Vorshlag S197 Development Thread

Vorshlag-Fair

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June 8, 2014...

Terry;
It's rather off topic but:
Any chance on a telescoping Steering wheel? It may sound mundane but when my 6ft 4in frame sits in our 2012 i have to straight arm the wheel to reach...
Luke - I don't think it was, but it did definitely tilt. I will check again the next time I'm inside a 2015. We had a 6'6" guy in there and he had so much headroom that he could get the seat back tilted and didn't need a telescoping wheel, however.

I thought those early claims of 300-400lbs less were wishful thinking. Ford adds a rear sub frame and tons of electronics, better safety equipment, more interior bling, and more suspension links front and rear, bigger brakes, and expect it to weigh less because its got aluminum fenders and hood?

if it weighs 3700 in track pack form that will be very light. a v6 loaded fusion is almost 3700lbs curb, imagine that but stiffer with a bigger engine and a huge new rear suspension, heavy rear end, and a drive shaft.
Agreed. The S197 is a great platform that was 3550-3650 pounds, but it had such a great motor and stock brakes and chassis rigidity for days that people could make it a lighter race car with some cutting or a heavy beast with 700 whp if they wanted. I think the S550 is going to be just a "better" S197... still a bit on the heavy side, but just as stiff, the same great motors to choose from (plus the turbo 4 added), and with better suspension. Why change the formula if it already works so well?


click the image above for an inside look at the aluminum F150 construction

Sure, it would have been nice if Ford could have invest the MANY BILLIONS they did on the F150 and made an all aluminum chassis... but the sales volumes of the Mustang compared to the F150 just do not justify the expense in engineering, testing and tooling needed. Maybe by the next generation Mustang they will have the costs lowered on this technology and we'll get a lighter Mustang in 7-8 years?
 

Vorshlag-Fair

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Project Update for June 16th, 2014: Been a busy couple of weeks since my last S197 post. We've had major progress on some V8 swap and other race car projects here, which I will cover briefly. Our summer intern has helped us clear out some pallet racks of "Stuff" and we found all manner of things worth selling on our Clearance page. There's a brief video where Jason and I show the tips of fitting 18x11" wheels on an S197 Mustang. My back is feeling better so we signed up for NASA @ Hallett next weekend, and are finishing pre-race prep and some additional brake upgrades/testing on the Mustang before we head out to Oklahoma on Friday. And now I'm finally covering the GTA event at Road Atlanta from May 9th, including the crash - I'll try to keep that brief. Let's get to it!

Other Projects and Builds at Vorshlag



If all you care about is Mustangs just skip this section. Some of you only know about Vorshlag from this S197 build thread, so you might not know that we have a service and fabrication prep shop that performs race preparations and track tech inspections, some repair work, full suspension/chassis/brake/wheel/tire installation services, and more. The "and more" part is really a lot more than you'd think - we're well versed in engine swaps and we like to swap V8 engines into cars that never came with them. We've now exceeded 100 kits sold for our BMW E36 LS1 swap, our E46 LS1 swap is selling well, and we've done swaps in BMW E30 and Z3 chassis. But we do more than that...



Our first or "Alpha" LSx V8 Scion FR-S swap development is moving along nicely and we just made an update to that build thread (on 7 forums, including at Vorshlag). The motor and transmission mounts were just completed and they look great (top right). The LS1 V8 adds barely more than 40 pounds to this little car, yet triples the engine displacement. Sound like fun yet?



Our Alpha LSx V8 NB Miata project development has reached a milestone, with the custom tubular rear subframe and rear suspension design now completed and ready for final welding and fixtures. This bolt-in subframe assembly houses an aluminum 8.8" IRS diff housing from a 2004 Mustang Cobra, which it needs to withstand the 450+ whp that the built LS1 motor it has will put out. Our new head fabricator Ryan H, who just joined us from a Daytona Prototype race team, has done all of magic to this car over the past month. Look for an update to this build thread soon (here). Zoom-zoom....



This Pikes Peak Subaru just came to our shop for a hair over two weeks to receive nearly 100 hours of custom fabrication work, including this new giant wing, a fuel cell install, custom firewall mods to accept a Tilton 3 MC pedal set-up and remote adjust brake balance bar, and more. This was a car we did a steel wide-body conversion on 2 years ago that our friends at Heritage Collision have now body worked and painted a few weeks before we got it. With all of the aero work completed it now looks like a million bucks.



There's a 5.0 Coyote V8 swapped German vehicle in our shop now getting a lot of work, but we didn't do this swap. We are doing some safety updates and fabrication work on this car, mostly by our new head fab guru Ryan H. When we had the motor out for extensive firewall rework (top left) we got a chance to weigh a Coyote 5.0 without a flywheel or clutch and it was 427 pounds, or almost exactly what an LS1 weighs in the same form. Interesting...


We have a BMW E36 LSx coupe (like above left) chassis already started, as well as an E46 coupe (like above right), a Z4 and an SN95 Mustang

Last but not least, we are doing more and more turn-key V8 swaps for customers, for both street and race cars. We're about to kick-off a new program where we take a rolling chassis we've acquired, set-up a plan for customers to pick the various drivetrain/suspension/safety options, and sell the build to the customer. This way they can choose the exact power level, suspension style, wheels and colors they want - and we build it. I've accumulated four really nice rolling chassis for this "Build a Racer" program, which I talk about more here.

Each one of these builds, and more I'm not even allowed to show, get the same type of photographs and "build thread" treatment for the owners, via giant emails. This takes a lot of time but it allows the owners to see their cars being built along every step of the way - just like our forum build threads.

House Cleaning - Vorshlag Clearance

We hired a summer intern and she 's helped us "find" a lot of Mustang parts in our shop that we have used and removed, or that some of our customers discarded after upgraded to something else. These parts are all still in great shape but just don't have a good home right now so we're blowing them out on our Clearance page. These are the Mustang related parts:

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Lots and lots of used 315mm Hoosier race tires, in A6 and R6 flavors. Amy used up 4 of these doing about 7 sessions that day at Full Tilt speed at an ECR track event 3 weeks ago, and they were still very fast. We have dozens left. I've just removed all of the Hoosier entries from the actual Clearance page (no longer willing to ship) because I lowered the price on these by 75% to only $100/set cash. This gets you a choice of the best 4 we have, but we won't ship them at that price - you've got to stop by and pick them up in person. We need the shop space more than we need the extra scrub tires for our own cars.

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Custom dual 3" stainless rear exhaust system for 2011-14 Mustang's. This is what we built using 3" 16-ga 304SS mandrel bends, two Flowmaster Series 44 409 stainless mufflers, two V-bands at the front, and with minimal work it should fit an OEM system at the "axle-back" connection. Fits better than any off-the-shelf ale back system with the stock Panhard, Whiteline Panhard or Whiteline Watts Link rear. We're blowing this one out cheap, and it could be shipped.

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The custom 10" plexiglass rear spoiler we built for our time in SCCA's ESP class has been sitting on a shelf since late 2012. I forgot we even had this until something on a shelf in front of this part was moved out of the way. It is in perfect shape and we would charged 2 or 3 times this much to hand make one like it. It is built to fit a 2010-12 rear trunk and is made to the absolute limit of the rear spoiler rules for Street Prepared category. Comes with all of the hardware needed to bolt it to the trunk (note: a handful of nut-serts will need to be added for the lower rear strut mounts)

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If that spoiler isn't your thing, maybe the big carbon fiber APR wing we used from 2012-2014 suits you better? Like the spoiler above, this also only mounts to the trunk so you don't have to cut into your fenders or anything else to add this. If you pick up a spare trunk, like we did (for $150), you can mount this wing to the spare and "swap trunks" between track days and street use.

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We acquired a brand new Magnaflow X-pipe for 2011-14 Mustangs that we're selling discounted by $100. It wasn't used on a customer's install and had been sitting on a shelf for months. It is brand new.

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This was one of the many Upper Control Arm and UCA mounts we tested in our car. This configuration is an unmodified UPR brand bolt-in upper mount with a Spohn Performance adjustable UCA with a Del-Sphere upper joint, also known as a Johnny Joint. Vorshlag customized the upper mounting bolt (larger) and made custom mis-alignment spacers. It works better than Spohn ever intended, but it makes a little noise, like many aftermarket UCAs do.

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Spohn Performance adjustable Panhard Rod, M5-105, built with 4130 chromemoly steel tubing and Del-Sphere ends. This unit worked fine and we used it until we upgraded to the Whiteline Watts Link kit.

Mustang 18x11" Wheel Fitment Video + New Sizes

When we bought this 2011 GT and started racing it immediately, in mid 2010, I was shocked at the utter lack of wide wheels that were offered to fit the S197. I mean it had been out since the 2005 model, but most folsk were still jacking around with 8 and 9" wide wheels, or worse, using 18x10 or 10.5" wheels that POKED out the fenders like mad. I bought a variety of wheels (1 of each) to test 18x9, 18x9.5", 18x10 and 18x10.5" sized on the front and back of our test mule, trying to fit as much as possible under stock fenders.

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After coming up empty handed we finally decided to pull the trigger and had our own 18x10" wheels made, which we calculated and verified would fit easily under stock fenders both front and rear. This D-Force 18x10 ET43 wheel was a success and now lots of other wheel makers have this exact same size. But I knew that we could fit more, so we did some more calcs and ordered 18x11" front and 18x12" rears, and made some suspension tweaks to make them fit with a 315 at both ends. We ran on this set-up for much of 2012-2013 before finally deciding to flare the fronts then the rears to fit 18x12s and even wider tires (335F/345R). the car only gets faster every time we up the tire and wheel width.


Click above for Hollywood quality video showing the tricks to install 18x11's on a Mustang (hint: its not Hollywood quality)

During 2013 we decided to try an 18x11" wheel for both ends, and came up with our proprietary fitment that uses radically different offsets on each end of the car. We have sold lots of 18x11" wheels now and have all the tricks and tips and this video above explains where the clearance is closest and the best way to have maximum room for street an track use. Jason and I made this video in about 10 minutes, so its not exactly Oscar worthy, but it gets the info across. We also touch on tire sizes to use on 10 and 11" wheels.

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  • 17×8.5 offsets from +6 to +50
  • 17×9.0 offsets from +12 to +58
  • 17×9.5 offsets from +19 to +65
  • 17×10 offsets from +25 to +72

In addition to the many 18" sizes we've run on various cars, Forgestar has launched an F14 wheel in several new 17" sizes. We begged them to do this for racers that were asking for their style of "custom built" flow formed wheel process and these are finally coming on line. There is also another F14 size we've been asking them to make that is about to drop - an even wider 18x13" size. Look for this big 13" wide wheel on our 2011 Mustang soon, and we've got sets being built for C6 Z06 customers as well. Bigger really is better in this instance.

continued below
 

Vorshlag-Fair

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continued from above

Global Time Attack at Road Atlanta - May 9, 2014

The two weeks after TWS and before our trip to Road Atlanta were extremely hectic at the Vorshlag shop. We had customer cars with insane deadlines and our guys were working extra hours to get caught up. That meant our pre-race prep on the Mustang was very very delayed.



Since we were leaving on Thursday at 3 am, the car was quickly prepped and loaded in the trailer on Wednesday. The guys pushed some fresh Motul RBF600 fluid through each corner to make sure it was bled and clean, the same set of 335F/345R Hoosier A6 tires from TWS were left in place, 8 fresh quarts of Mobil1 15W50 synthetic oil and a Wix filter were swapped, and the car was given a good pre-race tech inspection. Shop Manager Brad noted the XP20 Carbotech front brake pad depth was only 1/2 thickness, and asked me where the spare pads were.... err... good question. "I think they are in the trailer". I went to get the trailer, no spare pads. Crap. This WAS the spare set of pads. "No worries, we'll manage", I said. We have 3" front brake ducting, so the pad won't get that hot. Ha.



Note: getting in a rush does not excuse the mistakes I made in this pre-race prep. We tend to push our own car to the back of the line when it comes to shop time, behind paying customers. My not taking the braking system needs and consumables seriously enough led to the accident below. Our Motul rep was shocked that we were still using RBF600 fluid on this somewhat fast and heavy Mustang. "You should ONLY use RBF660 on that car!" Motul RBF600 is great brake fluid, and appropriate for 90% of our road course customers, but the boiling point is a touch lower than their 660 fluid. We've been pushing the limits of brake system sanity in this 3800 pound car and I knew that our measured caliper temps were nearing the boiling point of RBF600. Don't ignore advice from your suppliers and don't ignore the data you are taking. Learn from my mistakes.

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This Road Atlanta GTA event was the only "close" event on their 2014 schedule, and its at the same track as NASA Nationals East this year. It made sense early in the season to add this GTA @ Road Atlanta event to our own 2014 race schedule. Having never even been to Road Atlanta, much less driven it, we knew that I needed to get some track time there before going to NASA Nationals. This road course is notoriously tricky, and ATL locals tend to have a massive advantage over newbies at this track.



Even though the GTA series is ultra competitive, we were there for NASA practice more than anything else. Our car isn't built around the GTA rules/tires and the Hoosier A6 tires we run dumped us into their top class, Unlimited RWD. Turns out that the top 2 fastest cars for the entire GTA field of 43 competitors were in this class, hurray. This was a crazy "combo" event weekend with GTA, Formula D drifting, and 3 classes of Trans Am racing all happening over the same 3 days. GTA was to run a compressed schedule with one early morning Thursday practice, then 3 timed sessions Friday (almost back to back), and three more on Saturday (also within quick succession). The drifting was off and on all day and went late into the night, and the Trans Am practice, qualifying and racing was in between. It was a hectic schedule, but our GTA bits were all grouped together.


Todd Earsley drove the 15 hours solo from Dallas to run GTA in his street tire shod EVO

Since we had a 15 hour tow from Dallas to Atlanta, and Amy was already taking 2 days off work, we wouldn't make the early Thursday practice. We left in the trailer from our house at about 3 am Thursday morning with Amy, shop manager Brad and photo guru Brandon in tow. We drove 850 miles across 5 states, straight through and arrived in time to eat dinner near our hotel Thursday night. We got up and made it the 10 miles to the track early Friday morning to find a paddock spot and unload. Once there we found a few Texas folks in attendance, including MyShopAssist/FrictionCircleFab/NASA and USCA competitor Todd Earsley in his EVO, SPL Parts/NASA racer Sean Farrah in his boosted Nissan 300ZX, and NASA TT competitor Josh Garcia in his Toyota V8 powered AE86.

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We got to the track Friday morning with plenty of time, found the registration center and got our credentials to get in the gate, then we worked our way through the maze of infield roads trying to find the paddock. We asked directions from parking folks 3 times and were told to go 3 different places. We even found Todd Earsley in the infield maze of roads, who threw his hands up and just followed us. It was crazy confusing, and after coming back from this event I've found a map of the RA paddock areas and better understand why - there are TWO pit rows and TWO separate paddocks. The "infield" or "Pro" paddock and the "TT" paddock and pits set outside the track, across the T12-T1 front straight. If you learn anything from reading this post, it is to learn to ask WHICH paddock you need to pit in at Road Atlanta, and to NEVER underestimate this track's abuse of your braking system. More on that in a moment. They put all of the Trans Am and GTA cars in the left "TT" paddock and the Formula Drift cars were in the right or "Pro" paddock.


Josh Garcia's Toyota V8 powered AE86 Celica is always a popular car in the pits and on track

We unloaded the car from the trailer, and while I went to the driver's meeting Amy and Brad gave the car a quick wash at a nearby garden hose. They were drying it off, applying the GTA number boards, and checking fluids when we I got back. At this meeting the GTA staff warned us that this track was pretty treacherous and that they wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple crashes and car carnage. They were right.


Left: I'm talking with Sean Farrah in the pits before we went out in session 2. Right: Sean is a behind me here in his 300Z TT

We brought two sets of wheels and tires with us - a fairly well abused set of Hoosier A6 tires that had 2 hard weekends on them already and the semi-fresh set of 335/345 A6s that we had used for one weekend with NASA @ TWS two weeks earlier. The older, scrub set was a mis-matched mess: I had loaned out one of these 18x12" front wheels a while ago to Todd to test on his EVO, and it still had an old 315/30/18 A6 mounted to it. The matching 18x12" front wheel was brand new from Forgestar and not even powdercoated yet, and mounted with an old 335/30/18. We didn't realize we were missing the 315mm mounted wheel until moments before we left Dallas, but Todd grabbed it and brought it to Road Atlanta with him.


Left: After the GTA Session 1 results I was in 8th overall. Right: I found a 1.4 seconds in session 2, moving up to 7th




After swapping to our "test" tires, which were terrible, we never got a chance to put on the good ones

I figured Friday's first 2 or 3 sessions worth of laps would be throw-away times, since I was a total newbie here and intended to make as many laps as possible to learn this new track layout. So we mounted the worst set of mis-matched tires and put the 315mm on the inside (RF) corner, since it would see the least lateral loading. Contrary to what the sidewall numbers might lead you to think, the 315/30/18 and 335/30/18 Hoosier A6 tires are both exactly the same diameter (25.6" tall), so it shouldn't throw off speed sensors/ABS system due to side-to-side tire diameter differences.



They put us into two run groups sort of at random for the first session, and told us that based on those time's they would split the field in half and grid us by speeds. We got to grid early and got out first for the first session. There were a few faster cars that I let by immediately, during the warm up lap, who obviously knew this track better than I did. I tried to keep up with one of those but he checked out going over the "bridge" turn (T11). I quickly pointed by then tucked in behind Sean Farrah to follow his 300Z through this unfamiliar course. Unfortunately he was just as new to RA as I was, so it was more of the blind leading the blind, heh. We had a long first session and I ran until the checkered flag came out. The tires got greasy after the first 2-3 laps but they are A6s and I'm used to that. I still managed a 1:38.434 best lap, which was 8th fastest overall for the first set of sessions, and that put me in the "A" grid. This was one of my last laps in that long session and the tires were VERY hot by that point, so I knew there was a lot left in the car once I gained some course familiarity and confidence on the 5 or so TOTALLY BLIND corners. I had taken 11 laps in the first session



After making 11 hot laps and seeing the checkers for session 1, I took a cool down lap and came into our paddock spot. I hopped out, yanked off my heavy driving suit, had a quick download with Brad and Amy. "MAN this track is intense!!!", I kept saying. Even through ambient temps were around 77°F it was VERY HUMID and my driving suit was soaked. My laps from this session were pretty ragged and I had failed to watch enough lap videos or practice this course in any driving simulators - mistake. I had some great track notes from TT racer Marc Sherrin, who had driven here at a Chin Motorsports event in a rental 5.0 Mustang just two weeks prior, but it wasn't gelling in my brain AT ALL and I had no idea where to turn in for T1, T3, T6, T11 or T12. Turn 11 was especially daunting, which is the uphill, blind, FAST turn over a hill as you go under the famous bridge that cross the track. I'm not ashamed to say that Turn 11 was absolutely terrifying - fast, completely blind, soaked in danger if you screw it up, and with virtually no visual clues to learn from. "Take it flat", they all said... "Are you NUTS!?!" my id replied, on every lap.



We topped off the fluids and fuel and got ready for session 2, about 30 minutes later. I noticed zero fuel slosh problems on this mostly right hand turn track, by the way - even getting the fuel somewhat low in the long first stint I took. We checked the front brake pads and they were looking a bit worse for wear, but we didn't have any spares in the trailer like we thought. BIG mistake. "Don't worry", I told them, "I just need to take a few more recon laps, then I'll bring it in". We would then have just enough brake pad left for a few sessions of 1-2 hot laps on Saturday, if I could just pick up this layout today. Famous last words.


The Trans Am cars were paddocked all around us. We met some nice folks with good advice about this track

Grid A second session almost got rained out, and the B Grid got some sprinkles when they went out. This time I got to the pits early again, but they lined up cars sort of in order of times and I went out in a pack of cars about the same speed as me. I think I made a few passes and was passed about 3 times, and again stayed out and made a lot of hot laps in a row. More than I'm used to doing in this heavy car, but the brake pedal felt fine. The same well used A6 tires worked great for the first two laps, then fell off heavily to a certain point and stayed there. I slowed down after lap 2, as expected, but after about the 4th lap, the longer I stayed on track the faster I was getting. Corners were finally stringing together, I was "less lost" in Turns T2 through T5, I felt like I knew what to do to put Turns T6 and T7 together, etc. Turns T11 and T12 were still kicking my ass, but I had one more session Friday and 3 on Saturday to get that right.



In-car video from my first hot lap in session 2 is shown above. It was a 1:37.28, which was with the same very worn mis-matched A6 tires at their best temperature. More importantly I was keeping up with the blue 350Z of Sasha Anis ahead of me, which was a more powerful car and he ended up with a 1:28.0 on day 2. A lot of drivers made significant time drops on the 2nd day, with the rain gone and the track rubbered-in from the Trans Am and GTA racers. Todd dropped 10 seconds from Day 1 to Day 2 best times, as did many others.



According to the data logger I took 8 hot laps in session 2. Then all Hell broke loose.

continued below
 

Vorshlag-Fair

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continued from above

So after the Hoosiers fell off a bit I kept making laps, pushing 9/10ths or so, desperately feeling my way through T11 like a blind man. With walls surrounding both sides of nearly the entire track, steep elevation changes everywhere, BIG nasty curbs that could upset a battleship, and five corners that are over rises, it was the hardest track I've ever driven. Cars were dropping like flies - blowing motors, ripping splitters off, going off track, etc. By the end of day one I heard that half the GTA cars had dropped out (some made repairs and got back out on day 2). I kept pounding out laps, trying to soak it all in.

Again, in the 2nd session the car felt pretty consistent after the tires fell off about 2 seconds, after the first lap in this session. But learning the track was making up for the tires falling off and still I was dropping time late in the 2nd session. I made a 7th best lap time of a 1:37.015 with tires that we later noticed were absolutely FRIED. Down to the base rubber, zero tread left on the fronts or rears.



I still hadn't taken turns T11 or T12 at any respectable rate of speed, since I couldn't seem to find any visual markers to "line me up"... yes yes, I had 20 people giving me advice about "go under the red light" under the bridge, or "aim for the top left window in that medical building" over the horizon. It just wasn't working and I was still very slow through these last 2 corners. And those corners dictated the next long straight past the start finish.



On lap 8 I was on a good lap, finally seeing a 1:36 indicated on the predictive lap timer, finally with no traffic, but I wasn't pushing it any harder than I had been the whole session - the corners were just finally coming together. I was motoring down the LONG back straight and could see two cars entering Turn 10A as I went to go grab the brakes, doing about 150 mph. WHOOMP! Pedal goes straight to the floor, nothing happened. No brakes. Shit!

Most racers will mentally practice for this very situation. You should also practice a stuck throttle pedal, having a flat tire, and a few other "bad things might happen" scenarios. This way, when Bad Things happen (given enough time, it all happens) you know what to do automatically. In 27 years of driving on road courses I've had exactly one other sudden and complete loss of brakes before, in my 2013 Mustang on the OEM pads/small front rotors, I went off track after a 120 mph braking zone at ECR, and I was doing about 80mph when I left the track. I had time to downshift, pump the brakes a bit, try to use the E-brake, etc. THIS time it happened FAST and the loss of brakes was COMPLETE. I was going a lot faster here, the braking zone was steeply downhill, and the run-off area option was not very friendly. This wasn't just loss of pad material like last time, it was a total and immediate loss of hydraulic system pressure.


Last time we saw the front end intact and all one color for a few months...

As it often happens in a crash, my perception of time Slowed Down: I quickly evaluated options. There was a wall immediately off track to my right, a gravel trap just off track ahead, and two cars negotiating Turn 10B to my left. Pulling an e-brake could shed a tiny bit of speed but potentially lock the rear tires, put the car into a spin, and likely punt me into a wall. Or into the gravel trap sideways - and flip. Going left and "short cutting" Turns 10A-10B through the grass wasn't an option because I'd likely collect one if not both of the cars slowly exiting 10B right in front of me. So going off track straight ahead was my safest option. I managed a quick 5-4 downshift, as I would normally here while braking (and even go down to 3rd gear), but grabbing 3rd at 150 mph would only mechanically over-rev the motor and lock up the rear tires. According to the Solo DL, I left the track doing 142 mph, so the downshift was good for a tiny reduction of speed via engine braking.

Now of course we always video EVERY lap of every session Amy or I drive, to catch good laps as well as bad things like this - to hopefully learn from it. But we goofed didn't pull any video off the same SD card in this vidcam for 4 race weekends in a row, and the 1080P camera filled the card during the 2nd hot lap of this session. So we have no video of the crash. Sadly I always check the vidcam before a session starts, and would have realized "oh, this won't record, it must be full" and swapped cards before the next session. Just happened to fill up during the worst session of the weekend. We still have plenty of pictures of the shunt thanks to some sharp eye'd shutter bugs.



I hit the gravel trap and was going through it at an angle towards the bridge. There were big berms/walls on both sides of the bridge span that I didn't want to nose into, and my hope was to shed speed in the gravel, likely lose the splitter, and get back on track and under that bridge without hitting any walls or the 2 cars ahead of me. And that's what happened, but the impact LEAVING the gravel trap was INCREDIBLE. There was about an 18" earthen berm that marked the border of the gravel trap and that's what got me airborne....



This vertical impact is what broke my back, and while I didn't know that for certain for a few days, I knew a new level of PAIN. The hit knocked the wind out of my lungs and I couldn't breath for about 90 seconds. My entire spine started spasming and it was the most intense pain I've ever felt. The left front tire blew and both front wheels bent going over the 18" vertical berm, but I still left the gravel trap with the ability to steer, doing about 90 mph, with no brakes. The momentum took the car up the hill to the bridge and I was just coherent enough to know that I was closer to the pits than a corner station - I remembered seeing where the ambulance was parked. I checked and since nobody was close to me from behind, I rolled into Pit In just past T11, rolled down and then up the pit road and pulled over right next to the Medical Building. I shut off the engine in gear to slow then stop, and was less than 5 feet from where the ambulance was parked.




Brandon was sitting on pit wall and snapped a few pictures of me coming off track. It took him a second to realize that the car ... didn't look right. The splitter was gone and part of the lower bumper and front flares were ripped off. He saw me pop the belts, roll out of the car and lay on the ground, which I did to try to get my diaphragm working and to be able to draw a breath. He thought I was checking under the car, walked up and then heard me moaning in pain.

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It felt like someone was stabbing me in the back, and I still couldn't breath. The ambulance crew was on me in about 20 seconds and tried to immobilize me, learning that I had intense back pain. They checked me out for feeling in my legs, but by then I could breath and talk and kept trying to stand up - against their wishes. They wanted to load me into the ambulance and cart me off to a hospital but I was having none of it. I waited until the next Monday to get X-rays, and then saw the broken bones. It was a hard hit, and I think most of my damage (compression fracture to vertebrae T-11 and broken rib at T-12) happened where the pictures show me coming OUT of the gravel trap. There was about an 18" high ridge of dirt they cut into the ground for the hole for the gravel pit which launched the car about 2 feet into the air.



After 27 years of doing this stuff, dozens of offs at all sorts of speeds, this is the first time I got hurt. I was drenched in my driving suit and badly overheated, but they got me into the air conditioned medical building 20 feet away, cooled me down, and gave me two bottles of water which I guzzled. Getting out of the drenched driving suit helped cool me down, and they checked my vitals a couple of times. Amy was on the scene pretty quickly and wanted me to go to the hospital, but I was stubborn and stupid, and walked the 1/2 mile back to our paddock spot. Well, limped back while leaning on Amy. ;)

This all happened at about 11:45 am, and while there was one more GTA session left there was no way I was driving and the car looked like crap. Brad came to fetch the car from Medical and after about 30 minutes it has SOME brake pedal and could be stopped, carefully. He pulled remnants of the brake ducts and splitter mounts off, noting some green fluid and a crushed air conditioning condenser. We don't run any anti-freeze and we figured out later it was just freon and whatever crud they use in the A/C system. Amy limped it back to our paddock spot with the mushiest pedal EVER.


These two cars went on to clobber me 1-2 in Unlimited RWD. Somehow my limited running time still held onto 3rd place

The car was relatively fine, but I was not, and I was pissed - at myself for not feeling any drop off in braking, not feeling any warning at a total brake system failure, and ignoring the other signs (pads). Looking at the brakes after the shunt, the rear pads were down to about 1/4 thickness but the fronts were down to 1/8th, at best. While they loaded up our gear and got another tire & wheel installed I fought through pain and brief stints of back spasms for a few hours. Somehow in there I did a 10 minute videotaped interview with Whiteline, standing in front of the car. I don't remember much of that. I mostly just lied down in the trailer that afternoon, and we knew our weekend was over.


Brad was shoveling gravel out of the car and removing the brake duct hoses - there's still gravel coming out weeks later

Amy and Brandon had called our hotel and managed to check out of our 2 rooms by 12:15, raced into town and got all of our gear, while Brad and I watched part of one of the Trans Am races. We stuck around for another few hours so Brandon could shoot some more pics of the GTA drivers and paddock, but we decided to leave early and head back to Dallas by about 4:30 pm. I was a wreck and that was the most miserable drive. We made it about 5 hours, with me downing Advil and applying Icy-Hot patches several times, then stopped for the night. We got back on the road Saturday morning and made it back by about 3 pm, and I laid on the couch for the next 36 hours.

When I got back to shop on Monday I made a doctor's appointment and the guys unloaded the car, and we saw the extent of the damage. It wasn't as bad as my back, that's for sure, and we had it fixed and back on track for Amy to drive a mere 10 days later. The actual repair work only took about 2 days and not many parts.



I'm trying to see the good side to this event, so please humor me while I bench race a bit here, heh. Since there's not a results page up on the GTA website for this event yet I put this page (above) together from a Facebook data dump they posted. Looks like my session 2 times from Friday were still faster than about 29 other GTA drivers (14th overall) with only 19 laps taken on this course, using a very worn out set of mis-matched tires. Many drivers picked lots of time on Saturday, including fellow NASA Texas TT competitor Todd Earsley, who dropped a staggering 10 seconds on Day 2.

The TT3 track record at Road Atlanta is a 1:29.64 (linked here), so I needed to drop about 8 seconds to be competitive, yet the ST3 track record is a 1:35.3, set just this last weekend (same rules as TT3). Knowing where I typically place relative to Todd's EVO when he is racing on street tires, like he was at GTA, I think I can bench race my way there. For a few weeks after this event I was NOT going to ever go back to this track, but after a bit of time and healing, I'm now thinking... yea. Gotta get back on that horse. We'll do NASA Nationals, and the Test day before. I am hoarding sets of Hoosiers now to be able to take at least 2 sticker sets + a set of R6s to test on for Nationals at the end of August. Its gonna be hot!

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Lessons Learned + Brake System Upgrades + Safety Gear

We've had 5 weeks to investigate the car, and think about what went wrong. Please learn from my mistakes.

1. Don't ever take your braking system for granted. If you are tracking your car at a road course, make sure you have adequate and fresh brake fluid. Fresh brake pads and un-cracked rotors. For heavier and faster cars, seriously consider brake cooling. And if you have one of the heaviest/fastest cars on the grid, consider MORE brake cooling.
2. Don't skimp or shortcut on your safety gear. Fires, rollovers and crashes don't care that wearing all of that gear is inconvenient, costly or cumbersome. Get a quality set of 6-point racing harnesses and make sure they are TIGHT. Wearing a Head and Neck device is a pretty smart use of safety gear, and a fire-retardant driving suit/gloves/shoes is also a smart investment.
3. If you are to the point of investing in aerodynamic aids and aero testing to lower lap times, its probably long past time to have already installed a full roll cage.
4. When going to a new (to you) track and you want to get up to speed quickly, watch some good in-car videos and/or find this track in a driving simulator video game and invest the time to learn the track before you arrive.

Yep, I know... I'm not following my own advice here, but I'm working on all of these things.



The front pads were very worn after the Road Atlanta event. There was less pad thickness than backing plate thickness, as shown above. The front rotors were also DONE, with massive heat cracking on all of the surfaces. Those were both replaced with fresh Centric rotors and Carbotech XP20 pads and we won't do any more TT events without NEW pads at all four corners, and we'll keep full spares in the trailer (we usually do that already). The rear brakes looked fairly worn and after the first HPDE session at ECR 2 weeks later they were replaced at the track with a new set of spare Carbotech pads. The brake pedal was still mushy as crap after we got the car back from Atlanta, and the fluid looked like coffee. It had gotten HOT and boiled, as simple as that. THAT is what ultimately caused the loss of brakes...



But why did they boil? Two reasons: 1) I was driving longer stints than we designed the car for and 2) the worn and thin brake pad material wasn't thick enough to insulate the brake fluid in the calipers from the 1000+ degree rotors. We have since upgraded the Mustang to Motul RBF660 with a complete fluid flush. The Motul 660 looks light brown right out of the bottle, not clear like the RBF600 does when new. We had just flushed another car (see above pics) with 660 and that's what it looks like, fresh.



And even though these extended driving stints are very atypical for us in NASA TT, we went ahead and upgraded the front brake ducts from 3" to 4" on the front of the car, and plumbed the system with 4" flex tubing.

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For 99.5% of you reading this the 3" backing plate + hose kits we already make (we now have the hoses as an option) are more than adequate for HPDE or even TT use. Our shop guys are building the 4" backing plates now (below right), but we ran it with the 4" hoses and front openings at ECR already and saw a 60 degree drop in front caliper temps. This weekend at Hallett will be an even better test.




Safety Gear Upgrades

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I already wear an SFI 3-2A/5 driving suit, but its a very heavy material (read: cheap suit) and I'm going to upgrade to a more modern style that is about half the weight, and fitted better to my body than this giant Simpson STD.19. Having a lighter weight suit will make me wear it more often, especially during hot events, and reduce my chances of overheating my body. We're not going to use a cool suit, as that is overkill for our typical 2-3 lap stints. I borrowed a Simpson Hybrid Pro HANS device that I will use this weekend at Hallett, and if it works well I'll buy it for use for the rest of this season. Wearing a HANS device wouldn't have helped with the GTA shunt, which was an unusual force vector going almost straight up/down, but it would obviously help in a head-on or side impact crash.



I'll go with a new Alpinestar, Puma or Sparco suit soon. People might not know this, but we sell driving suits (it would help if they were listed on our website, I know), harnesses and all sorts of other safety gear - but we do. And if a driving suit comes in for local pick-up, our Operations Manager tests them out (see Sofi being a goof, above).

I've got a little bit more written but this post is getting too long, so I'll save that for another post later this week.

What's Next


  • More post-Road Atlanta Repairs - Pictures and details of the somewhat simple repairs + a short video showing what worn front S197 hubs sound like
  • FSF @ ECR - Track test after the car was repaired, where Amy drove the Mustang
  • Gas Monkey Bar & Grill Moto GT Bike Reveal / Car show - Sofi's charity bike build was unveiled at GMBG
  • NASA @ Hallett - Amy and I are racing the TT3 Mustang at the Hallett circuit this weekend with NASA and a record 41 TT competitors for this event


More soon,
 

Vorshlag-Fair

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June 23, 2014...



That picture shows a cool suit shirt + cooler + lines. There's also a pump, that circulates the cold water through the shirt, of course. Typically some amount of water is used with a full 8-10 pound bag of ice to keep it COLD.



We have installed these systems for customers with W2W race cars, and they are very popular in endurance race cars.



NASA Time Trial isn't necessarily where you'd use one of these systems, though, and I don't want people reading the advice above to thing that they NEED a cool suit in any way shape or form to do normal HPDE track events or TT. Adding a cool suit is so far down the list of "good safe things to do" it almost doesn't register on the radar for a TT driver. Maybe if you only race in mid-summer in Arizona, and you want to stay out on track for the longest possible time, then.... maybe. These systems add a significant chunk of weight and cost. Drivers are constantly swapping out bags of ice, and if the track doesn't have ice for sale you are pretty much out of luck. I've done multiple endurance races in Texas (with stints ranging from 2-3 hours) and have yet to use a cool suit... but they are popular in that form of racing.



I will not be installing a cool suit system in our TT3 car. Road Atlanta was a complete fluke - I ran stints so uncharacteristically long that my complaints the heat there should be ignored. I did notice 3 TT drivers at the NASA Hallett race (out of 44 TT drivers) this past weekend with cool suit set-ups, but they were driver's in cars that take a LOT of laps (read: not on Hoosier A6 tires) and/or driver's that "double-up" and run TT plus W2W.



This event was hot - 94 degrees and very humid - but the only time I felt any discomfort was when wearing my crappy, heavy, cheap, 3-layer driving suit. I've got to replace this old thing, which is much heavier and hotter than a quality suit would offer. My longest stints were 4 laps, but most of my sessions were 2 laps each. That's how you use a Hoosier A6 competitively, what can I say? We did manage to snag another double TT3 win, reset the track record, and won 4 more tires with a fairly quick overall time (3 seconds quicker than our old lap record from last year). More details coming soon in an event write-up.



Edit: here's a team mate from a LeMons race team I ran with in 2012 showing his cool suit quick-connect lines exiting his suit.... right out of the fly. ;)



Cheers,
 

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June 25, 2014...

[B]Roadracer350[/B] said:
Terry, how did the new 4" ducts work this weekend?



The changes we made from Road Atlanta to Hallett on the brakes worked wonders. The prototype 4" brake backing plates we made (above) must have moved a lot more air, as we saw an 80°F drop in max temps at the calipers (down from 490°F before to a peak of 410°F here). We had run the 4" front hoses and front opening at ECR with the 3" backing plates at ECR a few weeks back and saw 430°F peak there, so the backing plate was still a restriction.



And Hallett is one of if not THE most brake intensive tracks on the TX/OK/LA circuit of tracks. We're already making a run of these 4" backing plates now, and they should be done in a couple of weeks. The production plates will have oval ducts to push more air under the rotor ring, to cool the bearings and put the air where it can be pumped through the rotor vanes.



Again, for 99% of the people reading this build thread, our 3" brake backing plate and hose kit is enough. Just avoid the cheesy "partial" brake cooling backing plate designs (see above, right) that let air spill out of the inside of the rotor. The goal is to push the air inside the rotor hat and around the front wheel bearing (see the big gap with the stock dust cover removed, above left) without letting it spill around the backing plate, so that the air is forced through the rotor vanes and out like a centrifugal pump.



After looking at making a custom backing plate out of a CNC laser cut flat sheet it ended up being a better design using an OEM brake backing plate dust cover as our starting point. Then we trim away the excess from the rotor face (except near the tie rod, which needs heat shielding) and it seals the incoming air to the inside of the rotor. It sits as close to the rotor without actually touching it and works so much better than just "stuffing a hose in there" like some brake cooling backing plates do.



We have also made some new bolt-on rear tie-down loops for the S197, which allow faster/easier/better trailer tie strap mounting. We towed 10 hours last weekend with these and the car didn't move a fraction of an inch, and it takes about 1/10th the time to strap the back down than before, when we used axle straps over the solid axle. I also HATE using straps through the wheels to hold a car down, because the tires WILL rotate over a long enough tow and allow the straps to loosen up, not to mention it scratches the wheels - but I'll cover that more in my next post.

[B]TheKurgan[/B] said:
1:21 at Hallett is impressive, but how the hell did a camaro run a 1:18!! Very nice times for that kind of heat.
Yes, that "Camaro" that set top time for the weekend is Paul Costas' GT-1 tube framed race car. Paul is a good friend of mine and I've worked on this car with him many times...



He ran the fastest lap time of the weekend, from all classes, and won TTU on Saturday and the Super Unlimited races Sunday (he does both TT and W2W).



Most of you have seen this Camaro in my race write-ups before, and he has shocks on the car that we sold him. It runs a 14.5" wide racing slick out back, real aero, weighs around 2500 with him in it, and makes in excess of "lots" of horsepower.



Underneath the vaguely Camaro-like fiberglass skin a tube framed race car, built for the old Trans Am series and GT-1 class. This thing is a beast!
 

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June 25, 2014...



Not 20 minutes after I wrote my last post there was another track driven S197 in our shop for an HPDE inspection. The brake duct hoses were routed poorly and had been worn completely through by the front wheels.



The brake duct backing plate was also bent badly, but even once we straightened it out it has a huge gap to the rotor and large areas left uncovered... and also no tie rod shielding. Unfortunately this seems to be the norm and not the exception. Not all brake duct kits are the same.



We replaced this 3" hoses so now the rotors actually see some air flow, which should help him this weekend while he runs at CoTA.
 

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Project Update for 28, 2014: In this project build thread update we will be showing more details of the repairs and upgrades to the TT3 Mustang after the shunt I had at RoadAtlanta in May. Next we cover another track day two weeks later at ECR, where Amy drove and tested out the repairs and brake system improvements. I talk a little about wheel bearings and have a video of what a bad S197 front wheel bearing sounds like. We also had a car show to attend in June with our Mustang to support a Vorshlag team member's custom Cafe Racer charity bike build. Finally I'll "weigh in" with more of my thoughts on the S550 Mustang's latest weight revelations. We'll save the NASA event at Hallett for the next installment.



Injury Report and Car Repairs after Road Atlanta Crash

When we got back from RA the car was a bit of a mess, but my back was in a little worse shape. I made a couple of doctor visits, where they X-rays and some pokes and prods, but not much else. I was determined to avoid any surgery and especially spinal fusion surgery. Both doctors said "avoid any load on your back, don't go to the gym, lets look at you again in about 6 to 8 weeks", so I've been sticking to that plan. I dealt with the pain by taking Aleve daily, used an ice pack at night to reduce swelling, wear a lower back almost brace every waking hour, and had to take Hydrocodone about a dozen times when the pain got really bad (all from my doc's advice). Never missed a day of work but there were probably a few times I should have gone home early. Pain makes me more of an a-hole than normal, but Sofi would just yell into my office "you need take a pill!" when I got too far out of hand.



Sleeping has been very difficult, as all I had to do was roll on my side and the broken rib would spear me awake. I mostly slept sitting upright for the first 3 weeks and was getting about 2-3 hours a night. The rib finally felt like it was mended at about week 5 but the fractured vertebrae and nearby disc are taking a bit longer to heal. I don't have to exert myself or lift much weight to aggravate my back, so I keep the brace on most of the day. After 5 weeks away I finally made it back to the gym for some self-imposed physical therapy by week 6 and was off the pain pills and Aleve by then. It is week 7 now, I'm doing better, and have already completed two race weekends without any incident since the crash. It actually feels fine in a proper race seat and 6-point belts. With the next two months devoid of track events I can concentrate working at the gym to strengthen my back again.



The damage to the car actually wasn't nearly as bad - after a lot of checks and measurements it is still perfectly straight and unbent, just taking some superficial, cosmetic damage. This level of vertical impact could have turned many chassis into a banana, but the S197 unibody is a tank. After 4 years of just calling it "The Red Car" around the shop, I think a nick-name of The Tank is more appropriate now. ;)

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The gravel trap took the splitter off, and when that left the car it damaged some other bits that were bolted to or nearby it. The bottom edge of the front bumper cover was ripped off, which is a section hidden by the CS lower fascia but still integral to its attachment. The left side's black factory "side skirt" was also mangled and half torn off, plus the lower portions of the front flares were damaged.



The splitter we built is stout, and when it pushed back and came off it poked a hole in the A/C condenser, so that was removed and the lines capped for now. A replacement isn't costly (less than $120) but we have only used the A/C system once this year, during the Optima Street Car road rally, and it is limiting airflow to the Mishimoto radiator. One step of the repairs were to make some templates for patches of red race roll (plastic) to fix the flares. These fender flares are going to be completely replaced at some point (likely with a composite front fender that a buddy's shop is working on) but for now we just patched the broken lower edges - you can't even see the repairs at speed, not with the unpainted black bumper cover on the front to distract you.



A new front bumper cover and side skirt were acquired from Ford, then the bumper cover was modified on the upper edge to fit around the aluminum airbox we have built to route air from the lower grill opening to the (now) front of the radiator. This detail is hidden behind the upper grill block-off plate. We had a spare CS lower fascia (that a customer discarded due to a minor scratch) so that was attached to the new bumper cover and splitter before it was all re-installed. Some minor repairs to the radiator's aluminum duct work were needed as well.



The same splitter that came off in the crash was virtually unscathed, save a couple of rear mounting holes that tore out along with the mounting bolts. We made some new holes to move the rear mounting plate 1/2 inch forward, sprayed some paint on the scratched lower face, and it all went back on. Nobody said 3/16" 6061-T6 aluminum plate was light, but it is damned sure strong. I've seen plastic and composite splitters that came off in similar crashes, usually doing as much or more associated body damage, but the splitter is almost always completely destroyed in the process. Not this beast - it also cuts grass like a mofo!



Of course I am determined to not have this type of brake system failure again, and we've taken measures to that end, as shown in my last post. The 3" brake ducts, while more than adequate for so many S197 track drivers and racers, were not keeping the 14" front Brembos cool enough on our exceptionally heavy TT3 car (3802 pounds with driver). The Alcon temp strips indicating 490°F temps at the caliper should have been a BIG red flag, which I ignored (and we saw the results of that). That's near the boiling point of most hydraulic fluid and was just not a safe condition to leave the brakes at. So we have upgraded to larger 4" front bumper front duct opening using aluminum tubing and opening up the CS lower fascia from the 3" foglight hole with some careful cutting. You can see the new rear splitter mounting stanchion in the picture above right, and also where the old mounting holes in the splitter were torn out in the crash. That's all of the damage the splitter took.



The new front brake cooling duct openings were routed with 4" hoses but necked down onto the old brake backing plates' 3" ducts. We ran out of time to make new brake backing plates before the ECR track event. I was also curious to see if the larger hoses and front openings would help the brake cooling when even with that smaller restriction at the rotor. Our guys here at Vorshlag got everything repaired, new brake pads/rotors/fluid, nut-and-bolt checked, re-aligned, weighed and corner balanced, and the front brake ducts/hoses upgraded in about 2 days time, then loaded the car into our trailer to verify the repairs at a local HPDE event at Eagles Canyon on May 24th - less than 2 weeks after the crash.

Front Wheel Hubs - Diagnosis and Repair

One of the common wear items on an S197 Mustang, and all cars for that matter, is the front hubs. We recently had to replace the fronts, so I made this little video to show what bad bearings sound like, and what it takes to replace them.



The video above shows what you should do for quick diagnosis, and should be on your pre-track check list. Every. Time. We check the hubs whenever we do any track inspections here, and we've found bad front hubs on Mustangs a number of times. This is actually the 4th set that we've replaced on our 2011 GT since we picked it up in August of 2010. As the grip levels and brake heat go up the lifespan of the hubs goes down. 4 sets of hubs in 4 years ain't bad, considering the lap times this heavy beast puts down and the brake heat numbers we've seen.



We actually replaced these hubs after the ECR event (detailed below) but before we went to Hallett. They were fine before ECR but they weren't afterwards. Vorshlag stocks and sells this FMS-M-1104-A motorsports hub kit, which comes with the 3" ARP hardened wheel studs installed plus new spindle nuts (which are one-time-use nuts that need 250 ft-lbs of torque to seat). This kit is cheaper than buying new hubs and wheel studs separately, and they are already pressed in place.



We also have a variety of wheel spacers for the S197 and our reduced (17mm) hex/enlarged taper lug nuts for this chassis. These are the same 1/2"-20 right hand lug nuts a Ford uses, but with a smaller hex drive to fit inside aftermarket "lug wells" with a deep socket with more clearance to the wheel. The larger OEM (19mm) hex lug nuts often won't work with some wheels with a tighter lug well (like Forgestars). These lug nuts and wheel spacers are what we use on our car, and they are located in a new section of our shopping cart we have created here.

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Five Star Ford at ECR, May 24th, 2014



We had planned on attending this event many weeks earlier and I was bound and determined to make it back out there in our car, even if I wasn't going to be doing any driving. A big chunk of the Vorshlag crew came out to this Five Star Ford sponsored event at ECR on what turned out to be a beautiful Saturday in May.



We brought our 2011 GT test mule to test the new brake upgrades and to verify the repairs after RA. Amy was driving all day and gave lots of people ride-alongs. Our crew worked on nearly 20 cars during the day, doing a lot of brake fluid flushes (replacing crap fluid), Carbotech brake pad swaps and other various trackside repairs.



Since Amy drew the short straw and didn't get to drive at Road Atlanta at all, this was to be her day of testing and track fun. We mounted up a set of 315mm A6 scrubs and had her on track for over 6 sessions that day - taking runs in all of the Red group sessions as well as some in Blue group.



She took over a dozen riders that Saturday, which Jason and I kept funneling into the right seat of the Mustang - as well as funneling fuel into the Mustang's gas tank. I was also taking some pictures, talking to customers, and trying to help the guys work on a few cars (more on that in a second). Brad Maxcy, our shop manager and a racer himself, shot most of the pretty pictures in this write-up while working a long day fixing cars and brakes. You can see the images and video from this event in the gallery below.

Vorshlag's ECR picture and video gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/Five-Star-Ford-ECR-052414/

I was itching to drive but Amy was hearing none of it, and in truth my back wasn't up for the somewhat bumpy ECR circuit. That didn't mean I took it easy, oh no... I was seriously stupid and helped work on a handful of the 20 cars that needed brake flushes, brake pad replacements or other work that day. Fully one third of the cars at this event needed help from our crew, and I'm glad we were there with some parts and the technicians to help install it all.



Brad, Kyle and even our sales manager Jon were busy all day wrenching on cars, from the moment we got there until we left at around 5:30 pm. We knew we'd work on a few cars but this was a bit more than expected. Luckily we brought two cases of Motul brake fluid, lots of Redline synthetics, and 4 sets of Mustang brake pads - and we sold and installed every single one. I had warned the entrants at the driver's meeting that ECR would eat stock brakes, and we always try to put the word out beforehand to warn people to upgrade at least their fluid, but it still happens. Stock brake fluid SUCKS and has no business on a race track.



It ended up being a long day for our guys, and my back was killing me from even just working the jack or some other trivial tasks. I didn't drive or ride in any cars that day, which hurt me even worse, though. I was going nuts just watching all of these folks have fun. I am a terrible spectator and a worse patient, heh.



Amy drove in fairly heavy traffic all day, and managed only one or two clear laps. She had riders on every session so she was only pushing the car 8- to 9/10ths but still managed a 1:59.0 on a lap shown in the video above. There's also some shots in there of Mike D spinning in his twin turbo 67 Camaro and some footage of my old ChumpCar teammates in the 1998 Firebird I helped them with for a bit before bowing out and letting them take over.



This gutless 3.8L V6 powered 4th gen Firebird Chump racer looked pretty good out there and I was glad to see them finally get it back on track, as it hasn't run in about a year. The cage was welded in and completed by our friend Kurt at Janco Fab, using a cage kit I had purchased from Blainefab. Paul and Jason (shown above) took over the remainder of this build and finished up a lot of safety upgrades and other little odds and ends. It held together almost the entire day before the old transmission mount broke - and yet they kept driving it, heh.



I won't give away their lap times but they passed a lot of cars and a few 5.0L Mustangs in this 200 hp behemoth. Above right you can also see Shannon's 5.0 S197 on track; she had just started working at Vorshlag as our summer Engineering Intern. Her new True Street built motor was roaring down the front straight and she ran strong all day.



Mark C was quick, when he managed to stay on track and get a clear lap, heh. He had a quick off-and-on in Turn 11 and I barely caught the pic! Heather (Shannon's sister) was darned fast in the V6 5th gen Camaro, but she keeps burning the brakes off of this poor car. It needs a boatload more negative camber up front, as well.



By the end of the day we were all exhausted but we had a lot of fun. Corey White and Jerry Cecco put on a heck of a good event and with 60+ drivers there were lots of smiles to go around that day. Thanks to Five Star Ford for sponsoring the lunch, too! A bunch of us went into town and ate dinner at Fuzzy's Taco Shop before heading home, which was delicious. The food was great and Jason somehow managed to keep the queso from that giant burrito out of his beard. ;)



We had some good test data and learned that the larger brake cooling ducts in the bumper cover and the 4" hoses made a significant difference, with max temps at the caliper seeing only 430°F all day, and Amy was brutal on the brakes. She actually finished off the rear pads we had on from Road Atlanta after her 2nd session and our guys put on a fresh set of Carbotechs to let her finish the day (and they are still on the car 2 events later). We also learned that we can NEVER bring too many sets of brake pads to an event like this held at ECR... it we would have had 4 more sets we could have installed them all for folks. This track eats brakes, and the car's wheels above were gold before the day started.

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Lots of fun and I'll post up the next time FSF holds an event at ECR. Great place to do your first event, and you'll see a lot of pony cars and other vehicles at this low key fun track event.

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continued from above

GT Moto Bike Build Reveal at GMBG, June 15, 2014

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Vorshlag's own Sofi had an event we attended at Gas Monkey Bar & Grill. This place hosted her "bike reveal" where the Cafe Racer style motorcycle she and her dad hand built on June 15th, 2014. Many of the Vorshlag staff and friends came out to support this charity event, bought shirts and raffle tickets, and had a great time.



"Texas Dave" was in town with his Pikes Peak EVO and he brought it out and showed it in the GMBG parking lot. We brought the Vorshlag TT3 Mustang and had it parked in the the small show area during the party as well. KC from the Fast-n-Loud show had his truck in the same area later that day, as he knows Sofi and came to the party.



Sofi is our operations manager here at Vorshlag and schedules customer service work and supplies our shop guys with parts. She is also a decent fabricator and bike mechanic and races her various motorcycles as well, including her throw-back Cafe Racer style Honda (the blue one, shown above left). A lot of her friends and fans came out to support this event, and she's raised over $25K for charity with this bike build so far. We're all proud of her and respect the cause she's raising money for.

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She and one of our fabricators Olof built the exhaust for this new bike at Vorshlag a couple of weeks earlier and used the same ICE Engine Works kit we use to make custom headers for our V8 swaps.



The bike reveal went really well and there were close to 100 people there to see the bike for the very first time. I hadn't seen it with the painted tank and trim work installed and it really came out looking amazing. This bike is being given away via a raffle, with a drawing on July 5th, and all proceeds go to St. Jude's hospital for cancer research. You can see more info about the raffle here: https://rafflecreator.com/pages/1379/gt-cafe-for-cause We all bought several tickets, and if I win it I'll do wheelies in our parking lot, then probably fall off and break my back.



GMBG itself was actually really nice, even on this super hot day (it was well into the high 90s). There was a 90 minute wait to get a table inside but luckily for us, all of the folks who came for the Moto GT bike reveal had a private 2nd story air conditioned bar with front row seats to the bands that played on stage that day. The deck out over the pond surrounding the restaurant was also pretty nice. We ate and drank and had a great time. We've met most of the guys at GMG and they are all friendly, professional and passionate about hot rodding - and they provided the facilities for this party and raffle free of charge. He might be a little abrasive on the TV show but Richard Rawlings knows how to party and his bar and grill is a hopping place. I'm glad we could come out and bring a lot of friends to help support Sofi's charity. Again, if you want to purchase a raffle ticket the drawing is this weekend on July 5th, so good luck!

The New 2015 Mustang - What Does The S550 Chassis Weigh?

The last few weeks have been full of rumors and speculation about the new 2015 Mustang and what it will weigh. Steeda got a huge black eye when they "guessed" it the S550 would actually be gaining a few hundred pounds over the last generation, contrary to Ford's pronouncement of a weight loss. Motor Trend also had some guesstimations that were apparently pretty unflattering, and also not based on fact. Turns out Steeda never actually weighed a car, and the whole thing became an internet scandal labeled "2015 Mustang Weightgate".

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image above found on Jalopnik

The automotive car websites were going nuts, and even I got a call from a reporter at Jalopnik looking for real data - of which I had none. Turns out they finally got to the root of all of the mystery, the car gained less than 100 pounds, which was shown after Ford leaked some semi-official weights, shown below.

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image above found on Jalopnik

So it was much ado about nothing... of course the S550 didn't lose weight. That wasn't really a possibility, and few if any new car models are getting lighter than any older generations - due to rising crash standards, technology complexity, and customer demands for more creature comforts. The Mustang would have to make a radical change in the chassis goals to lose pounds (remember the Ford Probe disaster??). No, the S550 is staying somewhat the same in size and power but getting new features and upgrades - like the Independent Rear Suspension and bigger 15" front brakes - so it gained a few pounds in the process. The 3704 pound number being thrown around is still 130 pounds lighter than a stripped 2014 Camaro Z/28, a $75K track toy that comes with race tires but no air con.

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What strikes me as the most odd is the wild variety of car models that some folks are comparing the Mustang to, or trying to. Look at how much bigger the S197 is compared to a Genesis Coupe (which is fat and heavy too), a BRZ and an MX5, above. Am I supposed to believe that car people cross-shop Miatas with Mustangs? If they do, then they are VERY confused about what they want from an automobile. Even the turbo 4 and V6 Mustang will be so far removed from a flyweight 2 seat roadster like the MX5 as to be not in the same league. The S550 is really more of a new and improved S197, which itself was a RADICAL improvement over the Fox/SN95 chassis it replaced. The Fox/SN95 was based on a 1977 Ford Fairmont, and that's saying a lot.



Of course Vorshlag will weigh several S550s when the first ones arrive at local dealerships, and our car will be here hopefully before the end of August. We have aggressive plans for track testing then upgrading the suspension, wheels, tires and more. Stay tuned for that new build thread, which I will link in this S197 thread.

What's Next?

  • NASA at Hallett, June 21-22 - This event went really well, and we beat our 2013 lap record by 3 seconds, but I borked the splitter in an "off" during the first Saturday session!
  • Repairs and Improvements after Hallett - I'll cover the upgrades and repairs we made after this last NASA event. My hack driving knows no limits... not even the TRACK limits.
  • Lone Star Drift at TMS, June 29, 2014- Drifter vs Road Racer Battle, aka: Drifters go Derp!


As the summer gets hotter here in Texas the track schedule falls way off, to keep drivers from overheating, so we don't have any NASA events scheduled again until September (unless we go to NASA Nationals East, August 31st at Road Atlanta). The "summer track break" around here means we have some openings on our service schedule. If you need some race prep, fabrication, seating, cooling, brake system or safety upgrades you've been putting off, let us know. Several of our long term development projects for V8 swaps are getting more attention as shop time is freed up, so we'll stay busy either way.

That's all I have time for in this sitting, but I'll cover the Hallett event and the TMS road course "drift vs grip" event in my next write-up.

Thanks,
 

Vorshlag-Fair

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July 1, 2014...
[B]Mr. WHO[/B] said:
So with the new car coming, whats the plan with "tank?" Selling or holding onto for more fun? Maybe a side-by-side race?



That's still unknown. Amy would like to keep the 2011 Mustang after we get the 2015 up to speed. She wants her "pretty pony" back, and if we did that we would reinstall the leather power seats, remove the crazy aero bits, swap the stock hood/fenders/bumper cover back on, put street tires on it and softer spring rates then she could daily drive it like she did the first 3 years we owned it. It would look like the image above, with the gaudy stripes but no wing.



Personally I'd like to keep the 2011 as her TT3 race car and make the 2015 fit me better. At 6'3" and 5'7", our driving positions are very different in any car, and we both have to compromise the seating angle and such to fit each other with a slider. More than likely I'll need to sell the car to help fund a new building we're trying to buy for the business, but I won't give the 2011 away.



I also REALLY miss racing a much lighter, much more powerful car than this Mustang provides. My old LS1 BMW was 1000 pounds lighter and made 490 whp with a 7.0L pump gas motor... Sure, we could cut the bejezus out of the 2015 GT and get it light-ish but never this light. We're building a number of these LS1 BMWs now and its going to take a LOT to keep me from racing one of them.

So basically... I have no idea, and we're playing it by ear. When the 2015 arrives in a couple of months we have a lot of street car type suspension parts to design, build and test. So it might not be "Race Ready" until sometime in 2015... and the new building plans, ugh. I'm looking at more places tomorrow. So much going on.
 

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July 2, 2014...

[B]dontlifttoshift[/B] said:
Don't forget the Optima points for a working AC system.
Yea, we'll have to reinstall the condenser and re-charge the system before SEMA. This past weekend we were at an event (Drift vs grip exhibition) where I got stuck in my racing suit, belts, helmet, and gloves at a "3 minute warning" for like 15 minutes in 98 degree heat, right before a 10 lap shootout. That's when the A/C would have been NICE!



The road racers beat the drifters in this road course hot lap shootout, and then we showed the drifters we could also play their game (well, a little). Drifting on 345 Hoosier A6s is not easy but it is doable. :thumb:
 

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July 7, 2014....

[B]Houstonnw[/B] said:
I think you are incorrect about Castrol SRF and unfairly giving it a poor reputation on this website.

Maybe CMC and AI cars do not put as much heat into their front brakes as your TT car, but I don't know of anyone bleeding their brakes after each race. In fact most keep it in all year.

So short of your application, I think it is an almost guaranteed way to take boiling brake fluid out of the equation with less maintenance.
Hey, I'm just passing along information I got from two different Pro race engineers as well as a brake fluid company rep. Remember: everything in racing is a compromise. SRF is the most expensive fluid that is commonly used and when you go get water in the hydraulic system, this fluid CANNOT absorb it. So... where would the water end up?

I think this is one of those items people that many flock to that maybe... shouldn't. This happens a lot - and we are constantly talking people out of "full race" parts they aren't ready for, cannot utilize, or that have huge drawbacks - triple adjustable shocks, big aero, roll cages on street cars, etc.
 

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Project Update for July 17th, 2014: Wow, I'm so behind. I wrote most of this entry two weeks ago but was waiting for some pictures and got busy doing other things. It ran long so I pulled a few events out and will show them in the next update. In this build thread entry we show upgrades to the TT3 Mustang after ECR, including a new driveshaft, new tires, new brake fluid, aluminum lower rear wheel spats added, and more. Then we cover the NASA at Hallett event write-up. the car was overheating (explained below), a bit pushy with too much wing, and we got rain in final CW session laps. Then we will talk about stuff for the next entry.

More TT3 Mustang Updates + New Parts

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At long last we have ditched the stock 2-piece driveshaft and center bearing and replaced it with a 1-piece aluminum driveshaft. We used a Driveshaft Shop aluminum 3.5" diamet6er unit with a CV joint at the front, which is rated at 1000 hp.



So, how much weight did this save us? Sadly, I don't really know. My shop guys forgot to weigh the new and old driveshafts when they did the swap - it was a hectic thrash to get ready for Hallett and weighing this was overlooked. The Driveshaft Shop website shows this to weigh 19 pounds, but you know how I trust everything I read on the interweb.


The stock 2-piece driveshaft on the 2011-14 GT/Boss is HEAVY

The old stock driveshaft was still here so I just had our guys weigh it today. A hair over 37 pounds, so this upgrade might have lost 18 or so pounds, if the stated weight of the 1-piece unit is correct. Driving the car after this mod produced no adverse effects, or any noticeable benefits. A customer sold this one to us after we did a Tremec Magnum XL swap for the stock Getrag MT-82, so it was a cheap upgrade for us. We actually sell Dynotech Engineering driveshafts and will get them on our website eventually.



I've spoken about the upgrade we made to the 4" brake ducts at the front bumper opening and the hoses but before we ran the ECR test we ran out of time to make the new 4" ducted backing plates. Well now we had the time, and engineer Jason had procured a new Ford part number to test with. This OEM stamped steel backing plate is a different diameter than the one we used for previous batches of 3" ducted plates (based off the 14" Brembo equipped cars) and turns out it was easier to use with the 4" hole than the smaller 3" hole, plus it had some other advantages.



This different OEM backing plate version has a deeper dish to the hub clearance area which allows for more even flow inside the rotor ring itself, and should get more air to the hub bearing. We have tried 4 different backing plates from various S197 cars and this one fits the tightest to the rotor and has more room inside to spread air to the right places, so we've switched ALL of our S197 ducted backing plates to this new part number. We have a big batch of the OEM back plates being bead blasted this week so we'll make a run of these 4" ducted plates soon and put them in the same section as the 3" plates. The production 4" plates will have an oval duct on the backing plate, and not round like the prototypes built for our TT3 Mustang.



Again, unless you are KILLING your brakes and already have 3" ducted fronts, the 4" plates might be overkill plus they require some additional front fascia work to attach the 4" hoses. And the stock windshield washer bottle is not possible with 4" hose, whereas a 3" will barely fits around it. Some folks do like overkill, though. And you know me - I'm a hack driver and I tend to overdrive everything, so I use more brakes than most. We checked the front caliper temps with a fresh set of Alcon temp strips at Hallett, to see if we could reduce the max temp from 490°F we were seeing before with 3" and 430°F we saw at ECR with 4" front openings and hoses but the 3" backing plate ducts, and I will talk about the gains we saw below in the race report.

Towing and Strapping Down an S197

Whether you tow or drive your car to a race track, or what your choice of tow vehicles is, are two discussion I try NEVER want to wade into. These are no-win arguments that will put people against one another looking for blood, like the Hatfields and McCoys! But if you've made the decision to start towing your car to the track instead of driving it to the track, which does relieve a LOT of stress and allows you to focus on your driving and pushing the car rather than saving enough brakes and tires to get you home, there are some new things to learn.



When towing one of my least favorite things after a long race weekend is loading the car into the trailer and strapping it down. Every car has a "trick" or two that you might learn from someone else. Like when it comes to E30/36/46 BMWs, which I have towed hundreds of times, I tow them via "T-hooks" slotted into the 4 factory under-chassis slots (hidden under 4 plastic jacking point pucks) and I will always cross both the front and rear straps. On the S197 Mustang, it has its own set of tricks to strapping the car down safely. I've seen some janky set-ups and have learned what to do (and not) over the years by watching others' tow their cars.



The front is relatively easy, as we use 3" ratchet straps with a C-hook end and "hook" into some big slots in the front lower subframe structure. The same "T" hook ends also work here very well. But when towing inside an enclosed trailer it takes some finesse to throw the straps under the car to where you can reach them behind the wheel and then you have to hook them into the slots blind, but once you've done it before its fairly easy.



Left: Mac's Custom Tie-downs are my favorite. Right: I hate strapping through wheels, but these padded axle straps "could" work

We always cross the straps up front, to keep the car from shifting laterally on the bed of the trailer. I've seen the results of a poorly strapped down car inside an enclosed trailer... it can turn into a costly mistake to your bodywork or aero, especially on a long tow. I always like to check the straps, and tighten them if needed, during our first stop heading out of town to get ice and fuel for the outbound leg of any road trip. In 27 years of racing I've never had a car come loose in an enclosed or open trailer, or worse - had one fall off of an open trailer. I've known 2 friends that had that happen to them, though!



Strapping the S197 down at the back is a bit trickier than at the front. There are several ways to do the rear straps, but for the past 4 years whenever we towed this stick axle Mustang we have been using 3 foot long "axle straps" wrapped around the axle tubes then using 3" ratchet straps hooked to these and securing them back to D-rings in the trailer floor straight behind. This was a compromise set-up, and we had to be careful not to wrap the axle straps over or near the rear axle vent or it could get knocked off - that happened once - made a huge mess.


Left: With a Watts Link you need to keep the tow straps from bending any tubes. Right: This is the section to wrap the axle straps around

When we made our remote axle vent catch can and hose, that hose and fitting had to be avoided with these straps also - which happened once and made a huge mess. The ratchet straps themselves have to route around, over and through the next of Watts Link tubes and rear exhaust pipes or you risk bending or at least scratching something under the car. And since axle straps just wrap around the axle tubes you can't "cross the straps" at the back, or risk having the straps slide inboard towards the "pumpkin" on the axle, which then makes the straps loose during your tow (not good). Some folks like strapping cars down by looping an axle strap through a wheel or around a wheel spoke, but that is a TURRIBLE idea and can both stress crack a wheel spoke, scratch the crap out of your $$$ wheels, or allow the wheel to rotate during the tow and loosen the car against the straps.



So there are lots of "gotchas" on strapping the rear of a Mustang down. We have been fighting it for 4 years, but now we have a better way. We designed and built the tie-down brackets above for the S197 chassis and then tested them on our way to and from the Hallett, which was 10+ hours of towing. These new rear tow strap tie down brackets are made from beefy alloy steel and bolt to the rear lower control arm location. Olof hand cut this prototype pair based off of CAD drawings Jason drew up, but the production versions will be laser cut and powder coated red. The kit will come with a pair of new, 5mm longer, grade 12.9 bolts and nuts as well.



These should be available from us later this summer and the 22° bend shown here will be the right way to tie down a Mustang with crossed rear straps. We will make them in flat (un-bent) form for those that want to orient the tie down straps straight back, too. Strapping the rear down went from a frustrating 5-6 minutes with my upper body wedged under the back of the car to a simple 30 second reach around behind the tie and clicking the strap ends into the new brackets. The 10 hour bumpy round trip tow was flawless, and the car didn't move a millimeter on either trip.



Our popular GT500 rear brake upgrade kit has gone DOWN in price by $140. You heard that right.... out price on this kit just dropped over 27%. Why? We were previously sourcing the GT500 rear rotors from the only source we could find - Ford (read: expensive) - but have since found them made by Centric in their Premium line, which is the line we use on all of our race and street cars. This dropped our costs enough to be able to pass along this big savings. We have the replacement rotors available in this same S197 brake category location.




We have our first batch of Vorshlag adjustable rear spring ride height platforms (aka: "rear ride height adjusters") that finally arrived. These were drawn up a while ago after the supplier for a similar style that we had been using dried up. Now we make this Vorshlag version and they work on several chassis including the S197 Mustang rear.


We make these work on the S197 (at left) with a Nylon adapter and various BMWs (at right), also in the stock rear spring location

These adjustable platforms and adapters allow us to remove the fixed length, stock "Beehive" style spring (or lowering springs of the same shape) and replace them with shorter 60mm ID coilover springs, which come in infinitely more lengths and spring rates. Then we can adjust the ride height at the rear corners independently, for corner balancing. We can use these in conjunction with coilover style front strut/springs or by themselves, to work with a budget racer who still has OEM style springs and struts up front but wants to play with new rear spring rates and adjust ride heights out back.

Look for these coupled with MCS, Moton and other shock kits we sell as well as by themselves with the "Rear coilover spring kit" for the S197 Mustang.

continued below
 

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continued from above



The last upgrade before Hallett was a simple set of rear lower tire spats. These are small little air deflectors that Ryan fabricated out of aluminum to smooth the transition from the flare to the side skirt, both visually and aerodynamically. He bent and welded this pair and made them attach to the back of the factory black plastic side skirt. These were painted black but the racing at Hallett took their toll on the finish (I shot the pics above after Hallett), so these will come off and get a stronger semi-flat black powder coating before we go to SEMA. Like everything else, the finish of much the exterior of this car will need some touch-ups before its ready for the week long SEMA show or the televised Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational event held immediately after in November.



The guys here at Vorshlag had everything prepped before Hallett in about a day. The brake pads and rotors looked great but they pushed a little fluid through anyway, to make sure it was bled. The Carbotech XP20 pads were brand new before the ECR test day and they swapped in fresh Carbotech pads out back halfway through the day there. Car was nut and bolted, I drove down to the local Shell to fill the tank with 93 octane (and we brought 20 gallons more with us, as Oklahoma only has 91 octane for premium), and a sticker set of Hoosier 335/345 tires were mounted. This was the winnings from TWS, and I almost took a scrub set to Hallett and saved these.... but I got nervous at the last minute and had Olof mount the new sticker set.



Why? I was worried about two things: getting beat in TT3 at Hallett -or- maybe barely winning but not resetting our old track record there. My main TT3 competitor Jeff Tan had just had new aero installed front and back, new suspension spring rates added, and a stroker 2.3 liter motor drinking E85 in his red EVO 9. Our friends at Evolution Dynamics had just put a new custom tune on Jeff's TT3 EVO that made 300whp from 3200rpm to 8000rpm, peaked at 326 whp and 410ft lbs of torque. In this much lighter car it could be a killer in this class. They use a boost trick to make constant "max power" across a huge rpm range, - and meets the letter of the TT rules. Nothing I can do about it except - build a similar turbo motor. Jeff was coming equipped for a battle! We also had 7 cars entered in TT3, including Boss302 driver John Scheier who I've known for 15 years and co-driven with at the Solo Nationals more than once. He's always fast. There were 10 cars in TT1, and I was worried about getting stuck behind some of the slower TT1 Corvettes if I didn't qualify well in the first TT practice session. And the 2013 TT3 National Champion was hinting on Facebook he might show up at Hallett, so I had all sorts of threats looming.

The last mod we made was to my helmet - adding the D-ring hardware anchor mounts needed for the Simpson Hybrid Pro I was borrowing. I wanted to test this Simpson head and neck restraint system at Hallett, and the HANS quick-release post anchors I already had installed in my helmet were swapped out for these. No, you won't find these D-ring mounts at a local hardware store, like a friend told me, they have to be special ordered. I got a pair from RaceDaySafety over-nighted after we struck out at all of the local race shops.



I have used a HANS branded device twice before (see above right) and absolutely hated the experience, so I was hoping the Simpson Hybrid Pro would work better for me - to actually allow me to turn my head, look down more than 1 degree while in the car and strapped in, etc. As an autocrosser I'm used to having my head on a swivel and looking way ahead, sometimes 90 degrees from the direction I'm traveling. I even autocross many times with an open faced helmet, for better visibility. The HANS I used back in 2012 was not a sliding tether style that allows you to rotate your head, so that was part of the misery. At Hallett there are a few corners where you have to turn more than 90 degrees in a very short span of track, so looking out the side window to check and set-up corners would be crucial.

Still, I was determined to try to set a better example with my safety gear, vowing to run all of my sessions wearing my 3 layer suit, Nomex lined shoes and gloves; the Hybrid Pro attached and my Schroth 6-point belts secured tight. I was already sporting the back injury and this was my first event back, and I didn't want to make matters worse if I had a crash. Also, I was keeping an eye on the pain - if it got bad, I promised my wife Amy that I was going to hand off driving to my TT3 team mate (Amy). She wanted the seat time, too, so I had to watch my mouth and NOT complain unless it got really bad!

NASA at Hallett, June 21-22, 2014

Amy didn't have enough time off from work to go up a day early and run the Friday test-n-tune. That's a shame, as we both needed the seat time at this track. I had run the CCW 1.8 mile Hallett circuit all of about 15 laps that one day in 2013, and Amy had no laps at all. My friend John and another buddy of his (and MCS customer of ours) Garrett arrived on Thursday night and had a good paddock spot set-up for us outside of Turn 9 (aka "The Bitch"). TT1 racer Marc Sherrin was also on site and paddocked with them by Friday morning and taking laps, and TTU racer Paul Costas was there as well in his GT-1 Camaro.

Vorshlag Event Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/NASA-at-Hallett-062114/
Note - these pics are by me/Amy, Paul Costas, or Hallett's photographer (I bought a CD of pics)

We left Dallas plenty early at 2 pm, took our usual route north to Oklahoma City on I-35 and .... stopped. For an hour. There was massive construction traffic north of town that delayed our arrival by an hour, so we didn't get to the track until 7:30 pm. Luckily June 22nd is the longest day of the year so it was light until 9 pm, which allowed us plenty of time to unhook our trailer and... cart everyone to dinner 25 miles away. See, the Hallett Motor Racing Circuit is located in a remote part of rural Oklahoma and the nearest hotels are 25-35 miles away.

hallett-parking-L.jpg


Marc had heard of some restaurant "on a lake" called Freddie's Steakhouse that was supposed to be good - and once we found it, it was actually pretty awesome. Amy and I were joined by racers Marc, Costas and HPDE director Scott for a solid 2 hour dinner where we laughed ourselves silly. Since we drove them to dinner we took another hour of driving to take most of them back to the track, then we went off in the opposite direction to our hotel in Sand Springs, 30 miles away. It made for a long day and late night but we had a good time.

Saturday June 21st - TT Day 1

Back at the track by 7 am Saturday morning and we quickly unloaded the Mustang. Finally saw John and Garrett from Colorado, who were paddocked next to us and Marc. We did some quick checks of the car, mounted the vidcam and AiM Solo DL, then went up to the club house for the TT meeting at 8 am. We had 44 TT cars entered, which made for a huge field. We were to go out together in the first TT Practice as a group but then the TT group was split into two groups for the rest of Saturday: TT1/2/3/U in one group and TTB-TTF in another.



There was ample coverage of the Passing Under Yellow issues we had at TWS and what was acceptable and what was not for this weekend. Dave B, Ken B and Scot Adams all put their foot down about PUY, not blocking, how to take a cool down lap without impeding, and where to safely pass at this track. It was a good meeting and I hope we can continue to have these open discussions amongst the TT drivers like this before each day of racing.



All 44 TT cars went out in the practice sessions with me driving and Amy riding shotgun. We were on the sticker set of Hoosiers with a plan to set an aggressive lap time and try to grid ahead of as many TT1 and TT2 cars as possible, to avoid traffic in later sessions. Amy has never driven this track before and I have only taken about 20 laps or so, so it was still a learning experience. Not to mention the radical changes we had made to the car since we raced here in 2013 - new aero, wider tires, new suspension and more weight.



This session started at 8:40 am, 77 degrees but humid, and I went out 3rd in grid (getting to grid early in these free-for-all first practice sessions is key!), behind Paul Costas TTU Camaro in front and Marc Sherrin's TT1 Corvette in 2nd. They both checked out and we were driving with a good gap in front and behind on the first lap. I was hoping I could show Amy a good line in this session without crashing, hitting a curb or going off track. Which did NOT happen, unfortunately! hehehe... I actually did go off track at Turn 6 in the 2nd hot lap.


The TT Practice on Saturday is critical to get a good GRID PLACEMENT... which is why I was pushing so hard and went off, heh

My first hot lap was a gentle 1:26 lap and then I was stepping it up in speed for lap two. We had the rear wing set at 12 degrees AoA which was a bit too much, and it was pushing at speed. There's also no more reference markers on track, as it had just been fully repaved about 6 weeks before. I turned in a little early in T6 and just got on the throttle a bit too early and just drove off the end of the turn. Not normally a big deal, as there's some smooth run-off here, but with the new paving there's a bit of a drop to the nicely mowed grass at the edge of the track and the "Drop" caught the leading edge of the splitter and pushed it back about 5 inches. Unbeknownst to me the splitter also acted as a mowing blade and gave the landscaping a closer cut, which packed up the lower grill's mesh with grass almost completely.


What's wrong about the picture above? The grill is PACKED full of grass! #fairslawnservice

This cuts off all airflow to the radiator. Amazingly we finished that lap and one more before it started to run hot. I was exiting Turn 9 (The Bitch) on this 4th hot lap and I was catching the back of the TT1/2/3 field. As I crept up on a C5 Z06 I starting seeing spitting of water on the windshield. I made it around the final Turn T10 and on the front straight I looked down and saw the temp gauge starting to move quickly into the red. I was already past pit in and going 100+ so I shut off the motor and pulled offline, pointing everyone I had just passed back by me. Got around Turn 1 and there's no good place to pull off, so I briefly re-fired the motor, got around turns T2-T3 and pulled off, track right. By now the radiator cap had popped and it was gushing steam out of the hood vents and onto the windshield. I went off slowly enough not to damage the splitter further but it was pouring smoke and for a second there I thought it was actually on FIRE.


Saturday-Sunday's Hallett CCW track map. Ignore the "bunch up" and "go green" markers, which I royally screwed up on this version

Luckily it was just steam, but we had both already bailed out and the car was a good 50 yards off the track. We walked over behind a tire barrier and a corner worked came trotting over from Turn 4 to check on us, fire bottle in hand. I was wishing I had a bottle in the car at that very moment (more on that in a bit). I assured him we were OK and would stay behind the tire wall until the session ended, and that we didn't need a tow. I was just going to let it cool off, cleared the grill mesh of grass, and would limp it back to the paddock. While we were standing that the corner worker got a call on his radio and went running back to Turn 4. We couldn't see what had happened but as the cars went streaking by we noticed Jeff Tan's red TT3 EVO was missing....


One of our strongest TT3 competitors (Jeff) ended his day early with tire wall contact. Luckily this is a fully caged race car

Shortly after there were black flags at all corner stations and the workers at T3 waved us back on track as a pair of wreckers went racing to T4. We drove around and saw that Jeff's EVO had plowed straight off of T4, went through/over the tire barrier and through the catch fence, and it looked ugly. He was out of the car and looked OK but the car looked pretty tore up. The course workers and wrecker crew spent a while rebuilding the tire walls here, something we saw another 3 or 4 times this weekend. Since Hallett is built in the rolling hills amidst a lot of trees, they have tire walls and barriers on many corners which you don't want to find your way into. I got a series of pictures of a BMW that had an off in Turn 8 and took out a tire wall as well, shown above and below.

DSC_2988-L.jpg

Boss302 entering Turn 9 (the Bitch) with the typical OEM suspension S197 brake dive

I was wearing my full driver suit, gloves, shoes and the Simpson Hybrid Pro during this full session and I was miserable, hot and soaking with sweat by the time we got back to the pits. I could not turn my head AT ALL using this Simpson and I generally hated wearing it. The D-rings were rattling and driving me nuts, and I tried wearing it again in 3 other sessions but it was so constricting that I couldn't see from T2 to T3 and it negatively impacted my driving each session I wore it. I also gave up on the driving suit by later that afternoon, as it got DAMNED HOT at Hallett and racing in this entry level 3-layer suit was unbearable. At another drivers meeting I noticed about a dozen of the TT drivers were using cool suits, even in only 3-4 lap blasts, and now I see why. And we just became a Coolshirt.com dealer, so now we might add one of these systems to our car... even after I said I'd never do that for TT. The heat and that damned suit was sapping the life out of me.


Hallett Eats Cars. I personally snapped pictures of these two cars destroying tire walls. With no run-off, that's what you tend to hit

The front of Jeff's EVO is pretty much destroyed. That really sucks, but its another reminder of what can happen when you lose your brakes. Luckily ours worked great during that first session and the only failure was of my hack driving. We got to the pits and put about a gallon of water into the radiator and reservoir, then we thrashed on the car for an hour straight trying to fix the splitter. We had help from Patrick Lipsinic, Doug Worth, John and others. Time was running out and I was going to miss the next session if we didn't hurry, so we hooked up a strap to Doug's Raptor and pulled the splitter back into place.

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continued from above


My little "off and on" caused a good bit of damage. It took 4 people and a Ford Raptor truck to get the splitter pulled back out

Amy got all of the front supports off first, which we easily straightened. It wasn't perfect but it was at least level and enough forward so that the front tires didn't rub on the flares/splitter. That would have to do. We had checked times in the TT Practice and out of 44 cars I was still 6th fastest, with the off and overheating? I was hoping to make it to grid and I jumped in the Mustang, drove up to the hot pits just before the field was about to leave. Costas had the field pretty spread out and we had caught the back of the field on the 2nd lap, where I ran a best time of 1:23.469 with a pass on that lap. This was a solid second faster than last year, but I knew the car had a lot more in it. I made a total of two hot laps in this session and the car started running warm, so I came in early.


If you ever pop one of these radiator caps, throw it away. We now keep a spare in the trailer

It was after this point that John Scheier mentioned that the radiator caps on these cars are a one time use cap - after they "pop" once from an overpressure condition, they never hold pressure again. Turns out he was right - we kept having to add water all weekend and it never would hold pressure again. Amy went out after that TT session in the HPDE3/4 group and made a bunch of laps, getting to a 1:29, but when it started to run warm she came in early. Since Hallett is remotely located in the "Oklahoma Outback" a quick trip top a parts store wasn't an option.

After lunch it was over 90 degrees, but I went out in the 3rd TT session anyway to see if I could find some time. Tires got super hot, and I got stuck for 2 laps behind some TT1/TT2 cars gridded ahead of me, which was very frustrating. One of the cars holding up me and a train of cars behind us made a mistake in T1 so I made a pass on him into T2, outbraking this much lighter car. He immediately tried to take the position back and was making some VERY high risk moves for the rest of that lap trying to overtake, which were uncalled for - this is supposed to be TT, not W2W. This happens sometimes when Wheel to Wheel racers pay extra to also run in Time Trial - they don't turn that "attack for position" goal off and it has actually caused some accidents in TT before. Anyway, I finished the lap, with a pitiful 1:23.6 lap, then "pointed him by" on the front straight. I may have... used the wrong finger to point him by. I was pretty upset at the 5-6 near misses we had with him driving like a jackass behind me on the 2nd half of the lap after I passed him (cleanly). And of course the trackside photographer got a great picture of my angry "point by", which got me into all sorts of trouble with NASA officials. I won't get into all of that drama, but it was a dumb thing to do and I won't do it again.


My "angry bird" point by got me in a bit of trouble. Stupid mistake and very unprofessional. DON'T DO THIS (especially next to a photographer)

I won't be showing the video of this Lotus driver's ass-hattery because for one, all of this happened behind me after I passed him (I need a rear facing vidcam), and also because I lost my cool and the audio from my in-car camera was "too colorful". Due to the heat and massive traffic issues, this session ended up being a total waste of time and consumables. It only got hotter the rest of that day, so I sat out TT session 4 and let Amy make more laps in DE 3/4 and where she found two more seconds after finding some confidence. Before that session started she got stuck on grid belted in for 20 minutes (while yet another tire wall was being fixed after a Spec Miata smash-up-derby, wadding up one chassis) in 95 degree heat and she got overheated herself, with some signs of heat exhaustion after she came in from driving and got out of the car. We ended up putting 2-1/2 gallons of water in the car and we drank as much or more ourselves that day.


Amy ran in DE 3/4 sessions all weekend but likely took more laps than me, at this, her first Hallett event

Nobody went faster in TT sessions 3 or 4, and we wisely skipped session 4. Lots of crashed cars, and I got pictures of cars going through tire walls at T2 and another at T8. A Miata rolled after it was tagged from behind, Jeff's EVO, and our off and overheat. This track will really bite you in the ass if you go off in the wrong place, that's for sure. Big classes, with 10 in TT1 and 7 in TT3. We managed to win TT3 and ended up 7th overall in TT times, but it was not my best driving (or behavior) that day and we were really exhausted by the time the Saturday night party started at 6:30.



After racing was over I broke out the beer and we hung out and cooled off with friends parked nearby in the paddock (John, Marc, Garrett) and saw Oklahoma residents Mark Council, Pat, and Brandon Jung who came to the track to watch the track side action. We stuck around long enough to get to the party, ate some good barbeque provided by NASA, drank some more cheap beer, then bowed out early to get Amy back to the hotel and cool her off. For some reason the Hampton Inn gave us a jacuzzi suite so I took a long soak that night and got cooled off myself, too.


Left: its always more fun when you can paddock with friends - John (Tt3 Boss302), Marc (TT1 C6 Z06) and Garrett (TTB E36 M3)

With as poorly as I drove that day -including the "off" in practice and "angry bird" session that nearly got me DSQ'd for the day I was downright LUCKY to pull off the TT3 win that day. My best lap was a 1:23.469, which was a solid two seconds back from the TT2 winner (Josh Dunn) and nearly four seconds back from the TT1 winner (Marc Sherrin). I'm usually not that far off these guys and had to wait for Sunday's TT event to try to better my overall placement. It looks like I won the class by 3.5 seconds but in reality I was chasing John Scheier, who had a 1:25.7 best lap but was switched to TTU for non-competition reasons. John had some off-track troubles in some sessions, but I knew he could drop 1-3 seconds if he found the right line here. With 7 in TT3 class at least I scored 2 Hoosier tires for the win. I vowed to Amy that Sunday would be "drama free" and faster.


Official End of Saturday TT Results (link) are copied above. We had a NASA Texas record of 44 competitors in TT at this event

Sunday June 22nd - TT Day 2

Sunday went a lot better than Saturday. There was a bit of a panic in the morning when a "end of Saturday" TT results sheet showed me as DSQ'd but it was only a typo. Before the day started we refilled the radiator once again and finally adjusted the rear wing, to dial out a lot of the angle I had dialed in (went from 12 to 6 degrees), and the balance was a LOT better. I also removed the ballast plates in the trunk, which NASA's scales said were not needed. I went across the scales at Impound at 3864 pounds during a session Saturday (on a 3802 pound minimum), then after pulling the weight plates out and running less fuel it was 3812 pounds at another morning impound check on Sunday (that was close!), so I ran with a tick more fuel after that.

I went out in the first session and put down a 1:22.4XX, which was already a second quicker than Saturday. It felt decent but I got held up a little on my first lap by a wicked little TT2 Porsche 944 LSx swap car, but he was cool and pulled offline to let me by on the next lap. Got my best lap in on lap 2, then came in to hand off the car to Amy, who immediately went out in DE 3/4 and dropped a second herself from Saturday.



I went out again in a hot TT session 2 (92 degrees!) before lunch and ran my best time of the weekend, following Josh Dunn's TT2/ST2 EVO for a couple of laps. See the real "bitch" corner for me at Hallett wasn't Turn 9, which has always been easy to me, but Turn 4. When going CCW T4 is a tricky, decreasing, blind, uphill turn that totally dictates how you enter T5 and then T6 immediately after. You have to set-up out of T3 SUPER wide track left (on the rumbles) for the late entry to the right-hander T4, then give T4 a SUPER late apex. I hadn't seen anyone else do this turn as well as Josh had and following his line allowed my time to melt away - but some that have seen my video say it could have been even later, and I'm inclined to agree. My lines aren't ever perfect, I'm just a hack autocrosser, and I'll be the first to admit that I suck at Hallett. This car was capable of 1:20 or even 1:19 laps, but... I was a bit timid in my braking zones after having the off in my first session of the weekend and nursing the back injury.


For you Hallett regulars, yes - I know my lines are not ideal and there is room left in the car

Still, my second hot lap of a 1:21.751 in this 2nd Sunday TT session was good enough for a win and was a solid 3 seconds quicker than our best CCW lap from 2013. Josh Dunn ran his best TT2 time of the weekend in front of me, a 1:21.2, so I think we kind of pushed each other (you can see him pull away from me in the laps above). Running a 1:21 had been a secret goal of mine all weekend, and it felt good to hit that. The AiM's predictive timer kept showing me 1:21s but I couldn't seem to hit that until Sunday. I came in after this lap and called it a day for CCW laps and Amy went out once more in DE 3/4 after lunch and got down to a 1:26 lap. While she was out on track I rode along with James Wester (in his 5.0L S197, which he's modded with many Vorshlag parts) and did a check ride for him in HPDE3, and signed him off for HPDE4 - coming from an autocross background and previous track experience he was obviously fast and he was ready.

Sure, TT1 was 3 seconds faster and even TT2 beat our times at this event as well, but I was still happy to walk away with the 2nd class win of the weekend against some tough competitors. John Scheier had moved his Boss302 to TTU to help the class count there but he was really the TT3 car I was pushing to stay ahead of. He runs TT3 in the Rocky Mountain region, I've known him for 15+ years, and he runs on AST double adjustable coilovers that came off of my 2013 GT plus seats and wheels he got from Vorshlag. Behind John's Boss302 in TT3 was a Porsche 930, a GT3, an M3 and a C5 Z06. With only a narrow 2 second gap to 2nd place Scheier on Saturday it had stretched to a nearly 5 second lead on Sunday, when I finally pulled my head out of my ass and drove a little better.


Doug Wirth brought his TTB E36 M3 up from Dallas but broke a pressure plate and headed home on Saturday

We skipped TT session 3 as it was even hotter at 94 degrees, and not many went any faster in this session. We did stick around for the TT trophy presentation, after the 3rd TT session. They handed out trophies down to 3rd place and we got to take pictures with the trophy girls who had some Big Texas Hair, hehe. They were good sports and we had fun, even sneaking our cars into the winner's circle for some shots. We all ate a bunch of ice cream from the clubhouse, and ice cream makes everything better.


Final TT session on Sunday... "Reverse Skate!"

There was a merged TT session 4 at the end of the day Sunday at 4:30 pm, that was to be run in the OPPOSITE direction. Going Clock Wise at Hallett is extra tricky, as entries into Turns T9, T7, T5 and T4 are all blind and the runoff at T3 pretty much puts you into the middle of T2 if you overshoot. Not too many folks race Hallett in this direction but it was a "non-points" session just for fun... but new lap records would be acknowledged. And you know from reading this build thread, I'm all about the lap records.

Luckily I already held the CW TT3 lap record because it started raining as soon as we took to the track. 10 cars went out and I gridded up 3rd behind Raymond and Marc's TT1 cars, who were pitched in a heated battle all weekend - Marc won TT1 by .03 sec ahead of Raymond on Saturday, then they switched finishing positions in class on Sunday by .1 seconds but trailed a Lotus who took the win. Marc went out first and Raymond followed closely on his heels and the two of them flat out left me. I couldn't get the Mustang to stick in the spitting rain and I wasn't about to risk the car for a non-points session, especially since I already held this lap record. There was no driver confidence left once the rain started after this trying weekend, heh.

continued below
 

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continued from above


Left: The TT field was big all weekend, even split in half! Right: The clouds rolled and sprinkled rain in for the one CW Sunday TT session

After two laps behind a pace car to show driver's the unusual CW driving line before they went 10/10hs, Raymond's Viper put down a 1:23.3 and Marc was two tenths back, both of them driving like mad in the rain. I was very slow with a 1:27.6, and after 2 laps it started running hot again. The vidcam's SD card had filled up (Amy forgets to turn off the thing every time) and I forgot to turn on the Harry's Lap Timer video/data logging app on my Samsung S4 for this session, so there's nothing to see. That's probably good, as it was slow (results here), about a second slower than I ran in 2013 going CW. I wasn't about to stuff the car off into a tire wall in the rain, what with so little to gain in this "non-points" session (especially since we already have the CW Hallett TT3 track record).


Left: Front brake caliper temps were down 80 degrees from 3" ducting! Right: Our paddock was next to this picturesque pond

We let the car cool down while we hooked up the trailer to the F350, while it really started to rain. I was still a little baffled by the overheating issues after filling up the coolant, but John kept saying the coolant reservoir cap was indeed a "one pop then done" deal, so we have since replaced it and now keep a spare in the trailer. Good news - the 4" brake ducting really worked. The brake temps were way down, only peaking at 410°F on this brake intensive track (an 80°F drop from the 3" ducts/hoses/plates). The Motul RBF 660 brake fluid did great and I never once lost pedal pressure. We even had a LOT of brake pad left after this event - enough to do at least 1 if not 2 more track weekends, which is a big $$ savings. I've said it before but brake ducting pays for itself quickly, in saved brake pad/rotor wear and avoided crashes. :)

We used maybe 15 gallons of 93 octane Texas fuel all weekend and added 1/2 quart of oil over about 9 sessions driven. The tires looked great after all of this abuse and looking back we probably could have won both days on a scrub set - but hindsight is always 20/20. If 2013 TT3 National champ Chris Mayfield had shown up (as he threatened) I would have needed every bit of grip advantage of sticker A6s, and then some!



Our paddock space was perfect for the weekend as it gave us nice views of the track and the lush green hills of Hallett. The new paving on the track and infield roads was much appreciated and lap records fell left and right in TT and other classes.


New Hallett track records were set in all 10 TT classes going CCW and 5 classes going CW

The track folks served great food all weekend (awesome "track burger") and we ate some damned good catfish and Cajun jambalaya on Sunday, skipping our normal "lets make a sandwich" lunch. The rain let up quickly after the racing stopped and cooled us off while were loading up. We rolled out at 5 pm, so it was a long HOT day and we were ready to head back to Dallas. Marc took us on a new route home (highway 99 to 75 through Ada) using lots of 2 lane highways straight south, avoiding the bumpy, nasty Indian Nation Turnpike and the traffic of Oklahoma City and Denton in Dallas. This lopped an hour off our normal 5 hour I-35 route, which was nice.


Official end of Sunday TT Results (link) are copied above. We did a LOT better on Sunday

Anyway, with another win on Sunday we snagged two more Hoosiers for a total of 4 tires. It looks like we are the first TT entry in Texas to snag a regional championship for the year (the only team to place first at all 8 of the regional TT dates in 2014). We've had quite a streak of wins this year but we haven't "banked" any sticker tires yet, so this set will be saved for our next NASA event - which is unknown at this point (more on that below). Amy has been trying to talk me out of going to NASA Nationals, with the crash I had there and all. Might be a wise choice, but I've been fighting to get us there. The BIG event for us this year really is the SEMA/Optima Shootout November 8-9th and the next NASA Texas events after Nationals is Sept 20-21 at NOLA and Oct 11-12 at TWS, which I hope we can make.


Two TT3 wins, 4 tires, and resetting our 2013 TT3 lap record by 3 seconds works for me!

My back did great all weekend right until I wretched it working on the damned splitter repairs on Saturday. Once again I regretted not bringing someone else from Vorshlag to help, over did it, and had to deal with some pain that I could have avoided. The driving itself was fine, and caused zero back pain. Wearing the somewhat constrictive back brace, the constrictive Simpson Hybrid Pro, and the heavy/thick driving suit all added up to "too many layers" - which made it difficult to breath and my body got too damned hot in the 96°F heat we saw. I really have GOT to get a better 2-layer driving suit, soon, and will keep trying different Head and Neck Restraint Systems until I find one that allows me to turn my freagin head just a little.



Paul Costas had a good weekend, winning TTU both days and setting the fastest lap time of the weekend in his 1997 GT1 Camaro - you can see his write-up on his blog (when he gets around to adding it). It was fun seeing folks from 4 different regions all come together at Hallett as well as our Texas TT racers, who all did really well. Thanks to all of the NASA volunteers and race directors who put on a great event. The Hallett folks also went all out, were super nice and accommodating, had the track and grounds looking great all weekend, cleaned the bathrooms every day, had ice for sale at the track, and provided excellent food.


Left: Costas took home several trophies and had an epic shirt. Right: Dave and Will from NASA Texas

A lot of records were broken in TT and Spec Miata as well as some other classes. Yuri Kouznetsov made some laps in TT2 on Sunday to test his Pikes Peak set-up, then he and TT1 racer Raymond left Hallett and went directly to Colorado Springs. They both raced at the 92nd running of the PPIHC starting a couple of days later and both not only finished but good finish times, so congrats to them.

What's Next?

This write-up has gotten a bit too long so I am going to wrap it up. Here's a preview of what will be in the next S197 Build Thread installments as well as a final word about NASA Nationals.

+ ST3/TT3 2013 Mustang GT Build - We will keep adding to this S197 build thread with new content, like the race prep we are doing to Jamie Beck's 2013 Mustang for NASA ST3/TT3. In the next few weeks this car is getting an AJ Hartman wing and custom uprights, custom end plates, then a cage and starting on a major diet. We've already got it down to 3276 pounds and haven't even touched the glass or removed any stock sheet metal - this is all from just removing factory interior parts. We will document every pound coming out of this car from here on out (and will show how it is already at 3276).



+ Repairs and Updates after Hallett - After my simple "off and on" at Hallett I damaged a few exterior bits. The "pushed back" splitter was removed, some duct work was replaced, and we even added and upgraded some aluminum panels hidden under the bumper cover (a lower panel was added), the splitter mounts were fixed, etc. I tear up things and Vorshlag techs fix it. Rinse, repeat.



+ Adding a fire bottle & quick-release mount - After seeing the smoke pour out of the hood on our Mustang at Hallett (luckily it was only steam), then seeing cars at Pikes Peak + Hallett get burned from small engine fires that turned into larger ones due to a lack of a fire bottle, I figured it was past time. We have rounded up an affordable 2.5 pound bottle and it will be mounted in the car on a quick-release mount at the passenger side of the trans tunnel. That way I don't have to drive a car ON FIRE to a corner station to try to find a fire extinguisher if something happens. The fireball below was from a car we worked on (aero work + cage mods) that since entered the 2014 Pikes Peak event. About $120 investment in a fire bottle & mount can potentially save you thousands in fire damage. Will cover this more in the next update (they just finished it an hour ago - looks great).



+ New search for a HANS continues - I've scratched two off the list but there are many more. I know about all of the options, but what I would like is to borrow a couple more and try them out. So far I am thoroughly unimpressed with how much these restrain my head movement in the car.

+ Two sets of prototype AST S197 coilovers - These just went up for sale today in our Clearance section. There's also some other new additions for slightly used S197 parts in there. Vorshlag is once again an AST/Moton dealer but the new U.S. distributor doesn't have any inventory in the USA yet (and might not for weeks or months). But we have recently taken in (on trade) a couple of special sets of prototype ASTs, including the first (and possibly only) set of AST 4200s for the S197 chassis as well as the first set of 4150 prototypes that we used on our 2011 GT for two years. Both sets have been checked out and are good to go, and you can add camber plates, springs and ride height adjusters to get a killer set of monotube adjustables on your car for a big savings over new AST or MCS prices. Details are at the links below for each set.


Left: Prototype AST 4150 shock set for S197 (from my car!). Right: Prototype (and only) AST 4200 shock set for S197

+ MCS deal for BMWs and S197 from July 7th to August 4th - If you order an MCS set for any S197 Mustang, BMW E30, BMW E36 or BMW E46 during this time frame there is a $100 savings on the optional rear spring kits, to help introduce the new Vorshlag rear ride height platforms.



+ New S197 Fender Flare Kit Under Development - Our friends at Heritage have taken what they learned making the custom steel rear flares on our Mustang and have replicated this for another one of our customers, but also added custom front flares and a lot of "Extra Aero Pieces" to finish the wide body look off. They are pulling molds off of this car below and will offer composite offerings for all of this "soon". I will cover more of this in my next update, when hopefully the car below is painted/finished and the molds are ready. The plan is to get them to make the first set of composite front fenders for our car before SEMA. Fingers crossed...



+ Vorshlag Attends Drift vs Grip Event - I was going to cover that in this update but ran out of time. This was a Lone Star Drift event with a "5 lap battle" between the fastest drift cars and a few NASA TT drivers. It was UGLY, but we all had a lot of fun, and I'll show video and pics of this event next time. Here's some preview pictures of me driving like a jackass.



+ Vorshlag Skipping NASA Nationals East

After a lot of internal debate we have decided to skip the NASA Nationals event being held August 31st at Road Atlanta. There are several reasons. First, this "split Nationals" (East and West coast) is kind of lame and winning either one only makes you a "half champion". It was a novel idea but I don't want to spend the money and take the risks to do just the East event. That's the second reason - Risk. After looking at the carnage from Hallett, which has very little runoff area but low overall speeds, I am not comfortable going to Road Atlanta without a cage. This is another track with little runoff but HIGH speeds. Too many concrete K-walls and rough gravel traps (there should not have been an 18" drop into/out of that gravel trap) will keep me away until we have a caged car, and a better reason to go back and risk breaking something on my body again. Third is - Car Damage. I have a buyer lined up for the 2011 Mustang after SEMA, and I cannot afford to wad it up at Road Atlanta and ruin the car and the buyers future plans for it.


Road Atlanta (left) is hilly, fast, and unyielding. The LVMS 2.4 mile outfield course (right) is flat, slower speeds, and much safer

Instead of spending thousands of dollars going to Road Atlanta we are going to focus on the 2014 Optima Ultimate Street Car shootout (which we snagged an invitation to after winning the March USCA event) at LVMS in November. We will go and do a test event there as well. After that event the 2011 GT will be sold so we can focus on other projects (like the 2015 Mustang) and to help expand our business. Selling this 2011 Mustang helps us get into a bigger building, which we badly need. Ideally we would go to NASA Nats and give it a shot, but the reward just isn't worth the risk this time. Sorry...

So that's enough for this time. Stay tuned for more!
 

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July 21, 2014...

[B]Pentalab[/B] said:
Sad...and preventable. Steel cable at neck level + go kart = accident waiting to happen.
This jackass has to ALWAYS comment on everything that he knows NOTHING ABOUT, as usual.

As I've said here 100 times - GO AWAY, PENTALAB. The Corral misses your wisdom and insight.

===

Along with 175 other entrants, Amy and I were at this event, a few dozen feet away from the accident, with our car lined up first in grid. It was tragic but there is nothing more than speculation at this time as to the cause. We all knew the family, several people here at Vorshlag (including the region's Solo RE) that were there are still dealing with this, and we're all still a little raw. A full investigation is underway, but as I told the reporter who I helped remove from the event site, I've got nothing further to say at this time.



Look for an update about this freak accident in my next build post - after the family has time to grieve, we can all go to the funeral, and the experts have time to gather the facts. For now, please keep the armchair quarterback comments about this accident out of this thread and off my Facebook feed, thanks.
 

Vorshlag-Fair

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July 31, 2014...

[B]Boaisy[/B] said:
Having fun in the rain Terry?
Little rain never hurt nobody.... #becausestreetcar



Just an ordinay day driving to work... 3 inches of rain? No worries - my Hoosiers are DOT rated! :thumb2:



Been keeping the Mustang stored in my home garage (above), along with a few other strays awaiting time in the Vorshlag shop. Our shop is over-run with customer cars at the moment, but it looks like we'll be moving to a space 2x as large in about 60 days, so this "overflow" of cars at my house should soon be a thing of the past.



More info coming soon on our TT3 Mustang as well as other S197s we're working on (like Jamie Beck's 2013 GT getting a full cage and wing for NASA ST3 prep, shown above) in another S197 write-up.



http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8308

That link above is a new segment I'm going to start called "This Week in the Vorshlag Shop".



This series of posts details all sorts of work on customer and Vorshlag project cars. We work on a lot more than just Mustangs...
 

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