continued from above
Amy and I parked the car in the car show area and ran into the Fuzzy's Taco Shop that is inside TMS. We ate some good Tex Mex and warmed up, then went around and talked to some friends we saw also parked in Winner's Circle area, like Stuart in his GT500 SuperSnake and Wade in his 32 Ford. They told us the whole awards presentation was moved up an hour due to the weather, so we hopped in the car and got in line, then drove past the bleachers and announcer tent to get our winnings.
Official Results: https://www.good-guys.com/slsn-ac-14
Vorshlag Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/Goodguys-Autocross-at-TMS/
Left: Amy was not pleased when I took this picture while she was thawing out from the cold. Right: The Goodguys goodie bag was immense!
A nice trophy accompanied the awards packet (linked at the beginning of this section). Free set of tires from BFG and gift cards and deeply discounted certificates from other sponsors - nice! Can't get Rivals with this but it will help ease the pain of that $1300 set of tires (again - ouch!) that we got to run this and the USCA event. After that we followed the mass exodus leaving speedway, loaded up in the trailer, and headed home by 1 pm - which has to be a record early end time for us at any given autocross. The other event we would have been at if not for Goodguys, the Texas Region SCCA Solo #1, had 193 entrants and ran for most of the day in these same miserable conditions, so we lucked out on our early departure that day!
Some Random Mustang Work
We work on a lot of cars in our service and race prep shop, and one of those recently was Vorshlag Tester Mark Council's 2012 Mustang GT, who is also the OKC Region SCCA Autocross Chairman. We've already swapped his car from 3.55 to 3.31 gears, which he really enjoys for autocross and track use (no 2-3 shifts in parking lots and fewer shifts on track as well). This car has Forgestar F14 18x11s, AST 4150s w/550F/250R springs, Vorshlag plates, Whiteline swaybars, and a Torsen T2R.
We had installed a Cobra Suzuka GT kevlar racing seat into his car a while back, using the custom S197 bracket we make to go with the Cobra slider and Cobra side mount brackets. He loved the new Corbeau S197 Harness Bar, new seat and 6-point harnesses and raved about how much more control he had gained with this seat. He drives the car to events from as far as 5 hours away, and does a lot of track and autocrossing in the car, on both street tires (295/35/18 BFG Rivals) and R compounds (315mm Kumho V710s).
He loved the new driver's seat so much he went ahead and sprung for a passenger seat upgrade, which any track instructors or passengers will greatly appreciate. If you do one seat you really should do the other side as well. To save a bit he went with the steel framed fixed back Cobra Monoco seat on the passenger's side, which was about half the cost of the kevlar Suzuka. It only has about a 2 pound penalty in weight over the composite seats, and being a Cobra product, it still looks great and has very high quality construction and materials (I ordered some more of these seats for inventory). He skipped the slider on the passenger side and we just mounted the seat fixed to the bracket, fairly far back and lower than it would have been with a slider - which is what we often do on the right side seat.
Another change he had in mind was a new rear Upper Control Arm assembly. After reading what we had to say about poly bushings, Del-Sphere and all of the other variations on the upper arm and mounts he went with some brand new "ultimate" UCA from BMR, shown below. The instillation was straightforward, but still time consuming. You need a lift, removal of the back seat, and a BIG torque wrench for the main bolt (which should be torqued to 250-300 ft-lbs, depending on the brand - see your manufacturer's instructions) to tighten the mount to the chassis. The pinion angle also has to be adjusted, and there is even a second set of holes in the chassis mount for potential geometry changes.
The upper control arm is one of those places where a spherical seems like the right choice, as this bushing has to pivot much more than the LCA bushings do. And to match the new upper arm's spherical he went with a Steeda spherical bushing replacement on the axle side of the UCA arm axis also, per our suggestions.
Getting the OEM rubber bushing out of the axle side is a real B!TCH of a job. The instructions say to cut out the old bushing, but if you make a tool to press it out you can re-use that to press in the new Steeda assembly. Then when you go to tighten the 58mm (?!) hex nut for the new spherical you might need to make a tool for that as well...
After finding a massive 58mm socket for around $35 we had to chuck it up in the lathe to machine the outer diameter down for clearance, otherwise it would not fit in the space between the axle housing and the bushing mount. Really fun job, that one, heh. After all of this work was done I drove this car around our Test Loop (bumpy road we use to listen for creaks, pops and noises plus to test ride quality) with Mark in the car and we both agreed that it makes a LOT more noise inside now. We had previously rebuilt his entire axle with all new bearings when we did the 3.31 gear swap, and the rearend was silent as a church mouse just hours before, but after the double spherical UCA set-up was installed it was much LOUDER inside the car - and he still has the back seat installed. Just know that this particular UCA set-up adds a lot more NVH than you might expect - you will hear all sorts of noises from the rearend that were masked before. Mark said he likes the feel of the new set-up but needs more seat time to give a full review. You can read his build thread on s197forums here and he talks about the new seat and the BMR UCA in post #262.
Another Vorshlag Tester is Jan Maher, who was the first S197 Mustang owner on MCS TT1 coilovers. We've installed all sorts of goodies on her 2012 GT including the reclining Corbeau seats, shown below.
At the recent Texas Region SCCA Solo school, Jan had entered in her 2012 GT, while one of her two daughters that race, Shannon entered in her 2011 GT. They were both brushing up on some autocross skills to use in the many track events they enter - always a good idea to learn things like car control and LFBraking in a parking lot, where the only thing to hit are cones. Amy and I both worked with Jan that day, and while Amy was instructing in her car I happened to be riding with another student and noticed a broken wheel stud on course. I'm sort of OCD about finding and removing "FOD" on an autocross course so I hopped out of this car, stopped the course, and ran out to pick it up. It was a broken OEM wheel stud with what I recognized as one of our Vorshlag lug nuts on it. That narrowed it down to about a half dozen potential cars at the event, and I quickly found a missing stud on Jan's front wheel.
I took her the broken part and let her know the bad news - she wasn't racing in Sunday's autocross with a busted wheel stud, so she co-drove in Shannon's GT instead. With over 50K miles on Jan's car and lots of track miles it was probably a good idea to replace the front wheel bearings anyway (they are a known wear item - usually they make noises and clunking when they are bad), so we brought in a pair of new hubs using the M-1104-A Ford Racing kit, which come pre-installed with "longer and stronger" (insert joke here) ARP front wheel studs, are pre-greased on the hub face, and include two new spindle retaining nuts.
We've installed these FR hubs before (our 2011 GT is on the 3rd pair in 4 years - again, the hubs take a beating from lateral load and brake heat, and it is a known wear item), but noticed that this M-1104-A kit now comes with new front hub retaining nuts, which we used to order separately. This monster spindle nut has to be torqued to 250 ft-lbs and is a "torque to yield", one-time-use piece of hardware. Make sure you have a torque wrench big enough and rated high enough for this torque level - it took all of my weight plus a lot of arm strength to get these nuts torqued today. After a brake pad swap, some new brake fluid bled, and a full HPDE tech inspection at our shop Jan's car is fixed up and ready for USCA this weekend.
Getting Ready for USCA
We're running at full throttle around here getting our car and 5 others ready for the Ultimate Street Car Association event this weekend. We have multiple sets of tires to mount (Rivals, Rivals and more Rivals!), the hubs and pads on Jan's car, some brake repairs on Shannon's car, and much more to do. My Mustang is finally getting Schroth harnesses installed today before we load it onto the trailer. One of our customers has a couple of Miatas and he is bringing one of them to compete int he "under 3000 pound" class, with Rivals.
And at the end of the day today we have a company dinner at a German place where we will get together and raise a glass to toast Ryan, our head fabricator who is leaving us in about a month to go back to school full time. Really sad about that, like losing a member of the family... but he has great things ahead and we wish him the best. I've already hired a new shop foreman (Texas Region Solo RE, Brad Maxcy!) and we'll have a listing up on our jobs page soon for the fabricator position that opened up. If you have lots of automotive race prep and fab experience, love long hours and low pay, this could be the opportunity for you!
Please send your resumes to [email protected], thanks.
Hoosier tire winnings from this weekend stacked up next to a new set of 225/45/15 BFG Rivals for Mike M's Miata. Wow.
This weekend's 3 day USCA competition is looming heavy and I'm hoping more people will sign up at the last minute. Once again the Dallas area racers seem to find nothing but excuses when a big event like this rolls into town and I fear that we might not get another one if the attendance stays low. We lost the GTA event in Dallas after a dismal local turnout in 2012 and I've been calling people all week to try to get them to enter USCA this weekend. I worked out a deal with the organizers for a HALF PRICE entry ($250 vs $500). Use the word "SCCA" in the order notes and you will receive a $250 refund on your entry fee. Please feel free to call me at Vorshlag today if you are interested in going but have questions: 972-422-7170. I'm not associated with the USCA and neither is the SCCA, this was just a discount code hoping to grab local areas SCCA autocross racers and Time Trial entrants.
I'm pretty excited about this event. Rolling out there tomorrow at 11 am to set up the trailer, get their event decals installed, and start the 80 mile road rally. We have our car inspected, tagged, and all legal-like for street use, so I'm not worried about the Friday street drive. The weather looks good for the weekend so I'm hoping we can have another strong showing in the autocross, a better showing than last time in the speed stop (fingers crossed that the new ABS unit works!) and of hoping I do well on the "1.04 mile" (aka: 1.36 mile) TMS infield road course on Sunday.
Until next time...
Amy and I parked the car in the car show area and ran into the Fuzzy's Taco Shop that is inside TMS. We ate some good Tex Mex and warmed up, then went around and talked to some friends we saw also parked in Winner's Circle area, like Stuart in his GT500 SuperSnake and Wade in his 32 Ford. They told us the whole awards presentation was moved up an hour due to the weather, so we hopped in the car and got in line, then drove past the bleachers and announcer tent to get our winnings.
Official Results: https://www.good-guys.com/slsn-ac-14
Vorshlag Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/Goodguys-Autocross-at-TMS/
Left: Amy was not pleased when I took this picture while she was thawing out from the cold. Right: The Goodguys goodie bag was immense!
A nice trophy accompanied the awards packet (linked at the beginning of this section). Free set of tires from BFG and gift cards and deeply discounted certificates from other sponsors - nice! Can't get Rivals with this but it will help ease the pain of that $1300 set of tires (again - ouch!) that we got to run this and the USCA event. After that we followed the mass exodus leaving speedway, loaded up in the trailer, and headed home by 1 pm - which has to be a record early end time for us at any given autocross. The other event we would have been at if not for Goodguys, the Texas Region SCCA Solo #1, had 193 entrants and ran for most of the day in these same miserable conditions, so we lucked out on our early departure that day!
Some Random Mustang Work
We work on a lot of cars in our service and race prep shop, and one of those recently was Vorshlag Tester Mark Council's 2012 Mustang GT, who is also the OKC Region SCCA Autocross Chairman. We've already swapped his car from 3.55 to 3.31 gears, which he really enjoys for autocross and track use (no 2-3 shifts in parking lots and fewer shifts on track as well). This car has Forgestar F14 18x11s, AST 4150s w/550F/250R springs, Vorshlag plates, Whiteline swaybars, and a Torsen T2R.
We had installed a Cobra Suzuka GT kevlar racing seat into his car a while back, using the custom S197 bracket we make to go with the Cobra slider and Cobra side mount brackets. He loved the new Corbeau S197 Harness Bar, new seat and 6-point harnesses and raved about how much more control he had gained with this seat. He drives the car to events from as far as 5 hours away, and does a lot of track and autocrossing in the car, on both street tires (295/35/18 BFG Rivals) and R compounds (315mm Kumho V710s).
He loved the new driver's seat so much he went ahead and sprung for a passenger seat upgrade, which any track instructors or passengers will greatly appreciate. If you do one seat you really should do the other side as well. To save a bit he went with the steel framed fixed back Cobra Monoco seat on the passenger's side, which was about half the cost of the kevlar Suzuka. It only has about a 2 pound penalty in weight over the composite seats, and being a Cobra product, it still looks great and has very high quality construction and materials (I ordered some more of these seats for inventory). He skipped the slider on the passenger side and we just mounted the seat fixed to the bracket, fairly far back and lower than it would have been with a slider - which is what we often do on the right side seat.
Another change he had in mind was a new rear Upper Control Arm assembly. After reading what we had to say about poly bushings, Del-Sphere and all of the other variations on the upper arm and mounts he went with some brand new "ultimate" UCA from BMR, shown below. The instillation was straightforward, but still time consuming. You need a lift, removal of the back seat, and a BIG torque wrench for the main bolt (which should be torqued to 250-300 ft-lbs, depending on the brand - see your manufacturer's instructions) to tighten the mount to the chassis. The pinion angle also has to be adjusted, and there is even a second set of holes in the chassis mount for potential geometry changes.
The upper control arm is one of those places where a spherical seems like the right choice, as this bushing has to pivot much more than the LCA bushings do. And to match the new upper arm's spherical he went with a Steeda spherical bushing replacement on the axle side of the UCA arm axis also, per our suggestions.
Getting the OEM rubber bushing out of the axle side is a real B!TCH of a job. The instructions say to cut out the old bushing, but if you make a tool to press it out you can re-use that to press in the new Steeda assembly. Then when you go to tighten the 58mm (?!) hex nut for the new spherical you might need to make a tool for that as well...
After finding a massive 58mm socket for around $35 we had to chuck it up in the lathe to machine the outer diameter down for clearance, otherwise it would not fit in the space between the axle housing and the bushing mount. Really fun job, that one, heh. After all of this work was done I drove this car around our Test Loop (bumpy road we use to listen for creaks, pops and noises plus to test ride quality) with Mark in the car and we both agreed that it makes a LOT more noise inside now. We had previously rebuilt his entire axle with all new bearings when we did the 3.31 gear swap, and the rearend was silent as a church mouse just hours before, but after the double spherical UCA set-up was installed it was much LOUDER inside the car - and he still has the back seat installed. Just know that this particular UCA set-up adds a lot more NVH than you might expect - you will hear all sorts of noises from the rearend that were masked before. Mark said he likes the feel of the new set-up but needs more seat time to give a full review. You can read his build thread on s197forums here and he talks about the new seat and the BMR UCA in post #262.
Another Vorshlag Tester is Jan Maher, who was the first S197 Mustang owner on MCS TT1 coilovers. We've installed all sorts of goodies on her 2012 GT including the reclining Corbeau seats, shown below.
At the recent Texas Region SCCA Solo school, Jan had entered in her 2012 GT, while one of her two daughters that race, Shannon entered in her 2011 GT. They were both brushing up on some autocross skills to use in the many track events they enter - always a good idea to learn things like car control and LFBraking in a parking lot, where the only thing to hit are cones. Amy and I both worked with Jan that day, and while Amy was instructing in her car I happened to be riding with another student and noticed a broken wheel stud on course. I'm sort of OCD about finding and removing "FOD" on an autocross course so I hopped out of this car, stopped the course, and ran out to pick it up. It was a broken OEM wheel stud with what I recognized as one of our Vorshlag lug nuts on it. That narrowed it down to about a half dozen potential cars at the event, and I quickly found a missing stud on Jan's front wheel.
I took her the broken part and let her know the bad news - she wasn't racing in Sunday's autocross with a busted wheel stud, so she co-drove in Shannon's GT instead. With over 50K miles on Jan's car and lots of track miles it was probably a good idea to replace the front wheel bearings anyway (they are a known wear item - usually they make noises and clunking when they are bad), so we brought in a pair of new hubs using the M-1104-A Ford Racing kit, which come pre-installed with "longer and stronger" (insert joke here) ARP front wheel studs, are pre-greased on the hub face, and include two new spindle retaining nuts.
We've installed these FR hubs before (our 2011 GT is on the 3rd pair in 4 years - again, the hubs take a beating from lateral load and brake heat, and it is a known wear item), but noticed that this M-1104-A kit now comes with new front hub retaining nuts, which we used to order separately. This monster spindle nut has to be torqued to 250 ft-lbs and is a "torque to yield", one-time-use piece of hardware. Make sure you have a torque wrench big enough and rated high enough for this torque level - it took all of my weight plus a lot of arm strength to get these nuts torqued today. After a brake pad swap, some new brake fluid bled, and a full HPDE tech inspection at our shop Jan's car is fixed up and ready for USCA this weekend.
Getting Ready for USCA
We're running at full throttle around here getting our car and 5 others ready for the Ultimate Street Car Association event this weekend. We have multiple sets of tires to mount (Rivals, Rivals and more Rivals!), the hubs and pads on Jan's car, some brake repairs on Shannon's car, and much more to do. My Mustang is finally getting Schroth harnesses installed today before we load it onto the trailer. One of our customers has a couple of Miatas and he is bringing one of them to compete int he "under 3000 pound" class, with Rivals.
And at the end of the day today we have a company dinner at a German place where we will get together and raise a glass to toast Ryan, our head fabricator who is leaving us in about a month to go back to school full time. Really sad about that, like losing a member of the family... but he has great things ahead and we wish him the best. I've already hired a new shop foreman (Texas Region Solo RE, Brad Maxcy!) and we'll have a listing up on our jobs page soon for the fabricator position that opened up. If you have lots of automotive race prep and fab experience, love long hours and low pay, this could be the opportunity for you!
Please send your resumes to [email protected], thanks.
Hoosier tire winnings from this weekend stacked up next to a new set of 225/45/15 BFG Rivals for Mike M's Miata. Wow.
This weekend's 3 day USCA competition is looming heavy and I'm hoping more people will sign up at the last minute. Once again the Dallas area racers seem to find nothing but excuses when a big event like this rolls into town and I fear that we might not get another one if the attendance stays low. We lost the GTA event in Dallas after a dismal local turnout in 2012 and I've been calling people all week to try to get them to enter USCA this weekend. I worked out a deal with the organizers for a HALF PRICE entry ($250 vs $500). Use the word "SCCA" in the order notes and you will receive a $250 refund on your entry fee. Please feel free to call me at Vorshlag today if you are interested in going but have questions: 972-422-7170. I'm not associated with the USCA and neither is the SCCA, this was just a discount code hoping to grab local areas SCCA autocross racers and Time Trial entrants.
I'm pretty excited about this event. Rolling out there tomorrow at 11 am to set up the trailer, get their event decals installed, and start the 80 mile road rally. We have our car inspected, tagged, and all legal-like for street use, so I'm not worried about the Friday street drive. The weather looks good for the weekend so I'm hoping we can have another strong showing in the autocross, a better showing than last time in the speed stop (fingers crossed that the new ABS unit works!) and of hoping I do well on the "1.04 mile" (aka: 1.36 mile) TMS infield road course on Sunday.
Until next time...
