continued from above
The first
car issue was a broken vacuum line from the JLT oil separator that was added in 2011. This part helps catch oil residue coming from the heads (that would normally pump back into the intake manifold) caused during high RPM use (7800 rev limit? Yea, that qualifies!). The problem was this JLT kit it came with plastic fittings and inflexible plastic vacuum lines that are
prone to breakage.
After my first run it I opened the hood and the catch can lay there askew, with the line or fitting obviously broken. I grabbed some zip ties an secured the unit but with this line wide open I was losing vacuum. A-ha! This is why I was losing brake booster assist after any long straights, hence the hard pedal. Eureka! I've been complaining of this issue at autocrosses for many months, back into 2011, so there's no telling how long ago this fitting cracked (see below for "the fix").
Another issue was, as you can see above, the tire rub (then tire smoke) shown above. The 345/45/18 rears were both taller and significantly wider than the 315/35/18 Kumhos, and rubbed at two locations on the inside of the chassis - on the body at the forward section of the frame rail where it curves outward and on the rear swaybar. I would turn in, the car would take a set, where the axle would slide over and the tire would move relative to the rim, and the inner sidewall would start to "catch and release" the rub points - hop hop hopping through the long turns. This caused enough rubbing that it would smoke heavily. I kept an eye on it but there was little I could do other than drop out or keep going. I kept going.
So I had miscalculated a bit on the 14" wide rears. They need to go out
another 1/2" and then they'd look like Bubba going to the Drag Strip. We have the rear ride height compromised enough as it is for extra clearance and Amy said a firm "NO!" to flaring the rear of the car. So... when this set is gone we'll switch back to the 315 and tuck it all under the rear fenders. Again, I'm a fan of a narrow track for autocrossing, and this is very much "not narrow" at the moment.
The one problem that was missing was... the traction control faults and steering feedback shudder. WTF? This is a mystery but I have noticed that the more wheel spin we see the more problematic the steering is and the more faults we trigger. With 345mm rear A6s and a fresh LSD out back there was dramatically less wheel spin. This is good, because both the OEM replacement and the FRPP race re-programmed steering racks (M-3200-EPAS, $1249) are on national back-order until June 23rd. We found one in the country after calling dozens of places, and they were saving it as a spare for their GRAND AM race team. Wouldn't sell it to us for any amount of money. So... we cross our fingers and hope this steering rack and traction control fault issues take a hiatus. :/
We had been running with -4.0° front camber and I also noticed several pics showing the outside front tire loaded up at almost vertical, and not positive camber. Again, we're not using too much negative, and could even use a hair more possibly.
Updates After The Autocross
In preparation for the upcoming 4 day weekend of racing in Lincoln we knocked out these updates and repairs. First up was replacing the hoses/fittings and improving the mounting of the JLT oil separator.
Ryan made the bracket out of aluminum and bolted it to open flanges on the valve cover, then bolted the catch can to that. He had one of our vendors make the lines and fittings and buttoned that up quickly. Looks like how it should have been from Day 1 - I knew better than to let that aluminum can hang from plastic hoses and fitting. Its funny how these obviously poor parts can come back and bite you in the ass... no idea how long this has been broken. Hopefully I'll have a better brake pedal from now on!
Next up was the catch can installation for the rear differential fluid overflow problem we've been fighting at track events and even some autocrosses since day 1. Remember the fiasco this year from TWS, with oil spewing onto the rear tires? The little vent cap thing in the RR axle tube is a joke, and oil can and will come spraying out when it gets hot - and it will get hot at a track day. I bought this billet catch can and mount in mid 2011, and we finally got around to installing it. The factory vent was removed and a new fitting and custom made lines were fabricated by our hose vendor (who's a good friend of mine). Ryan bolted the catch can to the rear seat bulkhead and routed both the vent line from the axle and the "overflow" line from the catch can through a factory grommet in the trunk floor, on the driver's side just behind the back seats. Fixed!
Some wider spacers were procured and the 18x12 wheels and 345 tires went more outboard, and look just terrible. If we could massage the inner fender areas we could make this tire fit, but that's a big no-no in the SCCA, so out goes the wheel. With a custom swaybar (legal) and 45 minutes with a sledge hammer (not), these wheels would tuck inside the fenders. GRR.
Last up was foglight opening "grills". We had a customer's Boss 302S race car in the shop this week to do some suspension set-up work and we saw several great ideas on the car, including how they mounted the wire mesh grills in the foglight opening. These are functionally necessary to keep rocks and balled up tire rubber from hitting the evap core or radiator fins when lapping the Mustang behind other cars. The lower grill opening is also wide open from the factory and the evap fins on our car are already smashed up a good bit, and starting to happen behind the now missing foglights.
Ryan took the tighter stainless mesh material we picked up a few weeks back and made some round sections slightly larger than the foglight openings, then painted them black. Then he drilled a series of VERY small holes around the round rear openings in the grill. Last he tied stainless safety wire thru these holes to hold it in place, just like how the 302S does it. Sometimes seeing something done simply makes a solution so obvious. Looks good, functions great, no more smashed cooler fins. The grills are almost invisible at this rez above, but clearly visible in person or in
higher rez pics.
Oh yea, the
under-trunk carpet was reattached so we'd be extra-legal for the upcoming dual SCCA events.
Many Upcoming Events
There are several competition and track day events we have planned in the near future for our Mustang test mule. This weekend in Lincoln is the SCCA "Spring Nationals", with a ProSolo Friday-Saturday and a National Tour Sunday-Monday. After that we have a weekend off, followed by 3 straight weekends of racing in June:
Looks like we have a busy month of testing ahead. Click any of the links above to find out about coming to watch or to enter any of these events. We'll have the Mustang at all of them listed above, and we will give ride-alongs on any run we take, if they allow it. Just bought a special set of 200 treadwear tires for the Optima event, we'll be running the big A6s in Lincoln one more time, and the 315 Kumho V710s for the other two track day events at ECR. I'll talk more about each of these events in future thread updates.
Trailer is loaded, 11 hour tow to Nebraska tomorrow...
Cheers,