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

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It looks like my STX winning time was also good enough to top STU and all of the STX cars at the event but one, as Mark Sipe cleaned up some cone trouble with a hero 5th run (running in Street Mod during heat 3) that put almost 9 tenths on the BRZ. He's a damn fast driver and has been racing that RX8 since about 2006, and it is set up well. Maxcy was fast in his well prepped BMW 328is (running in X class) but also had cone trouble and sat on his 1st run. Since he was in X class and they automatically DSQ the 4th and 5th runs (that class only), and he was a bit closer on his 5th run. Madarash's ESP car was smoking fast, and even with the harder SMod factor he just out-placed me in PAX results. After watching all of my runs on video, there was clearly more time in the BRZ than we saw in this first event, with better driving and a developed set-up. As usual I complained more about power than anything, and there are some proven power mods on these cars out now, too.



In the end I think this event was a better test point for the "S197 in STU" idea than the last autocross where Mark and I drove his 2012 GT in two different heats on differing courses (mid-event course change, ugh). The times we see in these results show another piece of data supporting the request allowing more tire on the Mustangs in STU. Even with 295s and $100 worth of "cheater" rear suspension upgrades, it was still lacking. Both Mustangs would have gotten killed in the old STX class, especially running on the skinnier 265mm tires, so I think STU is still the right move for these cars. Of course everyone can always drive better and Mark will only get faster as he gets more seat time and mods on the car, but Amy isn't new to this sport and neither of them brought an un-prepped STU car.

Since there is still no resolution in sight on the ESP Watts Link rules debacle (delayed until 2015, for no good reason), see I will continue to not build a car of my own around an SCCA class in 2014. This is unusual for me, as I have almost always had a car built around some SCCA Solo class rules since I started autocrossing in the late 80s. Instead I will try to continue to co-drive cars like Matt's STX BRZ or maybe Mark's STU Mustang, at local events through this year and maybe even into next season. Might do the "local" National level events but I won't travel for them. We have been doing 25-30 race weekends a year for the past 7 or 8 years in a row, and it is taking its toll. Amy and I will continue to concentrate our personal cars and efforts on campaigning our 2011 Mustang in NASA TT (as well as another car we are building) next year, which as a club has been a good bit easier to deal with.

We are also on the list for a 2015 Mustang, as soon as they are released, whatever it looks like or weighs. Who knows how the SCCA will class this car, or if it will be heavier than the outgoing chassis? I think that all of the rumors out now of it being lighter than the S197 are wildly optimistic, but I am hopeful that with IRS it might have better corner exit traction. Time will tell. However it turns out we will try to make it better, and track + autocross it to test parts we develop for this new chassis.

More Aero Prep on TT3 Mustang

Now for the stuff most of you have been waiting for - if you even bothered to read the autocross bits above, I thank you. Many of you have been watching the progress of our front aero work from the past two weeks on the Vorshlag Facebook page. But for the rest of you, let's catch up from where we left off in the last update, where we were just starting to get the new aero development underway. Don't forget that almost every picture I post can be clicked for a larger rez version.



One big slab of 6061-T6 x .190 sheet makes up the new splitter, and yes, we probably went too thick and this thing has a sizable amount of heft. Its hard to tell in the small picture above (left) how much bigger the new unit really is. The black one is the Leguna Seca ABS splitter sitting on top of our aluminum BMF splitter. The Leguna piece sticks out past the lower fascia by 5.5". The new unit sticks out front by 10.25", almost double the forward length. It also goes back a couple of feet and is wider by nearly 4" per side, and is mounted 1" lower as well. The extra width is there to better line up with the upcoming tire spats/flares that will cover the front of the 18x12" front wheels. Spinning tires sticking out in the air stream are a big contribution to drag, so we planned to cover the leading edges.



The spacer to lower the splitter was built out of is 1" square aluminum tubing, pie cut on the back side and bent to match the curved contour of the lower fascia. This was then TIG welded back together while held in the fixture shown above, ground smooth, drilled for the existing mounting holes, and bolted between the splitter and fascia it becomes a rigid spacer. Ed cut and shaped this thing one night using his portable band saw, then Ryan (who did 90% of all of the work in this aero mod project) welded and ground it smooth, and it came out looking much nicer than any race part should. If we have ground clearance issues we can remove this 1" spacer and adjust the rear mounting eyes upward to match.



The radiator I talked briefly about in my previous post is shown above. Yes, it is a Mishimoto unit, which is a fabricated, all-aluminum radiator that is much larger than the OEM piece. It bolts in place and has the integral mounts for the A/C condenser, which is still on this car. We were going to buy the Ford Racing Boss-S radiator (M-8005-MGT), but at $750 retail (still $650+ at the lowest shipped price) I just couldn't stomach that. We have had excellent results with Mishimoto radiators in the past on LS1 BMWs (I have one in my new E46 LSx build, one in the Alpha E36 making 490 whp, McCall had one in his Z3 LS1, Matt has one in his E36 LS1, etc). Then we realized... damn, we're a Mishimoto dealer, and they do make an S197 drop-in radiator. We sell this radiator now for $247, which is a steal. I will touch on how it worked in my coverage of the ECR track test, below (excellent).



Above left you can see the "waterfall" air deflector that we built for behind the radiator. There are brackets that hold it in place (not shown in these pics yet) and it has rubber edging and cut-outs near any radiator hose. This deflector seals to the bottom of the radiator but is open on the sides. It directs the airflow up towards the hood ducting, but isn't part of a 100% sealed duct system. We talked to other race engineers and they agreed - the small incremental improvements from making a 100% sealed radiator-to-hood duct system is not worth the added work compared to what we have done here. We could get 90-95% of the benefit for 1/3rd the work. The upper right pic shows the first iteration of the rear splitter mounts. These are custom made pin mounts that go into small spherical eyes that can be adjusted up/down for a better fit. We have 3 on there, and the outer 2 have latching pins.

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Above left are the fabricated struts that hold the front of the splitter and bolt to the fabricated push bar behind the bumper cover. These are adjustable in length and made from aluminum tubing and steel threaded eye ends. They have been weight tested and also proven on track, don't worry. The above right picture is with the hood ducting cut and some corrugated cardboard stuffed in place, for mock-up. Then Brandon did his photoshop tricks and made the blue hood look red.



Building the hood ducting was done in the method shown above. We looked at other ways, and even attempted to weld on the aluminum sheet that the OEM hood is made of. welding was a major chore so we went with rivets. The aluminum side panels have small angle pieces riveted to them and to the hood, and he structure is actually stronger than before due to the boxed shape of the two ducts.



How big are the ducts, and why didn't we just "buy a Tiger Racing hood!", like so many people suggested? Well, as you can see, a human head will fit through the duct openings, so they are bigger than anything we've seen out there. The drop on the ducting is also very deep, unlike any off the shelf hood we have found for the S197. This drop was only possible by moving the coolant reservoir and factory routing of the cold-air inlet to the middle and going over the radiator support. THIS was why we did all of that work. The TR hood also has the ducts in less than ideal placement, in my humble opinion, moving from a low presure (forward) to high pressure zone back by near the windshield. It is also $1500+ for a composite hood that is prone to cracking, and a real bear to paint (according to a body shop I talked to that has done a half dozen), whereas this is a $300 used aluminum OEM hood with just "some fab hours" into it. It is still light and yet strong enough to work for years without cracking. Mostly it allowed us to make the ducting as deep as we wanted in where we wanted, instead of being stuck with an aftermarket composite hood's shape and layout.



As you can see above, Ryan added some epoxy seam sealer to the edges of the hood openings where the sheets of aluminum met. Again, welding this OEM material proved problematic, so we went with rivets and panel bonding epoxy on everything. It is air tight and STRONG. The ducts are BIG, placed in the correct low pressure areas (in theory), and they drop WAY down and grab air from the now uncovered back of the radiator, with more flow pushed upwards from the waterfall deflector. This hood ducting combined with the massive splitter we fabricated should produce significantly more front downforce than the LS splitter we used before, even at low speeds. In theory. Neither Jason nor I are aero engineers, but our mechanical engineering backgrounds aren't from another planet, either. We also know some smart aero guys who gave us a lot of tips.



We never got a good picture with the bumper cover off of the new "Corvette style" air cleaner installed onto the end of our fabricated aluminum intake tube, and now that is all buried under the front end and I don't want to pull it all apart for a pic. Above are a couple of pictures with the clear cellophane still on the air cleaner, but mounted in place. Removing the big, bulky factory bumper beam and foam crash structure and replacing it with the fabricated 1.75" x .120" wall DOM tube allowed a lot of extra SPACE for the rather large air cleaner to sit and draw air from. It is up out of the air stream with just the carbon fiber "lid" visible from the grill opening. It might get a tiny bit of extra airflow from some "ram air" effect, but I doubt it will be noticeable (it wasn't on track). That wasn't the intent of the new intake tube routing and air cleaner location - it was all about making room behind the radiator for the new hood ducting's surface area.



In order to leave as much room behind the radiator for more surface area on the hood, to allow more flow through the ducting, we ditched the OEM electric fan and shroud. Why? The stock fan shroud was VERY THICK (4" or more), and it was also sealed to the entire back surface of the radiator. This is a good thing on a 100% street car with stock grill and stock radiator, as it allows the fan to suck air from the full back surface of the radiator and not just the round area that the fan blade covers. We aren't as concerned about stop and go traffic driving as much now, and once you are up to speed (45 mph or so) on track the "free flow" across the radiator makes the electric fan irrelevant - and in fact, the shroud can restrict free flow at speed. So we added a slim aftermarket 16" diameter electric fan without a shroud. This mounts to the Mishimoto's upper and lower flanges with custom aluminum brackets Olof fabbed up. We have it tied into the factory wiring harness and it functions just like the stock fan (computer controlled). When Ed and I ran the car Friday night to burp the new coolant system (filled with distilled water), the engine idled for about 20 minutes and the fan came on 2 times for about 30 seconds. Trust me, it moves some air. You can feel it sucking in on the front of the radiator and also blowing hard up from the waterfall deflector. We had to wait for the track test to see if the ducting work would pay off with adequate cooling, seeing that we blocked off over half of the grill opening area. We were warned by countless Mustang folks watching the pics on FB that it would overheat and melt the block like the core of the earth, too.



Another area we wanted to improve was the oil / air separator system. We have been using the JLT for over 2 years, and had upgraded their normal kit to have a real mounting bracket (we fabbed) and real metal fittings and lines (the JLT kit comes with plastic bits that eventually crack/leak). It was OK but the kit we had only drew crankcase pressure from one cylinder head - the passenger side. I picked up the can from a Moroso kit a while back and used it in a new system we built. This larger Moroso oil / air separator draws from both valve covers, into the separator, with a vacuum source on the other side of the can. We were pressed for time and simply used 5/8" heater hose for the lines with Norma clamps crimped at each end. We set-up the Moroso can using fittings with hose barb ends that we put together and mounted to the firewall with the included mounting bracket. I hoped the heater hose could take suction without collapsing (it doesn't!), but we had the track test to check that out at.

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I'll cover the new flashy bits and we'll move on to the track test. First you will see coil covers are painted red now instead of blue, which I had spray bombed 2 years ago. A recent Vorshlag customer upgraded to some metal Ford Racing units and gave us his painted red ones, which actually match this car's body color so we swapped them out. Meh, it was a freebie, and the blue covers were a bit garish. The other bit of flash is the GOLD foil on the intake tube. This is not just for hard parkers, as it is used on real race cars all the time. This foil is DEI reflective gold foil, which we've used before on other builds, especially when the intake tube is around a source of radiant heat (like this one, which routes right over the top of the radiator and sticks out in the post-radiator air stream). And Brandon just took this shot (above right) of the air cleaner with the bumper on - note how it isn't really in the air stream, but tucked up behind the bumper cover. Un-ram air.



At left above we have the fabricated aluminum grill cover riveted to the factory grill surround. It isn't the final cover I had envisioned (wanted a smoother, more aerodynamic insert), but it was already made and we went with it for the track testing - and might not mess with it for a while. You can also see the tow hook we finally added to the front of the car. Yes, we went 3 years without a tow hook - and luckily never needed one. Whew! Above right I am doing the "200 pound splitter load test". The splitter doesn't bend, instead the front suspension just takes up the extra compression load, as it should.

We had a LOT of late nights over the previous 2 weeks to get the car track ready, and finished up Saturday night and loaded the car into the trailer at around 10 pm. As I was installing 4 temporary hood pins Ryan swapped on new front Centric rotors, new Carbotech XP20 pads, and flushed a little Motul 600 through the lines. The track prep went to just about the last minute. The plan was to test at ECR on Sunday morning at 9 am.

Note: we did not have the flares completed when we went to test, we do understand that some bad aero drag occurs when the tire is visible from the front like this, but they were partially done before the test - just not enough to mount them. Due to some business reasons, we are not showing the manufacturing techniques for our flares. Nothing revolutionary, but I've never seen flares done the way we have in mind - and it could completely flop, so I don't want to show my ass if it does, ya know? There are some teaser shots of the flares in progress, below, from after the track test.

Dyno Tuning at True Street

We have to back up a couple of days to cover the dyno tuning we had done before heading to ECR. On Friday before we went to the track to test we delivered the Mustang pieced together just enough to get it to True Street Motorsports, who does all of our Mustang engine tuning. The bumper cover and splitter weren't attached yet, but that didn't matter for the chassis dyno pulls. We've been using True Street for close to 3 years, and they have re-tuned our car after each major change. Our motor is bone and cooling systems have stayed all stock, never been opened up, and never given a single hiccup, thanks in no small part to their custom tuning. They've been the folks that kept our dyno numbers solid (430 whp back in 2011) yet keep the tune safe enough to beat on for 3 years and 17,000 miles.


Left: Driving to a corner gas station to fill up with 93 octane. Right: loading up to go to the tuner

Any time you make a change to your Mustang (with regards to power parts) it could need a new tune. I am not a believer in "mail order tunes", because without driving the car and/or putting it on a dyno and pulling air:fuel numbers and seeing the power curve and listening for knock, it is an impossible task to do this well. I am, however, a strong supporter of working with a local shop and getting proper dyno tunes done on your car, in person, with no e-mailing of files involved. Also, before you buy a stand-alone tuner (we use the SCT) talk to your local tuner shop and buy the tuner from them. You are always better off patronizing your local tuner with parts orders. Sure, you might spend $10 whole dollars more than the cheapest of the cheapest online parts wh0rehouses, but it will pay off in the long run with one-on-one help from YOUR shop that does YOUR tune, right on their own dyno. If you have a 5.0 Mustang in live in North Dallas, trust me, True Street is the place to get your go-fast goodies and engine tuning from. Come to Vorshlag for your suspension parts/work, for sure, but go to True Street for your power parts and tuning.



Anyway, Ryan and I stopped by and talked about an upcoming event (see below) then we asked Sean to give us a "safe" tune once again. By safe I mean tune it for 93 octane, fix any air:fuel changes induced with our custom intake tube/MAF, keep the timing curve from being on the ragged edge, and make sure the power curve looks smooth. They are very good at this and won't do "hero tunes" to squeeze out that last tenth of a hp while endangering your motor. We also asked for a few small updates, like going back to the OEM throttle map (removing our "street tire autocross" traction control mapping they made for us).




Since we were about to go race at Miller Motorsports Park in SLC, with an elevation of 4000 feet, we asked for a slightly milder spark curve than normal. That coupled with the intense heat that day (100+F in the dyno cell) made for a slightly softer number than before (I'm not sharing until after Nationals, sorry), but the air:fuel numbers were cleaned up and there were no unusual dips in the power or torque curves. We can also pull out a few pounds with this new number (we were at 424 whp and 3770 pounds on DOT tires in TT3). Of course we will stick the car on a dyno at Miller, to make sure everything is copacetic in case we get dyno'd after competition begins (it can happen, as can a scale check). If we need to add or remove ballast based on their dyno numbers, we can before racing starts. We can also tweak the timing, peak RPM and some other factors trackside if we need to adjust for the elevation, available fuel, observed knock, etc. I used to do a little EFI tuning many eons ago, so I understand the basics, and Sean only allowed us access to the most basic of alterations. Again - I'm not looking to add more power, just to be able to keep it safe. We lowered the rev limiter from 7800 to 7200, for sanity's sake (we only had it set that high to avoid 2-3 shifts in autocrosses; power falls off hard above 6500).

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Test Day at ECR, August 26, 2013

Brandon and Ryan from Vorshlag and racing buddy Jason McCall met up with me and Amy at our house Sunday morning for the trek out to Eagles Canyon Raceway, which is located about 70 miles from our shop. This is our home track, and where I've got the most track miles since I did the first NASA event there in 2008. Lately we have been out at ECR at least once a month, sometimes 2 or even 3 times in a 4 week period. Long story short - this is where we could put in the most reliable laps without "driver course learning" coming into play.

Vorshlag Photo and Video Gallery for ECR Track Test: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ay-ECR-082613/



Now the 2.5 mile ECR circuit is far from a high speed test track, as most of the corners are fairly tight with long-ish straights in between (125 mph top speeds). It would not normally have been the ideal location for testing the new aero. And honestly, we didn't think we would put in a full day of data logging and aero testing - this was more of a place to take the new set-up and do basic shake down testing, to make sure nothing fell off or burned up. If we noticed any aero imbalance we figured the semi-fast corners in T1/T2, T4, T9, T10 and T11 might show us. It is also much closer to our shop than any other track, and the folks that run it are very cool and accommodating.



After we got there we had even more folks join us, including Olof from our shop, a Boss302 owner and fellow track junkie Jerry Cecco, and Dave B - who brought his GTS3 BMW our to test with us. We set-up the sunshade and put out chairs while the fluids were topped off and the car was checked out.



Loading and unloading the car from the trailer requires the front splitter to come off, and we've designed the splitter so that it stays attached to the bumper cover and all comes off as a unit. We quickly found that lining the splitter's rear mounting pins up with the mating holes while sitting on the ground is much harder than when on our 4 post lift, even with 3 people shoving it this way and that. After nearly 45 minutes we got the pins lined up and pinned, the front retaining struts bolted on, and the ends of the bumper cover bolted in place. Whew.



Above you can see me standing on the "ankle cutter" again - which always freaks people out. Honestly when you're trying to work on the front of the car you kinda have to stand there. It has been tested to 300 pounds now, too. At right Ryan is strapping on a helmet to take a ride in the Mustang for the first time on a road course. He has driven the car countless times on the street, and even ridden in it at an autocross, just hasn't had a chance to grab a ride on track yet. At most track days he's usually too busy working on other customers' cars or taking temps and measuring data on our own.



We were testing on the newer set of 18x12 Forgestar F14s ($350/each) at all 4 corners mounted with a used set of 315mm Hoosier R6 tires. These wheels and tires were used at NASA @ Hallett on June 22-23 and all day with 2 drivers at the June 29th Five Star Ford ECR track day. So they had some miles, but more importantly they were the same tires we had run at ECR 6 weeks earlier in nearly the same conditions. Any improvements (or slow downs) could at least be nullified from the tires. In the shake down laps Ryan and I did and the car felt LOOSE, but I wasn't really pushing it hard yet, just running some 2:01 laps, checking the gauges (temps looked great all day), looking for any weird deflections in the hood and listening for the splitter rubbing or scraping.


Some external video of when the car was still feeling "a bit loose"

Brandon was shooting pics and video and the whole crew was standing at the pit wall, looking for anything weird, or laughing when I was drifting out of T11 (not on purpose). The splitter did touch on some curbing at the side on a few corners, but it showed no damage afterwards. This thing is TOUGH. One bump under braking into T6 was causing the splitter to barely touch on the front edge, but the old 5.5" Leguna Splitter touched in the same braking zone, so no surprise there. Ryan was very happy with how the car felt, especially the brakes ("WOW, this car really stops"). After a few gentle laps Ryan hopped out and we brought the car in for a thorough look at all systems.

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After that look-see went well, we added some fuel then Olof (above) got in to ride shotgun for the next 2 sessions out. Each run was only 3-5 laps, but we were learning a lot as I pushed the car harder each lap. The car was LOOSE AS HELL, especially in the faster corners. So each time we came in we kept adding more angle of attack (AOA) on the rear wing. For sessions 4 and 5 I went out alone, to push the car at the TT3 race weight we would be running. With the final wing change we managed to get the car a bit more neutral and ran the lap below.



That video has some pretty bad driving from me, as usual, and it was still a bit loose. Even with some ridiculously late braking into T1, which turned into a big SLIDE, plus some bobbles in other corners, the car put down a 1:57.6 lap in 95 degree heat on well worn R6s. The best lap I ever have put in at ECR was a 1:56 back in November of last year, when it was 40 degrees cooler and we were on fresh 315 Kumhos, and didn't have these big driving errors. In June the best Amy or I could get out of the car was a 2:00 min lap, wringing it out all day, so we seemingly found 3 seconds on the same set of tires in the same heat. We could have stuck around for more laps and likely chopped off some more time, but it was getting towards 1:30 pm and everyone wanted to go eat and get out of there. Most of us had not taken a day off in weeks and we were all dead tired, too.

The car did make some funky noises all day, only under decel or idle, which we attributed to the vacuum pulling the hoses shut on the oil / air separator system. We are replacing these with proper suction-rated lines tomorrow.

TT3 Work Continues After Track Test

So the car was barely finished enough to take it to the track but we have a lot to wrap up before heading to NASA Nationals. The car is covered in grasshopper guts, half of it is unpainted, and the temporary hood pins we had installed need to be replaced with Aero latches. The flares aren't done, we have a lot of spares to put together, and the general pre-race prep needs to be redone.


Left: Actual look at the track test event. Right: Photoshop rendering in red

We always see a lot of bug hits on the cars raced in Texas when the grass is high, and this test day was no different. To reduce the impact of bug and rock hits on the radiator (actually the A/C condenser) we've got some Kevlar honeycomb grill protector material coming. This will go on the face of the heat exchanger and stay out of the higher pressure airflow at the grill opening. This stuff us used in circle track to take mud and rock hits and can be cleaned out quickly.



Lots of cleaning has to be done before the bumper cover goes to the painter. We have a lot of little paint work to tackle, too - like the raw steel bumper beam, the unpainted splitter needs some semi-flat black, and the grill cover will likely get some black, too.


You merely adopted the downforce, I was born in it.

Some guys on a fb car page made the Bane connection, above. Strangely that's the 4th Bane reference picture so far (and the funniest). I don't like to name cars, though, and we just call it "the Red Mustang" around here.



The flare mock-ups are shown above, with some photoshop work to cover up a few things. The final flares will look pretty similar to this, and they are open on the back for better air evacuation. Hopefully we have time to post up some pictures right before we load up on Monday Sept 2nd, with a painted car, new graphics applied, and at Nationals we will have another set of 18x12" wheels in a different color installed. A sticker set of Hoosier A6s are inbound, other bits and pieces will be here today, and the hood is already bodyworked and primed. I have to stop here and go finish some more flare work tonight.

Upcoming Events

NASA Nationals< Miller Motorsports Park, Sept 4-8th. Will post up about that probably a few days after we get back. But there are several other events we will be at right after Nats.

Five Star Ford track event at ECR, September 7th. - This is an event we would normally be attending in our Mustang, but most of us will be at the NASA Nationals. Matt is taking his BRZ out that day, and if I can find someone to drive it out there, our 2013 GT will be there for showing. These track events are fairly informal but well run, includes instructors for novice drivers, lunch is provided, and they have great SCCA corner workers present. $150 to sign up and you can see more details here.

NASA @ TWS, September 20-22nd. We will be competing at this event at Texas World Speedway, the 2nd time this event is run on the NASA schedule this year (different direction). They will have HPDE, Time Trials, Racing, and an Enduro. Here is a link to the event sign-up page.

Camaro VS Mustang: The Ultimate Battle - October 5th, Texas Motorplex in Ennis, TX. This is a multi-motorsports event being run by True Street Motorsports. This event is billed as a Camaro and Mustang event but is open to all GM and Ford powered vehicles. Events include drag racing and autocrossing; Vorshlag is joining forces with the Texas Region SCCA folks to set-up and run the autocross event. Vorshlag will have cash prizes for the fastest autocross times from both street tire (140+ treadwear) and race tire (DOT R-compounds or slicks) entries. The entry fee is very cheap ($45!) and the sign-up page is here.

There are more events, but that's all I am going to put out there right now. Gotta get to work...

Cheers,