Vorshlag 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT - track/autocross/street Project

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Project Update for June 3rd, 2014 Let's cover two final April events - NASA @ TWS and ordering a 2015 Mustang - then get to the May events to get more caught up. We had two events on the same weekend of May 3rd - double booked! - and I missed competing in the SCCA ProSolo to be able to attend a car show. It sounds crazy but there was a good reason for that. Let's hit it...

Ordered a 2015 Mustang GT - April 21, 2014



I ordered a 2015 Mustang GT in late April. I ran over to Five Star Ford of Plano and met with Corey White on April 21st to pick the options on our 2015 5.0L 6-speed Performance Pack GT, to get first in line at this dealership... before they even knew prices on anything. "Real" ordering started on May 20th, but they had options listed as of that April day, without prices or many stats, so we made some educated guesses and got our order staged in line FIRST! As you can see from the screen shot, there are some extra options we added to the Performance Pack, which include: leather Recaros, touch screen NAV, and the 401A interior package/equipment group.

There's one reason why we got the car a little more loaded than you'd think for a "Race Car" - resale value. As long as it took to sell the base model 2013 GT we picked up, and in case the rumored GT350 voodoo engined car comes out within the next 12 months, we want to keep this 2015 as sell-able as possible. We have no idea when we'll see this 2015 GT - it could be late July to as late as the end of August. I will post up here the MOMENT it arrives, and quickly start a new S550 build thread. Our initial development plans include wheel and tire fitment, immediate camber plate development, weighing and track testing. We want to test it against a stock 2012-13 Boss 302 at a local road course (ECR) within days of arrival.

NASA at TWS April 26-27, 2014


The rear uprights was the last project Ryan Begham worked on - sad to see him leave us but we wish him the best of luck in school!

Once we had the new AJ Hartman wing installed the next big test for the 2011 Mustang was NASA at Texas World Speedway at the end of April. Since Amy and I both knew this track fairly well we didn't go ahead and sign up for the Friday Test-N-Tune event. With a competitive car that has recent changes you would normally do that, but NASA Texas had an 8 hour enduro event scheduled for 2-10 pm on Friday, so we would have had to arrive very early to get any testing in. Driving from Dallas towing our rig takes over 3 hours, so we'd have to leave by at least 7 am to get any testing in... and Amy didn't want to burn a day off of work (she works 2 jobs: her normal day job and also at night, here at Vorshlag) so we blew off the test day. Our replacement front 18x12" wheel also still hadn't arrived, so we only had one full set of race wheels. We mounted up a set of new sticker A6 tires (winnings from the last NASA event, thankfully, as these are $1710 per set!) and hauled down to College Station.


With the decals still wet and backing paper drying I drove to the local Shell to fill up the tank with 93 octane. #becausestreetcar

Getting the car ready on Friday was actually pretty tricky, as we were still finishing the wing install until around 6pm. Amy, Jason and I were also having a bit of trouble with some new material purchased to use in our vinyl cutter, but we got the old TT3 number boards re-created and installed. Ended up leaving the Optima door decals on, after removing them (carefully) and moving them back about 4 inches to make room. Some Hoosier decals, NASA decals, and the car went onto the trailer and we were rolling out by around 7:15 pm. Then we stopped at a Sam's Club to get drinks, snacks and ice for the weekend which put us on the road by 7:45 pm. We got to Costas' place by 10:45 pm and stayed up late talking about work, racing and stuff for another hour and a half. Late night!

Vorshlag TWS Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...SA-TWS-042614/

Note: with no Vorshlag crew, and no Brandon here to shoot his amazing pictures, and Amy feeling under the weather, we didn't get a lot of great shots from this event. Luckily Anna and Paul Costas shot a lot of pics and I used a number of their images in this event write-up. Matt Ruiter (a local TAMSCC racer) also took some great shots, which I have used with his permission as well.


My favorite shot of our car all weekend was this one taken in our paddock by Matt Ruiter.... Full rez version in our TWS event gallery

We got out to the track EARLY Saturday morning and dropped the trailer next to Costas and Matt White's trailers, who got a great paddock spot next to grid days earlier. Unloaded the car, topped off fuel, and got the sticker backing off, and went to a very brief TT driver's meeting where I handed our our TT maps.


Our paddock housed: our Mustang, Costas' GT1, Matt's ST1 Mustang, Misty's ST2 Camaro, Adam's E36, Toth in a Supra, and Norm's TTD BRZ

Amy and I decided that I would drive in the first TT session, which on Saturday is always a TT Practice that doesn't count towards anything except grid placement. But that still makes it pretty important, as gridding poorly only makes it harder to get a clean lap all day. You have to earn your place up the grid, and getting stuck behind slower cars can ruin your best TT laps. If you do poorly in Practice Saturday you often spend most of the remaining 3 sessions "working your way up the grid". As driver's get faster the grid placement shuffles, hopefully to keep faster drivers always ahead of slower drivers for the first few hot laps.



This first Practice TT session was super packed, with 61 cars on grid. Yes, not only did we have a record number of TT drivers but we also had all of the Competition school students joining us. TWS is only 2.9 miles so you can imagine that with 61 cars out there at once it was going to get crowded. NASA TT driver and instructor Jason Toth rode shotgun with me in the TT Practice, to see the driving line on this configuration before he hopped in with his students and in his TT ride later that day.


Getting ready for that first session, Costas took off these Goodyears and ran his this weekend on Hoosier slicks

See, we can take students or others with us in TT, but if we set our fastest lap of the day with a passenger our times will be automatically DSQ'd. They actually encourage some TT drivers to take HPDE students along if we are instructing that day but we only told to drive no faster than about "8/10ths", for safety reasons. Since this was just a TT Practice it wouldn't hurt, and I knew it would be slow, so Jason rode along. We got to grid pretty early and luckily started out in 5th place. There were two TT1 Corvettes and two Vipers ahead of us, and a whole bunch of cars behind us.


We had quite a variety of cars in the first TT practice session, with the Comp School thrown in the mix!

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Then this mess happened...

A Spin, A Wrecker, Several Passes Under Yellow and two DSQs

During the TT Practice there was a spin and a flat bed wrecker was called out on course for an extraction. There were then a number of Passes Under Yellow that were not appreciated by the track workers. Not one bit.



If you watch the video linked above you will see that we had a front row seat to a big nasty spin by a Viper Competition Coupe from the comp school group, about 30 feet in front of me at the 3:00 mark, entering T11. See, during the entire warm up lap this driver was scrubbing his tires like mad. I commented that maybe that was a bit much, but overall I just had a bad feeling - my Spidey Sense was tingling - so I backed way off this car when the first four cars ahead of me went Green during the out lap entering Turn 3, to give this guy some extra room. And I'm glad I did, because even through all four TT1 cars in front of built a big gap on the main straight most of them braked VERY early into Turn 15, where we're all doing about 150+ mph. The big gap I left quickly vanished and I had to back off into Turn 15 then 14 to avoid catching him. No big deal, it happens when we aren't gridded up in order by times - which is why the first session is called PRACTICE, so we can get gridded up in order by the first timed TT session.


Left: We have to run a nearly full tank and several weight plates to make our 3802 minimum weight

In the video the Viper slammed over the left curbing hard at T14, which may have damaged something. I pointed out the hard curb hit in the video. We caught up to him a bit in T12 then he braked pretty early into T11, and by this point I felt something was going to happen. Sure enough, the rear tires locked and he spun under braking into T11, first this way then that, on track and off. The spin was actually telegraphed pretty far in advanced and I had actually told Jason "Watch this", but the mic didn't pick it up on the video. I got the Mustang slowed down in plenty of time, and when he couldn't get going (he broke a half shaft) we threaded our way around him and got up to speed again.

Luckily I had pulled bit of a gap to the cars behind me, who probably didn't even see the spin happen, and I didn't impede anyone. The Viper pulled to the outside of the road in Turn 10 under momentum and parked - and without any halfshaft or drive, he was stuck. Everyone saw the Viper parked in T10 for 2 or 3 laps, with a waving yellow the whole time in this corner station. After getting back up to speed we took a leisurely hot lap 2 with an indicated 1:51.63 on the AiM SOLO, all while getting held up behind slower lapped traffic, making a pass, slowing heavily for Turn 10 (still waving yellow), and not really pushing it hard.

Funny thing was, that very compromised lap damn near matched my TT3 lap record time from this event in April 2013, where I ran a 1:51.530 and won TT3 both days. That best lap in 2013 was with me pushing hard, going 10/10ths on fresh 315 Hoosier A6 tires, using the APR GTC300 rear wing, the same power level, but the stock hood and the Laguna Seca plastic front splitter. Watching that old video I can see the front end wanted to push a lot at speed on corner entry and the rear was loose at speed, such as entering Turns 2 and T1 before the front straight.



After I ran that lap and saw the 1:51.6 as I crossed the start-finish line, I backed off (as you can see above, to about a 2:00 minute lap pace) and we immediately saw a waving yellow AND an EV/Ambulance flag added at the corner station before Turn 10, located inside Turn 13. Two corner workers there were waving two flags vigorously and that got my attention fast, even when slowing down from 150 mph. In the video I noted the yellow and the newly added Emergency Vehicle flag to Jason (at the 4:13 mark) and you can see that I backed way off, anticipating something new at the next corner station. We both knew what the two new flags meant - the TWS track crew must have rolled a wrecker out to Turn 10 to attempt a "hot extraction" of the Viper, which was stuck on the racing line in that corner for the past 2 laps. The entire session of 61 cars had already driven by the parked Viper, TWICE, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. Once you see waving yellows AND an EV flag AND a wrecker on course, that TT lap is OVER, if not the entire session.



At the 3:38 mark in the video you see the second corner station in a row with waving a yellow flag and an obvious wrecker extraction going on. With the corner worker moved out of his protected corner station next to the track waving vigorously he really wants us to slow down for the wrecker driver, who is standing on the track and nearly right on the hot driving line. At this point I backed off even more as I approached this chaos, before T11. But there were some drivers blazing up in my rear view mirror between Turn 12 to T11, and I'm looking back and wondering if they had seen the flags at T13 and ahead at T10?? Nope. They are going full tilt, nose to tail in a major battle. It wasn't until the entry to T11 that I realized - these guys are about to pass me! Between a corner worker violently waving a yellow flag outside of his protected berm and right next to a wrecker driver trying to load the Viper - which has been sitting in the same spot now going on 3 laps - onto his flatbed.


Left: Jefri Tam drove to 2nd place in TT3 both days. Right: John Roberts placed 3rd Saturday then 2nd place in TT2 in his LS1 Miata on Sunday

I quickly pulled even father to track left, let loose a stream of expletives as the two drivers pass me going 10/10ths, mid-corner next to the wrecker, and watch as yet another driver behind these two also takes Turn 10 flat out then blows by me before we've even left the "danger zone" of this corner workers area (aka: 90 degrees from the corner station). Remember: this is a Time Trial practice session, the times during which don't even count, and nobody is racing for position. This exact corner has had a yellow flag flying and a car stuck on track for going on 3 laps.



I got back up to speed after this corner, stayed out of everyone's way, and dove into the hot pits. Once there the TT director asked me how the session went, and I told him what happened with some colorful language to emphasize my point. Later I found out the TWS wrecker crew was furious and wanted a handful of people thrown out of the track for the weekend. It wasn't just 3 cars that passed under yellow near the wrecker, it was closer to 6. These track workers literally put their lives on the line for us, and deserve more respect from the drivers.

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Pictures in Turn 10 from another session. At right you can see some power on oversteer and counter steering going on...

There was a discussion about this incident on our local TT Facebook group a few weeks later. Some of the more experienced TT racers got pretty fired up when they saw the video and proposed some changes for the TT group. At a minimum we expect to have more post-session TT driver's meetings and hopefully some increased flag awareness from the drivers.

And Now.... Back to The TT Action on Saturday

I tried to stay focused and since I was gridded in P4 after the practice, which was good placing for the first timed session. Temperature was stable at 76°F, as it was overcast and relatively cool almost all day.


Left: Times from the gigantic clusterf*ck TT Practice session. Right: Times from TT Session 1 that followed

Amy and I agreed that I would go out in this first timed TT session to try to put in a good hot lap or two. We were on the new sticker set of 335/345 A6 tires, which I scrubbed in during the TT Practice. I went out with cold tire pressures of 28 psi front and 26 psi rear, which gives me hot pressures of 35 psi / 33 psi. We left the new wing at 6 degrees AoA, as it felt pretty good during the practice session and I wasn't even pushing hard yet. Not too much drag, with just enough rear bite at high speed exiting Turns 2 and 1 onto the main straight.



I had clear track and put in one good hot lap at a 1:48.440, more than THREE SECONDS quicker than our best lap here last year! That was exciting. As I crossed start/finish and saw the lap time I had the TT1 Corvette of Marc Sherrin tuck in behind and start drafting me, but I was pointing him by to pass, because I wanted to bank that lap (in Time Trial if you have a 4 off or spin on track your session times are DSQ'd). He figured it out and went on by me. Took a cool down lap and came in, figuring this would be my last laps of the day. That time went on to put us 6 seconds ahead of 2nd place in TT3, and we had 5 entrants in class on Saturday, so that meant we won 2 tires.



Maybe I could have made an even quicker lap 2, but I figured I would just catch traffic anyway and I didn't want to waste the tires. Amy went out in an HPDE 3/4 session just before lunch, to put in some laps, learn the line and get her up to speed, then she planned on running the two remaining TT sessions after lunch. But she wasn't feeling good, with crazy sinuses and a massive headache, and didn't feel well enough to drive after lunch... which meant that I got to drive in TT session 3 and 4, if I wanted.


Left: Saturday TT session 2 results. Right: End of day Saturday TT official results

I went out in TT session 2 at 2:10 pm and put in a 1:48.481 lap, nearly matching my time from the previous session (.04 difference). I was on a good hot lap 2 but had to abort the lap when I came upon a inattentive driver on a cool down lap ahead of me. I assume he clearly saw me gaining on him for 4-5 corners and he sort of pulled to track right, so I attempted a pass in a high speed corner (T7). In the middle of the corner he just came over on me and I had to put 2 wheels in the dirt track left to avoid a collision. This isn't the first time this has happened with this driver, and I hope he becomes more aware of his surroundings before he causes an accident. I'll just keep giving this driver plenty of extra room.



I wanted to note that this blocking situation is highly unusual in our NASA TT group, and the vast majority of our TT drivers have excellent situational awareness and go to great lengths to cooperate with other drivers, so that everyone can get their fast laps in.


There was plenty of carnage out at EVO Island, with one poor guy wrecking or blowing up BOTH of the EVOs he brought

The weather was still overcast and 77 degrees, but we started to get a hint of a sprinkle of rain at the very end of this second lap, so I took a cool down lap and came in. The final TT Session (4th) of the day got hot, after the sun had come out, and temps went up to 83°F. Everybody that ran this session slowed way down. We saw this coming and I'm glad we didn't go out in the session and waste the tires and brakes. With a 3800 pound Mustang you have to conserve these consumables when you can!

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By 6 pm the racing was wrapped up and NASA threw a great Saturday night party, as always. This one was special: they had a massive crawfish boil, lots of beer and soft drinks, chicken cooked on a grill, and the School of Rock kids ROCKED THE HOUSE for almost 2 hours. We had a great time relaxing, bench racing, drinking and eating with racers and friends. After the Passing Under Yellow Practice fiasco and then getting run off track only two sessions later, I was more than ready for a few stiff drinks, heh. What a crazy day!


Left: They had an amazing spread of food. Right: I got another TT3 lap record certificate and trophy - wish that 1:37.790 lap was mine, tho!

An old college / racing buddy Chris Ramey (who is a National Champion autocrosser and who also spent several years racing wheel to wheel in SCCA) did his first NASA TT event in his red C6 Z06 and he had an absolute blast, so I'm sure we'll see him back. We had a big group at a table eating and drinking, with Marc Sherrin, Jason Toth, Adam Faust, me, Amy and Todd Earsley... then Ramey started making Scotch and Sodas and we floated a keg of Shiner. Amy was still feeling cruddy so we left early and crashed out at about 9:30 pm.


Left: Chris Ramey was always known as Captain Oversteer - and he didn't disappoint! Right: Jamie Beck's 2013 GT has all of our goodies

This was an unusual day for Time Trial - TT1 had an astonishing 9 entries, TTB had 6, TT3 had 5, and every class was unusually brimming with drivers. I was happy to end up in 5th overall out of the entire TT group, to win TT3 and to reset our old lap record by such a large margin, which was even quicker than the new TT2 lap record. They gave out trophies and lap record certificates - and while our's had the wrong time and even Vorshlag was misspelled, its the thought that counts.

NASA TT - Sunday at TWS


Left: Spec Miatas "bump drafting". Right: The Costas "ResQ" Supra, former stage rally car, made its asphalt debut with Jason Toth driving

We got to the track early, Amy was still under the weather and not driving for the day, so I went out in TT Session 1. Well, before that it got a bit crowded and busy in our paddock area, Amy was kind of out of it, and we brought no crew with us. So I'm doing my pre-track checks: tire pressures, fluid levels, visual inspection of tires, torquing lug nuts, and put about half a quart of oil in.... and apparently left the oil fill cap off. Someone was talking to me and I got distracted.



I went out in the first session and felt like it was a little down on grip in left hand turns. Never saw any smoke or indication that anything was wrong. I put in a 1:48.712 lap, throwing away some time in Turn 14 where I slid the car and lost time - its obvious in the video but not worth editing and trying to match the data to. Speaking of that, Brandon is having a helluva time with the data merge and it is apparently due to the abnormal video file format that my Sony HD vidcam puts out, so we're on the hunt for a new video camera that uses the same SD cards. I don't want a GoPro, but something with a real lens and that can use a remote start/stop/off like our existing unit.


Left: Sunday's TT Session 1, my only session of the day. Right: Sunday end of day TT official results

I tried a second hot lap in that session, it was a clear lap but I slowed down to a 1:49 and change and it was obvious the car was slowing down. I took a cool down and came in. I hopped out of the car while Amy opened the hood - "Terry, COME HERE PLEASE." She showed me that there was OIL EVERYWHERE. The oil cap, that I had left off, had fallen down in the engine compartment from where I left it. I checked the oil level and the engine was about a quart low (but we run this motor with +1 quart over full). Its amazing what a TOTAL MESS you can make with quart of oil! I fished out the oil cap, undamaged, cleaned up some of the oil mess, but it had pumped engine oil down and through the wheels all over the right front tire. This was big old mess that could have been bad. Didn't hurt the motor, never lost oil pressure, but this explains why the grip fell off in hot lap 2.


Left: Leaving the oil cap off for 2 laps spilled a quart of oil out. Right: It was pumping through the wheel. This was my own damned fault!

Hot engine oil on a brake caliper could have flashed over, caught fire, and ended up in a very stupid mistake. It was still 77°F and overcast in that session, so we had the same conditions as Saturday. I thought about it and I could have gone out in TT session 2, but there was so much oil all over the car and I was once again about 6 seconds ahead of 2nd place that we didn't risk it. Amy still felt like crap, so after we stuck around to watch TT session 2, we loaded up and headed back to Dallas before lunch. TT1 got faster and their times dipped into the 1:45s to 1:46 range, but we just weren't going to catch them at our power levels on this high speed track. Any why should we? Those cars have nearly double the power per pound carried.

It looked like it was going to rain any minute, and sure enough, after we got 10 minutes from the track it started to rain and continued to come down throughout most of our 3+ hour trip back to Dallas. I really wanted to save this set of Hoosiers for the Global Time Attack event at Road Atlanta in a couple of weeks, so it was a good decision to opt out of the last 3 TT sessions of the day. Conserving consumables.



We watched live timing for the remaining TT sessions and SU races via Race Monitor on the way back, which was pretty exciting. TTB was a heck of a battle with our customer Allan Page in an E46 M3 fighting against Dysen Pham in an S2000, which has been almost unstoppable in our region ever since these cars got a "dyno reclass" and essentially 12 free points to play with for mods. Allan had taken the lead early on, reset the TTB record, then Dysen switched from Maxxis tires to a sticker set of Hoosier A6s and retook the lead and got down to a 1:52.824 for the win with Allan at a 1:52.972 - close finish! Another customer of ours, Norm Wilhelm (shown above), had a dominant win in TTD in a BRZ on MCS dampers and Vorshlag plates we supplied him with. Norm ended up besting the 2nd place TTD FT86 chassis twin by 2 seconds.

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Mike Patterson won all 4 American Iron races on new 18x9.5" Forgestar F14s he got from Vorshlag, with a fastest race lap of 1:53.0

Looking back at the weekend I took two hot laps in the TT Practice (1 aborted), one hot lap in TT session 1 and two laps in TT session 2 (1 aborted) on Saturday. For Sunday I took all of one hot lap, in TT session 1. That should leave us plenty of tires left for GTA, other than Amy's entire HPDE 3/4 session she took - but since she was mired in traffic it kept her speeds and tire wear down. Our new wing worked great, even through we only tried it at one position (6 degrees AoA). We made mounting holes for 3 positions - 6, 10 and 12 degrees - but the car felt so good I didn't want to mess with it, and with as few laps as we took here we didn't get in much testing - we were hoping to do that at Road Atlanta.


Amy running in a DE group was pretty funny, traffic-wise

We did make several shock adjustments on the new MCS RR2s during the weekend, and with easier access to the rear rebound knobs that was a welcome improvement. The dampers felt great with our Maxcyspeed custom valving, soaking up the bumpy pavement from this old track. New mechanical grip from the wider tires was evident in the slow turns and the added grip from the new rear wing helped at higher speeds. Its notable that we run the AJ Hartman wing at 6 degrees and it has more stick than the GTC-300 had at 12 degrees, and lots less drag. Last year we were "dirt tracking" through Turns 1 and 2 up onto the banking but this year the car was a lot more stuck down and confidence inspiring.

I like the car with more downforce. Unlike true "aero cars" that have very narrow speed ranges of effectiveness and HUGE downforce numbers, our splitter and wing combo seems to just make the car easier to drive, makes the brakes more effective at high speeds, and we're dropping major time from last year's lap records with almost the same set-up and power levels. We won TT3 by about 6 seconds again on Sunday and with 5 cars in class won another 2 tires for a total of 4 over the weekend. This might have been the last time NASA ever runs TWS 2.9 going ClockWise, as there are serious rumors of the owners selling the track and turning the land into a housing development. The MUD passed by the city a few weeks prior to this event, so who knows? We might be back in 2015 for a final time, but if so I think this 1:48.4 lap is more solid than the 1:51.5 lap I ran last spring in 2013.



It was a record attendance for TWS with NASA, with 335 entrants. Will and Dave and all the folks from NASA Texas did a great job with the racing, paddock, Saturday party, and I heard the Friday 8 hour enduro was a blast. We had a good time, with two solid wins and a new track record, especially considering the strange events on Saturday.



Costas had a great weekend in his GT-1 car, putting in TTU wins both days and winning several of the SU races on new Hoosier tires (switching from Goodyear). In SU qualifying he managed a 1:45.0 lap, which was the quickest lap recorded all weekend - nice! He had a nasty blowout at one point but it didn't phase him and he just swapped on some other tires. I can't do it justice here, so check out his write-up for the TWS weekend is located at his Witchdoctor website, which is always fun to read.



Texas SCCA ProSolo - Welcome Party - May 2, 2014

the following weekend Vorshlag sponsored the Friday night welcome party at the Texas Pro Solo held out at Mineral Wells on May 2nd, 2014. This event was within days of the the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration that is huge in Texas, and was the theme of the event. Contrary to what you might think, May 5th isn't "Mexican Independence Day" but actually a celebration in both Mexico and the USA of our thanks to Mexico for fighting off the French, who were invading their lands in 1862 and threatening to support the Confederates in the American Civil War. The Mexicans were outnumbered 2 to 1, and the French hadn't been defeated in battle in 50 years. This battle also marked the last time any European force has invaded the Americas. The more you know...



All that might explain why someone put a Mexican sombrero on me while I drank German beer and cooked American burgers and dogs for about 200 people over the course of a few hours. Jason went with me and talked to a number of folks at this Friday night event as well, and our shop foreman Brad Maxcy was running the event, as he does for all Texas Region SCCA Solos. Special thanks to Jen Maxcy, who helped me work the grill and serve the meats. The competition for the ProSolo was on May 3-4th, but we were double-booked with an event (see below) on Saturday, so we couldn't compete in this event. Bummer, would have been fun to run in Street Mod.

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Sam Pack 24th Dallas Spring Nationals Car Show, May 3, 2014

And this is the event we missed the ProSolo for, held on the Saturday following the ProSolo Welcome Party. Seems a little nuts to miss a ProSolo for a car show, but I had ulterior motives: they had a pre-production 2015 Mustang on display, and I was hoping to both weigh and drive this car, or at least measure a few things and sit inside of it. Corey White from Five Star Ford convinced me to enter and even sponsor this car show, so we showed off our TT3 prepped Mustang that day.



Photo gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Car-Show...arshow-050314/

We got there around 8 am and set-up our trailer then unloaded the Mustang, just as it was prepped after the TWS event. I cleaned it up a bit on site and then set up our tables and some demo parts. We talked to about 60-70 people that day, which is good for a typical car show, I guess. Saw several of our customers there, but many of them didn't show up until after 10:30 am as there was a Cars & Coffee event that morning (these events are HUGE and draw in 1200+ cars and thousands of spectators). Having this car show on the same day as C&C was a bit odd, but hey, its not my event.



There were some beautiful cars at this car show, like the various C2 Corvettes above. And the typical, garish, silly car show stuff... loads of chrome ding-dongs and add-ons, little turntables with model cars under hood, every other car had a supercharger, etc.



I have to admit, this is not my scene. At. All. But we were there for a better reason than entering a car show... to see another pre-production 2015 Mustang and hopefully measure, weigh and drive this thing.



This pre-production vehicle was locked up all day and nobody could find the handler that Ford sent with this car to get us inside it, to ask if we could weigh it, or drive it. Aaron Sockwell from Dusold Designs and I took matters into our own hands and just went over and measured a few things...



We crawled under the car and snapped a few pictures of front and rear suspension, but they show little more than we already knew. I did manage to snap a pic of the front strut to inner wheel distance, but it wasn't much. Discouraging.



We measured outside track widths and the front was over 2.25" narrower than the rear outside track measurement on this car, which was equipped with 255/40/ZR19 tires at both ends. That's likely going to make the car understeer more, of course. Staggered track width or tire width set-ups are almost always done by OEMs to "insure understeer". Oh well, one more thing for us to fix.



Corey called in some excellent food trucks and we tried a little bit of food from all 3 of them, including some amazing ice cream from the truck at left. The wood fired pizza truck was a huge hit as well. We killed most of the day waiting to try to get inside this car, hoping to weigh and drive it, and saw some neat stuff in Sam Pack's personal collection with the included museum ticket that all car show entries got.



I Look Inisde The 2015 Mustang - Video!

Finally, at around 5:30 pm, the Ford handler showed up to load the Mustang onto his trailer, and we were waiting for him. There were about 6 of us hounding the guy and we got to at least look inside the car's interior and trunk. I brought our Sony 1080P vidcam and we shot about 8 minutes worth of video, linked below. He wouldn't open the hood for us (in fact the hood latch was disabled) and refused to let us weigh the car (we can probably guess why). It was a pre-production and "very early build" car show model at that, so it had extra welding and bondo to smooth all sorts of sheet metal seams in the door jambs and trunk that would never be done on a production car. Turns out it was a 4 banger, which sounded like a vacuum cleaner when revved up, which we heard when Corey got in for a few seconds as well as when the Ford guy drove it away.



In the ~8 minute video above, Jason and I walked around the car discussing several items on the S550 chassis, and were actually pretty impressed with some of the aero and drag reduction tricks they have done. Sure, it might gain some weight, but it will likely be the most fuel efficient Mustang ever built (esp. the turbo 4) and a lot of that is due to the hard work of a lot of body and aero designers at Ford. The clean trim work, tight body lines, divorced mirrors and some other tricks will also benefit racers like us as well. The interior room was remarkably bigger, and 6'6" Corey White fit well, and even had to move the seat up a notch. I did my "helmet test", and at 6'3" I fit easily with my full face helmet on and sitting comfortably upright.

Sure, I was pretty bummed about the lack of a weighing or test drive, but what do you do? Ford is being pretty sly with this one, and could be covering up a whole pack of lies (weight claims) or... maybe they just want to save the surprise for when these are released. Who knows? We will see soon enough.

Kind of wished I would have entered that ProSolo, though.



By the end of this very long day they had awards to present for "class winners", and we won a 3 foot tall trophy - along with about 1/3rd of the attendees. I guess you could call it an attendance award.

What's Next?

• GTA @ Road Atlanta - May 9-10th, 2014. This is where I crashed hard on Day 1, broke my back and damaged the car. That really sucked.
• NASA @ Hallett June 21-22, 2014 - Hopefully I will be cleared by the doctors to race at this event, and I'm really looking forward to that!

That's all for this installation of the S197 build thread. I'll cover the GTA event at Road Atlanta in my next post, hopefully later this week, as well as more of my thoughts on the upcoming S550 Mustang and the rumors of it weighing "XXX" pounds over the S197 model. I won't bet the farm on the weight claims just yet - not until I see one or more of these cars on my scales with my own eyes.

Thanks for reading!

[Fair]

Project Update for June 16th, 2014: Been a busy couple of weeks since my last S197 post. We've had major progress on some V8 swap and other race car projects here, which I will cover briefly. Our summer intern has helped us clear out some pallet racks of "Stuff" and we found all manner of things worth selling on our Clearance page. There's a brief video where Jason and I show the tips of fitting 18x11" wheels on an S197 Mustang. My back is feeling better so we signed up for NASA @ Hallett next weekend, and are finishing pre-race prep and some additional brake upgrades/testing on the Mustang before we head out to Oklahoma on Friday. And now I'm finally covering the GTA event at Road Atlanta from May 9th, including the crash - I'll try to keep that brief. Let's get to it!

Other Projects at Vorshlag



If all you care about is Mustangs just skip this section. Some of you only know about Vorshlag from this S197 build thread, so you might not know that we have a service and fabrication prep shop that performs race preparations and track tech inspections, some repair work, full suspension/chassis/brake/wheel/tire installation services, and more. The "and more" part is really a lot more than you'd think - we're well versed in engine swaps and we like to swap V8 engines into cars that never came with them. We've now exceeded 100 kits sold for our BMW E36 LS1 swap, our E46 LS1 swap is selling well, and we've done swaps in BMW E30 and Z3 chassis. But we do more than that...



Our first or "Alpha" LSx V8 Scion FR-S swap development is moving along nicely and we just made an update to that build thread (on 7 forums, including at Vorshlag). The motor and transmission mounts were just completed and they look great (top right). The LS1 V8 adds barely more than 40 pounds to this little car, yet triples the engine displacement. Sound like fun yet?



Our Alpha LSx V8 NB Miata project development has reached a milestone, with the custom tubular rear subframe and rear suspension design now completed and ready for final welding and fixtures. This bolt-in subframe assembly houses an aluminum 8.8" IRS diff housing from a 2004 Mustang Cobra, which it needs to withstand the 450+ whp that the built LS1 motor it has will put out. Our new head fabricator Ryan H, who just joined us from a Daytona Prototype race team, has done all of magic to this car over the past month. Look for an update to this build thread soon (here). Zoom-zoom....



This Pikes Peak Subaru just came to our shop for a hair over two weeks to receive nearly 100 hours of custom fabrication work, including this new giant wing, a fuel cell install, custom firewall mods to accept a Tilton 3 MC pedal set-up and remote adjust brake balance bar, and more. This was a car we did a steel wide-body conversion on 2 years ago that our friends at Heritage Collision have now body worked and painted a few weeks before we got it. With all of the aero work completed it now looks like a million bucks.



There's a 5.0 Coyote V8 swapped German vehicle in our shop now getting a lot of work, but we didn't do this swap. We are doing some safety updates and fabrication work on this car, mostly by our new head fab guru Ryan H. When we had the motor out for extensive firewall rework (top left) we got a chance to weigh a Coyote 5.0 without a flywheel or clutch and it was 427 pounds, or almost exactly what an LS1 weighs in the same form. Interesting...


We have a BMW E36 LSx coupe (like above left) chassis already started, as well as an E46 coupe (like above right), a Z4 and an SN95 Mustang

Last but not least, we are doing more and more turn-key V8 swaps for customers, for both street and race cars. We're about to kick-off a new program where we take a rolling chassis we've acquired, set-up a plan for customers to pick the various drivetrain/suspension/safety options, and sell the build to the customer. This way they can choose the exact power level, suspension style, wheels and colors they want - and we build it. I've accumulated four really nice rolling chassis for this "Build a Racer" program, which I talk about more here.

Each one of these builds, and more I'm not even allowed to show, get the same type of photographs and "build thread" treatment for the owners, via giant emails. This takes a lot of time but it allows the owners to see their cars being built along every step of the way - just like our forum build threads.

House Cleaning - Vorshlag Clearance

We hired a summer intern and she 's helped us "find" a lot of Mustang parts in our shop that we have used and removed, or that some of our customers discarded after upgraded to something else. These parts are all still in great shape but just don't have a good home right now so we're blowing them out on our Clearance page. These are the Mustang related parts:



Lots and lots of used 315mm Hoosier race tires, in A6 and R6 flavors. Amy used up 4 of these doing about 7 sessions that day at Full Tilt speed at an ECR track event 3 weeks ago, and they were still very fast. We have dozens left. I've just removed all of the Hoosier entries from the actual Clearance page (no longer willing to ship) because I lowered the price on these by 75% to only $100/set cash. This gets you a choice of the best 4 we have, but we won't ship them at that price - you've got to stop by and pick them up in person. We need the shop space more than we need the extra scrub tires for our own cars.



Custom dual 3" stainless rear exhaust system for 2011-14 Mustang's. This is what we built using 3" 16-ga 304SS mandrel bends, two Flowmaster Series 44 409 stainless mufflers, two V-bands at the front, and with minimal work it should fit an OEM system at the "axle-back" connection. Fits better than any off-the-shelf ale back system with the stock Panhard, Whiteline Panhard or Whiteline Watts Link rear. We're blowing this one out cheap, and it could be shipped.



The custom 10" plexiglass rear spoiler we built for our time in SCCA's ESP class has been sitting on a shelf since late 2012. I forgot we even had this until something on a shelf in front of this part was moved out of the way. It is in perfect shape and we would charged 2 or 3 times this much to hand make one like it. It is built to fit a 2010-12 rear trunk and is made to the absolute limit of the rear spoiler rules for Street Prepared category. Comes with all of the hardware needed to bolt it to the trunk (note: a handful of nut-serts will need to be added for the lower rear strut mounts)