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I'll cover the new flashy bits and we'll move on to the track test. First you will see coil covers are painted red now instead of blue, which I had spray bombed 2 years ago. A recent Vorshlag customer upgraded to some metal Ford Racing units and gave us his painted red ones, which actually match this car's body color so we swapped them out. Meh, it was a freebie, and the blue covers were a bit garish. The other bit of flash is the
GOLD foil on the intake tube. This is not just for hard parkers, as it is used on real race cars all the time. This foil is DEI reflective gold foil, which we've used before on other builds, especially when the intake tube is around a source of radiant heat (like this one, which routes right over the top of the radiator and sticks out in the post-radiator air stream). And Brandon just took this shot (above right) of the air cleaner with the bumper on - note how it isn't really in the air stream, but tucked up behind the bumper cover. Un-ram air.
At left above we have the fabricated aluminum grill cover riveted to the factory grill surround. It isn't the final cover I had envisioned (wanted a smoother, more aerodynamic insert), but it was already made and we went with it for the track testing - and might not mess with it for a while. You can also see the
tow hook we finally added to the front of the car. Yes, we went 3 years without a tow hook - and luckily never needed one. Whew! Above right I am doing the "200 pound splitter load test". The splitter doesn't bend, instead the front suspension just takes up the extra compression load, as it should.
We had a LOT of late nights over the previous 2 weeks to get the car track ready, and finished up Saturday night and loaded the car into the trailer at around 10 pm. As I was installing 4 temporary hood pins Ryan swapped on new front Centric rotors, new Carbotech XP20 pads, and flushed a little Motul 600 through the lines. The track prep went to just about the last minute. The plan was to test at ECR on Sunday morning at 9 am.
Note: we did not have the flares completed when we went to test, we do understand that some bad aero drag occurs when the tire is visible from the front like this, but they were partially done before the test - just not enough to mount them. Due to some business reasons, we are not showing the manufacturing techniques for our flares. Nothing revolutionary, but I've never seen flares done the way we have in mind - and it could completely flop, so I don't want to show my ass if it does, ya know? There are some teaser shots of the flares in progress, below, from after the track test.
Dyno Tuning at True Street
We have to back up a couple of days to cover the dyno tuning we had done before heading to ECR. On Friday before we went to the track to test we delivered the Mustang pieced together just enough to get it to
True Street Motorsports, who does all of our Mustang engine tuning. The bumper cover and splitter weren't attached yet, but that didn't matter for the chassis dyno pulls. We've been using True Street for close to 3 years, and they have re-tuned our car after each major change. Our motor is bone and cooling systems have stayed all stock, never been opened up, and never given a single hiccup, thanks in no small part to their custom tuning. They've been the folks that kept our dyno numbers solid (430 whp back in 2011) yet keep the tune safe enough to beat on for 3 years and 17,000 miles.
Left: Driving to a corner gas station to fill up with 93 octane. Right: loading up to go to the tuner
Any time you make a change to your Mustang (with regards to power parts) it could need a new tune. I am not a believer in "mail order tunes", because without driving the car and/or putting it on a dyno and pulling air:fuel numbers and seeing the power curve and listening for knock, it is an impossible task to do this well. I am, however, a strong supporter of working with a local shop and getting proper dyno tunes done on your car, in person, with no e-mailing of files involved. Also, before you buy a stand-alone tuner (we use the SCT) talk to your local tuner shop and
buy the tuner from them. You are always better off patronizing your local tuner with parts orders. Sure, you might spend $10 whole dollars more than the cheapest of the cheapest online parts wh0rehouses, but it will pay off in the long run with one-on-one help from YOUR shop that does YOUR tune, right on their own dyno. If you have a 5.0 Mustang in live in North Dallas, trust me, True Street is the place to get your go-fast goodies and engine tuning from. Come to Vorshlag for your suspension parts/work, for sure, but go to True Street for your power parts and tuning.
Anyway, Ryan and I stopped by and talked about an upcoming event (see below) then we asked Sean to give us a "safe" tune once again. By safe I mean tune it for 93 octane, fix any air:fuel changes induced with our custom intake tube/MAF, keep the timing curve from being on the ragged edge, and make sure the power curve looks smooth. They are very good at this and won't do "hero tunes" to squeeze out that last tenth of a hp while endangering your motor. We also asked for a few small updates, like going back to the OEM throttle map (removing our "street tire autocross" traction control mapping they made for us).
Since we were about to go race at Miller Motorsports Park in SLC, with an elevation of 4000 feet, we asked for a slightly milder spark curve than normal. That coupled with the intense heat that day (100+F in the dyno cell) made for a slightly softer number than before (I'm not sharing until after Nationals, sorry), but the air:fuel numbers were cleaned up and there were no unusual dips in the power or torque curves. We can also pull out a few pounds with this new number (we
were at 424 whp and 3770 pounds on DOT tires in TT3). Of course we will stick the car on a dyno at Miller, to make sure everything is copacetic in case we get dyno'd after competition begins (it can happen, as can a scale check). If we need to add or remove ballast based on their dyno numbers, we can before racing starts. We can also tweak the timing, peak RPM and some other factors trackside if we need to adjust for the elevation, available fuel, observed knock, etc. I used to do a
little EFI tuning many eons ago, so I understand the basics, and Sean only allowed us access to the most basic of alterations. Again - I'm
not looking to add more power, just to be able to keep it safe. We lowered the rev limiter from 7800 to 7200, for sanity's sake (we only had it set that high to avoid 2-3 shifts in autocrosses; power falls off hard above 6500).
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