Vorshlag S197 Development Thread

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above

We went back and talked numbers with Corey. A $1500 rebate, big discount for the hail issues, and some more just because he rocks. In the end, the number was so low we couldn't NOT buy it. I felt like I needed a ski mask and gloves after the deal we got. Corey got the paperwork started and that was the quickest new car purchase I have ever seen. He had a Roush supercharged 2013 Raptor F150 warmed up and waiting for a test drive while the Mustang was being "make readied" for us, so we proceeded to go on the 2nd most hilarious test drive of my life, both of which were on the same day. I won't give away his crafty sales tactics, but after that ten minute test drive, all done by Corey, we both were AMAZED at the Raptor's off road capability and wanted one of these trucks. That's all I am allowed to say without giving Corey's trick away, but with 558 whp, Fox shocks, crackin' exhaust, and a suspension that can blow your mind... DAAAAMN that truck is a BEAST!

After that hilarious Raptor test drive that Matt here at Vorshlag joined us on (the back seat is absolutely massive, BTW), the 2013 GT was fueled up and ready to go. We hit the streets in both the 2011 and 2013 GTs, with a light drizzle starting to come down. I was really psyched about the new car we just stole and continued my jackassery, then proceeded to whip Amy 2-0 in wet drag races from stop lights.

The next morning I was still in shock from adding the 9th car to my fleet of sports car and got to washing off the previous night's rain. PaulM joined me with his 2011 GT and we washed both, then went with McCall and bought yet another car - something for a ChumpCar build, that I will start to chronicle next week (not a Vorshlag build, but we will make the roll cage). What a weekend!



On Monday I brought the car to the shop to weigh it, but with a full tank of fuel it was still a few pounds heavier than the 2011 GT was (with no fuel). I have calculated the low-fuel weight to be about 60 pounds lighter than the '11, stock for stock, both without the trunk junk. The 18" skinny spare in the 2013 is pretty slick and if we can find another it will make for a great drag race set of front runners (no "temporary use" or slow max speed listed). For those of you asking, I doubt this will fit over the 14" brakes, but we can try it. When I get a free moment, I will do an all-new thread on the 2013 GT ESP build and share even more. We've already begun ripping and tearing...

Whiteline S197 Parts Now Available

The North American Sales Manager for Whiteline USA, Reid Yoken, came by Vorshlag yesterday. He is in town for the Global Time Attack event this weekend and of course is stopping by to check up with all of his Whiteline dealers. He ended up staying for two hours and we discussed all sorts of new products coming for the S197 Mustang, the BRZ/FR-S, Subarus, BMWs, Miatas, and more. He promised to send us a few more new/pre-production parts for our Mustang and also our BRZ build, which was unexpected, but very cool.

Earlier this week the pricing was published for the new Whiteline Watts Link kit, which we have listed on our website now. Unlike some drop ship/resale operations that listed this and every other part known to man, we have actually used this Whiteline kit and know all of the tricks and tips for installation, tuning and use. We also stock some of their other S197 parts, like the Whiteline Panhard Bar kit (with the optional support brace) and some of their bushings. These Watts Link kits, Whiteline sway bars, and additional parts are available now. We will have another whole batch of S197 Whiteline parts coming for our 2013 GT soon.

Whiteline S197 Watts Link kit shown above, now available from Vorshlag

Our $899 price on the Watts Link kit's ($999 MSRP) is very reasonable considering all of the custom parts it comes with - a gorgeous cast aluminum differential cover with integral bearing loading studs, the bracket for the Watts "Football" mount, the cover's inlet/outlet ports for a differential cooler, and the various arms, brackets and hardware needed to mount all of this. It also comes with a unique cross-chassis brace, which is an optional piece on most PHB kits.

The OEM parts removed and replaced with the Watts Links kit installed.

We had Whiteline send us the production weight for their S197 Watts Link kit: "The entire Watts Link kit is 29 lbs, which includes 8.4 lbs from the differential cover and the associated hardware." Some of that weight is a wash, as you are removing a stock (or aftermarket) PHB, the stock cross-chassis brace (which is replaced in the Whiteline kit), and swapping the stock steel differential cover for their cast aluminum piece. We just weighed all of these stock parts we pulled off when installing the Watts on our 2011 and it all came in at 13.3 pounds. So in the end there's only a net ~15.7 pound increase for this Whiteline Watts Link kit. Not bad at all. In our upcoming 2013 GT purpose-built ESP build we will verify this to the tenth of a pound... and maybe look for ways to pull some weight out of the off-the-shelf Whiteline Watts kit, for those fanatics like us looking to save every ounce.

I discussed this on another forum earlier this week, but I want to make sure people who are racing the S197 realize how complete and high quality this Watts Link kit is. It works GREAT on a street car as well, without the banging and clanging of rod ends to drive you nuts. I will ask them if they want to make a rod end version, but if not we might modify their existing kit with rod ends for dedicated race car builds - we have already been asked. This always adds noise and new wear items, of course. Unprotected metal rod ends that are in high exposure areas are subjected to lots of salt, grime and road debris spray and should be given lots of thought before being installed on a street car.


Left: OEM rear sway bar routing ends very close to the rear tire. Right: Whiteline sway bar runs opposite of stock routing and has 6"+ to tire face (click to enlarge).

Another thing S197 racers should remember is that the Whiteline "axle mount" rear sway bar frees up a lot of inboard room for wider wheels and tires. This is unique to the S197 sway bar aftermarket and is one that cannot be overlooked. If you want to run more than a 10" rear wheel without cutting the fenders, you are going to need the Whiteline rear sway bar. Sure, you can buy it from us (we would appreciate it!), but whoever your Whiteline dealer is, this bar is the way to go for more tire room. Drag racers looking to run 15" or 16" diameter wheels can also look to this unique Whiteline sway bar style for the room they need to fit these smaller wheels. So much win!

Hankook Arrive & Drive

On Monday, the regional representative for Hankook Tires asked if I could come to their latest Arrive and Drive event (thanks Fabien!), which was about 30 miles from our shop. Any chance to thrash on somebody's cars and test new tires is always better than anything else I can think of on a regular work day, so I was in. Brandon went with me and shot some pictures of various attendees driving Hankook's Audi A3 and 2012 Mustang GT on Hankook tires. Super tight autocross course, no timers, just for fun.

Hankook always puts on a good show and if you can swing an invite, by all means check one of these events out. We took some autocross runs, had fun, snagged some Hankook swag, and headed back to the shop. I'm a big fan of the Hankook RS-3 tire, which is one of the fastest 140 treadwear tires around. Great for track use and autocrossers in the Street Touring class love them as well. The new 180 treadwear minimum in the SCCA "Road Tire" category will keep them out of there, at least until they can make a 180 TW replacement. We will see if that happens. I will also ask them about making some "big Mustang" R-S3 sizes - something like a 305/35/18 or 315/35/18 would be ideal on a 11" or 12" wide wheel. But for a more rational 10" wheel, Hankook is one of the few companies that does make a 285/35/18 size in the R-S3; this is a perfect fit with our 18x10" S197 D-Force/Vorshlag wheels.

SCCA Jackets for Class Winners

As I mentioned in my last update, Vorshlag teamed up with Solo Performance Specialties to sponsor the Women of Solo Luncheon this year, which was a big success. Dave made the commemorative embroidered polo shirts for all attendees, with the Vorshlag logo on the sleeve, and the ladies really liked them. Dave also runs SCCAgear.com, which makes various shirts/clothing/National Champion jackets for the SCCA.

Dave saw me complaining about the new three entrant minimum rule for crowning National Champions in my last Mustang thread post here, and he knew that I've pointed out in the past the lengthy process some new classes take to become recognized as a class at Nationals. So earlier this week he asked me to "put my money where my mouth is"... and I jumped at the chance.

SPS and Vorshlag have teamed up to provide a run of "SCCA Nationals Class Winner" jackets free of charge to all 2012 Solo Nationals winners who didn't get a National Championship jacket. They paid the same money, but only got half the swag. The recipients will include the winners in any of the unrecognized/provisional classes like "Road Tire" as well as some Ladies class winners who had fewer than three entrants. We made this press release together and will contact these Class Winners about their jackets in the coming weeks (Dave will make these jackets with the same look and at the same time as the National Champion jackets).

I know minimum entrant numbers and provisional classing is a complex subject with a lot of good points one way or another and there is no magic answer. We just felt like recognizing these winners with a little something extra this year, since the 2012 Solo Nationals was the first time the new attendance rule kicked in. Anyone that won can opt out of the free jacket, of course.

GTA Event Prep

I finally remembered what I forgot to post in my pre-Nationals post. The steering shudder is completely and utterly gone now, thanks to this one little swap!

For one "easy" payment of $999, our electric steering rack issues are a thing of the past. It is simply a stock rack that has been reprogrammed to turn off all of the auto-nibble-correction silliness. No other way to get this new programming other than to buy the new FRPP rack, unfortunately (we tried). Well, it does come on a Boss 302-S. I recommend this FRPP rack to any 2011-2013 Mustang driver that is experiencing this steering shudder like what I have documented in the videos from our 2011 GT. If you are experiencing these issues, you can try to take it to your dealership for reproduction and hopeful replacement, but we didn't have much luck there... Here's a tip: the biggest common variable on cars with this shudder is an aftermarket front Lower Control Arm bushing. Change the bushings and be prepared for the shudder.

Other preparation for this weekend includes: new Kumho V710s, upped the spring rates to 550F/250R, added a new set of Porterfield R4 pads and new rotors all the way around (the last track set of rotors and pads were well and truly thrashed). The guys also reinstalled the front brake ducting for use at the GTA event.

What's Next?

We are loading the 2011 Mustang into our trailer now for the tow out to Texas Motor Speedway on Friday and Saturday for the Global Time Attack event. There will also be some XTC drift event running on the same course (separate heats, thankfully!) and the whole "Hot Import Nights" show/circus/scene going on. We are told to expect a big crowd for all of that and they will be doing a live webcast on the GTA website.

Sunday we are loading up and heading to the Dallas Dragway in Crandall, TX. This is the new, preferred autocross site that the Texas Region SCCA is using for Solo events. We can't wait carve some corners and dodge cones at this new concrete site. I will post a new update next week in this thread about the event.

Also, I will start a whole new thread on our 2013 Mustang GT ESP build. Why a second thread? Well... we discussed it and the 2013 build will be a lot different from this 2011 build. The 2011 was a real test mule for us and we ran it in a variety of events and classes, from NASA TTB to TTS, and SCCA STX to ESP, as well as street driving and the Optima Challenge and more. I like the fact that the 2011 can do a little bit of everything pretty well, but I want to WIN the ESP class next year. That will take a completely different build, a different mindset, and a different car. It is also not really a "test mule" type of build, so it will get its own build thread.

What else... NASA has a race weekend at ECR on October 6-7th, where we will run the 2011 GT in TTS and the 2001 BMW 330Ci in TTD. Then there's another Five Star Ford of Plano sponsored open track day at ECR on November 11th, which we will be at in the 2011 GT.

Don't worry - the 2011 GT will continue on it's own adventures, chronicled in this thread. Meanwhile here's a taste of what we have in store for the 2013 GT:

The one-off flares above are no longer available... but we will make something similar for the 2013. Gotta clear those bigger Hoosiers!

Stay tuned!

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for October 4, 2012: I am a couple of weeks behind on updates, so let's catch up on the 2011 Mustang's latest racing events and changes.

New Suspension Parts & Tweaks

I talked about most of the pre-GTA weekend preparation in my last post (brake pads, rotors, tires) and showed pictures of more stuff, but forgot to talk about the other mods. Whiteline had sent us some additional products to test at Global Time Attack, namely their tubular and adjustable Lower Control Arms with Synthetic Elastomer bushings and a pair of their bolt-on LCA relocation brackets. The LCA relocation brackets are an attempt to fix the rear anti-squat geometry on lowered S197 Mustangs and we wanted to see how this worked in both track and autocross conditions. The Lower Control Arms themselves replace the stamped steel stock pieces, which have big smooshy rubber bushings. For GTA there were no real rules or points to worry about, so we figured we'd give it a try. Long term they will probably stay on the red 2011 Mustang, since we're building the black 2013 GT for dedicated ESP autocross use. For the NASA Time Trial class, we are running the red car in TTS, which means we no longer have to worry about tallying modification points. Pretty much the sky is the limit (TTS/R/U classes mostly revolve around power-to-weight ratios and tire compound).

The new parts are shown installed above. We are now working with the existing Whiteline Watts Link kit, Whiteline Upper Control Arm and Mount, and Whiteline Front and Rear Adjustable Sway Bars + End Links, for a package covering 100% of their S197 Whiteline catalog. We have recently updated our S197 suspension products page page to show all of these items along with the Whiteline Adjustable Panhard Bar, and we already stock and have sold some of these at Vorshlag. A lot of these parts were just released this past month and they made it on our website as soon as pricing was available. We are really liking what they have and I'm glad we picked up the Whiteline dealership (that's the last of the sales-y stuff, I promise!)

Other changes for this weekend of racing include a switch back to Kumho V710 rubber from Hoosier A6. Most people know the Hoosier DOT tire line-up: The R6 is more suited to track use (can withstand longer stints and more heat) and the A6 is for autocross use (heat up quickly, but tend to overheat on longer stints). The V710 is sort of like an R6, so we picked up and mounted two fresh Kumho's in 315/35/18 and ran two of our old Kumho's that have seen a lot of autocross & track use. These two older tires "looked" OK and I didn't want to drop $1600 on a whole new set of Kumho's after just getting back from Nationals and dropping $1600 on that set of A6's (which still looked pretty good, too - definitely worth running at a few more autocrosses).

Lastly, we upgraded spring rates due to the excessive lean we were seeing on the A6's at the Solo Nationals on that grippy concrete. These pictures really amplified how softly we have the car sprung and how little experience we have with the car in ESP use. I think we had four months of ESP preparation before Nationals? Compared to the 1.5 years we spent in STX on street tires, where the old, softer rates worked very well.

In the front we went to 550#/in Hyperco springs, up from the previous 450#/in rates. To match this change up front, we stiffened the rear rates from 175#/in to 250#/in, also Hyperco springs. We adjusted the sway bar settings a bit as well, on a hunch. With the normal track preparation came the rear trunk swap, ridiculously tall rear wing, fluids, inspection, and all of that. We loaded up and were ready to head out to Texas Motor Speedway for early Friday morning, as the GTA event was Friday and Saturday.

Global Time Attack, 9/21 to 9/22, TMS

TMS Infield Course Map

• Results: http://www.globaltimeattack.com/2012-rd-5-texas-motor-speedway-sep-21-22-2012/
• Picture and Video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/Global-Time-Attack-TMS-092112/
• Moto-IQ Write-up: http://www.motoiq.com/magazine_articles/id/2724/global-time-attack--round-5--texas-edition.aspx

We arrived at TMS at 7 am Friday morning, with Ryan and Brandon from the shop accompanying me for track-side support and event photography. It was a work day so we didn't expect too many spectators, but we saw a few hundred there - to watch the XTC drift guys...

There is a lot more like that in our picture gallery for this event, linked above, if this is your thing. After looking at what they have to do to these cars ... it is just too much for me to process. They are a unique animal with preparation all their own. I respect their car control and I will leave it at that. Well...

The drifters did spend a lot of time off track and drug all manner of dirt and crap onto the racing line that the Time Attack drivers had to deal with. Luckily the TMS track workers cleaned up pretty well after each XTC session, before GTA took to the track. Pretty well. I am glad XTC worked with GTA (and Hot Import Nights) to get this joint-event to happen. So that's all I'm going to talk about the drifting.

We grabbed a prime paddock spot for the trailer, unloaded the car, set up our sun shade, dragged out the compressor, generator, and cooler and put out half a dozen chairs. Then we aired up the tires and wired up the video camera and AIM SOLO. NASA New Mexico sanctioned this event, so already having a NASA Log Book and Annual TT Tech for the car helped me breeze through tech inspection.

KenO was there in his E46M3 "TTB" street car and he helped me set-up the AIM and get a beacon set for start/finish. We went to registration when the GTA guys arrived, picked up all of our stickers, and got to work getting the proper decals applied. Ken showed me a trick to "remove some stick" from the big number board decals, since they needed to come off Sunday for the SCCA Autocross. Stick it on and pull it off your shirt a few times, then stick it on the car. Worked great!

Left: KenO in the Enthusiast RWD winning E46 M3. Right: Me hand signaling Ken, "asking for a pass".

Ken was also a big help teaching me the proper line around this track, as he was the only driver entered who had ever run this 1.36 mile infield course (the "red" one in the track map below) in anger, driving in Corvettes at some driving school thing. I had run some of this course at a few Texas Region SCCA autocrosses, but that was MUCH slower, with slaloms on the main straight and weird offsets in all of the fast parts. After making a couple of recon laps, I realized my autocross experience on this layout helped me -0-. I did some lead follows behind Ken in the first day's second session and figured out where I was screwing up, royally. Then by the second day Ken's TTB E46 M3 on street tires was all kinds of in my way.


In-car video from Day 1, Session 3 laps... best of 40.66 seconds.

The track layout looked simple enough - eight turns and very little camber change, but with the ample rumble strips and high speed offsets it was pretty tricky. Many GTA drivers had offs and there was even one pretty good sized crash (Mustang lost brakes and backed into a tire barrier, totaling the car). Ken and I were pounding out 15-20+ laps in each twenty minute GTA session, whereas the other Time Attack series regulars would take three lap stints and call it quits (warm up, hot lap, cool down). And when you see the insane turbo cars that GTA caters to, it kind of makes sense. In their unusual categories they have Enthusiast, Street, Limited, and Unlimited, with further FWD/AWD/RWD segregation in each class.

The Unlimited AWD and Overall winner, GST's "Subaru" with 670 whp and 2500 pounds with a composite body and lots of aero.

Showing the GST's rear mounted radiator and diffuser, plus the massive driver & controls setback.

So what moves you up a class? Your tires. Almost 100% of the rules revolved around tire treadwear, something I have never seen before. That meant that the even the lowest preparation level Street & Enthusiast cars running on 140+ treadwear tires still had 600whp or more. I'm not making this up - these GTA cars are no joke when it comes to power. There isn't much difference in preparation/power from there to Limited and Unlimited, just the tire compounds. Limited was 60-140 TW and Unlimited was 0-60 TW. What did I bring? 40 treadwear Kumho V710s, which moved me all the way to Unlimited RWD. In a street car that weighs 3540 pounds... oh boy.

Well nobody else showed in Unlimited RWD, so I had a class to myself. But that meant there would be no payout for a win either. Still, I wanted to compare my times to the overall fastest, if I could be close. Surprisingly Ken and I weren't doing half bad on the first day, with the 2nd and 3rd fastest times in the earlier sessions (we ran more laps per session and I guess figured the course out sooner?). By the end of day one, I had fallen to 4th quickest time overall. The Mustang was VERY loose on all corners and I was chasing the set-up all day. Turns out all of these handling complications were from the tires. Two new tires up front overpowering the very worn out rears. I'm such a dummy... I know better than to run old tires with new tires!

After a big delay getting into the gate at TMS (they wanted to keep us out until 10 am!), we finally got back inside by 9:15am for the Saturday portion of the GTA event. I had stopped by the shop and grabbed the used 315/30/18 Hoosier A6's that Amy and I had run at the Solo Nationals a couple of weeks earlier. They were half gone, but still in better shape than the rear Kumho's, and laughably the A6's had a higher treadwear than the V710's! (using treadwear as an indicator of grip is a mistake, IMHO). So we were going to ask the "tire guys" that follow the GTA circuit to swap tires on the Forgestar wheels for us, but their machine would have trashed the lips.

Ed and JasomM instead took the wheels to a local Discount Tire, swapped the V710's for the A6's, and made it back with six minutes to go before our first session of the day. With air tools, two jacks, and many hands we got the wheels bolted on and took to the track in time to get in some quick laps.

I made three laps, came into the hot pits for a tire bleed... nobody was there. Crap! Drove into the paddock, bled the tires down, then had to wait in line to get back on track (since I left the hot pits). I finally made it back out and within a few laps I had busted off some 39 second runs. Woo! That was my goal - break into the 39's and I did it in the first session. I did another four or five 39 second laps just to make sure, then I came in. My original goal was once I ducked under a 40 second lap, I was going to stop for the day and try to preserve these semi-fresh A6's for some additional autocross use later this year, before we switch to the 2013 GT for our ESP thrills.

I felt great and was thinking I was sitting in 3rd place overall, against some crazy ass race cars. The GTA crew didn't have the official times displayed for another hour and right before session two was about to start, the printout was displayed for session one... and my name was nowhere to be found. WTF?!


In-car video from my Day 2, Session 1B runs... which don't count, because the transponder was tuned off!

Oh no.... (lightbulb) Oh no! I quickly ran to the car, opened the hood, and immediately realized that I screwed up and left the wired AMB transponder turned off for the entire first session! GRRR! I was so mad at myself and had wasted the only cool track session on the A6's we would have that day. You see I had turned the transponder off overnight, while the car was parked in the trailer, to save the car battery. So none of my 39 second runs were timed by the GTA folks and I only had my in-car AIM Solo to go by. Well crap.

Then the transponder switch, which is backlit when "On", started flickering. Then it went off right before my eyes. I tapped it and it came back on. Tapped it again and it went off. The switch was dying?! So Ed quickly hot-wired the transponder literally seconds before the second session started. I got at the front of the line and waited. And waited. After 10 minutes they told us that a car had gone off and hit a tire barrier, and the flat bed was bringing it in.

Yeeesh, that looked ugly. The driver was fine, but the car was toast. The clean-up took the entire 20 minutes and the second session was cancelled. Meanwhile the temperatures climbed from the high 70's into the high 90's and we had our 1.5 hour lunch break. The whole crew piled into the MegaCab and we got some food a few exits down the highway. I was fit to be tied as I watched the temperatures climb. Matching that 39 second time seemed impossible as the track temps crept up past 120°F, but I was bound and determined to get a sub 40 second lap. We got back from eating and I went out in session three and started using every inch of the track. Here's some of the last laps in that session, where I finally cracked off two 39 second laps! This was after three previous sets of three laps that resulted in a best of only 40.12 seconds. Whew!



That took everything I had and as you can see in the video, I was using the "Green Line" - with the inside two tires over the lipstick stripe and maybe even a tiny bit on the grass. Hey, we asked in the driver's meeting and they said "only one wheel has to be inside the lipstick", so I keep eeking wider and making my line at the start/finish offset straighter, and wasn't using as much "green" as one particular driver who shall remain nameless (cough... Ken... cough). I never got all four off (which would result in a DSQ for the entire session) and managed to squeak a couple of high 39 second laps in, with the results showing a best lap of 39.975 seconds. It wasn't as quick as I ran in the morning, even when I was taking no chances and barely touching the lipstick, but it was sub-40 and I was happy with that. The ambient temperatures were 100°F and I knew I wasn't going to find more than a tenth better lap than that, with as overheated as I and the tires were both getting.

We came in and let the car cool off and the crew started breaking down the trailer equipment while I walked the Hot Import Nights car show area quickly. Wow... I cannot describe this scene at all. I felt like I was on another planet. Cars with 15 degrees of negative camber, "poking" and "tucking" and "thumping". I don't "get it", none of it, so I guess that means I am getting too old. I did see the local Enkei rep and got to talk about upcoming new wheels for the FR-S/BRZ twins, which was cool. By the time I had made a lap of the HIN show, the Mustang had the spoiler installed in place of the wing, was loaded in the trailer, and the sun shade was rolled up. I talked briefly with the Mustang driver that wrecked and had the worst kind of day, then we rolled out by 3:30pm. I wish I would have stuck around for the 7pm awards ceremony, complete with video/pictures/champagne, but Amy and I had another day of racing on Sunday and we needed to go home and collapse. We used that saved 3.5 hours to catch some ZZZZs.

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Continued from above

Overall, the GTA event was intense and a lot of fun. We had a crowd watching and cheering, which is rare at any track event, even if they were mostly there to see the drifters (and I gave them some of that on Friday). I got to meet some cool racers, talked face-to-face with more of the Whiteline folks, did a video interview for them, and just had a great time. Before this event I was worried that I would be super slow and way off the pace, but the big 3500 pound Mustang did all right, placing 5th fastest overall and one of only five cars to break the 40 second lap barrier.

For the "class of one win" I banked $300 of Whiteline product credit, a pair of Oakley Sunglasses from FIAT, and get to go down in the record books as the Unlimited RWD track record holder for TMS (shrug). Congrats to AST/Vorshlag Tester KenO for his big win in Enthusiast RWD (he banked $800 in contingencies and the free sunglasses, too). Another local NASA TT racer with Vorshlag camber plates, Jeff Tan, managed to win Enthusiast AWD in his EVO X, also netting $800 in contingencies. I gotta give a big thanks to all the folks who came out to help crew - Ryan and Brandon on Friday, and Amy, Ed, Jason and PaulM on Saturday. The car was rock solid and had zero drama, doing nothing more than eating fuel and gobbling up more track miles.

SCCA Autocross, Dallas Raceway, 9/23

After two days of brutal heat (99°F), we were now supposed to spend a third day in the same heat at an autocross. These three day race weekends never work well for me and this time was no exception. Because we were already fried, we left the house late and arrived behind schedule, limiting us to one quick walk-through on a very complicated, busy, poorly flowing course (sorry JJ!) on a brand new event site that we were unfamiliar with. The site has drainage down the middle that fills with water and then algae, and this section is SLICKER THAN SNOT. The course that day crossed this section on the outside of a corner in an acceleration zone, which made for tail-happy driftoro. Then it got into it again during a heavy braking zone at the start of a tight slalom, which caught me out again many times.

• Results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_results/tr12_7_final.htm#ESP
• PAX results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_results/tr12_7_final.htm#ESP
• Picture & Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/SCCA-Crandall-092312/

Can you tell I'm setting this up with low expectations? After the wing was swapped for the spoiler (end of day Saturday at TMS), we kept the now well abused A6's on the car and just ran it in ESP as-is. Barely had time to adjust tire pressures and then we had to work first heat. I was the announcer and Amy worked the computer, which tends to run a bit long. We had to run over and grab the car and our gear, then hustle to get into the "two driver lane" in the very compressed grid area. By the time we pulled up they wanted us to run, so I hopped in and took a run. And promptly DNF'd.

OMG it was slick and the course was very ... quirky. Nothing flowed well, you came into turns all crossed up and pointing the wrong way, and the slaloms were tight. The 180° turn-arounds were also tight tight tight for this big car and I was fighting the course and the car all day. The "slick patches" also caught me out badly on four of my five runs. On my first run, the car got so crossed up that when it hooked up, it kicked the steering wheel back FAST. My thumb hooked on a spoke and when the wheel kicked back it ripped my hand so hard it damn near broke my left wrist. Two weeks later and it still hurts. So I finished my first run one handed and favored my right hand all day for driving. Excuses ... I gots em!


In-car video of my 3rd run is linked above, with ample mistakes.

We also had to rush rush rush to get the driver & numbers switched and barely had time to check tire pressures and spray them a bit to cool them off (it was HOT). Luckily Ed from Pirtek was there and helped us after every run. And who else was running at this event? None other than Jason McCall and his BMW Z3M LS1, which made its debut race at this event!

Jason McCall's Z3M LS1 - It Lives!!!!

Long story short, I drove like crap and wasn't well prepared for this event. Our 8 time ESP National Champion, Mark Madarash, was there in his flyweight Firebird and he schooled the entire ESP class, taking the win and setting Top PAX for the event as well, using only four of his allotted five runs. I fumbled my way through all five runs - getting lost, blowing corners, late into slaloms, DNF'd, double-apexing turns, and generally driving like a total ass hat. On my fifth run I almost put one together, but still lost the brake booster into two turns and blew my lines. Would I have caught Madarash with a miracle hero run? Probably wasn't going to happen, even with a better driver. Our Mustang is still 400 pounds too heavy and needs a lot more to keep up with that proven ESP winner.

The issues we had were also too numerous to count. The brake booster assist failure cropped up for me on all five runs, so that lovely problem has returned. We have yet another replacement vacuum check valve coming from Ford (and another as a spare!) as this seemed to fix the problem after the Optima event in June, where it was a big hindrance.


In-car from my 5th and fastest run is linked above. It is still terrible.

Might not seem like a big deal - losing the vacuum assist - but in this car when the booster goes away, suddenly it really throws you for a loop and blows your concentration. The pedal works fine, but after a long straight with high rpm usage it would intermittently lose assist and you felt like you were stepping on a brick, the pedal doesn't move, and the car won't stop. It wasn't consistent, but it did happen to me on every run.

Looks like much less lean here than at Nationals thanks to the new, stiffer spring rates.

When this happened at the Optima Challenge I luckily had a dozen autocross runs to put one together, and many laps on track to adjust my braking zones. You have to press the brake pedal with both feet and PULL on the steering wheel to get enough pedal movement to stop. It was exhausting at ECR back in June, but after we replaced the check valve in the booster it went away completely at the next ECR event in late June. So... just like the S197 front wheel hubs (we're on the third set in two years), the vacuum booster check valve has become a wear item, with spares to be kept in the race trailer. Live and learn.


Amy's 5th and fastest run is linked above.

Amy had a pretty good day, finishing third in class and 25th out of 126 in PAX, but she was a solid 1.4 seconds back from me. Just not driving aggressively enough? She got caught out by the slick spots and slalom timing on her best run also, but as always she still looks a lot smoother and cleaner than my hack driving runs. She is adjusting from street tire to R compound grip, slowly but surely. We need to keep getting her more and more seat time - when we all ran in STU for years she would regularly be on the same half second as Brian and I.

I think I need to avoid racing on three consecutive 100 degree days. I never do well in that type of prolonged heat. By Sunday I was sporting a massive headache and muscle aches, which meant I was low on water and salts. Stupid mistakes were abundant. As well as I felt that I drove on Friday and Saturday, I more than made up for it on Sunday with terrible driving. I really wanted to run GTA and this SCCA event, but probably shouldn't have done both.

What's Next?

This weekend, October 6th-7th, is the annual NASA race weekend at Eagles Canyon Raceway - which is what I consider my "home track". We had planned on running the red 2011 GT in TTS and the blue BMW E46 330Ci in TTD, but alas, the painter was delayed and the E46 will not be ready in time. Sucks, because we had run times 3+ seconds quicker than the old record (set by Costas in this same BMW in 2010, on street tires) with the 285 Hoosier R6s we can run in that class. Oh well, we will run the black 2013 GT in TTB (and get slaughtered) and the red 2011 GT in TTS and just have fun. I could get lucky and beat the existing TTS record at ECR (1:58.2), as I ran almost that quick back in June on the old Kumho's with the steering shudder and the old clanking PHB, but who knows? If fast Corvettes show up or the existing 350Z record holder are there, I'm sure they will be shooting to beat that record, too.

After the NASA weekend is a SCCA Club Race and PDX event on October 13th-14th. We had entered both Mustangs for that HPDE-like event, but will likely run the 2011 and the blue BMW there instead. Once the blue BMW gets back from its fresh paint job and gets some on-track laps/video/data, we will put it up for sale. We never drive this car and with seven cars and only room for six at our home garage, we need to "reduce the fleet".

I also have to get caught up on some pictures and text for the initial 2013 GT "ESP" thread. We have already done a lot of weighing and planning, some parts are coming, we have 18x10s on the car, and camber plates are going on today.

More soon!

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Note to S197forums readers: This new thread now contains the first 83 posts in our 2010-2015 S197 Development Thread. When I ported over this thread to this forum in October 2012 I left off the first 2 years of posts. That "2012-onward" thread started below...

http://www.s197forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92238

Now that we finally have a vendor section, the admins asked to move this S197 thread over here. But I wanted to go back and add the first 83 posts that I omitted in 2012, so I added them in this thread (which took me most of a day). I had hoped to merge this "old" set of posts with the 2012-onward thread, but it wasn't possible without manually copying each post over (which I am trying to do, but will take days of work). There are 1086 posts in that thread, and even if/when I have my posts ported over, we will lose all of the comments.



So now there are two threads, separated by years, for the same basic subject: our S197 Development work. The admins locked one down, as it would be a mess to manage. It is what it is... New posts can go here, and replies can be made here, as the old thread is locked. I will continue to port over posts as time permits, and of course we are still doing a LOT of S197 development, with new S197 specific parts coming out every month, so we will continue to add new posts as they are written.

Thanks!

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for Oct 11, 2012: We drove both the 2011 and 2013 Mustang GT's at last weekend's NASA Time Trial event at Eagles canyon Raceway (ECR). I had planned to wait after this coming weekend's SCCA Club Race/PDX event but they cancelled it, so I will share what we have learned now instead. I'm still writing the 2013's first post in its own thread, but it is coming soon. We also did some dyno pulls on both Mustangs and the 2013 BRZ yesterday at True Street Motorsports, so I can share those as well.

Pre-Race Prep

As mentioned in my last post the '11 GT needed surprisingly little prep before this NASA race weekend. We had just run it at the Global Time Attack and a local autocross just 2 weeks prior and all of the then newly added Whiteline rear suspension bits were working perfectly - and with two weeks of silent street use we were all smiles. Other than two more new Kumho V710 tires, an oil/filter change, and the swap back to the winged trunk and race tires, it was an easy prep.



That shot above shows all of the Whiteline goodies. These changes + the slight bump in spring rates are all that were different from the car in June when we ran ECR and I knocked off a 1:58.2 lap, using Hanchey's AIM Solo in-car lap timer. We were back to running Kumhos again, and otherwise on the same suspension (Motons + Vorshlag plates) and running the same power level (430 whp) and aero (our custom mega wing + LS splitter).



The black '13 GT, however, needed much more track prep help - but we only had one day to do it, with the sudden change of schdule on our E46 BMW. While the '13 started out life 45 pounds lighter than the '11, it was much less equipped, and missing the much-loved 14" front Brembo brake package - which also includes wider wheels, and different shocks/bars/springs (we think). We had planned on taking our 2001 BMW E46 330Ci to run at ECR in the TTD class, but our painter needed more time so the car wasn't going to be ready, so we hurriedly put the 2013 GT into some sort of track-ready form.



It was still bone stock, with the craptastic 235/50/18 all seasons, 18x8" wheels, stock non-Brembo brakes, stock pads/brake fluid, and stock base GT suspension (which I think is different than the shocks/bars that come on the Brembo equipped cars). I couldn't bare to run this car this stock, as it would shred the tires and be laughably slow, so we threw some parts at it on the Friday before the event. A set of Vorshlag camber plates took the front camber from 0 to -1.7° (with lowering springs the max negative number is closer to -2.8°), threw the old Eibach front bar from the 2011 on, and slapped on a set of our Vorshlag 18x10" wheels and that old set of 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s that I ran at the Optima Challenge.



As you can see, switching from the skinny 8" wide wheels and 235mm tires to the 10" wide D-Force wheels and 295mm Nittos actually helped the car lose over 27 pounds of unsprung weight/rotational inertia. That is a huge win, but the +60mm of tire should add more grip, too. The crew here tried to convince me to get a set of track-worthy pads for the '13, but I veto'd the idea, as we are chucking the whole stock brake set-up into the trash very soon and I didn't want to waste $300+ on track-worthy pads for a single event. I said "Hey, they are 13" front brakes, how bad could they be?!" I also blew off flushing out the stock brake fluid with some better Motul RBF600 that we stock and sell. Turns out those were two crucial errors in judgement on my part...

NASA @ ECR, Saturday Oct 6

We loaded up the '11 in the trailer Friday night. JasonM made new number and class graphics for both cars and we applied those at about 6 pm - right as the weather went from 80°F and sunny to COLD and overcast. Uh-oh... the forecast looked bleak but I towed the trailer out to ECR early Saturday morning, with Amy following me in the '13. Had to park in the gravel as the place was packed with NASA racers (something the SCCA club racers are sorely missing - more on that in a minute). The HPDE groups were loaded up, as was the Time Trial group, and three big W2W race groups. Pretty good, considering the crap weather and late event date in the year (over a month after the NASA Nationals).



We quickly unloaded and fueled up the 2011 and got our butts to grid. Amy was the lucky driver of the 2011 on Saturday and she ran in the TTS class against a very well prepped C5 Z06, an S197 Mustang AI car with big aero on Hoosiers, and many other quick TT racers. I was the unlucky schlub in the 2013 GT for the day, woefully under-prepped for TTB class - running against TTB fiend KenO and his Vorshlag/AST sponsored E46 M3; he already owned the previous TTB ECR track record at a 1:59.8, which he reset this past weekend by over a second - and he drives the car to and from the track, with a full interior. Anything sub-2 minute is QUICK at this track, too.



Let me back up a second - before the Saturday TT event even began I heard about a fellow TT competitor that crashed coming out of Turn 4 on Friday's practice event. A little tank slapper off into a 2000 pound hay bale that pretty much totaled the right side of this EVO X. So that's two totaled cars in two weeks from local Time Trial competitors - the Mustang at GTA and this EVO here. That sucks, but this is what can happen when you track a car at 10/10ths (or 11/10ths?) Don't forget the potential consequences, and don't short change your own personal safety. Luckily this driver also walked away unharmed, just lighter in the wallet.

Our Previous Lap Times at ECR

So back in early June I ran a 2:03.9 at the Optima Challenge on the 295mm NT-05 street tires, bitching about tires the entire time. The rears would overheat on the '11 within half a lap and I had to baby the throttle everywhere. That was with all of the same aero and the Moton Club Sports but an aftermarket PHB and the softer 450/175# spring rates. Then when we went back in June 23rd at the Five Star Ford track day I ran the big 315mm Kumho V710s, but otherwise the same suspension and aero, and turned a best lap of 1:58.2. Both June events had ambient temps exceeding 100°F. That 1:58 time in June was actually faster than the old track record for NASA TTS class, which was a 1:58.4, set in 2011. So we had thought all either Amy or I had to do was match or better that time from June and we could set a new track record in our street driven Mustang.



Amy went out in the first session, and in the Texas NASA Region the 1st TT session on Saturday doesn't count for the competition, only for gridding the cars in order of speed for Session 2. Kind of weird, but we all know it. Normally the quickest times happen early in the day, like this first session, due to excessive track temps. But this day was COLD, and it only varied from 47-50°F during both days, so track temp wasn't a problem!
She went out and busted off a 2:01 in her first session, which wasn't bad. Then in the 2nd session (or the first one that counted for competition), with no changes other than driving she popped off a 1:58.8!


Amy's best lap in TT session 2, at a 1:58.8

I was floored. She was leading TTS class over some other TTS drivers in real race cars, but in this overweight full street car. I asked her what she did different and she said "I pushed it a LOT harder!" She got out of the car shaking a little but with the BIGGEST smile I've ever seen. Oh man she was HOOKED on R compounds now. This was by far the fastest I've ever seen her run on a road course, and come to find out it was her very first time racing this car on R-compound tires on a road course (I kinda hogged the car at the previous events where we ran sticky tires). "I want some more..."



After her second session we made some lunch, then she hit the track again in session 3, but she only managed a 1:59 lap. We talked to Mike Patterson at lunch about a ride-along for some pointers for her. Mike is a long time AI racer, NASA race director, and one of the gurus at Moton/AST-USA. They went out in an HPDE3 session right after TT session 3 with Mike riding shotgun, giving her advice.



He knows pony cars and this track very well, and showed her a few places to tweak her line, where to track out farther, and some places to brake a tick later in the high speed braking zones. But overall he was impressed with her smoothness, ability to take advice and alter her driving quickly, and the car's lap times. He also raved at how well our 2011 GT soaked up some of the more notorious bumps at ECR, stating "That's the best handling street car I've ever ridden through turn 8 in at this track!" Gotta give credit to his own shop's custom Moton shocks (with DDP pistons + custom valving), and the new Whiteline S197 suspension bits.



So after this 4th session for her that day she went back to the trailer and we fueled up the 2011 once again. She was ready to try some of the new tricks Mike taught her in TT session 4, and the weather was still chilly but otherwise conditions were unchanged. Her main rival in TTS for the day was in a yellow C5 Z06 Corvette had just busted off a 1:57.5 but she felt she still had some left and was going for it....

(continued below)

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

(continued from above)



During her warm-up lap I saw her arm go up, signaling "pit in", and she came into immediately to the hot pits. I went over to see what was up and she said the rear brakes were making a horrendous noise - and I looked at the rotors, and both were split! It probably happened between her 4th session on track while the car parked down at our trailer, sitting in the cold wind cooling down. We had heard a slight noise going up to grid in TT session 4, so I got out, walked next to the car, and listened... then it went away. Couldn't see anything. But as soon as she braked hard once on her warm-up lap the rotor splits opened up. Just a single half speed lap like this wiped out the nearly new rear Porterfield R4 pads, too.

• Saturday TT Results: http://www.nasatx.com/resultspoints/...aturday_TT.pdf
• Vorshlag Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...SA-ECR-100612/

We quickly put the car in the trailer and bombed back across town to Vorshlag. Ryan met us at the shop with a pair of new rear rotors he picked up at O'Reilys and he swapped those + some used Porterfield R4S pads we typically used for autocrossing/street use, just on the back. The front 14" brake rotors and pads looked fine. We reloaded the car and got some sleep.

How About the 2013 in TTB?

Yea, about that. Well we had nobody there shooting pictures for us all day Saturday, so I don't have any "action pics" in the '13, and with only one video camera we didn't get in in-car vids of the '13 either. That's probably all for the best, as it was pretty terrible on track. I cannot describe in words how awful this car turned and braked. It was rather remarkable. Sure, the 5.0 Coyote V8 made boatloads of power, and the NT-05 tires worked "OK" in these frigid conditions (finally didn't overheat!), but the brakes were atrocious and the handling is best described as "boat like".

ECR is a little bumpy. OK, it is a lot bumpy, but with good shocks on our various track cars (ASTs or Motons) we don't notice the surface humps, heaves and bumps at this track almost at all. This 2013 GT was on the OEM shocks, and I'd swear they were 200,000 mile blown shocks and struts if I hadn't seen the odometer reading 600 miles with my own eyes. The front end was porpoising up and down about a foot all down the back straight. Even the corner workers we talked to at lunch remarked at how bouncy and floaty the car looked. First session best time was only a 2:10, but that session doesn't count for times.



Even with maxed out camber, which did help me from shredding the outside edges of the front tires, this car was a hot mess. Like driving a guided missile - all kinds of power, but with minimal turning and no way to stop. The handling was like this: it would turn in, then keep rolling, then bounce through the corners and flail around, seeing both top and bottom of suspension travel several times per corner. Just awful. The base GTs must have a set of noodle shocks and springs. And we even had an Eibach front bar set at full stiff, to try to fight this massive bodyroll. And big 295mm tires on the thing, up from 235s. It was all "lipstick on a pig" with the stock suspension, though. This car needs better shocks and springs BADLY.

By TT session 2 the base GT's 13.2" front brakes were going away quickly, and by that session I realized the brakes only had ONE hot lap in it at a time, then needed a really slow cool down lap to get the brakes to come back. I was braking the '13 a solid 50 to 100 feet sooner than in the '11 but it was still barely staying on track. And one time, it uh....didn't.

I was coming down the back straight in TT session 2 at what the (second, borrowed) AIM Solo later said was 115 mph. I go to brake for turn 7, down shifting from 5th to 3rd... but there were no brakes. Pumping madly, nothing happening. I could say I was still "getting a feel" for the stock pads and braking system but I was abusing the crap out of the car, to try to make better lap times due to the abysmal handling. It was too much and the front brakes just didn't have anything left. I won't blame the equipment, because I bought the car on purpose without the Brembos, then left the craptasic stock pads and fluid on there, then over-drove it; I have to blame myself for not having the forethought to replace these critical OEM bits + the extra abuse I was laying on the car.

So in TT session 2 on Saturday I went WAY off the end of the back straight, still doing about 80 mph, even though the entry speed is about 50 mph (according to the data I was doing 123 mph and slowing down to 51 mph in the '11 GT - lots of braking). The corner workers had a good laugh at lunch. "We thought that car would never stop!" I was a good 100 yards off in the dirt, but the tall and soft 4x4 stock suspension at least soaked the off-roading up well enough. Only evidence was a little stalk of grass in the grill, and otherwise zero damage. I got off lucky.



Turns out the front brake pads were done by the end of TT session 3, as shown above. Went from brand new full depth OEM pads to a hair off the backing plates in three sessions. Half of the pad material seems to be sitting there inside the front wheels, where I parked after coming off track! Since we had no times in TT session 1, and I earned a big fat DSQ for TT session 2, I had to go out and nail down something in TT session 3. Surprisingly, with much attention paid to the quickly fading brakes, I nailed down three laps in the 2:07s with a best of 2:07.33. By then my nerves were as shot as the brakes and I changed my role for the rest of the day to "Amy's support crew". I finished 3rd out of 4 in class, well behind KenO's 1:58.678. Oh well, not very shocking... since the car had no shocks!

I am glad I got to experience the nearly bone stock '13 on track, so I can be better informed when I talk about how important suspension upgrades are for this S197 chassis. After running in the beautifully handling '11 GT all day, Amy had zero desire to drive the '13 on track for Sunday, so we drove it back to the shop, following the truck and trailer pulling the '11 in for rear rotor replacement.

NASA @ ECR, Sunday Oct 7



Sunday TT Results: http://www.nasatx.com/resultspoints/..._Sunday_TT.pdf

Sunday we pulled up back at the track and quickly unloaded the '11 GT. I was driving it that day and Amy was support for the day - but secretly she hoped for a session or two in the car. She was still REALLY pumped after tracking it all day Saturday. We put in a little fuel and got to grid in time. The weather was again 47°F and warmed up to a balmy 50, with a little less wind than the day before - but still plenty cold. The schedule showed the same cars entered, with Michael Perkins TTS C5 Z06 the biggest threat, who won Saturday's TTS class with a best lap of 1:57.5. TTA was a good 2 seconds quicker that day, so I was worried that a certain EVO might jump up to TTS to reset the track record in this class - but they weren't listed in TTS (yet).



I went out and pushed hard in Sunday's TT Session 1 and got a best lap of 1:57.354, and was the quickest TT car in the session. Out again in TT Session 2 and ran two nearly identical 1:57.14 laps, only a couple of tenths faster. Mike Perkins took his TTS Z06 to a 1:57.390, so it was close! I didn't know at the time (they didn't get his class right until session 3 results were posted) but Josh Dunn's TTA classed gutted EVO had jumped to TTS for Sunday and was already running a 1:56.471.

For TT Session 3 I pushed a bit harder in a few spots and managed two more 1:57.11's, with one of those watching the AIM having a Forecasted 1:55.8 lap, right until I put two tires off exiting corner 11 onto the front straight. GRR! I knew the car had a high 1:58 in it but I couldn't even break the 1:56s in three sessions, which was very frustrating. It was in this session that Josh Dunn had cinched the TTS class with a 1:55.326, and the results finally showed him in TTS, so I knew I was out of contention for the day. Oh well, I took to TT session 4 with a vengeance, determined to get that 1:56 lap, just to make that personal milestone.


Click the image above to see in-car video of Terry's best lap of 1:56.33

So the two hot laps from TT session 4 in the video above were hectic. I passed 3 cars in traffic to a 1:56.9 lap, then had a semi-clear lap of a 1:56.343, with a car spinning off track in front of me (I lifted a bit there to make sure he wasn't coming back on track). I talked to the driver of the black TTS S197 Mustang, and it is a soon-to-be-AI car but he was running on Hoosiers, makes 400 whp with a 351W, and the car was about 200 pounds lighter than our '11. It looks like I was only catching him under braking, and most of that into turn 7.



By the end of the weekend on Sunday Amy and I were both utterly exhausted, but we both felt really good about our lap times. She wanted one more shot at the car on Sunday but after seeing how close to a 1:56 I was she let me take all 4 sessions. For Sunday I finished 2nd place to the EVO, a full second back, oh well. I beat the old TTS track record by 2 full seconds, so damn the new record! A 1:56.3 is still pretty darned quick for a full weight street car with good suspension, some aero, and two engine bolt-ons, I feel. We have had a lot of racers tell us the same thing in the past week, too. Mark Smith reset the American Iron track record at ECR with a 1:59.848, in a Boss 302-S, for comparison. The best ECR lap I had run prior to this was way back in 2008 in the E36 LS1 Alpha car, with a 1:57.2 in a gutted 2500 pound BMW with the same 315mm R compounds. We discussed our lap times and any ways to improve them in this car over excellent TexMex food from Fuzzy's Taco Shop in Sanger, TX, located at the interstate outside of ECR. This is the perfect post-race meal!

Explain The Gains

What made the 2 second improvement in this car since June 23rd? That is a BIG jump in time for a car that is otherwise unchanged, and one that we have driven so much at this track (I am not really "learning to drive the track better", having made many hundreds of laps here in the past five years). The only changes to the 2011 GT since our 1:58 laps were the slight bump in spring rates (which I detailed in my last post) and the addition of the full suite of Whiteline S197 components. I might sound like a broken record but this Whiteline stuff really has transformed the car, which we have noted at the Solo Nationals, GTA at TMS, and at NASA at ECR this past weekend. The Watts Link is the big game changer, but their swaybars, LCAs and rear relocation brackets helped, too. This stuff works, and more importantly, it doesn't make any racket on the street.



I am very, very impressed with the Whiteline parts and apparently you guys are responding to our positive results, with a lot of Whiteline S197 (and BRZ!) sales in the past few weeks. Thanks.... because in the end, that helps us keep doing what we're doing: trying new products, designing our own parts, and racing on them to prove what works and what doesn't.

Dyno Testing

So on Wednesday of this week we took three of Vorshlag's project cars to True Street Motorsports in McKinney for some dyno testing.



Nothing earth shattering here, just a routine "check-up" dyno pull on the 2011 GT and a first "Baseline" pull on the still stock 2013 GT and Matt's 2013 BRZ. Weather kind of sucked, with 100% humidity plus spitting rain, and even with SAE standardized corrections the 2011 tested a tick lower than the 430 whp pull on the same dyno back in Spring, but still pretty close at 424 whp.



The 2013 also made exactly what I thought it would make at 376.9 whp - within 1 hp of the 2011 GT when it was in stock form (378.5 whp). Ford re-rated the Coyote 5.0 in 2012 with an additional 8 hp (412 -> 420) but it didn't show up on our dyno test. Me thinks it was marketing fluff.



Still, 377 whp is nothing to sneeze at, and most of the reason why the 2013 was able to knock down that 2:07.3 lap at ECR. Like I stated above, the only thing it had on track was horsepower, as the brakes and handling were pretty much crap in stock form, in my view. It was a big floaty missile, that once you got it pointed in the right direction would gobble up straight-aways, but sometimes fly off the end of them. We were a solid 4 seconds faster on the exact same set of 295mm street tires with just better suspension/brakes in the '11 GT, and the 47 hp difference between these cars wasn't where we made up 4 seconds. Then we were fully 11 seconds faster with the tweaked '11 GT on slightly wider R compounds. And driving the '11 GT was much easier and confidence inspiring.



The overlay dyno chart above is showing all three cars: the 2011 GT with headers and a cold air (plus a custom tune by True Street), the bone stock 2013 GT, and the bone stock 2013 Subaru BRZ. Look at the shapes of the dyno curves for the stock vs modded 5.0 GTs - they are remarkably similar. The big 1-7/8" Long Tube ARH headers and the Steeda cold air added torque and horsepower EVERYWHERE, with zero loss of torque at any RPM. In fact there is an extra "torque hump" on the '11 at the extreme low end (2500-3200), which is very noticeable street driving both cars back-to-back. For the 2013 GT's headers I am again going with the bigger of the two primary options on the ARH long tubes, as it is simply a win-win over the 1-3/4" primaries (as ARH told me, the 1-7/8" full length units "make more power everywhere" than the smaller primary option).

The little BRZ made 167 whp, which was more than I thought it would. About right for a car rated at 200 hp (meh, so it is about a 16% drivetrain loss). And yes, our 2013 GT stickered ($31K) almost the same as the BRZ ($27K), but the GT was actually purchased for several thousand dollars less (with that $1500 rebate, + it is domestic and therefor they deal). But you don't buy a BRZ or FR-S for horsepower, you get one because it is a nimble RWD chassis that weighs almost 800 pounds less than the solid axle GT. Completely different animal. You can read more about our exploits with the "FT86" chassis in this thread on VoMo forums, also located on NASIOC, 'Carvers, RRAX, and SCCAForums.

What's Next

I swear the 2013 is getting it's own thread very soon. We have been removing parts, weighing things and gathering all sorts of interesting data on this car, so the new thread will have some new information worth reading. Our 2011 GT project thread here will continue, as we plan to keep tracking and street driving the red car.

The next event for the '11 is the Five Star Ford track day on Nov 17th at ECR. Vorshlag will be there with our trailer and some of our race crew to help support the many Mustang drivers likely to attend. We can help check your alignment, help set tire pressures, and will be giving ride-alongs in the red car with me or Amy driving. That should be fun!



The 2011 was back to street duty on Monday after a wheel swap. After we leaned on Wednesday that the SCCA PDX event was cancelled the crew here at Vorshlag swapped back to the stock trunk, too. The 2013 GT is badly in need of a bunch of suspension parts, to rid it of the 4x4 look and parade float handling. The uber-light brakes we will use are another three grand, and there's the LS back seat delete kit that is only another $900 more. Another set of custom Forgestars would be help, then we can get to cutting the fenders to make the big tires fit. I really need about five grand to build or buy what we need to get started. Hopefully my 2001 BMW E46 330 will sell for good money in the next couple of weeks (it just came back from the painter yesterday and looks flawless!) and I can use some of that cash to throw at the 2013.

I am almost done writing our "How To Build your 2011-2013+ Mustang for Track Use" article, too. Our entire crew is helping contribute to that one. We have had customers asking us for "the wish list" so we finally put it down on paper. Err... electronically. In that article we will finally list out which modifications we think help lower your track times the most, and in which order we recommend doing them in, with some budgetary numbers along the way. We also will list out what options to look for when ordering or buying a 2011-13 Mustang as well - "How to Buy a Mustang The Right Way".

More soon,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Reply from November 2, 2012...

Terry, it was nice meeting you and Amy, you guy's are very fast! Just to clear somethings up, don't want any AI guys to think my car isn't legal. My wrhp is 365, about 15hp shy of what i'm allowed for a 3,435 lb car, it was my wrtq that was 400, still legal and i was running on 275's all around. You were right about my brakes, they weren't stopping me, i had to use the tranny to slow the car down, losing time in turns 1 & 7. Sorry about not giving you a waive by, i was going to on the next straight, i had just run my 1:58.6 the prior lap and was trying to best it when i spun! (first time at the track). I wish i had my Medical waiver, it would have been fun running against the AI guys, just glad i won't have to run against you and Amy anymore! LOL!

Thanks for getting my numbers straight, Mark. It was nice meeting you at the event, and congrats on the 1:58.6 lap! That would beat the new AI qualifying record. And as you know, ECR is brutal on brakes. And you didn't hold me up, as I ran my fastest lap of the day during "that lap". As for the brakes, we've had pretty good luck at the various Texas tracks with front brake ducting + Porterfield R4 pads on otherwise stock 14" Brembo brakes.



This week at Vorshlag we're working on the current NASA AI/ECR record holder's S197 in our shop right now, Mark Smith's Boss 302-S. We've already found several things to improve, repair, update, and make lighter. The exhaust on his S was almost bone stock (stock manifolds, cat-delete center section, with GT500 mufflers) so we're making a custom X-style lightweight exhaust system now, as well as doing some other upgrades. This system will be tucked into the tunnel and dump right at the rear axle, likely saving 35+ pounds over the OEM bits. Once we get the exhaust finished (later today) I'll show the exact weight lost then we'll shoot a little video of the car, with some sound numbers.



One of the many unique parts we've seen on this 302-S was the carbon fiber front backing plates with an integral 4" duct. These are quite a bit larger than the 3" ducting/hoses we run on our car and might be worth upgrading to for S197s that see extreme brake abuse.

Again - nice meeting you at ECR and hopefully we'll see you in the AI race group next time.

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

November 9, 2012...


Finished the custom exhaust on Mark's Boss 302-S. This system knocked 46 pounds out of the race car (+ another 30 pounds in the light battery install).

I'm guessing that is going to be super loud and raspy as hell. I don't see any way those 3" resonators are going to do enough for you. It looks cool and seems well built but I would bet you guys will add another muffler.

click above for sound test video

Made a peak of 95 dB in two drive-by tests at 50'.

Cheers,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for Nov 16, 2012: Wow, has it been a month since my last update to this build thread? We've been buried and posting on our other build threads, but I neglected this one. We had an autocross two weeks ago (last one of the year) and have a track event tomorrow that we're loading up for. And the eBay auction on my 2001 BMW 330Ci is still going strong (ends Tuesday Nov 20th at noon!). Anyway - busy busy, so let's get caught up with a quick update.

SCCA Autocross, Crandall, Nov 4, 2012

Two weeks ago we had the last autocross for the year lined up. We had the 315/35/18 Kumho V710s still mounted to the Forgestar 18x11"/18x12" race wheels. Hmm, swap to the Hoosiers for this autocross or not? It was the last event of the year and I had the regional class championship wrapped up, so I blew off the extra work of swapping tires and had the guys here at Vorshlag leave those on the race wheels and the 315/30/18 Hoosier A6s stayed on the tire rack. If it was even remotely warm they would probably do all right, and I doubted Madarash would show up to two SCCA regional events in a row (my main ESP competition in this region - the reigning and 8 time ESP National Champion who is brutally fast every time).



Well, I was wrong... he did show up, but didn't run his car. Opie Viets brought his '84 3rd gen Camaro down from his region and ran with Madarash co-driving. And they ran Street Mod, in an earlier heat. Opie's car was similar to Mark's in many ways, and even had Madarsh's old double-adjustable Konis and some other parts of the set-up were the same. But it wasn't Mark's actual 3rd gen, and he told me this past week that it still needed some work. So yea, "I beat Madarash", technically, but it wasn't a real victory - it wasn't his car, running in the same class or heat. But.... I never get to say that much, so I gotta sneak it in whenever I can!

• PAX Results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_results/tr12_9_pax.htm
• Overall Results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_resul..._final.htm#ESP
• Photo and video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...andall-110412/

Strangely I did place 2nd out of 112 in PAX, which was a first for this car. It was frakkin working WELL on those Kumhos!?! So Amy and I drove together in ESP and ran in the last heat of the day. Temperatures were mild all day and there was water on two parts of the course for everyone's runs. It was there in the morning and kept seeping up through some cracks in the concrete pad, so we all had to deal with it. Oh well, could have been in worse spots.



The course was the same as two months ago for the first 1/4, then it had some tight turn-arounds with short acceleration zones coming out, with lots of tight TIGHT transitions. Walking the course I feared losing to street tired Miatas in STR or the narrow slalom buggies in STX, but luckily that didn't happen. Putting 2.5 seconds on STR and 4.5 seconds on STX was unusual for us, but it felt gooood. Even with a lot of tight stuff the big S197 did all right.



Everything seemed to work well that day, for once. The shocks worked brilliantly, as always, but so did the brakes. No "ice mode" or lack of power assist, like the last time we ran here (we put in the 2nd replacement brake booster vacuum hose grommet before the NASA event). The tires were pretty cool all day, but we finally got some heat in them after our 4th runs, which seemed to help. With the new stiffer spring rates we added after the Solo Nationals, and the stiffer swaybar settings that seemed to work best in our private test, the car corners flatter and transitions violently.



A nice surprise was Amy getting interviewed by a camera crew shooting for "Mobil1 The Grid". The interviewer even rode through with Amy and was all smiles after hopping out. They interviewed a half dozen racers so it might not "make the cut", but she put on some good runs and did great on camera, and the car looked and sounded great. She was a tenth off of Madarash's time, and a second quicker than the 3rd place ESP entrant, also a Solo Nationals veteran. The Mustang was just stinkin' FAST that day. So ... we will know if she made the cut when the show airs on Speed (or FoxSports1?) next March, I guess.



An old college buddy and my current engine builder (HKRacing Engines), Erik Koenig, was in town delivering two LS1 engines to Vorshlag, so he stuck around and came to the autocross. We watched some of the event from atop the drag race bleachers then he rode through with me on three of my runs. He taught me most of what I know about autocrossing back from our TAMSCC college racing days, and was the first person I ever rode through with in an autocross run with on race tires - which totally ruined me, and led me to go to college at Texas A&M University in the first place! He used to race well against Madarash in ESP in the early 1990s, so he got to talk to him again after being away from the sport for the past decade. It was good to see him out again and I hope he gets one of his Mustangs back into autocross worthy shape soon. Big shout out to my buddy Ed from Pirtek, who came out to "crew" for Amy's and my runs. When you're driving with two folks in a small heat, with numbers to change, tires to check, shocks to tweak, passengers on every run, and a TV crew shooting video of all of that, this really helps - so thanks!



Above is the in-car video from my fifth and best run. It had a huge mistake in one of the tight 180° turn-arounds, and I blew off the run after that. The right rear started spinning after that flub and I just matted the throttle, pissed off at my mistake, and just drove like an idiot to the finish. And dropped almost 9 tenths?! I am still scratching my head over that one. I guess all of my other runs were worse - and they all did have mistakes. I never claimed to be a good driver, but sometimes I luck into a good run. I didn't hit a cone all day and Amy was also pretty clean with only one cone, and we were stepping on cone bases. She managed 2nd in class and 11th in PAX, also a good placing for her.

This was our last autocross planned for the year. We have lots to work on over the winter to this car, mainly turning it into a more track-worthy car, with the compromises of running "autocross and track and street" down to just "track and street only", as the 2013 GT is getting closer to ESP set-up. We have another set of coilovers on hand for the '13 (AST 4200RR), as well as a Watts Link kit (Whiteline, of course), and some other bits and pieces that we will show in that build thread (I will link it from here when I start it).

Preparation for Five Star Ford track day



So that was two weeks ago and today we're prepping the 2011 GT for another track event. This is an informal HPDE put on by the Five Star Ford of Plano dealership where we got our '13 GT, and the dealer we got that car from is setting this up (Corey White). This is the same group that did this back in June. Weather for tomorrow looks nice and we should have 40-50 cars. Amy will be driving the '11 GT and Matt will be in his BRZ (which got 255 Hankook R-S3s on the 17x9" wheels, Carbotech brake pads, and an oil change today, too).



One of the biggest changes to the '11 GT was a height reduction on the rear wing element. After hearing from several aero experts about the poor placement of our APR 3D wing element ("it doesn't work above the roofline!") we finally got around to shortening our custom built wing uprights. Ryan took 5 inches out of the height and the element now sits below the roof line.

Ryan, and our new tech that started this week Olof, got the Mustang and BRZ cleaned up, inspected, tires swapped, brake pads swapped, and the red car is being loaded into the trailer now. We will be out at Eagles Canyon bright and early tomorrow morning to put in some solid laps in both cars.



The differential in the 2011 GT is fried again, so we'll order another carbon clutch pack rebuild kit from Ford and get that installed in the coming weeks. The left rear outer axle seal is weeping a tiny bit of fluid, so that needs to be changed. The next event for this car is another ECR track event December 8th - the annual "Toy Run" event.

(continued below)

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

2012 Mustang Boss 302-S Prep

During the week of Nov 5-9th we worked on American Iron racer Mark Smith's Boss 302-S race car here at Vorshlag. Figured I'd show this car, as it has some pretty cool parts and capabilities as delivered from Ford. I will show more on this car in a future post, too.



After setting a track record at ECR in October, he brought the car to Vorshlag for some more tweaks, updates, and repairs. We had discussed some weight saving items we could tackle for a good 75+ pound drop in weight. American Iron runs with a power:weight formula, and the 302-S can run a variety of restrictors to go up and down in power. With a lower weight he can run less power, then add ballast to use a larger restrictor for more power at bigger tracks. Flexibility...



The big update we made was a new custom mandrel bent exhaust, to replace the nearly stock parts that these cars come with. We left the stock exhaust manifolds in place, as much as it pained me, and concentrated on a lightweight, high flow race exhaust that included 16 gauge Stainless Steel mandrel bends, two 4" round Magnaflow stainless mufflers, and a custom X-merge, all made in-house here by our fab guru Ryan. The new system stopped just below the rear axle and the car dropped about 45 pounds - and picked up a lot of power.



The entire system is tucked above the bottom of the frame rails and shouldn't ever scrape anywhere, unless it runs over something off track that only hits under the middle of the car. Ryan added heat shielding to the tunnel near the tips, built custom hangers with poly mount bushings, and it looks and sounds amazing.



With the stock air filter/box in place and the stock exhaust manifolds, power jumped from 365 to 420 whp! The old number had a home-brew air restrictor in place, which was changed for a proper restrictor in the throttle body. LG Motorsports dyno'd the car with three different size restrictors and now it has 365 whp again, but a lot more torque than before. He can also run the car at three different weights now and has the dyno charts and restrictors needed for each AI legal set-up.



Ryan built a custom bracket for this sub-3 pound battery Mark wanted to try - and the dang thing works! It charges fast and will start the car at least 5 times in a row with the same charge. Dropped 30 more pounds with this battery, and the old one can be swapped in quickly to add ballast or if the new wiz-bang battery craps out. New front wheel bearings, a strut repair, lots of clean-up work, new fluids in the diff/cool and trans/cooler, and a sound test rounded out our work for the week. Mark was very pleased with the car, the exhaust still managed to only blow 95 dB, and he did well at two races at NOLA last weekend.


Video of the drive-by in the 302-S with a sound meter at 50 feet.

A rear main seal leak (that we warned him about) became worse in those two races at NOLA and a slipping clutch ended his weekend early, after the second race. He managed to secure 2nd overall in AI for the year for NASA Texas, so he was happy with that (he only ran about half of the races). Next year - look out! I suspect Mark's 302-S will likely win even more AI races.

Anyway... this quick post grew a bit! I better sign off and help get the trailer loaded. Until next time!

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

November 19, 2012...

So Teri, where did all that new found power come from? From just the new custom free flow exhaust and a tune? Great numbers!

That's what I didn't write very well, as it was asked on another forum.



So when this car came in it already had a restrictor in place - piece of sheet metal with holes drilled in it, inside the airbox. We didn't do "before" dyno runs, but with that set-up on the stock-ish exhaust it made 365 whp. With no restrictor and our new exhaust it made 420, then LGMotorsports made several restrictors and dyno pulls to get it back to 365 whp. Net benefit was more usable torque, which is still legal with AI rules and his curb weight. But he can also run it at heavier weights with the other restrictor or in ST with no restrictor.

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for Nov 30th, 2012: We had a track event in the Mustang since our last update and Amy set her new personal best lap at ECR. We've also finally modified the 2013 GT with real suspension bits, but that will be covered in that car's own thread. And after a considerable wait we finally have AST 4150s in stock for the S197 Mustang (and Vorshlag bought the entire order)!

Five Star Ford HPDE, ECR, Nov 17th

In our last project thread installment, we were preparing the 2011 GT for a Ford-centric track day at Eagles Canyon, our local 2.5 mile road course that is bumpy, but fun. This is where we do a majority of our testing and where Five Star Ford (a local Ford dealership - and where we bought our 2013 GT) had their first HPDE event back in June. This track is a brake intensive track, as I have mentioned before, and Amy drove the car exclusively all day and took the rear brake pads down to the backing plates. The pads were marginal when we got there and she still managed to get three HARD track sessions in before they started making racket and she brought it in.

Vorshlag Picture/Video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ar-ECR-111712/



Our photo guru Brandon went with us and took some great pictures, and Ed from Pirtek Plano South joined us out there as well. Matt brought his BRZ with our camber plates, some fresh 255/40/17 R-S3 tires and Carbotech brake pads and was tearing it up as well. I came out to watch, ride along and instruct, and to maybe take a few laps in one of our cars. In the picture above, I was riding through with Amy and it looks like I am yelling, but I'm probably saying "Gas! Gas! Gas!", to try to push her to faster lap times.



Ed and I (above right) got Amy's and Matt's cars ready, plus helped a few racers adjust camber or fix some small issues. I rode along with a number of other racers, including Matt in his BRZ, another FR-S driver Stephen F, and Amy in the '11 Mustang. After my ride along with me that day, plus Mike Patterson's in-car instruction from the NASA event in October, and maybe with some help from the new (more effective?) rear wing location, Amy lopped a second off her previous best lap to the tune of a 1:57.7.


Click above for in-car video from Amy's 1:57.7 lap.

This was again a pretty cold day (50s), very similar to the NASA event the month before, and she was pushing her braking zones and using more of the track on both corner entry and exit. She gave ride-alongs to Ed, me, and event organizer and Five Star Ford super dealer Corey White. Everyone had a blast riding along, the spectators loved watching/hearing her car on track, and she had the fastest car on track that day by a good bit. But as one onlooker said, "It ain't got that whistle!"



Vorshlag/AST tester Ken O and another Vorshlag/AST customer Jason had their E46 M3s out there in the Advanced group with Amy, both running Continental road race slicks (made by Hoosier). Ken normally runs 1:57s on Hoosier A6s, but could only get a best of 2:01 on these Conti's. I went out in a session in Matt's BRZ and had a BLAST, getting a 2:10.5 best after getting blocked on one of my few laps (AIM Solo showed a 2:09.5 predictive before that). Matt knocked off a 2:11.0, which was still damned quick especially since he hasn't been on track in about two years! That light, little RWD coupe is fun, with tons of grip and lots of brakes, but just very little power.



At the end of the day, the rear brakes were finally used up and it looked like we had a rear axle seal leaking a little (it melted), so we loaded up the Mustang and headed home. Amy had a grin from ear to ear and couldn't wait to get back out on track! I think we've created a monster - if I could convince her to let us build her a W2W car, I would love to get her out there mixing it up with the AI boys. The next day I unloaded the car at the shop and went to buy a (basket case) '97 M3, for parts, then unloaded that, so it turned into an all around busy weekend.



Repairs from ECR

So at this event the Porterfield front and rear brakes got used up, and then some. We already had a compromised pad set-up on the car, as we wanted to get rid of all of the rest of the Porterfield pads we had on hand, and Amy took care of that. The rears were to the backing plates and the fronts weren't much better off at day's end, but they were worn to begin with. On Monday after the event we swapped on some street pads, turned the rotors, and bled the system.



We have mentioned the Porterfields brake pads in the past, and we have had decent results from them, but when Ryan and the crew have switched from track (R4) to autocross/street (R4S) pads, the pads coming off tend to crumble and fall apart. This has happened to three sets of pads, which each had more than 50% pad life left... we pulled them out of the caliper and the friction material crumbled, fell off the backing plates, and were then junk. This was getting ridiculous and expensive, so we have now switched to another brand. We had even worse luck on Hawk brake pads. Not knocking these brands, just didn't work well on the Mustang.


Carbotech pads going on the '13 BRZ

Before the November 17th ECR event, we ordered some Carbotech pads (XP12 front, XP8 rear compounds) for Matt's BRZ. The pads themselves LOOKED really good - and yes, you can see quality differences in brake pads. After driving the BRZ myself for a session at that event, beating on the brakes relentlessly, and then seeing the lap times and data I logged on this car under braking (1.4g!), I am a believer. The Carbotech pads didn't fall apart or wear the rotors funny either, like the Porterfields have been.

I liked Carbotechs so much we have since become a dealer. Now we have ordered their track pads for the 2011 and 2013 Mustangs and we'll see how these do next weekend. XP20 front and XP10 rear for the '11 (race tires, Brembos, ducting) and for the non-Brembo equipped (ugh) '13 we got XP12 front and XP10 rear (street tires, small 13.2" front brakes, stock power). We will see the results soon enough but I've had several American Iron racers tell me Carbotech were the best pads they have ever used. After seeing the results on the BRZ, I believe them.

So the '11 GT's front Brembo calipers have been rebuilt already, as the dust seals had burned and melted mostly away. They lasted almost two years under abusive braking on this FAT ASS car, at a lot of track and autocross events. After the latest ECR event, Ryan noticed the rear dust seals were melted, along with the caliper guide pin dust boots and rear axle seals. The rear calipers and guide pin dust seals have all been replaced and the rear axle seals will be swapped out for new ones next week, when we rebuild the Traction Lok differential once again. We debated going to a better aftermarket differential in the '11, but decided to "punt" on this decision (we won't race again until late January or early February) and instead ordered another $110 FRPP carbon clutch pack replacement kit. The '13 GT will get the better differential first (likely a T2-R), as it is more important for autocross use than on track.

AST 4150 Coilovers for S197 in Stock

After almost a year of waiting, they are here! The 4150 is a new shock model from AST that is a single adjustable monotube coilover strut/shock combination that we have been waiting for since late 2011. I won't bore you with all of the details, but the development and then initial production took longer than expected; the first sets arrived yesterday. I also won't bury you with too much sales talk, as you can see more details about the 4150 at this link.



There I go over the history of the 4100, the changes to the 4150, and explain how Vorshlag helped in our small way to both develop and get these made. It turns out that Vorshlag was the only AST dealer who was patient enough and who believed in this product enough to put in the orders, and we just received all of the 4150s likely to be delivered in 2012. We have a number of S197 and BMW E36 models in stock, ready to ship.



To allow for the maximum amount of travel in the rear of the S197, we had AST make the rear shocks completely different for us than what they normally do. We've tested these rear shocks three different ways and the configuration we went with allows for maximum total stroke and no in-board wheel interference. We keep the (replacement, coilover style) spring in the stock location, use some AST supplied adjustable rear spring height platforms, and machine our own Nylon adapters to make these platforms fit the S197 chassis. We're making these adapters in house now (I made the pair in the above left picture on our lathe yesterday) and supplying them with each 4150 kit at no additional cost. It is highly unlikely that you will see another AST dealer selling AST S197 shocks made to the Vorshlag spec.

Again, you can ready more about them in this link.

Prizes and Kudos

Just found out moments ago that our red 2011 Mustang won 1st Prize ($400) for the Street Prepared category in the "Black Magic Shine Awards" at the 2012 SCCA Tire Rack Solo National Championships. And can you blame them? That Mustang looks GOOD.



Also received all of the prizes from the Global Time Attack event at TMS. Ken O picked up my Ducati Limited edition Oakley Sunglasses, which are pretty sweet.



We also won a $300 Whiteline product credit at GTA for the class win, which I put towards another Watts Link kit for my 2013 Mustang GT. They also made this video (click here or above, right) where they interviewed me at the GTA event, which they showed in their 2012 SEMA booth on a loop. Pretty cool surprise, even if I look like a bog dork on film.


What's Next?

We have another track event December 8th at Eagles Canyon Raceway once again, but this will certainly be our last track event of 2012. We are taking four cars out there this time: the 2011 GT, the 2013 GT (with a full "Stage 1" AST/Whiteline/Vorshlag suspension installed), Matt's 2013 Subaru BRZ and the 1998 Firebird ChumpCar for its maiden track voyage. This is their annual "Toy Run" event, which the owners of ECR hold in December of each year to raise money and get toys and foods for charity. It is also very very affordable for the racers: $50 + a $10 unwrapped toy + 2 canned food items. As you can expect, it brings out a LOT of people, and many of them are new to track events, or are autocrossers. We go to the Toy Run event every year and ALWAYS have a blast, seeing lots of friends that are track junkies and cone punchers alike. If you are in Dallas, come join in the fun!

MORE INFO........
Contact: Maggie Williams
Organization: Eagles Canyon Raceway
Link: www.eaglescanyon.com
e-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: 817-992-9774

We also have been modifying our 2013 Mustang GT with what we are calling our "Stage 1" track setup. This car is now equipped with all of the most important bits we recommend in our "S197 Mustang Handling Guide" (which will be published soon). See details below.



Vorshlag S197 Stage 1 Suspension Set-up: AST monotube adjustable coilover dampers, stiffer rate coilover springs and a lower ride height; Vorshlag camber/caster plates and upper spring perches; Whiteline Watts Link kit; adjustable front sway bar; Vorshlag/D-Force lightweight 18x10" wheels mounted with 295/35/18 Nitto NT05 tires; Carbotech brake pads. All told this is about $6000 in parts, but it makes a HUGE difference in on-track performance. Ideally this car would have the 14" front Brembos but we are eventually turning this into an autocross-only car, so the big brakes were skipped on purpose. Anyone tracking an S197 would be FOOLISH to not get the 14" Brembos.

This set-up is 100% street friendly, with a great ride that should even get the "wife approved" status. Notice - we have made NO power mods to this Mustang at this stage. The 5.0L equipped S197s already makes 380 whp bone stock, so adding more power should not be in your first round of modifications to these cars. It will only make the car harder to drive until you step-up to larger R compound rubber. Ask me how I know this. Of course nobody listens to that, and modifies for more power first... Oiy!

We will run my black 2013 GT equipped as shown above next weekend at ECR. With a data logger and on-board video we will see how much improvement (if any) we have made over the "baseline" set-up we ran in October (which was these wheels/tires + camber plates only, with a best of 2:07 laps). The Vorshlag crew is also going to be driving Cadillac CTS-Vs at COTA on December 7th - the new Formula 1 track in Austin - the day before the ECR event. Should be another fun weekend!

More soon,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

December 5, 2012...

All was well until that statement, kidding or not. I don't like companies that keep secrets from customers. Any and all questions not answered completely and honestly make my "spidey senses" tingle...sorry.

Well I think we have shared a lot more of our S197 wheel testing than most if not all other shops. There are 224 pictures in this gallery showing a lot of what we did. I purchased over a dozen different wheels to test fit with, many of which didn't fit (or fit poorly), and after testing had to be sold at a loss. Each one was weighed, we verified offset/backspacing, checked caliper clearance, and some of them were race tested.




In the end we found that there weren't any 18x10" or larger off the shelf wheels that actually fit this car, so we decided to make our own run of wheels in conjunction with D-Force Wheels. Big investment in time, money and marketing on our part. So we didn't release our final wheel offset data until the production run of Vorshlag/D-Force 18x10" wheels (see below) was ready to sell. Because we knew that once we sold a lot of these, people would figure it out and share the data quickly - so we did share that "magic offset" (the only number we could come up with that allowed a 10" wide wheel to fit both the front and back of an S197), which was +43mm. It wasn't long after that before people were ordering wheels from other vendors in this same offset and size, and other vendors made their own wheels using these dimensions. It happens, and you cannot keep a lid on everything. We know that. Forgestar sells tons of 18x10" wheels for S197s with this offset.



Vorshlag is always extremely open on every project build thread we make, but when it comes to something we might actually be able to sell, we don't give away things that would be considered trade secrets. We don't share things like the names of our suppliers, or machine shops, or individual part numbers on items we use inside a kit or product we sell. You won't find me posting up CAD prints for our parts, or telling you how much our cost is on an item. To do that would be business suicide. Most people can understand that, if they look at it from our point of view.



Likewise, the offsets on the custom set of 18x11 and 18x12" wheels we have managed to fit under the fenders of this car took a lot of time, money and effort to perfect. We know that many fewer people will run that size, because that takes a lot of compromises and variables put a certain way to make them fit. And it is not streetable. Then you have to realize that we are a Forgestar dealer. So if you want to get a similar set, we'd love to work with you, and we have the best Forgestar prices allowed. But we're not going to share the offsets openly. One of the few "hold backs" you will see.

It's not much of a secret, I sure they are running somewhere between 55-62 +/- a couple mm to fit that wide of a tire in the rear. I was just curious to know the exact offset in case anyone was looking to run that wheel combo.

Digital - We both know from tampering with Forgestar wheels that they offer a wide range of offset to suit/ make it possible to throw some thick tires out back.

Exactly. You can figure it out on your own if you don't want to work with us to get a set made by Forgestar. The guys at Forgestar won't give away our offsets either, and even if they did it might not be the right one (we've tweaked them since our first order).

Honestly I try to discourage most people from using the 18x12" wheel on these cars. We had to switch to a Watts Link (Whiteline) to minimize axle movement and then to a reverse mounted swaybar (Whiteline) to make room for these wheels, inboard. It isn't an easy fit. And for extreme track or autocross use they still aren't big enough. So on our 2013 GT we're going with at least 18x13 if not 18x14" rear wheels, so we can run the largest Hoosier or Kumho race tire made (345/35/18). That will take heavily cut fenders and fender flares.



But for 95% of the racers out there, just going to the proper offset 18x10" wheel is a huge step up in performance. Those can and DO fit very well, both front and back, and will swallow a 295mm tire.

Cheers,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Quick Update for Jan 18, 2013: I've been waiting for something to be published before I posted again, so I'll hold off on a big thread update for maybe another week or two. A lot has been going on in the background.



NASA Time Trial classes had a bit of a shake-up for 2013 but it was only minor tweaks and things worked out in our favor, for a change. We've gone from TTS (now called TT2) essentially down one class to TTA (now TT3), and we can run now run this car at the limit of the power to weight ratio. No more "well, it was overweight/underpowered", it is maxed out. Apparently this new mix-up has made TT3 the most popular class, at least for this first NASA Texas event. We have 9 cars signed up in the TT3 class, so far.



We're loading up the trailer right now to take the red 2011 Mustang down to the NASA Texas event at MSR-Houston later today for races on Saturday and Sunday. Amy and I are splitting up the driving duties over both days. Will post a much more detailed pre-/post-race report when we get back. Well, then I'm flying to New Orleans for a couple days to drive on some new BFGoodrich tires, so it might be late next week or the following. Hoping to get some good intel on this new "Rival" street tire they are making (for autocrossers and track guys that need a 200+ treadwear tire) as well as bend the ear of tire engineers about the R1 and R1-S race tires.

More soon,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for January 29, 2013 : We have a lot of ground to cover on the S197 Mustang thread. so look for several updates over the next week or two. Our last real S197 thread update was in November, and a LOT has happened behind the scenes since then - with respect to future competition in our 2011 and 2013 GT's in SCCA Solo ESP for 2013, plus several track events. We will also cover the new NASA TT3 classing and our first 2013 competition (with a track record + double-win), a track event in December with both of our S197s, the whole Watts Link/SCCA debacle, a new shock/spring set-up we've been testing on S197s, and then the BFGoodrich Rival tire launch event that I attended, where I got to test with four different types of cars and seven types of tires at the NOLA Motorsport park, including FR500S Mustangs (former Miller Cup cars). This set of updates will be broken up into multiple thread posts over the next several days, otherwise it will be too long and I won't get any sleep - and I've been on the road, racing various cars for four of the last five days, then sick with a stomach bug, so I'm beat. Let's back up and start with the preparation on the 2013 GT before the December track event first...

2013 GT Coilover Shock Install

The last time we took the 2013 Mustang to ECR, it was on the OEM shocks and springs and the handling was "frightening", to say the least. The car was hopping and flopping around, like a fish out of water. Lots of lean, roll, dive, and all that bad stuff we are used to on OEM sprung/damped S197s. Our long term plans at the time still included SCCA E-Street Prepared class preparations, but we would still do a track event or two before we got too far down the rabbit hole of autocross-only modifications.



Obviously a big improvement we could tackle that worked for both autocross and track use was to add our normal monotube adjustable coilover upgrade. Since Vorshlag sells AST and Moton monotubes, plus some others, we had several options that would work. We picked up some AST double adjustable coilovers with remote reservoirs for an S197 (AST 4200-RR), a custom test set made by AST-USA for a former employee. These were built with racing style "eye-to-eye" rear shocks, just like the Motons on our 2011 GT. On this car, however, I wanted to keep them "pin" style on top, to allow for the rebound knob to be located in the trunk for easy rebound changes (see above, left). An eye-to-eye shock tends to have the rebound knob located under the trunk floor and, like in the case of our Moton CS shocks on the 2011 GT, we have to remove a rear wheel to adjust rebound. It is a hassle, and that adjustment almost never gets tweaked. so we end up using the same setting for street and track use (which is a shame). So we asked AST-USA to re-work the rear shock shafts to have a traditional top pin and used it with the OEM style shock mount. They swapped out the shafts and adjusters to our favored eye lower/pin upper style and now the rebound knob is easy to access.



Once these were built to our liking, Vorshlag fabricator Ryan fashioned some reservoir mounts for the rear shocks, and cut holes in the trunk floor "spare tire well" to route the reservoirs through without disconnecting the hoses (which is a PITA) - just like on the 2011 GT. I asked him to tweak the angle of the reservoirs to be able to see the knobs easier from behind, which he did. The reservoirs were mounted into the spare tire well using the 2-piece "Seals-It" brand grommets to make this hole water tight. He mocked-up the seals with temporary Clecos, then used small machine bolts and nuts to hold them in place. If the shocks need to be removed from the car, the 2-piece grommets can be unbolted then the reservoir can slide right through the now open hole... no mess, no fuss. The other mounting/routing option for shock reservoir hoses is to drill much smaller holes/grommets and add (very costly) quick-disconnects on each shock line. Even then you still have to bleed off the Nitrogen charge before disconnecting the hoses, and re-fill the N2 when reinstalling. We feel this "big hole/2-piece grommet" arrangement is easier to deal with in the long run, and it is less expensive - but there are a dozen ways to skin this cat.



The front struts were not that unusual, being a typical non-inverted 22mm shaft monotube with rebound knobs on the strut shaft top and the compression knobs on the remote reservoirs (just like the rears). The hoses were long enough to route underneath the inner fender structure and mount the reservoirs just about anywhere in the engine bay. Ryan made some additional reservoir brackets for the front struts, but unlike our 2011 GT this car still had the factory airbox in place (everything is still bone stock under hood, for the lower 380 whp output). This meant we couldn't mount the reservoirs in the same place as on the '11 (which was blocked on this car by the giant OEM airbox), so we thought about it and placed them vertically in the airstream behind the headlights.



Shock reservoirs need to shed heat when they are working (they turn motion into heat), so we always try to keep them cool. Mounting them so that they get cool air from the front end seemed like the best idea. This location doesn't "show them off" as well as elsewhere, but so be it. I've seen some racers place remote shock reservoirs near the worst sources of under hood heat - like above a turbocharger (I've even done this myself) - but you really have to think about where you mount these things to keep them cool. A boiling hot reservoir will not allow the shock to perform nearly as well as one that stays closer to ambient temperature.



As you can see in the "Before and After" shots above, the ride height on the 2013 GT is significantly lowered, with the front dropping 1.25" and the rear dropping nearly 1.75". This gets rid of the huge front-down rake these cars come with and lowers the CG significantly. The spring rates we used were somewhat mild, with 450#/in in front and 225 #/in in the rear. This makes for a very decent ride on the street, but still a sizable bump in spring rates over stock, for better track handling (well, at least the front rates). See the updated spring charts below for the base 2013 GT OEM springs, the 2011 "Brembo GT" OEM springs, and the '07-08 Shelby GT spring rates (equipped with the FRPP M-5300-P springs).



Click the charts above for larger image... LEFT: 2013 Base GT. CENTER: 2011 "Brembo" GT. RIGHT: M-5300-P/'07-08 Shelby GT.

Since I first posted several OEM S197 Mustang spring rate tests, we noted two problems: first, we weren't compressing the springs nearly far enough. We were barely getting them compressed enough to even approach static ride height. So we upgraded our digital spring rater to a new "ram" to allow for 15" of spring compression vs the 4.5" it came with, which let us test over a wider range. These newly tested Mustang spring rates then become much more linear as we tested them over a wider displacement range. Second there was an error in our calculations for "rate at compressed height" that has also been fixed in our default spreadsheet. The measured force numbers never changed, just how we were showing them (rate of rate change vs rate at position). Sorry for the confusion.

So as you can see, we've upped the front spring rate considerably more than the rear on this car once again, which we have found - from a lot of coilover testing - works better with an S197, both on track and on the street. The bigger rate increase up front cuts down on brake dive, body roll and camber loss under cornering forces. It also reduces understeer caused by bottoming out of the front suspension. This 450#/in spring also makes the car transition much faster than with the ~100 #/in rates. Luckily the adjustable AST monotubes do a fine job of managing the 4.5 times increase in front rate. You won't see OEM-lowering springs in this spring rate range because the typical shocks these are used on (OEM style) cannot deal with those spring rates.

(continued below)

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

(continued from above)

ECR Toy Run - Dec 8th, 2012

People sometimes wonder why we are based in Texas... "Your summers are so hot!", they say. And while we DO have 2-3 months of a little heat (okay, a lot of heat), we have 12 months of racing every year. This allows us to race and test every month, and we don't have an "off season" huddled away from the cold with nothing to drive. Sure, we had a couple of snow days around the holidays, but nothing that prevented us from missing a track day or autocross.



Vorshlag picture gallery for ECR Toy Run - http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...un-ECR-120812/

So, we were racing in December and back on track again a few weeks later in January, like we do every year. I wrote about the December 8th ECR "Toy Run" event twice already: in part three of my December 28th post in the BRZ Project Thread and in my December 20th update on our Firebird ChumpCar project thread - some of which I have re-inserted here. All of us at Vorshlag had gone down to Austin and driven Cadillac CTS-Vs all day the previous day (Friday) at the new Circuit of the Americas F1 track. That event was a TOTAL BLAST, but when we finished we bombed back up to Dallas, grabbed the Vorshlag race trailer, grabbed McCall's truck and trailer to tow the ChumpCar, and drove two more cars to Eagles Canon Raceway before dawn for Saturday's annual "Toy Run" open track event. We got there and stacked our trucks, trailers and cars in a big clump and set up shop.



With four cars on hand we were a little busy - luckily we had Pirtek Ed there to help "crew chief" all of us (shown above talking to me in the black '13). He wrangled the five drivers and four cars and kept us all going all day, so... thanks Ed! Matt brought his BRZ, we brought the 2011 Mustang and Amy drove it all day, and I drove our 2013 GT on the new AST 4200-RR coilovers. Two of my racing buddies (McCall and Magyar) and I are also building a ChumpCar using a V6 4th gen Firebird and we ran it for the first time that day. Since this was a charity event, they asked the instructors to take passengers for ride-alongs at $5 a pop, and for $10 donated we would ride-along with anyone and "instruct". Between me and about 7 other instructors we raised an extra $600 that was given to a local food shelter, and we gave some kick ass rides to people in some quick-ass cars. I lost count of how many times I went out on track in the '13 and the ChumpCar, or in other people's cars (I drove a GT500 Mustang at one point), but it was a LONG and busy day. Too much fun!


Our 1998 Firebird V6 has been dubbed "F-Turd"... luckily it ran great.

The ambient temps were much colder than the November lapping day and Amy's and some others' lap times were a solid 1-1.5 seconds off their times at the Ford event, when the weather was a bit more favorable. Still, our black 2013 GT, which we base-lined in November, was a solid FOUR SECONDS faster with nothing changed other than the coilover shocks & springs (which were still pretty damned soft at 450F/225R). The same Vorshlag camber plates, same D-Force 18x10" wheels and 295mm Nitto NT-05 street tires, and same bloke behind the wheel (me). I have taken many hundreds of laps at this track since 2008 and wasn't "learning the line", but instead felt like I was wringing every millisecond out of this car. We went from a 2:07.7 to a 2:03.3. A keen observer will note that this 2013 GT, with no aero, bone stock power and the exact same set of wheels/tires, was faster than our 2011 GT was in June at the Optima Challenge event. A lot of that is probably the difference in temperature, but a lot of it was the fact that the car was easier to drive with less power. These Coyote 5.0 engines have plenty of go in stock form, so we would suggest upgrading the suspension, tires, wheels and brakes long before you start throwing more power at your track Mustang. Nobody listens to that, of course.



This was a pretty good suspension test, in my opinion. We know this track well and we ran this same car with the same set-up minus the shocks/springs a month earlier. Not only did we drop four seconds on a two minute lap, but we took the car from a bucking, portly pig that was rolling and brake diving and porpoising around this somewhat bumpy track and turned it into a calm, flat cornering car that was nothing like the OEM suspension'd Mustang any longer. I cannot repeat this enough: a bump in spring rate along with proper monotube adjustable coilovers will completely TRANSFORM these cars. The shocks that Ford installs are equivalent to $50/corner Autozone specials. Even the "adjustable" shocks that come on the Boss 302 LS are not good at all - Tokico adjustables are only a small step above the Autozone fare that comes on the GT's. The longer you run on track the more the performance in twin tube shock degrades in handling, as well.


Of course I couldn't resist a little hooning for the cameras... with the stock 380 whp, it's just too easy!

It isn't so much about how many adjustments the shocks have, or the reservoirs, but the type of damper being used. Monotubes are technically superior to twin tubes in every performance measurement, and their MUCH larger pistons can react to bumps much more rapidly and effectively. They tend to have more of an adjustment range and can deal with a wider spectrum of spring rates. We didn't make this a gut busting, over-sprung race car set-up (450F/225R), but instead mildly improved the front rates and kept the rear rates nearly stock. At the same time we lowered the car 1.25" or more at each corner, for a flatter "stance" and a lower Center of Gravity - which directly improves cornering grip. The lower ride height added negative camber, as it always does on McPherson strut cars, and this also helped improve front grip and lower front tire wear.


Andy Hollis giving the point-by from his OLOA race prepped CRX to Amy's '11 Mustang GT.

Amy had fun in the red Mustang and ran a bunch of 1:58 laps, sometimes with a string of 3 or 4 in a row within two tenths. Just couldn't get back down to the 1:57's she ran at the ECR event in November. These old Hoosier tires are just dead, and have "compounded out". We used and abused these for GTA, lots of autocrossing, and multiple track days. They still have tread left, and the wear is perfectly flat across the tread, but they are just getting ... slower. And we still used these same tires at the NASA event at MSR-Houston in January. Just like most folks, we have a fixed racing budget that isn't unlimited, so sometimes we gotta win some tires to get new ones. The rest of the car was flawless and the Carbotech brakes were phenomenal once again. The twice-rebuilt TractionLok differential is utterly gone but again, we need the budget to recover before dropping $700+ on a Torsen T2-R. Meh, we can deal with some imperfection - this is a stick axle pony car after all.



Matt had an uneventful, but fun day in the BRZ. We luckily didn't have anything explode, fall off or catch on fire in the ChumpCar Firebird. It was a big hot mess, and we uncovered some new issues in this fiurst track outing, but we made it through five sessions and three drivers and still drove it onto the trailer for the ride home. The 2013 GT suspension test was great and the 2011 GT was flawless all day. Overall, this ECR Toy Run event was a lot of fun and a very informative test. I have to thank the ECR track owners for putting this much-discounted event on for the 5th year in a row, and thanks also to Brad Flak for corralling the drivers and instructors. As usual, the Toy Run's ultra-low price tag attracted many first time track enthusiasts, including many local autocrossers. Hopefully this exposure to road course driving gets them a little more hooked on doing HPDE events. This worked in the past for myself and many other fellow (and many former-) SCCA autocrossers, like Vorshlag tester KenO - who was a blur around the track all day (above right and below left).



Another Vorshlag tester, and BMWCCA LSR president MarkW, was also on hand in his 1M (above, right), pushing his Vorshlag 1M camber plates and finally wearing front tires flat instead of chunking the shoulders. You 1M owners can thank Mark for the Vorshlag 1M camber plates. His constant stream of camera phone pics showing torn up front tire edges spurred the production of the OEM perches that make this fitment possible.

D-Force 18x10" S197 Wheel In Stock

Back by popular demand is the 5x114.3 bolt circle 18x10" D-Force Racing lightweight wheel. This ET43 offset wheel fits both the S197 Mustang and GR chassis Subaru STI without spacers. There are dozens of sets in stock in both Silver and Flat Black colors. These may not last too long, like last time, and will probably sell out before the next batch arrives. If you want a set, you can of course order them through Vorshlag. Thanks!



That's all we have on this December ECR event and the prep leading up to it, but I have a lot more writing to do to get caught up on this S197 thread. We have several more posts for this thread coming soon, so stay tuned for more.

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

January 30, 2013...

+1 - I'm dying to hear about these. Seems like the price point is very close to Nitto NT05s so I'd like to hear how you feel they compare since you have ran those before iirc.

The BFG Rival tires were incredible. I'm in the middle of writing my review... and 5 other thread posts. I am way WAY behind - sorry guys.



more soon!

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

January 30, 2013...

We got our lines crossed and 19COBRA93 asked this in another thread, but meant to ask it here - so I will bring my response to him here, to keep from junking up that other, non-related thread...

How do you like those NT05's for the track? I'm looking for a good street/track tire and those are ones I'm considering.

I feel that the NT-05 is pretty much one of my least favorite tires I have ever purchased. The grip levels are pretty mediocre and they tend to overheat when pushed hard. It is too easy to do this with very little effort...



Notice a pattern? Those 2 cars are being driven at the same track on the same tires, 6 months apart, and at differing power levels (380 vs 430 whp). NT-05s are on my "naughty list". They got really greasy in higher ambient temperatures, too. I've had much better luck on Bridgestone RE-11, Yokohama AD08, Hankook RS-3 and Dunlop Direzza SS Z1s on our S197s.



I mean, sure, the size was nice (295/35/18) and it fit our Vorshlag/D-Force wheels well (18x10 ET43) and the package fit the car well (see above). But this was just not a very grippy tire. We got these for use at an Optima Challenge event, and I won the autocross portion and placed 3rd in the track portion, but I felt like I left a lot behind. At this same road course a few months earlier, on narrower Bridgestone RE-11s in 275/40/18 size I was quicker - in the same car. Those Bridgestones were damned good tires, but at 180 TW they weren't legal for Optima use. So I was pretty disappointed in the wider NT-05's performance.



At the time we purchased these 200 TW tires there were very few options in the wider 18" sizes we were looking for (295-335mm), but now there ARE better, faster options. The BFG Rival comes in 295 and 335mm sizes now, for one. Look for my hands-on review on that tire, tested against many others, later this week.

...My advice (posted frequently!) to anybody that is getting into the scene is to stick with street tires until you can make them sing all the way from turn-in through apex, and into the track-out phase of EVERY corner, EVERY lap. At that point, you know, for a fact, that you're getting 100% out of the tire itself, and have reasonably good consistency. Now you can be certain that the tires are the limiting factor in the grip equation!

Excellent advice and I concur 100%. Learn on lower grip street tires, which have a more forgiving range of usable slip angles and that TALK TO YOU loud and clear, master your CAR CONTROL on these tires, and wring the ever living crap out of the tires. I also feel that learning car control is easier (and safer) in an autocross format than on track. It might be painful to limit yourself to 4-6 runs of 60 seconds or less on a given day, but you can learn a LOT and really PUSH the car without the potential for damage that sliding off course on track brings.

Then take this new found driver skill -car control- out to a road course... and you will be much further in your driver development along than those that only do road course events, from my experience. There are new skills to master there, of course, and some autocrossers have trouble turning off that "10/10ths" switch... and can have a lot of "offs" early on. Track driving takes more acute driving judgement, to juggle the increased risks, but this can be learned with experience.

Also, getting into R-compounds too soon can cover a LOT of driver-error and still make you look like a hero. The real goal is to learn how to drive the car at the very limit of adhesion; get it balanced on that knife-edge.

Once again, I completely concur and we have been preaching the same gospel for decades. I call it the "R-compound Crutch", and I see new drivers that move too quickly to R-comp tires learn bad habits but they are covered up by the mountains of grip these tires provide. You can run "Faster" but you personally reach a plateau that you cannot break out of if you "jump to R's" too soon.


Left: Racing in the Optima Challenge on 200 TW Nitto NT05 tires. Right: Racing in NASA TTB class on 180 TW Yokohama AD08 tires

When I am working with students, be it at autocross schools or HPDE instructing, I always ask them to resist that R comp urge... ask them to stick with 180-200 treadwear (or higher) street tires for at least 2-3 years, to better master their driving skills with the added audio feedback these lower grip tires can provide, then switch to Rs.


Above: We had fun in STU class for many years, racing in BMWs and various AWD boost buggies

For so many years there was no place for Street tires in SCCA autocrossing, but starting around 2003 SCCA (finally) created the category of Street Touring classes, which exploded in growth. These classes use 140-200+ TW street tires and we jumped into the category and ran there in various cars and ST classes from 2004-2011. It is hard to give up the "R compound crack" after so many years, but you readjust and learn to go fast on lower grip tires. Our "per-run tire costs" dropped radically when I gave up Hoosiers/Kumhos/R compounds, of course.


Brian's EVO X MR running on Yokohama AD07 tires - for street, autocross (STU) and track events (TTA)

Later, with the introduction of NASA Time Trials and their points based classing, street tires had a place on track competitions as well. This made for a car that could be daily driven, autocrossed and tracked in competition with the same set of tires. No more schlepping a different set of wheels/tires to a track or autocross event, you could change them at home and drive there and back on the same set. Some folks left them on full time, while others still swapped them out to harder tires for the daily commute (to keep their ST tires "fresh").



And of course there was always One Lap Of America's events, which demanded street tires. And then Optima Challenge switched to a 200 TW formula, followed by Goodguys and many others. The $500 endrance car series, 24 hours de Lemon and Chump Car World Series all require 200 TW tires, which we have begun testing with on our ChumpCar. Even drifting is done largely on non-R tires, to better to lose grip with I suppose? So the tire manufacturers have responded to this huge new demand and there are nearly a dozen great 140-200 TW ultra high performance tires out there. It is almost overwhelming. But this flood of options it has brought prices down a bit, and gives racers many choices.

It is a great time to be racing on street tires. The tire choices are better than ever, the competition for your business form tire manufacturers has never been hotter, and there are dozens of groups and classes to compete with them at. We still switch back and forth between R compounds and street tires, depending on the event and rules. Our set-up doesn't change radically, either, but we do tweak a few things. I will continue to discuss these changes as we do several more street tire events in our S197s in 2013.

Thanks for reading,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for February 2, 2013: This thread update covers the first 2013 NASA Texas race weekend we attended in the red Vorshlag 2011 Mustang GT. This January event is always held down south of Houston, but is sometimes plagued by poor weather (rain or cold). I was going to skip this event, but peer pressure worked and pushed both me and Amy to attend. I'm glad we did - the weather turned out to be extremely nice and we had a total BLAST running the red 2011 GT in the new TT3 class.

I will back up a bit and talk in more detail about the classing tweaks that NASA made for 2013, which I hinted at in an earlier post in this thread. This is the first significant classing change that I have noticed in TT since we started running this series in 2008. It looks bigger than it really is, as most of the changes were mostly to the class letters/nomenclature, but there were some substantial changes to TTA (now TT3).


2013 NASA TT Class Updates - Letter vs Number Classes

None of what is written below is official or approved by NASA, just our overview and interpretation of their rules. Don't take our word for it - read the rules yourself if you want to learn how to class your car for NASA TT. These rules only span 54 pages and only parts of that will even apply to a given entry. If you get mired up in the classing though, don't worry - we're here to help. Matt and I at Vorshlag have helped class hundreds of new folks into NASA TT. We have our own "class configurator" that is normally more up-to-date than the one's NASA makes. Shoot us an e-mail and we can help get your car classed, free of charge: info (at) vorshlag (dot) com, with a subject of "Help with NASA TT Classing". We can help with SCCA Solo classing as well, but that might involve substantially more tortured logic.

2013 NASA Time Trial Rules: http://www.nasaproracing.com/rules/time_trial_rules.pdf

NASA classes each Time Trial car into a "base class" and gives it a "base race weight with driver". Each base class has a "base tire width". Some cars have handicap points in their base class, denoted by one or two "stars". One star = +7 penalty points and two stars = +14 penalty points. Then modifications each cost "points", and you get 19 points to play with before you bump up a class. Running below your base race weight costs points (but heavier gains you points back). Running more tire width than your base size costs you points (but narrower gains you points back). The points for parts eats up most of your allotment, but whatever you change you can never violate the power-to-weight limit for a class. It sounds confusing, and it kind of is... but only because it is so unconventional. But this type of classing is also liberating, fun to explore, and competitors can "bench race" set-ups with different mods to play with their 19 points in class. Or you can go buck-wild and use more than 19 points and bump up a class... then you get a total of 39 points (or more) to play with. Make sense? You can keep adding mods or lowering weight or adding power to keep your car at the competitive limit for each up-class jump you make. This is how the new "letter" classes work (TTB-TTF)


Vorshlag built entries for NASA TTD and TTA classes.

Our Intro to NASA Time Trial article, circa 2008: http://www.vorshlag.com/tech_timetrials.php

This means you can have a Miata with wild aero, sticky Hoosiers, and a supercharger racing against a nearly stock E46 M3. And oddly enough, it works, as there is always the power-to-weight element... measured horsepower and measured weight reign everyone in. There are not "categories" to jump up, and anything can eventually be classed with almost anything else, if a given car gets modified radically enough.



In 2012, beyond TTA were the top three classes which were always strictly power to weight based, with no more points to play with. I now call these the "number classes", but in 2012 they were TTS, TTU, and TTR. There are "modifiers" you can exploit, to get you a little more power or a little less weight, if you have say... a 4 door vs a 2 door, or use a 275mm or narrower tire, etc. Otherwise it is strictly power to weight based. When we first started racing our 2011 Mustang in TT (see above), it was in TTB, but since it came with the Brembo brakes (+2), no decklid spoiler (+4), and the CS front lip (+3), we had very few points left to use. If we had added R compound tires and any exhaust mods the car would be easily into TTA and then even into TTS on points alone, due to the SCCA class allowances and rules we were focusing on (STX then ESP). We ran a few TT events with our STX set-up and it was difficult to manage the the narrow-ish street tires (just like it was in autocross!), but our ESP set-up with 315mm Hoosiers or Kuhmo race tires worked pretty well, but bumped us clear up into TTS. We almost won the November ECR TTS class, until a TTU car bumped down their power and ran quicker and beat us. Oh well, we were still too heavy and/or underpowered for TTS, nowhere near the power to weight limit. It was what it was... we were building our car around SCCA rules and letting the TT classing fall where it may. Other than adding the transponder, a brake pad and rear aero change, our Mustang was still set-up around ESP autocross rules for most of the 2012, even when run at NASA events.



Let's look at the old vs new classes in NASA TT, of which there are still 9 classes total. Nine classes, not 427 classes, like in SCCA Solo. Just sayin'. Anyway, most classes had little to no change other than a more clear naming style (numbered classes are power to weight only, letter classes are still points based). Here are the changes from 2012 to 2013, mostly affecting just one class...

NASA TT Classing - Name and Ratio Changes
2012 ... 2013
TTR -> TTU (Unlimited Wt/Hp)
TTU -> TT1 (5.50:1 Wt/Hp)
TTS -> TT2 (Was 8.70:1 Wt/Hp but went to 8.00:1 Wt/Hp)
TTA -> TT3 (Was 8.70:1 Wt/Hp but went to 9.00:1 Wt/Hp) For TT3 only, non-OEM Aero is a 0.5 modifier (in effect requiring 9.50:1 Wt/Hp).
TTB - 10.25:1 Wt/Hp
TTC - 12.00:1 Wt/Hp
TTD - 14.25:1 Wt/Hp
TTE - 16.50:1 Wt/Hp
TTF - 19.50:1 Wt/Hp

As you can see, before there was some overlap with TTS and TTA both having the same 8.7:1 power to weight ratio. But TTA - TTF were still all "points" based as well as power to weight, whereas TTS was only power to weight. Modifications in TTS were relatively unlimited, with those modifiers for certain limitations. So in reality TTS and TTA had very similar on-track performance. Now with the new TT2 and TT3 ratios and the removal of points based modifiers, they have effectively made the difference between TT2 and TT3 more significant and it creates more places to run your car, and more time difference between the two classes.

In order to keep it interesting in TT3, they also let you choose between a 9:1 and a 9.5:1 ratio. If you keep "stock aerodynamics" you can go with the more attractive 9:1 ratio, but if you want wings, splitters or other aero changes you get the 9.5:1. Still lots of room to tweak and play ... and bench race. And since we are in TT3 now, we get to strategize and play with more aero vs more power. Kind of looking forward to testing this.



As you saw in my last "mini-post", we went with TT3 and we chose the 9.5:1 ratio with alternate aero. Hard to give up the big rear wing and front splitter after you've tried it. We had to add a few pounds, but with our most recent dyno of 424 whp, and the +.6 modifier for running over 3750 pounds with driver, we were able to get a race weight of 3775 lbs, with driver. Here's the math.

3775 lbs / 424 whp = 8.903 pounds per hp... +.6 modifier (for running over 3750 lbs) = 9.503:1

So we were ready for TT3 and maxed out on the power-to-weight. How would we fare at MSR-Houston? Honestly, I didn't have high hopes. We would be running heavier than ever, and I don't know that track well. I've driven it twice before, but once was in the rain on street tires at stock power levels and the second time was last year at TX2K12, where we had massive tire problems (some used Hoosiers I brought kept popping internal cords and coming apart) and still nowhere near the preparation level the car had in mid-2012 to now. There were nine people signed up in TT3, the biggest TT class so far, and I was hoping to crack the top three if I put in a good run. The old TTA track record for MSR-H CW was a 1:44.3, but I couldn't remember what we ran there before going this direction. The tires we were taking were dead though, so I was very unsure of the performance potential. We were also going to share the car, with me driving one day and Amy the next, so we would only get about four sessions each. Time would tell...


NASA @ MSR-Houston, January 19-20th, 2013


NASA ran MSR-Houston's 2.38 mile course Clockwise this race weekend.

After making some new number and sponsor/product graphics for the 2011 Mustang GT, we loaded up the trailer and Brandon (Vorshlag's uber-photographer), Amy, and I left Dallas on Friday afternoon and towed 5 hours to the south end of Houston. We arrived at the track late, unhooked the trailer in the pitch dark, and headed to the hotel a solid 20 miles away.



Sunday, Race Day One

Next morning we got in before dawn, unloaded the Mustang and went to tech to get our 2013 Annual Tech sticker and renew our logbook ($10 for the year). We had NASA decals to apply, two transponders to mount and test, and a hundred other things. It was quite chilly, with temps in the low 40s, but the weather outlook was warming for the afternoon and predicted to be warmer still on Sunday.

Vorshlag photo gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ouston-011913/

The guys from Evo-Dynamics brought four EVOs and a GTR down from Dallas and hung out with us at the Vorshlag trailer all weekend (see our "foggy paddock" above). We had shade, lots of chairs, and lots to drink. Lots of fun was had with these guys all weekend, both on track and off. That's half the fun of a NASA race weekend - hanging out with fellow competitors and friends between race sessions, shooting the bull, bench racing, talking a little smack, and having fun.



The morning was pretty hectic for me, as I was both competing in Time Trial as well as instructing, which meant I had to go to three meetings that morning: instructors (missed it!), Time Trial and HPDE, to meet my students. I had an HPDE2 student driving in a beautiful and well prepped Porsche Cayman S. I rode along with her for three sessions then picked up a 2nd student later that day and Sunday.

I was so rushed that morning that I forgot to turn on my transponder in my first TT session, which meant I got no time. Normally that's not a big deal, as the first TT session on Saturday in NASA Texas doesn't count for competition, just for gridding. So this meant I was at the back of the grid, mired in slower traffic, for all of TT session two. Never got even a remotely a clear lap, but was quick enough to move up to grid position 10 out of 44, based on those session two times. Then in TT session three I was quickest of the group, which was mainly because the TT1 guys sat out, which moved me up to P2 in TT session four. So surely now I could get a clean lap or two without traffic...


Click above to watch in-car video of two laps in TT session four, in 1080P.

So TT session four wound up being perfect for getting fast laps, eventually. After chasing John Gross' TT1 C6 Z06 for part of the first lap, I watched him take the "agricultural line" into the Diamond's Edge corner, while I was giving Josh's TT2 car a point-by. Diamond's Edge is a tricky, fast corner where I enter in 5th gear, tap the brakes at the brake markers, turn in, let the car corner hard, then get back on the gas and brake for the tight 2nd gear corner at the end of the sequence. Then you touch three curbs through a wiggle at the end and accelerate back down another long straight. There is a lot of time to be made or lost into the braking zone in this corner sequence and John just got a little overzealous. He wasn't the only one using more than the track allowed that weekend, but luckily I didn't add my name to that list.

Saturday Results: http://www.nasatx.com/resultspoints/...aturday_TT.pdf

Old track records for MSR-H (CW is slower than CCW): http://www.nasa-tt.com/Texas_Track_R...6_articleid/11



Of course, there was no contact or crashes of any kind in any TT session (there never is), and the only real carnage was John's ZR1 splitter (now a "6 piece unit") and a couple EVO motors were served up to the Gods of Boost. Some dirt and grass was killed, but nothing bad. There were a lot of E46 M3s in TTB (and one that got bumped to TT3), with KenO leading the pack once again, but winning by a mere tenth of a second over Allan Page. Three of these M3 racers all run the same AST 4200/Vorshlag camber plate set-up and a 4th entrant has our plates - and he wants shocks. All of these M3's are driven to the track and are still street cars. Very cool.



So my fourth session went well and I got a couple of clean laps, finally. After chasing Josh for two laps, I busted off a 1:42.1 and 1:41.5 laps, then caught the back of the field and came in after four laps. The tires were DONE and I didn't want to risk a spin and get a DSQ for the session. So when I came off track I was told to head to the tech shed for a weighing. No problem, I should be fine. Errr... the fuel level was lower than I had planned and I missed weight. Damn! That DSQ'd the session, but my times from previous sessions (1:42.0) were still fast enough for a class win, still with a nice margin and new track record. We went and re-weighed a few times that afternoon and added enough extra ballast in the car to be legal for Amy on Sunday. We overshot by 50 extra pounds, "just in case".



Josh Dunn was fast in his EVO running in TT2, and he and I swapped best times with each other all day on Saturday, with Josh's TT2 drive edging me out by tenths at the end of the first day (and he went faster still on Sunday). At the end of the day's racing, there was a great banquet by the NASA folks and everyone stuck around to eat, drink, and hang out. There were trophies presented to last year's regional class champions, based on points earned over the 2012 season. Then we hit the hotel and crashed.

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[Vorshlag-Fair]

(continued from above)

Sunday, Race Day Two

Each new day on a NASA weekend makes for a new Time Trial competition event, so all of our times on Saturday were now thrown out (except for grid placement in session one) and we had to start the day anew. Four more TT sessions were available to shoot for our best lap time in class. Amy was to drive the Mustang in three of those four sessions, under her new car number "197" this day (S197... 197... get it?), so I made sure her transponder was charged and mounted, and my wired unit was turned OFF during her sessions. To make sure there were a minimum of seven drivers in TT3 class for Sunday (to help "make the class" for better contingency payouts) I was going to hop in for one TT session, unless she was really on fire and wanted the car all to herself.


Joe D's 2013 Mustang Boss 302 Leguna Seca.

Since I wasn't racing for most of the day I took on another student and worked with a customer/friend of ours in his 302 Leguna Seca. He made big strides and we bumped him up to HPDE3 by day's end, with HPDE4/TT probably only a couple of weekends away. In order to show the line to another student, I took the Mustang out in an HPDE3 session and made some 8/10ths laps, which he enjoyed immensely. Amy was struggling with grip and was mired in the 1:45s all day, with most of her laps only tenths of a second different from each other.


Mike P taking it 2-wide into Turn 17 during an AI race.

I spent most of my time Sunday as Amy's "track b!tch", or so she named me. It was nice to spectate a bit and I got to watch some insane American Iron and CMC battles in their race group. Mike Patterson was "super-sized" and ran in both Time Trial and American Iron, with a 3rd in TT3 on Sat and 4th on Sunday, plus a win in AI on Sunday as well. Not bad for his first event since he returned from some mid-season repairs last season - congrats!



Sean Farrah (above left) was having a ball in his Scion FR-S, running in TTE (he normally races in a TT2 classed 350Z) with the new Enkei 17x9" wheels and some mild suspension tweaks. He placed a respectable 4th in TTE in his relatively stock FT86, only a couple of seconds back from class leader Ken Brewer. It was good to also see Pranav Patel (above right) in his LT1 powered 4th gen Camaro for the first time on track. This future CMC car did well that day and he was working on getting his comp license, running in HDE3.


Left: We were quick enough to be gridded in P1 in a number of TT sessions. Right: Taking Amy for some recon laps on Saturday morning.

Like I said, Amy was struggling with learning the track and kept complaining about low grip. So when I went out in TT session three, I quickly found out what she meant - the tires, which had already seen a long hard life, had really degraded on Day Two. My best lap was a 1:42.536, fully 1 second slower than Saturday. I had clear track and felt like I had put in a good lap, but the car just wouldn't corner in the higher speed sweepers (Turns 2, 6 and 7) or transitional sections (Turns 8 through 13). Oh well, we got our money's worth and then some out of this set of tires.

Sunday TT Results: http://www.nasatx.com/resultspoints/..._Sunday_TT.pdf

Still managed a class win with 7 entrants on Sunday, which should be good enough for two more tires, for a total of four Hoosiers for the weekend. Can't wait to get these mounted up before MSR-Cresson event March 16-17th, where I think we are running the 3.1 mile course again (which merges the 1.7 and 1.3 mile courses for a big, technical course with a bunch of turns). And I just made a deal on a pair of 31 spline Torsen differentials - a new Torsen T2-R and new T2. So we'll have a real differential in the car for March, finally!



We wrapped up after the final HPDE sessions and before we loaded the Mustang into the trailer, Brandon took a few more pictures against a backdrop of a field with some electrical towers... Mmmm.



We said goodbye to our friends and competitors and hit the road for a long drive back to Dallas, stopping in north Houston for some damn fine Cajun food at a Pappadaux. Great weekend, lots of fun, but a bit hectic with the instructing and talking to folks stopping by to look at the Mustang. We had a few from the W2W groups stop by, after seeing the times we were running (again outpacing our American Iron race group, with the same power-to-weight ratios and carrying about 500 extra pounds). Most everyone remarked how little safety equipment we have in this car, and I agree - so we're pulling the trigger next week on a 4-point roll bar kit from Maximum Motorsports. This will provide a more secure cross bar to hang the shoulder straps from and give us some roll-over protection, "just in case". I am not a fan of full roll cages in street cars, and Amy doesn't like me cutting on her street car, so this will have to suffice.

What's Next?

After we got back to Dallas on Tuesday morning, I flew out to New Orleans for two days of fun at NOLA Motorsports Park, testing tires at the BFGoodrich Rival tire launch. I will post about that in my next thread update. We have the T2-R to install, the roll bar, and a few other suspension goodies that I will show once they are installed. We might have some new transmission mounts as well, if the prototypes show up in time. These could hopefully cure the shifting issues we're seeing, due to the body mounted shifter. When the drivetrain is loaded up mid-corner, it is sometimes impossible to make a clean shift. Amy and I both noticed we were early shifting or holding a gear longer, to avoid these mid-corner up-shifts. Just isn't possible for the drivetrain and shifter assemblies to synch up sometimes, when the big heavy motor + trans are loaded up and under power.


This was the weight with me in it, as we unloaded it from the trailer... with WAY too much hastily added ballast in the trunk. Needs to be 3775.

We are also going to work on a trunk-mounted, easy to adjust ballast system, so we can get the car closer to the 3775 pound minimum weight for our TT3 set-up, and swap known ballast amounts between Amy and I, since I outweigh her by a good bit. To get some additional rear bias, we are thinking of moving the small 14 pound engine-bay mounted battery to the trunk, and replacing it with a more sizable Optima Red Top. We are at 53% front weight bias (and 49.9% cross) in the picture above, but that is with a LOT of extra ballast in the trunk. We over-shot the minimum weight to be safe for both drivers using the same ballast. The roll bar structure will likely add 60 pounds mostly to the rear, and then the larger battery relocation, then whatever weight plates we need to make minimum will be in the trunk. Oh, check out the "motion capture" photo of the '11 GT that Brandon shot, using the new modular camera rig that he and Olof built. Pretty cool.



I just ordered a brand new tow vehicle from our buddy Corey White at Five Star Ford of Plano, a red 2013 Ford F350 Diesel 4x2 DRW, which should be here at the middle to end of March. I think I just sold my 2006 Dodge Cummins MegaCab 3500, so I might be truck-less for the NASA/Cresson event. If so, we'll have to drive the Mustang the two hours to the track and mount the Hoosiers there - oh, the horror! I have two other posts started for this thread as well as the now very late BFG Rival review, so I need to stop here so I can get caught up. Going to work all weekend and write write write! With the shop closed and the phones ignored I can get a lot more done.

Thanks for reading,