continued from above
Bigger Wheels
Another new ESP modification we added were 315/35/18 Kumho V710 R compound tires mounted to
Forgestar F14 wheels in 18x11" (front) and 18x12" (rear) sizes. We had been eying Forgestar (a division of iForged) for a while now and decided to give these wheels a try for larger widths like these. We called the guys in California there and they knew about Vorshlag and our Mustang, and our propensity for using big wheels. After speaking with them for a bit, they wanted us to become a dealer. So now we are a Forgestar dealer - if you see anything in their catalog you like, we sell at their MAP price.
They did a super-rush build and made these wheels (from flow-formed/semi-forged blanks they keep in stock) in an extremely short time frame for us. These were machined to our 5x114.3 bolt pattern, hub bore, and backspacing. We have done a ton of testing to see how far we can push wheel widths on this car and we sent them our specs... and no, I'm not sharing those with you. If you want wheels that fit like these, call us and we'll be glad to sell you a set.
It's the only piece of the puzzle we can hold onto, and we've spent a lot of time and money learning these wheel specs on this chassis.
Even being careful as we measured for backspacing, then calculated offset, we still missed the numbers a hair in the rear and had to add a small spacer. So ... that meant longer wheel studs in the rear were needed. AJ pulled the rear axles out and used our new 30 ton press to remove and install the studs. Now we have ARP long studs on both front and rear axles (and the front/rear studs are different spline diameters and part numbers, so don't just order 20 of one part). All of this final wheel fitting was happening as the spoiler was being built and other race prep work was being performed, all while we had customer cars coming for service and orders were being built and flying out the door. It was a hectic week to say the least.
That final rear spacer tweak got us to this fitment with 11's in the front and 12's in the rear. The front is too tight for 12's under stock contours, hence the 11's, but the rear has the room for a race application (I wouldn't recommend either of the above for a pure street car). I'm very happy with the wheels, which have insane amounts of front brake caliper clearance and a pretty low weight. I will talk more about Forgestar costs and weights in a future post - after we do some more testing on them. They worked flawlessly at the ProSolo and next we'll see how well they do at a banked/high speed track tomorrow - with a NASA time trial at Texas World Speedway.
Delays and Improvements
Now here is the part I hate. Many of you reading these posts have pre-purchased or put your "name in line" for some products we've helped develop on this very Mustang, including D-Force 18x10" wheels and AST 4150 shocks. Both of those products, which Vorshlag ordered in large quantities in 2011, are
over 3 months late being built and delivered to us. We have already refunded many of our pre-purchase wheel customers due to the continuous delays. AST stopped giving me dates and we received news this week that the D-Force shipment was delayed yet again. That's after we were told that the container was already here in the USA at port! Now they're saying May 14th.
I'm pulling my hair out in chunks! I just want to apologize here to anyone waiting on parts, and I did so publicly in
this blog post yesterday.
In that blog post I also talk about several improvements we've made to the Vorshlag branded products that we can better control deliveries on, such as several coating and plating upgrades we've made to various parts in our Vorshlag camber plates. Also, we finally received the machined and laser cut parts for our all-new S197 Mustang camber plates, which went to the electro-plater yesterday. I need these for my own Mustang and we have lots of patient customers waiting for these unique camber plates, so that was exciting. These should finally start shipping next week. So that's some good news to go with the bad.