Admin Edit: NEW POSTS WILL BE MADE IN THIS UPDATED THREAD: http://www.s197forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123860
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Project introduction for S197FORUMS: Some of you guys that read multiple forums already know about me and/or Vorshlag Motorsports. Vorshlag is a suspension design and manufacturing shop, making the world's best camber plates and numerous other items for various modern sports/sporty cars, such as: competition motor and transmission mounts, competition wheel studs, wheel spacers, and even our popular BMW LS1 swap kits. We're also a dealer for Dutch-made AST and Moton monotube shocks, Whiteline, Eibach, Hypercoil, Swift, Powerflex, Energy Suspensions, and several other suspension related companies. We're all racers here, running our test cars in SCCA Solo and NASA Time Trial, among other venues, from 30-35 weekends a year. There is no better place to test your parts than in some competitive form of motorsport.
After supporting the S197 in a small way from 2008-on with our camber plates, My wife and I test drove a new 5.0 Coyote equipped 2011 GT the week they hit dealerships in 2010. I knew what the 3V 4.6L cars felt like and this 5.0L car was different in EVERY way. The extra 100 hp, the Getrag 6-spd, the much improved 14" Brembo brakes, the improved materials/exterior look/fit and finish, and a quieter interior. Wow... Ford just got serious with this car! We immediately ordered one of our own.
In August 2010 we received our custom ordered 2011 Mustang GT. This was a Brembo equipped car with some other comfort and convenience options my wife insisted on. She daily drives the car and also races it with me in SCCA Solo and NASA Time Trial. Over the past two years we have used this car as a test mule for developing Vorshlag products, developing new AST dampers, and testing various parts from Whiteline, American Racing Headers, D-Force wheels, and many more. This car has been autocrossed dozens of times in SCCA STX, STU and ESP classes. It has run from TTB to TTS classes in NASA Time Trial. We ran it at a TX2K track event, Optima Challenge Qualifier event (which made it to TV), Global Time Attack, and numerous HPDE events at 7 different road courses. We have drag raced it, too.
We searched for a long time to find a good Mustang forum to post this thread in, and this is the one everyone said had the serious track and autocross people. Instead of copying 100 or so posts from the 2 years from this 2011 GT project into this thread, I linked some other forums that have all of the posts (and various user feedback) below:
Quick Two Year Overview: The car started out being prepped for the SCCA's STX autocross class - which had a maximum of 265mm tire width on 9" wheels, 140 treadwear minimum, and only header-back exhaust and cold air intake modifications allowed. Other than that it has almost the exact same suspension rules as the ESP class, which uses R compound tires and is home to the modded pony cars. Everyone said this car would be too heavy for STX class (made up of 3 series BMWs, Subaru WRXs, RX8s, and other lightweight sports cars) and for the most part, I now agree. The weight of this S197 5.0 is just too high to compete with these flyweight cars on the same tire width, even if we made 430 whp in STX legal form. For autocrossing power is the least important thing, but that's all we had. Some of the faster STX cars were 800-900 pounds lighter than our car, and weight is death.
Due to the ample suspension allowances of STX class and the unusual points modification system in NASA TT, for Time Trial track events we ended up starting in TTB class, but then moving up to TTA and even TTS class as we added more suspension mods - still on skinny street tires.
After 18 months of tilting at windmills in STX we threw in the towel and moved to ESP class in May 2012. The upgrade to 315mm R compounds transformed the car and we immediately knew we were in the right autocross class for this car. The power advantage we had in STX could now be utilized, and we spent 4 months developing the car for ESP class and took it to the 2012 Solo Nationals. I placed 4th out of 33 and Amy won ESP-Ladies. The car was still excessively overweight at 3540 pounds, some 300 pounds heavier than the 2nd place ESP S197 Mustang and almost 450 pounds heavier than the 1st place ESP Firebird.
So in September 2012 we purchased a 2013 Mustang GT for a dedicated ESP build. That car will be covered in a separate build thread which will also be added to this forum soon.
We have made numerous products for this chassis in the past 2 years. Our camber plate design radically changed in early 2012 and now I am happy with the design, ease of adjustment, and robustness of the product. I was unhappy with the wheel offerings in 2010 so we designed an 18x10" wheel that actually fit this chassis and had D-Force make a run of these for us.
Those wheels sold very well and now several other wheel makers have identically sized offerings. We sell one of those - a Forgestar in 18x10 and 19x10, as well as custom sizes to 11" and 12" widths (our 2011 has custom Forgestars F14s in 18x11F, 18x12R). We have worked with AST to develop the all new 4150, tested all of the pre-production S197 products made by Whiteline. We have made a custom rear wing (track), and a custom rear spoiler (autocross), custom seat brackets/sliders, custom brake ducting, custom rear diff fluid catch tank/vent system, custom dual 3" catted exhaust, and more.
This series of posts has a huge following on the 4 forums where it is posted, but we don't have the thread on any dedicated Mustang forums, until now. We are not a supporting vendor here - we tried to be and they won't take our money. So we decided to put our thread here and make the updates. Yes, some of the parts we developed was so we could sell parts, I won't deny that, and some of this we just made for our car to fix a problem. In the past we had noticed some of our parts being mentioned on this forum so we started answering questions, which is allowed. I'm sure a few vendors won't like us posting here, but I have had dozens of E-mails, calls and PMs from readers here who do appreciate what we are sharing. Hopefully the site owner will feel we're sharing more tech know-how than sales douchiness, and will allow the thread to stay.
If you like what you have heard so far go check out the back-story one of the 4 forums linked above. This will help you "catch-up" with what we've done on this car over the past 2 years of posts. We share everything - alignment settings, spring rates, weights, tips and tricks, things that worked, and even our mistakes and failures. If you are tracking or autocrossing an S197 Mustang I suspect you will see something new, or get a laugh reading about how we learned a lesson from doing something wrong. We appreciate hearing feedback and your experiences, too.
I will follow this post with our most recent 2011 GT thread update, from October 11, 2012. This post covered some pre-race prep on both our 2011 and 2013 GTs, a NASA Time Trial weekend (Oct 6-7) in both cars, and a dyno day for these two Mustangs (one bone stock, one modded) + a 2013 Subaru BRZ that we're building as well. We have about 8 or 9 similar build project threads going right now, all as detailed as this one. Each project's posts will have pictures, some will have video, and many will have a bit of humor as well. If this thread on S197FORUM isn't locked/burned/banned the next time we have an update for this project, I will come back and add future posts here, also.
Thanks,
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Project introduction for S197FORUMS: Some of you guys that read multiple forums already know about me and/or Vorshlag Motorsports. Vorshlag is a suspension design and manufacturing shop, making the world's best camber plates and numerous other items for various modern sports/sporty cars, such as: competition motor and transmission mounts, competition wheel studs, wheel spacers, and even our popular BMW LS1 swap kits. We're also a dealer for Dutch-made AST and Moton monotube shocks, Whiteline, Eibach, Hypercoil, Swift, Powerflex, Energy Suspensions, and several other suspension related companies. We're all racers here, running our test cars in SCCA Solo and NASA Time Trial, among other venues, from 30-35 weekends a year. There is no better place to test your parts than in some competitive form of motorsport.
After supporting the S197 in a small way from 2008-on with our camber plates, My wife and I test drove a new 5.0 Coyote equipped 2011 GT the week they hit dealerships in 2010. I knew what the 3V 4.6L cars felt like and this 5.0L car was different in EVERY way. The extra 100 hp, the Getrag 6-spd, the much improved 14" Brembo brakes, the improved materials/exterior look/fit and finish, and a quieter interior. Wow... Ford just got serious with this car! We immediately ordered one of our own.
In August 2010 we received our custom ordered 2011 Mustang GT. This was a Brembo equipped car with some other comfort and convenience options my wife insisted on. She daily drives the car and also races it with me in SCCA Solo and NASA Time Trial. Over the past two years we have used this car as a test mule for developing Vorshlag products, developing new AST dampers, and testing various parts from Whiteline, American Racing Headers, D-Force wheels, and many more. This car has been autocrossed dozens of times in SCCA STX, STU and ESP classes. It has run from TTB to TTS classes in NASA Time Trial. We ran it at a TX2K track event, Optima Challenge Qualifier event (which made it to TV), Global Time Attack, and numerous HPDE events at 7 different road courses. We have drag raced it, too.
We searched for a long time to find a good Mustang forum to post this thread in, and this is the one everyone said had the serious track and autocross people. Instead of copying 100 or so posts from the 2 years from this 2011 GT project into this thread, I linked some other forums that have all of the posts (and various user feedback) below:
Quick Two Year Overview: The car started out being prepped for the SCCA's STX autocross class - which had a maximum of 265mm tire width on 9" wheels, 140 treadwear minimum, and only header-back exhaust and cold air intake modifications allowed. Other than that it has almost the exact same suspension rules as the ESP class, which uses R compound tires and is home to the modded pony cars. Everyone said this car would be too heavy for STX class (made up of 3 series BMWs, Subaru WRXs, RX8s, and other lightweight sports cars) and for the most part, I now agree. The weight of this S197 5.0 is just too high to compete with these flyweight cars on the same tire width, even if we made 430 whp in STX legal form. For autocrossing power is the least important thing, but that's all we had. Some of the faster STX cars were 800-900 pounds lighter than our car, and weight is death.
Due to the ample suspension allowances of STX class and the unusual points modification system in NASA TT, for Time Trial track events we ended up starting in TTB class, but then moving up to TTA and even TTS class as we added more suspension mods - still on skinny street tires.
After 18 months of tilting at windmills in STX we threw in the towel and moved to ESP class in May 2012. The upgrade to 315mm R compounds transformed the car and we immediately knew we were in the right autocross class for this car. The power advantage we had in STX could now be utilized, and we spent 4 months developing the car for ESP class and took it to the 2012 Solo Nationals. I placed 4th out of 33 and Amy won ESP-Ladies. The car was still excessively overweight at 3540 pounds, some 300 pounds heavier than the 2nd place ESP S197 Mustang and almost 450 pounds heavier than the 1st place ESP Firebird.
So in September 2012 we purchased a 2013 Mustang GT for a dedicated ESP build. That car will be covered in a separate build thread which will also be added to this forum soon.
We have made numerous products for this chassis in the past 2 years. Our camber plate design radically changed in early 2012 and now I am happy with the design, ease of adjustment, and robustness of the product. I was unhappy with the wheel offerings in 2010 so we designed an 18x10" wheel that actually fit this chassis and had D-Force make a run of these for us.
Those wheels sold very well and now several other wheel makers have identically sized offerings. We sell one of those - a Forgestar in 18x10 and 19x10, as well as custom sizes to 11" and 12" widths (our 2011 has custom Forgestars F14s in 18x11F, 18x12R). We have worked with AST to develop the all new 4150, tested all of the pre-production S197 products made by Whiteline. We have made a custom rear wing (track), and a custom rear spoiler (autocross), custom seat brackets/sliders, custom brake ducting, custom rear diff fluid catch tank/vent system, custom dual 3" catted exhaust, and more.
This series of posts has a huge following on the 4 forums where it is posted, but we don't have the thread on any dedicated Mustang forums, until now. We are not a supporting vendor here - we tried to be and they won't take our money. So we decided to put our thread here and make the updates. Yes, some of the parts we developed was so we could sell parts, I won't deny that, and some of this we just made for our car to fix a problem. In the past we had noticed some of our parts being mentioned on this forum so we started answering questions, which is allowed. I'm sure a few vendors won't like us posting here, but I have had dozens of E-mails, calls and PMs from readers here who do appreciate what we are sharing. Hopefully the site owner will feel we're sharing more tech know-how than sales douchiness, and will allow the thread to stay.
If you like what you have heard so far go check out the back-story one of the 4 forums linked above. This will help you "catch-up" with what we've done on this car over the past 2 years of posts. We share everything - alignment settings, spring rates, weights, tips and tricks, things that worked, and even our mistakes and failures. If you are tracking or autocrossing an S197 Mustang I suspect you will see something new, or get a laugh reading about how we learned a lesson from doing something wrong. We appreciate hearing feedback and your experiences, too.
I will follow this post with our most recent 2011 GT thread update, from October 11, 2012. This post covered some pre-race prep on both our 2011 and 2013 GTs, a NASA Time Trial weekend (Oct 6-7) in both cars, and a dyno day for these two Mustangs (one bone stock, one modded) + a 2013 Subaru BRZ that we're building as well. We have about 8 or 9 similar build project threads going right now, all as detailed as this one. Each project's posts will have pictures, some will have video, and many will have a bit of humor as well. If this thread on S197FORUM isn't locked/burned/banned the next time we have an update for this project, I will come back and add future posts here, also.
Thanks,
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