Project Update for May 15th, 2014: I am way behind on this build thread - 5 events behind and counting - and cannot seem to catch up. Instead of one MASSIVE post I'm going to break it up into smaller chunks. When I first started writing this, a week ago, we were loading up the car to head to Road Atlanta to race with Global Time Attack. That event was...
memorable. Long story short: I overcooked the brakes, had a 150 mph shunt, the car and my back were a little banged up, but I will cover all of that in a forum post next week. In
this installation we show the new set of MCS double adjustable shocks added and detail one track event where we tested these at (TrackGuys at TWS).
MCS RR2 Dampers Added
Due to supply problems from Moton we haven't been selling these in 2014. My goals with this 2011 Mustang include to "race what we sell" and to "actively test the parts we recommend", and until that brand comes back online (maybe by July 2014?) we needed to make a shock change. So we called up the guys at
Motion Control Suspension in Georgia and had a set of
remote reservoir double adjustable monotube shocks built for our S197, which we call the
RR2.
After these arrived we had Stuart of Maxcyspeed & Co dyno test them. I wanted to see how close they were to the custom valved Moton Club Sport remote doubles that were coming off (shown above) and possibly have Stuart re-valve them. Stuart was the one that had valved our Moton doubles two years ago, and that set-up was working VERY well. That set of Moton dampers
has sold, but we hung onto them long enough to make sure we were happy with the MCS set. He added some rear rebound before we installed them and I'm glad he did - the car feels mostly unchanged from before, which is exactly what I wanted.
These two brands look remarkably similar, and they should - the same principles that ran Moton-USA for a dozen years now run MCS, so the products from both companies share many characteristics. Both are monotube dampers with remote canisters, both are rebound and compression adjustable, and both have similar piston sizes, housing wall thicknesses and construction. But there are some notable improvements to the MCS models.
Left: The old set of Moton Club Sport 2-ways with remotes. Right: The new MCS RR2 2-ways with remotes
First, the rear shocks are NOT eye-to-eye shocks on the MCS set we ordered (although you can order them that way) like the Motons were, so they don't require a special rear shock mount adapter to fit the back of the S197 chassis. It might seem "cool" to have eye-to-eye shocks but on a street car with OEM upper sheet metal mounts it has downsides. Two reasons: First, the added height of the eye-to-pin shock mount adapter eats up shock stroke. Second, the rebound adjustment on the eye-to-eye shock is only accessed underneath the car via a special tool. For the past two years if I wanted to adjust rear rebound I had to jack up the car, remove a rear wheel, insert a small pin drive tool into a hole on the shock and rotate the adjuster. PITA.
Adjusting the rear shocks is now just opening the trunk and turning a knob. Remotes are compression, rebound on the shock tops
Now, with the MCS RR2 rear shocks I can just pop the trunk, pull the trunk liner out of the way, and rotate the
adjuster knob that stays on the top of the shock. That adjustment just got a whole lot easier. I've never been a fan of removable knobs or special tools needed to adjust your shocks, and the Moton needed that at both ends. The problem is the special knob or pin tool is always hard to find when you need it most.
Moton rear shock shown with "divorced spring" in OEM position w/ ride height adjuster
The MCS RR2 rear shock and spring was left as a "divorced" set-up, just like the stock rear dampers and the old Moton set. This means the spring stays in the OEM location, not converted to be a "coil over spring" mounted over the shock. Why? Three reasons. The first is losing inboard rear wheel room with a shock mounted spring, and with 18x11 or 12" wheels we have to use every trick possible to stuff the wheels inside the stock rear fenders. Even with our new rear flares we use
all that room near the rear shock to clear the big 345/35/18 Hoosier tires. We have shown time and again that you can
never have too much tire on the back of an S197. As we have moved this car up from 255-345mm rear tires the lap times have dropped every single step of the way. The car gets easier to drive as rear traction increases.
An advantage to divorced springs is ease of rear spring replacement. We can a pair of rear swap springs track side in under 5 minutes. With a coilover spring mounting it is a lot more work, and the shocks have to come off and be partially disassembled. The final downside by moving the spring onto the rear shock is the
suspension loads are now moved to the OEM sheet metal upper shock mount. Ford designed this car to have suspension (spring) loads going through a different load path (in the factory "divorced" rear spring location), and only
damping loads were designed to pass through the upper shock mount. The only time we recommend gong to a coilover spring on these cars out back is when you have
a roll cage tied into a reinforced shock mount. Even then there is very little upside to doing all of that work... it would have a tiny bit more spring rate in roll relative to the divorced location. That's it. But less inboard wheel/tire room.
No thanks!
Up front the MCS front strut is very similar to the Moton unit that came off. The MCS units do have a slightly different lower bracket but we keep the slots pulled out to increase front wheel room. Every time we've seen someone use "crash bolts" or slotted strut brackets on a McStrut to increase front camber they
lose front wheel room, which again - is a huge draw back. We use every trick in the book to squeeze an 18x11" wheel under a stock front fender, and even with our custom front flares on this car it is tight fit with our 18x12" wheel and big 335/30/18 front tire. A shorter-than-stock Whiteline adjustable endlink and Hyperco 800#/in spring (same as we used before) wraps up the front end. As you can see getting to the front shock adjusters is as easy as out back - open the hood and turn a knob. No need for removable tools or knobs that can be lost. We already had brackets to mount the remote shock reservoirs and just re-used them for the MCS units.
I was happy with the install and the guys here at Vorshlag had it knocked out in only a few hours. They re-cross-weighed and balanced the car and got the two crosses to 50/50 with me in the driver's seat + the TT3 ballast in the trunk, with a 1/2 tank of fuel (as low as we dare run it in road course use with the stock tank/slosh issues). The only other substantial change was moving from a 350 #/in rear spring down to a softer 250#/in spring, to try to increase rear bite. We wanted to test these new springs at an event that didn't affect our preferred competition series record for the year (NASA TT3), so we signed up for this...
TrackGuys HPDE at TWS, March 29, 2014
Amy and I motored down to TWS (without any crew) for the weekend of March 29-30th to do a little testing before the NASA event a few weeks later. This HPDE club was running the 2.9 mile course in the counter clockwise (CCW) direction and the next NASA event there in a month would be running CW, but no matter. We just needed a higher speed track event to test the new MCS dampers and softer rear spring rates at, so this event worked well for that. We signed up with Amy as the only driver, since she hasn't taken as many laps at TWS and needed more seat time at these speeds.
Amy drove the Mustang for two days, 7 sessions on track totaling and about 3.5 hours of seat time this weekend, burning up a lot of fuel and
completely used up a set of Continental DP tires in the process. She got a lot more familiar with the TWS 2.9 mile course and the higher speeds seen here after that many hours on track. The brakes did great with this much abuse, but she used up a good bit of the brake pads. American Iron Camaro racer Mike Patterson rode with her and even drove our Mustang with her in the right seat for a few laps, giving her some excellent instruction. Amy picked up a lot from Mike and she ran some 1:59 laps afterwards, dropping 3 seconds almost immediately - this is a sport that is very difficult to "self-teach".
The TrackGuys crew had a record number of entrants for this TWS event and ended up being just
barely short on instructors, so I filled in for an instructor that had trailer trouble on Saturday and arrived several hours late. I rode shotgun with two Mustang students for a couple of sessions each - one was in a '04 Cobra street car making 550 whp, yikes! Lucky for me they both did great. Since I instructed this allowed me to take a few laps in an instructor only session using our car, and I took exactly 3 laps both days. The Conti slicks felt OK but I was definitely slower than my previous laps on 315mm Hoosier A6 tires, with a best of a 1:56.2 lap with a student riding along.
Left: Mike Patterson's AI Camaro was quick. Right: Amy in grid for the red group
We ran this event on the same set of 320/650/18 Continental DP slicks we ran briefly at ECR on Dec 28th, back when it was so cold we couldn't get any heat in the tires. These tires were now used with the above mentioned new set of MCS RR2 shocks and 250 #/in rear springs, but the rest was the same from previous events this year. We ran the hot pressures in the mid 30 psi range and they felt much better in these warmer ambient temps, and didn't have the funky feel from December.
Matt White (at left) was quick in his ST1 classed 5.0 Coyote powered Mustang and Misty White (at right) was moving in her ST2 Camaro
According to our previous lap time data these tires were about 5.5 seconds slower than the 315 Hoosier A6 (previous best at
TWS 2.9 CCW last September was 1:50.675, which was a new TT3 track record then). That seems like a lot, and maybe it is, but the A6 is a one or two lap "sprint only" type of tire and this Conti DP slick is made to go for many hours - which it did.
Looking at the pictures of the tire wear we definitely got our money's worth on this set, ha! The fronts might have had a
tick too much negative camber, as the insides are worn more than the outsides. We actually took these a into the cords and could have easily suffered a blowout - not a pretty sight at 150+ mph. We saw a Corvette do that (pop a front tire at high speeds) during this TWS weekend, and it destroyed the front bodywork and some other bits.
Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/TrackGuys-HPDE-at-TWS-March-29/
Amy and I took pictures so they aren't as good as what Brandon would have shot, obviously. We took video during each session but its pretty boring stuff so I'm not going to bother editing and posting up a lap.
There were Mustangs from all eras and types: race cars, street cars, and everything in between
This TrackGuys group put on a good event, but a handful of the drivers were a bit reluctant to give point-bys in the faster run groups. Amy got stuck behind a couple of Corvettes for too many laps in a couple of run sessions - she was held up in some corners, but they had enough power on the straights to prevent a clean pass. Oh well, it happens. She doesn't push cars in front of her hard enough to really "get the point across", but she's always safe and calm on track.
This C6 Corvette had an off in the wildflowers and we cleaned his grill, heh
Amy had fun and I got a few laps in: enough to know that the Continental DP slicks aren't going to be replacing our A6s any time soon, and also to know that the new MCS RR2 dampers feel as good or better than the customized Moton doubles we had on the car before. The new softer rear spring also seemed to put down power a bit better on corner exit as well.
The rear definitely has some more roll, as shown in the picture above, so we might look at bumping up the Whiteline rear anti-roll bar settings. But we've driven the car several times since this and it actually feels great. Having the ability to quickly and easily adjust the rear rebound settings of the MCS shocks is a welcome change, and it allows for more shock adjustments to be made.
What's Next?
I'm already working on write-ups for these events, which have come and gone:
The crash at Road Atlanta was pretty bad - but it is all fixable
More soon,
