Project Update for October 10th, 2014: Yikes, got a little behind on this build thread, mostly due to the construction and build-out of our new shop space over the past month. Lots of Mustang service and fabrication work has been going on at our shop, even on our own 2011 Mustang - which is about to go to SEMA and compete in the Optima Ultimate Street Car shootout. Have news on the 2015 Mustang as well. First, let's cover two events we competed in and won in in the last month.
SCCA Solo at TMS Road Course, Sept 28, 2014
Once a year the Texas Region SCCA holds an autocross on the infield road course at Texas Motor Speedway. Most of their events are normally held on a parking lot outside the Speedway (aka: the Bus Lot), and they had one the weekend before right there. But this Sept 28th event was a higher speed, more flowing course that is always a lot of fun, essentially for autocrossers that have never done a track event before. They have requirements in place (3 prior events) to make sure that this is NEVER the first autocross someone enters, both to prove someone's driving experience as well as course working background.
Sure, they throw a LOT of cones onto the TMS 1.1 mile road course's turns, to keep speeds in check (top speed is probably under 80 mph), because as we've shown in our videos before this road course can be pretty quick (120+ mph) if you run it as it is laid out. This year's SCCA Road Course autocross was one of the best I've seen - I've run this event every year since about 2005. This time we got 5 runs, and I was entered in MAM class (Modern American Muscle). Our crew had mounted up the same set of 315/335 BFG Rivals we used way back in March at Goodguys, then at USCA, then at a few other autocross events in between. The rears were kind of chewed up so we mounted them inside-out, which doesn't seem to affect the Rivals one bit.
I spent Saturday at the Texas Defensive Shooting Academy, instead of doing construction at the new shop
I probably shouldn't have entered this event on that Sunday, as Amy was busy painting at the new shop and I felt guilty. To make matters worse I had spent the
entire day Saturday out at a shooting range for a friend's bachelor party blasting hundreds of rounds through my Glock 34 as well as shooting FOUR different automatic rifles. I had so much fun that Saturday shooting with 12 college racing buddies, and everything turned into a competition: shooting steels on two lanes side by side, comparing groupings, shooting AR15s at tannerite explosives, and then the king of them all: the
driving shooting course! The video below was my best "drive-by" round, where I blew through 6 magazines and hit a lot of steel targets.
Driving + Shooting = Crazy but Fun!
I'm not a "gun nut", but this
is Texas and its like an unspoken law that everyone here has to show mastery with their firearms. What's the saying? "Never tell a man he can't shoot, drive or f*ck."
We all know I can't drive, and my shooting is marginal, but I'll skip that third one. This outing made for a really fun day, but I was wiped out from the sun (and too many drinks at dinner, and a stressful Texas A&M football game that they won in OT!) and then racing on Sunday, whew. Busy weekend during the middle of a shop construction thrash.
Anyway, so I was running this SCCA event without my normal sidekick Amy, for once, and that meant loading/unloading the trailer amd working my assignment as announcer alone (Amy usually runs the computer), and I figured it would be boring. Wrong - there were 146 entrants at this event, 8 in MAM class, and the CAM class entrants were talking smack and challenged me to a bet (loser buys lunch): fastest MAM vs CAM class time!
Left: Mike and I parked our trailers side by side in the paddock. Right: Mike running his 67 Camaro at Goodguys the next week
Both of these classes (CAM and MAM) are very similar, and some SCCA regions merge them into one class (CAM). For once were running in the same heat, on the same style tires, so our times might actually correlate. Mike Dusold runs his twin turbo LS powered 67 Camaro in Goodguys events in the Pro class, and is once again going to Scottsdale for the annual Goodguys invitational shootout. We don't often meet up at the same autocrosses on the same street tires, so this would be fun.
My first run was pretty tame, as the layout had changed from previous years' courses (offsets and slaloms everywhere, but in new places). I liked the flow, but they managed to cone off all of my "green shortcuts" from the past, so there was no secret advantage to knowing this 1.1 mile road course layout, heh. I put in a timid first run that was clean and noted a half dozen places where I could go faster. One major slow-down was my 2-3 upshift, which didn't go at all smoothly, and I coasted for about a two count before I finally got it in gear. That cost me a LOT of time... and reoccurred on runs 2 and 3.
I was worried that I had messed something up, but after talking to several other S197 Mustang drivers in MAM, we were all having this issue. Turns out that the course layout was arranged just perfectly to load up the drivetrain in a high g lateral maneuver that is was not allowing the damned remote shifter to line up properly for the upshift. I've even got poly motor mounts and the trans bushing inserts, too. Literally everyone was missing the 2-3 here. One of our MAM class competitors and customer's partially exploded his pressure plate (locking the car with the clutch engaged all the time) trying to make that shift, and had to have it towed home (luckily it was still under warranty).
Slowing and pointing to a downed cone on an aborted run 4
So on runs 4 and 5 I short-shifted 3rd gear very early, but with the torque this Coyote 5.0 makes it didn't slow it down a bit, and in fact I dropped a lot of time by not coasting and cursing at the shifter. After installing one of these Blowfish Racing shifter "cages" in a customer's Boss302 earlier this week, I'm thinking this might be a good idea for
ALL 2011-14 Mustangs with the Getrag MT-82 6-speed.
Left: We've done a lot of custom work on this green Boss302. Right: Installing the Blowfish Racing shifter cage was fairly easy.
Event photo and video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/TX-Region-SCCA-Road-Course/ (most of these pictures were taken by Brad Maxcy)
My 4th run was my fastest, but we noted that there was a mystery cone that got called in but never announced. And after checking the printed times it turns out I had a cone on runs 2-5 and never knew it! The announcer wasn't calling out all of the cones, and the times were posted about a 1/2 mile away from the grid/paddock area, and without Amy there to help check times I was clueless.
In-car video from my 4th run, with the "mystery cone!"
The weather was beautiful all day and since we ran in heat 1, worked heat 3, that meant I could leave early (skipped watching heat 4) and get home to try to SLEEP (haven't done much of this lately). In the end my 4th run
would have beat CAM, which
would have put me in 4th for overall PAX placing, but that cone tho. GRRR!
I had to sit on my first freagin run, the recon lap where I coasted for seconds trying to get the car to upshift. That run ended up still winning MAM class by a second, but I lost to CAM, so I owe Mike lunch. Oh well, can't win em all! Kudos to Mike and his crew at Dusold Designs.
There's the Final class results above, and the PAX results below. Again, hitting that cone cost me 12 spots in the overall PAX results. Gotta do it clean!
Goodguys at TMS, Oct 5, 2014
This was the event I was really prepping for when we mounted up the street tires, the weekend before. Of course any practice on street tires will only help our chances at the Optima shootout after SEMA, which is our "Big Event" of 2014, but there are always great PRIZES on the line at Goodguys for winning the All American Sunday (AAS) class. I've done 2 of these events in the past, and won the Spring event here in Texas. I really should have been spending the day painting at the new shop, but instead I entered and ran the Goodguys Sunday autocross - I wanted that cheddar!
Event photo and video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/Goodguys-TMS-100514/
These Goodguys autocross events are particularly tight and often require the use of 1st gear. The last 2 events in Texas used the same course, which was about 70 seconds long and you had to drive one particularly nasty section twice per run. This time they chopped off the extra lap, changed a few things up, and made a much more enjoyable, and quicker to run, 40 second autocross course. Yes, it was still tight, yes it still had a pirouette cone, but it wasn't so long that it made the runs drag on forever. The shorter course made for quicker running and instead of 3 or 4 laps like in the Spring, we got 6 or 7 runs (with a larger entry list) and were done sooner (they stopped adding times to the results sheet at 11:30 am).
Normally these guys start at about 9-9:30 am, so we got to the host hotel to check in (can't check in on site) at 7:45, unloaded the trailer at 8:15 am, and rolled up about 8:30... and they were about to start! Crap, no chance to walk the course, but it looked the same. As soon as I saw a car go through I realized it was a different layout and I'd have to learn it on the go. Finally got the car teched (missed my 1st run) and got in line to go. 30 feet into my first run I went the wrong way around a lane change and DNF'd. I figured it out as soon as I did it and rejoined the course for a look at speed.
Next time up I had watched a dozen runs and knew the proper route and knocked down a high 39 second run, plus one cone, which was about 3 seconds quicker than anyone else (cone only counts as one second). Blanton Payne was there in his LS1 swapped Genesis Coupe and he was the fast time to beat after first runs - he's a local autocrosser and has won the AAS event before in this car. He also runs the Friday-Saturday events in the FUN class in his vintage Mini cooper, and is always pretty quick in that tiny Mini.
By run 3 my lines were getting better and I had abandoned going down to 1st gear in a couple of sections. This was the first time I had done a Goodguys event here
without using 1st gear, and I wasn't sure how it would work. Well once again the prodigious torque of the Coyote 5.0L proved up to the task and I dropped significant time and fell into the high 38s.
Run 5 was my quickest with a 38.5 second run
Runs 4 through 6 were more of the same - clean runs with 38 second times. My 5th run proved to be my best with a 38.5 second lap. The next closest time in AAS was a high 40, so I won this event by 2 seconds, just like back in the Spring. Of course the provisional results posted on
Pro-Touring.com's forum are missing my times as well as about a half dozen others, but it seems like a glitch that will get fixed before the official results are put on the Goodguys website.
No matter - we got that stack of gift certificates and another free set of BFGoodrich tires for winning AAS, got to drive across the stage for the awards ceremony, and the whole nine yards. Josh Leisinger won the PRO class (Friday-Saturday pre-74 domestics) in a beautiful and nasty 800 hp 64 Corvette (see above). Robbie Unser (yes, of the Unser racing family) won the Street Machine (SM) class in his 64 Chevy II built by Speedway, and upon that win was bumped up to PRO class with Goodguys from now on. Both of those guys ran 2 days prior and were quicker than my runs, and 5 other Pro or SM cars beat my best time. That's frustrating, but with less than half the number of runs, and a car thats likely 600 pounds heavier than all of theirs (min weight in PRO and SM is 3000 pounds), I guess I should expect that.
For the 2015 season were building a lighter car that won't have to have these "its heavy" excuses any more. Honestly, the 3600 pound EVO X in the 2009 season and the 3600 pound Mustang from 2010-14 seasons were,
by far, the heaviest cars I've ever raced. They were both great in many ways, and we developed a lot of good parts for both chassis, but I really miss racing in the car below...
Yes, I've showed this picture before. I really REALLY miss racing in a car like this!
After it was caged and had 2 seats, this BMW LS1 car tipped the scales at a whopping 2550 pounds. It made 490 whp with a mild LS2 based 7.0L, on 93 octane fuel. It had all of the factory metal and glass, save the door glass. THAT combination is what I miss, and I miss it dearly. I am building another for 2015 - a BMW E46 coupe with big LS V8 power, big aero, and big tires.
We learned a ton of tricks on this Mustang, but its time to try something else, and I have our red Mustang tentatively sold after SEMA. We will still get a LOT of S197 Mustangs in our shop every week and we will continue to develop products for these cars. Same goes for the S550 Mustang - its even heavier (3800 for the V8). Beautiful car, the new IRS should really help the ride/handling, and Ford is gonna sell a ton of these cars. Just not to me, at least not this year.
continued below
That ties all the black up front together.
