and I was catching the back of the TT1/2/3 field. As I crept up on a C5 Z06 I starting seeing spitting of water on the windshield. I made it around the final Turn T10 and on the front straight I looked down and saw the temp gauge starting to move quickly into the red. I was already past pit in and going 100+ so I shut off the motor and pulled offline, pointing everyone I had just passed back by me. Got around Turn 1 and there's no good place to pull off, so I briefly re-fired the motor, got around turns T2-T3 and pulled off, track right. By now the radiator cap had popped and it was gushing steam out of the hood vents and onto the windshield. I went off slowly enough not to damage the splitter further but it was pouring smoke and for a second there I thought it was actually on FIRE.

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Saturday-Sunday's Hallett CCW track map. Ignore the "bunch up" and "go green" markers, which I royally screwed up on this version

Luckily it was just steam, but we had both already bailed out and the car was a good 50 yards off the track. We walked over behind a tire barrier and a corner worked came trotting over from Turn 4 to check on us, fire bottle in hand. I was wishing I had a bottle in the car at that very moment (more on that in a bit). I assured him we were OK and would stay behind the tire wall until the session ended, and that we didn't need a tow. I was just going to let it cool off, cleared the grill mesh of grass, and would limp it back to the paddock. While we were standing that the corner worker got a call on his radio and went running back to Turn 4. We couldn't see what had happened but as the cars went streaking by we noticed Jeff Tan's red TT3 EVO was missing....

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One of our strongest TT3 competitors (Jeff) ended his day early with tire wall contact. Luckily this is a fully caged race car

Shortly after there were black flags at all corner stations and the workers at T3 waved us back on track as a pair of wreckers went racing to T4. We drove around and saw that Jeff's EVO had plowed straight off of T4, went through/over the tire barrier and through the catch fence, and it looked ugly. He was out of the car and looked OK but the car looked pretty tore up. The course workers and wrecker crew spent a while rebuilding the tire walls here, something we saw another 3 or 4 times this weekend. Since Hallett is built in the rolling hills amidst a lot of trees, they have tire walls and barriers on many corners which you don't want to find your way into. I got a series of pictures of a BMW that had an off in Turn 8 and took out a tire wall as well, shown above and below.

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Boss302 entering Turn 9 (the Bitch) with the typical OEM suspension S197 brake dive

I was wearing my full driver suit, gloves, shoes and the Simpson Hybrid Pro during this full session and I was miserable, hot and soaking with sweat by the time we got back to the pits. I could not turn my head AT ALL using this Simpson and I generally hated wearing it. The D-rings were rattling and driving me nuts, and I tried wearing it again in 3 other sessions but it was so constricting that I couldn't see from T2 to T3 and it negatively impacted my driving each session I wore it. I also gave up on the driving suit by later that afternoon, as it got DAMNED HOT at Hallett and racing in this entry level 3-layer suit was unbearable. At another drivers meeting I noticed about a dozen of the TT drivers were using cool suits, even in only 3-4 lap blasts, and now I see why. And we just became a Coolshirt.com dealer, so now we might add one of these systems to our car... even after I said I'd never do that for TT. The heat and that damned suit was sapping the life out of me.

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Hallett Eats Cars. I personally snapped pictures of these two cars destroying tire walls. With no run-off, that's what you tend to hit

The front of Jeff's EVO is pretty much destroyed. That really sucks, but its another reminder of what can happen when you lose your brakes. Luckily ours worked great during that first session and the only failure was of my hack driving. We got to the pits and put about a gallon of water into the radiator and reservoir, then we thrashed on the car for an hour straight trying to fix the splitter. We had help from Patrick Lipsinic, Doug Worth, John and others. Time was running out and I was going to miss the next session if we didn't hurry, so we hooked up a strap to Doug's Raptor and pulled the splitter back into place.

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My little "off and on" caused a good bit of damage. It took 4 people and a Ford Raptor truck to get the splitter pulled back out

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Amy got all of the front supports off first, which we easily straightened. It wasn't perfect but it was at least level and enough forward so that the front tires didn't rub on the flares/splitter. That would have to do. We had checked times in the TT Practice and out of 44 cars I was still 6th fastest, with the off and overheating? I was hoping to make it to grid and I jumped in the Mustang, drove up to the hot pits just before the field was about to leave. Costas had the field pretty spread out and we had caught the back of the field on the 2nd lap, where I ran a best time of 1:23.469 with a pass on that lap. This was a solid second faster than last year, but I knew the car had a lot more in it. I made a total of two hot laps in this session and the car started running warm, so I came in early.

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If you ever pop one of these radiator caps, throw it away. We now keep a spare in the trailer

It was after this point that John Scheier mentioned that the radiator caps on these cars are a one time use cap - after they "pop" once from an overpressure condition, they never hold pressure again. Turns out he was right - we kept having to add water all weekend and it never would hold pressure again. Amy went out after that TT session in the HPDE3/4 group and made a bunch of laps, getting to a 1:29, but when it started to run warm she came in early. Since Hallett is remotely located in the "Oklahoma Outback" a quick trip top a parts store wasn't an option.

After lunch it was over 90 degrees, but I went out in the 3rd TT session anyway to see if I could find some time. Tires got super hot, and I got stuck for 2 laps behind some TT1/TT2 cars gridded ahead of me, which was very frustrating. One of the cars holding up me and a train of cars behind us made a mistake in T1 so I made a pass on him into T2, outbraking this much lighter car. He immediately tried to take the position back and was making some VERY high risk moves for the rest of that lap trying to overtake, which were uncalled for - this is supposed to be TT, not W2W. This happens sometimes when Wheel to Wheel racers pay extra to also run in Time Trial - they don't turn that "attack for position" goal off and it has actually caused some accidents in TT before. Anyway, I finished the lap, with a pitiful 1:23.6 lap, then "pointed him by" on the front straight. I may have... used the wrong finger to point him by. I was pretty upset at the 5-6 near misses we had with him driving like a jackass behind me on the 2nd half of the lap after I passed him (cleanly). And of course the trackside photographer got a great picture of my angry "point by", which got me into all sorts of trouble with NASA officials. I won't get into all of that drama, but it was a dumb thing to do and I won't do it again.

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My "angry bird" point by got me in a bit of trouble. Stupid mistake and very unprofessional. DON'T DO THIS (especially next to a photographer)

I won't be showing the video of this Lotus driver's ass-hattery because for one, all of this happened behind me after I passed him (I need a rear facing vidcam), and also because I lost my cool and the audio from my in-car camera was "too colorful". Due to the heat and massive traffic issues, this session ended up being a total waste of time and consumables. It only got hotter the rest of that day, so I sat out TT session 4 and let Amy make more laps in DE 3/4 and where she found two more seconds after finding some confidence. Before that session started she got stuck on grid belted in for 20 minutes (while yet another tire wall was being fixed after a Spec Miata smash-up-derby, wadding up one chassis) in 95 degree heat and she got overheated herself, with some signs of heat exhaustion after she came in from driving and got out of the car. We ended up putting 2-1/2 gallons of water in the car and we drank as much or more ourselves that day.

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Amy ran in DE 3/4 sessions all weekend but likely took more laps than me, at this, her first Hallett event

Nobody went faster in TT sessions 3 or 4, and we wisely skipped session 4. Lots of crashed cars, and I got pictures of cars going through tire walls at T2 and another at T8. A Miata rolled after it was tagged from behind, Jeff's EVO, and our off and overheat. This track will really bite you in the ass if you go off in the wrong place, that's for sure. Big classes, with 10 in TT1 and 7 in TT3. We managed to win TT3 and ended up 7th overall in TT times, but it was not my best driving (or behavior) that day and we were really exhausted by the time the Saturday night party started at 6:30.

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After racing was over I broke out the beer and we hung out and cooled off with friends parked nearby in the paddock (John, Marc, Garrett) and saw Oklahoma residents Mark Council, Pat, and Brandon Jung who came to the track to watch the track side action. We stuck around long enough to get to the party, ate some good barbeque provided by NASA, drank some more cheap beer, then bowed out early to get Amy back to the hotel and cool her off. For some reason the Hampton Inn gave us a jacuzzi suite so I took a long soak that night and got cooled off myself, too.

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Left: its always more fun when you can paddock with friends - John (Tt3 Boss302), Marc (TT1 C6 Z06) and Garrett (TTB E36 M3)

With as poorly as I drove that day -including the "off" in practice and "angry bird" session that nearly got me DSQ'd for the day I was downright LUCKY to pull off the TT3 win that day. My best lap was a 1:23.469, which was a solid two seconds back from the TT2 winner (Josh Dunn) and nearly four seconds back from the TT1 winner (Marc Sherrin). I'm usually not that far off these guys and had to wait for Sunday's TT event to try to better my overall placement. It looks like I won the class by 3.5 seconds but in reality I was chasing John Scheier, who had a 1:25.7 best lap but was switched to TTU for non-competition reasons. John had some off-track troubles in some sessions, but I knew he could drop 1-3 seconds if he found the right line here. With 7 in TT3 class at least I scored 2 Hoosier tires for the win. I vowed to Amy that Sunday would be "drama free" and faster.

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Official End of Saturday TT Results (link) are copied above. We had a NASA Texas record of 44 competitors in TT at this event

Sunday June 22nd - TT Day 2

Sunday went a lot better than Saturday. There was a bit of a panic in the morning when a "end of Saturday" TT results sheet showed me as DSQ'd but it was only a typo. Before the day started we refilled the radiator once again and finally adjusted the rear wing, to dial out a lot of the angle I had dialed in (went from 12 to 6 degrees), and the balance was a LOT better. I also removed the ballast plates in the trunk, which NASA's scales said were not needed. I went across the scales at Impound at 3864 pounds during a session Saturday (on a 3802 pound minimum), then after pulling the weight plates out and running less fuel it was 3812 pounds at another morning impound check on Sunday (that was close!), so I ran with a tick more fuel after that.

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I went out in the first session and put down a 1:22.4XX, which was already a second quicker than Saturday. It felt decent but I got held up a little on my first lap by a wicked little TT2 Porsche 944 LSx swap car, but he was cool and pulled offline to let me by on the next lap. Got my best lap in on lap 2, then came in to hand off the car to Amy, who immediately went out in DE 3/4 and dropped a second herself from Saturday.

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I went out again in a hot TT session 2 (92 degrees!) before lunch and ran my best time of the weekend, following Josh Dunn's TT2/ST2 EVO for a couple of laps. See the real "bitch" corner for me at Hallett wasn't Turn 9, which has always been easy to me, but Turn 4. When going CCW T4 is a tricky, decreasing, blind, uphill turn that totally dictates how you enter T5 and then T6 immediately after. You have to set-up out of T3 SUPER wide track left (on the rumbles) for the late entry to the right-hander T4, then give T4 a SUPER late apex. I hadn't seen anyone else do this turn as well as Josh had and following his line allowed my time to melt away - but some that have seen my video say it could have been even later, and I'm inclined to agree. My lines aren't ever perfect, I'm just a hack autocrosser, and I'll be the first to admit that I suck at Hallett. This car was capable of 1:20 or even 1:19 laps, but... I was a bit timid in my braking zones after having the off in my first session of the weekend and nursing the back injury.

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For you Hallett regulars, yes - I know my lines are not ideal and there is room left in the car

Still, my second hot lap of a 1:21.751 in this 2nd Sunday TT session was good enough for a win and was a solid 3 seconds quicker than our best CCW lap from 2013. Josh Dunn ran his best TT2 time of the weekend in front of me, a 1:21.2, so I think we kind of pushed each other (you can see him pull away from me in the laps above). Running a 1:21 had been a secret goal of mine all weekend, and it felt good to hit that. The AiM's predictive timer kept showing me 1:21s but I couldn't seem to hit that until Sunday. I came in after this lap and called it a day for CCW laps and Amy went out once more in DE 3/4 after lunch and got down to a 1:26 lap. While she was out on track I rode along with James Wester (in his 5.0L S197, which he's modded with many Vorshlag parts) and did a check ride for him in HPDE3, and signed him off for HPDE4 - coming from an autocross background and previous track experience he was obviously fast and he was ready.

Sure, TT1 was 3 seconds faster and even TT2 beat our times at this event as well, but I was still happy to walk away with the 2nd class win of the weekend against some tough competitors. John Scheier had moved his Boss302 to TTU to help the class count there but he was really the TT3 car I was pushing to stay ahead of. He runs TT3 in the Rocky Mountain region, I've known him for 15+ years, and he runs on AST double adjustable coilovers that came off of my 2013 GT plus seats and wheels he got from Vorshlag. Behind John's Boss302 in TT3 was a Porsche 930, a GT3, an M3 and a C5 Z06. With only a narrow 2 second gap to 2nd place Scheier on Saturday it had stretched to a nearly 5 second lead on Sunday, when I finally pulled my head out of my ass and drove a little better.

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Doug Wirth brought his TTB E36 M3 up from Dallas but broke a pressure plate and headed home on Saturday

We skipped TT session 3 as it was even hotter at 94 degrees, and not many went any faster in this session. We did stick around for the TT trophy presentation, after the 3rd TT session. They handed out trophies down to 3rd place and we got to take pictures with the trophy girls who had some Big Texas Hair, hehe. They were good sports and we had fun, even sneaking our cars into the winner's circle for some shots. We all ate a bunch of ice cream from the clubhouse, and ice cream makes everything better.

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Final TT session on Sunday... "Reverse Skate!"

There was a merged TT session 4 at the end of the day Sunday at 4:30 pm, that was to be run in the OPPOSITE direction. Going Clock Wise at Hallett is extra tricky, as entries into Turns T9, T7, T5 and T4 are all blind and the runoff at T3 pretty much puts you into the middle of T2 if you overshoot. Not too many folks race Hallett in this direction but it was a "non-points" session just for fun... but new lap records would be acknowledged. And you know from reading this build thread, I'm all about the lap records.

Luckily I already held the CW TT3 lap record because it started raining as soon as we took to the track. 10 cars went out and I gridded up 3rd behind Raymond and Marc's TT1 cars, who were pitched in a heated battle all weekend - Marc won TT1 by .03 sec ahead of Raymond on Saturday, then they switched finishing positions in class on Sunday by .1 seconds but trailed a Lotus who took the win. Marc went out first and Raymond followed closely on his heels and the two of them flat out left me. I couldn't get the Mustang to stick in the spitting rain and I wasn't about to risk the car for a non-points session, especially since I already held this lap record. There was no driver confidence left once the rain started after this trying weekend, heh.

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Left: The TT field was big all weekend, even split in half! Right: The clouds rolled and sprinkled rain in for the one CW Sunday TT session

After two laps behind a pace car to show driver's the unusual CW driving line before they went 10/10hs, Raymond's Viper put down a 1:23.3 and Marc was two tenths back, both of them driving like mad in the rain. I was very slow with a 1:27.6, and after 2 laps it started running hot again. The vidcam's SD card had filled up (Amy forgets to turn off the thing every time) and I forgot to turn on the Harry's Lap Timer video/data logging app on my Samsung S4 for this session, so there's nothing to see. That's probably good, as it was slow (results here), about a second slower than I ran in 2013 going CW. I wasn't about to stuff the car off into a tire wall in the rain, what with so little to gain in this "non-points" session (especially since we already have the CW Hallett TT3 track record).

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Left: Front brake caliper temps were down 80 degrees from 3" ducting! Right: Our paddock was next to this picturesque pond

We let the car cool down while we hooked up the trailer to the F350, while it really started to rain. I was still a little baffled by the overheating issues after filling up the coolant, but John kept saying the coolant reservoir cap was indeed a "one pop then done" deal, so we have since replaced it and now keep a spare in the trailer. Good news - the 4" brake ducting really worked. The brake temps were way down, only peaking at 410°F on this brake intensive track (an 80°F drop from the 3" ducts/hoses/plates). The Motul RBF 660 brake fluid did great and I never once lost pedal pressure. We even had a LOT of brake pad left after this event - enough to do at least 1 if not 2 more track weekends, which is a big $$ savings. I've said it before but brake ducting pays for itself quickly, in saved brake pad/rotor wear and avoided crashes. :)

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We used maybe 15 gallons of 93 octane Texas fuel all weekend and added 1/2 quart of oil over about 9 sessions driven. The tires looked great after all of this abuse and looking back we probably could have won both days on a scrub set - but hindsight is always 20/20. If 2013 TT3 National champ Chris Mayfield had shown up (as he threatened) I would have needed every bit of grip advantage of sticker A6s, and then some!

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Our paddock space was perfect for the weekend as it gave us nice views of the track and the lush green hills of Hallett. The new paving on the track and infield roads was much appreciated and lap records fell left and right in TT and other classes.

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New Hallett track records were set in all 10 TT classes going CCW and 5 classes going CW

The track folks served great food all weekend (awesome "track burger") and we ate some damned good catfish and Cajun jambalaya on Sunday, skipping our normal "lets make a sandwich" lunch. The rain let up quickly after the racing stopped and cooled us off while were loading up. We rolled out at 5 pm, so it was a long HOT day and we were ready to head back to Dallas. Marc took us on a new route home (highway 99 to 75 through Ada) using lots of 2 lane highways straight south, avoiding the bumpy, nasty Indian Nation Turnpike and the traffic of Oklahoma City and Denton in Dallas. This lopped an hour off our normal 5 hour I-35 route, which was nice.

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Official end of Sunday TT Results (link) are copied above. We did a LOT better on Sunday

Anyway, with another win on Sunday we snagged two more Hoosiers for a total of 4 tires. It looks like we are the first TT entry in Texas to snag a regional championship for the year (the only team to place first at all 8 of the regional TT dates in 2014). We've had quite a streak of wins this year but we haven't "banked" any sticker tires yet, so this set will be saved for our next NASA event - which is unknown at this point (more on that below). Amy has been trying to talk me out of going to NASA Nationals, with the crash I had there and all. Might be a wise choice, but I've been fighting to get us there. The BIG event for us this year really is the SEMA/Optima Shootout November 8-9th and the next NASA Texas events after Nationals is Sept 20-21 at NOLA and Oct 11-12 at TWS, which I hope we can make.

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Two TT3 wins, 4 tires, and resetting our 2013 TT3 lap record by 3 seconds works for me!

My back did great all weekend right until I wretched it working on the damned splitter repairs on Saturday. Once again I regretted not bringing someone else from Vorshlag to help, over did it, and had to deal with some pain that I could have avoided. The driving itself was fine, and caused zero back pain. Wearing the somewhat constrictive back brace, the constrictive Simpson Hybrid Pro, and the heavy/thick driving suit all added up to "too many layers" - which made it difficult to breath and my body got too damned hot in the 96°F heat we saw. I really have GOT to get a better 2-layer driving suit, soon, and will keep trying different Head and Neck Restraint Systems until I find one that allows me to turn my freagin head just a little.

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Paul Costas had a good weekend, winning TTU both days and setting the fastest lap time of the weekend in his 1997 GT1 Camaro - you can see his write-up on his blog (when he gets around to adding it). It was fun seeing folks from 4 different regions all come together at Hallett as well as our Texas TT racers, who all did really well. Thanks to all of the NASA volunteers and race directors who put on a great event. The Hallett folks also went all out, were super nice and accommodating, had the track and grounds looking great all weekend, cleaned the bathrooms every day, had ice for sale at the track, and provided excellent food.

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Left: Costas took home several trophies and had an epic shirt. Right: Dave and Will from NASA Texas

A lot of records were broken in TT and Spec Miata as well as some other classes. Yuri Kouznetsov made some laps in TT2 on Sunday to test his Pikes Peak set-up, then he and TT1 racer Raymond left Hallett and went directly to Colorado Springs. They both raced at the 92nd running of the PPIHC starting a couple of days later and both not only finished but good finish times, so congrats to them.

What's Next?

This write-up has gotten a bit too long so I am going to wrap it up. Here's a preview of what will be in the next S197 Build Thread installments as well as a final word about NASA Nationals.

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+ ST3/TT3 2013 Mustang GT Build - We will keep adding to this S197 build thread with new content, like the race prep we are doing to Jamie Beck's 2013 Mustang for NASA ST3/TT3. In the next few weeks this car is getting an AJ Hartman wing and custom uprights, custom end plates, then a cage and starting on a major diet. We've already got it down to 3276 pounds and haven't even touched the glass or removed any stock sheet metal - this is all from just removing factory interior parts. We will document every pound coming out of this car from here on out (and will show how it is already at 3276).

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+ Repairs and Updates after Hallett - After my simple "off and on" at Hallett I damaged a few exterior bits. The "pushed back" splitter was removed, some duct work was replaced, and we even added and upgraded some aluminum panels hidden under the bumper cover (a lower panel was added), the splitter mounts were fixed, etc. I tear up things and Vorshlag techs fix it. Rinse, repeat.

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+ Adding a fire bottle & quick-release mount - After seeing the smoke pour out of the hood on our Mustang at Hallett (luckily it was only steam), then seeing cars at Pikes Peak + Hallett get burned from small engine fires that turned into larger ones due to a lack of a fire bottle, I figured it was past time. We have rounded up an affordable 2.5 pound bottle and it will be mounted in the car on a quick-release mount at the passenger side of the trans tunnel. That way I don't have to drive a car ON FIRE to a corner station to try to find a fire extinguisher if something happens. The fireball below was from a car we worked on (aero work + cage mods) that since entered the 2014 Pikes Peak event. About $120 investment in a fire bottle & mount can potentially save you thousands in fire damage. Will cover this more in the next update (they just finished it an hour ago - looks great).

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+ New search for a HANS continues - I've scratched two off the list but there are many more. I know about all of the options, but what I would like is to borrow a couple more and try them out. So far I am thoroughly unimpressed with how much these restrain my head movement in the car.

+ Two sets of prototype AST S197 coilovers - These just went up for sale today in our Clearance section. There's also some other new additions for slightly used S197 parts in there. Vorshlag is once again an AST/Moton dealer but the new U.S. distributor doesn't have any inventory in the USA yet (and might not for weeks or months). But we have recently taken in (on trade) a couple of special sets of prototype ASTs, including the first (and possibly only) set of AST 4200s for the S197 chassis as well as the first set of 4150 prototypes that we used on our 2011 GT for two years. Both sets have been checked out and are good to go, and you can add camber plates, springs and ride height adjusters to get a killer set of monotube adjustables on your car for a big savings over new AST or MCS prices. Details are at the links below for each set.

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Left: Prototype AST 4150 shock set for S197 (from my car!). Right: Prototype (and only) AST 4200 shock set for S197

+ MCS deal for BMWs and S197 from July 7th to August 4th - If you order an MCS set for any S197 Mustang, BMW E30, BMW E36 or BMW E46 during this time frame there is a $100 savings on the optional rear spring kits, to help introduce the new Vorshlag rear ride height platforms.

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+ New S197 Fender Flare Kit Under Development - Our friends at Heritage have taken what they learned making the custom steel rear flares on our Mustang and have replicated this for another one of our customers, but also added custom front flares and a lot of "Extra Aero Pieces" to finish the wide body look off. They are pulling molds off of this car below and will offer composite offerings for all of this "soon". I will cover more of this in my next update, when hopefully the car below is painted/finished and the molds are ready. The plan is to get them to make the first set of composite front fenders for our car before SEMA. Fingers crossed...

http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/photos/i...-hjc4d6W-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/photos/i...-bVqSjLt-S.jpg

+ Vorshlag Attends Drift vs Grip Event - I was going to cover that in this update but ran out of time. This was a Lone Star Drift event with a "5 lap battle" between the fastest drift cars and a few NASA TT drivers. It was UGLY, but we all had a lot of fun, and I'll show video and pics of this event next time. Here's some preview pictures of me driving like a jackass.

http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...B61G2222-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...B61G2001-S.jpg

+ Vorshlag Skipping NASA Nationals East

After a lot of internal debate we have decided to skip the NASA Nationals event being held August 31st at Road Atlanta. There are several reasons. First, this "split Nationals" (East and West coast) is kind of lame and winning either one only makes you a "half champion". It was a novel idea but I don't want to spend the money and take the risks to do just the East event. That's the second reason - Risk. After looking at the carnage from Hallett, which has very little runoff area but low overall speeds, I am not comfortable going to Road Atlanta without a cage. This is another track with little runoff but HIGH speeds. Too many concrete K-walls and rough gravel traps (there should not have been an 18" drop into/out of that gravel trap) will keep me away until we have a caged car, and a better reason to go back and risk breaking something on my body again. Third is - Car Damage. I have a buyer lined up for the 2011 Mustang after SEMA, and I cannot afford to wad it up at Road Atlanta and ruin the car and the buyers future plans for it.

http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E..._map.svg-S.jpg http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects..._map_BFG-S.jpg
Road Atlanta (left) is hilly, fast, and unyielding. The LVMS 2.4 mile outfield course (right) is flat, slower speeds, and much safer

Instead of spending thousands of dollars going to Road Atlanta we are going to focus on the 2014 Optima Ultimate Street Car shootout (which we snagged an invitation to after winning the March USCA event) at LVMS in November. We will go and do a test event there as well. After that event the 2011 GT will be sold so we can focus on other projects (like the 2015 Mustang) and to help expand our business. Selling this 2011 Mustang helps us get into a bigger building, which we badly need. Ideally we would go to NASA Nats and give it a shot, but the reward just isn't worth the risk this time. Sorry...

So that's enough for this time. Stay tuned for more!

Vorshlag decided not to sponsor the forum any longer.

You can read our S197 build thread, and lots of other tech threads, on other forums and our own website forum, http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/

Thank you,