Update for August 14th, 2014: In my last post in this S197 build thread (July 17th) I had a lot more written but it ran long, so I waited until I could get caught up on other projects, including several customer cars and our search for a new Vorshlag HQ, and here we are and its August already. In this installment I will cover 3 events we attended after NASA at Hallett in late June, which include an autocross, a car show, and the Drift vs Grip "5 lap" exhibition race. We will also start covering the race car conversion of Jamie Beck's 2013 Mustang GT, which is being transformed from a track day/street car to a Wheel to Wheel race car using NASA ST3 class rules. And I touch briefly on a customer's Fox Mustang Coyote 5.0 swap and another customer's Coyote 5.0 swapped BMW. But first, new Mustang parts!
More S197 Brake Cooling Products
The S197 Mustang is a heavy car, and has a lot of power and the potential to go fast around a road course. This means one thing: it is going to turn a lot of kinetic energy into heat, and that heat has to be dissipated or it can boil the brake fluid and then you will lose your brakes.
I personally feel that the factory optional 14" diameter (355mm) Brembo front brakes are a damned good set-up, and we've kept this on our car for all 4 years we've raced it. The move to larger 15" (380mm) rotors normally means you are most likely going to have to use at least 19" diameter wheels, which I am loathe to do for many reasons - namely weight, cost, and poor tire selection. We've recently found some 18" solutions for this brake, which I will discuss with our 2015 Mustang very soon (which will keep the 15" brakes). I feel that 18" wheels and tires are the sweet spot right now, and we do everything we can to keep the 14" front brakes cool (and have upgraded to 14" rear brakes as well, to help shoulder some of the load).
In a previous installment in this thread we showed a new 4" brake duct backing plate that we built for our TT3 Mustang, after the issues I had at Road Atlanta. This one-off set is shown in the first two pictures in this post. Now our 3" ducted brake backing plates are more than adequate for 99% of the S197 track crowd, but for heavier/faster cars or for race cars that run in longer stints/races than a typical HPDE session or 20 minute sprint race, the 4" ducts are the way to go. Here is our oval 4" ducted front brake backing plate for the S197 being built.
Ideally you want to keep the incoming cooling air going to the hub and inside the rotor face, which was easy on the 3" ducts but the 4" round tube had a lot of the air pointing right at the rotor itself. Our new 4" oval duct backing plates now force almost 100% of the incoming air towards the hub and inside the vented part of the rotor, which will allow the rotor to "pump" the air out through the vanes and cool more effectively. These 4" oval tubing sections were first hand rolled (slip roller), welded in round, then ovaled using a couple of custom made tools. It will probably make sense to just buy 4" oval tubing, but it was pricy and we wanted to make a small run of these first - we like the finished look on these first few sets and will make another production batch soon.
When we were making the 4" oval plates we also updated our 3" backing plate design, choosing a different Ford part number for the backing plate itself. This new backing plate has more "inset" area for more even brake cooling around the hub and actually takes a little less time to make, as big chunks of the plate don't have to be cut away from this design. The oval versions are more expensive and time consuming, and fewer of these will be built and sold, so they are priced a little higher.
Both the 3" and 4" backing plates are about 1.75 pounds for the pair, so the need for the super expensive carbon backing plates seems a little spendy, to me. But the backing plates and hoses are only part of the brake cooling solution - that cooling air has to come from somewhere. Ideally you want to get high pressure air from the front of the car that has a provision for the 3" or 4" hoses to clamp to. On the 2010-2012 Mustangs the factory fog light holes in the "CS" lower fascia (see below, left) are an ideal way to get the brake cooling air to the front rotors and backing plates. If your 2010-12 GT didn't have the CS lower, get one, and then just don't add the fog lights... this becomes an ideal place for getting inlet air for brake cooling. We've even modified these openings to accept 4" tubing and hoses on our car.
Left: Brake ducts on a 2010-12 via the CS Lower Fascia. Right: There are less elegant inlet ducts kits for the 2013-14
The problem is the GT500 style nose, which is also used on the 2013-14 GT and 2013 Boss302, doesn't have a good place for inlet air for brake cooling. There are some kits that use the add-on foglight housings, but they are located further outboard and don't get the same type of air (pressure) as the 2010-12 CS lower grill foglight holes do. And they have to be reworked heavily to attach the brake ducting hoses to, and the hoses have to make a lot of turns to get to the backing plates. We've seen some kits that just drill a big honkin' hole in the lower grill (see above, right) but we think there is a cleaner way to add brake inlet ducts on the 2013-15 or GT500 nose.
If you have been reading this thread for a while you will remember my black 2013 Mustang GT, shown above. One of the track upgrades we made to this car was a set of custom front brake inlet ducts behind the egg crate grill. We utilized an unused, outer section of the lower front grill opening, opening up 7 "hexagons" on each side (see above, right) to allow for air intake, then made some duct inlet brackets behind the grill and plumbed the 3" hoses to the backing plates. And it worked perfectly. These inlets were quite stealthy and if you didn't look closely you'd never know they were there, unlike the "just drill a big 3 inch hole in the grill" solution shown on the red 2013 above.
We did that one-off inlet kit for my black Mustang back in February of this year, and since then we have made several batches of the 3" backing plates and even our first run of 4" oval plates. People have been asking us - how do I get air to the backing plates on my 2013-14 GT? Well now we finally have an answer: our new brake duct inlet kit for the 2013-14 cars, shown above and below.
We took the old templates, transferred them to CAD and made a run of Laser Cut parts. The video above at left (also linked here) explains how this is built and installed. Look for these kits in our S197 Brake section, available now.
Fire Extinguisher added to TT3 Mustang
Most road race cars have a full fire system with multiple nozzles. Usually there are nozzles in the engine compartment, some more pointed at the driver, and often one or more near the fuel tank/fuel pumps. One of the things racer practice is what to do when a fire happens... normally its: 1) kill the main power 2) pull the car off track quickly 3) pull the fire system 4) BAIL OUT. Burning up inside a race car is not a fun way to go out. Sometimes tech inspectors will ask a driver to come to tech in their race gear, strap into the car and have the nets up and prove they can get out of the car in 15 seconds or less, which is the typical requirement.
"Pulling the fire system" is very unusual, and you won't be allowed to race again until you can prove that the system has been refilled and recharged. The common systems these days are ESS foam based, which can be refilled track side, but many systems like dry powder and Halon cannot be easily recharged. And the most common cause of fire in a race car is an underhood fire, hence the common practice of having a secondary, hand held Halon fire bottle mounted in the car within reach of the driver.
So if something like this happens (above) you can get the fire put out quickly and without blowing your fire system and potentially ending your race weekend. The Pikes Peak car above had the required fire system but no nozzles in the engine bay, and no secondary fire bottle, so there was considerable damage to the wiring and plumbing underhood before the fire was put out on the side of the road (with sand). I saw the results of this engine fire, and another engine fire at Hallett during the June NASA race weekend that torched a friend's ST Corvette, too.
Also, when I blocked the lower mesh cover for the radiator opening at Hallett and "popped" the radiator cap it released a lot of steam, which looked like smoke, and it kind of freaked me out. It was THEN that I realized... I don't have a fire bottle in this car anymore. It isn't required in Time Trial, but I used to have one (it was added to run a certain event a couple of years ago, but removed when we sold the harness bar it was bolted/clamped to). All of this got me thinking: I need something to put out a fire on the TT3 Tank.
We did some looking and found a nice CNC aluminum fire bottle mount with a spring loaded quick-release pin, which makes it come loose from the mount in one second. Pull, rotate, and go. I picked up a DOT approved, low cost A/B/C 2.5 pound fire bottle, too. I should have purchased a Halon bottle instead of this powder based version, but Halon costs 4-5 times as much. Powder based fire extinguishers make a MESS when used, which is why Halon (an inert gas that smothers the fire) is much preferred.
Now the "quick-release" mount and clamp that came with the fire bottle would have been sufficient, but those spring-loaded clamps always worried me and I liked the feel of this Drake Offroad quick release bottle mount. The black anodized mount felt nice and was made to mount to a roll bar or a flat surface. The mount is in 2 pieces and the bottle is clamped to one side and the other side is bolted to the chassis. Then there's one pin at the back you slide into and then swing the front over another pin, which has the red quick release pull. Olof drilled the holes, used some stainless countersunk bolts to go through the carpet and tunnel sheet metal, and used washers and nuts on the back side. This fire bottle set-up is now secure and gives me a little more reassurance on track.
This Week in the Vorshlag Shop
I started a new forum thread over at the Vorshlag Forums and every week or so I will update that thread with pictures of the strange variety of cars we're working on at any given time. Since we don't have much to cover as far as mods on our TT3 Mustang this time, here's a few of the Mustangs and/or 5.0 Coyote powered cars that are being worked on now. You can see more in the This Week in the Vorshlag Shop forum thread.
Steve is an existing customer who recently brought us his 2014 Mustang up from Houston area for ARH full length headers, catted X-pipe, K&N cold air, a track-worthy dyno tune (at True Street), and some other work. Steve currently tracks this car regularly in Houston running on D-force 18x10" wheels and 285 Michelin PSS tires. For suspension he has Vorshlag camber plates and Ford Racing shocks and P springs.
As I tell a lot of people, we're not a traditional "horsepower shop" and mainly focus on suspension, chassis, fabrication and track prep - but we do offer a few bolt-on power parts, like the K&N cold air kit shown above. This is an easy bolt-on cold air intake that complements the headers.
Another mod we did to Steve's car was installing ARH 1-7/8" Full Length headers and their catted X-pipe. We've done a lot of these but the install never gets easier, heh. Due to the massive girth of the 5.0 Coyote motor getting access to remove the stock exhaust headers is difficult. There's a half dozen ways to do this, but we've found that it goes easier (least time and least busted knuckles) by dropping the front crossmember down about 12 inches.
continued below
More S197 Brake Cooling Products
The S197 Mustang is a heavy car, and has a lot of power and the potential to go fast around a road course. This means one thing: it is going to turn a lot of kinetic energy into heat, and that heat has to be dissipated or it can boil the brake fluid and then you will lose your brakes.
I personally feel that the factory optional 14" diameter (355mm) Brembo front brakes are a damned good set-up, and we've kept this on our car for all 4 years we've raced it. The move to larger 15" (380mm) rotors normally means you are most likely going to have to use at least 19" diameter wheels, which I am loathe to do for many reasons - namely weight, cost, and poor tire selection. We've recently found some 18" solutions for this brake, which I will discuss with our 2015 Mustang very soon (which will keep the 15" brakes). I feel that 18" wheels and tires are the sweet spot right now, and we do everything we can to keep the 14" front brakes cool (and have upgraded to 14" rear brakes as well, to help shoulder some of the load).
In a previous installment in this thread we showed a new 4" brake duct backing plate that we built for our TT3 Mustang, after the issues I had at Road Atlanta. This one-off set is shown in the first two pictures in this post. Now our 3" ducted brake backing plates are more than adequate for 99% of the S197 track crowd, but for heavier/faster cars or for race cars that run in longer stints/races than a typical HPDE session or 20 minute sprint race, the 4" ducts are the way to go. Here is our oval 4" ducted front brake backing plate for the S197 being built.
Ideally you want to keep the incoming cooling air going to the hub and inside the rotor face, which was easy on the 3" ducts but the 4" round tube had a lot of the air pointing right at the rotor itself. Our new 4" oval duct backing plates now force almost 100% of the incoming air towards the hub and inside the vented part of the rotor, which will allow the rotor to "pump" the air out through the vanes and cool more effectively. These 4" oval tubing sections were first hand rolled (slip roller), welded in round, then ovaled using a couple of custom made tools. It will probably make sense to just buy 4" oval tubing, but it was pricy and we wanted to make a small run of these first - we like the finished look on these first few sets and will make another production batch soon.
When we were making the 4" oval plates we also updated our 3" backing plate design, choosing a different Ford part number for the backing plate itself. This new backing plate has more "inset" area for more even brake cooling around the hub and actually takes a little less time to make, as big chunks of the plate don't have to be cut away from this design. The oval versions are more expensive and time consuming, and fewer of these will be built and sold, so they are priced a little higher.
Both the 3" and 4" backing plates are about 1.75 pounds for the pair, so the need for the super expensive carbon backing plates seems a little spendy, to me. But the backing plates and hoses are only part of the brake cooling solution - that cooling air has to come from somewhere. Ideally you want to get high pressure air from the front of the car that has a provision for the 3" or 4" hoses to clamp to. On the 2010-2012 Mustangs the factory fog light holes in the "CS" lower fascia (see below, left) are an ideal way to get the brake cooling air to the front rotors and backing plates. If your 2010-12 GT didn't have the CS lower, get one, and then just don't add the fog lights... this becomes an ideal place for getting inlet air for brake cooling. We've even modified these openings to accept 4" tubing and hoses on our car.
Left: Brake ducts on a 2010-12 via the CS Lower Fascia. Right: There are less elegant inlet ducts kits for the 2013-14
The problem is the GT500 style nose, which is also used on the 2013-14 GT and 2013 Boss302, doesn't have a good place for inlet air for brake cooling. There are some kits that use the add-on foglight housings, but they are located further outboard and don't get the same type of air (pressure) as the 2010-12 CS lower grill foglight holes do. And they have to be reworked heavily to attach the brake ducting hoses to, and the hoses have to make a lot of turns to get to the backing plates. We've seen some kits that just drill a big honkin' hole in the lower grill (see above, right) but we think there is a cleaner way to add brake inlet ducts on the 2013-15 or GT500 nose.
If you have been reading this thread for a while you will remember my black 2013 Mustang GT, shown above. One of the track upgrades we made to this car was a set of custom front brake inlet ducts behind the egg crate grill. We utilized an unused, outer section of the lower front grill opening, opening up 7 "hexagons" on each side (see above, right) to allow for air intake, then made some duct inlet brackets behind the grill and plumbed the 3" hoses to the backing plates. And it worked perfectly. These inlets were quite stealthy and if you didn't look closely you'd never know they were there, unlike the "just drill a big 3 inch hole in the grill" solution shown on the red 2013 above.
We did that one-off inlet kit for my black Mustang back in February of this year, and since then we have made several batches of the 3" backing plates and even our first run of 4" oval plates. People have been asking us - how do I get air to the backing plates on my 2013-14 GT? Well now we finally have an answer: our new brake duct inlet kit for the 2013-14 cars, shown above and below.
We took the old templates, transferred them to CAD and made a run of Laser Cut parts. The video above at left (also linked here) explains how this is built and installed. Look for these kits in our S197 Brake section, available now.
Fire Extinguisher added to TT3 Mustang
Most road race cars have a full fire system with multiple nozzles. Usually there are nozzles in the engine compartment, some more pointed at the driver, and often one or more near the fuel tank/fuel pumps. One of the things racer practice is what to do when a fire happens... normally its: 1) kill the main power 2) pull the car off track quickly 3) pull the fire system 4) BAIL OUT. Burning up inside a race car is not a fun way to go out. Sometimes tech inspectors will ask a driver to come to tech in their race gear, strap into the car and have the nets up and prove they can get out of the car in 15 seconds or less, which is the typical requirement.
"Pulling the fire system" is very unusual, and you won't be allowed to race again until you can prove that the system has been refilled and recharged. The common systems these days are ESS foam based, which can be refilled track side, but many systems like dry powder and Halon cannot be easily recharged. And the most common cause of fire in a race car is an underhood fire, hence the common practice of having a secondary, hand held Halon fire bottle mounted in the car within reach of the driver.
So if something like this happens (above) you can get the fire put out quickly and without blowing your fire system and potentially ending your race weekend. The Pikes Peak car above had the required fire system but no nozzles in the engine bay, and no secondary fire bottle, so there was considerable damage to the wiring and plumbing underhood before the fire was put out on the side of the road (with sand). I saw the results of this engine fire, and another engine fire at Hallett during the June NASA race weekend that torched a friend's ST Corvette, too.
Also, when I blocked the lower mesh cover for the radiator opening at Hallett and "popped" the radiator cap it released a lot of steam, which looked like smoke, and it kind of freaked me out. It was THEN that I realized... I don't have a fire bottle in this car anymore. It isn't required in Time Trial, but I used to have one (it was added to run a certain event a couple of years ago, but removed when we sold the harness bar it was bolted/clamped to). All of this got me thinking: I need something to put out a fire on the TT3 Tank.
We did some looking and found a nice CNC aluminum fire bottle mount with a spring loaded quick-release pin, which makes it come loose from the mount in one second. Pull, rotate, and go. I picked up a DOT approved, low cost A/B/C 2.5 pound fire bottle, too. I should have purchased a Halon bottle instead of this powder based version, but Halon costs 4-5 times as much. Powder based fire extinguishers make a MESS when used, which is why Halon (an inert gas that smothers the fire) is much preferred.
Now the "quick-release" mount and clamp that came with the fire bottle would have been sufficient, but those spring-loaded clamps always worried me and I liked the feel of this Drake Offroad quick release bottle mount. The black anodized mount felt nice and was made to mount to a roll bar or a flat surface. The mount is in 2 pieces and the bottle is clamped to one side and the other side is bolted to the chassis. Then there's one pin at the back you slide into and then swing the front over another pin, which has the red quick release pull. Olof drilled the holes, used some stainless countersunk bolts to go through the carpet and tunnel sheet metal, and used washers and nuts on the back side. This fire bottle set-up is now secure and gives me a little more reassurance on track.
This Week in the Vorshlag Shop
I started a new forum thread over at the Vorshlag Forums and every week or so I will update that thread with pictures of the strange variety of cars we're working on at any given time. Since we don't have much to cover as far as mods on our TT3 Mustang this time, here's a few of the Mustangs and/or 5.0 Coyote powered cars that are being worked on now. You can see more in the This Week in the Vorshlag Shop forum thread.
Steve is an existing customer who recently brought us his 2014 Mustang up from Houston area for ARH full length headers, catted X-pipe, K&N cold air, a track-worthy dyno tune (at True Street), and some other work. Steve currently tracks this car regularly in Houston running on D-force 18x10" wheels and 285 Michelin PSS tires. For suspension he has Vorshlag camber plates and Ford Racing shocks and P springs.
As I tell a lot of people, we're not a traditional "horsepower shop" and mainly focus on suspension, chassis, fabrication and track prep - but we do offer a few bolt-on power parts, like the K&N cold air kit shown above. This is an easy bolt-on cold air intake that complements the headers.
Another mod we did to Steve's car was installing ARH 1-7/8" Full Length headers and their catted X-pipe. We've done a lot of these but the install never gets easier, heh. Due to the massive girth of the 5.0 Coyote motor getting access to remove the stock exhaust headers is difficult. There's a half dozen ways to do this, but we've found that it goes easier (least time and least busted knuckles) by dropping the front crossmember down about 12 inches.
continued below