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Fair · 05-15-2014, 03:39 PM

Project Update for May 15th, 2014: I am way behind on this build thread - 5 events behind and counting - and cannot seem to catch up. Instead of one MASSIVE post I'm going to break it up into smaller chunks. When I first started writing this, a week ago, we were loading up the car to head to Road Atlanta to race with Global Time Attack. That event was... memorable. Long story short: I overcooked the brakes, had a 150 mph shunt, the car and my back were a little banged up, but I will cover all of that in a forum post next week. In this installation we show the new set of MCS double adjustable shocks added and detail one track event where we tested these at (TrackGuys at TWS).

MCS RR2 Dampers Added

Due to supply problems from Moton we haven't been selling these in 2014. My goals with this 2011 Mustang include to "race what we sell" and to "actively test the parts we recommend", and until that brand comes back online (maybe by July 2014?) we needed to make a shock change. So we called up the guys at Motion Control Suspension in Georgia and had a set of remote reservoir double adjustable monotube shocks built for our S197, which we call the RR2.

After these arrived we had Stuart of Maxcyspeed & Co dyno test them. I wanted to see how close they were to the custom valved Moton Club Sport remote doubles that were coming off (shown above) and possibly have Stuart re-valve them. Stuart was the one that had valved our Moton doubles two years ago, and that set-up was working VERY well. That set of Moton dampers has sold, but we hung onto them long enough to make sure we were happy with the MCS set. He added some rear rebound before we installed them and I'm glad he did - the car feels mostly unchanged from before, which is exactly what I wanted.

These two brands look remarkably similar, and they should - the same principles that ran Moton-USA for a dozen years now run MCS, so the products from both companies share many characteristics. Both are monotube dampers with remote canisters, both are rebound and compression adjustable, and both have similar piston sizes, housing wall thicknesses and construction. But there are some notable improvements to the MCS models.

Left: The old set of Moton Club Sport 2-ways with remotes. Right: The new MCS RR2 2-ways with remotes

First, the rear shocks are NOT eye-to-eye shocks on the MCS set we ordered (although you can order them that way) like the Motons were, so they don't require a special rear shock mount adapter to fit the back of the S197 chassis. It might seem "cool" to have eye-to-eye shocks but on a street car with OEM upper sheet metal mounts it has downsides. Two reasons: First, the added height of the eye-to-pin shock mount adapter eats up shock stroke. Second, the rebound adjustment on the eye-to-eye shock is only accessed underneath the car via a special tool. For the past two years if I wanted to adjust rear rebound I had to jack up the car, remove a rear wheel, insert a small pin drive tool into a hole on the shock and rotate the adjuster. PITA.

Adjusting the rear shocks is now just opening the trunk and turning a knob. Remotes are compression, rebound on the shock tops

Now, with the MCS RR2 rear shocks I can just pop the trunk, pull the trunk liner out of the way, and rotate the adjuster knob that stays on the top of the shock. That adjustment just got a whole lot easier. I've never been a fan of removable knobs or special tools needed to adjust your shocks, and the Moton needed that at both ends. The problem is the special knob or pin tool is always hard to find when you need it most.

Moton rear shock shown with "divorced spring" in OEM position w/ ride height adjuster

The MCS RR2 rear shock and spring was left as a "divorced" set-up, just like the stock rear dampers and the old Moton set. This means the spring stays in the OEM location, not converted to be a "coil over spring" mounted over the shock. Why? Three reasons. The first is losing inboard rear wheel room with a shock mounted spring, and with 18x11 or 12" wheels we have to use every trick possible to stuff the wheels inside the stock rear fenders. Even with our new rear flares we use all that room near the rear shock to clear the big 345/35/18 Hoosier tires. We have shown time and again that you can never have too much tire on the back of an S197. As we have moved this car up from 255-345mm rear tires the lap times have dropped every single step of the way. The car gets easier to drive as rear traction increases.

An advantage to divorced springs is ease of rear spring replacement. We can a pair of rear swap springs track side in under 5 minutes. With a coilover spring mounting it is a lot more work, and the shocks have to come off and be partially disassembled. The final downside by moving the spring onto the rear shock is the suspension loads are now moved to the OEM sheet metal upper shock mount. Ford designed this car to have suspension (spring) loads going through a different load path (in the factory "divorced" rear spring location), and only damping loads were designed to pass through the upper shock mount. The only time we recommend gong to a coilover spring on these cars out back is when you have a roll cage tied into a reinforced shock mount. Even then there is very little upside to doing all of that work... it would have a tiny bit more spring rate in roll relative to the divorced location. That's it. But less inboard wheel/tire room. No thanks!

Up front the MCS front strut is very similar to the Moton unit that came off. The MCS units do have a slightly different lower bracket but we keep the slots pulled out to increase front wheel room. Every time we've seen someone use "crash bolts" or slotted strut brackets on a McStrut to increase front camber they lose front wheel room, which again - is a huge draw back. We use every trick in the book to squeeze an 18x11" wheel under a stock front fender, and even with our custom front flares on this car it is tight fit with our 18x12" wheel and big 335/30/18 front tire. A shorter-than-stock Whiteline adjustable endlink and Hyperco 800#/in spring (same as we used before) wraps up the front end. As you can see getting to the front shock adjusters is as easy as out back - open the hood and turn a knob. No need for removable tools or knobs that can be lost. We already had brackets to mount the remote shock reservoirs and just re-used them for the MCS units.

I was happy with the install and the guys here at Vorshlag had it knocked out in only a few hours. They re-cross-weighed and balanced the car and got the two crosses to 50/50 with me in the driver's seat + the TT3 ballast in the trunk, with a 1/2 tank of fuel (as low as we dare run it in road course use with the stock tank/slosh issues). The only other substantial change was moving from a 350 #/in rear spring down to a softer 250#/in spring, to try to increase rear bite. We wanted to test these new springs at an event that didn't affect our preferred competition series record for the year (NASA TT3), so we signed up for this...

TrackGuys HPDE at TWS, March 29, 2014

see below

Fair · 05-15-2014, 03:40 PM

Amy and I motored down to TWS for the weekend of March 29-30th to do a little testing before the NASA event a few weeks later. This HPDE club was running the 2.9 mile course in the counter clockwise (CCW) direction and the next NASA event there in a month would be running CW, but no matter. We just needed a higher speed track event to test the new MCS dampers and softer rear spring rates at, so this event worked well for that. We signed up with Amy as the only driver, since she hasn't taken as many laps at TWS and needed more seat time at these speeds.

Amy drove the Mustang for two days, 7 sessions on track totaling and about 3.5 hours of seat time this weekend, burning up a lot of fuel and completely used up a set of Continental DP tires in the process. She got a lot more familiar with the TWS 2.9 mile course and the higher speeds seen here after that many hours on track. The brakes did great with this much abuse, but she used up a good bit of the brake pads. American Iron Camaro racer Mike Patterson rode with her and even drove our Mustang with her in the right seat for a few laps, giving her some excellent instruction. Amy picked up a lot from Mike and she ran some 1:59 laps afterwards, dropping 3 seconds almost immediately - this is a sport that is very difficult to "self-teach".

The TrackGuys crew had a record number of entrants for this TWS event and ended up being just barely short on instructors, so I filled in for an instructor that had trailer trouble on Saturday and arrived several hours late. I rode shotgun with two Mustang students for a couple of sessions each - one was in a '04 Cobra street car making 550 whp, yikes! Lucky for me they both did great. Since I instructed this allowed me to take a few laps in an instructor only session using our car, and I took exactly 3 laps both days. The Conti slicks felt OK but I was definitely slower than my previous laps on 315mm Hoosier A6 tires, with a best of a 1:56.2 lap with a student riding along.

Left: Mike Patterson's AI Camaro was quick. Right: Amy in grid for the red group

We ran this event on the same set of 320/650/18 Continental DP slicks we ran briefly at ECR on Dec 28th, back when it was so cold we couldn't get any heat in the tires. These tires were now used with the above mentioned new set of MCS RR2 shocks and 250 #/in rear springs, but the rest was the same from previous events this year. We ran the hot pressures in the mid 30 psi range and they felt much better in these warmer ambient temps, and didn't have the funky feel from December.

Matt White (at left) was quick in his ST1 classed 5.0 Coyote powered Mustang and Misty White (at right) was moving in her ST2 Camaro

According to our previous lap time data these tires were about 5.5 seconds slower than the 315 Hoosier A6 (previous best at TWS 2.9 CCW last September was 1:50.675, which was a new TT3 track record then). That seems like a lot, and maybe it is, but the A6 is a one or two lap "sprint only" type of tire and this Conti DP slick is made to go for many hours - which it did.

Looking at the pictures of the tire wear we definitely got our money's worth on this set, ha! The fronts might have had a tick too much negative camber, as the insides are worn more than the outsides. We actually took these a into the cords and could have easily suffered a blowout - not a pretty sight at 150+ mph. We saw a Corvette do that (pop a front tire at high speeds) during this TWS weekend, and it destroyed the front bodywork and some other bits.

Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-TWS-March-29/

Amy and I took pictures so they aren't as good as what Brandon would have shot, obviously. We took video during each session but its pretty boring stuff so I'm not going to bother editing and posting up a lap.

There were Mustangs from all eras and types: race cars, street cars, and everything in between

This TrackGuys group put on a good event, but a handful of the drivers were a bit reluctant to give point-bys in the faster run groups. Amy got stuck behind a couple of Corvettes for too many laps in a couple of run sessions - she was held up in some corners, but they had enough power on the straights to prevent a clean pass. Oh well, it happens. She doesn't push cars in front of her hard enough to really "get the point across", but she's always safe and calm on track.

This C6 Corvette had an off in the wildflowers and we cleaned his grill, heh

Amy had fun and I got a few laps in: enough to know that the Continental DP slicks aren't going to be replacing our A6s any time soon, and also to know that the new MCS RR2 dampers feel as good or better than the customized Moton doubles we had on the car before. The new softer rear spring also seemed to put down power a bit better on corner exit as well.

The rear definitely has some more roll, as shown in the picture above, so we might look at bumping up the Whiteline rear anti-roll bar settings. But we've driven the car several times since this and it actually feels great. Having the ability to quickly and easily adjust the rear rebound settings of the MCS shocks is a welcome change, and it allows for more shock adjustments to be made.

What's Next?

I'm already working on write-ups for these events, which have come and gone:

The crash at Road Atlanta was pretty bad - but it is all fixable

More soon,

Fair · 05-21-2014, 08:01 PM

Project Update for May 21st, 2014: So where were we? Ah, yes... April events and development work on the 2011 Mustang. First we ran an SCCA autocross in April on street tires - and all of our runs were during a downpour, so that was fun. There was an informal kart shoot-out we hosted the next week, then we created a new mount for a massive new (AJ Hartman) rear wing. Let's play catch up!

Texas Region SCCA Solo at TMS Bus Lot, April 13th, 2014

So there was a Texas Region SCCA event in April that we wanted to use for dry weather BFG Rival autocross testing with the new MCS coilovers. Amy and I co-drove in the 2011 Mustang on this rainy Sunday in April. We both ran in the first heat, in a steady rain that left little grip on for the BFG Rival 200 treadwear street tires. We both raced in the local "MAM" class (Modern American Muscle - a supplemental class to the new "CAM" Classic American Muscle class).

The club had 122 registered entrants, which was pretty dang good for a day everyone knew would have rain. We got there and it was still dry, unloaded the car and applied the hastily made "MAM" class letters that I hand cut the night before. I had Olof mount the same set of 315/335mm BFG Rivals that we used at the USCA/Optima event weeks before. The tires still looked good but the rears were flipped and run inside mount, since I kind of mauled the outer tread blocks on the right rear in my 90+ laps on track at the USCA event.

Results: http://texasscca.org/2014_solo_resul..._final.htm#MAM
PAX: http://texasscca.org/2014_solo_results/tr14_2_pax.htm
Photo and video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...CA-TMS-041314/

We had 5 runs each and Amy took 4 of hers first, then I took a couple of runs, then she took her last, and then I took my final 3. The rain was pretty hard at the beginning of the 1st of 4 heats and we still had to run the wipers on our last runs in the heat. It rained even into heat 2, stopped raining finally sometime in heat 3 and by heat 4 it dried up completely and times dropped by 10 or more seconds.

I worked in the trailer in heat 2, announcing, and took lunch with 2nd place MAM finisher Jay Payson from HP Tuners. He was in town for business and rented a Penske Mustang GT, which he enjoyed running in MAM. Since we left the rain gear box at the shop I still goat soaking wet, while taking pictures of Amy while she drove in heat 1.

Just a sample of the results showing how slow MAM was running in the wet compared to CAM that ran in the dry

I ended up getting fast time in the 4 car MAM class with the rental Penske 5.0 Mustang in 2nd place and Amy in 3rd. The Penske car had fresh Goodyear 220 treadwear tires and Jay said it was remarkably easy to drive. He normally races an M5 in FStreet class but he said liked the Mustang a lot and we discussed the merits of an E92 M3 and an S550 2015 Mustang for F Street at lunch.

Normally I -love- racing in the rain but as usual, the conditions varried too much to compare with other classes/run groups. And at this particular event we were definitely at a disadvantage here, with too much power and tires with too much width. See, in the rain it actually helps to have more pressure on the tires, just like in the snow, so you want a narrower tire with deep tread voids - which we definitely did not have on the well worn 315/335 Rivals. The new, deep tread, 255mm tires on the rental car were what you wanted in this instance, as strange as that sounds.

And Jay almost whipped me in a car he had never driven, so I felt lucky to come out ahead. Everyone else in the class ran their fastest run on their 5th and final attempt, except me. I was 3 tenths quicker on run 5 but stepped on a cone, so I had to settle with my 4th run. I had to drive on my best behavior in these conditions, which was driving me nuts, but I managed to "throttle" my normal tendency to over-drive and just did the rain dance. Tip-toeing on the gas and smoothing out my inputs as much as possible. We also ran a tick more tire pressure than normal, and dumped the compression damping on all 4 shocks to zero.

This was the slow in-car video from my 5th run. Its not very impressive, trust me.

The rain lessened all day and by the 4th heat we heard it was completely dry and times dropped dramatically, so the PAX results aren't very representative for everyone. Heck, the only group I'd want to compare any times with was the first heat, of which I think there was one car quicker than us in the 59.8 second range (STS winner JJ). It got progressively drier in heat 2 and 3 but by heat 4 it turned into a beautiful day and was fully a dry weather autocross. That would have been fun to make a few blasts around the course, but you run in the heat you are assigned. Oh well.

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Fair · 05-21-2014, 08:02 PM

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Left: We got to slog it out in deep puddles while... Right: The 4th run group had completely dry runs by day's end

Overall this event was a bust for testing with the Rivals. Why? Well we're only testing these with tires to use at the Optima Ultimate Street Car shootout in November, which is held in Vegas. The chances of rain for the ENTIRE day of that event in Las Vegas are virtually ZERO, so wet weather testing does us no good for that series. I will say the Rivals have surprisingly good grip for as wide and as bald as they were on this day.

Oh well, we got to see a lot of old friends and drive around really slowly. At least we didn't have any tire wear, ha!

Vorshlag Kart Fight 3

We are lucky to have a world class outdoor karting facility on the East side of Dallas called Dallas Karting Complex (DKC). Virtually all of the track, autocross, time trial and karting racers in DFW know about this place and have driven their rental karts before. We had a couple of Vorshlag sponsored Kart Challenges in 2011 and I was on a team of 4 in the first DKC 4 hour enduro in December of that same year. We got really busy in 2012 and 2013 and didn't have another Vorshlag-sanctioned karting competition for those two years, but I drove rental karts there many many times.

Instead of the structured, all day Saturday, 3-round shootouts we held in 2011, this time Vorshlag just held an informal night competition event at DKC on April 17th, 2014. This was a Thursday night and we posted up a Facebook event on our main Vorshlag page a few days beforehand just telling people, "hey, come join us from 6-9 pm, run a few races, turn in your time sheets, and the fastest time of the night gets a trophy".

We called it the Vorshlag Kart Fight 3, as this was out 3rd karting competition event since 2011. For something kind of thrown together at the last minute we had a surprising number of racers show up. By the end of the night we had nearly 40 people who came out to fight for the VKF trophy.

Kyle and Olof built this awesome trophy out of some broken Subaru drivetrain parts, TIG welded together and bolted to a base. The competition format was simple: show up, pay $15 a race (each race is about 10-12 minutes in length), and your best times run that night from 6-9 pm in the regular We had some swag and gift certificates for 1st through 3rd places. We also used NASA TT rules for offs and spins: if you put 4 wheels off or spun 180 degrees or more on track ALL times from that session were voided for that driver. We all spotted for each other.

Left: I went over the driving line, as I run it, with anyone who'd listen. Right: Fastest time of the night went to Alpha LS1 Miata tester Jason Toth!

I kept getting the same slug of a kart all night (excuses - I has em!) and while I had an early lead, I never improved on my first session times and could only manage 2nd quickest time of the night, a couple of tenths back from 1st. NASA TT racer Jason Toth was the winner, and (taking myself out of the running) 2nd place went to Billy Jack Smith and 3rd place swag went to NASA TT racer Jefri Tan (who runs in TT3 with me in a red EVO). We had one guy flip his kart (no injuries) and another NASA racer who put his kart so far off track he ended up in the sippy hole, and went home sopping wet. But no injuries and everyone had smiles on their faces.

"Helmet-Cam" Video from Marc Sherrin

NASA TT1 racer Marc Sherrin took the video above with a Go Pro strapped to his helmet, which is a compilation from about 3 sessions. As you can see we started off in daylight but it quickly got dark, and the track cooled off. They have excellent night lighting, so that made for extra fun NIGHT RACING! He even caught a glimpse of the kart that flipped in his video. We had 6 NASA TT racers, a lot of SCCA autocrossers, and various other local gear heads in attendance.

Vorshlag Kart Fight Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-Kart-Fight-3/

Five people from Vorshlag were there and Brandon managed to snap some pics while we were there. Thanks to everyone that came out to join us - we'll do it again soon!

New Massive Rear Wing on Mustang!

Let me first start off saying: I am not an aerodynamics guru. I have a mechanical engineering background/degree, and I understand some basic concepts of aero, but Jason here at Vorshlag studied hydrodynamics in college and I rely on his expertise. I also know other people are aero gurus that I listen to, and read from. So I will try to cover rear wings in this section without butchering the science of it too badly.

We have had an APR GTC-300 "3D" wing on our 2011 Mustang for the past 2, almost 3 years? This was supposed to be a temporary fix until we found a better 2D wing, from APR or another source. At the time APR was only making 3D wings, but have since come out with their own carbon 2D design. I initially bought this 67" wide GTC-300 carbon fiber wing element to use on another car, and we actually did use it on Brianne's Pikes Peak Subaru in 2012 for the PPIHC event that year. It is a good low speed wing (PPIHC is fairly low speed, as are many of our Texas tracks like ECR, MSR-C, MSR-H, HHR, TMS and others) but is somewhat "draggy" at higher speeds, and never was meant to work at the heights we ran it with on our car.

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Fair · 05-21-2014, 08:02 PM

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We designed and water jet cut that original wing mounting set-up very quickly, over the course of a few of days. The goal was to re-use these uprights with a 2D wing to be installed later that year, which never materialized. Because we had planned to use a 2D wing with these, and from my insistence, the APR 3D airfoil was mounted about 6 inches above the roof line - against the wishes of Ryan and Jason. At this height about half of the GTC-300 wing was doing nothing but generating drag.

Testing at both high and low speed tracks showed we were faster at max AoA on the APR wing: 12 degrees at the center

After we kept this GTC-300 wing on the car for a year, and after constant advice from aero folks, Jason and others, we eventually cut down these uprights by about half to lower the 3D wing element below the roofline. It seemed to work a little better at this lower height - which is the opposite of what you normally want to do with an airfoil.

Moving this 3D airfoil lower actually helped, due to the curved center shape of the wing

Why is this rear wring shaped this way? Answer: To meet certain class rules. This "3D" wing profile was made to help improve downforce when used in some racing classes on sedan-shaped cars that limited the mounting height of the wing element at 6" to 8" above the rear trunk lid height. This rule was made to limit rear downforce and slow cars down, so aero engineers came up with a way to trick these low mounted wings into producing more downforce at this low height by tilting part of the airfoil element upwards by 10-15 degrees right behind the greenhouse (aka: the bubble of glass and steel above the shoulder line of a car that houses the passenger compartment).

I always look at the C5R, C6R and C7R Corvette race cars for some of the latest aero tricks - not ashamed to admit that!

So the center section of this type of wing is angled upwards compared to the outer edges, to grab more airflow coming down over the roof and following the rear window. It really only works well when mounted low, and should only be used when class rules mandate a low wing mounting height. But this became so widespread in professional GT racing and looked so "high tech" that they caught on with racers who didn't need to mount them low.

CFD data shown on GT2 classed Corvette C6R race car (at left) and a striated smoke wind tunnel picture on a 911 GT2 at right

I've even heard other racers try to tell me that this type of 3D wing is better than a high mounted 2D wing. Which is wrong. Don't confuse popular solutions for another set of rules to mean that there isn't something better for your class. It is always worth looking at the "why" of a design.

Here is a chart of Drag (HP), downforce (pounds) and AoA for the 14" x 72" AJ Hartman Racing wing run through CFD software

You can see the CFD data on the GTC-300 airfoil at this link. And remember to look at the same units - the APR data is shown with speed in MPH (SAE) but force is shown in Newtons (metric), so you have to divide that Force data by 4 to see it pounds of force. The AJ Hartman wing just has better data, as you can see when comparing the two.

When to use a 2D vs 3D airfoil: http://www.aprperformance.com/index....sk=view&id=176

Even APR admits as such in the article above, and now that they make a 2D wing again they are pushing that design. And yes, we could have picked up a carbon APR wing, but when we were looking for one last summer they were having supply and manufacturing problems. Its no secret where their airfoils come from, and I would rather have a U.S. built carbon wing than one from an overseas factory. So we started looking at different wing manufacturers...

After a lot of phone calls, emails, investigations, spreadsheets, data investigations and personal inspection of various brands of U.S. made carbon fiber wings we honed in on two brands. The final decision was a close one but we picked the wing with the biggest span and chord available: AJ Hartman Racing. Their 14" chord length (the front-to-back size of the wing) and the massive 72" max width were simply unmatched by anything in this category for anywhere near this cost.

The Fulcrum wings are super popular here in Texas and I see them used to great effect on ST, AI, and other race cars

This hand laid carbon fiber wing is molded by AJ at his shop in New Jersey. He installs the saddles (bonded and riveted) to the wing at your specified widths, trims the span to your specs and the final wing just looks amazing. They weigh 9 pounds, total, and his wings can support the weight of a full sized adult. You may not know the AJ Hartman Racing name now, but the original airfoil design and molds were purchased from Fulcrum Aeroworks, which was a company formerly based right here in Dallas/Ft. Worth.

The retail price for this AJH wing is only $1300, which is insanely low (this airfoil easily compares to $2500-4000 U.S.-made wings), and now Vorshlag is their first ever dealer. AJ didn't yet have a wing mounting kit for the 2010-2014 Mustang trunk shape so we started designing one as soon as our first 14x72" AJH wing arrived.

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Fair · 05-21-2014, 08:03 PM

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In NASA Time Trial we are only limited on wing mounting to a height of up to 8" above the roof, which is WAAAAAY up there, and FEET higher than what the 3D wings were really designed to be used at. A 2D wing is simply more efficient than a 3D wing, when mounted above the roof. This means: they produce more downforce (negative lift) and less drag at a given speed and angle.

I spent most of a day on 4/19/14 making cardboard mock-ups for the 6 mounting pads, then making the trunk profile for the uprights

Since we weren't restricted on mounting the wing anywhere close to the rear trunk lid, we figured we would see more downforce with a 2D wing mounted at or near the upper limits for NASA TT. The higher you can mount the wing, and the farther behind the car, the less turbulent the air will be that is going over and (especially) under the wing. We had originally looked at making a wing that met NASA American Iron and NASA TT/ST rules, but they were conflicting. TT specified a maximum height but AI specified a maximum of 1.5" behind the car.

I transferred the cardboard to thin sheets of wood, cut those out for prototype templates and then bolted up the wing

My first mockups (above) were both AI/TT legal, shown above in wood. After staring at it for a while it just didn't... look right to my engineering eyeball. It was too vertical and not swept back enough.

If we see any trunk deformation at high speeds we will add tubing to brace to these two plates (at right) from the ballast weight bracket

So when I gave the upright layout to Jason I told him to just centrate on the trunk shape and approximate height (we pushed it up to around 6" above the roof, within 2" of the TT max height). He transferred the trunk shape into SolidWorks then moved the actual upper wing mounting portion rearward about 8 inches, which put the wing too far behind the back plane of the car to be AI legal. I kind of knew this first aluminum unit we made would be a prototype that we would later need to tweak, so we will go back and make "production pretty" wing mounting kits for AI and another for TT/ST use on the 2010-14 Mustang trunk.

Check out the video above showing the CNC plasma cutter making a wing upright in about half a minute

After Jason had turned the trunk shape into a CAD drawing I ran to our metal supplier and picked up some aluminum plate in two thicknesses, then rushed over to Friction Circle Fabrications in Lewisville. There Todd Earsley used his brand new CNC plasma machine (see video above) to cut the aluminum I brought into the shapes from the files we sent to him. He cut the six mounting plates and two uprights in less than 35 minutes on his machine, and I was loaded up and racing back across town with the parts still hot.

Once we got to Vorshlag the crew cleaned up the edges and started mocking up the mounting plates. We were super busy that week on customer cars and it wasn't until Friday afternoon that everything was finished, welded, painted and bolted together. We set-up the upper mounting holes with 3 initial Angle of Attack (AoA) positions: 6, 10 and 12 degrees from level. We left the wing at the lowest angle setting we made, 6 degrees, for our first TWS laps with NASA.

Me (at left), AJ (middle) and Jason (right) posing for a quick pic with the new wing when AJ Hartman stopped by Vorshlag

A couple of weeks after we built this wing, just after our TWS race, AJ Hartman happened to be flying through Dallas after a test with a customer down at CoTA. He stopped by the Vorshlag shop to check out our prototype mounting for our first AJH wing. He pointed out a few things we could tweak to make it better, but overall he liked the set-up. We showed him two more cars in the Vorshlag shop that need to get AJH wings, and he is making those for us now.

That's all we have time for in this installment. Tune in next time when we cover the NASA TT race at TWS with this new wing installed. This Saturday is Five Star Ford at ECR - see ya there!

Fair · 06-04-2014, 10:08 AM

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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