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This system worked very well and in that car's first 12 hour of racing the pads barely wore halfway, but the rear brakes (uncooled) went through two sets of pads. We might try this "dual cooling" set-up on front of the TT3 Mustang, or a single 4" hose to the rotor, or a dual 3" hose to the rotor. And a ducted rear rotor set-up is coming as well.
The front brake pads are wearing more quickly than we like (again, 3800 pound car + lots of brake heat), as shown above. We just put a new set of front
Carbotech XP20 brake pads on the front Brembo calipers for the USCA event and will address the brake cooling needs soon. The old pads (shown) wore down tot he last 1/16th of an inch of material and are only good for "emergency use", to make one session or a drive home from the track for someone that had a pad failure.
In Sunday's TT session 3, the car didn't even make through the first hot lap before the AdvanceTrac faulted heavily. I barely ran a 1:18 lap and it was only getting worse, as was the traffic. I didn't even try to make a 2nd hot lap, and with the start/finish line just before the pit entrance road I just dove into the pits and did a little cool down drive to the corner gas station and back, to get the brakes and systems cooled off before parking the car for rest of the day. The ambient temperatures were getting warmer and a few guys went quicker, so I ended up only 4th fastest in TT for the day after skipping the 4th TT session. If the AdvanceTrac wasn't faulting I would have gone out and could have dropped time. After the car had cooled off I hooked up the truck to the trailer, loaded up the car and our gear, then helped Costas put his car back together (windshield, bodywork, and wheels) after he fixed a nagging brake light switch issue that was a bear to access. Once he was ready for his last SU race, where he won the class all 4 times, I headed out a little early.
That 2nd session 1:17.310 time was good enough for the win (7 cars in class) and reset the TT3 record. A Radical SR8 ran with us in TT on Sunday and was stupid fast, but its a SportsRacer and that's to be expected. Troy Messer found a lot of time in his TT1 Corvette in the 4th session and ran a 1:15.8 and Vorshlag customer Corey Wells put in a fast lap with a 1:17.290 in his TT1 classed ZR1 (street car!) as well.
All in all this was a great weekend and the Vorshlag Mustang really came alive on the bigger Hoosiers I have lusted after for the last three years. Just as I predicted, it dropped a lot of time AND I was able to get in 3, 4, even 5 hot laps before the tires got overheated and greasy - unheard of when running at this weight on the 315mm A6 tires. The extra grip probably caused these additional AdvanceTrac faults and one CEL issue, so we're installing a new ABS/TC module that hopefully eliminates all traces of factory traction control once and for all. Again, I really missed having Amy and our crew there, and the only pictures I got were with my Nikon that I took, and the only shots of our car on track were those that Jamie Beck shot with my camera on Friday in practice. I watched all the video and saw plenty of driving mistakes so there's no telling what this car could have run without the AdvanceTrac faults and my hack driving. I know a 1:16 was possible without the brakes being applied by some stupid computer when I wanted to be WOT. Maybe next year NASA will run the MSR 1.7 course again. I sure hope so, as this course was more enjoyable for me than the 3.1 mile course we normally run in TT.
Making Weight by the Hair of My Chinny Chin Chin!
One little scare I had on Saturday was after TT session 2. I came after running that 1:17.7 lap and was sent to the scales. I wasn't too worried, as I had thrown a 25 pound ballast weight plate into the trunk mount moments before the session began, after I noticed a somewhat lower fuel load than I had wanted (normally I was going to grid with 7/8ths to a full tank). I made weight that time by 2 pounds!!!! And that took two tries...
The first time they put the car on the scales after that session it was
8 pounds light. As per the rules, that would have been
technically legal on my first weighing of the day (10 pound grace on first weighing) but I knew that weight couldn't be right. I asked them to roll me off, make sure the scale pads were under all 4 tires all the way, and we rolled it back on. That time it was 3804 pounds on a 3802 minimum. Whew!
I went to the paddock and immediately threw 20 more pounds of ballast and a
full tank of fuel went into the car for each successive session all weekend. I was weighed a couple more times; once it was 3835 and another it was 3853 pounds! So getting spooked by that "close call" 2 pound weight check made me run
too much ballast all weekend. I'm sure with our crew here I wouldn't have overshot that so badly, but oh well. It was fully 51 pounds overweight on my 1:17.310 lap Sunday.
Jason Toth (the Alpha LS1 Miata owner) made his TT debut on Sunday in an Audi A4 (loaner, shown above left) and had a blast. He borrowed my spare AMB so he graciously ran in TT3, which made for 7 in class. Hoosier pays all the way down to 2nd place so Jeff Tan won a tire that day in 2nd and I won 2 more in 1st. Which was good, because I blew my tire budget all to pieces with the new A6s for this event and BFG Rivals for Goodguys/USCA. I'll save the newly arrived 4 tire winnings for April's NASA TT event and use 3 of these 4 tires from this weekend as my Friday test set if we go down there a day early. Gotta get a replacement 18x12" wheel so we have two complete sets - running around and getting tires swapped and mounted minutes before my first TT session Saturday was a bit too hectic. Congrats to Mike Patterson (shown above right), who won all 4 AI races, reset the track record for that class in the low 1:20 range (on the new Toyo RR tires running 18x9.5" Forgestar F14 wheels he bought from Vorshlag), and ran in TT3 both days as well. He also works as race director for another race group, so he was a busy man!
Official Results: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/N...Cresson_March/
Vorshlag Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...SA-MSR-030814/
Left: Saturday's NASA TT results. Right: Sunday's NASA TT results.
Decal Removal + New BFG Rivals + Prep for Goodguys & USCA
We had to steal a tiny sliver of shop time to get the red Mustang ready for the next two "street car" events, so we took it. The guys made sure the car was street legal and re-attached the horns and double checked all of the street car systems like the wipers, lights, signals and the rest. We ran out of time to get the car reinspected (it was a few months out but it just got re-inspected today) but they got it all street worthy and up to snuff. On Thursday March 13th the set of BFG Rivals I found a couple of weeks earlier (TireRack was out of stock on the 335s) arrived in town and I went out to an undisclosed location to pick them up.
On the Friday before Goodguys Olof got the 315/30/18 pair mounted to the front 18x12 wheels and the 335/30/18 pair mounted to the rear 18x12s. Once mounted on the car they were swallowed in the massive rear flares and even the 335s looked small.
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