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

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Project Update for June 2, 2012: Amy and I spent 5 days in Nebraska autocrossing at the SCCA's "Spring Nationals", with a ProSolo on Fri-Sat and a National Tour autocross on Sun-Mon. We also spent about a day (11 hours each way) driving from Texas to Lincoln and back. Completely wiped us out and I'm still playing catch-up. This was a great test for us against 10 of the top ESP cars in the Pro and 18 ESP cars in the Tour.

2012 Lincoln ProSolo

Amy and I left Dallas early on Thursday morning and towed north for 11 hours to Nebraska, driving straight through. We got to the event site at about 5:15 pm, minutes after they had stopped selling tickets for practice starts. Meh, we had 12 chances to see the starting line and had done the Mineral Wells ProSolo not long earlier. We were too tired to care. Unloaded, added more event sponsor decals, teched the car, checked in with registration for both events (moving Amy out of a 1 car ESP-Ladies class for the Tour and into ESP Open), ate food at the welcome party, saw a bunch of friends, walked both the left and right ProSolo courses, then finally made it to the hotel at about 9:30 PM and CRASHED. That made for a very long day.

• SCCA's News Write-up: http://www.scca.com/solo/news.cfm?cid=51024
• Results: http://scca.cdn.racersites.com/prod/...%20Results.pdf
• Reaction Times + 60 Foot: http://scca.cdn.racersites.com/prod/...%20revised.pdf
• Pictures and Video (both events): http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ationals-2012/

Friday morning Amy was running first in "L1" class (one of three PAX factored Ladies classes) and did OK, finishing the morning in 4th out of 13. Amy was having trouble at the starting line and her 60' foot times were off the pace. She also complained loudly about understeer in the tight 180° turn-arounds.



When I made my Friday morning ESP class ProSolo runs I knew what she was talking about, and the rest of that day we were chasing the set-up trying to dial out this push. I was still only cutting 2.1-2.2 sixty foot times, which was frustrating considering the big Fat Boy rear tires we had just started running. The launch RPM from the 315mm Kumhos was only about 1800, but with the 345/35/18 A6s it was now up to 3200 rpm... yet the 60' times were barely better than at the Mineral Wells Pro. WTH?



I started out pretty fast on the right side (2nd fastest, behind Marky-M) in the morning but had nothing quick on the left side. The courses were poorly marked visually (lots of DNFs, some lost driver course-cross-over-close-calls, lots of cones) but if you could find the line it still flowed well and had some of the fastest peak speeds of a National Level event I had ever seen. I didn't mind - with the 2011's transmission, 3.31 gears, and uber-tall 345/35/18 rear tires we could hit 77 mph in 2nd gear - and we hit that for a second or more on the "back straight" (which had huge offsets in it, actually).

Unfortunately we weren't really helped much with our uber-2nd gear terminal speeds, and with nothing fast on the left I was mired down in 5th place. Amy finished her afternoon runs with only about a .2 sec total improvement, and mine weren't much better, either. She had fallen down to about 6th, and I was still in 5th.


IN-CAR VIDEO: Terry's fastest Day 2 runs from the 2012 Lincoln ProSolo. Rear spoiler removed.

The first Friday work session we had ran long, due to all of the lost drivers and DNFs, but our second work session was an eternity. Due to continual timer "network problems" (which are unfortunately not uncommon at ProSolos) we were stuck on course until 8:15 at night, working 3 hours in the heat, then the rain, then the cold, then the increasing dark. It was nuts, but finally the event was over just before full dark.

On her Saturday morning runs it was cooler and Amy found a half second on the left side but coned it away, then found a tenth on the right. Her L1 competitors, many on fresh tires for Saturday (we need to learn from this pattern) were all much faster and moved her all the way down to 9th out of 13. Yeesh. Her best runs were both 44.6 sec, and on my final two runs I managed to dip into the mid 43s on both sides. For a moment there I was announced to be up in 3rd place, just after my last left side run - so that felt good. I found time on my last right side run as well but the announcer said I was now in 4th, barely in the trophies. That was short lived - by the time 2nd drivers made their runs I was bumped down to 5th, .025 sec out of the trophies. That's... mid-pack!? Three Firebird/Camaros took the podium spots with McGeorge in 4th in his beautiful '12 Boss302.



Knowing pretty early on that we were off the pace, we used all of our ProSolo runs for testing. This was still only our 6th autocross in ESP and we're still a long way from getting the proper R compound set-up down for this car. Other than tire pressure and shock changes, one significant set-up change we did Friday night was the front toe settings (which were still set-up for track events), hoping for better turn-in. It was better but after Amy's Saturday morning runs she said the push was still there, so I made a Hail Mary pass... I pulled off the rear spoiler.

In theory this would make the car push less, at least in high speed turns, and THAT IT DID. The damn thing was squirrely as hell in the higher speed sections of the course, like the "back straight". What I was able to take flat footed before was really loose on my 1st and 2nd Saturday runs. I had to pedal back a bit on my 3rd and 4th runs, so that "stupid rear spoiler" is very much working at higher autocross speeds. Removing this had no affect on the lower speed turn-arounds, which was the issue we were trying to address. Without a rear bar adjustment or spring change, nor time to change anything in my last 2 runs, I was stuck with it. I still found a total of 5 tenths on my final two tries, but it was simply from finding the proper lines in the last 2 segments and a good light - the same sections Amy and I both had botched badly during the whole event.



So the Pro was a bust, as I was 2 seconds behind Madarash, Amy was 2 seconds behind me, and neither Amy nor I made the Challenge. Did we take a step backwards? At the MW Pro we both placed higher - I was only 1 second back from Mark over both courses and finished in 2nd place out of 7, ahead of some of the same drivers that were beating me at this event. So it seems that the switch to Hoosiers was a bust, and the 14" wide 345mm rear tire was causing a big understeer problem. Oh well, now we know.

"Bigger isn't always better" - this idiot

2012 Lincoln National Tour

Sunday rolled around and it was time for the Tour - and we were already dead tired from spending 3 days on site. I don't remember what weather we had on which day, because it was changing wildly from day to day, yet was ALWAYS WINDY. We saw 98°F heat, rain, cold, fog, even the threat of hail and tornadoes. There were several storm systems that grazed the event site and a few that dumped some of the wet stuff. We saw it all in Lincoln!



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The other thing we saw after so many racers made their 12+ runs at the 2 day ProSolo was tons of "OPR" - Other People's Rubber. And the tar that fills the seams in the concrete was coming up as well. It was nice when the ProSolo courses "rubbered in" on the 2nd day, as it helped you find the hard to see courses; there were many fewer DNFs on Day 2. The problem was at the following event - the Tour - which had two separate courses on the same surfaces as the Pro. The Tour courses were also a little "undermarked" in my opinion, with lots of places to get lost... especially when you went across or towards one of the rubber-covered Pro corners, like this:



You'd be zipping along, see the rubber laid down from 2 days ago, and get lost. I watched all of my National Tour run videos and caught myself hesitate more than once when near one of these rubber-lined ProSolo corners. Oh well, we all had to drive the same courses, and many folks found their way better than others. On Day 1 of the Tour I ran first and Amy was 2nd driver, and she laid down a smokin' fast first run (good enough for 2nd in class)... but coned it away! My first run was pretty quick, and good enough for 2nd, but that didn't last long. Mark Madarash cleaned up his coned first run and quickly jumped into a big lead. I whittled away at my 1st and 2nd run 62.6's and found a 62.19 on my 3rd run. Amy's 2nd run was considerably slower than her first and had 2 cones. So she needed to dig deep on her 3rd run and get a clean one in. Her 62.2 first run raw time would still put her in the trophies if she could just clean it up. We were all parked directly into the wind with our hoods up, some already done and sitting in Impound, but the 2 driver cars were waiting their turn for 2nd drivers to make their last runs. Bunch of ESP drivers were gathered behind our Mustang (the big rear spoiler acts as a wind break and we can at least hear each other talk standing there). Winds were 25+ mph all day but we kept seeing short wind gusts that were taking hats off all day.



We're about to get Amy helmeted up and in the car when... WHAM! We look over and see the hood of our car completely vertical. Oh no... the wind had gusted, got under the hood, and ripped loose the hood struts and sent it smashing into the windshield! Glass was EVERYWHERE inside, as it shattered both the inner and outer layers of safety glass.

In an instant, without saying a word, the entire swarm of ESP drivers jumped into action. Madarash and another driver were rolling up duct tape and picking up small glass particles from the dash and seat. Another ESP racer went to find Amy a full-faced helmet to borrow. More hands helped me quickly assess the damage ("I see a broken hinge and two hood struts flopping under there - lets just TAPE IT CLOSED"). A grid worker jumps in and says "OK, I assume you want a ten minute mechanical!", then ran to tell the rest of the drivers in Impound/Grid to close hoods. We had the hood back down and taped it closed across the fender at the right rear corner, where the hinge was ripped in half. Mark and I were taping the lower 1/3rd of the windshield to keep it intact, both inside and out. Another driver was helping tape the outside and got cut his hand, so he backed away to stop the bleeding and another took his place.



In something like 3 minutes we had the hood closed, the windshield taped up on both sides, Amy strapped in the car with a borrowed helmet, and ready to race - she didn't even miss the 2nd driver rotation. It was awesome! What a kickass group of racers... I can't thank everyone that helped enough. Man, its times like these I really appreciate what a great group of folks we race with - some of which I didn't even know.

• SCCA's News Write-up: http://www.scca.com/solo/news.cfm?cid=51025
• Results: http://scca.cdn.racersites.com/prod/...%20Results.pdf
• Pictures and Video (both events): http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ationals-2012/

Amy's last run after that mayhem was slower, mostly from the big, borrowed helmet that was slipping down over her eyes. Oh well, she made it around safely and got a clean run, but her first run was still quicker with the cone. That put her way down in like 14th place out of 18, ouch. I started making calls to about a dozen local windshield repair places but being Memorial Day weekend I came up dry. Another ESP racer called a contact at a Ford dealer and he told us what the windshield places had told me - there isn't a windshield for this car in Nebraska, maybe they could get one by Wednesday. Well, looks like we'd be racing Monday (Day 2 of the Tour) with the busted windshield!



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Monday rolled around, I was down in 5th place, and Amy in 14th. We had picked up a roll of clear packing tape and covered all of the many vertical cracks that we had missed the day before. The duct tape was still in place on the lower 1/3rd of the windshield and across the back corner of the hood, which we didn't open until we got back to Texas (after asking in Impound if anyone wanted to see under there once again). My first run was quick, the 2nd fastest in class, and it moved me all the way up to 2nd place. Mark was already 1.7 seconds ahead for the day, but he and I (plus 3 more ESP drivers) never improved on our first runs.



Madarash (above left) stayed well out in front of ESP but I eventually fell down to 3rd place out of 18 when Newcombe made a smokin' fast 3rd run - the only driver to get in the 64s other than Mark that day. Moving up from 5th with a busted windshield and heavy understeer, I was happy just to salvage a trophy out of this Tour. Amy fought the car all day and was fully 2 seconds off my pace - I think her height made it more difficult to see through the "portal" of visibility I found above the tape line and between the cracks. Still, she moved up 2 spots to 12th, but wasn't happy about that at all. She's always a lot closer to me when we co-drive and this weekend just didn't go her way.



We learned a lot at these events: never underestimate Nebraska weather (pack for EVERYTHING), bring lots of tape, a non-square tire set-up can cause a push, and we still have a lot of work ahead if we want to narrow the gap to the Titan of ESP. One step forward, two steps back - the gap to Mark has doubled since the MW Tour, so we need to re-assess our changes and do more serious testing. Another set of tires is going on the car soon for a dedicated test day where we will try different spring rates and shock/bar/tire pressure settings. We also have too much lateral movement of the rear axle (rear fenders were digging into the top edges of tire tread), and the 77" wide rear track made the car harder to navigate through the many transitions and slaloms. I also felt the rebuilt/upgraded LSD starting to slip so we have got to step up to a better diff (T2R).


Video of Terry's Day 2, Tour, Run #1 You can see the view from the driver's seat

Looking at the Tour results you might think we did well, nabbing 3rd place out of 18. We did not. I was fully 4 seconds back over 2 days, which is an eternity. Again, we learned a lot and now we know how much we need to make up.


Upcoming Events

We have adjusted our June race schedule to sneak in a private test day, and also to get one more weekend off. We were almost about to register for the Mid-America Ford Meet track day at Hallet but the other folks we were going with decided to cancel, so we did as well.

• June 8-9, Optima Face Off at the HOT ROD Power Tour - Autocross + Speed/Stop + Time Trial track event (ECR + Ball Park at Arlington)
• June 23, Five Star Ford Track Day (ECR)

The windshield is replaced, the hood is repairable, and only the hinge itself is torn. Easy fixes, considering. We're going to add a "hood tether" so that the hood can be raised (to cool engine between runs, impound, etc) unsupervised. I still don't want thehood prop, as its always in the way when you're working under the hood and we've almost lost the hood in high winds with that as well. The below left picture shows the tire rub we're still seeing with the 345/35/18, even spacing them out 1" wider than we had the 315s on the same 12" wheels. Way too much rub. So yea, I'm going back to 315s out back; not going to play around trying 335s, as the 315s at all four corners WORKED and the car could ROTATE. I might even go back to Kumhos and run a set head-to-head against the Hoosiers. The V710 seems a lot more tolerable of temperature than the A6, so far. We had to spray the crap out of the Hoosiers at the Tour.



Also shown above is the 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05 tires we bought for the Optima FACEOFF at the Hot Rod Power Tour next weekend (plus a set in 275/40/18 we got for a customer's new D-Force 18x10 wheels). This was the best 200 treadwear tire we could find any real data on. Mounting these on another set of the new 18x10" Vorshlag/D-Force wheels which we will use for this 2 day event, then pull them off and sell the set (sort of have a buyer lined up).

Someone from Speed TV called Friday to see if we were going to the event, and they are gonna be there filming. Friday at Quick Trip Park is the Speed Stop and Autocross, then Saturday at ECR for the Time Trial. Not really sure how this event is going to be run or scored - hopefully its not a 100% "subjective event" and its a real competition. Come out and watch to see some epic cars! There will be a huge variety of big dollar, magazine famous rides that will completely overshadow out little 2011 GT. Still, with both venues being very familiar to this driver and car, maybe we will get lucky and place well? Time will tell...

More soon,

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Project Update for June 13, 2012: I am still recovering from last weekend's Optima Faceoff at HOT ROD Power Tour series of competition events. Wow, what a crazy two days! So much to talk about, the TV coverage was insane, and we did really well - considering all of the things that went wrong with the car and set-up. I have spent the last two days just cropping pictures and editing videos. I am still trying to wrap my head around the results (official results won't be out for "at least a week"), the car/set-up issues we ran into (all of which were my own damned fault), and the event itself.

More Event Prep

Let's back up and show some of the last minute prep work done before this event - a lot of little things piled up in the days before the Optima event. I figured there would be a lot on the line (and even more than I had bargained for!), so we wanted to get the car set-up, reliable, and ready. We did a pretty good job, but made some key mistakes - again, mostly from my tire selection and poor set-up choices.



The 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05 tires were mounted on the D-Force/Vorshlag 18x10" wheels, which were mounted on the car - and they looked great. To improve the front track width a bit for the track day, we went with 7mm spacers up front... it wasn't needed, but it "looked better" with them. I kinda knew there would be some TV coverage so vanity won out (and there was a LOT more TV crew than I had ever dreamed of). This 295 tire mounts on the 10" wheel beautifully and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend a 295mm tire for these D-Force wheels now. We've tried a 315mm race tire on these wheels and it was way too much, but this 295 fit great. The height was a little short but it was workable. This set of mounted and balanced wheels and tires is for sale! $1800 + shipping and they are yours ($2650 retail, mounted and balanced). Used for two days, still have tons of tread.



As you can see in the first pictures we also pulled off the big "93" numbers and "ESP/TTS" class letters from the side doors and front of the car, as Optima has their own decals and numbers for these events. Part of the repairs from the "windshield incident" required two new hood hinges, as we noticed when pulling the hood that both of them were torn to shreds (as seen above, right). We had the local Ford deliver those, painted them in red to match, and put the hood back on. Well, not before some PDR guy came by to look at the hood damage, who promptly man-handled the bent rear corners so badly that he cracked the paint. Never even tried to use the heat gun to get the paint warmed up. "uhhh... thanks?"



Since we had planned on running both the rear wing (track) and rear spoiler (autocross + speed-stop) at this weekend of events we did some tweaks to both rear aero packages. For the wing base plate mounts that bolt directly to the trunk structure, Ryan made some new lower "shims" (above left) that better match the curves and contours of the trunk, which turned out nicely. For the rear spoiler, two additional "struts" were added to the outer edges, which mounted forward to existing holes in the trunk (to some wing base plate mounting holes). These two front struts joined the existing 4 rear struts to make for a much more rigid structure. Now you can really push on the ends of the spoiler and it doesn't deflect.



Like we do before each track event or autocross (and for customers, now that Vorshlag is a NASA Approved HPDE tech shop), the car was given a good pre-track inspection. Ryan began by swapping over to the track pads (R4) and rotors and flushing the brakes with Motul RBF600 (which we now stock and sell). He noticed a bit of wear on all of the caliper and pad mounting hardware, which isn't a surprise considering how many times we've swapped rotors and pads (autocross set vs track set). The dust seals were FRIED and had burned to a crisp. So new caliper bolts, pad retaining pins, and dust seals were ordered. The dust seals had to come from Italy so those would have to wait, but the hardware was swapped along with the track set of rotors and pads before the event. These R4 track pads take a bit to get up to temp, so I had to be mindful of getting the brakes hot for the speed-stop and autocross events (this would bite me in the ass later).



An odd safety item we needed for this Optima event was a fire bottle "mounted in the car with a metal bracket". We called a fire extinguisher supplier and had two Halon bottles (one for Mustang, one for the E30) with roll bar mounts ordered over a week before the event. Of course these didn't arrive in time (and still haven't, two weeks later), so Ryan had to fab something up the morning of the event. It's a cheesy little 2.5 pound "BC" type bottle mounted to a metal bracket with a quick release (hitch pin), but it met the letter of the rules. The mount was plenty strong, but a little hinky looking - still better than some other set-ups we saw.



One car actually caught on fire at the track event as it was leaking transmission fluid onto exhaust all day, pouring smoke out while on track, and it finally was enough to burn. The track personnel couldn't get his fire bottle out quickly enough and they had to use one from the paddock. So there was a solid basis to this rule. We will chuck this 2.5 pound extinguisher (the bottle was on the harness bar upright) and mount the real 5 lb Halon bottle into the Mustang if/when it arrives.

Well this portion has already gotten long... I will start another update tomorrow.

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Project Update for June 15, 2012: With all of the pre-event prep and changes made to the Mustang (see my last thread update, above) to tackle an autocross, speed-stop, and track event all in one weekend we loaded the car into the trailer Friday morning and headed to QuikTrip Park for the Friday events during the Optima Challenge Faceoff. We saw lots of cool hot rods and muscle cars on the highways, as the week long Power Tour was wrapping up at the same location... across the street in the parking lot for the at the horse track called Lone Star Park.

OPTIMA FACEOFF AT HOT ROD POWER TOUR

I was ready for autocrossing on the surface at LSP, as I had raced there many dozens of times and new how the site would bite. When we rolled up and saw what looked like thousands of cars parked all over the giant open asphalt lot at LSP, I was confused. I asked the guy at the gate: "Uhhhh... Where is the event!?!" "You see the small parking lot across the street? That's it." Oh damn. The lot used to park cars for the minor league baseball field (QuikTrip Park) and neighboring Verizon theater (which had some high school graduation going on) was our lot for the day. It was a much smaller, sealed asphalt surface, and I didn't know this site at all.



Oh well, no home court advantage today (but I knew the ECR track better than any other track I've raced on - hopefully that would pay off tomorrow!). We wound our way through the barricades and finally found a spot to park the truck and trailer. While Amy unloaded the Mustang I went over to registration, which was already well underway. The organizers had several huge trailers set-up, including this massive multi-level rig Optima brought they called Optima Prime. It really was like some massive Transformer, with all of these swiveled and rotated and flipped out sections on this 53' trailer, and both air conditioned space and a shaded upper level observation deck. Very cool.

• Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ff-QTP-060812/
• Top 3 Results: http://www.optimainvitational.com/op...ower_tour.html
• Detailed Results: http://www.optimainvitational.com/Fa...%20Results.pdf

K&N, Bowler Transmissions/Royal Purple, RideTech, Wilwood, and others also had their big display trailers set-up, there were bleachers for spectators to sit in, (hundreds of people came by to watch the events) and TV cameras EVERYWHERE - on man lifts/cranes, crews walking around with 2 SpeedTV hosts, mobile lipstick cameras they put in and on cars, and more. I was blown away by all of this pageantry and spectacle for an autocross - in 24 years of competing in this sport I had NEVER seen anything like it! After I shook my head, pinched myself and was positive this was real, I made it up to the registration platform inside the Optima trailer. I got checked in, signed all sorts of insurance and release forms (TV stuff), they handed me an event T-shirt + a gaggle of decals, and I went back and got the car "stickered up" and ready.



Amy did her magic and put the huge Optima side decal boards, Optima numbers, and Optima windshield banner decals on perfectly (as usual we laid them up wet - you shoulda seen some of the other decal installations!) Drove the Mustang over to the pre-grid area where all of the entrants were lining up and started talking to some folks. Damn fine cars here, including the LG ZR1 and numerous magazine featured cars I had seen before or knew of. Wow, there was some serious hardware in the 40 car field! After snapping some pics of several of my dream cars, I began to walk the tight autocross course several times, and also talking to some friends I knew that were entered. There was a driver's meeting at the Optima Prime trailer, then we were split into 2 groups, and my group was lined up for the Speed Stop Event.

Wilwood Disc Brakes Speed-Stop Event



Now remember: we had just mounted these brand new Nitto tires, rolled the car onto and out of the trailer, and then driven it 100 feet to the grid area. So yea, the tires were covered in silicone mold release. Also, the R4 brake pads and dedicated rotors were swapped on, but not in the perfect order from the last time they were used, also with zero driving. Guess where I'm going here? The tires were not scrubbed in and the brakes were not bedded, so I had NO grip and NO brakes on my first 3 speed stop attempts! Blew right out of the stop box every time.

This also wasn't a straight forward "accelerate then brake" deal, due to the size of the lot. We had a decent little acceleration zone (I saw a peak of ~60 mph), then a pirouette cone lined in water barriers, then a super tight offset slalom (35' apart with significant offsets) into the 20x40' stop box. And there was water seeping up through the parking lot at the front of the stop box, which never stopped all day (from heavy rains the day before). Not complaining - we all had to drive the same thing - it just wasn't a straight "go and stop" kind of deal. You had to set-up for the turn-around and subsequent slalom to get a good time. The acceleration box from the standing start was also pretty bad until it rubbered-in, later in the day.


Lined up for the Start-Stop event in front of another crowd of spectators

Right before the Speed Stop event was to start they had pushed our group temporarily over into the autocross line for 1 run (while some cars were moved in the Speed-Stop area), which also felt like driving on greased ice. My first 3 Speed-Stop runs were pathetic, and I blew through the stop box each time, pressing like mad on the brake pedal. After those first 4 attempts to do anything was losing my mind. I noticed I had no fuel left, and I was drenched in sweat already - and had no water or ice in our cooler, and it was already hot (95°F day). I had to get out of here and get fuel, water, ice, scrub the tires and bed the brakes. I asked for a fuel break, was told where to exit, and I got out of that parking lot. About 1 mile away was a RaceTrac gas station, and in that mile of driving I broke more traffic laws than I can count. It must of looked like somebody was driving a car full of sting-crazy bees - I was swerving across three lanes, accelerating like mad, then panic stopping. But when I got back 10 minutes later the brakes were bedded and those tires were scrubbed in.

Ride-Tech Street Challenge Autocross



So with the silicone off the tires the the brake pad surfaces matching the rotors, I went back in line to wait for my group to start the autocross portion for the next hour. We had 4 straight hours of racing (with one 15 minute break where we went back to pre-grid), and each hour we'd rotate from S-S to Auto-x. My first auto-x run on the greased-up tires was a 35.6 sec run. My next run an hour later on the now-scrubbed tires was a 33.2. Then I had a string of 32s, then five runs in the 31s. I was getting faster and the announcer noticed...



By the end of the day I had taken about 12 autocross runs and managed to run a 30.8 and a 30.5 second pass. We thought those might be in the top three but since they were not posting times we didn't know how close we were. The announcer was calling out times over the speakers, but these were pointed away from the grid and towards the crowd. By around 4 pm I had two buddies join us (McCall and Ed, the two nose-pickers shown below) that were helping with tire pressures, tire spraying (these NT-05s were boiling in short order), keeping me hydrated, and this let Amy go across the event site to the Optima trailer and listen for our times (which she would text to us after each run).



With 40 cars moving through the line it made for a little wait between each run, and the camera crew used those periods to do on-camera interviews with drivers. I was interviewed 3 times during autocross & Speed-Stop events, and you can hear one of the interviews at the end of my autocross video, below.


Click for in-car video of one of my 31 second autocross runs + an on-camera interview with Bill Goldberg

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Even though this was a super tight autocross (where I was at steering lock 6 times per run) and there were smaller cars there that could navigate the course better than this wide Mustang (EVO, three MR2s, etc), somehow we did all right and our little Mustang ended up with the fastest time at the end of the day! Whew... Of course we didn't know this until the end of Saturday, because they kept the results final secret - hey, it was part of the drama of TV, so I get it. The look on my face when they announced me as the autocross winner must have been pretty funny... because I was totally shocked!



Click for in-car video of my Speed Stop Run #7, 14.4 seconds

Unfortunately I never made a good showing at the Speed-Stop event all day. My run in the video above was my best on that course and it was a solid 0.9 second off the Todd Earlsey's Evo, who placed first in the event (and 2nd in the autocross - he had lots of good points already racked up going into day 2). They only announced the top 3 finishers after the Saturday awards ceremony so I didn't know where exactly I ended up, but now that the final results are up it looks like I ended up way down in 9th (this placing utterly killed my chance at the overall win). I took about 8 runs over 2 hours on that S-S course and never really got a good stop or turn-around in, with a massive front end push in the turn-around and the brakes just not working.

The start box rubbered-in after a number of entrants made big smoky burn-outs and I could finally leave the line on these street tires at about 1800 rpm late in the day, but that was the only improvement I saw. The pedal was hard as a brick at the braking zone into the pirouette cone, and just as bad into the stop box. I had no power assist with the brakes; I was jamming that pedal down with all my strength with very little affect. We tried to diagnose the booster and vacuum lines on site but could not find a vacuum leak big enough to leak down the booster - it just didn't have any pedal assist after any high RPM sprint. Something was broken. We also had a major push that we couldn't dial out, even with a crazy alignment, tire pressure tweaks, and radical shock changes.

Roshambo?! (Autocross Shoot-out)

At the end of the day we had a special non-points event in store. By now it was 6:30 pm and time for the "autocross shoot-out", with the top 16 drivers doing a head-to-head "race to the line" sort of deal. They called it Roshambo, but many of you would know it as a "double-cross". They called the top 16 drivers' names, where I was the last one to be called, and they pulled me to the front of the line (didn't know at the time, but this was because I had won the autocross). When they described the event at the driver's meeting they were wrapping up extending the course between the formerly separate finish to the start lines, with a short and TIGHT section of course. I listened to the driver's meeting instructions... as I walked this new section of course 30 yards away. Three times. Nobody else that I could see walked it, and therefore didn't know how tight it was.


Left: Lined up with eventual Roshambo winner Brian Finsh. Right: Lots of sparks from the rear brakes (see more here)

This extra course knowledge paid off in my first round heads-up match, as I blazed through this newly added section of course to make the continuous lap and I won my first round by over a second. One thing that was unique was that any driver that hit a cone was eliminated - and if both drivers hit a cone they were BOTH out. So during the first round's 8 match-ups there were some cones, and a pair of drivers who both hit cones. That pair that coned out made for a "bye" run for me in round 2 - but I still had to make a clean cone-free run. It was a slow parade lap, of course. In the 3rd round I was lined up against the 1971 Camaro of Brian Finch. Now he had an unusual advantage - not only is he a series regular (and a great driver!) but he entered 2 cars in the event, and both cars were fast enough to get into Roshambo... so he had twice as many looks at the new course by the 3rd round (his 1970 Nova had been bumped out in his 1970 Camaro). When we ran heads up I got behind in the slalom and lost a lot of time, and was not surprised when he beat me back to the line. He ended up going onto the 4th and final round against Louis Gigliotti, and Brian won the Roshambo shootout. Didn't count for much more than bragging rights, but its a cool event - especially since there was only one class of cars racing.

End of Autocross Day

So after all of that I had to look back and ponder... this really was an AMAZING day of autocrossing. I can honestly say I have never seen anything remotely like this. Cheering crowds of spectators, pumped up announcers, and TV cameras everywhere. At an autocross. Insane!

So by now its closing in on 8 pm and we still had some work to do. Hot, tired, sweaty, and tired. I went to try to find out if there were any printed results for the autocross, but they weren't telling so I had to stew all night after the Roshambo loss, not knowing how I did in the timed event. With Ed and McCall's help we swapped the spoiler for the wing to use on the drive over to ECR in the morning and at the track, and also to show some more parts we had designed and built. Loaded the car into the trailer and drove to Costas' to crash out for the night, after grabbing some dinner at Fuzzy's Taco, then watched some F1 practice. Long, hot, exhausting day - and we had another hot long day lined up for Saturday.

Project Update for June 19, 2012 - Part 1 of 3?! Finally getting to the write-up covering Track portion of the Optima Faceoff event. This has become embarrassingly long. These write-ups take more time than you might imagine, and sometimes it grows beyond my expectations. There was a lot going on this weekend!

When we left off above, the Friday Autocross, Roshambo, and Speed Stop events were wrapped up and we had loaded up and towed the rig to a nearby friend's house to crash for the night. We were supposed to meet back at the same parking lot at QT Park at 6:30 am the next morning for the drive over to ECR...

Detroit Speed Road Rally

The deal was they wanted everyone (that could) to drive from the QT Park area to ECR, which was a 70+ mile drive. This was to show entrants that were real "street cars", and successfully making this trip gained you 5 points in the competition. With the three main events worth up to 25 points each, and the one other "Design" competition worth another 5, every point mattered (we didn't learn the final point tallies or event break-down until a week after the event). And if there was ever a car that was easily capable of street driving, it was our emissions legal, stock-motored, daily driven Mustang GT.



We rolled up to the Lone Star Park parking lot at 6:30 am to unload the trailer, but Optima Jim was quickly turning everyone around. Apparently there was a scheduling mix-up on the parking lots we were supposed to meet at? Jim was pointing the HOT ROD Power Tour Long Haul guys to one spot for their scheduled group picture and telling the Optima Faceoff drivers to meet at a nearby auto parts store parking lot for the group drive to ECR. We went to the same RaceTrac gas station that I had fueled up the day before, unloaded the Mustang, then drove it next door to the gathering spot for the group drive to the road race track for the day's events.

Two other Dallas locals and I talked about the route from this parking lot in south Arlington up to ECR and came up with a perfect route - simple, fewest turns, no toll roads, and bypassed the interstate running right next to Texas Motor Speedway, which had an Indycar race scheduled that day (epic traffic!). We talked to the lead car driver Optima Jim, he liked the idea, so one of the locals in a C6 (Robert Wilson) led the entire group and I brought up the rear to catch any stragglers. The hour and a half long drive went off without incident, the group stayed together, nobody got lost, and the camera car was busy the whole time filming the 40+ cars. This group of stickered up muscle cars was quite a sight driving through Dallas that day, I assure you!

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Eagles Canyon Raceway - BFGoodrich Hot Lap Challenge

This was the main event of the weekend and the one I was most worried about. Once we arrived at ECR I found that Amy, who had left 15 minutes before us, had already arrived and set-up our truck/trailer in the perfect spot: right next to the track in the paddock area. We quickly set-up the new roll-out shade, which then became a popular spot for many competitors to hide from the sun throughout the day. I had the front toe set at 5/16" total out for the autocross, to help this pig to turn, so I reset the toe at the track to 1/8" total out (which is what we normally run for track use). We reset the tire pressures to 35F, 30R, bumped up the compression and rebound a bit on the Motons, and re-checked camber (-4° up front). The oil was topped off and everything was checked; after the first session the front tires had gotten up to 47 psi, so we lowered them to 37F/32R hot.


Left: Vorshlag trailer was an oasis of shade. Right: Picture of the Mustang from the ECR clubhouse deck

There was a driver's meeting at 9 am and one of the race organizers approached me about talking about the track, after they went over flags and passing rules. There were six of us in attendance that had driven ECR before, but somebody told them that I had more laps here than the others. I guess... maybe I did? I ran TTU in the first NASA event at ECR in 2008 (setting the fastest TT time and a TTU record in the E36 Alpha car, which has long since been smashed), had run two LeMons endurance races there in 2011, and dozens of other events over the past 5 years at this 2.5 mile road course. So I got up there and spoke to the racers for 10 minutes about the layout, the various turns, pit in/out, runoff areas, places that can get you, where corner stations were, etc. Basically: ECR is a great track with a bunch of tight turns joined by a variety of 1000-2000' straights, and the fun feature of 70' elevation changes in some areas. It's hard on brakes, bumpy in areas (good shocks help), horsepower pays off on the straights, but there is no high speed cornering and you rarely see cars exceed 125 mph. I talked about lap times as well: 2:15 is what Spec Miata runs, and a 2:00 flat is FAST for street tires and R compounds alike (AI record is 2 flat).


Left: ECR Track Map. Right: Running the Vorshlag E36 LS1 "Alpha" car at ECR in Oct, 2008

After the driver's meeting I ended up talking to a dozen more folks about tires, the course, and the surface. People came by the trailer all day to discuss set-ups and I was glad to help. Our car was far from the ringer that day, as there was some SERIOUS hardware that I knew would be fast, and a few of the locals were worth watching out for: Louize Gigliotti in the LG-prepped ZR1 and Todd Earlsey in the Evo Dynamics prepared EVO were two. Todd regularly runs in NASA TT and Louis sees all sorts of track events in crazy cars all the time. I talked a bit with Dave Michaels, who was driving the Lingenfelter (LPE) prepared 5th gen Camaro, which sounded pretty gnarly as well. There were several 500-800 whp cars in attendance that could be spoilers, but I was hoping that ECR track experience would pay more dividends than brute horsepower.

• Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ff-ECR-060912/
• Top 3 Event Results: http://www.optimainvitational.com/op...ower_tour.html
• Detailed Results: http://www.optimainvitational.com/Fa...%20Results.pdf

Well, it turns out that having both didn't hurt! The ZR1 had me worried because of his experience, skill, the fact that it started out as a $120K ZR1, the 345 Michelins I noticed it was riding on, and the fact that LG had prepped the heck out of this one (this is Lou's personal car). LGMotorsports knows Corvettes and this was no run-of-the mill ZR1, having a fully built motor, ported blower, custom splitter and wing, track-worthy suspension, carbon ceramic brakes, and lots of other modifications they have made to it for hill climb competitions (it recently dyno'd at 755 whp and 820 wtq). So yeah, our daily driven Mustang GT with a stock engine and some bolt-ons was a bit out-gunned on the horsepower front. I felt like our Mustang wasn't probably going to hang with these crazy muscle cars, 600 whp GTRs, Lambos, ZL1 Camaro, C6 Corvettes and ZR1s if they were driven halfway well.


Left: Ed talking to race control, getting me sorted before going out on track. Right: A beautiful Cuda making laps, the ZR1 coming in.

I was also a little iffy about my tire choice, as the Nitto NT-05s were prone to overheating in the little 30 second autocross runs the day before. How would these handle track sessions in Texas summer heat? The answer is... they didn't. I will go ahead and say something that a few HPDE gurus won't agree with: Nitto NT-05s suck. These tires are greatly inferior to Yokohama AD08s, Bridgestone RE-11s, Hankook RS3, and Dunlop Star Specs that I've tracked and/or autocrossed with on this same car. The problem is - all of those other tires are under 200 treadwear, except the Dunlop, which has a maximum size of 275/35/18. I wanted more tire for this car, because when I ran ECR in December 2011 in the Mustang (with quicker lap times) on 275/40/18 Bridgestone RE-11s it was very "rear traction limited". My hope was that these wider 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s would better take the heat and abuse that the Mustang would dish out. Bad call on my part.

After making a few slow parade laps behind a pace car I came in and waited in grid for the first real timed session of the day. This was about 10:30 am, which ended up being the coolest session of the day (where fastest laps were turned by many). After being told by the race director and camera crews to move to the front of the line, I ended up being the first car out (with I think Luis' ZR1, the LPE Camaro, and the Todd's EVO behind me). I mistakenly thought (from reading the Optima event regs) that we would only get 2 sessions all day and that each hot lap (3 laps per) would count cumulatively (like at a One Lap of America event). They had said that any off could DSQ you for the session, too (also sort of like OLOA). So this meant I had to make every lap count, right out of the box, and have zero mistakes. When every lap counts you drive differently, and I hoped my prior ECR experience and aggressive driving would pay off.

So... the posted event regulations weren't actually how they ended up running the track portion. Instead it was all about getting one golden lap for the day, like any normal NASA Time Trial. That makes a lot more sense, and we finally confirmed this "just try to get one good lap" strategy by the 3rd session on track. Live and learn, and never trust the pre-published event regs (because to this point, few of them applied to this actual event). After seeing how much this series had grown in 2012, and how this was the first "big TV show" versions of the Optima Qualifier events, it wasn't a surprise that they would be tweaking the format as the weekend progressed. Its all good.


Click for in-car video from my first of seven on-track sessions of the day - and my slowest

So the in-car video from my first session is shown above. They lined me up first, with a group of 3 or 4 cars, with a scheduled 3 hot laps. They wanted to figure out spacing, camera panning, etc - eventually they had groups of 5 to 8 cars on track at once. I never saw anyone else in the first heat (except the EVO parked on an access road, after it blew off an inlet hose). I have to admit that it was a bit nerve racking having 2 bullet cameras added to your car (one pointing at me, one exterior) in addition to my own in-car video set-up, plus half a dozen manned and elevated camera stations around the track. The TV crew told us at the beginning of the day that they were trying to space us far enough apart on track so that each camera station could follow each car through the corners separately, for nearly 100% on-track video coverage for each driver. These camera stations were hard to miss, too - it was WEIRD having guys way up on cranes with mounted SpeedTV cameras tracking you through a corner around Eagles Canyon. I've never been filmed from multiple TV cameras like this and it made me a bit nervous at the beginning of the day.


While many cars had problems, our little Mustang kept pounding out lap after lap

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continued from above

So how was the Mustang on the NT-05s? It was terrible, the tires overheated quickly, and they made a LOT of noise. I was told by many folks they could hear me from a mile away, just due to the howling of the tires. In my first session where I went 10/10ths on every lap I only managed a best of 2:05.9. I could get a half of a lap of hard driving before the rears would start to boil and I had to back-pedal coming out of 3rd gear corners. I had to watch out for overheating on my out lap. 2nd gear was completely unusable on the exit of Turn 11, so I left it in 3rd and skated around delicately. The car had a MASSIVE push all day (even after lots of set-up changes), especially after the right front got hot, so the car would just push push PUSH worse if I didn't take a cool-down lap.

The same steering feedback shudder we've been fighting for a year was still present (new steering racks are still on national backorder until the end of June), and the brakes sucked. It took me the first two track sessions before I figured out that the booster just wasn't working at speed, and I had to brute force the brake pedal to get it to stop. It made heel-toe downshifts tricky, and I did a lot of left foot braking to be able to press hard enough (and would swap feet mid-braking zone). By my 3rd session I could finally get into threshold braking on all corners. After I figured out the work-around for the busted brake booster, and once I finally listened to JasonM, Ed, Mike and Amy (thanks for coming out to help guys! It was huge) about taking one hot lap followed by one cool down lap, I started dropping time. 2:04s were followed by a lone 2:03.9. Here are some abbreviated results, but all are linked here.



Name..........Fastest Time.. (Car)
Louis Gigliotti.........1:59.772 (LG ZR1)
Dave Michaels.....2:01.904 (LPE 5th gen Camaro)
Terry Fair...............2:03.967 (Vorshlag S197 Mustang)
Todd Earlsey........2:05.756 (Evo-D EVO-9)
Brian Finch...........2:06.052 (Royal Purple 71 Camaro)

So my 2:03.9 lap ended up being the 3rd fastest time overall, which was a bit of a surprise. That is slower than I've run in the same car on narrower tires here before, but it was the best I could muster that day. Maybe it was the conditions, the heat, the NT-05s, and a bunch of broken parts (steering rack + booster), but I still wasn't happy with the laps in the Mustang. I also regretted the 550 #/in front 275#/in rear springs, which have done nothing but make the car push since we put them on (when we added the Moton Club Sports). Those have since come off and we've gone back with the previous set-up of 450F/175R. It always rotated better, put power down better, and didn't have this awful push. (I'll retest this set-up this weekend at ECR).



During the last few later afternoon sessions the heat was rising and the times were too - nobody was going fast. I knew I wasn't going to find much if any more time and the rear tires were cooked. I had been talking to Ed during my sessions, who was relaying to me the announced times lap by lap. The Ford "Sync" system linked to my iPhone via Bluetooth works VERY well, and we had some of the best 2-way on track comms I've ever seen at ECR. Ed would call me before I went out on course, I'd answer, and just cranked up the radio speakers. With a full face helmet he could hear me talking back to him, too. He spotted traffic for me, told me lap times, and most importantly - calmed me down when I was over-driving the car. That's when we managed the 2:03 lap time - with a strategy of cool down laps then hot laps.



They allowed competitors to run on track almost as often as they liked, and each time they announced "we have an empty grid" I would scramble up there, if I wasn't already in line. So after six track sessions (?!) I was pretty burned out and had spent very little time out of the car and out of my driver's suit. The crew that was there was keeping me hydrated between sessions, and the camera guys were constantly adding and removing cameras to the car between sessions. The handful of minutes I stepped out of the car I was peeling off the driving suit and damn near passed out in our trailer - out of the sun. I still ended up doing another 3 or 4 on-camera interviews, as the crew figured out that I was running top 3 times, and since we did well enough in the autocross to possibly be an "overall" contender. Goldberg was super nice and really liked the car, and kept encouraging us to keep pushing it out on track. So I kept going out, over and over, pouring more and more fuel into the tank.



I inadvertently left my Sony HD video camera on after my 2nd track session (stupid!) and killed both the battery and filled up the SD card after, so I didn't get much in-car video of my own. This week I purchased a mega-over-sized battery and two more SD cards, plus a wired remote from Sony so I can control and see when the damn thing is recording.


Some of the many TV cameras set-up at the ECR portion of the Optima Faceoff

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My last two sessions the lap times simply weren't there. Ran some 2:04s, lots of 2:05s, but it was just too damned hot. There was a camera crew by the pit wall and a crowd was gathering, including the TV host Goldberg... and with the rear tires overheated, I started hooning. A lot. They were loving it, waving for more, so I kept stepping the tail out in turn 11... and then into 3, and 7, and basically in front of each big camera station on course. I was hooning my ass off - cameras make me stupid. I also had Ed on the phone telling me that the announcer and the crowd were eating it up, and they were betting how much I'd hang it out each lap, so I gave them more and more, and started kicking the car all the way through 11 sideways.



Now I still don't condone the "sport" of drifting, but if "driving a little loose" gets me on TV, I'm gonna do it. It's not hard - we used to mess around after autocrosses back in college (TAMSCC!) and set-up these impromptu drift sessions. This was long before the Drifting "sport" became a fad, before the e-brakes and the banged up cars, and decades before Ken Block and funny shoes. We were just a bunch of autocrossers "practicing". So if this event makes it into a TV show some of this clowning might get shown. The camera guys kept telling me "this is great stuff!", and the car wasn't getting any faster, so who knows?

Lingenfelter Performance and Design Challenge

One more "competition" for the weekend was a "performance and design" subjective thing. Again, I thought this was for a full 25 points, but it ended up only being a 5 point deal so it didn't alter the results too much. Compared to the crazy hardware that is typical at these events, our car is pretty plain and I figured we'd do poorly in this part of the challenge.


Left: The winner of the Design Challenge, Rodney Moore. Right: The Design Challenge judges talking to me about the Mustang (it got 5th place)

The top guys from Lingenfelter, Optima and Wilwood came by and checked out the car and asked several questions. The point of this judgement was visual improvements, of which we have done very little. I told them, hey, this is our suspension test mule so it's not about looks... but we've made this rear wing set-up, the rear spoiler used on Friday, added this LS splitter, these "Vorshlag" wheels are ours, and most importantly these are our camber plates and other suspension bits. I guess it helped and the Mustang scored the last point in 5th position.

Top Ten Track Shoot-out

This was another non-points event they held, run after the day's "BFG Hot Lap Challenge" track time was done. The ten fastest cars were called up to the grid, lined from fastest to slowest, and they wanted us to make a 5 lap sprint to the checkered flag. The announcer said it was all about getting to the flag first, and I tried to ask someone on pit road if this was indeed the case. Ed was talking to me on the phone during the whole session again, and passing along lap times, announcer's and crowd's feedback, etc. As far as we knew it was about working your way up through the pack and getting to the finish line first. They lined up Lewis' ZR1 in front, then the LPE Camaro was supposed to be 2nd (but it caught on fire late in the day, then was pouring transmission fluid onto the exhaust by now and wasn't allowed to run) so they moved me up from 3rd place. The rest of the field was behind me, but all I had eyes for was the ZR1 Corvette. They sent us out 15 seconds apart, and we were supposed to NOT pass on the out lap (yellow flag out lap were the rules for the day), but after the green flag dropped it was on.

I tore ass through pit-out and was catching the ZR1 by turn 3. I knew how each of the top 10 cars were performing from running so many sessions that day - everyone was running hot, taking cool down laps, or only making 1-2 lap sessions. I felt like I could push the Mustang 10/10ths on a 5 lap sprint without slowing down more than a second from my fastest time all day. Driving Flat Out for each lap wouldn't make for the fastest peak time, but it could allow me to pass faster cars. And the only one faster left was the ZR1. So on the out lap I hauled ass, caught up to Loise's Corvette, and painted his mirrors red with Mustang. I wasn't going to pass him on the warm up lap, but I was letting him know I was back here. "Hi, Louis!" He saw me swerving back and forth, as I was baiting him to push it hard on the out lap. That boosted ZR1 had about 1 fast lap in it, but the Mustang could lay down 5 heaters...

He fell for it by turn 5, put the hammer down, and we were in a sprint race on the out lap! Come on, heat soak that intercooler! By the time we were at the green flag I think there was 8 or so car lengths between us and he was hanging it out trying to gap me. I pushed as hard as I could on the first timed lap and ran a 2:04 to Lewiz's 2:00. On lap 2 the ZR1 was cooking, the intercooler was heat-soaked, and I got a hasty point by into turn 3, which I took with a smile! Ed was hooting and hollering, saying that the announcer and the crowd was going nuts! "Pass him! Pass him!" I got around the ZR1 and opened up a huge gap. The ZR1 slowed to a 2:38 on lap two. Now that I was in the lead I drove like a man possessed, pushing to the limit, and the tires quickly overheated.


Left: the field got bunched up like this after a couple of laps, a good half lap behind me. Right: Pulling in first felt good!

I didn't care - these tires sucked and I'd NEVER be driving on them again, so I was eager to sacrifice the set. Ed told me that my gap was big and nobody was catching up, the crowd was going nuts, so I started pushing too hard... and hooning a little. Then started hooning a LOT. The crowd on pit wall was waving and shooting video, and I think I was waving back while going sideways. By the 5th and final lap I had a big gap on the field and was catching the last car, and still yawing through any turn that had a camera. I took the checker, then a much needed cool-down lap. Damn, I wish my camera was working during that session... that was THE most fun I've had behind the wheel in my life. Pushing the car, passing the ZR1, hooning for the crowds and cameras, and Ed egging me on via bluetooth. That was a smile that took hours to wear off!


Goldberg giving me the thumbs up after I made it to the checkered flag first. Parc ferme, P1!

I pulled into pit road and Goldberg was telling the TV crew, "I want Terry's Mustang RIGHT HERE, in front!" (Amy was standing next to him). I pulled up to where they wanted me, climbed out, and was drenched in sweat. I thought I had won the "top ten shootout", but they decided to award the win to the fastest lap driven, which was the ZR1. Again, by now we were all used to the "fluid nature" of the event structure (there was some interesting radio chatter, arguing one way or the other, even after the checkered flag was thrown). Fair enough. The camera crew went to interview sponsors, the LG crew, and others. Of all of the events during the weekend, this was where I felt I did the best. I knew who got through 5 laps fastest and had a huge blast doing it.


Left: LG crew being interviewed after winning the top ten shootout. Right: Me, Lou, and Louis talking after the top ten laps.

After we were done with the cameras, Loueis made a crack about the out lap "All I could see in my mirrors was red, you ass!" We all had a good laugh waiting for the cars to cool down and the final camera work to wrap up. I've known the guys at LG for over a decade and Louis is a friend of mine, so all of my wise cracks (like misspelling his name!) are in good humor. They brought one damned fast car to this event and clearly had the fastest lap time all day, and in the top ten shootout, and I begrudge them nothing. I've owned and raced multiple Corvettes myself and wish dearly that I could own one (I don't race Corvettes for business reasons, but that is all), especially a ZR1 as badass as theirs!

Overall Placement

Once that little pit row gathering ended, I took the car back to the trailer and peeled out of my driving suit, then started guzzling water (Amy and I were laid up all day Sunday with the after-effects of dehydration). The guys took care of the car and got everything shut down. Our whole crew piled into a truck and drove up the hill to the awards presentation at Optima Prime.It was 6pm on Saturday and we still had no idea how our car had placed. I still had no clue that we had won the autocross, nor did I know I placed so poorly in the Speed Stop. I knew fairly well that we were 3rd fastest in the track portion, but that was the only thing concrete. The big questions was: who was the overall winner, and who would get the invite(s) to the BIG Optima Shootout in November? (held right after the SEMA show)

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That once-a-year street car shootout has been televised on Speed for a while and that was the goal: get an invite. They had warned us that the invitees were more about the "spirit of the event" and not necessarily the fastest cars, but we held out hope.



Left: one of my on-camera interviews with Goldberg, "I don't know what to do with my hands..." Right: After the Top Ten Shootout

They rattled off the top 3 finishers in each category, with the Speed Stop winner (Todd's EVO), Track day winner (Louis' ZR1), the design competition winner (Rodney Moore's beautiful 1970 440-six pack Cuda), then they rattled off the autocross winners... I wasn't third, I wasn't second, then they rattled off "with a time of 30.5".. hey, didn't I run that time? "Terry Fair". Whu.. hey, that is me?! I was completely FLOORED, as I thought all along I had done no better than 3rd place in the cone carving. On stage they asked me, "How did you get through that tight course so fast?" I said something like "I tried to make the car as narrow as I could!" Did I mention that cameras make me stupid? I probably looked like Ricky Bobby in this clip for every TV interview I did. "I felt like I was in a space ship..."



After they did the complicated math for the 5 scored categories, the overall placings were: Todd's EVO in first, L3w1z' ZR1 in second, and my Mustang + Brian Finch's Camaro tied for third. The two invitees to the "big show" in November ended up being two excited entrants with interesting stories (both of whom did the "Long Haul" for HOT ROD's Power Tour) that weren't too terribly close to the top of the time sheets in any given event. Again, "spirit of the event" and all. Heck, after finding out that I placed 1st in the autocross and 3rd overall I was so relieved that I didn't care about not getting an Optima Ultimate Street Car Shootout invitation. Not much, anyway.


The Optima Qualifier Events - Should You Enter?

It's hard to describe how insanely fun and different this event was. The same mega-trailers that were at QuikTrip Park were relocated to the top of the hill at ECR in the early hours of the morning, again - I had never seen an autocross or track event of this magnitude, with this level of sponsorship support and camera coverage, especially at our little club track! The various crews of Optima series folks outdid themselves on Saturday with big man lifts and cranes out on course with manned TV cameras covering 90% of the 2.5 mile road course. They had AMB transponders; portable lipstick cameras on several cars in each session; multiple radio channels for TV crew, race control and corner workers; and the SCCA corner workers did an excellent job flagging, as usual. Lunch was delicious catered Bar-B-Q, free to all entrants, and the TV hosts + Optima folks + race control crew were all super friendly and professional all weekend.


Left: Our crew getting the car ready between sessions. Right: The plague of grasshoppers did a number on the cars!

This Optima series is run like nothing I have ever seen in the SCCA, NASA, or any HPDE group. Even pro level road racing series don't have crews that work like this. Amazing, slick, punctual, professional and well worth every penny of my meager entry fee. I got so much track time, tons of autocross and speed stop runs, a cool T-shirt, free food, an unforgettable experience, and we might even see the little red Mustang on TV if we're lucky. Not bad for 230 bucks! After reading this, if you thought this sounds like fun, and you have an Optima Qualifier event near you - by all means, do it! Sure, running on 200 treadwear street tires can be a buzz kill, but everyone is on the same type of tires (here's a hint: use the Michelin PSS!). Yes, there are some tuner shops' crazy cars and a few semi-professional drivers that are regulars in the series - but as you can see, three local NASA regulars did pretty well in the overall results at this one.

Just be prepared for a little more emphasis on the TV show aspects than the straight forward competition events you may be used to, but it was still very competitive. Not knowing the standings from each event in real time was frustrating, but all part of the show! Go in with the right mind-set and you will have a blast. And who knows - you just might end up on TV (they will be filming at several Optima Qualifiers and making a series of shows leading up to the November shootout; I'll post up when we know when/if this event's show goes to air).

What's Next?

Man, its been a week and a half since this event and I'm still smarting from the poor placings in the Speed Stop and Track portions. I will look back, remember all of the things wrong with the car, and just shake my head. There was nothing we can do about the steering rack for the past few months (short of pulling one from a wrecked 2011+ car), but the brake booster issues, crappy tires, spring rate/set-up problems, and unscrubbed tires and brake pads were all bone-head mistakes that could have been avoided. I didn't take this event serious enough to do any testing on the NT-05s, where we could have made some adjustments. Knowing how much TV coverage this event got I wish I could go back and do some things differently. Hindsight is 20:20...

It's hard to follow that crazy event with a lowly track day or autocross, but that's what we've got planned. Luckily we had two weeks and a weekend off of any sort of racing, to recover. Ryan has already rebuilt the Mustang's front calipers (dust seals, hardware, new brake line, new fluid, etc), swapped out to the softer springs, and fixed a number of little things that plagued the Mustang over the Optima weekend - I'll cover this in my next thread update. The Mustang has a few more track events to attend this year before we move it to a more dedicated ESP-autocross-only preparation plan for the remainder of 2012. We're taking it back to ECR again for an HPDE "fun track day" Saturday, June 23rd. For details on how to sign up, click here ($150, unstructured track day - join us!). We'll run the 315 Kumho V710s, the "old" (softer) spring set-up on the Motons, and I will play with rear aero Angle Of Attack (AOA) at this event (we started to tweak this at the end of the Optima event).



Hopefully with these fixes and real R compounds the Mustang can crack the 2 minute mark (I ran 1:57s back in 2008 with a junkyard 5.7L in the E36, having zero track experience at ECR). The American Iron track record is 2:00 flat, so beating that is the goal. Amy is bringing our E46 330 "TTD" car (shown above) for some laps on fresh 285/30/18 Hoosier R6s to try to outrun our existing TTD track record, which was a 2:12.9 (set by Paul Costas in our BMW 330, 2 years ago, on crapped-out Yokohamas). This car has been getting worked on lately, and is now streetable again (new high flow cat). Sunday I will swap out the rear wing for the spoiler and Amy and I will run the Mustang at an SCCA autocross at Texas Motor Speedway, testing the spring set-up changes on a known site and the known-good Kumhos. After that we have a 2 week break we will try to use to design and build some new rear suspension bits.



We've also started to finally attack another in-house project car, specifically with the goal to be able to enter these "wide open" street car type track events, like the Optima Challenge, TX2K, OLOA, UTCC, and more. This is using our white E46 BMW 330Ci chassis, a big nasty LS motor, with goals of light weight, lots of tire, and some custom aero. Check our BMW E46 330 LS1 "Alpha" build thread soon for more details. We couldn't ever really find a good racing class to build this E46 LS1 swap mule for - everything we came up with had some goofy limitation or classing restriction. Building the E46 Alpha for these unlimited street car events let's us show some more of our race prep services, tests our production E46 LSx swap parts, and yet keeping it streetable (working windows, wipers, lights, defrost, ABS) helps us relate to more of our customer's needs. It also lets us enter a variety of street car competition events with it. We've begun tearing into this car this week for a full-on "track terror / still streetable / no rules" build. Because if I do another Optima event, I'm not going to take a knife to a gun fight again!

Cheers,

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Project Update for June 26, 2012: Part 1 of 2... In my last series of updates after the Optima Faceoff event, I listed a lot of little things that we realized were broken or set-up poorly on the car. In the two weeks after that we attacked each of these items, except one: the whacked-out electronic steering rack. This is STILL on National backorder. Good grief, Ford.

Some Repairs & a Quick Inspection



One obvious area that needed to be addressed, and is a common failure point on any heavily tracked car, is the brake caliper dust seals. Caliper "dust seals" don't exist on real "race calipers", but are always found surrounding the outer edges of caliper pistons on production street cars. And when you get the brakes to the 800-1200°F temps we have seen, these seals eventually catch fire and/or melt. It's not the end of the world - they just keep debris out of the caliper bores. Still, when damaged they can allow brake dust to migrate down the bores and past the piston's fluid seals, which can then get into the fluid. Our car gets a brake re-bleed every few weeks and a complete flush every couple of months, so it's not a huge concern. However, it is something you should always look at when changing pads, if you have factory calipers with dust seals.



Ryan noticed the front seals looked rough a few weeks earlier, so we ordered new parts from Ford / Brembo. The dust seals had to come from Italy, but finally got here and weren't that expensive. He pulled the front calipers off and placed a thin block of wood between the opposing pistons (the front Brembo calipers have 4 pistons - two inner and two outer) and applied air pressure to the brake line inlet... POP! This pushes the pistons out enough to remove them, two at a time (keep your fingers out of the way!) Once the pistons were removed, he peeled away the burned remnants of the dust seals and inspected the caliper pistons and bores, which looked fine. All of square seals that keep the fluid pressure in (at the bottom of the pistons) looked good too. Everything was cleaned with brake parts cleaner and blown out with air. Make sure it is all CLEAN. New dust seals were wrapped around each piston and back in they went, slathered and assembled with plenty of fresh Motul brake fluid. It's a messy job that has to be done on the bench, so PROTECT YOUR EYES from spraying brake fluid, of course.



Our stock motor has been buzzed to 7500-7800 rpm literally hundreds of times now, and this previous Optima event was no different (1st gear autocross, track event, etc). Just as a precaution I asked Ryan to pull a valve cover off for a quick top end inspection. With a new valve cover seal ordered from Ford and in our hands (cheap), Ryan pulled one side apart for a look-see. Everything in the valve train looked perfect: no obviously broken springs, errant metal or unusual wear. Those cam-phasers make for a complicated piece of engineering! It all looked perfect so I guess our religious changes of Mobil1 synthetic oil has paid off for the past 11,000 hard miles of use this Coyote 5.0 has seen. Good to know...

Some suspension set-up changes were made as well - we removed the 550#/in front and 250#/in rear springs in favor of the previous AST4100 set-up that used 450#/in front and 175#/in rear springs. It rides SO much better on the street with these rates (even with Moton Club Sports) and it always rotated better with those, too. I was hopeful that these springs would make for some improvements in the "death push" we saw at ECR with those Nittos two weeks ago. For the next few weeks of street driving the 295 Nittos were pulled in favor of the set of identical 18x10s with 275 Bridgestones, the winged trunk was swapped back for the stock one, but the race pads (Porterfield R4) and rotors stayed on. Amy drove it and commented on the improved ride quality for her daily commute, so the softer springs were better there too.



Two days before the event last week, our 2001 BMW 330Ci went up on the lift for our usual pre-track inspection. It was also given a fresh two gallons (the normal seven quarts + one extra quart) of Mobil1 oil and WIX filter, an alignment check, basic nut-and-bolt torquing and paint pen mark-ups (so during later inspections any bolt rotation can be seen), a good washing, a brake bleed, and some small repairs.

The BMW was ready Thursday afternoon, so on Friday morning the Mustang went up on the lift to have the same inspection work and oil change done. The Hoosier A6s were already removed and the used 315/35/18 Kumho V710 tires were remounted and balanced back on the 18x11F/18x12R wheels again. The big wing and trunk went back on, a fresh nine quarts (we run an extra quart for racing) of Mobil1 10W40 went in (along with a WIX filter), and the alignment was re-checked. Once everything looked good it was loaded into the trailer for the ECR open track day along with eight extra wheels and tires (one set for each car).


Five Star Ford Track Day at ECR

This was the first track day event put on by a local Ford dealership, Five Star Ford in Plano, TX. They sell a lot of Mustangs and wanted to host a "customer appreciation event", and invited all sorts of modern Ford muscle (and anyone else that wanted to join them!) for a fun track day on June 23rd. There were lots of 2011-2013 Mustang GTs, 2012-2013 Boss 302s, and a bunch of other SN95/Fox/S197 cars. There was a large range of car prep and driver skill levels at the event, from "noob street driver" to "gutted race car on huge Hoosier slicks". Great variety of non-Fords as well with a Ferrari, some BMWs, a couple of Lotuses (Lotii?), a gnarly sounding C6 Corvette (Robert Baily, who ran in the Optima Challenge with me), and more.



Our Mustang's preparation level was kind of in the middle of that array - an air conditioned full interior, emissions legal exhaust, stock-engined (with cold air and headers), daily driven street car running pump gas... but it was equipped with Moton doubles, race seats, lots of negative camber, a wing on the back, and 315mm Kumho V710s. It was not the most powerful or insanely prepped car of the event, but we did all right in it. For wild and crazy, Costas' GT-1 Camaro took care of that, where he once again brought a missile launcher to a gun fight. He should just write "BFG" on the side (old school Quake gamers will know what gun that refers to). Can't blame him - if I had a similar car I'd bring it, too. He still had less $$ in his track toy than many folks in attendance, which is often the case.


Our 36' trailer had ample shade, and we shared chairs, drinks, tools, and some spare parts with a number of event attendees. Met some nice folks!

We rolled up at 7:05 am and the paddock was already packed. Lots of new folks who had never done track days, that actually followed the instructions and showed up on time! Give 'em a few years and they'll be an hour late or more. We found a good spot up top to park the truck & trailer, right next to the tech inspection shed. We unloaded the Mustang, set-up the sun shade awning/tables/chairs, and then got to work. Amy and I brought our Mustang and our TTD prepped 2001 BMW E46 330 coupe, so we had to change tires on the BMW since it was driven and not trailered to the event. This car hasn't seen real track action in two years, other than one short session here at ECR last December, right after the new motor went in. We dismounted the 18x10's with Yokohama AD08s and mounted the 18x10s with Hoosiers, after the Mustang was unloaded.



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Costas had driven this BMW at a NASA TT event in 2010 here at ECR and set the track record for TTD at 2:12.9, which is still intact, but did it at the time on some shredded 265/35/18 Yokohama A048s. Our goal this day was to see if we could beat that time on a better prepped version of the same car (it's now at the limit for TTD preparation for points). This Bimmer now has a fresh M54 motor, fresh 285/30/18 Hoosier R6s, but the race seats have been removed and an emissions legal exhaust has been added (3" high flow cat), so who knows? Amy and I planned on swapping sessions between both cars, but with only one video camera and one lap timer (the dreaded G-Tech RR) we would have to do some gear swapping.



The driver's meeting was at 7:30 and immediately after they wanted the Advanced group to go on track - which Amy and I were both signed up for. Amy managed to get several laps in the BMW, but I was still mounting the video camera, wiring up the new Sony remote to that (which worked great! Now I can turn the camera on/off, record, zoom, and even snap pictures from this small remote that can be clipped to the E-brake handle - all while strapped into the race seat). I got out for one lap before the checkered flag, so I didn't bother to record that session.



The ECR crew was running everyone in about 20 minute sessions, split between the Advanced, Intermediate and Beginners groups. A few weeks ago the pre-registered car count was pretty low, under 22 cars, so I started hustling up some attendance online, along with several others that were going. We saw some SCCA autocross regulars that heard about the event from my Facebook postings and e-mail bombardments, many of which had never done a track day before. After today they were now hooked! With about 30 entrants in the beginner class it was nice to see a lot of new folks trying out an HPDE track event for the first time. Fresh blood - This is what its all about! Now they know first hand how much they need camber plates and better suspension parts...



Lots and lots... and lots of Mustangs. I think the final car count was 48, which was excellent considering that this was only one day past the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year, and we saw 101°F temps!) and the first event put on by Five Star Ford. Excellent event, catered food, relaxed atmosphere, instructors, perfect SCCA corner workers, and the usual great ECR track crew.



Costas (black GT-1 Camaro) had the field covered with his hardware and talent, bringing the lightest, most powerful, tube-framed race car with the largest tires. If you got it, bring it! His videos showed a best lap of 1:51, which is mind-bogglingly-fast, and betters the NASA TTR record by a good 4 seconds. He'd be foolish not to bring this car to the October NASA event to potentially get his name in the record books again. His buddy Mike brought his Gold/Orange GT-1 Camaro for some fun laps, but it's not nearly as wild and wooly as the black one. He's still having a lot of fun tracking it each time I see him out there.



Brian Hanchey of AST/Moton USA brought out his new track toy, a 2005 GT with some go fast goodies and suspension. This was his first track event or any real outing in the car, so he and Moton-USA VP (and AI Camaro racer) Mike Patterson wanted to get some shake down laps in after it received a new motor and some other ex-World Challenge bits (big Brembos, engine stuff, Torson T2R). He arrived on some heavy 18x9.5" wheels and 255mm BFGoodrich 300 treadwear tires that came with the car, but I thought those skinny tires were holding the performance back a good bit. I had brought the 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s on the D-Force 18x10s to show off and possibly sell, so we mounted them on his Mustang for one session. These were better enough to drop his best lap time by about 2.9 seconds - NT05s still are not my favorite track "street tires", but they are a damn sight better than 255 BFG Comp TAs! Once again we realized that tires matter.



He got a lot of good laps in, blowing out the old track cobwebs and getting some good data logged on the car and set-up. He had to deal with some needless overheating issues at the event, but after checking data today he saw that it had a theoretical 2:06 lap (with merged sectors from other laps; this sector analyzing is done all the time) - which isn't too shabby for 200 treadwear street tires! Throw on some big fat R compounds and it is knocking on the golden 2 minute barrier. We've turned a few wrenches on this car (made custom race seat slider brackets + some exhaust mods), but most of the drivetrain work was done by a GRAND AM race team. The motor and exhaust sound MEAN on this car and once this hotted-up motor is dyno-tuned and running on real tires, this unassuming black GT will be a track terror. Brian really convinced me to quit screwing around and BUY the damned Torsen T2R, which he raved about in this car.




Vorshlag BMW and Mustang - On Track Impressions

So the track day event ran super smoothly, but how about some lap times in our cars? Amy went out in the BMW for 3 sessions, where I timed her from pit wall during part of one session (I came in early - after the steering rack's "death shudder" started), but we were mostly out on track together at the same time - hence very few on-track pictures of any of our cars or others' in the Advance group. It wasn't until days later that I had the in-car videos rolling to know the lap times in the Mustang, but we never got times in the BMW.



She and I both ran the BMW on track at the same time as Hanchey's Mustang, who was running a new AIM Solo GPS lap timer ($399, or $699 with optional wired OBD-II data option). That little timer unit is nice, and I want one. The OBD-II data stream was quite impressive. The Solo has a great mount, easy to read display, on-board battery, predictive lap timing, it already had ECR in its memory, etc. If you are on the fence about what lap timer to get - just go to Bimmerworld (or your favorite AIM dealer) and get an AIM Solo and be done with it.

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The BMW felt damn near perfect - brakes were awesome (just some HP+ pads on the stock rotors + good lines), handling was flat and grippy (AST 4200s + 285mm Hoosiers + Powerflex bushings throughout), and the power was surprisingly peppy and easy to put down (OS Giken diff FTW). This lower mileage M54 is a lot better than the original lump we raced with in DSP in 2009. Old blue was pretty darned quick and we both passed most of the cars in attendance while driving it. We can tell from looking at Hanchey's laps during the same session when he was running behind us that the BMW ran at least a 2:09 laps, and more likely 2:08s. This is little better than speculation, but I did manage to get a 2:10 lap timed on one of Amy's many laps. So it easily beat it's old TTD record, now that it is on big Hoosiers. Tires matter.



Here is Amy's best lap in the Mustang (2:03.2), with some footage of me in the BMW. Click for 720P video

Here's Amy making laps in the Mustang. If you watch her in-car video above you will see me in the BMW, briefly, coming back on track. Yea, I uhh.... had an "off" in the BMW, but nothing got hurt, other than my pride. You see, I was dicing it up on track with Hanchey's Mustang for a couple of hot laps, was screwing around and got the rear tires REALLY hot drifting through Turn 4-5 (on accident!), then took Turn 6 as fast as before... but the rear tires had zero grip. Back end stepped out a little, which I counter-steered, added a little throttle. Didn't help. I added full lock and full throttle. Nope, still coming around. Felt like it was in slow motion, the whole time I'm thinking "What the hell, I don't EVER go off of tracks sideways!". Went for a ride, going off on the inside of the exit of Turn 6. Weirdest off I've ever had. No harm other than some grass packed in the tire bead (since fixed), no foul - except Amy drove by right after I got back on track, so she totally busted me.


Left: Amy's "look of displeasure" is obvious! Right: My driving talent on full display. I was merely "exploring an alternative line"...

Amy said she had a blast driving both cars, but really liked tracking the Mustang better. It's just always going to be so much quicker on any sort of road course, with nearly double the horsepower. With the same drivers, and on similar tires (R6 vs V710), suspension (AST 4200 doubles vs Moton Club Sport doubles), and preparation level (both cars have cold air/tune/header/custom exhaust) the Mustang was a solid 10 seconds a lap faster than the BMW. It is hard to ignore that. I enjoyed the hell out of the BMW, right until I drove it off track like an asshat. Embarrassing, but I share it all here on this thread. Great stress test for these well used and abused D-Force 18x10s... not a scratch. This set is 5 years old and has been used on 3 cars, including our E36 Alpha car, my M3, and this 330. Zero defects.


In-car video of Terry in the Mustang for three hot laps, 2nd session of the day. Best lap of 1:58.2. Click for 720P video

OK, now that I've taken my licks, let's get to my good laps in the Mustang. This video above is from my first "full" session on the track that day (remember, I only got one "installation lap" in the first Advance session of the morning's session #1). The cooler temps we saw earlier in the day once again made for the best laps, but at least this time I put in a better drive early rather than late, unlike two weeks ago at the Optima event. Still, this was only my 3rd time tracking this car on R's, and the first time there weren't HUGE problems (cording/bloated front tires at MSR-H, diff fluid pouring on the rear tires at TWS). I still found some driving improvements in the later sessions, like using 2nd gear exiting corner 11, but the rising ambient and track heat negated any lap time improvements. Hanchey rode through with me in session #5 for two hot laps and he enjoyed it, but we only managed to run laps of 2:01.2 and 2:00.4 times.

The steering rack's death shudder reappeared this time, like at TWS, but unlike two weeks ago at this same track when I was running street tires. So the issue gets worse on sticky R compounds, as we've proven time and again. Driven hard enough for enough laps it would eventually go crazy and get into a violent shudder, plus sometimes trigger an engine fault as well, like it did in my video above after three hard laps. Shutting the engine off and back on would clear the engine fault/limp mode, but not the steering shudder. Only dipping below 45 mph would temporarily stop it, but it came back as soon as you crossed back above 45. When this happened badly enough (only to me, not Amy) I would just come in, shut it off, and pop the hood and let everything cool down and "reset". Even on normal laps it was still shaking pretty good - we've just gotten used to it. New replacement steering racks should be available from Ford and Ford Motorsport "soon" - after months of "it's still on back-order" (I have heard that Ford continues to find bad *brand new* electronic steering racks in the 2013 production lines, which is why there has been none to spare for Ford Motorsport or repairs. The word is they've fixed the QC issues at the Mexico plant that makes these units).

The Mustang's brakes worked flawlessly this time out, so that was a big plus! During the two weeks since Optima we replaced the original vacuum check-valve at the brake booster, which wasn't expensive. We weren't sure if the power assist would work until we revved the piss out of it on track. Well, once on track it was obvious - that fixed it! No telling how long this valve has been bad or "going bad", and leaking down vacuum, but hopefully this is the end of our "brick-like brake pedal" after long acceleration runs on track and in autocrosses. Keep this in mind if you run into similar a lack of brake assist.

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Our change back to 450F/175R spring rates was huge on track, just like it improved the street ride. The bad front end push we saw at Optima went away; now the car could turn-in easily and accelerate better, so this spring rate set-up stays until we find some reason to try the stiffer rates again. We had some serious rear tire rub in the rear with the 315s on the 18x12s... first from the tire to the fender lip with too much rear wheel spacer, then from the tire rubbing inboard on the stock rear swaybar with less spacer (I pulled 7mm of spacer off after the 3rd track session). The permanent fix here is to run less spacer and remove the stock rear swaybar - by making our own rear swaybar of an all new arrangement. The stock bar routing (and all aftermarket bars follow this) will always limit inboard wheel/tire room on this chassis. More on this in a future post!

Overall, I was very pleased with the performance of the Mustang this weekend, especially compared to the dismal performance on street tires just two weeks ago. The brake booster repair, the spring rate change, and the move to wider Kumho tires transformed the car - to the tune of 5.7 seconds faster per lap. Running my 1:58.2 lap in a heavy street car like this is pretty darned quick, considering the NASA TTS track record is 1:58.4, American Iron record is 2:00, and the CMC record is 2:04.2 - and those are set in October, when it's not 100 degrees, in real race cars.

I'm going to go ahead and say this, because it was obvious to anyone that watched laps at this event: our mildly tweaked Mustang GT was faster than anything else in attendance, other than Costas' 2200 pound, tube-framed GT-1 monster. Faster than the 2013 GT500, faster than the many Boss 302's, faster than the gutted race cars on Hoosiers (there were a surprising number on Hoosiers or Continental slicks), supercharged Lotus 7 on slicks, and on and on. Even with a girl driving. I don't get to say that often, as there's usually a bunch of prepped race cars at some events that can always beat a real street car like this. Having the fastest Mustang at a Mustang event was pretty cool - because we're not a "Mustang shop" per se, and don't have a big power set-up on this car. It's just a bone stock 5.0 motor with two bolt-ons.


On Monday the wing was removed, the street tires went back on, and Amy drove it to work with the AC blowing - like she does every week

So hopefully that statement doesn't offend anyone that was there, but... damn the red car was moving! Felt good to run a sub-2 minute lap at ECR again after all these years running in relatively slow cars at ECR since 2008. Major adrenaline rush, big grin for days, pulse pounding good time! And all of you reading this know exactly what we've got on this car - it is not crazy, the opposite of exotic, and we hide nothing. These 2011+ Mustangs really can get you to work and back and still haul ass on track, with the right mix of parts. Anyone could go buy a 2011-2013 Mustang GT (spend $20-30K), copy the parts we've used, and go just as fast or faster. It's easy. Call us - operators are standing by! ha! It really just boils down to running big enough and sticky enough tires (people that say 315s are too big for road course use on a 3500 pound car are misinformed), the right wheels to make those fit, the proper suspension parts (which we're still improving), a little brake cooling + good pads, and a few motor bolt-ons and a tune.

One thing to mention: both cars were easy to drive fast. We've got the brakes working very well on both and this is a brake intensive track. The handling and damping on both is exceptional, and this is a bumpy/shock intensive track. True, Amy and I both have many laps at this track (I probably have 20-25 hours on track at ECR) so that helps, but neither of us is some driving savant (look no further than my BMW mega-off at this event for proof of that). Sure, my times are a little quicker than Amy in the higher powered Mustang, but I have a lot more seat time in this car and just ran this car it at this same track two weeks ago; she has never run the Mustang at ECR. Racing these cars was relatively easy, and if it weren't for the lingering steering shudder (that only seems to affect our car this badly) it would have been a completely stress free drive. I missed having a good race seat to keep me planted in place in the BMW, and I let the Hoosier's tendencies to overheat in 100°F conditions sneak up and bite me, but otherwise it was a breeze. I will also note that driving the Mustang on R compounds at a 1:58.2 pace was much easier than sliding around on street tires doing no better than 2:03.9! There was a complete absence of hooning in the Mustang this time around. Hooning is hard work...


What's Next?

We've cancelled all previously planned track and autocross outings for the month of July, for a few reasons. One, because it iss freagin' HOT in Texas from now until August; many of our local racing clubs stop having events from June-August. Today it was 108°F in Dallas and it will be in the triple digits all week. Those are miserable conditions to race in. We could see 30-60 days of over 100, easily. Amy and I got a touch of heat exhaustion at the Optima weekend, and got another round at this past weekend's ECR events, so we need time to recover. We spent last Sunday in pain, trying to get fluids and electrolytes back into our systems. Once you get heat exhaustion it is too easy to "re-get it", so we need a break.

Also, there are some lingering repairs we might finally be able to fix on the Mustang - like the stupid freagin' steering rack! Just heard that these are scheduled to be back in stock June 29th - so we've got one on pre-order (along with a T2R!). Upon inspection on Monday, it appears that the rear brake caliper piston dust seals are now fried, too, but the fronts still look fine. We'll get some new rear seals coming and swap those. Considering how many autocross and track hours of abuse this car has seen in... coming up on two years, this is a pretty good lifespan for dust seals.


Tire rub sucks! I am damned tired of this condition making the handling intermittent and weird. We are finally going to remedy this.

Lastly, we have a list of new parts to design, build and develop for the S197 Mustang. Going to too many races lately has delayed this considerably. The stock-style rear swaybar flat will not work with a 315mm tire under stock fenders, and it has to be replaced. I refuse to go to smaller rear tires just because Ford routes the swaybar in an inefficient manner. If we can keep the car off of a race track for a few weeks we can build the custom, splined-tubular steel rear swaybar set-up we've been meaning to make for the last year (we now have pieces coming to make this). This will allow the 315mm rear tire to finally fit inside the fenders under heavy lateral loading (it has 1" of clearance now to the bar, but under load the tire is still hitting the rear swaybar). I cannot remember an event yet where the rear tires haven't been rubbing on something - that has to stop. We're trying to make a very tunable rear bar that can work for both semi-serious track/street cars as well as dedicated track cars, so there are some modular bits to work out. We also really want to make a better Watts link than we've seen offered - something that is beyond the "Bolt on Billy" crowd. No bling, less weight, just a new design that has better lateral location and tunable roll center without the need to be 100% "bolt-on".

It might be a month before I update this thread again. We have a LOT going on at Vorshlag HQ, including three job openings, and four other major project cars that have been getting worked on in the past month - and another LS1 swap chassis we're adding to the already large array of BMW chassis we've tackled. The E36 LS1 swap kits are selling like mad, with three kits sold in the past three days - and people still don't know about half the sub-system kits we've added in the past quarter (which aren't even on the website yet), not to mention the ones we're about to release.

In any case, I better wrap this up. Once again, thanks for reading!

Cheers,

[Fair]

Project Update for August 30, 2012: I haven't updated this thread in two months, but we have been busy as ever here at Vorshlag in that timeframe, and a lot of work was done to the Mustang. After the two weekends of race events in the Mustang in June (Optima @ ECR + Ford Dealer @ ECR event) we took a break from racing that car and concentrated on other projects we had going on at the shop. We thrashed around the clock for 4 weeks, tested, and then went to Colorado to support Brianne Corn's Pike's Peak Subaru STi at the 90th running of the PPIHC event. That month is a blur. We also started build projects on a 2013 Subaru BRZ, dove headfirst into a new 1999 Miata LS1 swap, made some strides in our BMW E46 LS1 project, and prepped and sold our $2011 GRM Challenge winning E30 V8. We took on another turn-key E36 M3 LS1 swap, bought another car or two, and have been refocusing our service shop on the things we are really good at.

In my last post I was saying that we might not update this Mustang thread for a while because we needed to develop some parts to allow the big rear tires to fit. No, not the monster 345/45/18 Hoosiers, just the relatively tame 315/35/18 Kumhos on our Forgestar 18x12" rear wheels. These wheels should fit within the confines of the stock rear fender contour and inboard wheel constraints (if lateral axle displacement can be kept in check), but the stock style rear swaybar mounting location is sticking right in the way (see lower left picture), and this is where we are seeing the rear tires rubbing time and again. Whoever thought this was a good routing was not a "car guy", who would immediately see this is the inner wheel width limit.



We have to add spacers to push the wheel outboard and then they can rub on the fender lips and/or cut into the tread. We've been fighting this all year. Why try so hard to make 315s fit inside the fenders of this car? Well because we have tried tires with these widths - 255, 265, 275, 285, 305, 315 and 345mm - and the car goes faster/is easier to drive/has more rear traction with each step up in tire width. We've determined the 345 tire was a bad call (too wide and too tall - yes, as many of you told us before I raced on them), but the 315 is still a great size to use both front and rear. I prefer the 315/35/18's tire height but Hoosier only makes a 315/30/18 in 18" diameter so that's what I went with for the Solo Nationals.


Mustang racing on 315mm Kumhos with 18x11 front, 18x12 rear wheels, rub free. 75 hp worth of graphics are missing?!

We also needed some unique suspension parts other than just camber plates and shocks (that we cannot get) to sell for the S197 market - Vorshlag is a business, after all. There are hundreds of shops selling the same old Mustang doo-dads and bolt-on bits, so we wanted to look for something new, unique and different - either that we designed and built ourselves or someone new in the S197 market could come up with. To make room for the rear wheels we had purchased components to use in the design and fabrication of a splined/NASCAR style rear swaybar, to move it away from the rear tires + to give us a cool new product that would have lots of adjustment and probably be lighter, too. As the splined bar, mounts and other parts are arriving I saw this S197 Mustang rear suspension photo on the Whiteline Flatout Facebook page...


Whiteline S197 prototype Panhard and rear swaybar

Hmm, there are a lot of new parts in that pictures. Whiteline UCA + mount, LCA arms + relocation brackets, Panhard bar and reinforcement, a new rear swabar, and big fat end links. I was staring at this picture for a second, not sure of what it was that caught my eye...then BOOM! The light bulb goes off: I yelled "They've routed the rear swaybar backwards from the stock bar! That clears up tons of inboard wheel room!!" Instead of hanging from the chassis via two stand-offs and attaching to the axle way out by the wheel, the Whiteline swaybar bolts right to the axle housing and has end links that grab the chassis. This routing now removes potential tire rub at the swaybar!

Matt heard me shouting in my office and ran over to take a look and to double-check my logic. Vorshlag was already on Whiteline's mailing list from several talks we had at SEMA and PRI, and we were talking all year about doing the buy-in to become a stocking Whiteline dealer. They make bushings, control arms, reinforcement brackets, swaybars and end links for lots of cars, and are the go-to brand for Subarus and EVOs, which are two car models we sell heavily to. But when I saw that their new S197 parts were finally coming out I did more digging. Then I saw their brand new Watts Link, which was unique from all other designs made for this S197 chassis, and I got on the phone, fast. This was another solution that we had a need for...



Long story short, about two weeks ago we got our hands on the latest yet still pre-production S197 Whiteline Watts Link kit, their front and rear adjustable swaybars, and their rear upper control arm (UCA) and chassis bracket. We also picked up their new production S197 Panhard bar kit + reinforcement bracket, just for pictures and to keep in inventory. After that round of parts shipped they heard we were running this car at a Global Time Attack race at Texas Motor Speedway at the end of this month, so they sent us their rear lower control arms and relocation brackets to test for that race. These bits aren't SCCA ESP legal (well... we found a way to make them legal, but are not pursuing it just yet), so they are not going on before the SCCA Solo Nationals next week. At the GTA event this car will get the LCA bracket + arms, a lower rear ride height (finally!), and then we will have a 100% "Whiteline equipped" S197 (we will then shoot some on-track video at GTA which they can use in their SEMA booth). Look for that update late in September.


Left: The rear swaybar (shown above) is solid and 27.5 mm dia. and routes very differently than any other. Right: Whiteline Endlinks are beefy!

The Whiteline parts look incredible, with materials, bushings, finishes and design aspects I'm not really used to seeing in the "Mustang Market". Why is that? Well my theory is that I think there are actually only a couple of real innovators in the Mustang aftermarket world, and then everyone else copies these one or two companies' products, and pretty soon it all looks the same. Then many times production goes overseas and it becomes a "race to the bottom" on price. I have also seen many older aftermarket designs from previous generation Mustangs (Fox/SN95) get re-hashed for the newer Mustangs (S197), too. Whiteline came in to this new (for them) market with fresh ideas from their other car markets, introduced an all-new Watts Link layout and design, and completely new swaybar routing. They have innovated instead of copied or rehashed, and fixed issues for me that I don't even know they intended to (more rear wheel room!). Again, this is my theory and I mean no offense to companies in the existing Mustang market. If you are at one of those Mustang companies and are reading this, I was referring to you guys as the only "real" Mustang innovators, OK?

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