Vorshlag 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT - track/autocross/street Project
- Thread starter Vorshlag-Fair
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Vorschlag's build thread, Randy Pobst's M3 comparo, and C&D's Lightning Lap were the three main reasons I bought my car. Still glad I did.
SlowJim
forum member
I used the exact same three resources when I decided to buy mine.
Pauly
Way too loud
Great looking new shop! Fantastic
Project Update for December 2, 2014: This is part 2 of 3 of our "lead up" + SEMA2014 + OUSCI coverage. This segment is devoted to the SEMA show itself. We got to display our 2011 Mustang at the show (parked in two different places), but there were a few bumps along the way. I personally took over 700 pics at the show with my camera phone (that many dubbed the "Potato Cam" due to a few blurry pics) and posted them live on Facebook during the show. My focus was on cool cars that corner carvers might like, as well as the parts that interest us most. More from Vorshlag joined me - Jason was there by Tuesday, Olof and Jon arrived Wednesday, and Brad flew in on Friday took some great shots in the Central Hall with his Canon gear. We will discuss cars, new parts, and the various areas of the show. But first, let's get a piece of business out of the way...
Vorshlag TT3 prepped 2011 Mustang GT FOR SALE
Yes, it it has to be done - We are selling our red Mustang S197 development car (read more here). I'm not happy about it, and would much rather keep this car, but this car is a chunk of capital that I need to liquidate in order to help our business grow. Very soon some big changes we are making will become apparent, and this car will help pay for this expansion. Asking price is $48,500, and we have almost double that in it. Comes with your choice of tires (fresh 335/345 Hoosier A6s or fresh 335 Rivals), with or without the current livery, and more.
Click this picture to go to the FOR SALE page, which has dozens of pictures and lots of details
We had this car "sold" for several months, but right before SEMA the buyer flaked out. Oh well, what can you do? They aren't a "buyer" until the money arrives. Any of you reading this thread for a while will know about this car, which we've developed for over 4 years. I counted them up and this car has set 15 track records and has posted dozens of wins over the past 4 seasons, in Time Trial as well as autocross. It has been shown on TV shows 6 different times and the for sale page for this car was even linked in a recent Jalopnik article. Its "internet famous"! It is also a fully street legal car, with AC, Sat NAV, full interior, and all that. If you drive around on the street in this car you will get more attention than if you had a stripper dancing in the back of a convertible. It is also pretty quick on a race track, too. I feel the price is fair, but like everything, it is negotiable. This FOR SALE web page has all of the details you could ever want. If you have questions call Vorshlag and ask for Terry (me); the number is on that for sale page and all over our website.
This is the current look/decals/livery of the Mustang. Paint is less than a month old. Click for more details
And in case you were wondering - No, we're not building a 2015 Mustang to replace this one. With no Body In White program for the S550 for "at least a year" from Ford, building a 2015 Mustang race car requires buying a new car then cutting it up and throwing away a lot of stuff. So we'll wait for a BIY or until we can find a theft recovery/flood damages/front hit chassis to start with (I'd rather use the '16 GT350 front bits). Maybe 6-12 months from now these cars will become available in a cheaper form (used/crashed/BIY) and then we can hopefully build the crazy S550 race car that I have in my brain. Until then we have another race car build we are starting (for 2015 season) that isn't even a Ford at all (but will have a few Ford parts). I brought the chassis from my home shop (have 4 cars stashed there, waiting) to the Vorshlag shop this past weekend, so I will link to that build thread in my next S197 update. This S197 thread isn't going away - we have S197s in our shop every day and any development we do will still be chronicled here. In my next post I'll show some new S197 stuff we've been working on.
The Long Tow to Vegas
OK, back to the SEMA update. We had the car prepped and loaded last time, ready to head to Vegas. Getting from our shop in Dallas, Texas to Las Vegas, Nevada is a long, somewhat boring drive - mostly through Texas. Luckily it was uneventful, and we set-up the back seat of the crew cab F350 as a "sleeping cell", with Amy and I switching out every 2.5 hours to drive while the other caught up on sleep. With the previous 2 months being full of 7 day weeks with hectic 14-18 hour days, we both needed the rest between driving stints.
We had decent weather but hit some rain in the desert, which turned into heavy snow at higher altitudes. Luckily we didn't have to slow down much, and drove straight through in a little over 20 hours. Crossing two times zones and with daylight savings being undone during this day, we "found" 3 hours along the way, and ended up in Vegas mid day on Sunday.
Parking at our hotel was tight so we had to unload the Mustang down the street and park it in front of our room. The trailer and truck were stuck off site until Monday morning, then we were allowed to drop off the trailer for the week at a LVMS parking lot. This left us with the F350 to tool around town in, until our guys drove in Wednesday in Amy's BMW 740iL. The Mustang managed to get over the many speed bumps in the hotel parking lot as well as traverse the "above ground storm drainage" ditches along the many many secondary street intersections in Vegas. #BecauseStreetCar
Parking With "Ford out Front", aka: the Worst Parking Spot at SEMA
This next section is full of some bitching and moaning, so feel free to skip it.
There's more content again down at "Notable Cars of the Vegas 50".
SEMA is a huge show that continues to grow, and now it has spread into 3 main convention halls at the Las Vegas convention Center, covers three huge parking lots (both with open displays, active cars driving, and big air conditioned tents), alley ways, and there's even the AAPEX show (OEM parts and suppliers) that is inside another convention hall in the Sands hotel, around the corner. Its a huge freagin show. I haven't been to SEMA since 2010, and it has grown a lot since then, and changed in some fundamental ways. Many have said this was the best SEMA show they had ever seen, and I tend to agree.
Ford Motor Company has had a BIG presence at SEMA for many years and they have spent a large budget to get your attention. Back in 2010 (the last time I was at SEMA) Ford was already renting the big parking lot in front of the main Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. This lot had barriers lined around the lot and they had set-up jumps in the middle to show off the new Raptor trucks' suspension. I remembered seeing people lined up to ride in a "jumping" Raptor back then, but I didn't pay it much attention. It was a side-show distraction, plus I worked a booth for 3 days that year and was rushed just getting away to see a few manufacturers we worked with then.
Well a lot has happened since 2010 - Vorshlag has gotten a lot bigger, we've been building some notable cars, I won the USCA qualifier so I was finally guaranteed a spot at the OUSCI (Optima Ultimate street Car Invitational), and we were even invited to park our car in the "special Ford area" to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Mustang. Two invites to SEMA in the same year? Craziness. Optima requires that your car is shown somewhere at SEMA for the full week, either in a booth or in their special "Optima Alley" parking area. When I had the choice of having our car park in a "special Ford area" out in front of the Central Hall versus a back alleyway with the Optima group, I chose FORD. Duh...
All 50 Mustangs were parked in front of the Central Hall, parked in the shape of "5.0"... for about 45 minutes, then shuffled away
There were all sorts of extras that went with the 50 cars picked to represent each year of the Mustang. "The Vegas 50", which had a special Facebook group and email list, got exclusive invites to a private Ford meet-and-greet event at the Ford booth on Monday (press day + load in), and we got Exhibitor badges from Ford that let us walk the show floor all day Monday - which I had never done. There was also an extra Exhibitor Party we got to go to, which sounded cool, and tons of free Mustang and Ford swag.
Our red Mustang was in the lower part of the "0", of the "50" picture
A lone Ford employee was trying to coordinate all of these activities: a parade of 50 Mustangs from some outlier lot to a special aerial photo shoot on Monday, then to the week long "special display area". Long story short, it ended up being a big hot mess, and a big waste of time. We stood around waiting for too many hours on Monday, the parade route was all of 200 yards long, and the aerial photo shoot (see above) took far longer than it should have. Then we got lined up to park... and it was immediately obvious that I had made a huge mistake.
See the drifters spraying 50 Mustangs parked around the perimeter? That wasn't cool
We were corralled like cattle and parked two wide, bumper-to-bumper in between concrete barrier walls and a parallel ring of bike railing surrounding the Ford out Front DRIFTORO SPECTAKULARRRR!!! I was immediately leery of this "special Ford spot" when I saw a couple of trucks practicing drifting around the parking lot that Monday night, so when we pulled into place I quickly darted to the "outer ring" of the two wide parking sports - that move likely saved my car's paint job. I asked our Ford contact "Will there be drifting all day here, and won't that send lots of asphalt and crap onto our cars??" There were several rare and special six figure $$ cars in this line-up of 50 years of the Mustang, and I didn't want this to turn into a really bad place to be stuck all week. "Oh no, there won't be any problems! This is a GREAT spot with lots of visibility and foot traffic! We'll having someone come dust off the cars every morning!"
The DROFTORO SPECTAKULARRRRRRRR had just begun... and our car was parked right in the "spray"
We left the car with a bad feeling, then went and got some free food + beer at the party for Exhibitors on Monday, meeting up with our friends from EVO-Dynamics and MyShopAssist (exhibiting). Then we went inside and did the special Monday night deal at the Ford booth at 6:30 pm, which wasn't much but included more food and drinks.
The next morning, we entered the back of Central Hall and started walking the show. Pretty soon I was getting all sorts of texts and messages from some of the Vegas 50 folks, and it sounded BAD. We made it out front to take a look by 11 am and our cars were already COVERED in asphalt pebbles, tire junk, and various dust and debris. The cars looked like they had been parked in a bombed out ghetto all night once the DRIFTORO SPECTAKULARRRRRRRR!!!! was in full swing. They were drifting anything with four wheels: Raptors, Trophy Trucks, NASCAR Cup cars, New 2015 Mustangs, older S197 Mustangs, anything that could break the tires loose was flinging rocks and crap all over our cars. I was losing my MIND and was looking frantically for the Ford contact, but eventually we found her and she said that no matter what, we were stuck there for the rest of the day.
I won't get into too much more of what I said, other than to say I was less than pleased, and I wasn't alone. A guy from the Lucas Oil trailer out front brought over a gas powered leaf blower out of their trailer and blew the crap off most of the Mustangs at the end of the day of drifting, which got about 80% of the junk off. After waiting for 90 minutes later than promised, we were finally able to get our car out of that fiasco and move it to Optima Alley. Once parked there I used a California Duster thing and got even more crap off the paint, and Wednesday morning I went crazy with some Meguiars Quik Detail and finally got it clean. We weren't the only owner to move his car Tuesday night... by Wednesday the "Vegas 50" was the "Vegas 18".
Leaving the Ford out Front area Monday afternoon, Amy and I ran into the star of the TV show "Highway to Sell", Dennis Pittsenbarger (below). We know Dennis from Optima series events, and when he saw our Vorshlag jackets he grabbed us as we walked by. We caught up with Dennis about his the first season the show (he's hoping it gets picked up for season 2!), which we had both watched every episode of. He was also announcing all week at SEMA for a televised gig, then for the OUSCI event on Saturday and Sunday (he had lost most of his voice by then!).
It's cool seeing folks you meet at racing events or through the car world that make a TV show, which usually becomes a big break in their career. I also ran into Kevin Byrd of Two Guys Garage during the SEMA show, who I have known for years (he built an LS1 BMW E30 that we chatted about numerous times). He was filming cars in Optima Alley for a show they are doing on SEMA 2014. We also bumped into Aaron from GMG on 4 different occasions, met the two Brits from Wheeler Dealer, and saw about a dozen other "cars and sparks" TV stars throughout the show.
Notable Cars of the Vegas 50
The 50 Mustangs that Ford picked to represent each year were mostly either almost completely stock or "modified show cars". I'm not really part of the "show car scene" but its all part of the car culture and I gotta respect that - these people like to show and shine, and that's cool. There were a couple of "racey" looking builds in this group, which I will point out below. There were a few others in the Vegas 50 that tracked their cars, but these two were the most epic builds.
The Creations n' Chrome built "Top Notch" fox Mustang was pretty wild. I had seen this in magazines but it looked even better in person. It had a supercharged Aluminator 5.0L, a tube frame chassis with a carbon fiber body, massive engine + driver set-back, along with wide wheels and flares. What's not to like?? I think this car got one of the Golden Ticket invites to OUSCI but I don't know if they could make it, and it was on the wrong type of tires to run that event? (200+ treadwear is required)
Another car that caught my eye was this dark blue Mustang II, which was damned cool. I have never said "Cool" and "Mustang II" in the same sentence in my life. A high school buddy had a 1978 "Cobra" Mustang and I had a 1972 Mustang, both with built 302s. Looking back at that time in my life, they really were both hideous cars, from the two worst generations of Mustangs ever made, and we kind of knew it. This blue car above redeemed the entire Mustang II generation of cars - but it had very little Mustang II left, of course.
A tube chassis build that was based loosely on a C5 Corvette platform, with the T56 rear transaxle and torque tube in place. A new floor and tunnel were fabricated, then the remainder of the Mustang II body was plopped on top. All new fenders and wheel arches were made to cover big meety wheels and tires on the C5's wheelbase, with a custom sheet metal front end based loosely off of the 2013 Boss302 LS. Crazy interior and engine bay work were also part of this build.
continued below
Vorshlag TT3 prepped 2011 Mustang GT FOR SALE
Yes, it it has to be done - We are selling our red Mustang S197 development car (read more here). I'm not happy about it, and would much rather keep this car, but this car is a chunk of capital that I need to liquidate in order to help our business grow. Very soon some big changes we are making will become apparent, and this car will help pay for this expansion. Asking price is $48,500, and we have almost double that in it. Comes with your choice of tires (fresh 335/345 Hoosier A6s or fresh 335 Rivals), with or without the current livery, and more.
Click this picture to go to the FOR SALE page, which has dozens of pictures and lots of details
We had this car "sold" for several months, but right before SEMA the buyer flaked out. Oh well, what can you do? They aren't a "buyer" until the money arrives. Any of you reading this thread for a while will know about this car, which we've developed for over 4 years. I counted them up and this car has set 15 track records and has posted dozens of wins over the past 4 seasons, in Time Trial as well as autocross. It has been shown on TV shows 6 different times and the for sale page for this car was even linked in a recent Jalopnik article. Its "internet famous"! It is also a fully street legal car, with AC, Sat NAV, full interior, and all that. If you drive around on the street in this car you will get more attention than if you had a stripper dancing in the back of a convertible. It is also pretty quick on a race track, too. I feel the price is fair, but like everything, it is negotiable. This FOR SALE web page has all of the details you could ever want. If you have questions call Vorshlag and ask for Terry (me); the number is on that for sale page and all over our website.
This is the current look/decals/livery of the Mustang. Paint is less than a month old. Click for more details
And in case you were wondering - No, we're not building a 2015 Mustang to replace this one. With no Body In White program for the S550 for "at least a year" from Ford, building a 2015 Mustang race car requires buying a new car then cutting it up and throwing away a lot of stuff. So we'll wait for a BIY or until we can find a theft recovery/flood damages/front hit chassis to start with (I'd rather use the '16 GT350 front bits). Maybe 6-12 months from now these cars will become available in a cheaper form (used/crashed/BIY) and then we can hopefully build the crazy S550 race car that I have in my brain. Until then we have another race car build we are starting (for 2015 season) that isn't even a Ford at all (but will have a few Ford parts). I brought the chassis from my home shop (have 4 cars stashed there, waiting) to the Vorshlag shop this past weekend, so I will link to that build thread in my next S197 update. This S197 thread isn't going away - we have S197s in our shop every day and any development we do will still be chronicled here. In my next post I'll show some new S197 stuff we've been working on.
The Long Tow to Vegas
OK, back to the SEMA update. We had the car prepped and loaded last time, ready to head to Vegas. Getting from our shop in Dallas, Texas to Las Vegas, Nevada is a long, somewhat boring drive - mostly through Texas. Luckily it was uneventful, and we set-up the back seat of the crew cab F350 as a "sleeping cell", with Amy and I switching out every 2.5 hours to drive while the other caught up on sleep. With the previous 2 months being full of 7 day weeks with hectic 14-18 hour days, we both needed the rest between driving stints.
We had decent weather but hit some rain in the desert, which turned into heavy snow at higher altitudes. Luckily we didn't have to slow down much, and drove straight through in a little over 20 hours. Crossing two times zones and with daylight savings being undone during this day, we "found" 3 hours along the way, and ended up in Vegas mid day on Sunday.
Parking at our hotel was tight so we had to unload the Mustang down the street and park it in front of our room. The trailer and truck were stuck off site until Monday morning, then we were allowed to drop off the trailer for the week at a LVMS parking lot. This left us with the F350 to tool around town in, until our guys drove in Wednesday in Amy's BMW 740iL. The Mustang managed to get over the many speed bumps in the hotel parking lot as well as traverse the "above ground storm drainage" ditches along the many many secondary street intersections in Vegas. #BecauseStreetCar
Parking With "Ford out Front", aka: the Worst Parking Spot at SEMA
This next section is full of some bitching and moaning, so feel free to skip it.
There's more content again down at "Notable Cars of the Vegas 50".SEMA is a huge show that continues to grow, and now it has spread into 3 main convention halls at the Las Vegas convention Center, covers three huge parking lots (both with open displays, active cars driving, and big air conditioned tents), alley ways, and there's even the AAPEX show (OEM parts and suppliers) that is inside another convention hall in the Sands hotel, around the corner. Its a huge freagin show. I haven't been to SEMA since 2010, and it has grown a lot since then, and changed in some fundamental ways. Many have said this was the best SEMA show they had ever seen, and I tend to agree.
Ford Motor Company has had a BIG presence at SEMA for many years and they have spent a large budget to get your attention. Back in 2010 (the last time I was at SEMA) Ford was already renting the big parking lot in front of the main Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. This lot had barriers lined around the lot and they had set-up jumps in the middle to show off the new Raptor trucks' suspension. I remembered seeing people lined up to ride in a "jumping" Raptor back then, but I didn't pay it much attention. It was a side-show distraction, plus I worked a booth for 3 days that year and was rushed just getting away to see a few manufacturers we worked with then.
Well a lot has happened since 2010 - Vorshlag has gotten a lot bigger, we've been building some notable cars, I won the USCA qualifier so I was finally guaranteed a spot at the OUSCI (Optima Ultimate street Car Invitational), and we were even invited to park our car in the "special Ford area" to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Mustang. Two invites to SEMA in the same year? Craziness. Optima requires that your car is shown somewhere at SEMA for the full week, either in a booth or in their special "Optima Alley" parking area. When I had the choice of having our car park in a "special Ford area" out in front of the Central Hall versus a back alleyway with the Optima group, I chose FORD. Duh...
All 50 Mustangs were parked in front of the Central Hall, parked in the shape of "5.0"... for about 45 minutes, then shuffled away
There were all sorts of extras that went with the 50 cars picked to represent each year of the Mustang. "The Vegas 50", which had a special Facebook group and email list, got exclusive invites to a private Ford meet-and-greet event at the Ford booth on Monday (press day + load in), and we got Exhibitor badges from Ford that let us walk the show floor all day Monday - which I had never done. There was also an extra Exhibitor Party we got to go to, which sounded cool, and tons of free Mustang and Ford swag.
Our red Mustang was in the lower part of the "0", of the "50" picture
A lone Ford employee was trying to coordinate all of these activities: a parade of 50 Mustangs from some outlier lot to a special aerial photo shoot on Monday, then to the week long "special display area". Long story short, it ended up being a big hot mess, and a big waste of time. We stood around waiting for too many hours on Monday, the parade route was all of 200 yards long, and the aerial photo shoot (see above) took far longer than it should have. Then we got lined up to park... and it was immediately obvious that I had made a huge mistake.
See the drifters spraying 50 Mustangs parked around the perimeter? That wasn't cool
We were corralled like cattle and parked two wide, bumper-to-bumper in between concrete barrier walls and a parallel ring of bike railing surrounding the Ford out Front DRIFTORO SPECTAKULARRRR!!! I was immediately leery of this "special Ford spot" when I saw a couple of trucks practicing drifting around the parking lot that Monday night, so when we pulled into place I quickly darted to the "outer ring" of the two wide parking sports - that move likely saved my car's paint job. I asked our Ford contact "Will there be drifting all day here, and won't that send lots of asphalt and crap onto our cars??" There were several rare and special six figure $$ cars in this line-up of 50 years of the Mustang, and I didn't want this to turn into a really bad place to be stuck all week. "Oh no, there won't be any problems! This is a GREAT spot with lots of visibility and foot traffic! We'll having someone come dust off the cars every morning!"
The DROFTORO SPECTAKULARRRRRRRR had just begun... and our car was parked right in the "spray"
We left the car with a bad feeling, then went and got some free food + beer at the party for Exhibitors on Monday, meeting up with our friends from EVO-Dynamics and MyShopAssist (exhibiting). Then we went inside and did the special Monday night deal at the Ford booth at 6:30 pm, which wasn't much but included more food and drinks.
The next morning, we entered the back of Central Hall and started walking the show. Pretty soon I was getting all sorts of texts and messages from some of the Vegas 50 folks, and it sounded BAD. We made it out front to take a look by 11 am and our cars were already COVERED in asphalt pebbles, tire junk, and various dust and debris. The cars looked like they had been parked in a bombed out ghetto all night once the DRIFTORO SPECTAKULARRRRRRRR!!!! was in full swing. They were drifting anything with four wheels: Raptors, Trophy Trucks, NASCAR Cup cars, New 2015 Mustangs, older S197 Mustangs, anything that could break the tires loose was flinging rocks and crap all over our cars. I was losing my MIND and was looking frantically for the Ford contact, but eventually we found her and she said that no matter what, we were stuck there for the rest of the day.
I won't get into too much more of what I said, other than to say I was less than pleased, and I wasn't alone. A guy from the Lucas Oil trailer out front brought over a gas powered leaf blower out of their trailer and blew the crap off most of the Mustangs at the end of the day of drifting, which got about 80% of the junk off. After waiting for 90 minutes later than promised, we were finally able to get our car out of that fiasco and move it to Optima Alley. Once parked there I used a California Duster thing and got even more crap off the paint, and Wednesday morning I went crazy with some Meguiars Quik Detail and finally got it clean. We weren't the only owner to move his car Tuesday night... by Wednesday the "Vegas 50" was the "Vegas 18".
Leaving the Ford out Front area Monday afternoon, Amy and I ran into the star of the TV show "Highway to Sell", Dennis Pittsenbarger (below). We know Dennis from Optima series events, and when he saw our Vorshlag jackets he grabbed us as we walked by. We caught up with Dennis about his the first season the show (he's hoping it gets picked up for season 2!), which we had both watched every episode of. He was also announcing all week at SEMA for a televised gig, then for the OUSCI event on Saturday and Sunday (he had lost most of his voice by then!).
It's cool seeing folks you meet at racing events or through the car world that make a TV show, which usually becomes a big break in their career. I also ran into Kevin Byrd of Two Guys Garage during the SEMA show, who I have known for years (he built an LS1 BMW E30 that we chatted about numerous times). He was filming cars in Optima Alley for a show they are doing on SEMA 2014. We also bumped into Aaron from GMG on 4 different occasions, met the two Brits from Wheeler Dealer, and saw about a dozen other "cars and sparks" TV stars throughout the show.
Notable Cars of the Vegas 50
The 50 Mustangs that Ford picked to represent each year were mostly either almost completely stock or "modified show cars". I'm not really part of the "show car scene" but its all part of the car culture and I gotta respect that - these people like to show and shine, and that's cool. There were a couple of "racey" looking builds in this group, which I will point out below. There were a few others in the Vegas 50 that tracked their cars, but these two were the most epic builds.
The Creations n' Chrome built "Top Notch" fox Mustang was pretty wild. I had seen this in magazines but it looked even better in person. It had a supercharged Aluminator 5.0L, a tube frame chassis with a carbon fiber body, massive engine + driver set-back, along with wide wheels and flares. What's not to like?? I think this car got one of the Golden Ticket invites to OUSCI but I don't know if they could make it, and it was on the wrong type of tires to run that event? (200+ treadwear is required)
Another car that caught my eye was this dark blue Mustang II, which was damned cool. I have never said "Cool" and "Mustang II" in the same sentence in my life. A high school buddy had a 1978 "Cobra" Mustang and I had a 1972 Mustang, both with built 302s. Looking back at that time in my life, they really were both hideous cars, from the two worst generations of Mustangs ever made, and we kind of knew it. This blue car above redeemed the entire Mustang II generation of cars - but it had very little Mustang II left, of course.
A tube chassis build that was based loosely on a C5 Corvette platform, with the T56 rear transaxle and torque tube in place. A new floor and tunnel were fabricated, then the remainder of the Mustang II body was plopped on top. All new fenders and wheel arches were made to cover big meety wheels and tires on the C5's wheelbase, with a custom sheet metal front end based loosely off of the 2013 Boss302 LS. Crazy interior and engine bay work were also part of this build.
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continued from above
Under the hood was a big surprise - a Ford Triton V10 with a custom intake manifold, custom valve covers, and the throttle body hidden under the cowl. Took them 2 years to build this car and it won awards at two Autoramas. This car also got one of the Golden Ticket invites to OUSCI but I don't recall it making any runs? My memory of the OUSCI entries is a bit skewed, due to some strange event issues we ran into (which I will save for next time).
S550s parked in Ford Out Front + Ford Booth in Central Hall
Left: "Look, we can put a wing on a 2015 Mustang" Right: "That's cute." hehehe
This winged white S550 above (made by a shop called "FullRace") was parked in the Ford out Front area, along with some other quickly modified S550 Mustangs. These were 2015 Mustangs likely purchased ahead of production deliveries, usually for $1, which happens by a number of manufacturers every year for SEMA. We tried to get one, but we aren't a "style" shop, which is who gets almost all of these SEMA cars.
Left: The inevitable "so last year" flat black wrap. Right: Gold plated wheels were en vogue...
There were lots of these S550s out front and in the Ford booth. Some had quick paint jobs, stripes or wraps; a few had underhood mods, some with superchargers (at least one of which was fake); saw some hastily lowered suspensions, but no real shock offerings yet that we could see; and of course a lot of blinged-out wheels. Sure, there were a few S550s that had a tasteful mod here or there, but for the most part this group looked a bit rushed together for SEMA. In the coming months we will see real performance parts emerge for these cars, but its still a bit soon.
More of the Gold Plated fad was found inside. Oh, and over-the-top wide "lip" wheels won't go away
During the Gold Lot staging for the Vegas 50 Mustangs our Mustang were lined up next to the APR Wide Body S197, which was pretty ironic. Some said our car "out wide-bodied" APR? I don't know about that, but we definitely had a lot more tire under the fenders than any other S197 there.
That's the number one issue I have with the various flares and wide bodies made by some aftermarket companies - it seems that they do all of this work just for the look. Often they take only moderately wider wheels ans push them outboard without really adding any real width, or if they do its only on a show car with 24" diameter wheels that wold never see a track. Giant flares with 275mm tires just doesn't make any sense to me, ya know? The Shelby S197 wide body install costs $25,000, and I took a flier from their shop (we toured Saturday night) just to make sure I didn't read the number wrong. Wow...
Vorshlag SEMA Show Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Car-Shows/2014-Sema-Optima/
There are many hundreds of pictures in that gallery above. I can only show a fraction of the cars and parts here, but feel free to look at more there.
Parking in Optima Alley
Optima had a rather large presence at SEMA this year, with the big Optima Prime trailer (below left) in a massive booth area inside Central Hall and two more trailers in Optima Alley (below right). This was a HUGE reserved area to park the Optima entries.
Most of the 100 cars invited to OUSCI were parked in Optima Alley, which was a road situated between the Registration building and the North Hall. On paper it looked like this was going to be a "low visibility" and low traffic area, but I was so wrong. There were several lunch trucks parked out there all week and the foot traffic consisting of newly registered attendees and hungry show folks was quite large - many thousands of people walked through this area, which ended up being a better spot for car visibility than the Ford out Front area. People could walk up to cars and look at them up close, with no bike railing or concrete walls in the way like our previous spot.
I started seeing our Mustang show up on social media - mostly with positive remarks, but a few "ricer" comments from the wing and splitter. There was actually a pretty good one on a "Mod Motor Mustang" page, with a lot of haters posting funny memes after someone put a picture from an unflattering angle of our car, covered in dust when we were parked with Ford. Luckily enough racers saw that and came to defend our honor, heh.
Since we only did the one USCA qualifier and don't have MavTV I never saw about 75 of the OUSCI entrants before, so I got to meet a lot of new faces and see a lot of crazy machinery in this area. Lots more late model sports cars than I expected (uh-oh), which was forewarning of things to come. It was in Optima Alley where I first saw then fell in LOVE with the LS1 powered Star-Quest of John Lazorack (below).
Look at this thing! Its just outrageous, with an 80s vibe, LSx V8 power, and a big dash of aero. Big, wide fender flares cover 315mm tires, which he made the himself. John is a designer at General Motors and used skills to scan/map the Conquest body, then designed new flares in 3D, then had molds made from his design. Fiberglass flares that bolt on are the result, and it looks killer. You can and should read more about this build in this article on Speed Academy.
After leaving the Ford out Front area Tuesday night, Optima Jim met me at the entrance to Optima Alley and we got parked and cleaned up that evening by 7pm. We were able to get our Optima event decals, credentials (a big carbon fiber badge), and a bunch more swag. Left that area and met one of our customers for a fancy sushi dinner at a swanky restaurant. We scored tickets from Optima folks to an exclusive Honda party late that night, but we got there too early and missed all of the Optima folks. Dancers in glass cages, dozens of escorts everywhere, it was off the HOOK. I saw Dennis there and he said "What the hell is going here on in here!?", heh. There were exhibitor parties like this every night of SEMA, if you have the stamina to party until 2 am and then be ready to work a booth by 8:30 am the next morning.
Another cool Optima entry I saw in the Alley was this purple E-body Chrysler. It had a big nasty LSx swap and TONS of custom touches. The flares are there if you know what to look for - allowing wider tires - but their placement really low on the body makes this car seem even lower than it really is. I had a 72 Challenger with a big block 440 in high school, among other Dodges, so I have a strange affinity for old Mopars - even one with LSx power. This builder had tightened up the bumpers, added a custom interior, great wheels and big Wilwood brakes. Amazing work - and there were probably 30 more cars just as well prepared at OUSCI!
If you are ever in Vegas for SEMA, plan on sticking around for Saturday and Sunday and spend the $30 for tickets to come see this OUSCI event. Even if you ignore the racing (which I should have done, ha!), just seeing the machinery there was worth the price of entry.
The C10 Truck (above left) had a tilt front end and all sorts of custom work, and was an OUSCI entry. This thing had active rear aero... on a truck! Craziness, but too cool. The Cuda (above right) built by the Roadster Shop was one of several amazing cars they had at the SEMA show, and it got one of the Optima Golden Ticket invites, and they ran this at OUSCI. I think it as boosted - you could hear the turbo(s?) spool on the road course. So sweet.
This Fuller built AWD 32 Roadster was originally built to compete in Optima events, but I think its just too damned nice to risk tearing it up at OUSCI. It has been under construction for 3 years and was being shown off in the Jet Hot booth at SEMA. Pushrod/inboard suspension, AWD, Boss429 power, big honkin tires at all 4 corners... what's not to like?! This thing is sick - and it makes the Ken Block "Hoonicorn" 65 Mustang look like it was only mildly modified. In person the craftsmanship was amazing on this 32.
This green 911 wasn't an Optima attendee, and it was a bit "hella flush" for my tastes, but it had a big LSx in the trunk. So that alone made it cool, in my book. A year ago we almost bought a Porsche Boxster that had a blown engine, for such a good price I couldn't pass it up. That would have been an LSx swap we tackled, but the seller flaked out after we had agreed upon a price, ugh. Someday...
Chevy had a decently sized and stocked display in the Central Hall. A partially completed 2015 COPO Camaro was there, with the windows covered up (probably wasn't finished inside). Biggest change was the switch to a supercharged powerplant. These drag-race COPOs are not that interesting to me, but folks were lined up to see it.
There was an orange 2015 Mustang in the HRE Wheels booth that Cortex had built, which got a Golden Ticket and ran at OUSCI. It was sporting what were supposed to be HRE's flow formed wheels, but I think there were pre-production CNC monoblock parts (long story). HRE has a new line of flow-formed wheels (like SSR, Kosei, D-Force, Forgestar, etc) that they are making now, but at nearly $700 each its a tough sell. We are set-up as a dealer, but with essentially the same offering from Forgestar costing about half ($350-360/each), I don't don't know how many we'll sell? If you love HRE this might be your solution, I guess.
Seemed like there were mechanical teething issues, and the poor driver couldn't find the autocross course to save his life, so this was one of the approx. 80 cars I actually beat at OUSCI. As with other Cortex cars, look for this one to be developed further, and it once it has a little more time to be tweaked, it should be fast.
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Under the hood was a big surprise - a Ford Triton V10 with a custom intake manifold, custom valve covers, and the throttle body hidden under the cowl. Took them 2 years to build this car and it won awards at two Autoramas. This car also got one of the Golden Ticket invites to OUSCI but I don't recall it making any runs? My memory of the OUSCI entries is a bit skewed, due to some strange event issues we ran into (which I will save for next time).
S550s parked in Ford Out Front + Ford Booth in Central Hall
Left: "Look, we can put a wing on a 2015 Mustang" Right: "That's cute." hehehe
This winged white S550 above (made by a shop called "FullRace") was parked in the Ford out Front area, along with some other quickly modified S550 Mustangs. These were 2015 Mustangs likely purchased ahead of production deliveries, usually for $1, which happens by a number of manufacturers every year for SEMA. We tried to get one, but we aren't a "style" shop, which is who gets almost all of these SEMA cars.
Left: The inevitable "so last year" flat black wrap. Right: Gold plated wheels were en vogue...
There were lots of these S550s out front and in the Ford booth. Some had quick paint jobs, stripes or wraps; a few had underhood mods, some with superchargers (at least one of which was fake); saw some hastily lowered suspensions, but no real shock offerings yet that we could see; and of course a lot of blinged-out wheels. Sure, there were a few S550s that had a tasteful mod here or there, but for the most part this group looked a bit rushed together for SEMA. In the coming months we will see real performance parts emerge for these cars, but its still a bit soon.
More of the Gold Plated fad was found inside. Oh, and over-the-top wide "lip" wheels won't go away
During the Gold Lot staging for the Vegas 50 Mustangs our Mustang were lined up next to the APR Wide Body S197, which was pretty ironic. Some said our car "out wide-bodied" APR? I don't know about that, but we definitely had a lot more tire under the fenders than any other S197 there.
That's the number one issue I have with the various flares and wide bodies made by some aftermarket companies - it seems that they do all of this work just for the look. Often they take only moderately wider wheels ans push them outboard without really adding any real width, or if they do its only on a show car with 24" diameter wheels that wold never see a track. Giant flares with 275mm tires just doesn't make any sense to me, ya know? The Shelby S197 wide body install costs $25,000, and I took a flier from their shop (we toured Saturday night) just to make sure I didn't read the number wrong. Wow...
Vorshlag SEMA Show Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Car-Shows/2014-Sema-Optima/
There are many hundreds of pictures in that gallery above. I can only show a fraction of the cars and parts here, but feel free to look at more there.
Parking in Optima Alley
Optima had a rather large presence at SEMA this year, with the big Optima Prime trailer (below left) in a massive booth area inside Central Hall and two more trailers in Optima Alley (below right). This was a HUGE reserved area to park the Optima entries.
Most of the 100 cars invited to OUSCI were parked in Optima Alley, which was a road situated between the Registration building and the North Hall. On paper it looked like this was going to be a "low visibility" and low traffic area, but I was so wrong. There were several lunch trucks parked out there all week and the foot traffic consisting of newly registered attendees and hungry show folks was quite large - many thousands of people walked through this area, which ended up being a better spot for car visibility than the Ford out Front area. People could walk up to cars and look at them up close, with no bike railing or concrete walls in the way like our previous spot.
I started seeing our Mustang show up on social media - mostly with positive remarks, but a few "ricer" comments from the wing and splitter. There was actually a pretty good one on a "Mod Motor Mustang" page, with a lot of haters posting funny memes after someone put a picture from an unflattering angle of our car, covered in dust when we were parked with Ford. Luckily enough racers saw that and came to defend our honor, heh.
Since we only did the one USCA qualifier and don't have MavTV I never saw about 75 of the OUSCI entrants before, so I got to meet a lot of new faces and see a lot of crazy machinery in this area. Lots more late model sports cars than I expected (uh-oh), which was forewarning of things to come. It was in Optima Alley where I first saw then fell in LOVE with the LS1 powered Star-Quest of John Lazorack (below).
Look at this thing! Its just outrageous, with an 80s vibe, LSx V8 power, and a big dash of aero. Big, wide fender flares cover 315mm tires, which he made the himself. John is a designer at General Motors and used skills to scan/map the Conquest body, then designed new flares in 3D, then had molds made from his design. Fiberglass flares that bolt on are the result, and it looks killer. You can and should read more about this build in this article on Speed Academy.
After leaving the Ford out Front area Tuesday night, Optima Jim met me at the entrance to Optima Alley and we got parked and cleaned up that evening by 7pm. We were able to get our Optima event decals, credentials (a big carbon fiber badge), and a bunch more swag. Left that area and met one of our customers for a fancy sushi dinner at a swanky restaurant. We scored tickets from Optima folks to an exclusive Honda party late that night, but we got there too early and missed all of the Optima folks. Dancers in glass cages, dozens of escorts everywhere, it was off the HOOK. I saw Dennis there and he said "What the hell is going here on in here!?", heh. There were exhibitor parties like this every night of SEMA, if you have the stamina to party until 2 am and then be ready to work a booth by 8:30 am the next morning.
Another cool Optima entry I saw in the Alley was this purple E-body Chrysler. It had a big nasty LSx swap and TONS of custom touches. The flares are there if you know what to look for - allowing wider tires - but their placement really low on the body makes this car seem even lower than it really is. I had a 72 Challenger with a big block 440 in high school, among other Dodges, so I have a strange affinity for old Mopars - even one with LSx power. This builder had tightened up the bumpers, added a custom interior, great wheels and big Wilwood brakes. Amazing work - and there were probably 30 more cars just as well prepared at OUSCI!
If you are ever in Vegas for SEMA, plan on sticking around for Saturday and Sunday and spend the $30 for tickets to come see this OUSCI event. Even if you ignore the racing (which I should have done, ha!), just seeing the machinery there was worth the price of entry.
The C10 Truck (above left) had a tilt front end and all sorts of custom work, and was an OUSCI entry. This thing had active rear aero... on a truck! Craziness, but too cool. The Cuda (above right) built by the Roadster Shop was one of several amazing cars they had at the SEMA show, and it got one of the Optima Golden Ticket invites, and they ran this at OUSCI. I think it as boosted - you could hear the turbo(s?) spool on the road course. So sweet.
This Fuller built AWD 32 Roadster was originally built to compete in Optima events, but I think its just too damned nice to risk tearing it up at OUSCI. It has been under construction for 3 years and was being shown off in the Jet Hot booth at SEMA. Pushrod/inboard suspension, AWD, Boss429 power, big honkin tires at all 4 corners... what's not to like?! This thing is sick - and it makes the Ken Block "Hoonicorn" 65 Mustang look like it was only mildly modified. In person the craftsmanship was amazing on this 32.
This green 911 wasn't an Optima attendee, and it was a bit "hella flush" for my tastes, but it had a big LSx in the trunk. So that alone made it cool, in my book. A year ago we almost bought a Porsche Boxster that had a blown engine, for such a good price I couldn't pass it up. That would have been an LSx swap we tackled, but the seller flaked out after we had agreed upon a price, ugh. Someday...
Chevy had a decently sized and stocked display in the Central Hall. A partially completed 2015 COPO Camaro was there, with the windows covered up (probably wasn't finished inside). Biggest change was the switch to a supercharged powerplant. These drag-race COPOs are not that interesting to me, but folks were lined up to see it.
There was an orange 2015 Mustang in the HRE Wheels booth that Cortex had built, which got a Golden Ticket and ran at OUSCI. It was sporting what were supposed to be HRE's flow formed wheels, but I think there were pre-production CNC monoblock parts (long story). HRE has a new line of flow-formed wheels (like SSR, Kosei, D-Force, Forgestar, etc) that they are making now, but at nearly $700 each its a tough sell. We are set-up as a dealer, but with essentially the same offering from Forgestar costing about half ($350-360/each), I don't don't know how many we'll sell? If you love HRE this might be your solution, I guess.
Seemed like there were mechanical teething issues, and the poor driver couldn't find the autocross course to save his life, so this was one of the approx. 80 cars I actually beat at OUSCI. As with other Cortex cars, look for this one to be developed further, and it once it has a little more time to be tweaked, it should be fast.
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More Cars from Optima Alley + Optima Booth
Left: Olof and Jon arrived Wednesday and hit the show running. Right: Our spot in Optima Alley was excellent!
Moving to Optima Alley was a big improvement, and Jason and I would pop out there a couple of times a day to check on the car and ended up talking to dozens of people each time. The Mustang drew a crowd, which was astonishing considering the level of hardware it was parked next to. We even had an impromptu filming with Chad Reynolds and the MavTV film crew one time when we were there, which I think showed up on the last show? The MavTV coverage of the USCA series in 2014 has improved all season, and our car made it into both the "pre-OUSCI" episode as well as the OUSCI episode, which is always good for exposure. Both of these will continue to air, so check your cable/satellite provider to see if you have the MavTV channel.
I could write a huge post just about other cars that entered OUSCI, and it wouldn't be at all boring. But I didn't end up meeting a huge number of the entrants. Its been about 4 weeks after the event now and some of the screwed up things that went wrong with how the event was run are becoming less irksome now. I regret getting so spun-up about how the event was run and not meeting more of the drivers and builders during the 2 days we were at the track. As a competitor its hard to turn off that part of my brain, I guess. We don't know if we will "build" for OUSCI competition in the future, but we will surely enter the local USCA qualifiers - which themselves were a TON of fun - and see how it all adds up for OUSCI.
There were plenty of imports in Optima Alley, including these two below. The MINI was a bit outgunned on the horsepower front but the rear engined VW had some extra power in the back seat!
So there was a rumor of a few Race Cars sneaking into OUSCI, and there were a couple. The interior of the car below at left raised a few eyebrows, but apparently not as many people cared about that as our splitter and wing. So there's talk of a "Vorshlag Rule" to do away with splitters and wings. Which is ridiculous, as we can and do regularly street drive our car on the street. Apparently there's a lot of leeway in the definition of a street car. Our car has real Air Con, Sat Nav, power windows, full interior, but gutted and caged race cars are all good. There was also a little bit of a thrash to install some parts in Optima Alley right before the SEMA parade. Looked like the intake was acquired at the last minute, and it was swapped in the parking lot. And it was swapped back about 2 miles into the parade when something went wrong, doh.
The Pro Touring Camaros were out in full force, with James Shipka's (below left) One Lap Camaro (OLC) and many others in attendance.
Mark Stiloh's latest 69 Camaro creation was called "Hellfire", and it was displayed all week in the Optima booth next to Hobaugh's Corvette. These red terrors were both amazing builds, and both fast on track (quicker than I was!)
Random SEMA Cars
There were hundreds of other cars I took pictures of at SEMA, both inside in booths and outside in show areas. I cannot hope to cover even a fraction of those - you can see some for yourself in the SEMA gallery - but here are a few.
This DTM-prepped BMW was in the Akrapovic exhaust booth, and I got to take some close ups during Load In Day before it was moved behind ropes. Neat aero tricks abound, but you always have to remember - even DTM has rules restrictions, and some of the biggest design elements are compromised to fit within that series' rules. Still, very slick little tricks here and there (the side mirrors even had a wing!)
Other than the many fluff versions, there were some racey S550s in the Ford booth. The blue Roush car had some real track prep parts, and I hope they try to focus more on the handling/downforce/safety aspects than just superchargers and dress-up stuff. The Watson Racing S550 was a drag car, and it looked pretty solid, too.
Another amazing Roadster Shop build, this 2nd gen Camaro (below) had lots of "road race" inspired custom work. Was it a legit track car? I kind of doubt it, at the level of craftsmanship that was used, but who knows? They beat the heck out of that E-body Chrysler they built at OUSCI! There's a great article on MotoIQ covering SEMA (a Nerds Eye View: SEMA 2014) that has a lot more pictures and info on this Camaro below.
Turner Motorsports just came off a winning season in their Z4M Roadsters and they had one of the 2014 Season cars in the H&R booth in the South Hall. The car had some sexy curves (and no, I'm not talking about the Turner booth babes) and I took a bunch of pictures of the flares and aero. Why? Because we have a Z4 chassis sitting in my home shop awaiting its turn to become an LSx powered track beast. I saw Will Turner in that area and we chatted briefly a bit about the 2014 winning car as well as their 2015 season plans (they are building two more Z4Ms from new BMW Motorsports chassis).
Scion had a booth with several cars built for a Scion "retro" themed contest. The two I liked the most are shown below. The Toyota race team livery FR-S was a real hit, and won the overall award from Scion.
I've included these two FR-S cars for two reasons: first, this was the most popular car at SEMA, by far. While the S550 was the "Car of the Show", the FRS/BRZ 86 twins were more abundant, and after 3 years of production this is saying a lot. Second, they were both well made show car builds. And while not what a racer would probably own, they are part of the overall "car culture" and both examples here had many race-inspired parts and overall themes. Cool pair of cars.
Toyota commissioned somebody to make this "Camry" bodied race car with a flip-up body that looked surprisingly stock and steel. It was a tube frame chassis with a Toyota based V8 with a big honkin' supercharger on top. Why would Toyota want to build and show this car at SEMA? #BecauseRacecar
Another Ring Brothers creation graced the Barrett Jackson booth, this time a highly modified Pantera. It was a work of art. The ugliest car of the show has to go to the Ken Block "Hoonicorn" 65 Mustang, though. Yes, its an amazing creation that makes 845 hp, is AWD, uses a Sadev transaxle, and made for one wild ass Gymkhana video... but in person, the proportions were all wrong and it looked ridiculous. But "ridiculous" is kind of the Ken Block trademark... style and beauty often don't go hand-in-hand.
Instead of going on and on about SEMA cars for days I leave you with a link to the Vorshlag SEMA 2014 Gallery as well as the MotoIQ coverage of the show. Enjoy!
Cool New Products
Of course we go to SEMA really to see new products being offered for the first time (ditto for the PRI show), and we found a lot of new items we're going to be selling at Vorshlag and/or using on our own race cars. Here's but a few...
So we've been working with Forgestar since 2012 and have really been moving a lot of their custom wheels to racers and street guys alike, especially in the Mustang crowd that wants 10" and wider wheels on both ends of the car. We hit a wall on their F14 series wheels at 18x12" - they don't offer anything wider, and to make an 18x13" would require a whole new set of tooling ($$$). Instead they have developed the M14 series 2-piece wheels using a version of the F14 center, shown above. Available in up to 18x15" widths in 1/4" increments, with light weights and BIG caliper/rotor clearance, and available in a large range of offsets, I think we've got the solution to our REALLY wide wheel problems! My next race car will have these M14's on both ends, sporting 18x12" up front and 18x14" out back.
With prices getter more competitive and programability getting easier, digital dash displays are starting to show up in more race cars (and even grassroots level stuff). Of course we saw the stuff from Racepak (above left), and we already sell AIM, but there was some really nice offerings from some new players, with more OEM-looking gauges. The VDO "Analog" gauge cluster (above right) was all digital, has flexible configurations, can be had for $700-900, and looked like it would fit in a typical BMW binnacle. There were also lots of "analog" style gauge cluster offerings from Dakota Digital that were showing up in many cars on the SEMA show floor.
Electrical wiring isn't glamorous but it is often necessary to re-wire a car when it becomes a race car. The OEM electrical connectors are designed to make 5-7 connections in a lifetime, and after a decade underhood they can often become brittle from heat and age, causing broken locking tabs and water leaks - which lead to electrical gremlins. We've seen that too many times! But race-quality electrical components are very different, and we've been using MIL-spec connectors and higher end solid-state electrical parts in race cars for years. We saw some cool new bits from a few manufacturers, and recognized a lot of things we had already been using. The "smart wiring" programmable CAN-BUS solutions are becoming more common as well, and everyone from Motec to Holley had something to show.
The folks at GM Performance are taking a page out of the Ford Racing playbook and are offering Z/28 and ZL1 Camaro upgrade parts for 5th gen Camaro SS and owners. The displays of the parts and of a car on the side with highlighted bits was identical to a Ford displays from years past, but like they say.... "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
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Left: Olof and Jon arrived Wednesday and hit the show running. Right: Our spot in Optima Alley was excellent!
Moving to Optima Alley was a big improvement, and Jason and I would pop out there a couple of times a day to check on the car and ended up talking to dozens of people each time. The Mustang drew a crowd, which was astonishing considering the level of hardware it was parked next to. We even had an impromptu filming with Chad Reynolds and the MavTV film crew one time when we were there, which I think showed up on the last show? The MavTV coverage of the USCA series in 2014 has improved all season, and our car made it into both the "pre-OUSCI" episode as well as the OUSCI episode, which is always good for exposure. Both of these will continue to air, so check your cable/satellite provider to see if you have the MavTV channel.
I could write a huge post just about other cars that entered OUSCI, and it wouldn't be at all boring. But I didn't end up meeting a huge number of the entrants. Its been about 4 weeks after the event now and some of the screwed up things that went wrong with how the event was run are becoming less irksome now. I regret getting so spun-up about how the event was run and not meeting more of the drivers and builders during the 2 days we were at the track. As a competitor its hard to turn off that part of my brain, I guess. We don't know if we will "build" for OUSCI competition in the future, but we will surely enter the local USCA qualifiers - which themselves were a TON of fun - and see how it all adds up for OUSCI.
There were plenty of imports in Optima Alley, including these two below. The MINI was a bit outgunned on the horsepower front but the rear engined VW had some extra power in the back seat!
So there was a rumor of a few Race Cars sneaking into OUSCI, and there were a couple. The interior of the car below at left raised a few eyebrows, but apparently not as many people cared about that as our splitter and wing. So there's talk of a "Vorshlag Rule" to do away with splitters and wings. Which is ridiculous, as we can and do regularly street drive our car on the street. Apparently there's a lot of leeway in the definition of a street car. Our car has real Air Con, Sat Nav, power windows, full interior, but gutted and caged race cars are all good.
There was also a little bit of a thrash to install some parts in Optima Alley right before the SEMA parade. Looked like the intake was acquired at the last minute, and it was swapped in the parking lot. And it was swapped back about 2 miles into the parade when something went wrong, doh.
The Pro Touring Camaros were out in full force, with James Shipka's (below left) One Lap Camaro (OLC) and many others in attendance.
Mark Stiloh's latest 69 Camaro creation was called "Hellfire", and it was displayed all week in the Optima booth next to Hobaugh's Corvette. These red terrors were both amazing builds, and both fast on track (quicker than I was!)
Random SEMA Cars
There were hundreds of other cars I took pictures of at SEMA, both inside in booths and outside in show areas. I cannot hope to cover even a fraction of those - you can see some for yourself in the SEMA gallery - but here are a few.
This DTM-prepped BMW was in the Akrapovic exhaust booth, and I got to take some close ups during Load In Day before it was moved behind ropes. Neat aero tricks abound, but you always have to remember - even DTM has rules restrictions, and some of the biggest design elements are compromised to fit within that series' rules. Still, very slick little tricks here and there (the side mirrors even had a wing!)
Other than the many fluff versions, there were some racey S550s in the Ford booth. The blue Roush car had some real track prep parts, and I hope they try to focus more on the handling/downforce/safety aspects than just superchargers and dress-up stuff. The Watson Racing S550 was a drag car, and it looked pretty solid, too.
Another amazing Roadster Shop build, this 2nd gen Camaro (below) had lots of "road race" inspired custom work. Was it a legit track car? I kind of doubt it, at the level of craftsmanship that was used, but who knows? They beat the heck out of that E-body Chrysler they built at OUSCI! There's a great article on MotoIQ covering SEMA (a Nerds Eye View: SEMA 2014) that has a lot more pictures and info on this Camaro below.
Turner Motorsports just came off a winning season in their Z4M Roadsters and they had one of the 2014 Season cars in the H&R booth in the South Hall. The car had some sexy curves (and no, I'm not talking about the Turner booth babes) and I took a bunch of pictures of the flares and aero. Why? Because we have a Z4 chassis sitting in my home shop awaiting its turn to become an LSx powered track beast. I saw Will Turner in that area and we chatted briefly a bit about the 2014 winning car as well as their 2015 season plans (they are building two more Z4Ms from new BMW Motorsports chassis).
Scion had a booth with several cars built for a Scion "retro" themed contest. The two I liked the most are shown below. The Toyota race team livery FR-S was a real hit, and won the overall award from Scion.
I've included these two FR-S cars for two reasons: first, this was the most popular car at SEMA, by far. While the S550 was the "Car of the Show", the FRS/BRZ 86 twins were more abundant, and after 3 years of production this is saying a lot. Second, they were both well made show car builds. And while not what a racer would probably own, they are part of the overall "car culture" and both examples here had many race-inspired parts and overall themes. Cool pair of cars.
Toyota commissioned somebody to make this "Camry" bodied race car with a flip-up body that looked surprisingly stock and steel. It was a tube frame chassis with a Toyota based V8 with a big honkin' supercharger on top. Why would Toyota want to build and show this car at SEMA? #BecauseRacecar
Another Ring Brothers creation graced the Barrett Jackson booth, this time a highly modified Pantera. It was a work of art. The ugliest car of the show has to go to the Ken Block "Hoonicorn" 65 Mustang, though. Yes, its an amazing creation that makes 845 hp, is AWD, uses a Sadev transaxle, and made for one wild ass Gymkhana video... but in person, the proportions were all wrong and it looked ridiculous. But "ridiculous" is kind of the Ken Block trademark... style and beauty often don't go hand-in-hand.
Instead of going on and on about SEMA cars for days I leave you with a link to the Vorshlag SEMA 2014 Gallery as well as the MotoIQ coverage of the show. Enjoy!
Cool New Products
Of course we go to SEMA really to see new products being offered for the first time (ditto for the PRI show), and we found a lot of new items we're going to be selling at Vorshlag and/or using on our own race cars. Here's but a few...
So we've been working with Forgestar since 2012 and have really been moving a lot of their custom wheels to racers and street guys alike, especially in the Mustang crowd that wants 10" and wider wheels on both ends of the car. We hit a wall on their F14 series wheels at 18x12" - they don't offer anything wider, and to make an 18x13" would require a whole new set of tooling ($$$). Instead they have developed the M14 series 2-piece wheels using a version of the F14 center, shown above. Available in up to 18x15" widths in 1/4" increments, with light weights and BIG caliper/rotor clearance, and available in a large range of offsets, I think we've got the solution to our REALLY wide wheel problems! My next race car will have these M14's on both ends, sporting 18x12" up front and 18x14" out back.
With prices getter more competitive and programability getting easier, digital dash displays are starting to show up in more race cars (and even grassroots level stuff). Of course we saw the stuff from Racepak (above left), and we already sell AIM, but there was some really nice offerings from some new players, with more OEM-looking gauges. The VDO "Analog" gauge cluster (above right) was all digital, has flexible configurations, can be had for $700-900, and looked like it would fit in a typical BMW binnacle. There were also lots of "analog" style gauge cluster offerings from Dakota Digital that were showing up in many cars on the SEMA show floor.
Electrical wiring isn't glamorous but it is often necessary to re-wire a car when it becomes a race car. The OEM electrical connectors are designed to make 5-7 connections in a lifetime, and after a decade underhood they can often become brittle from heat and age, causing broken locking tabs and water leaks - which lead to electrical gremlins. We've seen that too many times! But race-quality electrical components are very different, and we've been using MIL-spec connectors and higher end solid-state electrical parts in race cars for years. We saw some cool new bits from a few manufacturers, and recognized a lot of things we had already been using. The "smart wiring" programmable CAN-BUS solutions are becoming more common as well, and everyone from Motec to Holley had something to show.
The folks at GM Performance are taking a page out of the Ford Racing playbook and are offering Z/28 and ZL1 Camaro upgrade parts for 5th gen Camaro SS and owners. The displays of the parts and of a car on the side with highlighted bits was identical to a Ford displays from years past, but like they say.... "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
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OS Giken had a damned nice display with a lot of parts, especially considering how small of a company they really are. They had good exploded views of their popular limited slip diffs, various versions of ramp angles, as well as examples of LSDs for the Ford 8.8" and Chevy 10-bolt. Good stuff, if a bit pricey.
Whiteline had an S550 in their booth and Jason and I chatted them up on 3 different occasions. It was nice to see our S197 in some of their literature as well as playing on their video monitors, ha! We met their head of domestic parts development Jan (shown below at left talking to our engineer Jason) and we picked his brain about what they have coming out for the S550.
What we didn't expect to see were so many new S197 parts! They have developed a "high angularity bushing" that is essentially a spherical bearing made of their hard elastomers, similar to a Johnny Joint or Del-Spehre. But unlike those two aftermarket offerings, the Whiteline "Max-C" bushing joint was easier to rotate through 2 axis, and their demo-part was right there to push on yourself.
They already had two brand new S197 lower rear control arm offerings (shown above) with this Max-C bushing, in fixed length and adjustable length. They hadn't decided to make a UCA using this bushing yet, but boy did we hound them to get to it! That's the one joint on this car that really NEEDS a bi-axis joint, and the Max-C looks like the perfect fix without adding the noise associated with Del-Sphere or all-metal spherical joints. Look for this part from Whiteline soon, hopefully in our hands for testing by the end of the year.
Mishimoto had a nice little booth at the show and we talked to their development folks for a bit. They had new S550 parts on display already, like this Ecoboost oil cooler kit. We've had great luck with their S197 aluminum radiator, slim-line electric fans, silicone hoses/bends, and some catch tanks and such. We tend to use their radiators in all of our LSx swaps in BMWs and the FRS/BRZ as well.
Speaking of S550 parts, Ford had many new offerings already on display, having found many weaknesses in the new chassis' independent rear suspension. Those 10 second quarter mile runs they've done on supercharged 5.0s? They had the aluminum subframe mount bushings and updated halfshafts, as shown above. The halfshafts use a low-cost variation of the 930 Porsche CVs, which are apparently stronger than the OEM S550 bits. Ford also had the new Mustang "tilted on the side" to show all sorts of silly things, like the "Trans Cooler Scoop" (aka: the gravel trap) and the Boss302 side exhaust (aka: silly and loud ballast). The real work seemed to be shown in the Ford Racing display out front, where a new "Ford" supercharger kit was being offered, as well as 2015 5.0L heads (which can be retrofit to the 2011-14 Coyotes for more flow).
With the good also comes the bad - at least a glimpse. There were a LOT of really ugly cars shown at SEMA, but I've kept them out of this write-up other than this 5th Gen Camaro on 34" rims (but you can see them all in the photo gallery!) There were really some goofy products as well. Most of the back half of the 1st floor in South Hall is where most of the worst displays are stuck at SEMA. Every Chinese tire manufacturer you never heard of and never will buy from is banished here, slinging 60" tall tractor tires and car tires in every color of the rainbow. Some of the company names are hilarious and do not translate well. Names like "Happy Luck Trustworthy Parts Co" (true story!) will make you smile... and pick up your walking pace.
Now this was an exception to the "funny name" rule, as this Vietnamese restaurant Pho Kim Long had excellent food. We noticed a LOT of Pho places that had goofy names in the same neighborhood, so I think this was intentional. Some days you need to venture away from the convention center for lunch at SEMA.
SEMA Ignited + Friday Parade
So the SEMA show was wrapping up Friday at 4:30 pm, and the plan was to have everyone meet at their cars in Optima Alley, roll out in one big group and join the hundreds of other SEMA display cars that would be parading to the SEMA Ignited event Friday evening. This was to be from about 5 pm until late that night, and every OUSCI entry was asked to be there with their car. This was one of the two parts of the "Road Rally", and counted for 5 of that 25 points towards the OUSCI champion, so we pretty much had to go. SEMA Ignited is open to the public (unlike the SEMA show itself), and showcases hundreds of the cars displayed at SEMA as well as many of the displays/trailers from a lot of the same sponsors that would be at OUSCI that weekend.
By Friday morning we had shop manager (and photographer) Brad on site, Paul Costas was here for another trade show starting Sunday, plus Amy and I, Jason, Jon and Olof. We all met up in Optima Alley for the driver's meeting before the Road Rally and got ready for the parade and SEMA Ignited. We had one checkpoint to meet up in the alley next to the Central Hall, then on to the SEMA Ignited parking, then we had to go to a restaurant to check in by a certain time to get our 5 points towards OUSCI.
The fuel level was pretty low when we loaded the car on the trailer back in Dallas a week earlier, and after driving around town a bit Monday, one parade to the Ford area, moving it to Optima Alley, and the Ignited parade it was getting dangerously close to running out of fuel. We rolled out and I held my breath hoping that the parade would run smoothly and without too much traffic.
Ha! When has a parade ever run smoothly?? It was bumper to bumper traffic that took 90 minutes to traverse about 4 miles. The indicated fuel range that started at "13 miles to empty" ended up at "zero" by the time we made it through the parade and into the SEMA Ignited parking area. There were a few cars that did run out of fuel, and a couple of other breakdowns along the way, including this famous rear end collision of a Liberty Walk Ferrari 458. Oops!
Once we were in the right parking area we were lined up two wide and bumper to bumper, almost all 100 OUSCI entries grouped together. Some cars parked on the show floor took a little longer to get there, but most made it. We got there right at dusk and night fell quickly - and our parking area got REALLY dark. We came back after dinner and there were portable lights set-up, which made car viewing a lot easier.
We had the Optima Umbrella Girls on hand at both ends of the parade, and they were handing out free OUSCI event T-shirts and trying to get spectators to show up Saturday and Sunday. A lot of the OUSCI competitors helped out and I ended up handing out 3 boxes worth of shirts and talking to people at SEMA Ignited for an hour or two. You know what makes you really popular? Even more popular than beautiful, leggy umbrella girls? FREE T-SHIRTS!
Eventually I went and checked in at the Tilted Kilt (a popular "Breastaurant") and met up with some of the USCA competitors I knew personally or from forums/online, and we all had a bite to eat. Optima had some free drinks for us, and while we ate they had one of the USCA qualifier event TV shows playing on the bar's screens with the volume cranked to 11. After we ate and drank a bit I went back out to SEMA Ignited for a while longer, but by 9:30 I was bushed - and I needed to be at the track at 6:30 am the next morning (to walk the autocross and speed stop courses!). Jon and Olof were nice enough to stick around until 10 pm and when they could leave they took the Mustang to a gas station a block away to fuel up with the 91 octane Premium they have locally (we brought plenty of 93 octane from Texas, but it was in the trailer), enough to make it to the track (25 miles away) the next morning. So I walked across the street to our hotel (convenient!) and got some sleep...
Speedhunters?!
I'm jumping ahead to the Saturday night portion of the Road Rally from OUSCI (from LVMS to Shelby museum, all the way down the Vegas Strip - and worth another 20 points), but this is such a cool pic I had to share it here.
One of my all-time favorite automotive websites for beautiful pictures is Speedhunters, and one of their photographers shot a picture of our car cruising down the Vegas Strip. The photographer was riding in a Liberty Walk wide-bodied 911 Turbo, but he was hanging out for 4 city blocks trying to get a picture of our Mustang. We stopped at a light and he was giving compliments on our car. From a Speedhunters photographer. Riding in an epic 911. Craziness!
Eagles Canyon Toy Run 2014 -Saturday Dec 6, 2014
I drove 5 different cars at the 2012 ECR Toy Run, including 3 of my own cars! All for FIFTY BUCKS!
Last bit here, then I am wrapping it up until the next segment, where I will talk about the OUSCI event itself. This Saturday here in Dallas we're going to take our red 2011 GT out to Eagles Canyon Raceway to the annual "Toy Run" event, December 6th. This is an annual event where the track massively discounts entries for a one-day track event... $50 + an unwrapped $10 toy + two canned goods is all it costs to run 4-5 sessions on this 2.5 mile road course.
Event Details: https://www.facebook.com/Eaglescanyontoyrun2014
The low price brings out lots of folks, but its always a good time. The weather can be iffy in December, but the forecast this time looks to be 63 degrees and clear. If you are in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area, or even within a couple of hours away, you should come check out this track. Never done an HPDE before? No worries - they will have instructors. Don't have track tires? No worries - there are no times taken, this is just for FUN and to bring in gifts and food for needy children in the area. The owner of ECR takes a hit, but it brings in so much charity and goodwill everyone feels good at the end of the day. And you get to race all day for $50!
This event brings in the most eclectic mix of street and race cars, noobies and veterans alike. Its a super low cost way to check out HPDE for the first time or a cheap way to get some testing done, too. This is an event where we've corrupted a lot of local SCCA autocrossers and introduced them to the high speed thrills of road courses. Our 2011 Mustang will be there just to be shown off, because it is For Sale and all.
Come join us! Spread the word!
What's Next?
The wrap up of this 3-part mega series of posts will be in my next post. This is where I will cover the two hectic days (and nights) of the OUSCI 2014 event itself, and explain what went wrong with our entry (21st place, arg!) and some things that the newly expanded event (100 cars!) didn't get exactly perfect. All in all it was worth it, now that I look back on it, but it was a bit stressful learning the ropes at our first big Optima Shootout. If you have never done OUSCI and want to, read my next post so you can learn what rules really matter and which ones apparently don't, what prep you should do and the mods that won't help. I will also talk about our next race car and what we plan on doing with it...
Until next time,
OS Giken had a damned nice display with a lot of parts, especially considering how small of a company they really are. They had good exploded views of their popular limited slip diffs, various versions of ramp angles, as well as examples of LSDs for the Ford 8.8" and Chevy 10-bolt. Good stuff, if a bit pricey.
Whiteline had an S550 in their booth and Jason and I chatted them up on 3 different occasions. It was nice to see our S197 in some of their literature as well as playing on their video monitors, ha! We met their head of domestic parts development Jan (shown below at left talking to our engineer Jason) and we picked his brain about what they have coming out for the S550.
What we didn't expect to see were so many new S197 parts! They have developed a "high angularity bushing" that is essentially a spherical bearing made of their hard elastomers, similar to a Johnny Joint or Del-Spehre. But unlike those two aftermarket offerings, the Whiteline "Max-C" bushing joint was easier to rotate through 2 axis, and their demo-part was right there to push on yourself.
They already had two brand new S197 lower rear control arm offerings (shown above) with this Max-C bushing, in fixed length and adjustable length. They hadn't decided to make a UCA using this bushing yet, but boy did we hound them to get to it! That's the one joint on this car that really NEEDS a bi-axis joint, and the Max-C looks like the perfect fix without adding the noise associated with Del-Sphere or all-metal spherical joints. Look for this part from Whiteline soon, hopefully in our hands for testing by the end of the year.
Mishimoto had a nice little booth at the show and we talked to their development folks for a bit. They had new S550 parts on display already, like this Ecoboost oil cooler kit. We've had great luck with their S197 aluminum radiator, slim-line electric fans, silicone hoses/bends, and some catch tanks and such. We tend to use their radiators in all of our LSx swaps in BMWs and the FRS/BRZ as well.
Speaking of S550 parts, Ford had many new offerings already on display, having found many weaknesses in the new chassis' independent rear suspension. Those 10 second quarter mile runs they've done on supercharged 5.0s? They had the aluminum subframe mount bushings and updated halfshafts, as shown above. The halfshafts use a low-cost variation of the 930 Porsche CVs, which are apparently stronger than the OEM S550 bits. Ford also had the new Mustang "tilted on the side" to show all sorts of silly things, like the "Trans Cooler Scoop" (aka: the gravel trap) and the Boss302 side exhaust (aka: silly and loud ballast). The real work seemed to be shown in the Ford Racing display out front, where a new "Ford" supercharger kit was being offered, as well as 2015 5.0L heads (which can be retrofit to the 2011-14 Coyotes for more flow).
With the good also comes the bad - at least a glimpse. There were a LOT of really ugly cars shown at SEMA, but I've kept them out of this write-up other than this 5th Gen Camaro on 34" rims (but you can see them all in the photo gallery!) There were really some goofy products as well. Most of the back half of the 1st floor in South Hall is where most of the worst displays are stuck at SEMA. Every Chinese tire manufacturer you never heard of and never will buy from is banished here, slinging 60" tall tractor tires and car tires in every color of the rainbow. Some of the company names are hilarious and do not translate well. Names like "Happy Luck Trustworthy Parts Co" (true story!) will make you smile... and pick up your walking pace.
Now this was an exception to the "funny name" rule, as this Vietnamese restaurant Pho Kim Long had excellent food. We noticed a LOT of Pho places that had goofy names in the same neighborhood, so I think this was intentional. Some days you need to venture away from the convention center for lunch at SEMA.
SEMA Ignited + Friday Parade
So the SEMA show was wrapping up Friday at 4:30 pm, and the plan was to have everyone meet at their cars in Optima Alley, roll out in one big group and join the hundreds of other SEMA display cars that would be parading to the SEMA Ignited event Friday evening. This was to be from about 5 pm until late that night, and every OUSCI entry was asked to be there with their car. This was one of the two parts of the "Road Rally", and counted for 5 of that 25 points towards the OUSCI champion, so we pretty much had to go. SEMA Ignited is open to the public (unlike the SEMA show itself), and showcases hundreds of the cars displayed at SEMA as well as many of the displays/trailers from a lot of the same sponsors that would be at OUSCI that weekend.
By Friday morning we had shop manager (and photographer) Brad on site, Paul Costas was here for another trade show starting Sunday, plus Amy and I, Jason, Jon and Olof. We all met up in Optima Alley for the driver's meeting before the Road Rally and got ready for the parade and SEMA Ignited. We had one checkpoint to meet up in the alley next to the Central Hall, then on to the SEMA Ignited parking, then we had to go to a restaurant to check in by a certain time to get our 5 points towards OUSCI.
The fuel level was pretty low when we loaded the car on the trailer back in Dallas a week earlier, and after driving around town a bit Monday, one parade to the Ford area, moving it to Optima Alley, and the Ignited parade it was getting dangerously close to running out of fuel. We rolled out and I held my breath hoping that the parade would run smoothly and without too much traffic.
Ha! When has a parade ever run smoothly?? It was bumper to bumper traffic that took 90 minutes to traverse about 4 miles. The indicated fuel range that started at "13 miles to empty" ended up at "zero" by the time we made it through the parade and into the SEMA Ignited parking area. There were a few cars that did run out of fuel, and a couple of other breakdowns along the way, including this famous rear end collision of a Liberty Walk Ferrari 458. Oops!
Once we were in the right parking area we were lined up two wide and bumper to bumper, almost all 100 OUSCI entries grouped together. Some cars parked on the show floor took a little longer to get there, but most made it. We got there right at dusk and night fell quickly - and our parking area got REALLY dark. We came back after dinner and there were portable lights set-up, which made car viewing a lot easier.
We had the Optima Umbrella Girls on hand at both ends of the parade, and they were handing out free OUSCI event T-shirts and trying to get spectators to show up Saturday and Sunday. A lot of the OUSCI competitors helped out and I ended up handing out 3 boxes worth of shirts and talking to people at SEMA Ignited for an hour or two. You know what makes you really popular? Even more popular than beautiful, leggy umbrella girls? FREE T-SHIRTS!
Eventually I went and checked in at the Tilted Kilt (a popular "Breastaurant") and met up with some of the USCA competitors I knew personally or from forums/online, and we all had a bite to eat. Optima had some free drinks for us, and while we ate they had one of the USCA qualifier event TV shows playing on the bar's screens with the volume cranked to 11. After we ate and drank a bit I went back out to SEMA Ignited for a while longer, but by 9:30 I was bushed - and I needed to be at the track at 6:30 am the next morning (to walk the autocross and speed stop courses!). Jon and Olof were nice enough to stick around until 10 pm and when they could leave they took the Mustang to a gas station a block away to fuel up with the 91 octane Premium they have locally (we brought plenty of 93 octane from Texas, but it was in the trailer), enough to make it to the track (25 miles away) the next morning. So I walked across the street to our hotel (convenient!) and got some sleep...
Speedhunters?!
I'm jumping ahead to the Saturday night portion of the Road Rally from OUSCI (from LVMS to Shelby museum, all the way down the Vegas Strip - and worth another 20 points), but this is such a cool pic I had to share it here.
One of my all-time favorite automotive websites for beautiful pictures is Speedhunters, and one of their photographers shot a picture of our car cruising down the Vegas Strip. The photographer was riding in a Liberty Walk wide-bodied 911 Turbo, but he was hanging out for 4 city blocks trying to get a picture of our Mustang. We stopped at a light and he was giving compliments on our car. From a Speedhunters photographer. Riding in an epic 911. Craziness!
Eagles Canyon Toy Run 2014 -Saturday Dec 6, 2014
I drove 5 different cars at the 2012 ECR Toy Run, including 3 of my own cars! All for FIFTY BUCKS!
Last bit here, then I am wrapping it up until the next segment, where I will talk about the OUSCI event itself. This Saturday here in Dallas we're going to take our red 2011 GT out to Eagles Canyon Raceway to the annual "Toy Run" event, December 6th. This is an annual event where the track massively discounts entries for a one-day track event... $50 + an unwrapped $10 toy + two canned goods is all it costs to run 4-5 sessions on this 2.5 mile road course.
Event Details: https://www.facebook.com/Eaglescanyontoyrun2014
The low price brings out lots of folks, but its always a good time. The weather can be iffy in December, but the forecast this time looks to be 63 degrees and clear. If you are in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area, or even within a couple of hours away, you should come check out this track. Never done an HPDE before? No worries - they will have instructors. Don't have track tires? No worries - there are no times taken, this is just for FUN and to bring in gifts and food for needy children in the area. The owner of ECR takes a hit, but it brings in so much charity and goodwill everyone feels good at the end of the day. And you get to race all day for $50!
This event brings in the most eclectic mix of street and race cars, noobies and veterans alike. Its a super low cost way to check out HPDE for the first time or a cheap way to get some testing done, too. This is an event where we've corrupted a lot of local SCCA autocrossers and introduced them to the high speed thrills of road courses. Our 2011 Mustang will be there just to be shown off, because it is For Sale and all.
Come join us! Spread the word!
What's Next?
The wrap up of this 3-part mega series of posts will be in my next post. This is where I will cover the two hectic days (and nights) of the OUSCI 2014 event itself, and explain what went wrong with our entry (21st place, arg!) and some things that the newly expanded event (100 cars!) didn't get exactly perfect. All in all it was worth it, now that I look back on it, but it was a bit stressful learning the ropes at our first big Optima Shootout. If you have never done OUSCI and want to, read my next post so you can learn what rules really matter and which ones apparently don't, what prep you should do and the mods that won't help. I will also talk about our next race car and what we plan on doing with it...
Until next time,
Mike K
WANNA BE FAST
This is all old news. I got realize from your Facebook. Lol
There were some awesome cars in attendance at this year's event.
I want to try my luck at Road America for next year's event
There were some awesome cars in attendance at this year's event.
I want to try my luck at Road America for next year's event
ModdedMach
Detailer of shiny things.
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When Terry posts updates to this thread i feel like a Harry Potter fan excited about the next book lol.
Sign me up for those Whitline MaxC bushings, i was going to run Spohn but i may hold off and wait for these offerings.
Sign me up for those Whitline MaxC bushings, i was going to run Spohn but i may hold off and wait for these offerings.
claudermilk
Senior Member
^^ This. love these epic updates.
I've already moved on LCAs, but I'll be looking for them to heed Terry's "advice" to produce a UCA bushing. Sounds like what has been needed all along.
I've already moved on LCAs, but I'll be looking for them to heed Terry's "advice" to produce a UCA bushing. Sounds like what has been needed all along.
Norm Peterson
corner barstool sitter
The thing about LCAs and UCAs is that it has always been about the two end connection details. Get that part right, and what the metal stuff between them looks like hardly matters as long as it is sufficiently strong structurally to withstand the loads applied to it, long term.
Norm
Norm
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Those 5th gen camaros need all the help they can get don't they? If that's a "street" car then the Vorshlag car must be a garage queen.
From what I remember this car got all of the "street car points" (15 of the 25 points in the judged portion). The air conditioning was a racing cool suit, people were using iPods as car radios, see the snapped-in floor mats there? That's the interior. Get how this works now... ?
Yea, me too. I won't ever bring a street car to a gun fight again.
Just like how we learned "what rules matter and what rules are absolutely ignored" in the GRM $20XX Challenge in 2010 (which we rectified completely by 2011 with the same car shown above - and won the whole freagin thing!), we learned a lot of similar things about OUSCI going to the Vegas event. I will share that in my next write-up.
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ModdedMach
Detailer of shiny things.
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They havent been released yet so you probably wont find much. Googling whiteline and sema would yield more results.
Essentially, itll be something very similar to johnny-joints, UMI's Roto Joints or Spohn Performance's "DelSphere". Which are all spherical joints where the spherical ball in incased in a hard synthetic polymer material (poly, Derlin, elastomer), and that material is then encased in a metal housing, so you get all the articulation of the spherical joint, but the polymer "insulation" if you will, provides much more noise cancellation.
My favorite design to date is Spohns Del-Sphere, mostly because the amount of pressure applied to the sphere by the Derlin case is adjusted by the threaded end-cap which is used to tighten/loosen the setup (or to be completely removed to rebuild/replace internal parts). They have to be set up correctly tho- from what ive read, the secret is to be sure the bolt going through the sphere is a VERY perfect fit and make sure the Sphere cap is cranked down very very tight so that the only movement that can happen is the preferred articulation that happens under load- and the entire deal has a grease zerk for lubrication as well. Ive heard people running there UCA/LCA setup call them "silent". Vorshlag ran their UCA and found it did have some noise tho, so im sure experiences vary.
Sorry Terry- didnt mean to threadjack.
Department Of Boost
Alpha Geek
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Where is the race report? I'm really curious how all of that went down.
II, which was damned cool. I have never said "Cool" and "Mustang II" in the same sentence in my life. A high school buddy had a 1978 "Cobra" Mustang and I had a 1972 Mustang, both with built 302s. Looking back at that time in my life, they really were both hideous cars, from the two worst generations of Mustangs ever made, and we kind of knew it. This blue car above redeemed the entire Mustang II generation of cars - but it had very little Mustang II left, of course.
A tube chassis build that was based loosely on a C5 Corvette platform, with the T56 rear transaxle and torque tube in place. A new floor and tunnel were fabricated, then the remainder of the Mustang II body was plopped on top. All new fenders and wheel arches were made to cover big meety wheels and tires on the C5's wheelbase, with a custom sheet metal front end based loosely off of the 2013 Boss302 LS. Crazy interior and engine bay work were also part of this build.
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THAT IS BEAUTIFUL!
http://www.engineswapdepot.com/?p=3218
Project Update for January 15th, 2014: This was supposed to be part 3 of 3 of our "lead up" + SEMA2014 + OUSCI coverage. This segment was going to be devoted to our coverage and personal impressions of the 2014 Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational (OUSCI) event. I took audio notes each day there and I've been transcribing that and trying to write this for over 6 weeks, and its complete. It is huge, it is in depth, but its brutal and extremely negative. if I posted this it would only make a small percentage of entrants and the organizers very angry, so I'm not - I can't see what good will come of it. Long story short: OUSCI was very frustrating to our entire group that went, which were all racers.
I wrote 60,000 words about this event - that I will likely never publish
I've written bad reviews of events in the past: The 2012 ASCS event which was a joke. The dangerous way the track event for TX2K events was run. I've posted about or trials with pig headed rules makers in SCCA. Some of you get something from this, but mostly it makes me hated by more and more people. In the end, its bad for our business, and there are 7 other people that rely on Vorshlag for their income. Nobody wants to hear the truth (not my "no holds barred" version of it).
Instead this will be a short S197 project update, where I will show some newly finished work on our 2011 GT, which is still for sale (and I've lowered the price) with a new listing on eBay. At the end of this I will cover what we are racing in 2015, which is an all new race car build that we started working on only 8 days before it's first outing. All happy news, all the time.
Vorshlag TT3 Mustang : New Updates and Lower Price
This image is one of my favorite views of this car, and in original resolution is my current desktop background
Right before SEMA/OUSCI we made a lot of changes to our 2011 Mustang, most of which were cosmetic but they also included some real aero updates - like the rear new wing uprights and end plates shown in the image above. Normally we would have reinforced the trunk lid to take all of these new, bigger loads - but we ran out of time and went with it "unsupported" for the SEMA show and OUSCI. This is what we did on a similar AJ Hartman carbon fiber wing element we made uprights for on Jamie Beck's ST3 race car, shown below.
A couple of weeks after we got back from OUSCI in November I asked Ryan to duplicate the trunk reinforcements he made for Jamie's ST3 Mustang - to put on our car. He started with some aluminum plate reinforcements that bolt to the bottom side of the trunk (including some through-holes to the mounting uprights) attached with stainless M6 button head bolts, as shown below.
The round aluminum tube design used was the same as the previous versions on Jamie's car. Ryan added riv-nuts to the bottom side flat edge of the tube structures, then machined custom Delrin bushings on the lathe and bolted them to the flats at the base of the trunk tubes.
These hard bushings press the trunk lid down onto a strong, sheet metal structure of the back of the trunk surround. This way the aero loads push the trunk down, with loads passing through these aluminum tube reinforcements, that then pass to the chassis structure. It seems unusual, and on a pure race car the wing uprights often bolt through slotted holes in the trunk and down to the frame, but we've used this design in the past and it works.
The finished trunk reinforcements make the entire trunk / wing struture more rigid and it closes more easily now, too. We're going to leave the tubular reinforcements in raw silver on this car. Looks good and goes well with the red and black on the car for the trifecta of "Vorshlag colors" (red, black, silver)
These pre- and post-SEMA updates took some time and a bit of cash. Replicating these front flares and fresh paint would have been about $6000 to the normal guy. The custom wing uprights, larger end plates, and trunk reinforcement work would cost another $2000. With all of that included we felt like it justified the $48K price we were asking for the car. Well, the car hasn't sold so we're going to eat a lot the costs of these updates and lower the price to $44,500.
New eBay ad with buy it now price of $44,500: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321643064787
The purchase still comes with the buyer's choice of tires and wheels (we have two matching sets of Forgestar 18x12" wheels, one with a fresh set of 335mm BFG Rivals and the other with fresh 335/345mm Hoosier A6 tires), and of course Vorshlag set-up and parts support to the buyer. If you know of anyone that's looking for a unique, fast, well sorted, and beautiful Mustang like this, please send them our way. If this for sale page is still up, then the car is still for sale. We've stopped racing the car, it is now being stored in my home shop, but its ready to go for the 2015 racing season. If interested, call Vorshlag and ask for Terry... Thanks!
What's Next?
As much as I'd like to take the 2011 Mustang back to the USCA event in Texas in March, they have banned all of the things that made it fast. We've also proven all of the theories and parts we wanted to test on this chassis in NASA TT3 competition, so that car is in storage awaiting its sale. Again, check the For Sale page here or the eBay auction through Feb 4th. We kept this test mule for over 4 years, which is twice as long as we tend to keep any chassis here at Vorshlag.
Having this car for sale and no new race car ready for the 2015 NASA racing season left us with few options for this year. I was going to sit on the sidelines and watch until after the 2011 Mustang sells, then we could finally finish our LSx swap E46 BMW build that is started. That car is just at the point where it needs a five figure cash infusion, to pay for the motor, transmission, wheels and shocks, so its "on hold" until the Mustang sells.
In the last week of December a friend of mine made a change in his race car plans. He wanted to get out from under a C4 Corvette track build we had been brainstorming for the past 3 years and move to a newer chassis, with fewer hassles. Can't blame him but I also couldn't let him just part it out and get rid of it. He had already done so much work to this car that it would be a shame to let it go in pieces, and, it was the exact right year and model for where it was classed.
So I bought this 1992 Corvette LT1 ZF6 car from him for a GOOD price and we put together a very low buck project plan with a very compressed time frame race prep. We had about 3 weeks to take it from a gutted interior car with no safety gear to a safe, reliable race car that could be competitive in a NASA TT class. We could have gone nuts with a TTB build but decided to keep it simple and build it for TTC, which is the base class for 1992-96 LT1 Corvettes. This project was initially announced on the forums as a "mystery chassis" and we had some hilarious guesses about what we were building, after giving about a dozen clues.
Today, as I write this post the Corvette has a custom roll bar, race seat, harnesses anchored, ballast box built, Hoosiers mounted, brakes upgraded, shocks replaced, it has lost 400 pounds, 150 pounds of ballast has gone back in (on the floor in the middle of the car), the car is at the tuner's geting dyno'd and some new livery decals are being cut. This was all done in a WEEK AND A HALF, 8 days at the shop, and our crew knocked it out of the park. We should just barely make the deadline for this weekend's NASA race at MSR-Houston, Jan 17-18th. We will continue to refine and tweak this project all season. Our class this weekend has a good variety (Mini Cooper S, Mazda RX8, and this 24 year old Corvette!) so I've got my fingers crossed that we can pull out a win and hopefully start the beginning of a string of new TTC track records. At the end of the season this car will (hopefully) be sold and help fund and finish our nasty TT1 V8 BMW monster for 2016. If a body in white S550 arrives soon enough that might change our plans, too.
Why a 24 year old Corvette, you ask? Well to start with its already 800 pounds lighter than the S197, when both are without ballast. It has a far superior OEM suspension set-up (forged aluminum A-arms, aluminum IRS), nearly perfect weight distribution (still 51%F/49%R with all of this weight removed), excellent brakes/ABS, and much less drag. We're racing it in a "lower" class and it won't put down the lap times the TT3 Mustang did, but its something new, something different, and we cannot afford to keep racing the same car year after year. Its bad for business.
We have torn this car apart, modeled all of the suspension bits, and measured for 18x11" wheels at both ends (see above right)
We also have been working on the new S550 chassis in earnest, measuring and modeling parts to help build new camber plates, shocks and wheels. We have already sold a bunch of 10" and 11" wheels for this chassis and the first set of prototype MCS TT2 shocks are due here in a few weeks and will go on the Dusold Designs 2015 Mustang shown above, who is helping us test these suspension goodies and wheel sizes. Look for more updates in our S550 thread located here.
Vorshlag is still working on a lot of S197 and Coyote powered cars, of course. With our new CNC machine room we have the ability to make more new products for this chassis, and there are many on the schedule already. I had planned on showing some new custom fabricated bits we have made recently for some customer S197s, but this post got out of control, so that will happen next time.
And don't worry - this "project build thread" will not go away. If we get another S197 chassis for a Vorshlag build, or do anything new to any S197, it will be featured here. Until then...
Cheers,
I wrote 60,000 words about this event - that I will likely never publish
I've written bad reviews of events in the past: The 2012 ASCS event which was a joke. The dangerous way the track event for TX2K events was run. I've posted about or trials with pig headed rules makers in SCCA. Some of you get something from this, but mostly it makes me hated by more and more people. In the end, its bad for our business, and there are 7 other people that rely on Vorshlag for their income. Nobody wants to hear the truth (not my "no holds barred" version of it).
Instead this will be a short S197 project update, where I will show some newly finished work on our 2011 GT, which is still for sale (and I've lowered the price) with a new listing on eBay. At the end of this I will cover what we are racing in 2015, which is an all new race car build that we started working on only 8 days before it's first outing. All happy news, all the time.
Vorshlag TT3 Mustang : New Updates and Lower Price
This image is one of my favorite views of this car, and in original resolution is my current desktop background
Right before SEMA/OUSCI we made a lot of changes to our 2011 Mustang, most of which were cosmetic but they also included some real aero updates - like the rear new wing uprights and end plates shown in the image above. Normally we would have reinforced the trunk lid to take all of these new, bigger loads - but we ran out of time and went with it "unsupported" for the SEMA show and OUSCI. This is what we did on a similar AJ Hartman carbon fiber wing element we made uprights for on Jamie Beck's ST3 race car, shown below.
A couple of weeks after we got back from OUSCI in November I asked Ryan to duplicate the trunk reinforcements he made for Jamie's ST3 Mustang - to put on our car. He started with some aluminum plate reinforcements that bolt to the bottom side of the trunk (including some through-holes to the mounting uprights) attached with stainless M6 button head bolts, as shown below.
The round aluminum tube design used was the same as the previous versions on Jamie's car. Ryan added riv-nuts to the bottom side flat edge of the tube structures, then machined custom Delrin bushings on the lathe and bolted them to the flats at the base of the trunk tubes.
These hard bushings press the trunk lid down onto a strong, sheet metal structure of the back of the trunk surround. This way the aero loads push the trunk down, with loads passing through these aluminum tube reinforcements, that then pass to the chassis structure. It seems unusual, and on a pure race car the wing uprights often bolt through slotted holes in the trunk and down to the frame, but we've used this design in the past and it works.
The finished trunk reinforcements make the entire trunk / wing struture more rigid and it closes more easily now, too. We're going to leave the tubular reinforcements in raw silver on this car. Looks good and goes well with the red and black on the car for the trifecta of "Vorshlag colors" (red, black, silver)
These pre- and post-SEMA updates took some time and a bit of cash. Replicating these front flares and fresh paint would have been about $6000 to the normal guy. The custom wing uprights, larger end plates, and trunk reinforcement work would cost another $2000. With all of that included we felt like it justified the $48K price we were asking for the car. Well, the car hasn't sold so we're going to eat a lot the costs of these updates and lower the price to $44,500.
New eBay ad with buy it now price of $44,500: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321643064787
The purchase still comes with the buyer's choice of tires and wheels (we have two matching sets of Forgestar 18x12" wheels, one with a fresh set of 335mm BFG Rivals and the other with fresh 335/345mm Hoosier A6 tires), and of course Vorshlag set-up and parts support to the buyer. If you know of anyone that's looking for a unique, fast, well sorted, and beautiful Mustang like this, please send them our way. If this for sale page is still up, then the car is still for sale. We've stopped racing the car, it is now being stored in my home shop, but its ready to go for the 2015 racing season. If interested, call Vorshlag and ask for Terry... Thanks!
What's Next?
As much as I'd like to take the 2011 Mustang back to the USCA event in Texas in March, they have banned all of the things that made it fast. We've also proven all of the theories and parts we wanted to test on this chassis in NASA TT3 competition, so that car is in storage awaiting its sale. Again, check the For Sale page here or the eBay auction through Feb 4th. We kept this test mule for over 4 years, which is twice as long as we tend to keep any chassis here at Vorshlag.
Having this car for sale and no new race car ready for the 2015 NASA racing season left us with few options for this year. I was going to sit on the sidelines and watch until after the 2011 Mustang sells, then we could finally finish our LSx swap E46 BMW build that is started. That car is just at the point where it needs a five figure cash infusion, to pay for the motor, transmission, wheels and shocks, so its "on hold" until the Mustang sells.
In the last week of December a friend of mine made a change in his race car plans. He wanted to get out from under a C4 Corvette track build we had been brainstorming for the past 3 years and move to a newer chassis, with fewer hassles. Can't blame him but I also couldn't let him just part it out and get rid of it. He had already done so much work to this car that it would be a shame to let it go in pieces, and, it was the exact right year and model for where it was classed.
So I bought this 1992 Corvette LT1 ZF6 car from him for a GOOD price and we put together a very low buck project plan with a very compressed time frame race prep. We had about 3 weeks to take it from a gutted interior car with no safety gear to a safe, reliable race car that could be competitive in a NASA TT class. We could have gone nuts with a TTB build but decided to keep it simple and build it for TTC, which is the base class for 1992-96 LT1 Corvettes. This project was initially announced on the forums as a "mystery chassis" and we had some hilarious guesses about what we were building, after giving about a dozen clues.
Today, as I write this post the Corvette has a custom roll bar, race seat, harnesses anchored, ballast box built, Hoosiers mounted, brakes upgraded, shocks replaced, it has lost 400 pounds, 150 pounds of ballast has gone back in (on the floor in the middle of the car), the car is at the tuner's geting dyno'd and some new livery decals are being cut. This was all done in a WEEK AND A HALF, 8 days at the shop, and our crew knocked it out of the park. We should just barely make the deadline for this weekend's NASA race at MSR-Houston, Jan 17-18th. We will continue to refine and tweak this project all season. Our class this weekend has a good variety (Mini Cooper S, Mazda RX8, and this 24 year old Corvette!) so I've got my fingers crossed that we can pull out a win and hopefully start the beginning of a string of new TTC track records. At the end of the season this car will (hopefully) be sold and help fund and finish our nasty TT1 V8 BMW monster for 2016. If a body in white S550 arrives soon enough that might change our plans, too.
Why a 24 year old Corvette, you ask? Well to start with its already 800 pounds lighter than the S197, when both are without ballast. It has a far superior OEM suspension set-up (forged aluminum A-arms, aluminum IRS), nearly perfect weight distribution (still 51%F/49%R with all of this weight removed), excellent brakes/ABS, and much less drag. We're racing it in a "lower" class and it won't put down the lap times the TT3 Mustang did, but its something new, something different, and we cannot afford to keep racing the same car year after year. Its bad for business.
We have torn this car apart, modeled all of the suspension bits, and measured for 18x11" wheels at both ends (see above right)
We also have been working on the new S550 chassis in earnest, measuring and modeling parts to help build new camber plates, shocks and wheels. We have already sold a bunch of 10" and 11" wheels for this chassis and the first set of prototype MCS TT2 shocks are due here in a few weeks and will go on the Dusold Designs 2015 Mustang shown above, who is helping us test these suspension goodies and wheel sizes. Look for more updates in our S550 thread located here.
Vorshlag is still working on a lot of S197 and Coyote powered cars, of course. With our new CNC machine room we have the ability to make more new products for this chassis, and there are many on the schedule already. I had planned on showing some new custom fabricated bits we have made recently for some customer S197s, but this post got out of control, so that will happen next time.
And don't worry - this "project build thread" will not go away. If we get another S197 chassis for a Vorshlag build, or do anything new to any S197, it will be featured here. Until then...
Cheers,
Department Of Boost
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