continued from above
Explain The Gains
What made the 2 second improvement in this car since June 23rd? That is a BIG jump in time for a car that is otherwise unchanged, and one that we have driven so much at this track (I am not really "learning to drive the track better", having made many hundreds of laps here in the past five years). The only changes to the 2011 GT since our 1:58 laps were the slight bump in spring rates (which I detailed in my last post) and the addition of the
full suite of Whiteline S197 components. I might sound like a broken record but this Whiteline stuff really has transformed the car, which we have noted at the Solo Nationals, GTA at TMS, and at NASA at ECR this past weekend. The
Watts Link is the big game changer, but their swaybars, LCAs and rear relocation brackets helped, too. This stuff works, and more importantly, it doesn't make any racket on the street.
I am very, very impressed with the Whiteline parts and apparently you guys are responding to our positive results, with a lot of Whiteline S197 (and BRZ!) sales in the past few weeks. Thanks.... because in the end, that helps us keep doing what we're doing: trying new products, designing our own parts, and racing on them to prove what works and what doesn't.
Dyno Testing
So on Wednesday of this week we took three of Vorshlag's project cars to
True Street Motorsports in McKinney for some dyno testing.
Nothing earth shattering here, just a routine "check-up" dyno pull on the 2011 GT and a first "Baseline" pull on the still stock 2013 GT and Matt's 2013 BRZ. Weather kind of sucked, with 100% humidity plus spitting rain, and even with SAE standardized corrections the 2011 tested a tick lower than the 430 whp pull on the same dyno back in Spring, but still pretty close at 424 whp.
The 2013 also made exactly what I thought it would make at 376.9 whp - within 1 hp of the 2011 GT when it was in stock form (
378.5 whp). Ford re-rated the Coyote 5.0 in 2012 with an additional 8 hp (412 -> 420) but it didn't show up on our dyno test. Me thinks it was marketing fluff.
Still, 377 whp is nothing to sneeze at, and most of the reason why the 2013 was able to knock down that 2:07.3 lap at ECR. Like I stated above, the only thing it had on track was
horsepower, as the brakes and handling were pretty much crap in stock form, in my view. It was a big floaty missile, that once you got it pointed in the right direction would gobble up straight-aways, but sometimes fly off the end of them. We were a solid 4 seconds faster
on the exact same set of 295mm street tires with just better suspension/brakes in the '11 GT, and the 47 hp difference between these cars wasn't where we made up 4 seconds. Then we were fully
11 seconds faster with the tweaked '11 GT on slightly wider R compounds. And driving the '11 GT was much easier and confidence inspiring.
The overlay dyno chart above is showing all three cars: the 2011 GT with headers and a cold air (plus a custom tune by True Street), the bone stock 2013 GT, and the bone stock 2013 Subaru BRZ. Look at the shapes of the dyno curves for the stock vs modded 5.0 GTs -
they are remarkably similar. The big
1-7/8" Long Tube ARH headers and the Steeda cold air added torque and horsepower EVERYWHERE, with zero loss of torque at any RPM. In fact there is an extra "torque hump" on the '11 at the extreme low end (2500-3200), which is very noticeable street driving both cars back-to-back. For the 2013 GT's headers I am again going with the bigger of the two primary options on the
ARH long tubes, as it is simply a win-win over the 1-3/4" primaries (as ARH told me, the 1-7/8" full length units "make more power everywhere" than the smaller primary option).
The little BRZ made 167 whp, which was more than I thought it would. About right for a car rated at 200 hp (meh, so it is about a 16% drivetrain loss). And yes, our 2013 GT stickered ($31K) almost the same as the BRZ ($27K), but the GT was actually purchased for several thousand dollars less (with that $1500 rebate, + it is domestic and therefor they deal). But you don't buy a BRZ or FR-S for horsepower, you get one because it is a nimble RWD chassis that weighs almost 800 pounds less than the solid axle GT. Completely different animal. You can read more about our exploits with the "FT86" chassis in
this thread on VoMo forums, also located on NASIOC, 'Carvers, RRAX, and SCCAForums.
What's Next
I swear the 2013 is getting it's own thread very soon. We have been removing parts, weighing things and gathering all sorts of interesting data on this car, so the new thread will have some new information worth reading. Our 2011 GT project thread here will continue, as we plan to keep tracking and street driving the red car.
The next event for the '11 is the Five Star Ford track day on Nov 17th at ECR. Vorshlag will be there with our trailer and some of our race crew to help support the many Mustang drivers likely to attend. We can help check your alignment, help set tire pressures, and will be giving ride-alongs in the red car with me or Amy driving. That should be fun!
The 2011 was back to street duty on Monday after a wheel swap. After we leaned on Wednesday that the SCCA PDX event was cancelled the crew here at Vorshlag swapped back to the stock trunk, too. The 2013 GT is badly in need of a bunch of suspension parts, to rid it of the 4x4 look and parade float handling. The uber-light brakes we will use are another three grand, and there's the LS back seat delete kit that is only another $900 more. Another set of custom Forgestars would be help, then we can get to cutting the fenders to make the
big tires fit. I really need about five grand to build or buy what we need to get started. Hopefully my 2001 BMW E46 330 will sell for good money in the next couple of weeks (it just came back from the painter yesterday and looks flawless!) and I can use some of that cash to throw at the 2013.
I am almost done writing our "How To Build your 2011-2013+ Mustang for Track Use" article, too. Our entire crew is helping contribute to that one. We have had customers asking us for "the wish list" so we finally put it down on paper. Err... electronically. In that article we will finally list out which modifications we think help lower your track times the most, and in which order we recommend doing them in, with some budgetary numbers along the way. We also will list out what options to look for when ordering or buying a 2011-13 Mustang as well - "How to Buy a Mustang The Right Way".
More soon,