continued from above
Test Day at ECR, August 26, 2013
Brandon and Ryan from Vorshlag and racing buddy Jason McCall met up with me and Amy at our house Sunday morning for the trek out to
Eagles Canyon Raceway, which is located about 70 miles from our shop. This is our home track, and where I've got the most track miles since I did the first NASA event there in 2008. Lately we have been out at ECR at least once a month, sometimes 2 or even 3 times in a 4 week period. Long story short - this is where we could put in the most reliable laps without "driver course learning" coming into play.
Vorshlag Photo and Video Gallery for ECR Track Test: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ay-ECR-082613/
Now the 2.5 mile ECR circuit is far from a high speed test track, as most of the corners are fairly tight with long-ish straights in between (125 mph top speeds). It would not normally have been the ideal location for testing the new aero. And honestly, we didn't think we would put in a full day of data logging and aero testing - this was more of a place to take the new set-up and do basic shake down testing, to make sure
nothing fell off or burned up. If we noticed any aero imbalance we figured the semi-fast corners in T1/T2, T4, T9, T10 and T11 might show us. It is also much closer to our shop than any other track, and the folks that run it are very cool and accommodating.
After we got there we had even more folks join us, including Olof from our shop, a Boss302 owner and fellow track junkie Jerry Cecco, and Dave B - who brought his GTS3 BMW our to test with us. We set-up the sunshade and put out chairs while the fluids were topped off and the car was checked out.
Loading and unloading the car from the trailer requires the front splitter to come off, and we've designed the splitter so that it stays attached to the bumper cover and all comes off as a unit. We quickly found that lining the splitter's rear mounting pins up with the mating holes while sitting on the ground is
much harder than when on our 4 post lift, even with 3 people shoving it this way and that. After nearly 45 minutes we got the pins lined up and pinned, the front retaining struts bolted on, and the ends of the bumper cover bolted in place.
Whew.
Above you can see me standing on the "ankle cutter" again - which always freaks people out. Honestly when you're trying to work on the front of the car you kinda have to stand there. It has been tested to 300 pounds now, too. At right Ryan is strapping on a helmet to take a ride in the Mustang for the first time on a road course. He has driven the car countless times on the street, and even ridden in it at an autocross, just hasn't had a chance to grab a ride on track yet. At most track days he's usually too busy working on other customers' cars or taking temps and measuring data on our own.
We were testing on the newer set of 18x12 Forgestar F14s ($350/each) at all 4 corners mounted with a used set of 315mm Hoosier R6 tires. These wheels and tires were used at
NASA @ Hallett on June 22-23 and all day with 2 drivers at the
June 29th Five Star Ford ECR track day. So they had some miles, but more importantly they were the same tires we had run at ECR 6 weeks earlier in nearly the same conditions. Any improvements (or slow downs) could at least be nullified from the tires. In the shake down laps Ryan and I did and the car felt LOOSE, but I wasn't really pushing it hard yet, just running some 2:01 laps, checking the gauges (temps looked great all day), looking for any weird deflections in the hood and listening for the splitter rubbing or scraping.
Some external video of when the car was still feeling "a bit loose"
Brandon was shooting pics and video and the whole crew was standing at the pit wall, looking for anything weird, or laughing when I was drifting out of T11 (not on purpose). The splitter did touch on some curbing at the side on a few corners, but it showed no damage afterwards. This thing is TOUGH. One bump under braking into T6 was causing the splitter to barely touch on the front edge, but the old 5.5" Leguna Splitter touched in the same braking zone, so no surprise there. Ryan was very happy with how the car felt, especially the brakes ("WOW, this car really stops"). After a few gentle laps Ryan hopped out and we brought the car in for a thorough look at all systems.
continued below