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GT Moto Bike Build Reveal at GMBG, June 15, 2014
Vorshlag's own Sofi had an event we attended at Gas Monkey Bar & Grill. This place hosted her "bike reveal" where the Cafe Racer style motorcycle she and her dad hand built on June 15th, 2014. Many of the Vorshlag staff and friends came out to support this charity event, bought shirts and raffle tickets, and had a great time.
"Texas Dave" was in town with his Pikes Peak EVO and he brought it out and showed it in the GMBG parking lot. We brought the Vorshlag TT3 Mustang and had it parked in the the small show area during the party as well. KC from the Fast-n-Loud show had his truck in the same area later that day, as he knows Sofi and came to the party.
Sofi is our operations manager here at Vorshlag and schedules customer service work and supplies our shop guys with parts. She is also a decent fabricator and bike mechanic and races her various motorcycles as well, including her throw-back Cafe Racer style Honda (the blue one, shown above left). A lot of her friends and fans came out to support this event, and she's raised over $25K for charity with this bike build so far. We're all proud of her and respect the cause she's raising money for.
She and one of our fabricators Olof built the exhaust for this new bike at Vorshlag a couple of weeks earlier and used the same ICE Engine Works kit we use to make custom headers for our V8 swaps.
The bike reveal went really well and there were close to 100 people there to see the bike for the very first time. I hadn't seen it with the painted tank and trim work installed and it really came out looking amazing. This bike is being given away via a raffle, with a drawing on July 5th, and all proceeds go to St. Jude's hospital for cancer research. You can see more info about the raffle here:
https://rafflecreator.com/pages/1379/gt-cafe-for-cause We all bought several tickets, and if I win it I'll do wheelies in our parking lot, then probably fall off and break my back.
GMBG itself was actually really nice, even on this super hot day (it was well into the high 90s). There was a 90 minute wait to get a table inside but luckily for us, all of the folks who came for the Moto GT bike reveal had a private 2nd story air conditioned bar with front row seats to the bands that played on stage that day. The deck out over the pond surrounding the restaurant was also pretty nice. We ate and drank and had a great time. We've met most of the guys at GMG and they are all friendly, professional and passionate about hot rodding - and they provided the facilities for this party and raffle free of charge. He might be a little abrasive on the TV show but Richard Rawlings knows how to party and his bar and grill is a hopping place. I'm glad we could come out and bring a lot of friends to help support Sofi's charity. Again, if you want to purchase a raffle ticket the drawing is this weekend on July 5th, so good luck!
The New 2015 Mustang - What Does The S550 Chassis Weigh?
The last few weeks have been full of rumors and speculation about the new 2015 Mustang and what it will weigh. Steeda got a huge black eye when they "guessed" it the S550 would actually be gaining a few hundred pounds over the last generation, contrary to Ford's pronouncement of a weight loss. Motor Trend also had some guesstimations that were apparently pretty unflattering, and also not based on fact. Turns out Steeda never actually weighed a car, and the whole thing became an internet scandal labeled
"2015 Mustang Weightgate".
image above found on Jalopnik
The automotive car websites were going nuts, and even I got a call from a reporter at Jalopnik looking for real data - of which I had none. Turns out they finally got to the root of all of the mystery,
the car gained less than 100 pounds, which was shown after Ford leaked some semi-official weights, shown below.
image above found on Jalopnik
So it was much ado about nothing... of course the S550 didn't
lose weight. That wasn't really a possibility, and few if any new car models are getting lighter than any older generations - due to rising crash standards, technology complexity, and customer demands for more creature comforts. The Mustang would have to make a
radical change in the chassis goals to lose pounds (remember the Ford Probe disaster??). No, the S550 is staying somewhat the same in size and power but getting new features and upgrades - like the Independent Rear Suspension and bigger 15" front brakes - so it gained a few pounds in the process. The 3704 pound number being thrown around is still
130 pounds lighter than a stripped 2014 Camaro Z/28, a $75K track toy that comes with race tires but no air con.
What strikes me as the most odd is the wild variety of car models that some folks are comparing the Mustang to, or trying to. Look at how much bigger the S197 is compared to a Genesis Coupe (which is fat and heavy too), a BRZ and an MX5, above. Am I supposed to believe that car people cross-shop Miatas with Mustangs? If they do, then they are VERY confused about what they want from an automobile. Even the turbo 4 and V6 Mustang will be so far removed from a flyweight 2 seat roadster like the MX5 as to be not in the same league. The S550 is really more of a new and improved S197, which itself was a RADICAL improvement over the Fox/SN95 chassis it replaced. The Fox/SN95 was based on a 1977 Ford Fairmont, and that's saying a lot.
Of course Vorshlag will weigh several S550s when the first ones arrive at local dealerships, and our car will be here hopefully before the end of August. We have aggressive plans for track testing then upgrading the suspension, wheels, tires and more. Stay tuned for that new build thread, which I will link in this S197 thread.
What's Next?- NASA at Hallett, June 21-22 - This event went really well, and we beat our 2013 lap record by 3 seconds, but I borked the splitter in an "off" during the first Saturday session!
- Repairs and Improvements after Hallett - I'll cover the upgrades and repairs we made after this last NASA event. My hack driving knows no limits... not even the TRACK limits.
- Lone Star Drift at TMS, June 29, 2014- Drifter vs Road Racer Battle, aka: Drifters go Derp!
As the summer gets hotter here in Texas the track schedule falls way off, to keep drivers from overheating, so we don't have any NASA events scheduled again until September (unless we go to NASA Nationals East, August 31st at Road Atlanta). The "summer track break" around here means we have some openings on our service schedule. If you need some race prep, fabrication, seating, cooling, brake system or safety upgrades you've been putting off, let us know. Several of our long term development projects for V8 swaps are getting more attention as shop time is freed up, so we'll stay busy either way.
That's all I have time for in this sitting, but I'll cover the Hallett event and the TMS road course "drift vs grip" event in my next write-up.
Thanks,