Whiskey11
SCCA Autoscrosser #23 STU
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2012
- Posts
- 1,644
- Reaction score
- 2
I figured I would go a head and make a new thread for this that better reflects the direction the car is going and updated classing. Many of you here are familiar with my rather lack luster performance in STX, so expect more "interesting" yet equally lack luster performance this year!
Just kidding, I really hope to do much better with the car with some added grip on the car and a better sorted car. I also launched a new blog, which for the first 3 posts will have excerpts from it placed in here and then a link. Given the "format" of this forum and the word count limit, it makes this much easier. I fully plan on doing the whole posts for event reports since that is what you all actually "care" about anyway! Without further ado:STU Mustang Project Refresher
More Season prep!
Carbotech 1521's replaced the factory pads and Centric 120 series rotors replaced the factory rotors. This is a relatively simple process to do but it is time consuming. After some 2.5hrs of fiddling with the brakes, they were installed. Bedding these new pads in to the new rotors was relatively straight forward too. Carbotech recommends a series of stops from 60 down to about 25. A short break and then another series of stops. I did 5 stops, a 5 minute cool down and 5 more stops. That produced a very nice transfer layer on the new rotors. Not that I took photos of that because that would make sense!
As for the pads themselves? Well, I'm a bit underwhelmed by them but they are so new I'm not sure I can really pass judgement quite yet. What I'm noticing is that initial bite is about the same as the factory pads. The pedal effort, IE: How much pedal needed before ABS engagement, has increased. It takes A LOT of stepping on the brake to get the ABS to engage, even with snow tires. I'm curious to see how that works out when there is some serious rubber under the car. On that note, I suspect a lot to blame in the factory lines and fluid still in the car... if nothing else they don't help at all and are on that "shortlist" to replace.
Read the rest here!
MOAR Season Prep!
It also isn't a color you see used on the S197 very frequently. In fact I struggled to find photos of these wheels before purchasing them. I bought them more on a whim. Sure there are "gunmetals" out there which are more gray than silver that look good too. It really is just hard to describe these wheels accurately and I really like it! In the brief days I had them on the car to get the mold release off the tires the number of complements, thumb ups and looks increased quite heavily. Which is great in my opinion! Let them look! I do feel like the car might need to be lowered slightly to take some of the wheel gap away. It doesn't look too bad at the moment but these 25.9" tall tires really do add wheel gap where the taller 245/45/18 ZI Star Specs I have on my stock wheels fill the wheel wells better.
Of course those "meats" also added almost an inch of tire width to the ground which should really help this car scoot around corners. Initial driving impressions are really odd. The RS3V2 has less steering precision than the narrower 265/40/18 RS3V1's I used the previous two years. They are incredibly numb on center and you can really feel the sidewalls moving around. Tire pressure is at 32 PSI for each corner so that may have to go up to compensate for that some. There is a slight, and I do mean slight, rub at full lock with these wheels and tires. I'm half tempted to buy a 5mm spacer for up front to cure this and bring the front wheels out to a more "flush" look. Then my car would be stanced yo!
So as many of you guys know, Kelly Aiken at BMR Suspension was supposed to be getting me one of their new chassis mounted watts linkages to test against the Fays2 unit currently on the car. Their unit has undergone some design changes and Kelly assures me this latest revision to the frame is the production spec unit. That should mean that I will have the BMR Chassis Mount before the first season's autocross on April 11th and 12th.
Read the rest here!
If you are slightly narcissistic and want to get more "live" updates, you can like Cone 502 Racing on Facebook or follow the blog. Here is a link to the Facebook page: Linky!
That gets everything up to date thus far! First event is April 11th/12th with a Test'n'Tune and Points event at LAP-N. Expect an update then! And as always, questions, comments, concerns, gripes, bitches, or complaints, post them up!
Last edited:
