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

[Fair]

Project Update for Feb 24, 2012: It took me a week after the "track event" last weekend to write this update - needed time to get that disaster weekend behind me, I guess. This event was the first of 2012 for me, called the "Run To The Alamo", held by the ASCS / Pro-Touring folks, with the track portion of the event to be held at Harris Hill Road. The event was also a "qualifier" for the Optima Challenge, held each year in Vegas after SEMA. This RTTA event was supposed to be a 3 day competition event with a timed autocross, "speed stop event", and track day as well, but the autocross and speed stop portions were cancelled at the last minute (they didn't secure an autocross venue). They did have a car show, cruise-in and dinner Friday that I missed ("darn"). The somewhat lack of organization, problems with timing equipment, WEATHER, and a sick wife that tagged along combined to make for a full on "Charlie Foxtrot" event for me (clusterf*ck).

PICTURES: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...TA-HHR-021812/
"RESULTS": http://americanstreetcarseries.com/?page_id=751

So in my last update I covered the thrash by Vorshlag technicians AJ and Ryan. They wrenched on the Mustang for 2 days to get all of the new suspension bits installed and adjusted, brake pads/rotors on, harness bar and harnesses in, seats swapped, brake ducting built, car washed, oil changed and everything double-checked. We have been getting buried in customer fab/service work and we could only squeeze the Mustang in at the end of the week. This was the first competition event in the car since mid December, so everything need to be looked over.

The crap started with loading the trailer. I sold my 38' enclosed trailer in January (and just bought another one late today) so I borrowed a buddy's open trailer for the weekend. I was trying to leave Dallas by 1 or 2 pm, in a failed attempt to avoid Friday's "leaving town" traffic. I was also worried about the splitter making it harder to load, but with my nearly 12 feet worth of ramps (Race Ramps + the trailer ramps), it just cleared. Right as we started loading the car the weather went from sunny/nice to raining...



And the rain didn't let up for almost 48 hours. My wife, who normally co-drives our race cars and always goes to races with me, was going to come along as track side support and to help with driving to and from the event. Since we were only taking one car, and since I'm done trying to "double up" on track events in one car, she was just along to help. Too much abuse, and too hectic, to run 2 people in one car. Friday morning she was starting to get sick, and I knew from experience it wasn't going to get better anytime soon. I called McCall, he dropped everything and agreed to run down to San Marcos with me for the next 2 days to help. When I told my wife she was off the hook, she insisted she was going to go along to help, even when I begged her to stay, so we left about 3:30 pm and McCall was off the hook instead (this proved to be a huge mistake). She had set-up a blanket and pillow in the back seat of the MegaCab and proceeded to make a cocoon and slept back there the entire way. 6 hours of driving through crap traffic and steady rain the entire way... with her coughing and hacking from the back seat (later we found out she had full blown bronchitis). Oh joy.

So the drive down from Dallas to Austin/San Marcos was a nightmare, from weather and health reasons, but the truck and trailer worked fine (other than two hub caps coming off of the trailer along the way, which is $90 I need to replace now). The hotel she had reserved was very nice, full of high school cheerleaders (no joke), and we got there early enough to go out and get a real meal, but with a sick wife I stayed in and ordered room service food. She was up all night, throwing up and coughing. I almost convinced her to blow off the event and head home, since she was a mess, but she convinced me to stay. It rained HARD all night - rain pounded on the hotel window and kept waking me up, too. This all night downpour was not a good sign...


American Street Car Series "Run To The Alamo", aka Pain in the Rain

The ASCS guys said the track portion was to start at 7:30 am sharp, so "be there with cars ready for tech on time". We got up early and drove to the track by 7:40, just a tick late thanks to terrible directions by my sick navigator (heh!) and a "deep water crossing" we had go across at a bridge near the track (bad sign #2). We got to HHR and it was utter mayhem there, trucks and cars parked willy nilly, trying to unload cars in their postage stamp-sized upper parking lot. We finally figured out where to park (lower lot) and unload the car. It was raining pretty hard and it never much let up all day. Unloading a car from an open trailer in the rain SUCKS.

The main guy running the event showed up around 8:45 (oiy!), registration finally got started about 9:30, then we sat around watching the Daytona GRAND AM race in the clubhouse and kept seeing the rain come pouring down. Track owner said it had rained for going on 3 days in a row, and even though they were "in a drought" the area around the track was super saturated and "it will be draining across the track all day, even if it stops raining" (he was right). All the surrounding land drained into and across the property that the HHR track is placed on, and it was soaked.



Around 10 am they finally started had a driver's meeting ... that became a sponsor thank-fest that lasted a good 1/2 hour. By 10:45 am we had our RFID transponders installed (more on that) and a few of us finally lined up to get out on track. They wanted to do "some lead follow" laps to "sort out the drivers into groups" (never happened), and these laps lasted for almost 45 minutes, 2 laps at a time. Two drivers spin off track and proceeded to get good and stuck in the mud, during lead-follow laps. So yea, it was one of those kind of track days. I think by day's end we had 7 or 8 cars go off into the mud, needing a tow.



Watch this "highlight video" and you can see how much the weather and track conditions sucked...


in-car video showing "the opposite of track enjoyment"

There was a serious water crossing on the track, where you had to slow WAY down, and it made for 20' rooster tails whenever you crossed it. There were another 7-8 "rivers" crossing the track all day. This track has MAJOR drainage issues - not the fault of ASCS but it sucked all the same.



...see part 2 below...

[Fair]

...part 2 continued from above...

The ASCS group did have some timer teething issues (with their brand new RFID track timer system they were breaking in), but Brian Finch of DSI was super helpful and worked with me several times to get my transponder to read. It took 2 transponders, moving them 3 times, re-adjusting the track side receiver, and me losing about half my laps to get it to finally work on my car. Any of you looking at RFID track timing systems, beware: they might be cheap, but they are far from idiot proof. Range is very limited and the angle of the transponder to receiver is critical, too. Maybe this Hardcard Systems unit was being messed with from the rain, I don't know - it just needed a lot of tweaking to work. By about 1:30 pm I got to where I was almost running over the receiver to make sure it read. Receiver blew over into the track surface and into the driving line once, too. Once we mounted it on the side window, aimed parallel to the receiver, it worked "pretty well". You can see the little little stick-on/disposable transponder on my right side window, below (this is the same stuff used to track groceries and other consumer goods).



On a positive note, I did finally get to see better in-car video from my 1080P vidcam, mounted properly on the harness bar, and not stuck right to the windshield with the old suction cup mount. Bad news is the rear view mirror and my ugly mug are now shown. I need to play with placement and maybe tweak the rear view mirror location, but it works better than before. I also managed to finally get my G-Tech Pro RR Fanatic data logger + lap timer to work properly in Road Race mode.

I fought with this damn G-Tech thing for a couple of events last year but never got it out of the "SS" (drag race) mode. This time, after but sitting in the pits in the rain waiting to get out on track, I messed with it long enough to figure out that the "scroll wheel" is also a push button for "select", and that did it. I also figured out how to make it work for continuous lap timing, predictive lap timing, how to add segments, and even how to make a separate start and finish (for hill climb and autocross). So now this $299 data logger display finally paid off - because now it works as advertised! I need to make a "how to video" for this thing because the instructions it comes and that they have online with are terrible. It has software I can download to data mine the laps and maybe... maybe place these onto the video??? We'll see.

What else... oh yea, I guess I tested the new Porterfield R4 brake pads, which worked fine on track but it was raining all day. They are still on the car now, and after a week of street driving there's very little brake dust, they don't make too much noise, and they work fine cold, so it might work for autocrossing, too (I bought R4S pads for that, though). With the DTC-60 Hawks, the wheels would be BLACK after a DAY of street driving, they sucked cold, and after a week the noise would make you want to drive the car into a tree. I couldn't tell jack squat about any "new rear grip", other than I had none. The new 6 point harnesses worked out nicely, and the harness bar was rock solid. Nobody wanted to ride in the Mustang - guess it wasn't cool enough? There was some pretty crazy hardware there, the weather sucked, and a lot of cars went off into the mud - not too shocking.

This event is supposed to be run on 200 treadwear tires, which I never mounted. You see I had borrowed a set of well worn 275/35/18 Dunlop Star Specs mounted on 18x9.5" wheels, but with less than 3/32" of tread on these things I wasn't going to risk those on a wet track until it dried off a bit - which it never did. So I ran the "cheater" full tread 180 treadwear Bridgestone RE-11 tires all day, but they saw that at tech noted this on my times for the competition event portion (before they revised the results). Again, the plan was to switch to the Dunlops once it dried off, then tell them to wipe out the old times, and start my timed runs over... but with 2-3" of water running across the track in 7 or 8 spots, it just wasn't safe to run on nearly bald tires. Even with nearly full tread RE-11s it was a frakking handful. I couldn't accelerate in any gear past about 3000 rpm or it would result in instant wheel spin. Even the "straights" were a handful, as most of them were curved or off-camber, so I was short shifting and using mostly 4th and 5th, and it was miserable.



Most sane people would have just packed up and left, but damnit I wanted to wait it out and post some good times when it dried out. This was a qualifier for the Optima Challenge event, you know? One person from the "top 5 times" would be chosen from this event, plus "one more hard charger", at the series organizer's discretion. So I "hard charged my ass off" and put in over 80 laps in this slop, worked on my rain driving some more at HHR (it rained all day when I ran the Mustang here in Jan 2011, too!), and put in (according to my data logged times on the CW morning runs) the fastest times in the morning rain session. Burned a tank of fuel putting around, and getting sideways. Kept coming into the pits to check on my wife, who was sicker and sicker (running a 101-102°F fever all day), and finally at 3:30, when I wasn't getting any faster and the rain let up for a few minutes, I loaded the car back onto the trailer and headed north back to Dallas. It rained the entire way back, too.

So of course, about 30 minutes after I left, there was a break in the weather right around HHR, the track dried up considerably, and lap times fell by 15-20 seconds. Figures. Again, with a sick wife and the better part of 2 days already wasted, I made a judgement call, cut my losses and bailed. Maybe if I would have stayed until dark, swapped on the Dunlops, I could have hung with the top finishers? Who knows. Should/coulda/woulda. I was in the top 1-2 in times during the rain by the time I left, so I'll have to be happy with that. Which I am not.

http://americanstreetcarseries.com/?page_id=751

more below...

[Fair]

continued from above

If you look at the results above, it shows my name but not times. Earlier this week it did show my best wet time of 1:59.2, which was still 9th quickest - not bad considering I left well before the track dried out, and these guys were driving until dark (the fastest lap of the event was the very last lap of the event, apparently). For some reason they deleted even that time, no idea why. I don't know why, for some reason them deleting all of my times now, after posting them before, is really pissing me off - especially since I made at least 2x or maybe even 3x as many laps as anyone else there. There were periods of 20-30 minutes where I was the only car out there - some guys made only a handful of laps in their high dollar Pro Touring cars. I get that, too. My time listing, before it was deleted, did have the little **not on 200 TW tires** noted, and I was ranked in order with the rest, but now my times are wiped off the results, so I guess its like I didn't even make a lap.



What a bunch of jokers. I will never go to another ASCS event after seeing all that went wrong here - not even considering the terrible weather and piss poor track drainage. They spent more time talking about what was for lunch than what was at stake from the competition. Its just... not the same as a NASA Time Trial, or something else equally as competitive. Heck, my local marquee BMW autocross club takes the competition more seriously. Even the TX2K11 event I went to last year, which was a total train wreck, dangerous, disorganized, and which I vowed to never attend again was more on the ball and had better results than this. Maybe if the track had been dry, where I would have immediately switched to the Dunlops, then they would have no basis for throwing out my times - then maybe I would have had more fun? I almost never have much fun at non-competition events, and that's what this became - plus miserably wet. But then again, I have already signed up for TX2K12... so I guess I should never say never.



Pictures I have posted from the event will show you some seriously nice muscle car hardware, and many of you will recognize a these cars from the pages of Popular Hot Rodding and the Pro-Touring scene. Neat cars, a LOT of money invested in many of the, and I was impressed with how many of the owners weren't afraid of throwing them off the track and into the mud. I can think of only one car there that wasn't driven on the wet as hell track. There was no real damage done, luckily, but it could have been ugly if a car had spun off sideways and gone shiny side down. Oh yea, the "Detroit Speed Inc" 53' 18 wheeler transporter was chock full of kickass cars, any of which I would be proud to own. They are doing something right - that transporter was nicer than some NASCAR team's units (and may have been an ex-NASCAR Cup teams' setup). The DSI owner was a super nice guy, and worked his butt off to help me get my timing issues sorted - big thanks to Brian for that. He's apparently an owner of the new ASCS series, so maybe he can help guide them into a more organized competition series.



So, overall my thoughts on the ASCS Run To The Alamo = "meh". Needs more organizational work.


Dry 0-60 Testing

Of course our Mustang was completely filthy when we got it back to Dallas, from driving through that slop for the full day + towing it home on wet roads. AJ worked his magic and got it cleaned up this week, the weather cleared up, and I took the Mustang on another set of four 0-60 test blasts on the same roads as a week ago. This was to test the dry traction with he new rear suspension parts and pinion angle setting...


Click for video of 0-60 testing in the Mustang with the new rear suspension bits

So that was pretty much "the suck". The damn thing was slower 0-60 in all 4 tests, by 2-4 tenths. I am not a complete noob when it comes to drag racing on street tires (have made on the order of "thousands of runs" at the drag strip in similar cars), so I want to think it wasn't driver error. This testing was performed on a closed course with professional drivers driving around me, of course. It only looks like residential streets - its a TV thing. After speaking with a few more solid axle savvy friends they all think we're running a bit extreme on the pinion angle we started with (-2.5°, straight from the Spohn directions), so we're going to back it down quite a bit, do iterative testing, and inch our way to the best pinion angle. Its a grind, but this needs to be done.


What's Next?

Next event for this car is March 11th, which is the first Texas Region SCCA autocross. Local concrete lot, pretty tight, so its usually my worst event site for a car like this. I'm looking in the shop at 3 of the sets of 2011 tires we ran in STX class last year and none of them are fresh enough to re-use for this event, except the 265/35/18 Toyos R1Rs, which I wasn't at all happy with (these were the worst in our April 2011 tire test). Been trying to sell these Toyos for almost a year. So I've been looking at buying fresh tires this week, and I have it narrowed down to the 265/40/18 size in the Yokohama AD08 and the Hankook RS-3. The RS-3 is new to this 40 series size, and of course they are not in stock yet (I keep calling our guy at TireRack). I think I am going to hold out and wait for this one, as it handily won the dry autocross test that GRM / TireRack did last year, but the AD08 was right on its heels and fastest in the wet.

If we can arrange it in time I am going to hold a private autocross test before this March 11th event, but things have been so damned busy that all of my plans are going sideways lately.


New Track-side Support Vehicle

The weekend wasn't a total bust. On Sunday the weather in Dallas was picture perfect... literally not a cloud in the sky, 70°F, just beautiful. Son of a B! I took this time to go pick up my new golf cart-sized "track vehicle project", which isn't a golf cart at all. Taylor Dunn, Gas powered BG-150 "utility truck". Think "Austin Powers", but not electric, and with a front cab and box on the back. The rear box is coming off for a 2nd row of seats and a flat load floor. The TD is very narrow and should fit nicely in the front section of my new enclosed trailer, next to the built in aluminum work bench and cabinets.




Vorshlag Open House March 10th

Also, Vorshlag is having an open house along with hosting the Texas Region SCCA's Annual Solo Tech event, Saturday March 10th from 9 am until 4 pm. Feel free to come by our facility that day for a tour of our shop, meet our guys, see what we can offer in terms of fabrication/service/set-up work as well as products we build, stock and carry. Free burgers, drinks, etc. Join us here!

[Fair]

Project Update for March 14, 2012: Last week was a hell of a lot of work and activity and this week is worse. This will be a quick and dirty update - we're about to load the Mustang into trailer and then Amy and I head to Houston later today for a track event Thursday and a National Tour autocross on the weekend. If I flub any spelling or grammar, please know that this was written quickly.

So the first track event of the year (RTTA) was a bust, what with the terrible rain, my erased times, Amy's illness cutting our trip short to the point where I missed the late afternoon dry session, and the overall level of disorganization of this event. I was hoping the first autocross of the year would avoid the rain, but I was wrong. It started raining the day before, which was when we held the Vorshlag Open House and SCCA Annual Solo Tech Party, held at Vorshlag on March 10th...


Open House and SCCA Tech



I won't bore you with all of the pictures (you can see more here), but we thrashed for weeks getting the shop and front office areas of Vorshlag HQ in tip top shape for this event. The Texas Region SCCA Solo group needed a place to hold their annual tech and we needed an excuse to have our open house party (we've been working at our new location for 6 months!). So we put in a lot of late hours and weekend days, spent a little bit of money, and we got the place looking pretty good.



A customer's engine swap turned into a 3 week mega-thrash after some front chassis rot was found and corrected. That put us a bit behind on shop clean-up, which started about 7:30 Friday night before the Open House event. Ryan (with help from Cameron and AJ) had been building tables for several days and those were wrapped up, thankfully. We were also down a man all week, as Jason was Crew Chief for Brianne Corn's rally Subaru that ran in the WRC event in Mexico last week. It was the perfect storm of variables that made Friday night a 2:15 am night... but we got the shop and front offices cleaned up and looking great.

The first 3 hours of the Open House and Tech went off without a hitch, and right as we started grilling up burgers and brats it started to rain and kept at it all day. We still had over 100 people show up and 37 cars were teched, so it was still a great event. I didn't sit down all day and felt like I talked to 1000 people and gave 200 tours of the shop - people liked the place. Towards the end of the day Ryan and AJ put the Mustang on the lift, I took the 18x9" WedsSport wheels and got the new 265/40/18 Hankook RS-3s mounted (our new tire machine is still down), the guys checked out everything, re-adjusted the pinion angle a bit, mounted the Hankooks to the car, and we loaded it into the new enclosed trailer (purchased 2 weeks before) still dirty, while the rain came down. I was running around this week getting the out of state title on the trailer transferred, DOT inspection, weigh station check, and paying for tags and taxes, too.




Tex Reg SCCA Autocross #1 - First Autocross of 2012

On Sunday the 11th Amy and I took the trailer on a short tow across town with the Mustang loaded inside. This was a test of the trailer before our longer tow the following week (happening in about 2 hours), as we could have driven to the site only 45 miles away. Still, I'm trying to keep the STX autocross tires off the street and reduce heat cycles, so it will likely be towed to all autocross events this year. I'm glad we had it - as it rained all morning, and the trailer became a good dry spot to sit inside of.



Made a few small mistakes this day, such as not scrubbing the tires in before the first run (silicon mold release + wet surface = slippery first few runs!), I didn't load the "autocross" throttle map tune via the SCT (so it had the bezerko street tune map - not what we needed in the wet), we left the Porterfield R4 "track" pads on (ran out of time), and we had the loose shoulder harness belts clanking around on the back of the seats (I only use a lap belt for autocrossing - lets me move my upper body around and I can see better out the side windows, which happens when you're going sideways a lot).

Anyway, we started with fairly low rebound settings on the AST 4150s and lower tire pressures, to soften the reactions as much as we could for the wet conditions. Amy and I worked the 1st of 2 heats, where it rained off and on until about 11:30, when it finally stopped. The skies were overcast and the wind was nil, so it didn't dry off much at all during our runs in heat 2, as you can see here on our first runs...


Left: Amy's 1st run Right: Terry's 1st run

As you can see it is not raining but it is still pretty damned wet. We both ran in STX open class, as I don't have another co-driver this year so we'll both run "open" until Nationals, where she will likely move to STX-L. Since we had a 2 driver car, had to adjust the seat and belts significantly, swap numbers, check tire pressures, and reset the video between runs, and the smaller heats made for quick driver changes, we ran 1 run each, then did runs in 2s... so Amy, then me, then Amy, Amy, me, me, Amy Amy, me, me. Even with faster changeovers we were running behind and I was one of the last cars to make my a run - and in fact I put myself on a 5 minute timer from my 4th to 5th run. It turns out that Amy stopped for a downed cone on her 2nd run, which they threw out, but she didn't know they gave her the re-run so she didn't take her 5th run. That sucks because she would have likely dropped more time.

The sun had just peeked out and it was a tick drier, but if you watch my 5th run you will see that the actual driving line was still wet, due to the cars dragging water from some drainage onto the line. It was the only lap where I tip-toed the throttle and braked early, so I wasn't too surprised that it was 1/2 second quicker than my previous best. It "felt slow", which usually means its fast... you know?


Left: Terry's 5th and quickest run (37.5). Right: Amy's 3rd and quickest run (38.2)

Let's see where that put us...

• Final Results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_results/tr12_1_final.htm
• PAX Results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_results/tr12_1_pax.htm
• Sound Meter Testing (it was close to 100 but not over!): http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_results/2012_1_sound.pdf

We had 8 cars in STX, pretty good for a wet event with only 67 entrants. Ledbetter got first in his newly restored BMW 328is... we installed a fresh longblock and repaired the chassis the weeks before this event (that was the 3 weeks of work that got us a little behind). It was his first outing of the year and with a fresh set of Dunlops and the added horsepower of the fresher motor (old motor had 230K!) he was fast, as was his co-driver (his mom) who got 3rd in class right behind me. The three of us were the only cars in the 37s, and I felt good only being .5 behind him. That BMW looked hooked-up in these nasty conditions, and this was the tightest lot we race on in Dallas/Ft. Worth - which is usually worst lot for the Mustang. Brad Maxcy (on fairly bald RS-3s) was in 4th and Amy was hot on his heels in 5th, both within tenths of 3rd place. Amy and I were both clean in all 10 of our combined runs so we didn't "cone test" the splitter yet (whew).



more below...

[Fair]

continued from above

We loaded up and headed back after the event (then went to Fuzzy's Taco with the Maxcy's and to see JOHN CARTER OF MARS after eating). I am pretty happy with the results considering the tight course/tiny lot, the wet conditions, and the fact that I forgot to load the "soft throttle map". Amy liked the way the car handled after we made some tire and shock adjustments (after our first runs), but she said the throttle map was making it hard to accelerate. The new, full tread Hankooks worked admirably in the wet but we were definitely fighting serious wheel spin. After watching all 10 runs on video, I have also finally come to the conclusion that I have been creating some braking problems all on my own. The "ice mode" ABS issue that I complain about on 4 of 5 of my runs only comes when I stab the brakes as the rear tires are still spinning, from my typical over-driving. Why didn't I noticed this before? The new video camera location made for better video and easier to turn it on/off, and I took video of more runs as a result - which made the ice mode situation obvious. I am an idiot and have got to calm down and quit over-driving this car.



The PAX results were also better than normal for this car, to date. 9th place in PAX for the big, heavy, over-powered and under-tired Mustang was pretty good considering the tight course and wet conditions. We'll see if that trend continues in this weekend's Texas National Tour event, where STX has a huge class.


New S197 Mustang Camber Plates + New Aero?

So I had an ad out there for a new draftsman (ended up hiring 2 folks), as I was needing some drafting help to help catch up on some camber plate revisions, new designs and other product development. Since I spend too much time on forums I can't get all of my design work done. Got 40+ resumes but found the perfect guy to help out for the short term. He is a great SolidWorks guru and racer; he and I worked several late nights last week and got the drawings done for an all-new Mustang camber-caster plate.



This one is easier to adjust camber (loosen the 4 strut top nuts and slide the assembly in-out) than before, it has 3 caster settings (like our BMW E36 design), has a pointer and hash marks for camber setting reference, and is now using an aluminum main plate and an all-new bearing holder design. A lot of work but he did an excellent job.



I took those 3D files, output them in the proper format, uploaded them to a website that makes stereo lithography parts, and 36 hours later these Rapid Prototype nylon parts arrived. Woo! We tapped the holes, pressed in a spherical bearing, installed a snap ring, and assembled the new camber plate.



We just test fit this into the 2011's LF strut tower today and it adjusts perfectly, with more camber change than before and a lot more caster adjustment than the previous two revisions. So now we will have a production batch made and skip the normal machined prototypes we normally make. Should see these in 3-4 weeks. Woo! Right about when the AST 4150s arrive for this S197 Mustang chassis (and many other 4150 models).

FYI: The 25 sets of 18x10" D-Force/Vorshlag wheels for the Mustang and Subaru chassis are on the water. They should be here in 3-5 weeks. We've pre-sold over 20 sets of the 25 coming in, so if you are on the fence... ?

The aero part mentioned above... I am running out of time so I will make a post about that soon. Working with a composites expert, we now have a composite splitter to fit the 2010-2012 Mustang. Looks similar to the Leguna Seca Boss 302 part that we bought for our car, but instead of the 12 pounds of flimsy ABS plastic for the element, this one is 3 pounds of high density foam core wrapped in glass weave and structural resin. Much more rigid than the LS plastic piece, too. We still have some work to do before this goes to market, but we think it will have a significantly lower cost (with the mounting kit) when compared to the $750 price for the Leguna Seca splitter. I will show pictures and talk more about this in a future post. I am running TX2K with the Leguna Seca piece so hopefully it will have a bit more front bite on this (hopefully dry) track than before.


Loading Up

So before we head off to MSR-Houston for the TK2K event tomorrow I mentioned some noise form the Mustang's rear end. Howling on the right side, so Ryan popped the rear cover, pulled the C-clips, and took a look at the axles.



Everything looks fine - the outer bearings, the axle shafts, the ring and pinion, no metal or shavings int he fluid - weird. The fluid smelled a bit burnt so we'll see if the fresh fluid helps any. Maybe it is the inner bearings in the diff carrier - I'll order the Wacetrac LSD I wanted to try out and new bearings and we will get that installed soon.



Before we loaded up the car it was pushed outside, put up on jack stands, and the fender wells and underside got a much needed washing. It was nasty under there. We mounted up some 275/35/18 Hoosiers A6s to the 18x10s for TX2K, so maybe it will have some grip.



The National Tour is Fri-Sunday so its going to be a long weekend and a lot of towing across Texas. And there's more events the following weekend, so I might wait until that weekend is past before my next update.


We are running MSR-H's 2.4 mile course clockwise for TX2K12 tomorrow, supposedly


More soon,

[Fair]

Project Update for March 22, 2012: Sorry it took me nearly a week after the last double-header event weekend to get this update up, but we've been slammed at Vorshlag and with a 3 day work week last week I'm still way behind. I was also hoping that the TX2K12 folks would have some sort of results posted for the track day, but alas - the only results up a week after their event weekend are for drag racing. I checked the usual forums that have TX2K threads (which usually have more info than the Tx2K website), but they are just full of street racing stories, videos showing who had the biggest burnout at the "street meet", their "dyno day" numbers, and other things I don't care about.

My pictures and videos from TX2K12: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/TX2K12-MSR-H/



So let's back up a tick. Where we last left off here the Mustang was being hurriedly prepped, washed, and loaded into the trailer. There was some wheel bearing noise I noticed at the Harris Hill Road track event (RTTA) and it was louder at the last autocross earlier this month. Ryan and AJ pulled the rear axle apart, yanked out the right side axle shaft, and we inspected the bearings, shaft, and differential for wear. It all looked perfect. Was I hearing the noise correctly?? I know it was from the right rear... or was it? Weird.



We had found some 275/35/18 Hoosier A6 (autocross compound) DOT tires to mount to the D-Force 18x10" wheels, which were to be used at the MSR-Houston track event held by TX2K12 last Thursday. Our newly repaired tire machine was finally ready to use for the first time... but one more little issue cropped up (fixed this week!) so we took them to Discount Tire once again. I hadn't run the Mustang on track with anything but street tires up until now so some R compounds were long overdue. I could have thrown the 315/35/18 Kumho V710s on there but... I just had a bad feeling about the event and didn't want to burn up brand new tires at this one. That was a smart move.



The 275/35/18 is super short and looks ridiculous (to me) on the Mustang, but hey, its the spec tire for the GRAND AM Mustangs so I went ahead and tried it. Meh, it works I guess, but has a ton of wheel gap at the fender. A little skinny for an 18x10" but it had some grip. We got the car loaded up, strapped in, and AJ and Ryan loaded out the trailer with the toolbox and all the track gear for the first time. First long tow with the trailer, and no spare wheel/tire to be found. Oh well, wish me luck! We left Dallas around 5:30 pm (rush hour traffic = FML) but got to Pearland around 10 pm and crashed out.



The next morning we got to MSR-H early and set-up our trailer next to Costas & Anna's set-up, right next to Track Entrance where NASA normally grids... but with only 40 cars split amongst 4 sessions, there were very few cars to grid, so it worked. Great trailer/paddock location, whatever - thanks Paul! We went to the driver's meeting, turned in our self-tech forms, and made sure they had our AMB transponder numbers registered. It was clear that Peter and the TX2K crew had stepped up their game for 2012; this event was better organized, safer, and more enjoyable than in 2011. Costas and I were put both in group Advanced 1 (A1) which had 8 cars, there was an A2, and we had to work with beginner (B1, B2) drivers all day.



I took a GT500 Mustang driver around the track in my first A1 track session with the 275s at all 4 corners and he had a BLAST (you can see his GT500 in the bottom right pic). He'd never done a track day, autocross, nothing - so his eyes were huge as we bombed around MSR-H on Hoosier A6s, drifting the rear out of most corners - these tires had been sitting for over a year before I bought them, so I was "cleaning off old rubber". Managed nothing better than a 1:49.48 lap in this session, going the ClockWise direction, meh. I was shifting around 6K to keep from hurting anything, as it makes peak power around 6200 anyway. The laps felt slow, and it was loose as hell out back. Was the splitter actually helping front grip and the lack of rear wing hurting the overall balance? All I knew was that it was loose in high an low speed corners. And the track was BUMPY... coming out of turn 10 there's a huge dip, so if I do any more track events in this car the 175# rear springs (which work great for autocross) we might need to bump up a tick in rate, to keep the rear from bottoming out on tracks like this.



continued below

[Fair]

continued from above

The wheel bearing noise was getting loud in session #1 and sounded like it might be the right front tire, and not the right rear as I had thought? We came in after our 20 minute session and I took a look - tire pressures went up to where they should be but the RF wheel bearing felt tight when I rocked the RF wheel, while it was in the air. I took Amy out with me in A1 session #2 and we didn't make it 100 yards before we knew something was WAY wrong; came right back in after one lap for a better look. Click the video below and you can hear the loud WAH! WAH! WAH! noises above the wind noise, but it was VERY apparent in the car that something was BAD wrong with the TIRE now. Steering wheel was shuddering like mad - and it wasn't the electronic gremlins this time, it was the tire. Sure enough, the RF tire had grown about 3" in diameter on one part of the inside shoulder; it was grossly out of round. This happened during the half hour of down time after I had re-checked hot tire pressures and wiggled the RF wheel bearing immediately after session #1. WTF? Costas :" Oh yea, that tire has popped some cords".


Click either pic above for in-car video and hear the RF tire doing its death howl

The tread looked fine but the carcass of that Hoosier was toast; luckily I had a back-up plan and brought along a pair "vintage" 305/30/18 Hoosier A3S5 autocross tires with a DOT stamping date of 2005... so that's like 7 year old tires. I had used these early on with the E36 LS1 Alpha car, so they were good back then... but "then" was around 2007. Amy and I pulled the Right Front and one Rear wheel off, took them to the MSR "Office Shop", and they swapped on the 305s for us (sure wish I had my Taylor Dunn track vehicle up and running at this point! That was a lot of walking around with wheels and tires). We put these 305s on the back and moved two of the better 275s up front for a non-square set-up. Not ideal, but it was what I had for spare R compound tires in the trailer. Went out in session 2 with Amy riding along again (mistake!). Here's that highlight video...


Click for video from my A1 Session #3...mistakes and all

So I had one warm up lap where I took it pretty easy, trying to scrub the rear tires in - they really did have some OLD rubber that needed to go away. Come around for my first hot lap and got sideways under braking and had a quick off and on. I managed to steer around the curbing and saved the splitter from curbing crash testing, but Amy was still pissed. This was her daily driver, she bemoaned, and "you are never tracking my car again!". Well, crap... so I took it easy for the rest of session #3 but still managed to go 2.2 seconds quicker with the old 305mm rears, running a best lap of 1:47.26 lap. The rear was still a bit loose in high speed corners but it was clear that the car responded quickly after having a wider rear tire... All of you that think I'm crazy for wanting more than a 275mm tire, well, I beg to differ. I do wish we had found a trunk in time to make a wing mount (I have a 68" wide CF APR GTC-300 wing sitting here waiting to be mounted to something), as I think it could have gone much quicker with some rear down force.


Left: The RF tire #2 gave its life to the MSR-H gods. Right: The 305 looked right at home

So we came in after she said she had "had enough", checked the tires and found another RF tire that had been destroyed. WTF?! There was only one corner on the track where you really load the RF going clockwise, but it was the fastest turn there. Was it a combination of a bad wheel bearing and this corner? Too much negative camber? Something else? We checked the RF wheel bearing again (it now had some serious resistance when spun - took a lot of force to turn the hub by hand; not good), and the camber (-3°, right where it should be). I think we're done for the day... not going to kill a 3rd tire to maybe squeak out another second or two, if I'm lucky. The higher powered cars at TX2K12 were far quicker than I was going to get to today - Costas GT-1 car had the top spot but some race prepped big power GTRs, a couple of Vipers and Z06s, and a Supra were all several seconds faster than the Mustang. I wasn't going to make the Top 5 Time Trial shootout, so Amy and I mounted the 18x9s and RS-3 Hankooks for the upcoming National Tour on Saturday and loaded up the car.



Costas had a pretty good day - his GT-1 car ran great in 3 sessions, putting in more trouble-free laps all day than I've seen that car do in the last few events combined, where I saw it run. He was pushing the car harder each session but taking it pretty easy; he had a small deficit going into the Time Trial but was confident the car had more time in it. Sure, he had an off in session #1 on some older/harder tires, but we gave him sufficient quantities of grief. GT1 Lawn Service, "We cut your grass fast!". It was on FB before he had even un-belted; by the time he had his helmet off there were 3 more "captions" for that pic.



So his GT-1 car, 3 GTRs and a Viper went out for the Time Trial Shootout at the end of the day. 3 hot laps later a GTR was on top - wish we would have had used his helmet/pit radios so he would have known to push it on lap#3. There was some potential blocking by the first place car but he didn't mind and still had a great day - anytime you get to bust off a lot of trouble-free laps in a GT-1 car on 14" wide slicks, its a good day.


Click the above left picture for the Time Trial Shoot-out Compilation Video

After we left the MSR-H site we went and ate some kickass Mexican food at Los Cucos, then made it back to our hotel and crashed. We had another busy 3 days ahead of us....

...Texas National Tour continued in part 2, tomorrow...