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The old X-pipe was removed and the cats were inspected. Yep, both of them were clogged up. Driving over some curb somewhere probably smashed the internal matrix and ruined them both. So they were cut off and the Magnaflow stainless 3" mufflers were acquired (we're a Magnaflow dealer now, in case you guys need anything). We also added 3" V-band clamps and flanges to the header collectors, which made me happy as they are the least leaky type of exhaust junction.
On this system we moved the mufflers further back and set them under the recesses made for the exhaust under the saddle style fuel tank. Yes, there is a fiberglass heat shield between the mufflers and the fuel tank, and we added some DEI gold foil reflective insulation there as well. The turn-downs are also pushed further back and now dump just under the axle housing, with the heat of the exhaust not near the axle. We've run the car at two race weekends since and had zero rear axle heat issues.
The guys made some custom rear exhaust hangers and the system was buttoned up in less than a day. Ground clearance is still excellent and the sound is... well.... it sounds like a race car now. I certainly wouldn't recommend this for a street car or daily driver, but we don't need ear plugs driving it on track, so it is appropriate.
The Magnaflow mufflers should last for years to come, too. Listen to the in-car videos from the race coverage below to hear the sound.
There was some weight savings, of course, but also some extra room around the rear axle. We run the ride height at back of the car
very low and it was getting tight between the axle tubes and the over the axle 3" pipes under full bump travel. Parts of the old system will be reused at some date on another S197, as that 304SS custom over the axle section still looks great.
As I drove the car down to the corner gas station to fuel up (and a police car pulled somebody over right behind me, yikes), the "System Fault" message above showed up on the touch screen of the car. WTF? This happened right after we fired up the car, so the rear O2 data was likely wigging out with no catalysts upstream to affect the exhaust stream emissions. We kind of figured that would happen (and we will have the car in for a retune at True Street soon enough), so I hoped this wasn't an issue that would pop back up (it didn't all weekend). A full tank of 93 Octane Shell fuel went in the tank and we loaded the car in the trailer.
NASA at MSR-H Jan 18-19, 2014
We didn't do many improvements to the TT3 Mustang for this season opening round of NASA Texas, but if you've been reading this forum thread for a while you know why. We only just decided to stay in TT3, after the red Mustang didn't sell in November and the 2015 Mustang was delayed likely until August. I had planned on making some upgrades, but as you read at the top of my post, January got a little insane around the shop and left very little time to work on our own cars. So we're just sticking with the existing TT3 set-up and the classing formula has changed for us. The exhaust change was done more to eliminate the CEL issues we kept running into, which we hoped would mean less trouble on track. I doubt it added any power, but we will re-dyno the car soon to make sure. We've been down 10-11 whp for the last year and a half, from the highest tested 430 whp dyno number the car made back in 2012. Plus we tend to run 30-40 pounds over minimum weight, so we're safe if we accidentally unlocked 3-4 hp.
Back in November I had blew my last set of Hoosier contingency tires on a new set of 275 A6s for the ST2 car, which meant I had no fresh tires to use for TT3 on the Mustang in January. Hmm, that wasn't too smart, but I didn't make a good guess on what we'd be doing 3 months later. Instead of forking out $1400 for a fresh set of sticker 315s we decided to just run some used scrubs and hope for the best. Fresh tires can be worth 1-2 seconds per lap, so I knew going into this race weekend we were venerable. But the TT sign-ups were a little light, and some TT3 competitors had last minute problems, so we thought we might get lucky and sneak in the win on used tires (2 race weekends old).
The other mistake we made this race weekend was NOT bringing any of our Vorshlag crew members with us. If we would have had Ryan there wrenching and Brandon shooting pictures this would have been a smoother race weekend, for sure. We get so buried with the "other stuff" during a NASA weekend that I overlooked some issues with the car. But Amy and I went down there solo, and the results were as predicted - a bit of a mess.
The track configuration at MSR-Houston is run once a year on the NASA Texas race calendar and every year they change the direction, as this track can be run Clockwise and Counter Clockwise. Amy and I looked and we hadn't run this 2.38 mile course CCW in... ever? Hmm, that's strange, we've run here a half dozen times, but it has always been CW. So we'd be learning as we drove, and sharing sessions since we're running the same car together again this year. At least we only pay one entry fee this year, from our new "Team Vorshlag" team entry. We will keep doing this until we can afford a two car trailer and two race cars, which might not ever happen.
Our crew finished up the new ligthtweight exhaust Thursday night and loaded the trailer so Amy and I could leave Dallas by about 2 pm for the 5 hour haul to south Houston on Friday. We had planned on meeting up with some friends who had scoped out a good paddock spot and got there just at the sun was setting, unloading the car in the dark and getting our 2014 Annual NASA tech performed. Our paddock was shared with two other enclosed trailers and racers, Paul Costas' GT1 Camaro and Matt White's Coyote powered SN95 Mustang ST1 race car. We were all parked right where it is marked "Grid", as our TT track map had one mistake as the actual grid was held much further down the main straight. Our trailer grouping was right there at the pit wall and when standing up on Paul's trailer's observation deck we had the best views of the track in the paddock!
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