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

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Another change we made was to remove the current "livery", which we've had on the car since 2012. The crazy stripes were Amy's idea, and the vendor decals were there to show what we have on the car that we sell. Some of the parts shown in decals are about to be removed (more on that in my next post) and almost all of the vendors we use aren't "Goodguys/USCA" sponsors, so they had to get toned down a bit.

Street Car, Race Car - What's The Definition? Who cares?

The number board, NASA decals and race numbers/class letters make this streetable car look more like a race car than it really is, and I didn't want to put the wrong impression for Goodguys or USCA - because this really is a very streetable car that we often drive around town for various events, unlike some cars that show up at those street car competitions. We have had a few folks complain publicly about how our Mustang is a "race car" showing up and beating "street cars" at NASA events, Goodguys, and other competitions, but I just chalk that up to internet whining. It is even funnier when folks with "street cars" that have gutted interiors, no radio or air con, built or boosted motors and/or wildly illegal emissions systems make these claims about our 2011 Mustang. This really is a full interior car (back seats are reinstalled as of last week), with the OEM air bags, big honkin' radio, touch screen sat NAV, a satellite radio subscription, air conditioning, power windows, all of the OEM glass, OEM seat belts, and a bone stock engine from throttle body to exhaust port. The suspension is refined for competition, but it's still quiet and uses bushings in most of the arms and links.




A ducted hood, splitter and big wing don't make a car a "race car" or really much less streetable than other cars - but these are visible exterior mods that look "racey" and some that don't understand the function of them would even say "ricey". And at the events we race in, this Mustang is usually the heaviest car at the entire event (3802 pounds) and almost always competing against much more radically prepped cars. Is it my fault if someone shows up to NASA TT in a bone stock car and gets beat? Should they expect to win in a totally stock vehicle? Sometimes a fairly stock-ish car can do well in NASA Time Trial, but most of the time these entrants are making significant modifications to otherwise OEM vehicles to be more competitive. When there are contingencies on the line (like free sets of tires for the winners) you better believe I'm going to look at the rules and do what I feel is most beneficial to lowering our lap times. At the 2013 NASA Nationals our car was one of the only ones on the TTU-TT1/2/3 grid that was a registered and inspected street car, and once again the heaviest car on grid.



Just know that everyone has their own definition of a "street car", and your's might not sync up with mine. You should see some of the street cars race in Hot Rod's Speed Week! The 80 mile road rally we have to drive on public roads this Friday at the USCA event will separate the street cars from the race cars, and I'm confident that I will have no problems on that drive. In fact I'll probably have the A/C on and playing Channel 51 on Sirius blasting through the 1000 watt stereo, burning 93 octane pump fuel and having fun.



Back to the decal removal. So we left the car out in the sun for a couple of hours to help soften the adhesives, then I started to yanked off the stripes and most of the decals myself. Kyle finished removing the decals and then washed the car. After that I removed the adhesive residue with the Goof Off Heavy Duty spray remover I like (not the Goof Off Industrial Strength, which can sometimes affect the paint - the "heavy duty" version is much safer). Finally, Ryan used his detailing skills and tools to buff and wax the paint. HE wasn't around when Brandon took this picture below, so I stood in for him and pretended to do real work, heh.



Some of those decals have been on there for about 2 years but luckily we use good vinyl and they came off well. Nothing was brittle and tore except for a few printed decals that came from vendors or race events. One of those left a HUGE glob of adhesive that took a bit of elbow grease to get off, but it all cleaned up well. Some of these stripes and decals went onto VERY fresh paint (due to time constraints) but Shiloh's paint work held up perfectly. Once it was all buffed and waxed it came out nice.



There's the old livery at left and the new "naked" look at right. We had planned on doing some simple black stripes and a few vendor decals but the weather started to turn and we ran out of time. That's going to happen soon, so it won't stay "naked" long. Yes yes, it looks better with a simple red paint job, but this car is a marketing tool for us and it has to show the parts on it that we sell, so they have to go back on at some point.


Goodguys Autocross - Sunday March 16th - TMS

A Goodguys weekend consists of 3 days of car shows, swap meets, and autocross competition. The typical customer for these shows is the 1972-older domestic car or truck owner, and they tailor most of their many events around these folks. The g-machine muscle car scene has taken a strong foothold over Goodguys and the Friday-Saturday autocross competition is chock full of these 1972-older American cars.

Event website: https://www.good-guys.com/slsn-2014

Luckily they also welcome the "late model" 1973-newer American cars on the "All American Sunday Autocross", which we have entered once before (last October, where I got 2nd place by .02 seconds - and lost out on a free set tires from BFG!). Last October we went to the Goodguys event at Texas Motor Speedway for our first time and ran on a used set of 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s and I was introduced to their autocross course layouts. I had heard they were tight, but this was an eye opener.

With 90% of the course run in 1st gear, several super tight 180° turn-arounds and running through major sections of the course multiple times, I'd really call this more of a gymkhana than an autocross, but that's how they set up all of their events and more power to 'em. Not knocking it - just different from your typical SCCA course, in case you attend one of these. And you should - it is fun and you get to see some serious machinery! I learned what to expect back in October (about the course as well as the unannounced goodies you win for first!) and so when the next Goodguys event was scheduled in Dallas (they do 2 events a year at TMS - Spring and Fall) I signed up. This time I was there for two reasons: first, to get practice for the following week's USCA event (more on that below) and second, to win the fat loots they give to the winner.


The prize package for the winner of the All American Sunday at a Goodguys event is no joke!

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Ya see, back in October I didn't take the Goodguys autocross that seriously because I didn't realize they had such good prizes for the winner. I lost that event by two hundredths and only after the event was over did I realize that there was a free set of BFGoodrich tires on the line. So for this March 2014 Goodguys I came better prepared, with a fresh set of BFGoodrich Rivals and more serious driving attitude.



We luckily knew the entire "Goodguys event" drill this time. Since we weren't allowed to bring our truck and trailer inside the Speedway on Sunday we got to the race hotel at 7:20 am to register (for the Sunday autocross event you have to sign up the day of, or become a Goodguys member and sign up about 3 weeks in advance), got to the TMS assigned trailer parking area outside the Speedway, and quickly unloaded the car from the trailer. Yes, it was on street tires and we still trailered the car, but mostly because we are trying to keep these BFG Rivals FRESH and avoid unnecessary heat cycles on them. The more times you drive on any set of tires - where they start out cold and then get hot and then cool off again - the more heat cycles they take. Heat cycles can "age out" a set of competitive tires before the tread is gone, even these Rivals. And at $1300 a set I'm going to SAVE THESE TIRES. Not to mention that Texas Motor Speedway is also about an hour away from our shop, and we had no spare tire.



The weather started out in the low 50s when we left the house, but a cold front had swept in the day before (and brought MASSIVE winds and rain that night), and temps were dropping into the lower 40s and the wind was BRUTAL. The winds was blowing so hard that everything was flying out of the trailer - pieces of wood (which we use with the trailer ramps), papers, and anything not bolted down. This did not bode well for the rest of the day. We bundled up in several coats, tossed our helmets (didn't need em!) plus an air gauge in the trunk, and we drove to the Speedway entrance. Once we got inside to the area where the autocross is held we got in line and I went to walk the course.



I realized quickly that this was the same course we ran in October. Exactly the same, really, but one of the Pro drivers (the Fri-day-Saturday group is broken up into groups and the shops and drivers that go to most of the Goodguys events and do well get assigned into the "Pro" category) said it was different by a couple of feet here and there. Regardless, having run this strange layout in October was a big help, since I knew I wouldn't get lost this time like so many did at that event. I walked it one time and got back into the Mustang to stay warm!



When the event finally got underway around 8 :30 am the Pro class drivers went first, which they are allowed to do. They park by the announcer and put on a good show for the crowd, but they aren't competing in that day's events. Many of the 1972-older domestics that ran Friday-Saturday also take runs throughout the Sunday, but they also aren't in competition - just making fun runs. A little frustrating for those of us that are competing in the All American Sunday (1973-newer) event, but they paid their money and they get their runs. It makes the day more interesting, as just late models autocrossing can be boring for this crowd of spectators - which was a surprisingly full crowd all day, considering the weather.



I had one of my student's from Sunday's SCCA Solo School where Amy and I instructed who was at this event, Lloyd in the red Boss302. His son was with him and he wanted to get a ride in our car, so I took a rider on my first run - and only on this run. Last October I took riders on all of my Goodguys runs, but when you lose by .02 seconds you begin to get paranoid. I knew this first run would suck, and it did. The BFG's still had visible decals and mold release and it felt like driving on ice. He had fun and I got that awful run out of the way. You can see in these pictures that we were wearing helmets, which I'm so used to doing, but nobody else was because it isn't required at Goodguys.



And while the course ran very near fences and concrete barriers it doesn't seem to phase anyone at these events, so I just went with the flow and drove my laps. My first lap was a 77 second run, which was terrible... but after the first round of runs it was in 1st place somehow. Then I made a second run of a 74.4 second run, which was painfully slow and I had wheelspin everywhere, and now I was 4 seconds in the lead. Huh?

The lines were heavy and growing all day and it was taking about an hour between runs, but I was used to this from the October event. By the time I got to the line for my third run it was around 11 am, and they said they'd pick the fastest time run by 11:30 and call them the winner. I pulled up to stage and the guy is plastering decals on the car for "Autocross Winner", and I hadn't even made my last run. "Nobody is close" he said, and then I was told to report to the timing tent after my last run, shown below.



That run felt a little better, and I made all of my 1st gear downshifts shifts smoothly. The wheelspin was more controlled than my other two runs but there was still VERY little grip on this still wet asphalt in these crazy cold conditions. The BFG Rivals apparently don't do as well as the Falkens in cold temps, and Brian Hobaugh was stupid fast on Falkens in his gorgeous orange 2nd gen Camaro, running several seconds quicker that day than me. But he and the rest of the Pro class drivers were in the 1972-older series and luckily their runs didn't get compared or counted with ours'. Next weekend at USCA those cars are in the same class as me, so I am hoping with warmer temps and better driving I can get closer.

AAS...Terry Fair............2011 Ford Mustang............74.124
AAS...Bryan Mills...........1994 Ford Mustang............76.059
AAS...Lloyd Collins.........2012 Ford Mustang............76.684
AAS...Greg Scherer........2002 Pontiac Firehawk........77.788

I copied the first 4 results from the 23 entered in the "AAS" class and it turns out there were two driver's that improved a lot on their last runs and got within 2 seconds of my final time, including my student from the Solo school the day before (nice driving, Lloyd!). Didn't know until the results were posted earlier today.

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So after I won the autocross I was told to park in the Winner's Circle area with all of the car show class winners and previous day's autocross SM and PRO class winners. Lots of people came by to shoot pics of the big red Mustang, which was fun but weird to watch. Honestly the this car had so little to do with the win, at least within this class - it was mostly about getting through a painfully tight course as cleanly and close to the cones as possible. I think I could have done as well or better in a rental automatic Mustang, and I got beat last year by one of the Pro driver's in his wife's automatic and stock 5th gen Camaro convertible. These Goodguys courses are super tricky and don't emphasize the car's performance all that much.



Amy and I parked the car in the car show area and ran into the Fuzzy's Taco Shop that is inside TMS. We ate some good Tex Mex and warmed up, then went around and talked to some friends we saw also parked in Winner's Circle area, like Stuart in his GT500 SuperSnake and Wade in his 32 Ford. They told us the whole awards presentation was moved up an hour due to the weather, so we hopped in the car and got in line, then drove past the bleachers and announcer tent to get our winnings.

Official Results: https://www.good-guys.com/slsn-ac-14
Vorshlag Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ocross-at-TMS/


Left: Amy was not pleased when I took this picture while she was thawing out from the cold. Right: The Goodguys goodie bag was immense!

A nice trophy accompanied the awards packet (linked at the beginning of this section). Free set of tires from BFG and gift cards and deeply discounted certificates from other sponsors - nice! Can't get Rivals with this but it will help ease the pain of that $1300 set of tires (again - ouch!) that we got to run this and the USCA event. After that we followed the mass exodus leaving speedway, loaded up in the trailer, and headed home by 1 pm - which has to be a record early end time for us at any given autocross. The other event we would have been at if not for Goodguys, the Texas Region SCCA Solo #1, had 193 entrants and ran for most of the day in these same miserable conditions, so we lucked out on our early departure that day!

Some Random Mustang Work

We work on a lot of cars in our service and race prep shop, and one of those recently was Vorshlag Tester Mark Council's 2012 Mustang GT, who is also the OKC Region SCCA Autocross Chairman. We've already swapped his car from 3.55 to 3.31 gears, which he really enjoys for autocross and track use (no 2-3 shifts in parking lots and fewer shifts on track as well). This car has Forgestar F14 18x11s, AST 4150s w/550F/250R springs, Vorshlag plates, Whiteline swaybars, and a Torsen T2R.



We had installed a Cobra Suzuka GT kevlar racing seat into his car a while back, using the custom S197 bracket we make to go with the Cobra slider and Cobra side mount brackets. He loved the new Corbeau S197 Harness Bar, new seat and 6-point harnesses and raved about how much more control he had gained with this seat. He drives the car to events from as far as 5 hours away, and does a lot of track and autocrossing in the car, on both street tires (295/35/18 BFG Rivals) and R compounds (315mm Kumho V710s).



He loved the new driver's seat so much he went ahead and sprung for a passenger seat upgrade, which any track instructors or passengers will greatly appreciate. If you do one seat you really should do the other side as well. To save a bit he went with the steel framed fixed back Cobra Monoco seat on the passenger's side, which was about half the cost of the kevlar Suzuka. It only has about a 2 pound penalty in weight over the composite seats, and being a Cobra product, it still looks great and has very high quality construction and materials (I ordered some more of these seats for inventory). He skipped the slider on the passenger side and we just mounted the seat fixed to the bracket, fairly far back and lower than it would have been with a slider - which is what we often do on the right side seat.



Another change he had in mind was a new rear Upper Control Arm assembly. After reading what we had to say about poly bushings, Del-Sphere and all of the other variations on the upper arm and mounts he went with some brand new "ultimate" UCA from BMR, shown below. The instillation was straightforward, but still time consuming. You need a lift, removal of the back seat, and a BIG torque wrench for the main bolt (which should be torqued to 250-300 ft-lbs, depending on the brand - see your manufacturer's instructions) to tighten the mount to the chassis. The pinion angle also has to be adjusted, and there is even a second set of holes in the chassis mount for potential geometry changes.



The upper control arm is one of those places where a spherical seems like the right choice, as this bushing has to pivot much more than the LCA bushings do. And to match the new upper arm's spherical he went with a Steeda spherical bushing replacement on the axle side of the UCA arm axis also, per our suggestions.



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Getting the OEM rubber bushing out of the axle side is a real B!TCH of a job. The instructions say to cut out the old bushing, but if you make a tool to press it out you can re-use that to press in the new Steeda assembly. Then when you go to tighten the 58mm (?!) hex nut for the new spherical you might need to make a tool for that as well...



After finding a massive 58mm socket for around $35 we had to chuck it up in the lathe to machine the outer diameter down for clearance, otherwise it would not fit in the space between the axle housing and the bushing mount. Really fun job, that one, heh. After all of this work was done I drove this car around our Test Loop (bumpy road we use to listen for creaks, pops and noises plus to test ride quality) with Mark in the car and we both agreed that it makes a LOT more noise inside now. We had previously rebuilt his entire axle with all new bearings when we did the 3.31 gear swap, and the rearend was silent as a church mouse just hours before, but after the double spherical UCA set-up was installed it was much LOUDER inside the car - and he still has the back seat installed. Just know that this particular UCA set-up adds a lot more NVH than you might expect - you will hear all sorts of noises from the rearend that were masked before. Mark said he likes the feel of the new set-up but needs more seat time to give a full review. You can read his build thread on s197forums here and he talks about the new seat and the BMR UCA in post #262.

Another Vorshlag Tester is Jan Maher, who was the first S197 Mustang owner on MCS TT1 coilovers. We've installed all sorts of goodies on her 2012 GT including the reclining Corbeau seats, shown below.



At the recent Texas Region SCCA Solo school, Jan had entered in her 2012 GT, while one of her two daughters that race, Shannon entered in her 2011 GT. They were both brushing up on some autocross skills to use in the many track events they enter - always a good idea to learn things like car control and LFBraking in a parking lot, where the only thing to hit are cones. Amy and I both worked with Jan that day, and while Amy was instructing in her car I happened to be riding with another student and noticed a broken wheel stud on course. I'm sort of OCD about finding and removing "FOD" on an autocross course so I hopped out of this car, stopped the course, and ran out to pick it up. It was a broken OEM wheel stud with what I recognized as one of our Vorshlag lug nuts on it. That narrowed it down to about a half dozen potential cars at the event, and I quickly found a missing stud on Jan's front wheel.



I took her the broken part and let her know the bad news - she wasn't racing in Sunday's autocross with a busted wheel stud, so she co-drove in Shannon's GT instead. With over 50K miles on Jan's car and lots of track miles it was probably a good idea to replace the front wheel bearings anyway (they are a known wear item - usually they make noises and clunking when they are bad), so we brought in a pair of new hubs using the M-1104-A Ford Racing kit, which come pre-installed with "longer and stronger" (insert joke here) ARP front wheel studs, are pre-greased on the hub face, and include two new spindle retaining nuts.



We've installed these FR hubs before (our 2011 GT is on the 3rd pair in 4 years - again, the hubs take a beating from lateral load and brake heat, and it is a known wear item), but noticed that this M-1104-A kit now comes with new front hub retaining nuts, which we used to order separately. This monster spindle nut has to be torqued to 250 ft-lbs and is a "torque to yield", one-time-use piece of hardware. Make sure you have a torque wrench big enough and rated high enough for this torque level - it took all of my weight plus a lot of arm strength to get these nuts torqued today. After a brake pad swap, some new brake fluid bled, and a full HPDE tech inspection at our shop Jan's car is fixed up and ready for USCA this weekend.

Getting Ready for USCA

We're running at full throttle around here getting our car and 5 others ready for the Ultimate Street Car Association event this weekend. We have multiple sets of tires to mount (Rivals, Rivals and more Rivals!), the hubs and pads on Jan's car, some brake repairs on Shannon's car, and much more to do. My Mustang is finally getting Schroth harnesses installed today before we load it onto the trailer. One of our customers has a couple of Miatas and he is bringing one of them to compete int he "under 3000 pound" class, with Rivals.



And at the end of the day today we have a company dinner at a German place where we will get together and raise a glass to toast Ryan, our head fabricator who is leaving us in about a month to go back to school full time. Really sad about that, like losing a member of the family... but he has great things ahead and we wish him the best. I've already hired a new shop foreman (Texas Region Solo RE, Brad Maxcy!) and we'll have a listing up on our jobs page soon for the fabricator position that opened up. If you have lots of automotive race prep and fab experience, love long hours and low pay, this could be the opportunity for you! Please send your resumes to [email protected], thanks.


Hoosier tire winnings from this weekend stacked up next to a new set of 225/45/15 BFG Rivals for Mike M's Miata. Wow.

This weekend's 3 day USCA competition is looming heavy and I'm hoping more people will sign up at the last minute. Once again the Dallas area racers seem to find nothing but excuses when a big event like this rolls into town and I fear that we might not get another one if the attendance stays low. We lost the GTA event in Dallas after a dismal local turnout in 2012 and I've been calling people all week to try to get them to enter USCA this weekend. I worked out a deal with the organizers for a HALF PRICE entry ($250 vs $500). Use the word "SCCA" in the order notes and you will receive a $250 refund on your entry fee. Please feel free to call me at Vorshlag today if you are interested in going but have questions: 972-422-7170. I'm not associated with the USCA and neither is the SCCA, this was just a discount code hoping to grab local areas SCCA autocross racers and Time Trial entrants.




I'm pretty excited about this event. Rolling out there tomorrow at 11 am to set up the trailer, get their event decals installed, and start the 80 mile road rally. We have our car inspected, tagged, and all legal-like for street use, so I'm not worried about the Friday street drive. The weather looks good for the weekend so I'm hoping we can have another strong showing in the autocross, a better showing than last time in the speed stop (fingers crossed that the new ABS unit works!) and of hoping I do well on the "1.04 mile" (aka: 1.36 mile) TMS infield road course on Sunday.

Until next time...

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Project Update for April 2, 2014: This post covers the first day of the 3 day Optima Street Car/USCA event at Texas Motor Speedway March 21-23. We ran on 315/335 BFG Rival 200 treadwear tires on our 2011 Mustang as well as tested the Ford Racing M-2353-CA "Boss 302R" ABS/TC module, but left our existing Hoosier A6 suspension parts and settings untouched from the last TT3 event and Goodguys. I will split the event write-up over three different days.

What is the Ultimate Street Car Association?

The USCA was only created late last year and announced at SEMA. I hinted at it in my October post after Goodguys. Basically this is the new series created for the qualifier events for the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational, held every year the weekend after SEMA in Las Vegas. This series includes 3 days of competition in streetable cars on 200+ treadwear tires. Drivers go head-to-head in autocross, Speed Stop and road course time trials. You also have to prove the street worthiness by driving your car for 50-100 miles on an assigned route. The last part of the scored competition includes a Design and Engineering segment where 5 or more judges score each car with a number of categories that include various street equipment, craftsmanship, and creativity.



The video above is a good preview of what the series is about. This was a promo for a show that covers the 2013 Optima Invitational event, which is airing on MAVTV now. Getting an invite to this event is a big deal for most shops and amateur racers like ourselves and guarantees you a spot in the SEMA show the week before as well.

If you have been reading this build thread for a while you know that we have entered 3 of these Optima qualifiers before. The first Optima qualifier was an ASCS "Run To The Alamo" in Feb 2012. That event was supposed to be a 3 day/3 event format with autocross, speed stop and road course times. They didn't check to see that this track (Harris Hill) didn't have a paddock or parking area big enough for the speed stop and autocross, so those 2 events were cancelled. During the road course event they had timer problems but I ran all day, in the pouring rain. We left after about 6 hours, soaking wet, about 30 minutes before they were supposed to stop running. I was in the lead. They ended up keeping the track open until dark, the rain cleared, the track dried off, I got beat, and didn't get an invite.



The second qualifier we entered was the OPTIMA FACEOFF AT HOT ROD POWER TOUR in June of 2012. We fared a little better at this televised and much more organized 3 day event, winning the autocross and coming in 3rd in the road course portion, but I got 14th place in the speed stop. I finished 3rd overall and didn't get an invite. At some of these Optima qualifiers they weren't even inviting the overall winner, but instead just picking people for their "spirit of the event" to invite to SEMA, as happened here. They later came back and offered an invite late in the year to the winner of the June event, local NASA TT racer Todd Earsley in his then yellow EVO.

Last but not least was the GOODGUY'S ALL AMERICAN SUNDAY autocross at TMS in October of 2013. This was an Optima Qualifier but only had the autocross, and was one of Goodguys super tight "gymkhana" courses. I got 3 runs, was in the lead, so I was taking riders... ended up losing that event by .02 seconds - stupid mistake. They picked another car that didn't even place for the SEMA invite anyway.



I learned a lot about these Optima qualifiers over the past three years. Most qualifiers were being hosted in different series, sometimes with wildly varying competitions - some road course only, some autocross only, some had 3 day Optima style events, and others were random things like High Speed Open Road events. Not a consistent format. The event we did at Hot Rod Power Tour was more like the Optima Invitational, but we didn't take the event seriously enough and showed up on the WRONG tires: 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s. What I quickly found out was THESE TIRES ARE NOT GOOD, and we quickly overheated them in the road course event. We also arrived at that event with a poor brake pad selection (Hawk DTC-70) that were too hard for slow speed use, and a leaking power brake booster fitting that killed the vacuum assist. I used the same set of 295 Nittos last October at Goodguys, and that didn't help my chances.

USCA Rules: http://ultimatestreetcarassociation.com/usca-rules/

Probably due to the old Optima qualifier inconsistencies, USCA was created to host consistent and competition based events, and all 10 of their events on the 2014 calendar are hosted at notable road courses which can hold all 3 driving formats: autocross, speed stop and road course. They are run by the same group of people that host the Optima Invitational in Vegas, so the events are more representative of the "big show" held after SEMA. For 2014 the USCA has kept one "spirit of the event" selection per event but offers an Optima invite to the winner of each of THREE different classes: 3000+ pound 2WD, under 3000 pound 2WD and AWD. This means 4 invites go out at each event, and 3 of them are going to be somewhat serious competitors that won out over a class of entrants. I like that - awarding the winners instead of mostly "spirit selections" made at previous events. Good move. The three class format also separates the lightweight and AWD cars from the traditional heavy RWD pony cars, which meant we might have a better shot in our 3550 pound Mustang.




Last but not least, they have a TV contract for all of the USCA events. The Optima Invitational has been filmed and aired almost every year since its inception but the qualifiers rarely were. In 2012 about half a dozen of the qualifiers were televised, and we got some TV exposure at the June 2012 event. All ten of the 2014 USCA qualifiers will be televised, starting around August 8th on MAVTV. So you get 3 days of racing, good food, some swag, television time, and 4 people from each event get invites to Optima/SEMA? That's a lot of value for the money! Yes, the entry fee is higher now than at some past events... but let me tell you now: IT WAS WORTH IT!

We had SO much fun at this USCA event that I can barely put it into words. And anyone can enter... it doesn't take a "pro" driver or a $200K car to win this thing - I'm living proof of that: I'm admittedly a hack autocrosser in a heavy Mustang with a stock motor and still won an invite to Optima Invitational! with the overall win. We are super excited about that, and want you readers to really think about finding a USCA event nearby and checking it out. At least go out to WATCH, but if you have a streetable car and 200 treadwear tires, you should ENTER. This three day event was the most fun I've EVER had with my clothes on!

USCA at TMS, Friday March 21st, 2014

Before we get started, a note about the pictures: There's a LOT of them. Some of these were copied from other people's posts on Facebook and are credited. Anything with a Vorshlag watermark is something that either Amy or I shot with our Nikon, or one of our cell phones, or that Brandon shot with his gear. If it is a GOOD picture, just assume Brandon took it.




Brandon took some of the best pictures from one of our events we attended... ever. That means this series of posts is very heavy on the photos, and each one with a Vorshlag watermark can be clicked for a higher rez version. Sadly he was only able to come out on Sunday (road course and final awards), so all of the autocross, speed stop and road rally pics were ones that Amy and I took. There's over 530 pictures from this event in the gallery linked below - I can't show them all, but many are worth looking at!

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You can get the "original" rez pics from there and save them for things like PC background wallpapers. And no, I won't even pretend to think that our Mustang was the most photogenic at this event, ha! There were some seriously cool machines there and he took some amazing pics of them. Several folks that attended this event have gotten in touch with Brandon about getting some enlargements and poster sized prints: you can reach him through his website brandonlajoie.com.



Vorshlag Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...te-Street-Car/

The Ultimate Street Car Association held it's 2nd event for 2014 at the Texas Motor Speedway in Ft. Worth, Texas. By Friday morning they already had all of their big sponsors on hand already set-up and ready, including the massive "Optima Prime" trailer that the picture above was shot from. This massive 3 story trailer expands out like a Transformer and was their HQ for the weekend as well as the awards stand and announcer perch.



We got to the track with our trailer and car around 11:30 am and was told we could pick any garage spot we wanted. Yep, the NASCAR garages were open for our use and at no additional cost, so we all got an unexpectedly nice upgrade for the weekend. With the winds and weird weather we saw, this was a welcomed surprise!


Some of our Vorshlag testers will be featured in a "women of USCA" segment (left) and more Vorshlag folks parked in the garage

We didn't take over the whole garage but a good quarter of it was Vorshlag folks. The event was a bit under-attended by local drivers, due to a few factors: 1) Not many folks knew what USCA was or knew the rules/classes. 2) The entry fee was a little steep. 3) There were several other racing events going on that same weekend that drew potential entrants away, including: inaugural WRL race at MSR-Houston, Texas Mile, and BMWCCA at COTA. I got a call from one of the USCA principles a week before the event and we worked out an even better deal where local folks could get $250 off their entry fee + I threw in $100 service credit at Vorshlag for a $350 in savings. I then made a number of phone calls to customers, got another 7 folks to join us, ordered several sets of BFG Rivals, and then there was a flurry of safety gear outfitting at Smiley's that week. All told we had 8 entrants that had "Vorshlag" on their order form, out of the 38 signed up, and I'd like to thank ALL OF THOSE FOLKS for stepping up: Jerry, Jan, Shannon, Heather, Michael, Jon, and Marc!


7 of the 8 Vorshlag customer entries at the TMS round of USCA

38 doesn't sound like a huge number, but considering the early date for the season (Texas Region SCCA had just kicked off their season the weekend before) and a long drive for many of the Pro Touring "regulars", that wasn't bad. I hope that next year we can help them get 100 entrants in Texas - and after you read my post, I hope YOU will get the bug and want to join these folks at another event in 2014 (see the ten 2014 dates here). It only takes 200+ treadwear street tires, some safety gear, and a car that has some nominal street car provisions.

I've been telling my other racer friends that missed the TMS event about the new USCA/Optima series - how it includes multiple driving competitions, how all of the events are held at renowned road courses that also have parking lots big enough for a proper autocross pad, about how there are 3 classes this year and ALL of the class winners get an invite to SEMA/Vegas Optima Shootout - and now have half a dozen folks BUILDING THEIR CARS for this series! Yes, it was THAT much fun, is infectious, and it is accessible to virtually anyone with a car with street tires. I'll cover more of the classing, tips and tricks to doing well in this 3 day event as we go.



We arrived Friday and we had a naked red Mustang (see above) - and yes, I prefer it that way as well. We were going to try to "tone down" the Vorshlag and race car graphics a bit, but they still had a gaggle of event and sponsor decals for us to add, so Amy got to work.



As our other Vorshlag customers and friends arrived Amy was drafted to install many of the bigger "event decals" as well. And then someone wanted big Vorshlag decals, which we had a limited supply in our trailer, so those started going on cars ... including our own.



Amy also showed some folks how she installs big decals, both wet and dry, and passed along some knowledge. Once Shannon saw Amy's decal tricks she started helping her sister and mom with installs on their cars, too. Yep, two sisters and a mother all entered this event in their 3 track cars - they all did well and snagged a lot of camera time, with about 4 special interviews sessions. Look for a side story about Jan, Heather, Shannon, and "the women of USCA" in the episode that will air for this Optima Challenge event! (sometime around August 15th on MAVTV, the Lucas Oil channel)

I was reluctant to "over-Vorshlag" our Mustang, as this event was about street cars and I wanted it to look the part - well, as much as possible with a giant wing, flares and splitter. So we put some simple black Vorshlag decals on the rear flanks, which are much smaller than we normally run. We also kept the white Vorshlag.com windshield banner, and added some small decals for our main products: Whiteline, Forgestar, MagnaFlow and Maxcyspeed.



To show BFGoodrich some love we got a BIG Rival "R" decal from the BFG rep on site. This was added to the hood and two small "R" decals went on the front flares. Marc followed suit in his red C6 Z06, and we all added the Optima windshield banner, Redline oil rear window banner, the giant Optima door panel decals, the numbers we were assigned, and the tall strip of sponsor decals for the sides.



Doing that many decals on 8+ cars carefully enough to avoid bubbles, wrinkles and tears took Amy and everyone else a few hours, and we cleaned up some exteriors as we went also (some folks still bring a dirty car to an event that is televised, ha!). We all got registered, teched, had all of our safety gear checked (more on that in the Sunday Road Course section), and met a bunch of cool folks who were also arriving.

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We saw Todd Earsley again from MyShopAssist, which is the customer service work software we use here at Vorshlag. Todd entered his NASA TT prepped EVO, which he added an interior to for these events. He also brought out his dog Violet, the sweetest puppy you'll ever meet. She quickly became the event mascot. Mike from Dusold Designs in Lewisville was entered as well, and his twin turbo 7.0L LSx making 1000 whp was a LOT of fun to watch - and he's been kicking butt in the Goodguys events, too.


Left: Todd and Violet are regulars on the NASA Texas TT circuit. Right: Marc Sherrin is a NASA Texas TT1 racer and a real character!

There were also lots of famous folks from the Pro Class of Goodguys and Optima Street Car events. Kyle and Stacy Tucker from Detroit Speed and Engineering had their transporter full of cars and they both entered. Infamous autocrosser and road racer Danny Popp entered in a wild 5th gen Camaro prepped by Lingenfelter. Bret Voelkel from RideTech was there in his Camaro, and autocrosser Cheryl Herrick from JetHot had a Nova that was absolutely beautiful inside and out. Ryan Mathews, a former NASCAR truck series driver, was entered in a race prepped 5th gen Camaro from DSE that had big aero, no interior and a full cage. Last but not least, 2013 Optima Challenge winner Brian Hobaugh was there in a really beautiful and monstrous 2nd gen Camaro built by Maier Racing - who builds epic autocross cars from Detroit iron.



There were so many AMAZING cars! Detroit Speed had several that most people would give a right arm for. So did Ride Tech, and many other Pro Touring shops from around the nation. It helped to have the Goodguys event the weekend before, so many of these shops that normally wouldn't have made the trek to Texas brought big transporters full of cars and ran Goodguys, flew home for a week, then came back for the USCA 3 day event.



Dallas area's Aaron Kaufman from Gas Monkey Garage was entered in his 1963 Falcon (which he is taking to Pike's Peak this year), but he only ran on Sunday in the road course event. From what I heard there might be a conflict with his Discovery channel TV contract, so he and his car probably won't be shown on the episode that was filmed at this event. Too bad, the car looked great - but Brandon got a lot of good pics of his car.



We spoke again at this event with Aaron and a couple of the guys from the GMG shop - all super nice folks. Marc even tried to get Aaron to co-drive with his team in a ChumpCar race at Daytona in May, in his "Poorvette" C4 Corvette that we caged. That car is a riot!

Detroit Speed Road Rally

The only "competition" on the Friday of this 3 day weekend was the Detroit Speed sponsored Road Rally, which was to be a 90 mile street drive "poker run" event, used to prove the street worthiness of the entrants. To show that you made all 90 miles of the drive each car was given a playing card at each of 5 checkpoint stops, and our hand was turned in at the end for some extra door prizes (based on your poker hand). We had a driver's meeting around noon and Jimi and Dennis of the USCA introduced us to the series, outlined that day's events, and handed everyone their Rally notes and maps.



This was the only portion where all entrants that completed every stage (5) of this competition could get the full 25 points towards their overall score - the other 4 competitions were to be weighted scores based on finishing order, with the winner getting 25, 2nd got 22, 3rd got 20, then 18, 16, 15, 14, etc. So all we had to do was make each checkpoint and finish, but not everyone did. A few folks skipped this event due to work obligations on Friday (and got 0 points), and someone missed one checkpoint and only got 20 points, but everyone else got the full 25. It was more of a "Pass/Fail" sort of deal.



I wasn't worried about the street drive in our car, as we've been driving it on the street for years, it is street legal and everything worked. The weather on Friday was exceptionally nice, sunny and warm. By 1:30 pm we were told to stage outside of the garages and given a heads up that we would be making some laps of the 1.5 mile, 24° banked oval, driving in single file, to start the rally. This wasn't originally in the plan but we were glad it was added. We drove at "mostly highway speeds" and had a good time chasing Marc Sherrin's C6 Z06 Corvette in front of us.

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Left: Jimi Day of the USCA ran things smoothly behind the scenes. Right: Show host Chad Reynolds of BangShift.com was always making us laugh

We were told to take two laps then to line up and everyone would stop at the Start/Finish line for pictures, then proceed out of the infield via the south tunnel and then follow the route on the rally instructions and map we were given. We tried to get our Vorshlag folks to all stick together but we lost most of our group by the first stop light. It wasn't a hard route to follow, and with nearly 40 cars all stickered up in Optima graphics it made it easy to see someone from this event no matter where you ended up. I was lucky enough to have a navigator (Amy) riding shotgun, but of course, like the stereotypical married couple, we had to argue over the instructions the ENTIRE time!



The first couple of miles of the route were on highway 114 right outside of the Speedway, but the route quickly diverted to secondary roads and even some residential streets. We got to see some beautiful homes in the city of Trophy Club, went through a school zone (the school kids went bonkers seeing all of the classic muscle cars go by!) into Grapevine, skirting around Grapevine lake. We drove through Flower Mound, Lewisville, and into my hometown of Plano. All of these secondary roads are concrete with expansion strips, and going slow you could feel every one in our Mustang with stif 800# springs. As the temperatures crept up into the 84°F high for the day, we rolled the windows up, turned the air con on, had the Satellite radio playing and the nav screen showing us the upcoming turns.

Amy and I have thousands of miles experience doing "TSD" rallyes, so the route instructions would have sufficed, but they gave us all detailed colored maps with the checkpoints clearly marked. They even had marks for what we quickly noticed were Optima film crews along the route, so we'd smile and wave for the dozen or so locations where we saw folks with tripod mounted cameras situated in medians and on road sides (some competitors said they never noticed them!). Having a navigator definitely helped, and we picked up more than a few strays - solo drivers trying to drive on unfamiliar roads while looking at a printed map - along this series of city roads that we had mostly driven on in the past.



We drove way across the Dallas metroplex and all the way east to Plano, then headed north to Frisco. Mike Dusold from Lewisville had made this route for the USCA folks and he did a fine job of keeping all of the competitors on real streets with the normal street car challenges and bumps. With the shocks turned down on our Mustang it really wasn't that bad. One of the 5 checkpoints was at Pole Position Raceway, an amazing indoor kart track facility in Frisco. I hadn't driven at this Pole Position yet and I knew I had to give these karts a spin!



About half of the competitors were too hungry to stop for karting and instead stopped for lunch along the route, or wanted to get to the Holley Welcome Party dinner at the race hotel's final checkpoint. But at least 20 of the entrants stopped in for some karting fun. These were decently quick electric karts (45 mph) on a slick concrete surface in a climate controlled building, which was nice because it was a bit warm outside that day. Mike had arranged for a killer deal - half price races at $10 each - and I ended up buying 4 races. Each race is about 12 minutes long and they can have as many as 20 karts on track at once. I got into a decent kart my first two races and had the fastest lap times in each race. My next two races I ended up in two stinkers, with no front tires left and no top speed, and was 1-2 seconds slower on my best laps and got 4th and 5th fastest laps, ugh. So even the rental indoor electric karts can be as inconsistent as those of the gas powered variety, heh! Still, it was a lot of fun.

Amy had a spring pollen/sinus induced headache and sat out the karting, which she normally enjoys. She instead went to get some much needed food for about 7 of the competitors that were there - a real life saver. We scarfed down Whataburgers and fries between races and by 4:30pm we had burned enough of the day at the kart facility and got back on the road, as we still had two more checkpoints to meet before dinner. By now we had three playing cards and a pair of fours, so my "poker run" hand was looking more like a foot. Marc Sherrin was already giddy with his budding hand of 3 eights, but we had no idea what the prizes would be for the poker hand at the end (not part of the points competition, of course).


Left: The cars in the road rally stopped traffic everywhere. Right: First street drive with the new ABS computer - lots of lights, as expected

In the next leg we noticed a ~2 mile section of road on the route that was under serious construction and made a slight detour, not saving any distance just avoiding a traffic clusterfox, which worked beautifully. Thank you, Ford Sync Nav system! This construction detour we made (and were followed by a few others in the road rally) lopped off some time, as we made the next checkpoint ahead of people that left the kart track 20 minutes before us. The final stretch was a route along an old highway that was little more than a 2 lane road with a bunch of stoplights, which ran parallel to I-35. We could have taken the Interstate, and that was tempting, but we were worried about straying too far off the route and any consequences we might see. Unfortunately there were none, and we found out later than many competitors got to the party hours ahead of us by just using highway and tollway routes instead of the surface streets that made up the rally route, going directly from one marked checkpoint to the next. Oh well, live and learn... we waved at all the camera guys along the actual route, at least.

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Holley Welcome Dinner

We finally arrived at the final checkpoint around 6 pm and the brakes were howling on our Mustang. So much stop and go traffic on XP20 Carbotech track worthy brake pads and the noise and dust that ensues. One thing we noticed immediately after starting this road rally was that the front rotors were WARPED. These had been on the car since just after Nationals at Miller, lots and lots and lots of race weekends, and they were worn thin. It takes a lot to warp Centric Premium 14" front rotors, but the surfaces were covered in micro-cracks - an indicator that they were too thin. I called ahead (via the Sync systems in-car bluetooth!) to our shop and had Kyle snag a pair of fresh Centric front rotors that we keep in stock, for a Saturday morning swap.



Jimi Day handing competitors their final card at the Marriott hotel checkpoint, right before dinner was served

Our warped front rotors paled in comparison to one competitor (who shall remain nameless) who lost an alternator on the road rally and had to stop and get 4 car batteries, which he swapped out when each one would die. Towards the end of the 91 miles of heavy traffic driving he noticed high coolant temps. They had to change a head gasket that night, and coupled with a complicated alternator swap they finished work on the car at 5:30 am Saturday morning! Long night, but he made it to all 5 checkpoints and raced Saturday and Sunday and drove it home, too.



The USCA folks had us all park for pictures and video at the Marriott race hotel, where the Holley Welcome Dinner was held. My final playing card given to us at this stop made for a terrible poker hand, but Marc ended up with FIVE EIGHTS! He was showing everyone his cards, and they explained that ten decks were used at the 5 stops, so the five of a kind was possible, however unlikely. He figured he had the poker run cinched up, until Danny Popp whipped out five KINGS! What are the odds, that out of 38 hands there would be two people with 5 of a kind??? It seems that this winning hand was the end of Danny's good luck for the weekend. They both got to pick from the door prizes that USCA had paid out, and all of us got a new Optima battery tender in our goodie bag after completing this event, as well as a USCA TMS event T-shirt that was pretty nice.


Left: Marc with his "five eights" hand. Right: Chad announcing the door prizes and talking about the events on Saturday

Dinner was burgers and sides in one of the Marriott ball rooms, and we had fun telling stories of our road rally driving, karting, poker hands and bench raced a bit for the next day. We got back to TMS to park in the garages that night by about 8 pm, tired and ready for some shut eye. Since we live only about 50 miles from the track we just drove home. I left the truck, trailer and Mustang in the garage area - Amy had followed me out to the track Friday in her long wheelbase BMW 740iL, which we call the Couch, and Marc Sherrin and his dad Carl rode back to the far side of Dallas with us.

Tune in next time for my Saturday USCA event coverage - the Autocross and Speed Stop competitions!

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Project Update for April 8th, 2014: This post covers the second day of the 3 day Optima Street Car/USCA event at Texas Motor Speedway March 21-23. I also have some "house cleaning" clearance items that are Mustang related to post and talk a little about Pro Touring and SCCA's CAM class.

House Cleaning!

As happens around here a lot, we change parts on our Mustang "test mule" from time to time. And when we pull anything off one of our cars we sell the used bits on our clearance page. I won't get too salesy here, but if you see something you or one of your buddies might like, check it out.

We recently installed our 4th different set of shocks onto our Mustang - a set of MCS RR2 shocks that I will show in one of my upcoming posts - so our old Moton Club Sport remote reservoir double adjustables are now for sale. We bought these new in May of 2012 and they have proven to be very rugged, have a large rebound and compression damping adjustment range, and we've set a lot of track records and notched up a lot of wins on these.


What you see here is for sale, just as they came off our TT3 Mustang a week ago

Lots more information can be seen about these used Motons if you click the pictures above. A winning set-up, real-deal remote reservoir Moton doubles at a big discount. If you don't see them listed on that page then they have sold.



Next we have the last of the used Cobra Suzuka Kevlar racing seats from our Mustang. This is the "normal width" (aka: narrow) Suzuka, best suited for folks under ~175 pounds. We had this on the passenger side of our car for several years, and it has of 2005 build tag. It is in decent shape, with no tears or rips in the fabric but it does have significant fading of the material. It basically went from Dark Black to a Slightly Less Dark Shade of Black. We replaced this and the driver's side Suzuka "GT" width seat about a month ago with a new set, to better show off the current Cobra models we sell. The used driver's side Suzuka seat lasted exactly 48 minutes after we posted it for sale on our clearance page, so if you want this click here and buy it. Once its gone, its gone.



Last but not least, we still have multiple sets of the new 305 and 320mm Continental DP racing slicks as well as a many pairs of used Hoosier DOT racing tires we need to move. Stacks of tires are all taking up far too much room in our overly crowded but climate controlled shop. The Contis are normally about $2000 for a set of 4 but the we have dropped the price on these brand new race tires to $550/set, below what we paid for them.



All of the used Hoosiers listed right now are 315/30/18 sized A6 tires, which until very recently was the tire we used on our TT3 Mustang. I normally hoard my old race tires, but since we moved to the 335/345mm tire sizes on our Mustang, the crew here is grumbling at me to move out these 315s. Each Hoosier has some tread left, and we have listed each pair currently for sale with pictures of the actual tires being sold and DOT date codes from the sidewalls.

Happy bargain hunting!

A little About Pro Touring Cars + SCCA's CAM Class?

Before we get started on the 2nd day of USCA coverage I wanted to back up and cover the PT "movement" to explain some of the cars that were at this event or seen at other events nationwide - and to state that not all Pro Touring cars are created equal. The typical cars that run the Pro Touring series of events - Goodguys, USCA, ASCS, Optima - are 1972 and older American made muscle cars, with a smattering of old Corvettes and even a couple of wild T-buckets (or kit cars) and Cobras (or kit cars). The typical Pro Touring car has some modern wheels, brakes, and big 200 treadwear tires. Most nowadays have big LSx motors, and the Pro guys all seem to have built 7.0L+ LS7 based engines that make 650-700+ hp. It has gotten crazier as the years have passed and these events have gotten more popular.



This Pro Touring "movement" has been around for a long time, and there are disputed stories about which was the first Pro Touring muscle car. The car I remember first, and that those of us that have been around HOT ROD magazine long enough remember, is the Gottlieb 1969 Camaro called "Big Red". This was more of an "Outlaw" top speed event car, but it had the look that Pro Touring adopted. This car even has its own Facebook page and it's own website. Built in 1987 (when I was but a wee lad) this car became a semi-tube framed "silhouette" car with a giant 540ci V8 motor that made 750 hp, wild and crazy and very little of the 1969 Camaro was left. It started out radical and nuts. It was built to run the La Cararrea and Silver State Classic open road races, and the car had just enough of the look of the classic Camaro to be allowed to run those. It was an over-the-top build that is chronicled here.

The cars that followed, like the Camaros from famed Pro Touring builder and GM Engineer Mark Stielow, were still packed with crazy powerplants and modern suspension, but more often than not today's PT cars are still mostly based on factory unibody structures and much tamer builds compared to Big Red. These are more streetable cars that were entered in One Lap of America events, and later beget the Goodguys and Optima "Pro Touring" scene. These latter events were made to allow pro built show cars to have a place to show that they were... more than just show cars. Show them being driven in competition.


A pair of 1st gen Camaros built by Mark Stielow, which both ran in Optima Invitationals

As these competition events have grown in number and popularity, more radical Pro Touring builds have been built and they are fast approaching the Gottlieb car - and in many ways have surpassed it, at least in suspension sophistication. These PT cars have more and more radical mods: extreme lightening, lightweight and big race motors tamed just enough for street use, and modern, uncompromised racing suspension designs. The popular front suspension for a 1st or 2nd gen PT Camaro includes narrowed hydroformed frame rails with aluminum spindles, modern double-A arm suspensions, and a narrowed set-up that allows 315 or 335mm tires to fit with the outer track unaffected. The transmissions are increasingly more racey (Jerico, G-Force, etc) to take the power of these big LS-V8 engines. And rear suspensions have gotten beyond solid axles, with fabricated tubular IRS set-ups going under classic Detroit Iron.



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Even the "iron" component is becoming less evident, with engine blocks mostly in aluminum and sheet metal going over to composites & carbon fiber. There are Pro Touring cars with 4 pound fiberglass doors, Lexan windows, CF front ends, and big aero, with exotic materials and methods creeping in. And why not? There are essentially NO RULES in most of these series - even fewer than the admittedly open NASA Time Trial "numbered classes" (TT1/2/3) that we here at Vorshlag campaign in. On top of that PT cars usually have show quality paint, bodywork, interior coverings and more. You can spend a lot of money building a fast Pro Touring car, and the arms race doesn't seem to be slowing down. With top name street rod and race shops building these cars, price tags in the $100-200K range are not uncommon.


A Pro Touring Camaro being built with an LS9 engine, custom crossmember and firewall, modern suspension

I'm not saying they should change anything in Goodguys, ASCA, Optima or USCA, not hardly. More power to 'em! These cars are beautiful and fun to watch, and these groups all put on helluva show. I'd give my right arm to be able to own one of these Pro built cars, or to have clients that trusted us enough to let Vorshlag build one for them. But that's not what we do, and the PT type scenes is really not what the SCCA is about, either (more on that in a second). Sure, the 200 treadwear tire limitation does ultimately put some limits what you can do that really matters, and the 3000 pound minimum weight for the main class in USCA is a good number, but these series and the PT cars that enter them are going to get wilder and less recognizable as time goes on.


A classic Camaro built around SCCA Solo rules looks almost nothing like a PT car underneath

Why do I bring this up? Because the SCCA created a class explicitly to attract Pro Touring cars called Classic American Muscle. And this class has the fewest rules of any class SCCA has created in the history of Solo. Jason Rhodes deliberates on the many problems with the ruleset in CAM. Jason built the 1967 Camaro Z/28 shown above for STX class, only to have it moved to a less competitive STU class a year after its debut. If you look at the CAM rules from a racer's point of view there are some crazy things that you could build. And in typical SCCA style, the rules makers haven't thought this through very well, and when (not if) these wild creations show up there will be a series of TAKE BACKS and rules changes the likes of which have never been seen.


Brian Hobaugh's Pro Touring Camaro ran in C Prepared class at the Solo Nationals, and did very well

We always complain about rules, and some of us have wished for more unlimited rulesets... just be careful what you wish for. Instead of fixing the issues in STX and STU classes, with respect to the modern Muscle Cars, the SCCA punted all pony cars into STU and seem to be ignoring any requests for allowances because "they can just run in CAM". But CAM is not a National class, and probably never will be - at least with the wide open rules it has now. I think creating CAM was a mistake, in this form, and removes all impetus to fix the pony car problems in STX and STU.

That being said, I'm going to be doing some autocross testing on street tires by running some SCCA Solo events in CAM class (and in our region they have split it by years, so we will run in MAM or Modern American Muscle). This will hopefully help us tweak the set-up and improve my driving to get ready for the Optima Invitational in Vegas. I actually renewed my SCCA membership last week (shocking!) and have already signed up for an event this weekend at TMS bus lot. But that doesn't mean I'm "building for CAM", no no no. If I was, first I'd ask someone to smack me over the head. Next, it would be a dedicated build along the lines that Rhodes laid out, but that would be a spending war that I wouldn't want to be a part of 2 years form now when the class either blows up and gets a rules re-write, or dies away from lack of attendance.


We tilted at windmills in SCCA's STX class for 2 years, and briefly in STU. I'd rather not be a part of the Solo Circus again

Anyway, I made that brief foray into the history of Pro Touring just to see how it has evolved and relates to the STX/STU/CAM/MAM classes within SCCA, which I honestly don't have any heart to fight for anymore. SCCA Solo is going to do whatever it is going to do, and I'm not going to get involved more than casually entering a few local autocross events to use for practice for another series. I caution anyone looking at CAM as "the answer" to the woes of the pony car drivers that may have formerly run in STX/STU classes. CAM might never take off, and if it does, be prepared for MAJOR changes when the rules makers figure out what they have left open to exploit. Enjoy!

USCA at TMS, Saturday March 22nd, 2014

Now that the house cleaning, PT history and SCCA rules discussion is out of the way, let's cover the Saturday series of events at the USCA qualifier at TMS on March 22nd! On this day we were to compete in two of the toughest competitions: the Speed Stop and Autocross. I will discuss each event separately, but we were running these both concurrently off and on all day Saturday.


The USCA driver's meeting (left) was held after the ChumpCar driver's meeting (right) in the same garage, an hour earlier

We had a driver's meeting early that morning at 8:30 am, right as the 12 hour ChumpCar race that was being held Saturday on the infield road course had started. We were told that the last digit in our assigned car numbers would determine which group we were in, "Odd" or "Even". We were given some time to walk both courses, and I took it, walking the large autocross course 3 times and the speed stop twice.

Ride-Tech Autocross Course

I will start with this Saturday event first, since I was in the "Odd" group that started out on the Autocross course first, and then we switched about every hour between this and Speed Stop. Towards the end of the day both courses were open to anyone, and lots of people had stopped running while others kept taking lots of runs.



Before we got going I took my walk-throughs a little more seriously and jogged / walked briskly by myself two times after walking it once with some friends, to get a good look at the autocross course. Chatting with others is normal on your walk-thrus but I've learned that I absorb a lot more of the course when I walk by myself, without distractions.



The course was set-up by an experienced SCCA autocrosser and it looked good, and nothing like the Goodguys gymkhana course. This made me very happy, as it would more suit a "normal car" and not the strange gearing and insanely tight turn-arounds that the Goodguys courses focus on. It wasn't an "easier" course than the weekend before, per se, just more flowing and with higher average speeds. Gone were the worries of another "1st gear only" course and as I walked the site it felt like a perfect 2nd gear course for our 3.31 geared Mustang - and it was. There were a LOT of cones and they even lined the course with white chalk, so it should be hard to get lost. If you did make a mistake I could see where there would be a lot of cones to collect.

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Left: The man lifts used for filming were in the middle of the course, out of the way. Right: The world's biggest video screen, recently added to TMS

They had video camera stations and Man Lifts set-up inside the course, and the layout had one crossover, but it made for a much bigger layout. If you look at the map in my previous post they had a LARGE area for the autocross to run in, much bigger than Goodguys used the week before. This is where SCCA normally has the paddock when they do the TMS Road Course autocross events, and it was BIG. There were a few "gotcha" sections the designer put in there, trying to make it challenging, but nothing that someone with 25+ years of autocross experience couldn't see past, heh.

Event Results: http://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us...dds-four-more/


Left: The Autocross course was overlooked by the Optima Prime trailer. Right: Dennis Pittsenbarger was announcer all weekend

There was a slight delay while some timer issues were worked out. The USCA folks had a brand new timing system, but the wireless lights were apparently interfering with another signal. The Texas Region SCCA folks working the course and instructing helped them diagnose the issue and it was found that the 3+ TV cameras around this course were stepping on the signal for the lights, so they fixed that after a bit. Before they did Jimi Day sent our group to go make one run on the speed stop course, while they fixed the issue. I'll talk about that in the next segment. Also, the weather was super sketchy. Rain was in the forecast (not if but when) and the temps had fallen, with winds whipping up all day. You'll notice dark clouds in many of the Saturday pictures, and that's what we ran under all day - a constant threat of rain.



Once the Autocross course finally went hot around 10 am I got in a fast first run. I was lucky to have Amy, Kyle and Jason spotting on the course, listening for times, and helping with tire pressures and getting me ready before each run. I made a few more good runs in the first session by the time we were told to switch events with the "Even" group. At that time I was temporarily in the lead for the Autocross. We came back to this area 3 or 4 different times that day, and I quickly found out that my early leading times had fallen. I was in the low 43 second zone in the morning but the big gun drivers were already in the 42s and Brian Hobaugh was in the 41s. Yikes! I stepped up my driving and worked the tires hard, trying to maximize rear grip.



The rear tires became the limiting factor in everything on the autocross course that day. Yes, even with 335s on the back the car struggled to put the power down from this stock Coyote 5.0 (433 whp SAE). I was pushing the car to the edge of the cones, and picked up more than a few cone penalties that day (often just stepping on the cone bases, which is verboten in USCA). The event announcer (Dennis Pittsenbarger) was noticing my quick-ish times but was quick to also point out my penchant for cone penalties, and dubbed me The Conekiller, heh. He had nick names for lots of people, like "Cookie Monster" for Jon Miller - who had won a big bag of cookies in the Poker Run - and "Five Eights" for Marc Sherrin. He kept all of us informed as well as entertained all day, standing atop Optima Prime announcing.



I earned the Conekiller name, of course, but luckily this wasn't a "3 and done" sort of event. I kept making autocross laps until I could get a faster time clean. Then I'd push in another area and run until I had it clean and faster. Rinse, repeat. Over the day I made close to 20 autocross runs - more than most but less than a few. I worked my way into the 42s, then the high 41s. At one point I had a 41.7 second run but that wasn't good enough for the win, as Hobaugh had his orange Camaro down to a 40.900 second run. Brian Finch and Kyle Tucker both had 41.7 times a hair quicker than mine, so I was in 4th. I didn't think I could catch Hobaugh but was so close to Finch and Tucker that I kept making runs, looking for a tenth...



Side note: everyone was supposed to stop in a stop box after the autocross Finish timers, but I quickly noticed that most of the Pro drivers blew that off, as it wasn't manned like the stop box in the Speed Stop event. I kept killing my brakes to try to make that stop box, and it was TOUGH. But the new Ford Racing M-2353-CA" ABS/TC module worked brilliantly and our Mustang was definitely stopping well, considering the hefty weight it was carrying. All of the weirdness I've noticed when autocrossing on street tires was gone - with this ABS module I could go from wheelspin into full ABS braking without it missing a beat. It never once let me down all day - success!


Left: Our latest ballast weight rack, now with MCS remote reservoirs installed. Right: Our Mustang on the autocross course

We had the TT3 ballast plates removed (above) but the Mustang still pushed 3550 pounds, then add another 200 pounds for me. Many of these top Pro drivers were in purpose built muscle cars and were much closer to 3000 pounds, which was the class minimum weight for the "GT3" class - the class we cared about.

Towards the early afternoon, after we had stopped for a lunch break and got going again, I was making autocross runs and the the fuel level got very low on the Mustang. I was parked in grid at the autocross course, strapped into the harness and ready to pull up for another run, so I asked Jason and Amy to go back to the trailer and grab the fuel jugs then get them filled at a nearby gas station with 93 octane. There were no active fuel pumps at TMS that day, but the gas station was about a mile away. I would keep making runs while they were getting fuel.

Strangely they arrived back to the paddock with a 5 gallon fuel jug and dumped that into the tank while I was strapped in. I figured they found a competitor with some 93 octane and would replenish that next, but I asked them "Where did you get that fuel?" They said, "It was in our trailer". "Uhh.... that's not one of our fuel jugs. You need to find out what you just poured into the car, please."

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E85 ethanol fuel is becoming popular with racers running boosted engines, for the high octane rating yet low cost compared to race fuel

I don't think anything more of it and I'm in line about 4 cars back from the start line, ready to make a run, when Jason runs up and says, "Shut off the motor, that was E85!" Oh crap. I pull out of line and get out of the car. He explains that a friend of ours put his fuel jugs in our trailer overnight, after I told him he could stash his stuff in our trailer. He runs E85, didn't mark his fuel cans, and they just put 5 gallons of corn juice in my tank. CRAP! I kind of... lost my temper. I wasn't so much mad at them but mad at myself for watching them put "unknown fuel" in our car. I should have stopped them. They went to go get our fuel jugs both filled, and we talked about ways to get this fuel out of the tank. Kyle had already left for the day and we didn't have the Ford quick-connect fuel line tools needed to make this easy. The weather was looking bad and we knew we might get rain at any minute. The only dry runs left for the day were about to happen in the next 10 minutes. CRAP CRAP CRAP!



I did some mental calculations... I had about 2 gallons of 93 octane in the tank (fuel light had come on) when they dumped 5 gallons of E85 in there. There was not enough time to dump out the tank and no tools on hand to do it easily. We'd need to run to town, get the tools, dump the fuel, refill it with 93, and that would take an hour or more. By then it would likely be raining and the day would be over. I needed to make some more speed stop runs as well. Instead of all of that I decided we would DILUTE the E85 with a lot more 93 octane, but before that I'd take one more run. I was so mad, and so far back in the standings (4th place would cost me a lot of points in this event) I just didn't care, and needed just a tenth of a second better to make 2nd place in the autocross.

I got back in line, strapped in, and made this run below. Click that image for the in-car video, some commentary about the E85 fiasco, and go to the 720P for the best resolution.



I don't know why I was faster on this run, maybe since my head was somewhere else (E85 dilemma) that it let my subconscious drive the car? I wasn't thinking about driving at all, I just drove. Jason said I was smoother and cleaner than I had been all day, not hanging the ass out for the camera, and he knew it would be a faster run before I even crossed the finish line. This 41.581 second run ended up being my fastest lap of the day and moved me up to 2nd place, just squeaking ahead of Finch and Tucker (shown below). I never got close to that time again in the half dozen laps I ran in the hours after the rain had come and dried back up.



My 41.58 run still was pretty far off of Hobaugh's best, and he backed up the 40.9 with another 40.9. Nobody had anything that could touch him in the autocross competition all day, but even being almost 7 tenths back my 2nd place finish was good enough to net me 22 out of a possible 25 points, which made all the difference in the end. After we quit switching courses between the even and odd cars we were finally able to run together, so and I could watch Tucker, Finch and Hobaugh run. Wow, those guys were hailing some tail.


Left: Hobaugh's Camaro was in a league of it's own. Right: He took a lot of autocross and speed stop runs! Each of those papers is a time slip.

All of their cars looked great but Hobaugh's Camaro was so hooked up I cannot describe it. Here is one of his runs on video, below, which is obviously much faster than any of mine - or anyone else's. He dominated the Goodguys autocross event the weekend before (on Friday/Saturday) by an even larger margin.



That Camaro is hooked up and Brian had no driving mistakes. Very well done. Agian, he won the Optima Invitational last year in his dad's 1965 Corvette, and he has been autocrossing for something like 28 years, so he is no stranger to these events. Looking at his video, I'm going to have to step it up driving-wise as well as make some fundamental changes to our TT3 set-up to work better on these street tires for the Vegas Optima event. I had enough little driving mistakes but for the most part my run was right on the cones and on the limit of the tires everywhere.



I might never catch Hobaugh on any autocross course, and I don't think with 100 more runs that Saturday that I would have caught him. That car is seemingly tailor made for the tight stuff, and I was very happy to pull off 2nd place at this event.

Saturday Breakage

Our Mustang was a tank all weekend with nary a hiccup, but that couldn't be said for everyone. When you are making 700+ hp and taking dozens of runs in a row, things can break, even on street tires.



One of the more popular builds was this vintage Volvo built by "Swedish Ops". This had an LSx V8 swap and a manual transmission. Apparently they lost a McLeod hydraulic throw out bearing and had to snatch the transmission out to repair it. This was one of 2 cars in the "under 3000 pound" class, which it ended up winning. It barely made weight, as you had to weigh under 3000 pounds to run this class.



Saturday was also a bit of bad luck for the DSE crew. Kyle Tucker's 2nd gen Camaro munched a clutch, one of the multi-disc variety. His crew had the transmission out and the clutch changed in a little over an hour, and he was back out there making Speed Stop and Autocross runs.



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Last breakage that I recall on Saturday was Danny Popp's 5th gen Camaro. We heard it go "BANG" on course after it had blown a CV joint in the rear halfshaft. Without any spares he was out of the event and didn't get to make a lap around the road course on Sunday. That sucks, and I hate seeing a top competitor like this get his weekend ended early. I'm sure we'll see Danny at another USCA/Optima event soon, and it looks like on Facebook that he's testing this Camaro on the BFG Rivals (he was on 305mm Goodyear Supercar tires during the USCA weekend).

There was one more key competitor that broke on Sunday, which I will cover in that series of posts.

Wilwood Disc Brakes Speed Stop

The other Saturday event was the Speed Stop, which has been a tough event for me in the past. I was bound and determined to NOT place poorly in the Speed Stop this time, no matter if I had to take 30 or more runs to do it. I ended up getting 3rd quickest and it only took about 28 laps to pull that off, heh.



The course layout was simple, and it was held in the smaller lot that Goodguys normally uses for their autocross. Again, in my overall satellite map of the TMS site you can see the area where it was held, and it had about half the space there as the Autocross site. It was still plenty big, and allowed for a pre-grid area, starting box, and a straight long enough to top out 2nd gear for me (around 70 mph). After the straight we had a big braking zone into a tight ~150 degree turn (the one with the 4 cones lined up, above). Not quite a 180, but darn close to that. That corner was still bottom of 2nd gear, luckily, and this led immediately into a tight 3 cone slalom (optional direction to start) then right across the finish lights and into a 40 foot stop box.

Event Results: http://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us...dds-four-more/

Seemed so simple when I walked it, but I fought this course all day long and it took far more runs than the Autocross course to sort of master it. I drove it so many different ways, but it was all about limiting wheelspin, going slow enough in the turn-around, staying on the throttle through the cones, and braking as late as possible - down to the inch.



That video has 3 of the Speed Stop runs in it, and each run is around 11-12 seconds, so it isn't too long. You can see my frustration there, after I kept running over the same cone in the slalom, lap after lap, and as I found out even touching a cone was a penalty - you didn't have to knock it down or move it out of the marked box. That is their rules, I just needed to learn them. The USCA had good spotters watching this course, mostly from the Texas Region SCCA.



I knew this SCCA crew well: Wayne Atkins was the starter, Brad Flak was the stop box spotter/flagger, and Brad and Jen Maxcy were running the timers and handing out time slips to competitors. Even though I knew them, they they cut me zero slack. They did give pointers to me and the other entrants about how much room we were giving up in the back of the stop box or how far off of the cones we were. I had Amy and Jason spotting for me on many runs as well.



Stuart from Maxcyspeed came out and gave me some pointers for the shocks, and we made some time up after his damping suggestions. We also tried all manner of tire pressures and the car stopped best with the pressures we had dialed in on the autocross course, with about 31 psi up front 315s and 33 psi in the rear 335s. We changed shock settings for the speed stop and autocross, however, and made more shock changes for the Sunday road course. This event was the last time we ran the Moton Club Sport doubles, and now we have to re-learn the car on the MCS doubles (luckily they are very similar in look, construction and function).



My first speed stop was in the 12.4 second range and I spent the entire day working on my driving, trying different lines, tweaking my braking points, and just flat out beating on the car to get every tenth we could. Hobaugh and Finch were once again leading the charge and I chased them all day. I spent all morning mired in 7th place, then worked my way into 6th, then 5th. After a brief rain shower that took a good long time to dry off of the speed stop course I went back and was "hot lapping" this course with Bret Voelkel, Brian Hobaugh and Danny Popp. Some of the guys were doing big, hairy burn-outs to try to increase starting line traction - there was just very little grip in the starting box.



I didn't bother with burn-outs, but would instead just keep working on my launch, shifts, brake points and cone distances. Marc Sherrin and I kept swapping back 6th place, first in the 11.7 second range than in the 11.6 second range. I was confused about the different classes on Saturday and kept an eye on Todd Earsley's EVO's times all day - and even through his times didn't end up counting against mine we pushed each other. He and I have a friendly rivalry at these events + NASA TT, so when I looked and saw him missing for a long time on the autocross course, I asked Amy where he was. She had someone spotting the Speed Stop and came and told me "Todd just ran an 11.53!" So I ran over to that area and made laps until I had an 11.52, heh.



Towards the end of Saturday afternoon I happened to be making laps when only 2 other cars were there and the camera crew and show host Chad were interviewing me after every couple of passes, since they seemed a bit bored. After a string of runs touching the same cone in the slalom 4 times in a row I finally got a clean run, and nailed the stop as deep in the stop box as possible. Chad ran up with the the camera crew and stuck a microphone in my face and said, "Wow, you really got it deep in the box!" and I replied, without thinking, "That's what she said". They laughed pretty hard at that but I doubt that will make it onto the show, heh.

This event is hard work, and emphasizes more of the car aspects than driver skill. You still have to really PUSH the car to get your best lap and nail everything to the inch to minimize your time. I watched Hobaugh make a lot of passes and he really beat on his car to get down to that 11.0 second run. Eventually I had a bit of a break through with my driving and got down to an 11.2 second lap, after a string of 11.5s and 11.4s. It all came down to pushing the braking zone as late as possible, getting the brakes WARM, and waiting a foot later on the binders to save a tenth or two - or push you right out of the box and into the Red Flag territory (essentially a DNF).



As you can see, Hobaugh won this event once again - two in a row for Saturday - but Finch was right on his heels at only .01 seconds back! I was 2 tenths back from the two of them, and my 3rd place standing netted me 20 out of a possible 25 points.

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At this point on Saturday it was looking like Hobaugh had this whole weekend sewed up, but I knew one thing these Pro guys didn't: the TMS Infield Road Course. With a couple of hundreds laps under my belt here in 2012 with GTA and 7+ years of SCCA autocrosses on the same layout, I had a little course knowledge over anyone else in attendance. Would knowing the course be enough, since everyone would get 6 fifteen minute sessions on track Sunday? I had no idea - only Sunday would tell. I was worried about being down on power to virtually all of the top 15 cars, too. But one thing that really helped my overall standing was the last "competition" that happened on Saturday: the design challenge.

Lingenfelter Performance - Design and Engineering Competition

During the middle of one Autocross session they pulled me over to the Optima trailer "to be judged". There was no Judge Dredd there waiting but instead 5 industry icons picked mostly from the company owners from the event sponsors who would evaluate each car. This judged event was also worth a total of 25 points, from a ranked score. The judges first scored each entry on six categories of "street car amenities" (things like air con, door glass, lighting, and such) and then on another series of things such as the paint, interior modifications, engineering changes, drivetrain, and the fit and finish of the car. I was really worried about this because our Mustang is far from a show car, unlike many of the Pro cars. But, also unlike many of those, our Mustang is really a street car - with a full interior, air bags, air con, and all of that. And the unique and custom aero and wheels look the part, and then some.


Prepared to be judged....

Turns out we didn't do so badly, and the judges noticed that I had all of the "street car points" in the 6 categories they were looking for. We maxed out the 15 points that made up these streetable things, while many others did not. Some of the Pro Touring entries here were barely disguised race cars, and they did poorly in these street categories by not having things like HVAC, real doors, side door glass, interior materials, or a radio.



The other 10 points of the 25 point score were subjective numbers based on a 0-100 scale from each judge. They threw out the high and low judged score on this subjective scale, average the remaining three numbers and divide that score by 10, then added this to the 15 point scale from above. Sounds easy, right? Looking at the score sheet above helps it make more sense. On the subjective 0-100 scale we scored a 61 average, better than many others. That meant I got 6.1 points out of the subjective 10 point part + all 15 points for the 6 street car amenities categories for a total score of 21.1 out of 25.



That the 21.1 points wasn't my final score in the this category, of course, as this was only used for the overall class ranking yet again. The car's score here was good enough for 4th overall in class, so I netted 18 out of 25 points in this event, not the 21.1 points scored. Follow?



Cheryl Herrick's beautiful Chevy II (above) from Jet Hot won this event, and if you had seen it up close you'd know why. That car was amazingly well prepared and scored a 72.2 score on the 0-100 judge's subjective scale (7.2 points) and she also netted the maximum 15 points for "the street amenity score". Her overall score was really only a 22.2 out of 25 possible points (only 1.1 points better then our Mustang), but since she ranked first she got the full 25 points in this category. That ranking thing is how they do it in all categories, and it really pays to win as many events as you can. Finch scored one place ahead of me here (by a 0.2 point scored margin, doh!) and netted 20 out of 25 points. He also beat me on the Speed Stop by one place, but I nudged him on the autocross by one place. So, unbeknownst to me, I went into Sunday 2 points behind Finch and what I thought was a huge gap behind Hobaugh. But his Camaro's Design score was hurt by the lack of a some street car parts and the resulting ranked score was only a 6.95, which hurt him.

End of Saturday



Jason and I checked the car over at the end of the day, fueled up again for Sunday morning, and we left the car parked in the garages for the night. The BFG tires looked EXCELLENT at this point and I felt like we'd get several more weekends like this out of them, at this rate. I was tired - between shuffling back and forth from the Autocross and speed stop events I was rarely unstrapped and out of the car most of about 6 hours that day. We did get a nice lunch break and the rain delay for about 90 minutes, so we relaxed in the garages and shot the bull with everyone during that down time. We had a BOATLOAD of fun that day. I have never taken so many autocross runs in a single day, and never had to work course - sweet!



They had all of the events wrapped up by about 4:45 pm and we buttoned up the trailer and loaded bodies in the BMW to head home after a long day with lots of wind and cold, some rain, and a mix of frustration and elation. The E85 fueling mistake ended up not being a big deal after all, as we had been diluting the tank all day with more and more 93 octane. By Saturday evening we had it virtually purged of ethanol (well, other than the 10% that most Texas gas pumps include, for a normal E10 mix).



My mind was spinning about how badly I got beat in the autocross (in raw time, 7 tenths is an eternity) and what that could mean for what Hobaugh had in store for the road course? While I was still hopeful Sunday would be the one event I could possibly still win, my thoughts of an overall win for the class/event and SEMA invite were nil (at that point I had no idea what any of the Design scores were). I was resigned to maybe place in the top 3, which would be a good placement with these Pro built cars and top drivers in attendance.

But Sunday was a whole new game...


Click image above for a "fly by" video on the main straight of the TMS Infield Road Course

More next time!