Vorshlag S197 Development Thread

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Oct 22, 2013...

Hey hey hey, I helped stack cones at the mustang vs camaro event! Lol!

Yes, the course tore down a lot faster than it went up, thanks to everyone stacking cones.

I will say that the guy on the mic was hilarious and had us laughing the whole time! I'm still upset at myself for not forking over the money and running the autox track. It was well put together and everyone I talked to that ran the track loved it! Good work Vorshlag!

Glad you liked the commentary on the PA system. That was me on the microphone (and posing as a jackass in the picture above, putting the course together that morning) - I usually work as "announcer" at most autocross events we go to in one of the work heats. I have a good time announcing, and while it is tough to keep talking by myself for 2 hours straight, I tap into that same gene that lets me make these mega long posts!




Thanks for coming out and thanks to everyone that helps set up or tear down at this event. Hopefully we'll see you at another autocross or track day soon...?

Cheers,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Oct 22, 2013...

I love the videos, makes me want to go road track racing. Which finally I'm going to get to do on Nov. 3rd. I'm doing the HPDE that day and I was wondering if you were going to be doing any instructing that day. If so is there a way I can "request" you as my instructor and if not do you recommend I request any particular instructor if I can? Also I ordered some Carbotech XP12/XP8 pads from you guys yesterday for my 2006, based on my memory of what you had recommended in the past. Did I order that right?

Thanks,

James

That's a good brake pad combo, James. Your Carbotech pads are here, by the way.



As for instructing at the NASA @ ECR event Nov 2-3, well, I haven't done much of that this year. I'm just getting too buried with "stuff" at NASA events to have any time left over to instruct anymore. After going to an instructor clinic in 2011 I did a lot of instructing at NASA events in 2011 and 2012, but for 2013 I've been trying to concentrate more on prep/set-up/driving (the 7 TT3 track records we set this year were NOT easy) and working with customers at these events. And it seems if the car is outside of the trailer it always has a small crowd around it, asking questions and looking for answers. So I spend a lot of time talking to folks, which is really a big part of why we go to races, other than to test new products and parts to sell.



Looking back at the NASA @ MSR-Cresson event in March I had a great student in a 5.0 Mustang (hey Jan!), who has since become a Vorshlag tester (her MCS TT1 coilovers are epic!), plus another student I worked with briefly that weekend (her daughter, in another Mustang, with my old LS splitter and a Sparco race seat she got from us). Doing all that + talking to folks + learning the 3.1 mile course andtook a lot out of me that weekend, and that super busy Saturday was my only loss in TT3 on the NASA Texas schedule this year (to far!). But it was worth it. Luckily I came back on Sunday, drove better, found two seconds, and got the win and the track record. It was a very hectic weekend, but there is a lot of satisfaction working with new students and seeing that "light bulb" moment(s) when they make a break through. I miss that a lot, but I miss a lot of things, heh.



I also had another Mustang student at NASA @ NOLA in May (she was a first timer and did great, too!), and two students at the NASA @ MSR-Houston event last January. So I guess I did instruct at 3 of the 8 NASA Texas weekends in 2013. I remember all three of those events has being "very hectic", too.



If you make it to the ECR Toy Run on December 7th I could possibly be instructing there, because I likely won't have a car to race by then (after selling both S197s and before the ST2 BMW or the S550 Mustang are ready). Which saddens me beyond words... but makes it easier to instruct.

Cheers,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Oct 23, 2013...

I am going to miss the updates on this thread when you get you S550. After all the $$$ I have dumped into my S197 it's the car I have to stick with for a while, make that a long time.

Also, this thread is like crack. I am jonesing for more right now, LOL.

Well don't fret just yet - we have a lot of S197s in and out of our shop all the time getting cool things done to them, your's included. There are TONS of posts I have yet to write based on various mods we've done on customer cars, like the Tremec XL swap in the Boss LS, and many others. And I am already trying to plan for another S197 purchase and build, possibly in 2014, which we would update in this same thread. We have way too many S197 spare parts to not have one of these cars again...



This Tremc "direct shift" 6-spd drove SO nicely, but we're waiting on the magazine article before we talk more about this swap.

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for Oct 30th, 2013: It is that day I have dreaded... the eBay auctions are live for both our TT3 prepped 2011 Mustang GT and our 2013 GT. Don't want to sell either car, especially the 2011, but the business craves cash. We're trying to get into a bigger building next year and I've got too much capital tied up in cars. The 2011 GT is obviously set-up for TT3 use, in likely its fastest iteration yet for the past 3+ years, but it is also street legal. The 2013 GT was taken back as close to stock as I care to get it, with more details shown in the eBay auctions for both cars.

I have spent close to 30 hours over the past week writing, laying out, editing and coding the auction pages for these two cars. I've read through these pages so many times my eyes are bugging out, so please don't point out any more of my spelling or grammar errors, heh. The guys at the shop did a great job cleaning up the cars, taking the pictures, and helping me edit these pages.



The eBay auction for the Vorshlag TT3 Mustang is now underway. This is one of the fastest street legal S197 Mustangs on track in the country. Please click the image above so get to the auction. You can come see this car in action one last time this weekend at Eagles Canyon Raceway, Friday-Sunday, where Amy and I will be racing with NASA and looking for track record #8 for the year. Auction duration is 7 days and ends on Nov 6th. The bidding action has been very steady today on this one...



If our TT3 prepped 2011 GT is too racey for you, Vorshlag is also selling our super clean and mostly stock 2013 GT in another eBay auction. This black on black 6-spd car has under 6K miles, is lowered on 5300-P springs, has a few Whiteline parts, and comes with the 14" Brembo front brakes and 19x9" OEM wheels. Take a look at the eBay auction which also began Oct 30th and also ends Nov 6th. Good number of bids on this car as well.

That's all I have for today. And before you ask (again) we are moving these two Mustangs out to make room for the upcoming "S550" 2015 Mustang GT, which we hope to have early next Spring. We are NOT abandoning the S197 chassis and might pick up another next year to use for continued development. We still have a LOT of items we will be creating for this chassis and we still work on 5-10 different S197s per week in our shop. I will be adding to this build thread for years to come, don't worry. I still have the TMS Road Course autocross to cover plus a bunch of new parts we have added to our website or are about to release. There will be more posts next week.

One quick request: if you liked reading about this 2011 and 2013 GTs, please go to the Vorshlag Facebook page (here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vorshlag/460717830112), like the page (almost at a "milestone" number), then find the two posts I made for these S197 eBay auctions and "like" those as well. If you could share either or both that really helps spread the word.

Thanks,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for November 25, 2013: Wow, really got swamped for the past few weeks and haven't made an update to this thread, and a lot has gone on in the background. We were short 3 people during the week of SEMA, hired a new Ops Manager, and got swamped in service jobs and orders in the past week. So please excuse the tardy updates. Let's see... I will talk about our last autocross in the red 2011 GT, which was the annual "TMS Road Course" autocross event. I will then touch on the eBay auctions on both S197 test mules and what's next.

SCCA @ TMS Road Course Autocross - Oct 13th

Before this autocross event in October we had about 3 weeks of busy time at the shop. The Mustang did so well at TWS all we did was change the oil (which we do after every other event) and do a typical "pre-race inspection". The guys ended up leaving the brakes, wheels, tires and other systems untouched.

For whatever reason the racing schedule was pretty light in October this year. There was no NASA event this month (but two in September, with Miller Nats and TWS), so Amy and I signed up for this SCCA Solo event on the 13th in the TT3 Mustang. This was no run of the mill autocross but instead the annual "road course autocross" event this region runs inside the super speedway at Texas Motor Speedway, on the infield road course (see image below).


Texas Motor Speedway in Ft. Worth, Texas, has a NASCAR/IndyCar super speedway plus an itty bitty infield road course.

If you've been reading this build thread for a while you might remember that I ran this road course in our Mustang in September of 2012 with Global Time Attack. The course we ran with GTA was the same basic 1.56 mile layout (the red course in that link) as this autocross followed, but it was done at MUCH faster speeds with GTA, because they didn't add elements to this flat road course to slow us down. That GTA event was a lot of fun, and we met a lot of cool racers and saw some amazing cars. We were all sorely disappointed that GTA couldn't come back to TMS in 2013. A few local shops are working with us to try to get Jason Dienhart and his GTA circus to come back through Texas next year, and we even have proposed a "GTA" type class to run in NASA Texas TT, as a provisional/regional class. More on that in a later post.


Running this road course.... as a road course, in Sept 2012 with GTA

So with GTA I ran a 39.87 second lap (with my transponder off) and an official 39.975 lap to win Unlimited RWD class, but this autocross set-up would not be a complete lap of the 1.56 mile road course. It would instead have a separate Start and Finish gates that chopped off about a 1/4 mile of track, to allow for a braking area after the finish lights. And at GTA I was topping out 4th gear going into turn 1 (about 120 mph) and using only 3rd and 4th gears. To keep it from being a 25 second long autocross course with speeds much higher than SCCA allows, there were a few (hundred) cones added. But we knew what to expect, as Amy and I have run this event with the Texas Region SCCA many times over the past 7 or 8 years.


Amy pulls up to the start line, which just before the "crossover" and the start/finish line we used in GTA

This "TMS road course autocross" event is always lots of fun for area autocrossers, and they have to cap the entries at about 165. This event gives autocross racers a place to run outside of the normal parking lot confines, and on a real live road course at that. Autocrossing on a road course might seem alien to some, but I started out in an autocross club (TAMSCC) that regularly held high speed autocrosses on road courses (TWS "Aggiecross", Riverside Annex Firecracker 1.4, Riverside 4-10 split "Police Course", etc). Then running with Spokes down in Houston (Heritage Center!) or SCCA in Houston (at the Blimp Base, now known as GrandSport Speedway) I was exposed to even more road course autocrosses. So I was event chairman for these "road course" events multiple times and made hundreds of runs on autocrosses where we regularly used 4th gear, so it only seems natural to me to autocross on the biggest, fastest sites and road courses you can find. This is why I cringe so hard when I run needlessly tight autocross events, like what Goodguys holds (1st gear only). That stuff is what is alien to me.


Giant, open, fast autocrosses run on road course sized layouts are what I grew up on. My ESP '87 Mustang back in 1992

Sure, this TMS event has a little extra speed (high 70s/low 80s for the faster cars), but it is still nowhere near what the unrestricted course would let them see (I only used 1st-2nd-3rd gears on this course in autocross form). And it is still relatively safe, as autocrosses go. I wish more SCCA autocross regions tried this type of road course event once a year or so, to help bridge the MASSIVE gap that there seems to be between autocrossers and club racers. We constantly hear that the SCCA is hemorrhaging members and much of that is from their dwindling numbers of club racers, as there seems to be very little new blood coming into their ranks. The PDX series (SCCA version of HPDE + Time Trial) is one such bridge between these two competitive groups within SCCA, but it seems that the rules makers have made it extremely difficult (read: expensive) to do PDX events, requiring the same safety gear ($$$) as club racing in many classes. I've begged our SCCA region's officers to come join us at a NASA race weekend to see how that club has made the switch from HPDE to TT to Club Racing so seamless and painless... but that's a different discussion for a different time.


Amy (at left) ran in W class in the Mustang, battling her best friend Melinda in her BSP C4 Corvette (at right)

Anyway, this TMS road course autocross is always on our calendar, and considering our plans for 2014 and the upcoming auction of this TT3 Mustang, we had planned to make this our last autocross in the red car. Looking back over the past 3 and a half years of racing in this Mustang, from where we started out (with our initial plans just to autocross this car in STX, where it floundered) to where it ended up (built for and around NASA TT rules, where it flourished), having our last autocross in it at a road course seems strangely appropriate.

All day long Amy and I both gave ride-alongs on our autocross runs. Amy ran in the Women's class (so she could support the class which she kind of helped set-up a couple of years ago) and I again ran in the "X" pro class. I don't consider myself a "Pro" but rather I just run in this PAX factored "catch all" class when the heat schedule balances out. The PAX factor for StreetMod class (where this TT3 car happens to end up) is terrible and I had no illusions of winning this class, especially with as tight as this course is usually run, but I had hope that Amy could do well.


This was the first SCCA event we ran with the new splitter and flares. The Mustang had a huge crowd around it all day, with a line for ride-alongs

Event Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...tober-13-2013/
Event Class Results: http://www.texasscca.org/2013_solo_r...13_8_final.htm
Event PAX Results: http://www.texasscca.org/2013_solo_r...tr13_8_pax.htm

This event had some sketchy overcast weather with some spitting, misty rain off and on all day. It made for a slick surface, and in my in-car video where it looks like the front end is pushing out and the rear is loose, well, it was because it was always just a little bit wet. The tires we ran on that day were the old A6 Hoosiers that we well and truly used up at TWS with NASA TT (we can kill a set of new A6 tires at a NASA TT weekend in about 20-30 laps), and not what I'd even remotely call fresh. But for an event we were just running for fun, this was a perfect use for that last little bit of rubber.

As you know we have been concentrating on NASA finishes in 2013, so we've not taken SCCA autocross competition/tires/classing seriously at all, and as a result I've been a lot happier, heh. Honestly, for what we need to do with our test mules here at Vorshlag, running our cars around NASA's somewhat open TT ruleset allows us the freedom to build and test parts that more people will want to use, so we will likely stick to this plan in the future (that means: don't look for our 2015 Mustang to be running in ESP class). We also ran our normal Carbotech XP20 track duty pads, which do NOT work cold, so the first runs on cold brakes are pretty much throw-aways. Last excuse for the day: since I was running in "X" class, only my first 3 runs are counted (they DSQ all of the runs after the 3rd, just for this class), so my fastest run (4th) didn't count for the class or in the PAX results.


Left: Slaloms for Safety! Right: Coming into the finish

That is a shame, since I dropped some time on my 4th run, which would have PAXed about around 6th overall. Instead I was PAXed in 9th, kind of goofing around, on old junk tires and using the painful StreetMod PAX factor (.867). With ESP's .849 PAX factor (this car is a LOT closer to ESP than SMod) my clean 4th run would have been 3rd fastest PAX time out of 162 entries, but whatever... that's just bench racing. Yes, I have difficulty switching off that competition gene at SCCA events... I'm hoping over time I will care even less.

In my humble opinion, the course designers use too many cones when they do their road course autocross event at TMS, and they make some of the "slow down" elements EXTREMELY tight. I guess to make it "safe", but the black helicopters make me think it is to keep higher powered/track worthy cars from PAXing well, ha! There were some of the same "Miata straights" that I had to come to a stop in (where a narrow car can take almost flat out), and there were plenty of slaloms and typical "chicanes for safety" course design elements, which inadvertently ends up allowing cars to have spins that can seldom (but predictably) lead into concrete walls. Which happened again, like clockwork. I'm not just saying this to be a complainer, but to offer up some alternatives. "Speed doesn't kill". What causes incidents are big changes in direction in higher speed sections near immobile elements. Whenever I see slaloms or huge offsets into a finish or near a fence or wall, a red flag goes off in my brain. And when they try to slow down cars with big offsets on a straight away near a concrete wall, I can predict with nearly 100% accuracy that somebody is gonna smack it.


This element was entered at nearly 80 mph, after a super tight offset, into this super tight box. Which wrecks the flow of this road course

Sure, it is easy to "Monday Morning Quarterback" this difficult and unusual event they hold each year, but I am actually going to try help do something about it. A few of us are working on a possible new/different road course to procure for 2014 or 2015, for this annual autocross. Why? Because I've set up about a dozen of these super high speed autocross events in the past, have set up over 80 autocross courses in total, and have run on virtually every road course in Texas for dozens to hundreds of laps on each. With some other like minded autocross/time trial racers I think we can ferret out something that is safe for an autocross yet still keeps the flow and flavor of a road course. More on that as things develop.

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above



I ran in the 1st heat, Amy ran in the 3rd heat, and we both worked in the timing trailer in 2nd heat. I was announcer, trying to give the spectators a good show, and Amy worked the timing computer. When I got the car to grid I aired up the tires - I finally brought an air tank to an autocross event and used it, so my first run I actually had enough tire pressure for once. We had walked this 1.4 mile course once and I knew it would drive tight, but this was a new level of tight. Almost every year that they have run this course there has been a small "incident" or two, so the next year they just make the elements tighter and nastier, to the point where it was this year where I could barely fit through some gates. I clipped a cone on run 1 and set-up to make a clean "Safety" pass for run 2, which is shown below with in-car video.


click image above for in-car video of Terry's 2nd 46.286 second run

There are some mistakes in that run, as always, but it was mostly decent and had no cones. Again, it was a bit damp and slippery all day, and with nearly bald A6s, driving the car was a constant dance on the head of a pin. I had a first-time-spectator riding along, who had an absolute blast. The last section before the finish is super tight and I had to downshift to 2nd gear to get the car to rotate enough to make the finish. It led to some significant wheelspin, but it was controllable. My 3rd run was much of the same, and was quicker up to the finish area, but the self-induced wheelspin was a bit much and I let it get a bit too sideways... so I took a little off-course excursion to avoid hitting the finish lights or any cones. Again, violent changes in direction right at a finish is a sure fire way to have some car collect the timing lights, which happens more than people think. I knew the car was heading for the lights so when it was sideways and beyond the point of staying off the cones/lights, I cranked in more steering to keep it out of harm's way, avoiding even a cone smack but touching the dirt with two tires. Oh well.


A little induced oversteer was used to navigate the super tight finish section. Twin stripes of rubber can be seen behind the car

After I got the inner hoonigan out of my system I took a more controlled 4th run, which doesn't count in X class. This time I didn't do any stupid "downshift at the finish" and jut let the motor bog in 3rd gear, and of course it was clean and 3 tenths faster than my 2nd run, even with a tick more moisture coming down. While I got pummeled in the PAX factored X class (6th of 13) my 2nd run time as still 9th in PAX overall, like I said above. I had fun but felt the extreme tightness of the elements on this course was unnecessary. I do hope local autocrossers who go to this event that have never done an HPDE or track event don't equate this course to how track events really feel. And I don't complain just to complain - I honestly think this type of autocross event could be held at a better road course venue and not need anywhere near as many cones to stay safe.



I got to ride along with Melinda in the BSP C4 Corvette above. Wow, that thing was FAST. This is a dedicated BSP autocross car that won BSP at Nationals in back in like 2005 or so? It uses 315/335mm Hoosier A6s and has an LT4 swap. Total grip machine with more than enough power. We're building a C4 Corvette track car for a customer at the shop right now, and these models are a real bargain at the moment - if you don't mind working on 25+ year old cars. Sadly, this circa-1984 Corvette suspension is light years ahead of the McStrut/stick axle Mustangs. Even though I barely edged out Jason McCall (Melinda's husband and a good friend of mine) in X class (due to his cone trouble), his raw times were a good bit faster. I've owned and raced C4 Corvettes in the past and these C4s make terrible street cars, in case you were wondering.



Amy ran in the 3rd of 4 heats, and she was pretty dang close on my heels with a 46.337 sec 3rd run (only a tenth back from my official fastest run), also taking passengers each time. Well, if you ignore my clean 4th run of a 45.968 (no good for X class), which was a little quicker. Still, she managed to wring a lot out of the car with very little autocross seat time in the past couple of months. She won the "W" class, and either of us would have won StreetMod by 2 seconds or ESP by 4 seconds. She ran "W" simply to support the regional class she helped create a couple of years ago. I normally have to beg her to run in a "Ladies class".

After removing the AST remote reservoir double adjustable shocks from the 2013 GT we made some new fliers and brought it to the TMS event to show off to potential buyers, before the auction started. Hundreds of people drove by this car but we were never there to answer any questions. I think 2 fliers were taken, yay...



As much as I have complained about the pinched and erratic course design used on this road course, which I'm sure the Safety Stewards are dictating much of at this point, this event was still a LOT of fun. The Texas Region folks ran everything like clockwork and even with 162 entrants and 4 runs each the entire event was wrapped up by 4:30 pm.

Since Amy and had worked early and both had our runs over after the 3rd heat, we loaded up the Red Mustang, stowed our gear in the trailer and were on the road out by 3:30 pm. It was a fun day and normally I would have stuck around to watch 4th heat, but the weather was just so "blah", and we were tired from working the past 3 weeks in our normal "7 days a week" schedule at the shop, so we headed out during the 4th heat. We ate some good lunch with the McCall's at a California Pizza Kitchen on the way home, then crashed out for the rest of the day.

From Auctions To Classified Ads

So it has been a couple of weeks since both of the eBay auctions ended on our black 2013 GT and the red TT3 prepped 2011 GT. Neither car made reserve but I think it was mostly timing. November is a terrible month traditionally in the aftermarket, and it is known by "Slowvember". I should have known better trying to auction cars this month, heh. Anyway, we've relaunched both auctions to regular classified ads, linked below. I've actually "sold" the black 2013 GT four times over, but due to flaky buyers the deals have all fallen through. Don't get me started...

• http://www.vorshlag.com/cars-2011-TT3.php
• http://www.vorshlag.com/cars-2013gt.php

Anyone that is looking for either type of car, please call us at the shop (972-422-7170). I'm not desperate to sell them at some fire sale price, and please refrain from asking for us to part them out - we're not to that point yet, and hopefully won't get there. I would like to move both of these by the end of the year, of course.

What's Next?

I am going to stop there, as there's still a lot to cover on the TT3 car (and I have a lot more written) but I've waited too long since my last post. In my next thread update we will cover the NASA race weekend at Eagles Canyon Raceway Nov 2-3rd, which went well but was also a bit frustrating in a few ways (which I will explain in detail) for the TT3 car. Double win, new personal best, new track record, and 4 tires won... but the class was fierce (biggest TT class both days) and 2nd place was closer than ever!



I also got to finally drive an S197 Mustang on track with MCS TT1 singles, which were amazing. This customer daily drives her car and tracks it 2+ times a month, and this damper set-up was amazing. I drove her car previously on the stock shocks with camber plates and this was a night and day difference. I got to take about 6 laps at speed at ECR with the owner riding along, and there is video with data and timing on it we are going to try to share. We've also made some progress and updated our ST2 BMW E36 LS1 built thread (and added it to the NASA forums), which is going to be our "tweener" race car after this TT3 2011 Mustang and before the 2015 Mustang arrives.



We are going to run the TT3 Mustang on track one more time, to test a fix to the throttle body circuit (which I will explain in my next post - the guys are swapping out throttle bodies today). So if you are in or near Dallas/Ft. Worth and want a ride in a 1:55 car at ECR - and especially if you are interested in buying this car - come out to the ECR Toy Run December 7th (see details here). This is also the least expensive track day of the year, and all proceeds benefit two good causes, so come out, bring something with 4 wheels, and join in the fun!

Thanks for reading,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for December 2nd, 2013: After the October TMS road course autocross the next event on our race schedule wasn't for three whole weeks. The gaps between race weekends are getting longer as the season winds down. Of course I had something going on every weekend day between these events, but at least not any races. We were wrapping up the last of the work on the 2011 GT, both for this season ending NASA weekend at ECR as well as before the car would (hopefully) be sold an upcoming eBay auction (it wasn't). We were slammed at the shop during this 3 week break but we made time to finish the pre-race prep a few days before the Nov 2-3 race weekend, where we pick up below.



While the shop was working on getting the car ready, Brandon made the new TT race map for ECR, shown above. We took the satellite image and found that the old 2008 track map we had been using for years was not drawn to scale. Our new ECR track map (above right) is not perfect but a lot closer to reality than the old map. We marked the "bunch up" and "go" green zones and marked the corner numbers the same as always, then made 40+ copies for the Time Trial racers to use in our meetings.

Pre-ECR Race Prep

This was the last NASA competition event we had planned for this car, so we worked hard to wrap up any unfinished projects and upgrades before we went to ECR. This included tweaks to the flares, brakes, and rear diff catch can system.



Jason worked on the flares, wrapping our black ABS work in red vinyl that matched the factory Race Red paint. Then he cut new stripes fore the sides and with Brandon's help they re-applied the strips to the flare section. This made them look less ugly than they did before, and was something we should have made time to do before going to Miller or TWS in the last few months.

Ryan re-routed the lines for the oil catch can/vacuum recovery system after seeing the hoses keep flattening out from a high vacuum condition. We've been chasing the correct routing for this system for months, and the way some Ford guys told us to do it wasn't working (they set-up these cars simply as an external breather, but we wanted to pull a slight vacuum on the crankcase). The vacuum source we were using was too strong, though, and sucking the hoses flat. We punted and temporarily just turned this system into a vented catch can system without vacuum (which we fixed after this race weekend; I will show that in my next post).



As I mentioned at Miller, the front Brembo calipers on this car have seen at least 100 cycles on and off the car. We used to swap rotors and pads between a street/autocross set-up and the track-only stuff. So some of the threaded mounting holes were starting to wear and had to be repaired (helicoil). We had picked up a spare set of new Brembo calipers to have on hand "just in case", and the Thursday before this weekend's events the guys in our shop were bleeding a little fluid through the calipers when one of the threaded hole for the banjo bolt/brake hose finally stripped. It was time to replace the front calipers (we had replaced the rears when we went to the 13.8" GT500 rotors out back), so they put on the new set and stuck the old ones in the "spares" pile to be rebuilt (for the 3rd time) and to have the stripped hole re-tapped and helicoiled.



Once the new Brembo front calipers were swapped on (along with new brake pad pins and clips + the existing Carbotech pads that we used at Miller & TWS), the rest of the car was "nut and bolted" and inspected closely. One change was made to the routing of the diff vent tube overflow line and that system was buttoned up. The "AGM" style, 14 pound Odyssey PC680 battery was charged up (its starting to get tired after 3 years of street and track use, so we will finally replace it after this next race weekend) and the car went into the trailer with all of our gear. We loaded the car on a well worn set of 315/30/18 Hoosier R6 tires but a fresh sticker set of A6s were mounted and balanced onto the "white" showcar wheels and those were loaded in the trailer, to hopefully be installed Friday night at the end of our planned test day.

ECR Test Day, Friday Nov 1st, 2013 - Day 1 of 3

With the trailer loaded I picked up Ryan at the shop at 7 am on Friday morning and we towed the 70 miles out to ECR, in heavy morning commute traffic. The plan was to get there around 8, find a good paddock spot for the weekend, unload the car, unhook the trailer, run some laps and tweak the set-up for a few hours, then swap on the A6 tire set at the end of the day, stuff the car back inside the trailer for the night, and head back to the shop in the truck. If all went well we'd come attack the NASA weekend on Saturday morning in TT3, already set-up and with me "mentally ready" to put in my best laps in an early session. Getting there Friday would also ensure we had a better paddock space for the weekend. I took a few (crappy) pictures with camera phone, and had the Nikon ready for use by Ryan, but there is not much photo coverage of this Friday test day.... because everything went pear shaped.



We actually got there by 8:30am (morning traffic was murder) but the weather was absolutely beautiful (the area had gotten 3 inches of rain the two days previous, though, so it was very muddy off track!); low 60s with plenty of sun and breeze. We unloaded the Mustang and I noticed that the fuel gauge was almost on "E". Hmm, that was a mistake at the shop. :/ Should have fueled it up before it was loaded. We looked in the trailer and only had one spare fuel jug, which was of course empty, for mistake number two. Oh well, no worries - the track has 4 grades of fuel at their pumps... right?



Wrong. The pumps were completely out. Great! (they got a fuel delivery late that afternoon). I quickly went out on track briefly at the end of the first track session and made one test lap but the car ran very poorly, bucking and popping like it was misfiring badly. Zero power and very worrying, so I immediately came in and talked with Ryan. We thought that with such a low fuel load maybe it was fuel starving EVERYWHERE? Weird. So let's resolve that by getting fuel before I fret too much.



Our next task was a hunt for fuel jugs. We went asking around in paddock and borrowed 5 empty fuel jugs from an American Iron racer, then took that plus our single empty jug we had brought and drove 15 miles to the nearest gas station. We filled up with 30 gallons of 93 octane fuel, put 10 of that into the Mustang and kept our 5 gallon jug filled for use later in the day. The AI racer gave us some cash for the 15 gallons we got for him, and we could finally get started for the day. So I went out a second time with more than enough fuel now and made another lap. No better - motor was still running very badly, misfiring, bucking, and popping, at both part throttle and WOT. Immediately came in since I didn't want to hurt anything.


Investigations began looking for the poor running issue

At this point I'm freaking out while Ryan was calmly diagnosing things, checking for any visible issues, but couldn't find anything obviously wrong. He would find something small, fix it, and we would go blast down the highway or take another lap, and the car always ran like crap. Re-routted vacuum lines, fixed a chafed wire, pulled the spark plugs, checked a lot of things, and looked at any engine codes each time. Finally traced it down to a recurring code showing "Bank 1 lean", all the time. Kept resetting, going back out on track or on the highway. Bank 1 Lean, Bank 1 Lean, kept popping up. Nothing we tried worked. Ryan spoke with Sean at True Street, who thought that it had to be sensor or something electrical, and told us to look at the O2 sensors first.



Meanwhile we had a lot of other customers out at ECR that day also, some of whom needed a hand with this or that, or came by to talk with us, so it was a very hectic day. Long story short by 4 pm we were out of ideas and the car was still running poorly. I felt like crap (hadn't slept in over 2 days), had just got some bad news at the shop the night before (our new Ops Manager had turned in his notice!), and the prospect of racing this car in this final NASA Texas weekend looked slim. My 2013 goal of setting every TT3 lap record on the Texas schedule would be squashed. Damn it! I was really pessimistic but Ryan thought it must have a fouled O2 sensor. He made some calls and we found that the closest Oxygen sensor was at a Ford dealer 50 miles away (they only had one!), so we made the call - lets head back to the shop.

Of course we had ALL of our gear unloaded and the trailer set-up for the upcoming race weekend: chairs, coolers, tables, parts displays, wheels/tires, tools, and we had a perfect paddock spot. Grrr... so we loaded everything back up, loaded the car, rehooked up the trailer, and we left the track by 4 pm. I called Brandon at our shop and had him run to the Ford dealer to get this O2 sensor (about $130, since it is a wide band) then run by my house to also get our stock 2013 Mustang GT. We were going to pull parts off that car and swap sensors over until we found the issue, if we had to - I wasn't missing this last race of the year, not at my home track!


Even with only a handful of laps the mesh grill was packed with grasshoppers

So we kept talking ourselves into this issue being a bad O2 (pre-cat), and I knew it wasn't mechanical. The engine has been rock solid reliable for over 3 years and it ran perfectly when we loaded it into the trailer after the last event in October. Had to be electrical in nature...right? So we hauled ass across town, through more murderous 5 o'clock Friday traffic and got back to the shop around 6 pm.

At this point Ryan was coming down with a cold and I was so tired I couldn't see straight, so Olof and Kyle did most of the wrenching at the shop. Kyle has a better scan tool here that also data logs and it was pointing to a bad Oxygen sensor. Amy brought everyone some food (Ryan and I had skipped breakfast and lunch out at the track, since it was such a thrash). They got both pre-cat O2 sensors pulled and, lo and behold... Bank 1 O2 was blacker than midnight. The Bank 2 sensor looked fine (tan), so we swapped in the ONE new sensor we could buy in town that day and fired it up. The 2013 GT was still there in case we needed to rob another one, but we hoped this lone sensor would do it. Fired right up, cleared the codes, and I took the car around on a drive of our test loop with Ryan riding shotgun again. All of the problems cleared up before we left the parking lot. Woo! No more bucking, hiccups, nothing. Well, I noticed one or two small hiccups at part throttle tip-in, but we chalked that up to fouled spark plugs.



We got back after our 2 mile street drive, I did a few donuts in the parking lot, and pulled it right into the trailer. Man, that was a huge relief! Ryan was still wrenching on the car inside the trailer, but everything was buttoned up and ready for transport by 8 pm, after a long 13 hour day. We ended up leaving the R6 set on the car for use in the first "Warm Up" session Saturday, since those times wouldn't count (this was a mistake, in hindsight). I finally went home with the truck and trailer to try to get some much needed sleep, where I promptly passed out.

NASA at ECR, Saturday, Nov 2nd, 2013 - Day 2 of 3



After a ridiculously early start Amy and I got out to ECR again before dawn, looked around and settled on a less desirable paddock spot at the bottom of the hill, out in the dirt (but hey, that's why you show up on a Friday for the NASA weekend at Eagles). We quickly unloaded the car from the trailer, unhooked the trailer, unloaded our gear for the day, and got ready for the TT warm up session. It was pretty dang cold (42°F!) and I got to grid on this worn set of Hoosier R6 tires. We had a huge class in TT3 (7 cars), with a bunch of new cars and drivers I wasn't familiar with. No idea what to expect for the class today! It was still very cold, and in heavy traffic with plenty of blocking (a recurring theme all weekend) I only managed a 1:58.100 lap, slipping and sliding around. The time was crap but still good enough to start grid 4th on the grid out of 35 TT cars for the next session (which is the first official TT session). Looking back I should have been out there on sticker A6s and qualified in about 2nd place on grid, which would have saved me a lot of traffic grief in the next session. Qualifying is key!



After the TT Warm-Up we had a small break, when Kyle from our shop had arrived at the track. We did a quick wheel and tire change and mounted the sticker set of Hoosier A6s to the Mustang plus worked on some other customers' cars. It had warmed up into the mid 50s and I went out hopeful that this could be my fastest session of the day, which would also make it my last session to drive. The plan was to let Amy drive in the last 2 TT sessions of Saturday, if I could get my best lap in this session.

What you don't see in the video below are the painful first 2 hot laps where Corey Wells' TT1 ZR1 Corvette and I are stuck behind another TT1 car, who is known to "take a bit of time to get up to speed" and accidentally holds up the front of the pack. Very, very frustrating. Mike Weather's TT1 Z06 had some issues and waved everyone by on the first hot lap, and in the middle of the 3rd hot lap Corey and I finally pushed our way past the slower TT1 car. By then I had gotten all 4 Hoosiers and brakes truly overheated and almost blew off the session, but I knew it wouldn't be this cool again all day plus I wanted to let Amy drive the last two TT sessions, so I took an unprecedented 3rd hot lap in a row. Always a bad idea on A6s...


In-car video of 1:55.250 lap, on hot lap 3, TT Session 1

Well that video lap above was just a big hot mess, but it ended up being my fastest lap of the weekend. I watch that and just laugh - that's the best I could do?! On this lap I ran out of brakes twice - first going into the downhill Turn 9 and almost went off mid-corner. Before that point the AIM Solo predictive timer is showing high 1:54 lap times, so I gathered it up while cursing traffic and pushed on. The predictive timer was still showing a 1:55.1 time, so I kept in it. Then in the very next braking zone I had brake fade again, entering Turn 11. Barely kept it on track. I guess this should be expected, after 3 complete bonsai TT laps in a row - you simply cannot push a TT car 10/10ths every single lap and maintain the tires and brakes. I normally try to get my best lap in on my very first lap of a session, or at worst on the 2nd lap. And the first lap on a set of sticker A6 tires are their best, too. But when you are held up behind a slower driver in front for 2+ laps that just wasn't possible. And with more fast TT drivers right behind me, I didn't dare back off and let them pass, to only get held up when I caught them (which always happens). By the 4th lap I'm usually catching the back of the field and the chances of getting a clear lap approach 0%, so I had to take that lap when I did.



So this double-brake faded 1:55.250 lap ended up being my best all day, was third fastest of the TT session, and it was enough for the new TT3 track record and class win. In that session the next quickest TT time was a solid 3 seconds back, in the 1:58s. Most racers went faster in the 2nd timed session, after I had handed the keys off to Amy.


Left: The grid for TT session 2 was a mess. Right: This looks more like it

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above

Amy drove in TT sessions 2 and 3, and put in a 1:57.449 in session 2. She was still working up her nerve in both sessions (plus she put in an HPDE4 session) and looked to pick up time on Sunday. She stayed out of everyone's way while she got up to speed, waving others by on the first lap or moving herself down the grid beforehand - which a good racer should do. I wish every TT driver would be so courteous.



By day's end nobody was getting all that close in TT3, so I had Amy take the 4th session as well. My session 1 lap time of 1:55.250, even as compromised as it was, still compared very well with the AI times that day, the quickest of which was about 5 seconds back. In one of the AI races that day there was a crash into Turn 11 when a Mustang racer lost his brakes, which I was the first on the scene to check out (I was standing at pit wall). Then Mike Patterson lost his brakes on his AI Camaro moments later and he went off in Turn 11, about 100 feet away. Crazy! One thing to point out was the TT1 ZR1 of Corey Wells, one of our customers. This nearly stock, street driven 2010 ZR1 ran a 1:50.449 lap on Michelin slicks, winning TT1 and approaching the TT1 record. You should watch this lap on youtube... its is amazing.



Another TT record fell that day, in TTB. Our friend/customer/tester KenO beat the old TTB record handily with his E46 M3. He moved some TT points around in his build and made changes to his set-up and it paid off with a 1:57.955 lap on Saturday, beating the old TTB record of 01:58.678, which he had set in 2012. Ken dropped the record further to a 1:57.603 on Sunday. We ended up building a new exhaust system with a 3.5" in/out MagnaFlow muffler for Ken a couple of weeks later, which dropped his car's ear splitting 105 dB sound level to an amazing 85 dB while picking up flow, ground clearance and power. Custom exhaust work is one of the fabrication services we provide to a number of competitors.


For competitive reasons Ken asked us not to show any more of the exhaust than this. We made a new system from the headers-back



Amy put in some good laps in the Mustang, getting faster each session out and getting down to a 1:57.449, nearing her personal best at this track. But she felt like she could find more on Sunday, so we planned on doing the same strategy - letting me go out in the 1st session then she'd take the rest, unless I got into some traffic again and needed to take the 2nd session also, to try for the class win. I also wanted to get that 1:54 lap that the timer said was in the car, and which I felt was in the set-up with some clear track. Unfortunately, the TT1 car that had held me (and others on the grid) up in the earlier sessions Saturday was just fast enough to get ahead of me on grid final session on Saturday. Oh great.


Time Trial Results: for Nov 2nd: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/N...e%20Trials.pdf

I should have been happy with the 1:55.250 lap in TT3, as this was a new personal best at this track by over a second, plus beat the old TTS and TT2 lap records (which were set in the same TT2 car in 2012). It says "TTA" below but that car should have said TTS, as I was there running in TTS that weekend and remember it all too well. Second place in class on Saturday was a solid 1.5 seconds back (Jeff Tan) and 3rd was 2.5 seconds back (Amy), so why should I worry? (ha! Wait until Sunday...)

The existing NASA Eagles Canyon Track Records before this weekend
TTU.....John Page..........Chevy Corvette.....01:55.879.....Oct-10
TT1.....Troy Messer........Chevy Corvette.....01:50.105.....Oct-12
TT2.....Josh Dunn..........Mitsubishi Evo.....01:55.326.....Oct-12
TTA.....Josh Dunn..........Mitsubishi Evo.....01:55.629.....Oct-12
TTB.....Ken Orgeron........BMW M3.............01:58.678.....Oct-12
TTC.....Eric Foss..........Mazdaspeed 3.......02:03.814.....Oct-12
TTD.....Zachary Parker.....BMW M3.............02:05.336.....Oct-12
TTE.....Josh Price.........Acura Integra......02:11.133.....Oct-09
TTF.....Ken Brewer.........Toyota MR2.........02:15.810.....Oct-10

I need to note here that the Mustang was running much better Saturday than it did on Friday, but it still wasn't 100% right. There were some stumbling issues I could feel at part throttle, something that was very noticeable to me but Amy said it felt fine to her. The new Oxygen sensor had seemed to clear up the wild bucking and popping issues, but maybe the fouled sensor was a result of another issue, not the cause of it? Kyle checked the codes on the car throughout the day and kept seeing (and clearing) O2 Bank 1 issues... now showing stuck full Rich. We would end up monitoring this closely all weekend.


Left: On the scales, where I got within 9 pounds of my 3770 lb minimum, running with the "low fuel" light on! Right: Adding more ballast (aka: fuel)

Two of our customer's had some car troubles that kept us busy, too. One of them broke a rear control arm and the other had a motor issue that led to lots of black smoke. We diagnosed the UCA failure and had the customer ride with us to the shop, where his ride picked him up. We had a new UCA at our shop we would install the next morning. And the 2nd customer's car was loaded into our trailer for a tow to their house, and later to a Ford dealer for diagnosis. So after unhooking our trailer and unloading all of our gear... we had to load everything back up, load up the customer's broken car, and leave our TT3 Mustang sitting in the paddock overnight (along with another friend's car who crashed out at our place that night and rode back and forth to the track with us). Dropping their broken car off and then taking the other customer to our shop for pickup made for a long night, but we finally made it home by 10 pm.

NASA at ECR, Saturday, Nov 2nd, 2013 - Day 2 of 3

Sunday was a new day and I was determined to find that elusive sub 1:55 lap time if I could get a clear lap. Today we had Olof (technician) and Brandon (photographer) from Vorshlag joining us, and they stayed just as busy as Kyle did on Saturday and Ryan did on Friday. This is the point where the pictures started to get a lot better, as it was Brandon using his talent and gear to shoot them and not me or Amy shooting with our Nikon or camera phones. I slid in a couple of Brandon shots from Sunday in the Saturday post above, too, because they are so much better than ours'.

Vorshlag Event Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...CR-Nov-110213/



Amy and I got back out to the track at 7:30 am towing the now empty trailer. We set our paddock back up, unloaded our gear for the 3rd time this weekend, and got ready for TT session 1. Olof worked on our customer's Mustang and installed the new and improved Whiteline UCA and mount (KTA141-A). This job was a little tricky doing it parked in the paddock on jack stands, but he got it done. This customer was able to get his HPDE sessions later that day without issue, which made him very happy.


Jamie's Forgestar/AST/Vorshlag/Whiteline equipped car getting some trackside repairs and heading back out for more laps

The first TT session was at 8 am, so we were a bit rushed checking tire pressures, fuel level, and getting everything ready before heading out on track. Well, with all of the frantic work going on in the paddock and people stopping by to talk I spaced out and forgot to plug in my damned transponder. You see, Amy and I have separate AMB transponders for our separate, individual TT3 entries, and we swap on her battery powered unit and unplug my wired unit when she races. Well her battery powered unit was off the car but we didn't plug mine in, GRR!


Left: Out on track in my "timeless" session. Right: Hitting the scales again after another session stuck behind "the blocker"

I was oblivious and went out on track, which was still pretty cold at 44°F, sitting in a good grid spot and hoping to get a good lap in... then I was black flagged on the first hot lap. WTF? Apparently Amy had been watching the Race Timer app and noticed that my first hot lap time never triggered, she immediately knew what had happened, asked the NASA folks to black flag me, which they did during my 2nd hot lap - so I came in. She waved me over in the hot pits, explained the issue, opened the hood and hooked up my transponder and sent me back out about 30 seconds later. I knew time in this session might be running a little short so I took a warm up lap at full speed and right as I came around to the start/finish to get a timed lap... the flagger at the stand whipped out the checkers, 13 minutes into the session. NOOOOO! Apparently they shortened all of our TT sessions from 20 minutes down to 15 minutes, but gave us 5 sessions on Sunday instead of the typical 4. Normally this would be welcomed news, as I only want to take 1 or 2 hot laps, but in this case that 5 minute (really, 7 minute) shorter session left me without a single hot lap. My whole session was blown and I never got a timed lap. It was so cold that I only saw an indicated 1:56 lap (on Lap 1) on my AIM Solo anyway, and nobody else set a fast time in this session, so that wasn't likely going to be the time for that golden lap to happen.

So that first session was wasted and totally my fault, but this happens sometimes. I have had an item on our build list all year to get a dash-mounted switch for the 2nd transponder, with an indicator light, but we just never got around to it. One of several sessions that were blown this year for the same stupid reason - no transponder. Switching beween two transponders for two drivers is highly unusual and takes an extra effort, but apparently too much for my old, feeble brain to remember, heh. Next year Amy and I are racing as "Team Vorshlag" so we can use the same car and ONE transponder (and pay one entry fee), so hopefully this won't happen again. I will have them set the TT2 car up with a single, wired transponder that is always on when the engine is running, so I cannot forget!

Long story short, Amy let me drive again in TT session 2, where I was gridded 5th in line, right behind the TT1 car that I've been having trouble get held up behind all weekend (and pretty much all year), so I was worried I would get blocked again. Even with a big gap on the Warm Up lap, where I held back for an entire straightaway before Turn 11, he also held WAY back and I caught him by the start/finish line line on hot lap 1. Then I followed about 1 car length off his bumper through Turns 1, 2, 3 and 4, to let him know I was there ("Hi!") and obviously getting held up. Right where you normally accelerate between turns 4 and 5 he freagin brake checked me! I came so close to crashing into the back of his car and taking us both out I cannot describe it. It was a very close call, an absolutely insane move, and totally caught me off guard. I braked so hard going down the hill into Turn 5 that there couldn't have been inches between us. There was a lot of speed differential, too, and the incident could have totaled both cars - not a good place to brake check someone.


Left: Out on track. Right: Coming in after a brief off track excursion with grass in the grill

So that Near Miss really spooked me, and I backed way way off and let the train of three cars held up behind me go by (who were also held up by the slow poke in front) while I let loose a stream of expletives. I took another brisk cool down lap, trying to build up a gap ahead while not holding up more drivers behind, so as not to ruin anyone else's session. On the very next lap I turned up the heat and re-caught one of the TT2 cars I had let by me after the near accident, in the same spot entering Turn 5. I was trying to get a good run up this hill on this Corvette and had a bit of wheelspin through uphill Turn 5. Any wheelspin quickly overheats A6 Hoosiers, so I backed off knowing this lap was blown, which turned into some off-throttle oversteer. I cranked in full opposite lock and got back into the throttle to hopefully transfer some weight to the rear... but it was too late. I had a little tank slapper and when I caught it the car wanted to go a bit wider than the track surface allowed for, heh. Instead of chancing a sideways off I straightened up and barely took all 4 wheels off, track right. It was 4 off, though, which of automatically DSQd any of times from that session, so I immediately came in and waited in the hot pits, trying to cool down. I was spitting mad, and eventually had some words with the TT1 driver that nearly crashed us both when he came in - telling him that his brake check move was utterly insane and that his constant blocking was getting old. His response was a lame "I never saw you..." Sure, since this giant red Mustang swerving and flashing bright lights parked 5 feet aft of your back bumper is so hard to miss. Good grief...

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above


Mike Weathers' TT1 Corvette and I were always next to each other on grid all year, but communicated well and never impeded each other

Based on the repetitive blocking I encountered this year from this one TT driver I am going to run a completely different TT warm-up/gridding/out lap strategy next year to avoid getting anywhere near drivers like this, and I am going to publicly call out these games in every TT meeting we have.

Amy took the keys for TT session 3 while I tried to cool down. She went out and ran a 1:56.934, which was her personal best at ECR by over a second. That was good news, and she came in all smiles and super pumped up! If you don't know this track, a 1:56 lap is really flying, and would be a record in any of the lettered TT classes and was still 3+ seconds faster than American Iron was running. Many of the TT drivers congratulated her on her new best lap time, as only 5 other TT drivers ran quicker than her on Sunday.


Jeff Tan's ST3/TT3 prepped, EVO-D tuned EVO put up a hellva fight, taking 2nd in TT3 both days

Amy's 1:56 would have been 2nd place but Jeff Tan also had a fast session 3. After slapping on a set of 275mm Hoosier A6s for the first time he dropped to a 1:56.7, and I felt like he might go faster still in the 2 remaining sessions. This is a gutted and race prepped ST3 EVO with an Evolution Dynamics tuned motor that makes a big flat power curve... where they tweak the boost levels to make the same flat 380 whp across the entire rev range. It is a TT trick you can do in a turbo car, and they've used this tuning strategy plus good driving to notch up a number of TT lap records in Texas. Well I was worried Jeff might go out and find more time in TT session 4, which he eventually did in a BIG way

After 3 TT sessions were in the books I still didn't have a time yet, so I went out in TT session 4. There were 6 cars in TT3 class on Sunday so 2 more contingency tires on the line for anyone on Hoosiers, plus I was worried that my track record from Saturday was a little soft - since I had two major driving errors on that 1:55.250 lap Saturday. It was up to 65°F, a little warm for that ideal A6 lap time, but it was still possible. This time I gapped the road blocker in front of me by a HUGE amount, holding up the rest of the field on the Warm Up lap, but I wasn't going to catch him into the first turn again, by damn.


The bulk of the NASA Texas TT competitors are great about giving point-buys and making room for others during cool down laps

Luckily I had a fairly clear first hot lap with Jeff Tan glued to my tail. He was chasing the rabbit (me) and barely kept a handful of car lengths between us. I slowly pulled a little bit on him and when I saw the 1:55.279 time at the start/finish after hot lap one I knew he had to be in the 1:55s as well, but I felt like our gap was increasing ever so slightly. I found out later that Jeff had run a 1:55.872 right behind me, his fastest ever by a large margin. He got really close to my time - which made me nervous! - and this was the closest gap in TT3 that we had all year (other than the one loss at MSR-C). Lap one was good but I wanted more, so I went ahead with Hot Lap 2. This lap was feeling better, where I put even more distance on Tan, and I had an indicated 1:54.6 through most of the lap... but I was slowly catching that same TT1 car again. I can't get away from this guy...

I looked up when I was coming up the canyon out of Turn 10 that the TT1 driver had his fist in the air, indicating that he'd be going into the pits. Great! He was waaaay up there, and surely he saw me closing in and would give me room on his cool down lap. But instead of looking in his mirrors, seeing me closing fast on him (I don't think he owns a rearview mirror) he instead lollygagged for the last few hundreds of yards of his lap and I caught right him in the middle of Turn 11. I had to back way off to avoid hitting him, almost coming to stop mid corner, which of course blew my 1:54 lap down to a 1:55.9. I tried to take another lap but by now the A6s were overheated and I was catching the back of the TT field going into Turn 3, so I took a cool down and came into the pits.



The weather was getting warmer, and I was exhausted from constantly getting pissed off at the blocker, so Amy went out in TT session 5. She took one of our customers (who had the engine troubles the day before) riding shotgun, letting many of the other TT drivers by her on the first lap, cleanly and safely. She took several laps at a 1:59 pace, just having fun on the ride-along; taking riders in TT DSQ'd her session, of course, but she never impeded anyone. Probably her last day driving this car in competition, so she made the most of it.

While Amy came in from that session I went out in in the very next HPDE4 session driving one of our tester's Mustangs, who is running our first set of S197 MCS TT1 singles on her car. This was the very first set of S197 MCS TT1s ever built, where we helped them calculate shock lengths and such. We knew the car rode beautifully on the street (daily driven) but I needed to drive this car to make sure all was well on this bumpy, tricky track.


Jan's Mustang on MCS TT1 coilovers was a lot of fun to drive

This '12 Mustang GT was on the stock 19x9" wheels and some worn out 255mm Nitto Invo tires, Carbotech XP16 pads, Vorshlag plates, MCS TT1s, a CG lock on the stock belt, and that's it. Totally stock engine, tune, airbox, and those skinny street tires that had seen better days. We went out with several instructors in HPDE4 and I pushed it about 8-9 tenths, running as quick as a 2:07.5 lap in traffic on these very low grip tires. Watching that video (which is only posted on my personal Facebook page at the moment) I had to brake 200 feet early into Turn 6, while coasting and waiting for a point by, so the car should run closer to a 2:05 lap. She took some video and data with her phone (Tom's Lap Timer), which we will try to get ahold of and post later. Jan had a blast riding along as I talked her through my lines, braking points, and described the different phases of "tire feedback" on 4 laps, always in some traffic. This car was a joy to drive, easy to put anywhere, and soaked up the ECR bumps effortlessly. Only complaint was the stock seats! Seriously, once you run laps with a dedicated fixed back racing seat, nothing else compares. I was sore later on, after trying to hang on for 4 laps while I slid around on the flat leather seats.


Time Trial Results for Nov 3, 2013: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/N...e%20Trials.pdf

Seems like all the of the car breakage calmed down and nothing went wrong on Sunday, thankfully. Times generally dropped significantly from Saturday, except for me, where I ran nearly identical 1:55.2 best laps (either blocked or with serious brake fade) on both days, only a couple of hundredths quicker on Saturday. As I said above, KenO reset the TTB record to 1:57.603 on Sunday. Another E46 M3 customer, TTB racer Jason Covington had his personal best with a 1:58.606 (which would have been near the TTB record last year). Jeff Tan had a personal best, Amy had a personal best, and a total of four TT records were broken (TT3, TTB, TTE, and TTF) this year. It was beautiful weather all weekend, with high of 76°F on Saturday and a high of 68°F on Sunday, with some brisk 40 degree mornings. Olof and Brandon took off by 2:30 pm on Sunday and Amy and I were loaded up and on the road by 4 pm.



Big thanks to our guys from Vorshlag for coming out all weekend, as there's always something we need help with on our car or customers who need a hand. We had tons of people come by, look at the Mustang, ask for help, borrowing tools, etc. Within TT we have a good group that gets along well and help each other out, even within the same class; Jeff asked for a look at some tire rubbing issues and I gave him tire pressure advice, too. Great event put on by the folks of NASA Texas once again, with some W2W class carnage Saturday but clean racing on Sunday, and no contact in TT. It was a close call on Sunday with me and the TT1 car, but luckily I managed to keep from slamming into him, with inches to spare. I will definitely watch my gaps next year, and if I am in a similar car that has to get the fast laps in early but behind a "faster" car that takes 3-5 laps to get up to speed, I am going to really hang back in the warm up lap to build a big gap. We're not supposed to do that, but you know what, we're also not supposed to intentionally block or brake check drivers behind us, either. Anything I can do to avoid contact, I will do.


Left: Plaid Print Yuri blowing a kiss to the camera. Right: Jason running in TTB in his E46 M3

By the end of the day I just felt fortunate that I didn't wreck the Mustang into another car on two separate occasions, and just felt lucky to win the class and 2 Hoosier tires each day. In the end, with all of the new track layouts, mistakes, challenges and hurdles to jump this year we still somehow managed to attain our goal of setting track records at all 8 track configurations on the 2013 NASA Texas schedule, which was a big win for Vorshlag.

New NASA TT3 track records set in the Vorshlag Mustang in 2013:

• Motorsports Ranch Houston (2.38 CW), 1:41.544, Jan 19, 2013
• Motorsports Ranch Cresson (3.1 CCW), 2:22.753, March 17, 2013
• Texas World Speedway (2.9 CW), 1:51.530, April 21, 2013
• New Orleans Motorsports Park (2.75 CW North Course), 1:50.535, May 5, 2013
• Hallet Motor Racing Circuit (CCW), 1:24.365, June 23, 2013
• Hallet Motor Racing Circuit (CW), 1:26.786, June 23, 2013
• Texas World Speedway (2.9 CCW), 1:50.675, Sept 22, 2013
• Eagles Canyon Raceway (2.5 CCW), 1:52.250 Nov 2, 2013

All of those records will eventually be broken, and I feel that the Mustang in its current form (it got faster after every round up updates in 2013) could beat all of those lap times if we raced it in TT3 again next year. We took 13 of 14 possible TT3 wins in the NASA Texas series, with that one 2nd place loss at MSR-Cresson where I ran out of sessions, fuel, and talent. This left me with 1390 out of 1400 possible points in TT3 class, which was the highest of any driver in TT in our region, out of the 100+ unique TT drivers we had in Texas this year. With the 6 race drops we get, that made for a perfect 800 point season, with Amy placed 3rd in TT3 at 553 points, having missed several events. Nationals was a bit of a mess (3rd place out of 11) but I learned two valuable lessons: don't make massive aero changes before Nationals and bring new sticker tires for each day of competition at Nationals. Overall it was a great year for us in this car and I am looking forward to another healthy NASA Texas schedule next year, hopefully starting in the ST2 BMW and switching to the 2015 Mustang by April or May? I hope the 2015 Mustang is as solid, reliable and easy to drive as this 2011 GT was.

What's Next: Sell Both Mustangs

In our next installment I will talk about taking the TT3 Mustang to True Street to try to diagnose the part throttle issues, where they made a discovery about to the actual issue. This led us to replace some electronics at our shop, which seemed to fix the issue once and for all. I still want test this fix on track, but this coming weekend's ECR Toy Run event might get cancelled due to snow or ice. Low of 22, high of 33, high chance of snow... not the best track testing conditions. :/

Both this 2011 GT as well as our 2013 GT are still for sale, just awaiting the right buyers. In the spirit of Cyber Monday I am lowering the prices on both cars today, so if you were interested before please check the linked ads to see the new asking prices. I've got to move these two cars before the end of the year, so give me a call. I cannot afford to just give either car away, but things are about to get drastic if they stick around any longer. Please, don't make me de-mod the TT3 Mustang... but if the car is still here in a few weeks it will have to happen.



The crew pulled the front of the car apart one last time after the ECR race weekend and finished up some unfinished business, painting everything that was still bare metal and perfecting a few details, which will be covered in my next post. Late next week I'm off to Indy (BRRR!) to attend the 2014 PRI show, joined by 2 other Vorshlag team members, then we will come back and get back to work on several long term custom projects here at the shop. There are some other small changes and new Mustang parts I will show off in the next post, such as the motor mounts we put in after TWS and the throttle body replacement.

Cheers,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for Dec 27, 2013: Been a busy busy month here at Vorshlag since I last posted, after the 2013 race season ended. There have been a lot of updates on a number of other project build threads, such as our shop parts hauler "Truck Norris", our E38 740iL restoration project, the Chumpcar Firebird build, and Matt's 95 M3 LS1 swap. We've also had a few things brewing with our two main in-house S197 projects - including several repairs, updates, and possibly even a major change of course for our 2011 GT - and it is time to share that here. Don't worry, its good news.


Many projects have kept us busy in the shop, as well as gobbled up my time updating project threads on several forums

2013 PRI Show + 2015 Mustang!

The annual December "ECR Toy Run" track day event we had hoped to attend was rescheduled due to a massive ice storm in Dallas. The new date ended up happening when we were at the 2013 PRI Show in Indianapolis. This is a huge racing industry trade show we attend almost every year, and where we had some important business meetings and saw lots of new parts. I was really bummed about missing the Toy Run, and missing some automotive TV show filming that happened out there that day, but I got a great consolation prize: getting to see the 2015 Mustang first hand!




This year PRI moved from Orlando to Indy, but even with the terrible downtown parking and horrendous Winter weather it was the biggest PRI show I had ever attended. We learned a lot being there, but not much was shared on social media for the folks outside of the racing industry that aren't allowed to attend. Balls to that, you can feel free to rummage around in my photo gallery and get an eye full of next year's parts.



To me, the highlight of this show was seeing the 2015 Mustang in person. I got to crawl under the back of the car and see the IRS up close as well gawk at as the exterior shape and body lines. I spent a bit of time and made an "S550 vs S197 Mustang: An in depth comparison" article, which you can read here. In this, the 2nd part of our preliminary S550 investigations, I compare the S550 and S197 Mustangs styling side-by-side, then go "up skirt" and look at the suspension on this pre-production car to verify the rumors and images we've been shown. If you are interested in that new fangled Mustang, give it a read.

Throttle Body Replacement + Front Splitter Updates

As I mentioned in my last update, we took the car to True Street and had them put the car on the dyno, load it up, and try to diagnose the part throttle stumble that bit me in the backside at the November ECR event. Turns out that they found something wonky in the throttle body circuit... the pedal would send a signal for a certain percentage of opening yet the throttle body would refuse to open by that amount. Some wiring bugaboo, but we first swapped in another stock throttle body - which has electronics inside, since it is a drive-by-wire setup.



Luckily that fixed it. I have driven the car 2 or 3 times since that was replaced and it runs like a top, from 1500 rpm roll-ons to 7000 rpm shifts.We didn't have to repair any wiring harness gremlins, which was a relief. The 3 year old Odyssey PC680 battery finally gave up the ghost, so we swapped in a new $125 replacement. This battery managed to never let us down on the street for years of daily driving, and it was long term storage that killed it (sitting for weeks between races without a battery tender). While the TB was being replaced the entire front end was then blown apart for inspection and updates.



This was another area I discussed last time: the front end and splitter refinements. Our custom splitter development has spanned several months (August - November) and we've learned a lot along the way, and noted some areas that could be improved. Extra fasteners added here or there, a better alignment on the captured mounting pins, and some better sealing on the radiator ducting.



Some of it was just normal track wear and tear. The black painted finish on the splitter took a lot of bug hits at ECR (grasshoppers are brutal at 125 mph!) so the splitter was removed and completely repainted during the above work. It all went back together better than before, and we kept the "short" splitter on the car (the 6" vs 10" extended length) for now.

Goofy Oil Catch Can + Crankcase Vacuum Routing

After the weekend of the NASA@TWS race in September, we noted a bit of oil residue under the car. It got worse by NASA@ECR in November, when we noticed a bit more oil leaking under the car and showing up on the floor of the trailer. It wasn't a lot, but was more than a little, you know? Looked like it was coming from the rear main seal of the engine, just dripping out of the transmission bell housing. That's not good. We kept cleaning it off and watching it all weekend, and it got progressively worse.



Dammit, why did this happen? I think it was my fault - having something to do with the improper routing we ran on the oil catch can/PCV system. See, we were trying to follow the routing of the Boss 302-S oil breather system, but that doesn't really have a sealed catch can like we run. Instead that car just has a crankcase breather system, with no real vacuum source, and uses a fresh air filter in the top of the catch can. With the crankcase breather routing we ran (since our August test at ECR, see above) we pulled a high amount vacuum from the intake manifold, through the catch can, and then back to the tops of both valve covers. With no fresh air inlet it was too much for the system to hold and it was collapsing the hoses. We chased the horrible honking noises, hoses that kept getting sucked flat, pulled the PCV valve out for a straight thru unit, and overall just ran too much vacuum on the crankcase. This likely pulled the rear main seal out of place during this time.



We have since switched this system to more conventional OEM type PCV routing, shown above, which is how the stock Coyote 5.0 positive crankcase ventilation (PCV) system runs. The only difference is that we have added an oil catch can/filter in line with the hose on the passenger side head (the vacuum side). The driver's side valve cover pulls in fresh air from in front of the throttle body (which is atmospheric pressure, and not a vacuum source), to keep fresh air coming into the crankcase, which balanced the vacuum pulled on the passenger side valve cover at the opposite end of the system. Again, just like the factory routing, and all of the "hoses pulled flat" and honking noises have gone away. We had initially switched to a simple breather system during the ECR race weekend, but with 3 race weekends run in the weird "high crankcase vacuum" mode we think that is when the rear main seal was damaged. The old routing kept filling the catch can with oil.

You can see the extra hose bib that was added (TIG welded) to the gold foil wrapped aluminum intake tube in the two pictures above, when we switched the hoses to a more traditional PCV style routing. We even added the PCV valve back to the passenger side valve cover (note the blue color of the one-way check valve on the PCV coupler; the black coupler on the driver's side is just a straight thru connector). We will test this new routing at a track test day / possible TV shoot this coming weekend, but I'm confident this will work just like stock, because it is just like the stock routing now but with the catch can in place.

Basically we created a problem, listened to people tell us to keep doing it the wrong way, chased our tails, damaged the rear main seal, and then undid the mistake and went back to a logical PCV routing system. Sometimes you have to ignore advice and just do what makes sense, what works.

Repair Work to Rear Main + Clutch



So by now it was late November, many repairs and fixes had been done to help sell the car and put to bed every little nagging problem, except one: the leaking rear main seal. At this point and we still had every intention of selling the red TT3 Mustang, and I couldn't let anyone buy the car with a known oil leak. So I asked the guys in our shop to yank the transmission out for a look at the rear main seal. This meant we had to drop the after-header exhaust, the starter, the driveshaft, unhook the shifter, and then pull the transmission. Lots of fun. Kyle tackled this rear main seal + clutch replacement work in 6 hours and 23 minutes, according to our MyShopAssist logs (this service tracking system is used on all of our service work starting in mid 2013, even our own cars).



This was the first time we had to pull the transmission out of our 2011 GT, as the service to 3rd gear last April was done by the dealer under warranty. The drivetrain in this car has been rock solid and I didn't expect to see any damage to the clutch, pressure plate or flywheel, other than possible oil contamination.



Once the transmission was out, the clutch, PP and flywheel, as well as the reluctor for the crank trigger had to come out to access the rear main seal. The seal replacement is actually very easy once all that is out of the way. The new part wasn't expensive at all ($11) and I was hoping that's all we would need to do - burn some hours making access to the seal, then replace this one part. Looking at the clutch disc surface you would think this was a brand new car, as it had almost no noticeable wear. 18,000 miles and lots of autocross starts and thousands of shifts on track, and all of the friction and metal surfaces looked perfect on the clutch, flywheel and pressure plate. Amy and I are always easy on drivetrain parts, but there was some damage... something quite strange.



Above are pictures of the 3 dowel pins in the stock flywheel (in 6 pieces, just as they came out). When Kyle pulled the transmission he noted that all 6 bolts holding the PP to the flywheel were very loose. That's not good. And then when he pulled the PP off the 3 dowel pins fell out, as each had broken in half. WTF? I cannot say what happened here, except to note that this has all been apart before for some warranty work. The loose pressure plate to flywheel bolts must have allowed the pressure plate to wobble out the mounting holes, and that movement then broke the dowel pins. To me this meant the PP was not reusable, and I had questions about the flywheel. Could we have reused it all? Sure, and since we were selling the car so it would be no bother... but I don't play that way.



We weighed the OEM flywheel, of course, and at 22.3 pounds it was lighter than I originally thought it might be (but confirmed the numbers I was given by Fidanza). Would it be worthwhile to replace this with a 12-13 pound aluminum flywheel? Hmm.... not a lot of gain here, compared to some V8 cars we've dealt with that have 40-50 pound flywheels. Since I felt uncomfortable replacing just the pressure plate, and we could not find the part number or a source for the 5.0 Coyote's flywheel dowel pins, we went ahead and replaced all of it.

While this seems somewhat drastic, remember - this is a 6+ hour repair job, where the labor outweighs the replacement costs of the clutch/PP/flywheel parts. It is rare that you pull a transmission and not replace at least the clutch disc. After doing some research and running out of time (we had the car in pieces, stuck on one of our lifts) we went back with the exact stock replacement parts sourced from Ford. The clutch, pp and flywheel are the same OEM pieces as what came out, just brand new and secured properly this time. All told it was about $500 in parts, and while we could have saved a little money with aftermarket replacement bits I didn't want to risk changing something that worked so well on a car I was about to sell. Most aftermarket clutches would have more pedal effort, and at this power level (420-430 whp) we obviously didn't need it, as we had never felt clutch slippage and noticed almost no wear on the clutch parts.



Going back together was fairly easy, and everything lined up perfectly. As you can see we are still running the stock shifter (less notchy than most SSKs) but do have the Steeda rear poly bushing in the body side mount and the Whiteline trans bushing insert as well, and Amy and I both like the positive shift feel and low shift effort. New pressure plate mounting bolts were secured in place on the flywheel with red Loctite this time, which was obviously missing on the old bolts (they were clean and dry).



continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above

Once the transmission & clutch parts were all back together I thought we were done with the rear main seal repairs. Not so much. Turns out a slight leak in the clutch hydraulic system developed that refused to cooperate. Bleeding and bleeding just resulted in a mess on the shop floor from a tiny leak that couldn't be found. So we replaced the stock plastic hydraulic line (shown below) with a commonly used stainless steel hard line (FMS-M-7512-A, $229, that technically is for the 2005-10 Mustang, but it can be tweaked slightly to fit the '11-14 6-spd), as we thought there might be a crack in the plastic line. That wasn't the issue and the pedal's hydraulic feel was still crap, with a tiny yet invisible leak. Don't waste your money on that metal clutch hard line unless : you have the system apart already, don't want the plastic line anymore, and don't mind tweaking the hard line to fit.

The leak was later finally chased down to a 90° plastic quick-connect elbow on one end of the hard line that had "sprung its spring". It dripped down the line and was in an inaccessible spot that was very hard to see. This meant we had to buy yet another clutch line to get the new elbow, the OEM plastic piece (which comes with this elbow). That fix turned this little leak repair into into another $300 worth of parts and another few hours of investigations and several clutch bleeding attempts - but that seems to finally be fixed as well. Lesson learned: always be suspect of plastic quick connects! Good grief, what I wouldn't give for a regular threaded fitting sometimes; we could have made a new line that actually fit this chassis better for about $40 in parts.



This whole crankcase vacuum / rear main seal snafu snowballed quite a bit, and is honestly a little embarrassing, but I have to chalk it up it was a learning experience. It never left is stranded and didn't "break" per se, and we caught the flywheel bolt damage while we were in fixing the rear main seal issues we caused. I took poor advice on the PCV system routing that I now know to be wrong, but in the end we finally got our system laid out correctly. The guys also found and fixed a broken exhaust mount while the exhaust was off, too (probably due to the off track excursion I had at Turn 6 at TWS), which made the lone rattle on the car disappear.

Please, if you have read this far, learn from our mistakes. Always question any advice on aftermarket mods, do your research, and plan for the worst when you get your car apart - don't plan on a 6 hour fix when it could turn into a multi-day parts chasing mess. What I thought would be a 1 day repair with $11 in parts ended up spanning two weeks and involving $800 worth of consumables - none of which made the car any faster, ugh. But now I can say that the car is at least fixed right and we avoided a potentially spectacular clutch system failure.

Somebody Buy Our Black 2013 Mustang GT...

So I've had potential buyers sniffing around both Mustangs, but the vast majority have been looking at the less costly and more stock-like black 2013 GT shown below. The black GT will sell soon, I can feel it. But the Red 2011 Mustang seems to have no takers. Why is that? Maybe the car looks too radical to be street driven - it isn't, but it has that perception. Yet it isn't radical enough to be a full "race car" for others. And of course the graphics are a bit over the top and the front flares are admittedly ugly. If we sell this car we won't have a replacement track car/race car ready for the next few months because we are too busy at the shop working on customer cars, which means we will miss the first few NASA Texas events for the season.



Instead of de-modding and dumbing down the 2011 GT we're now going to concentrate harder on selling the black 2013 Mustang GT instead. Again, that car is pristine, has 6K miles, and has been garaged every day of its life. I've almost had it sold so many times (and once again last night), came within $500 of closing the deal once, so its almost there. Here are the details:

Classified ad page: http://www.vorshlag.com/cars-2013gt.php
Price: $26.5K obo!
Odometer: 5,9XX miles
VIN: 1ZVBP8CF2D5247691
Engine: Coyote 5.0L DOHC Aluminum V8, 420 hp (dyno'd at 377 whp , 365 wtq)
Drivetrain: Getrag MT-82 6-speed manual, Rear Wheel Drive, 8.8" rear axle with Limited Slip and 3.55:1 rear gears
Colors: Black exterior, Black Cloth interior
Upgrades include:

• Ford Racing M-5300-P springs (lowers the car 1.5")
• Whiteline Adjustable Panhard Bar (re-centers the rear axle when lowered) and chassis brace
• Whiteline LCA relocation brackets (fixes rear suspension geometry when lowered)
• Eibach larger diameter front swaybar (part of this kit)
• 14" Brembo 4 piston front brakes (what comes on the Boss302 and Track pack cars) with Centric premium rotors
• Vorshlag S197 stainless brake line kit
• Prototype brake cooling package made by Vorshlag for the 2013-14 Mustang GT (hidden front ducts behind the grill, 3" hoses to a pair of Vorshlag S197 Brembo backing plate ducting)
• Engine is bone stock, as is the interior and exterior

Optional upgrades to the black 2013 GT

Of course if you want to customize this Mustang we have lots and lots of parts we can put onto this car, both new and used. We will sweeten the deal and discount the parts and labor on a number of parts, to help sell this car. Here are a couple of things we could add to incentivize the right buyer, with the discounted costs shown:

• AST coilovers + springs + camber plates for +$1800. We have a set of used set of 4100s that have the Grand Am DDP pistons, were custom valved, and were used on our red 2011 GT for a year and a half before we went to Motons. These became the prototypes for the 4150. This set-up new would cost $2839 + the custom revalving.
• Wider wheels and tires (shown above): The 2013 GT already has the upgraded factory 19x9" wheels and 255 Pirellis that come on the Track Pack/Brembo cars. For +$1000 we would upgrade to the 18x10" D-Force LTW5 wheels and 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05 tires (used). This set-up new would cost ($1236 for 4 wheels + $248/ea for tires) $2240.

Again, get it touch with us if you are thinking about buying a 2012-14 Mustang, as we can make this one customized for YOU, many banks will still give new car financing on a car this new, and the 5 year/60K warranty has a majority of its life left.

2011 Mustang Development - Not Quite Dead Yet...?

My point is, if we could just sell this 2013 GT we would likely keep the red 2011 GT and continue to develop it and race it in the 2014 season. Why not - nobody wants to buy it! I've talked with Amy and she doesn't really want to sell the red Mustang, and for once would rather keep one of our long term project cars. After we buy the 2015 Mustang and had it race ready, in the future, she would love to make the red 2011 GT a street car/daily driver again. I also think that this S197 still has a lot of untapped performance potential in TT3, as we never got around to trying a few things I wanted to test or develop further.


We have yet to find the limit of "bigger is better" when it comes to tires on the heavy S197

What things? Wider tires than the 315mm Hoosiers we ran in all of 2013 season. Why does this car need more tire? Because it is very heavy, makes a decent amount of power, and in testing it has gotten faster after every single tire width upgrade we've done since 2010. We started on 255mm tires and quickly moved to 265mm, 275mm and finally 295mm wide street tires. And when it came to R-compounds we tried 275, 285, 295, 305, and 315mm widths ranging from Kumho to Hoosier.



We tested briefly in 2012 with the 345/35/18 rear Hoosier A6, and it had ferocious forward bite on these nearly 14" wide tires (13.9" section width/13.2" tread. The 315/30/18 is only 11.8" of tread/12.5" of section width, fully 1.4" narrower), but they rubbed the inside body structure and fenders badly under cornering (before the Watts Link). The rubbing caused other handling issues, and a huge smoke screen, so we shelved that size for a while. When we cut and flared the front fenders (to clear the new 18x12" wheels) I had every intention of doing the same to the rear fenders, then upgrading the front to 335mm and the rear to the 345mm tire again. I met with considerable resistance from Amy about "cutting on her car", but I'm wearing her down.


The 345mm rear Hoosier was wider than the stock rear fenders could accommodate and made lots of tire smoke from rubbing

As we noted many times in our Time Trial events this past year (with 15 separate NASA events in 2013) my fastest laps were almost always my first or second lap, barring traffic problems. On one or two rare occasions I ended up making my best lap on hot lap 3, but that was always due to a driving mistake or traffic on previous laps. The Hoosier A6 is a temperamental tire and works best in ambient temps from 50-60°F, and more often than not the lap times fell off a full second per lap after the first. We were also only getting 20-30 hot laps per set of tires before they are GONE.


Tires that only work for 1 or 2 laps, coupled with slower cars in front = TT traffic frustration!

My theory is that with another 20mm up front and another 30mm on the rear that our "golden lap zone" of ideal conditions could be expanded from 1 or 2 hot laps to maybe 3-4 hot laps. That is a big improvement for Time Trial that could have allowed for faster lap records at a few events in 2013 where I had serious traffic issues in the first couple of laps (more times than I can count). Not to mention a potential increase in mechanical grip from the additional two or three inches of tire on the ground at each axle. And possibly an increase in total tire life? That +20/+30mm change is not a small increase in tire width.

Another area we dabbled with late in the 2013 season was adding downforce, which I think still has more room for improvement on this car. While Vorshlag is first and foremost a suspension shop we have been seeing more and more aero development creep into club level road racing and time attack/time trial competition, and we were finding lap time improvements using aero changes very late into the season. The 10" long front splitter we added right before Miller, that many told us was "too long to be effective", coupled with our front grill block-off and ducted hood made more front downforce than the APR GTC-300 rear wing could match. That meant that at high speeds the car had an aero imbalance, and it was prone to oversteer. I cannot emphasize enough how loose this car was at Miller with that long front splitter, and we ran out of AoA on the rear wing to stabilize the car in high speed corners. Nothing like going 150+ sideways, wee!



To "fix" this we lopped 4 inches off the front of the 10" long splitter (well, actually a spare we had), right after returning from Nationals. Magically the car was balanced once again at the 150+ mph corner entry speeds we saw at TWS in late September, and was faster than ever at ECR in November. But it always nagged me... if we only had more rear downforce wouldn't that bigger front splitter be better overall? With some of the latest rear wings on the market having 14" and even 16" long chords and 70"+ widths, there could be a more efficient and more effective wing to test on this car, then we could bring the Big Splitter back (we kept it, just in case).



As I mentioned in my previous posts we would have liked to get into S550 chassis development as soon as possible, and run the 2014 season in NASA TT2 class with the new Mustang (a bump up on power and/or down in weight from TT3, going from 9.5:1 to 8:1 pounds per hp) but my hopes of acquiring one of these in the early spring of 2014 and prepping it to race for most of that year seem to be dashed. At best we might see a car in early August. So recently we began our ST2/TT2 build on an E36 BMW LS1 car, then our paying customer shop work picked up so much (we're building a number of race cars and LS1 swaps for people right now) that this project was delayed. Meaning, if we mothball the 2011 GT we won't have a car to race at all for many months, which pains me. That's half the reason I quit the secure engineering jobs I had in the past - to start a business, create products tailor made to racers, and then using our racing as "testing"!


We have a lot of work left on our ST2 BMW LS1 project before it is ready to race

Long story short, we're going to take our red 2011 Mustang and keep racing and developing with it as long as we need to, until the ST2 car is completed or until the S550 is here and prepped. This might mean an entire extra year competing in the red 2011 GT, known jokingly around the shop as the "pretty pony". And that's one thing I aim to do - make it look less ugly, with a new rear wing, proper metal flares blended into the bodywork, and a more low key graphics theme - say good bye to white strips visible from space!


This is the worst looking pair of flares on any car I've ever owned, and that's saying a lot

Those prototype plastic front fender flares we made look OK at 100 mph, but up close, they ugly. Sure, these were aerodynamically efficient but we have plans to make proper METAL flares welded to the front and rear fenders to cover the much wider Hoosier tires. Amy is still complaining about cutting the rear fenders on "her car" to clear the bigger meats, but I've got the Mustang at the shop all day, there's a fresh blade on the SawsAll, and possession is nine tenths of the saw.... I mean the "law".

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above

We've got a few ideas in mind to keep pushing the performance of this 2011 Mustang on track. We know some of our TT3 records are soft, so it might be nice to bump them up a bit. And we're running some all new track configurations this year so we could try to nail down some more. But then again, TT2 is faster, and would be challenging to try to compete there in Texas and at NASA East Nationals. We beat some of the TT2 records last year in TT3, and with less weight or more power (or just more development on the TT3 set-up) we could feasibly reset some of those and nail down some wins. And if we went ahead and bumped the red 2011 to TT2 it would be an easy transition to bring the BMW LS1 ST2 car up to speed, accumulating points in the same class all year. Which way to go then?

Where To Race - TT2 or TT3?

Before we start this bench racing section I have to post the new NASA Super Touring rules, revised for 2014. This is the basis for the TT classing and rules, and there are some changes that affect TT2 and TT3.

New 2014 rules: http://www.nasaproracing.com/rules/Super-Touring.pdf

Lots of little changes in the new ST rules, and they look good. I like that the 4 door exemption is being cut in half, as this factor never really hurt most of cars that could come in both 2 or 4 door models.


The E36 BMW 2 door and 4 door chassis weigh almost exactly the same, but the 4 door used to have a +0.4 modifier bonus but now is only +0.2

The new 2014 revised Competition Weight modifier chart for ST, above, is easier to wade through and penalizes the super light cars more (sub 1800 pounds = -2.0 penalty!). I like this since the sub-1800 pound cars with driver aren't really "cars" per se, not by any modern definition. Just for grins here is the old, more complicated Competition Weight modifier chart from the TT rule set, below.

For 2013 the TT3 class was the most popular TT class in the NASA Texas at almost all of the 14 race regional competitions we had last year (and at NASA Nationals). And Vorshlag had a decent set-up there, winning 13 of the 14 regional TT3 races in this car, mostly with the pre-August '13 aero changes and narrower front wheels. We could feasibly develop the car further and do better in TT3 again, but for grins let's see what it would take to make the jump to TT2. At first glance it would seem like the jump would be easy, as it is "only a 1 point weight to power ratio change", going from 9:1 to 8:1. Just lose a few pounds here and there and race it, right? In reality it is much more complicated than that.



First let's back up and analyze our current TT3 setup with respect to power, race weight, and ratio modifiers:

2013 TT3 race weight was 3770 pounds with driver. I'm about 210 with my gear on and we've been using 3/4 tank of fuel to ballast up that weight (and to avoid fuel starvation - I usually go out in each session with a nearly full or totally full tank). Latest DynoJet chassis dyno pull was a best of 419 whp, after we added the new air snorkel, but it made 430 whp in the past (more on that "missing power" in a second). Here's the 2013 and 2014 TT3 ratio calculations:

TT3 Unadjusted Wt/Power Ratio = 9.0
Non-OEM aero = +0.4 (*penalty) - note this changed from -0.5 in 2013
Running 3700-3799 pounds = -0.5 (*bonus) note: we used a +0.6 bonus for 2013
Adjusted Wt/Power ratio = 8.9 (the adjusted limit at this weight was also 8.9 in 2013)

3770 pounds / 419 whp = 8.99 currently

So if you noticed we were a little over the 8.9 ratio needed at this race weight, almost by 0.1, which is a good bit. This means we could really have run as low as ~3730 pounds at this power level, or run a few hp more on the dyno at 3770, and not get dinged. That is just part of the cushion we like to run, just to stay squeaky clean and legal. As much as others have pushed me to I won't cheat, and I show these ratios and calculations publicly and have our TT classing paperwork at every event for anyone to look at. In 2 years, 20+ TT events, and probably 40 weighings on this car we've missed weight twice, both times by 5 to 7 pounds, and we fixed it shortly after (and ran faster at the proper weight in later sessions).



But how can we get this car down to an "8.0 ratio", to be competitive in TT2? We think there is a bit of power to be had in the exhaust, as this setup used to make 430 whp and did for quite some time. The catalysts we are running are a few years old, and one of them is smashed a little and might have a busted catalyst matrix, causing some flow restriction. Removing the cats and making a shorter/lighter race exhaust might uncork that 10-12 whp and get the power back to where it was before (from 419 to 430). But other than that there is no more "easy power" to be had. Everything we could do to add 20-30 more hp would cost thousands of dollars (build a race motor) and virtually every bolt-on mod that might be done would just move the rev range up and likely lose as much or more power below 5500 rpms. So let's stick with 430 whp, for the most simplicity, reliability and lowest costs.

3770 pounds / 430 whp = 8.76



Hmm, we're still way off the mark at that power level. What about losing a bit of weight? We think that ditching the over-the-axle exhaust section and the pair of relatively heavy Flowmaster mufflers in favor of a lightweight "dumped" system like we built on the custom Boss 302-S exhaust we built (see above) could shed as much as 40 pounds off of the current system (see below). We dropped more than that on the 302-S exhaust. We could also replace the bloody slip-fit joints from the headers to the exhaust (which always leak just a little and we have to tack weld in place) in favor of proper 3" stainless V-band flanges.



Then there is the rear seat, which when removed would drop another 35 pounds, with hardware. So with exhaust changes and rear seat removed that is the "easy" 75 pounds to lose. All could be quickly undone and involve almost no cost (well the exhaust would take two mufflers, some mandrel bends and about 7-8 hours to fabricate and weld, but who's counting!).

3695 pounds / 430 lbs = 8.59

If we do something about the fuel starvation issues, maybe with a new fuel tank sump or surge tank, that could mean we wouldn't have to run nearly a full tank. We run almost full now, which is 16 gallons, and at 6 pounds per gallon for gasoline that's 96 pounds. Running only a 20-25 pound fuel load, with a proper fuel tank pick-up, surge tank or even a small fuel cell, might help us drop up to 70 pounds of fuel weight...

3625 pounds / 430 whp = 8.40

We're making some progress but we need a lot more. Let's look at some interior bits that could be removed to drop more pounds. That carpet likely has some hefty insulation under it. It needs to come out and be weighed. And the air conditioning compressor, accumulator and condenser core are not only heavy but the condenser core is blocking air to the radiator. Is there another 90-100 pounds in weight savings here, not even touching the under-dash bits? Could be.

3525 pounds / 430 whp = 8.18

So with a little bench racing we're getting closer to the 8 pounds per hp goal, but don't forget about the TT modifiers. Since we are moving to TT2 there's no more +0.4 penalty for "non-stock aero" (formerly 0.5), yet there's still a bonus for running a race weight heavier than 2999 pounds... scroll up to the Competition Weight adjustment chart for that modifier (now a -0.5 bonus, which used to -0.6).



Looks like if we got down to 3500-3600 pounds there is still a -0.3 bonus, which means we could add even more power and still be TT2 legal, yikes. You kind of have to back into this weight penalty/bonus deal by first choosing a race weight, looking at the Competition Weight table of modifiers and then figure out your final ratio that way. It takes a couple of iterations but isn't hard to do. With a guess at 3525 pound minimum weight (where we think we could get without cutting up the car) that is a -0.3 modifier bonus, which is helpful.

3520 pounds / 457 hp = (8.0 - 0.3) 7.7 ratio (legal ratio at this race weight for TT2)

Yikes, that's a big jump... so we would be going from TT3 with an adjusted 8.9 ratio to TT2 with a 7.7 ratio. Even after dropping another 250 pounds we would still be 27 whp shy of the limit for the class. Another way to look at it is that at 3520 pounds the car would be 207 pounds overweight for 430 whp. Yikes... that's a lot of power to find (read: pay for) or a lot more weight to lose (450 pounds lower than we are now, which is impossible without radical chassis surgery and/or without exotic materials). So maybe a 100% competitive TT2 build is not in the cards for this 2011 GT... and I'm OK with that. What about a "semi-competitive" TT2 car?



Say we get that "easy" 200-250 pounds out of the car, add the bigger rear wing, flare the sheet metal properly and run the wider 335/345 tires, then ballast back up to TT3 weights -or- run sans ballast and just jump into TT2 with a +200 pound heavy car? Again, we did pretty well last year in TT3 and even beat TT2 lap records a few times at 3770 pounds. With more tire, more aero and less weight we might still be able to sneak in a few TT2 wins until the dedicated ST2/TT2 car(s) are built? Who knows. It gives us some extra performance and classing flexibility with minimal spending.

Again, there is no easy way to add another 30 whp, as the only "easy" bolt-ons left are bigger cams and a different intake manifold design (bigger cross section, shorter runners). Yet we know that these mods will likely lose power below 5000 rpms over what we have now. The popular Boss302 intake is a known "power shifter", adding a few points of peak power up top but killing as much or more power below 5500 rpm, so that's a dead end. The other ways to add power to an engine are to improve the Volumetric Efficiency, add compression or displacement, or add boost - none of which are easy or cheap to do. I like having a bone stock engine from throttle body to exhaust port, as it keeps the factory 5 year / 60K powertrain warranty intact, hehe.



So while I will consult some folks smarter than me and see where we can lose more weight (without cutting away big parts of the car) or gain more power (without getting into the motor), we will likely just try to improve the TT3 performance, drop as much weight as we can easily undo, and ballast up closer to the class limit... and remove the ballast and run TT2 as-is, when it makes sense. We will also make a separate ballast package for whenever Amy drives, as we are running as "Team Vorshlag" in 2014, and she and I will split driving duties. At least this way we can run the same transponder and won't screw that up, heh. Just need to make a very visible, quick to install chunk of driver ballast to make up the differences in our weights.

MCS / S197 Shock Test Video


In-car video from Nov 3rd track test with MCS TT1 coilovers on 2012 Mustang GT at ECR

Shannon just uploaded the 720P high def version of the Tom's Lap Timer video that I talked about in my last forum update. In the video above you can now see how the MCS non-remote singles work on this somewhat bumpy track. Driving this car was effortless (exception: hanging on in stock seat was difficult!) at 9/10ths, and we put in several hot laps with some traffic in an HPDE4 session. I didn't make any crazy passes and we got held up on every lap, yet we still managed to put in that 2:07 lap there.



The 255mm street tires (Nitto Invo) were worn smooth out, but car owner Jan has since ordered 18x11" Forgestar F14s from us (that just arrived) and we will be installing some fat 295/35/18 BFGoodrich Rivals onto those next week. This Mustang is nearly bone stock, with a 100% stock powertrain, some Carbotech XP16 brake pads, and the MCS shocks and Vorshlag camber plates. Real monotube adjustable dampers absolutely transform these cars on track, yet with the valving turned down this daily driven Mustang rides beautifully (550F/250R rates). I think with the 11" wide wheels and 295 Rivals this car could dip into the 2:03-2:04 zone, which is just FLYING for street tires. In comparison, a truly bone stock 2012 GT runs about a 2:12 lap at ECR, from what we have seen and timed (we tested our 2013 GT on 18x10" wheels and 295mm Nittos for our "baseline" numbers).

USCA Event at TMS is On!

There was an event we were in danger of missing in the early part of 2014 if we didn't have a street car to race - the Ultimate Street Car Association's TMS event March 21-23, 2014. This is the new series created by Jimi Day/FM3 Marketing to serve as the qualifiers for the big Optima Challenge shootout after SEMA, and we want to be there in this Mustang, which is a real street car. We hope to be on proper 335mm Rivals this time, too. Keeping the 2011 around will allow us to make that event in our own back yard, which is exciting. Road course, autocross, speed stop and some car show portion.


Time for some fat street tires and a run at the USCA event in March!

NASA @ MSR-Houston Jan 19-20, 2014

First NASA event of 2014 is right around the corner, as we race 12 months out of the year here in Texas. The MSR-H event is being run this year in the CCW format, opposite of 2013, so any TT3 winning time will be a track record, and possibly TT2 as well. So Amy and I will enter as "Team Vorshlag" and run whichever class has more cars, and if we can get to 5 in a given class maybe somebody will win some tires. The attendance looks pretty light right now, but that is typical for this January event - which could have really cold or windy weather, rain or fog (the fog last year delayed the start of the event) - but being Houston that could change at any minute and turn into a warm sunny day. Most people wait until the last possible minute to enter this event, which drives the NASA folks nuts!




With this renewed focus on the red 2011 Mustang and a split of TT3 & TT2 goals for 2014, we have a lot of prep work to do in the next few weeks to make MSR-Houston, unless we just take the car "as-is". I don't want to do that, of course! We almost never run the same set-up twice in a row - continuous development makes for continuous improvement. The initial changes we have planned (exhaust, flares, tires, weight) are still much less work than is needed to finish the ST2 BMW, which needs 200+ hours of work to be a running, driving car + time for testing and sorting the new set-up. We will continue to work on that ST2 BMW as time permits but for now we'll concentrate on 2011 Mustang development until the 2015 Mustang gets here.



We are doing a tire test tomorrow at ECR in the Mustang (320mm Continental slicks vs 315mm Hoosier A6) so I will report back on that soon.

MUCH more soon!

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Yes, a rear diffuser is on our list of ideas, and yes these become MUCH more effective when you have a flat bottom car. We can do the diffuser without penalty but the flat bottom... not so much.

Gmitch flatned his with I think thin Durabond. A couple sheets would be all you would need an a day. A lift would help also.

Like any form of competition, there are rules we have to live within. When it comes to a flat bottom floorpan, which we discussed then dismissed early on, there is a rule that prevents us from doing this even in NASA ST/TT. For the latest revision of the TT/ST rules, see Super Touring rule 7.3.2.A.6....

7.3.2 Restrictions and Limitations for Production Vehicles Only

The following rules do not apply to any vehicle that is taking the Modification Factor assessment for “Non-Production Vehicle”, regardless of whether or not the vehicle was originally a Production vehicle. “OEM” is defined as any part that comes from the vehicle manufacturer either as a standard feature, a factory option, or on a factory optional trim model/package of that generation of the street-legal (in the U.S.A.) version of the vehicle.

A) Other than the listed exceptions, every Production vehicle must retain its unmodified:

1) OEM frame rails/rear frame cross beam, and/or Unibody, and Sub-frames/
suspension cross-members (in their OEM locations)
2) Strut/shock towers
3) Inner/inboard side of the fender wells (any non-horizontal aspect)
4) Rocker panels
5) Transmission tunnel
6) Floor pan
7) Windshield frame location

Of course there is some wiggle room. Here are the exceptions that deal with under car aero...

5) The transmission tunnel may be modified for the purpose of installing a competition driver seat. The floor pan must remain in its original position.
6a) Modifications of the floor pan for purposes of exhaust clearance only, and/or the rocker panel for side exit exhaust only are permitted and will be assessed a Modification Factor in the “Adjusted Weight/Power Ratio”.
6b) Removal of the floor section of the rear hatch/trunk space and either replacement with a sheet metal cover or placement of a fuel cell is permitted without an additional Modification Factor.
6c) Floor pans may have maximum diameter 0.75 (3/4) inch holes drilled into them for purposes of the attachment of ancillary parts, safety gear, seats, and for the passage of wires and hoses, and specifically not for the passage of suspension components.

B) Production Vehicle Aerodynamics
1) A rear wing (or rear spoiler for wagon-style bodies) may not exceed a height of eight (8) inches above the roof-line (or OEM windshield height for convertibles).
2) Modification of the OEM roof line is permitted, but will be assessed via a
Modification Factor in the “Adjusted Weight/Power Ratio”.

D) ST3 Only Production Vehicle Aerodynamics (does not apply to ST1 or ST2 vehicles)

The addition of non-OEM aerodynamic aides or modification of OEM body lines (unless specifically stated otherwise in these rules), will be assessed a Modification Factor to the “Adjusted Weight/Power Ratio” (7.4). The following are permitted exceptions, and will not necessitate the assessment of the ST3 Non-OEM Aero Modification Factor:
1) Undertray/belly pan forward of the centerline of the front axle.
2) Removal of a convertible soft top/frame and/or adding a hardtop to a convertible provided that the hardtop uses a sealed rear window and is either OEM, an OEM option, or the same shape and size of an OEM/OEM option top.
3) Lexan front, rear, and rear side windows without uncovered holes.
4) Front wing window/frame removal and replacement with Lexan.
5) Hood replacement/modification for venting and/or weight reduction (“aero” hood pins are permitted).
6) Removal/cutting/drilling of the fascia for engine cooling, air intake, and brake ducting purposes.
7) Removal of rain gutters/drip edges and mirrors.
8) Flared and/or rolled fenders.
9) NACA ducts, air ducts, or air hoses placed in a side window frame solely for the purpose of driver cooling.
10) Headlamp, headlight covers, and fog lights may all be removed. The holes may be left open, used for brake ducts, or must be covered with material that replicates the shape of the OEM light/cover, leaving the shape of the OEM fascia intact.

So to add a flat bottom to the car between the front and rear axle centerlines would incur the following penalty:

7.4.2 Modification Factors
The “Modification Factor” listed after each item below is added or subtracted from the actual measured Wt/Hp ratio to determine the “Adjusted Wt./Hp Ratio” that determines vehicle legality in each ST class.

Non-Production Vehicle: ST1 & ST2 = -0.4
ST3 = -0.7

That 0.7 factor is painful and we don't want to take that penalty.

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Jan 3, 2014...

Hi Terry, I just wondered what brand those mufflers were, pictured with the boss 302s? Are you planning to sell that exhaust system? I'm really glad you are going to keep the red mustang, you've put so much time and effort into it. At least until the 2015 arrives. All the best to you and the crew for the new year!

Arnie - these are MagnaFlow 304 stainless 3" straight-thru mufflers. I will show more about these but here are a few shots of when we made the system for the Boss 302-S.

The mufflers should be here early next week and we'll get started, weighing the car before and after...

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Project Update for Feb 6th, 2013: Its been over a month since my last post in this thread but so much has been going on I cannot hope to cover all of it. In the red 2011 Mustang alone we've done a track test/TV shoot at ECR (Dec 28th), rebuilt the front splitter mounts, made an all new exhaust system, ran in the 2014 season opening NASA Texas Time Trial at MSR-Houston (Jan 18-19), then the following weekend we ran the car in SCCA Club Trials at the the Polar Grand Prix race weekend at MSR-Cresson (Jan 25). And the next weekend we drove it out to Cars & Coffee (Feb 1). Somehow this became my largest EVER single forum post, took a week to write, and I had to break into 5 parts due to post length limits (and up to 10 parts on some forums).


Left: The first mock-ups of the 2013 FR-S LSx look good. Right: Cage wrapping up on this C4 Corvette

And that was with just one car of many we are working on... Something has been going on every single weekend since my last post - looks like we won't get a "winter break" from racing this year. I won't go into the Scion FR-S LSx swap we're knee deep into, or the Corvette race car build that consuming lots of time, or the half dozen other cars we've been working on. Or the fact that we just broke a monthly sales record for the 10 year history of the business... in a January (traditionally our slowest month of the year). Everything feels like its going by at 1,000 miles an hour lately.



See, we're not "just a Mustang shop", or "not just a suspension shop" as we work on a lot of BMWs, Subarus (including a '95 Impreza with an '07 STi swap, above left), Miatas (including the LS1 Alpha). And we're doing a lot more than suspensions - like seat and harness installs (above right), chassis work, roll cages and roll bars, brake upgrades, wheel and tire fitments, and more.



But yes, we're knee deep in Mustangs. I just bought another one, the former stage rally SN95 Mustang shown above left. We have some fun ideas about what to do with this car that involve a big motor, rallycross and a lot of hoonage. So I've really got to get rid of one of our two S197 Mustangs, and I've slashed the price on the 2013 Mustang GT to $25K. That's an amount I've had and turned down more than once for this car, but all of the other higher priced offers went "poof" and the buyers flaked out. So if you wanted to see me bleed with this car, mission successful. I don't think it can last long at that price, but I've said that before, too. Check the ad and give me a call if you are interested.



We should have a new 2011-14 5.0L external oil cooler kit available very soon. We developed this on a 2013 Boss302 that was seeing some very high oil temps at the track. We junked the factory Boss/Track Pack "oil heater" system (that uses hot radiator coolant to "cool" the oil) and replaced it with a big Mocal heat exchanger, custom bolt-on mount, BMRS lines, a Canton oil filter sandwich adapter with thermostatic control. This same car has also received a Mishimoto radiator, customized Maximum Motorsports 4-point roll bar, Schroth Profi 2 harnesses with customized anti-sub belts, front brake cooling, a customized set of auxiliary gauges in a Ford Racing 3 gauge pod, and a custom built front tow hook. This Gotta Have It Green Boss is turning into one slick track toy.



So that was some of what's been going on in January - a small slice of the craziness that Vorshlag has become. I've also been looking at larger commercial properties to move the business into, as we've completely run out of room with our company's growth. I hope that by October we will be somewhere new, so I need to finalize the deal on the new place by about June... we looked at 15 properties last Saturday, after Cars & Coffee.

Let's back up and cover the S197 Mustang development for the past 5 weeks....

Track Test & TV Shoot @ ECR, December 28th, 2013

There is a new "car guy" TV show that has been created and been filming in the Dallas area for a few months. This show is supposed to debut in March 2014 (don't know what channel or markets yet) and while I don't know much about the show, I do know a lot of the folks involved. They are all track folks, and we go to a lot of track events so we have run with all of them many times. So when I got a call about being part of a TV shoot for a sketch about a "street car vs. race car" track segment, I was on board in an instant. The only question was... did they consider our Mustang the street car or the race car??



Yep, our big red 3770 pound Pony was going to be the race car. Uh-oh. Sure, while our street legal Mustang can be quick, there are some still "street cars" that would give us fits on track. I've run against some C6 ZR1s and Z06s that were fookin FAST. So I asked what we'd be running against? Turns out it was to be C6 Corvette. Uh-oh, those can be fast. But luckily it wasn't a Z06 and it was "a nearly stock 6-speed manual convertible", whew. But the driver was pretty good and he was going to be running "slicks". The car had a mix of 305 Pirelli P-zero racing slicks up front and 345 Hoosier A6s out back. That could be pretty fast, if the two compounds worked together. Oh well, we would find out later in the day when we did some head-to-head stuff...

320mm Continental Rolex Race Tire vs 315mm Hoosier A6 Track Test

Before the filming began we used much of this day at ECR to test some tires on the Mustang and some shocks we're developing for another chassis.



Some of you that have been following this thread for a while remember the big gaggle of Continental slicks I purchased at the end of last season. Got a bunch of 305/650/18 and 320/650/18 Contis for a good price and we stuck them on our clearance page.

305/650/18 on 18x11" wheel fits the S197 very well front and rear

These Rolex series Continentals are measured like real racing slicks and are very different tires than the CTSCC Series Contis that are measured like passenger tires, which are very similar to a DOT Hoosier R6. The DOT type tires have a LOT more steel belts in them and tend to weigh a good bit more. The real racing slicks tend to have the spring rate of the tire measured and marked on each carcass.

The same 305/650/18 on an 11" wide wheel (at left) is much more square than when on 10" wheel (at right)

We really don't know much about these Rolex Contis yet. What we have are the "GT-O" compound/series tires, which I have been told were made for the high banks of Daytona and are different both structurally and in compound from the GT-R and other versions that are used on Rolex DP cars. Technically our Mustang is heavier than these tires are designed for, but we don't make a fraction of the downforce of a DP car so it likely all evens out.

These 305 and 320 Contis were such a good deal it was hard to NOT buy them, and we've sold a couple of sets and so far everyone has been happy with them. I wanted to see how they'd fare head-to-head against the A6s, so we mounted a set of 320s to one of our 18x12" Forgestar sets and left some well worn 315 Hoosier A6s on the other set and brought them with us to the track that day.



Amy and I got to ECR at 9:30 am that Saturday right as the film crew guys arrived. As we unloaded the Mustang, Brandon showed up, then Olof and his buddy Steve arrived. Sofi rolled up in her truck towing a trailer with two of her motorcycles, too. So we had a big Vorshlag contingent early on.

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above



We also had some of our testers/customers join us, so we could do some shock testing and car set-up work with them. Mike, Jan and Shannon brought one of their Mustangs and a Miata we had some new prototype Bilstein Motorsports shocks on. This racer family has 5 track cars between them, and we see them at tons of track events every year.



The day started off a little cool (46°F) but quickly warmed into the high 50s then low 60s, with the sun shining bright. I went out at about 10:30 am on the Contis and tried to get them up to temperature, to see how they felt and hopefully get in some lap times. After about 4 hot laps they just were not working, so I came into the hot pits and Olof took tire temps and bled the tires down (We tried from 30-38 psi, with little luck). The hottest we saw the tires get to was 109-110°F, which is not nearly enough heat. So I went back out and tried another 5 laps, grip was terrible, and I couldn't barely run a 2:00 lap. Came in hot and again, still around 110°F on the touch probe pyrometer for the tires. WTF? The A6s would be boiling after a run like that.



I guess the only conclusion we can say is they don't work in 60 degree temperatures with only a handful of laps. It is an endurance tire, but we didn't think they were that hard. I was driving on these like a wild man, trying to scrub them in and build some tire heat, but the Contis just laughed at my attempts at hoonage and stayed dead cold. I was not at all happy with the performance of the Continental GT slicks and could not wait to get them off the car. We punted on the remainder of the test, but I vowed to try them again in the warmer months - maybe then we can get them warm enough to work? The March 29-30 TrackGuys event at TWS is likely where they will get used again. There was zero visible tire wear on the Contis, as you would expect.

Hoosiers On + Filming for the Show



So while Olof and I swapped over to the Hoosier A6 scrubs we brought, the rest of our big group was out tracking their cars or motorcycles; they run the bikes and cars in different run groups every 30 minutes on these Member Days. Mike was pounding miles on the prototype Miata Bilsteins, Jan and Shannon were both having a blast on the MCS equipped Mustang, and Sofi was running both of her bikes.


Left: Olof and Steve assisted with a coolant leak on Mike's Miata. Right: Our Ops Mgr Sofi had fun running her 2 bikes on track

Amy ran a couple of sessions on the Hoosiers, giving rides to folks and ran some 1:59 laps. I then took over and ran a couple of sessions, failing to get a single clear lap. It was a member day so there weren't a lot of cars out there, but there were enough to clog up any given lap, all while we were out there with two cars and a camera car trying to get footage (that ended up being really tough to do). With everything from full on race cars (nearby Pinnacle Motorsports had a few cars out there testing) to very clearly street cars on the track, and lap times from sub 2 minute to 2:30s and beyond, it was impossible to get a single clear lap. But it was fun anyway, and they likely got some footage to use.



We tried some lead-follow stuff where we were supposed to change places (Corvette street car vs Mustang race car) and not lose the camera car, but that didn't work out so well. We needed a much faster camera car. And both of us wanted to occupy the same space on track and both cars had similar acceleration rates, so needless to say there was more than one off that day, heh. Mine was pretty good and I stuffed it off the entry to Turn 6, pretty hard, and dug a trench about 70" wide in the soft dirt. Tore up the splitter mounts and dislodged the lower bumper cover, which kept Olof busy for a bit doing some hasty track-side repairs. He got it put back together well enough that you wouldn't know it was borked know unless you crawled underneath.



After losing two different camera cars they tried to use, we eventually just had a bunch of POV cameras slapped on both cars and onto a quadracoptor camera rig to shoot some aerial stuff. In the afternoon they wanted to do a 3 lap head-to-head shootout with a side by side green flag start. I will wait and see if this sketch airs on the show, but the other car had its off during this shootout and it was a good session for the Mustang. Here's a tip: fast heating A6s come up to temp and overheat by the time Pirelli slicks get up to temp, which can make for a handling nightmare if you use both tires on the same car.



During the "3 lap challenge" I was really trying to run consistent laps, which isn't something you normally strive for in the "I just need one lap!" berzerk 10/10ths driving I do in Time Attack/Time Trial competition. I was worried that a small driving screw-up might put me on the defensive then I'd never stay ahead. Turns out that wasn't a worry, and I ran fairly consistent if a little conservative laps at 1:57.0, 1:57.1 and a 1:57.4.

Those times were pretty good considering the age of these tires, but a solid 1.5 seconds off my times here in November, when these tires were brand new (it was the same set). And that 1:57.0 lap was a solid 3 seconds faster than I could manage on the 320mm Continental slicks. Again, the GT-O compound isn't their softest and the track needed a lot more heat for these to get up to temperature. So I guess that tire test proved that running the 315mm Hoosier A6 is still a good choice, compared to the GT-O compound Rolex series DP race tires.

We were supposed to do some track side interviews after that portion of filming was done but they had some technical difficulties with the other car and the quadrocoptor (it flew away, right as the filming started). They said the whole day of filming might have to be redone, and later invited us back for a reshoot to be held on New Years Day. Yikes, I didn't plan to be awake that day, since we had a big NYE party planned and knew we'd never get any of the crew to join us that day, so we bowed out. Long story short - we may never see any of this footage and my dreams of being a TV star were dashed, heh. Oh well, it was still a fun day and we got a lot of testing done.


Left: I fit in the Mustang fine, with the Cobra seat lowered down. Right: In the Miata's stock seat, I don't fit so well

I got to drive Mike's 2000 Miata later that afternoon. We shot some video while I drove it on track for about 5 laps, all the while talking to the camera and giving my feedback of the feel of the Bilstein Motorsports shocks we built and then custom valved with Maxyspeed & Co. I was pretty happy with the feel of the car as a whole but I had to re-tune my brain to drive without the aid of ABS! It has been a while since I drove a car with "old school brakes", but I managed some 2:17 laps on some worn out Kumho XS tires and that lopped about 10 seconds a lap off the car's previous lap record with the stock shocks. It rode great, too, so I think we might have a good damper setup.

Mike has since installed an aluminum UltraShield seat (and Vorshlag is now an UltraShield dealer, to go along with Cobra, Corbeau, Sparco and Momo) and Schroth harnesses into the Miata. He says that lowered the seating position about 3 inches, which would have made my head not stick above the roll bar, as shown above. That seat change would have made driving his car not only safer but less tiring. After 5 laps of being thrown around on top of the stock seats and 3-point belts I was ready for my trusty Cobra racing seat again.

More CEL Problems and Traction Control Faults

One thing to mention is that all day the Mustang was fighting me. Amy didn't have a lick of problems, but it seems whenever I drive the TT3 Mustang lately it is throwing Check Engine Lights, laying down under power or resetting the Traction Control. Obviously it is something in my driving style, but as I told Amy, while it seems like I'm whipping this thing like a rented mule, that's producing the faster lap times.

That happened all day on me: with the Continentals it reset the Traction Control into Fault Mode twice; so bad that I had to come in the pits, shut off the motor, and reset the whole sequence while holding the brakes. During one semi-clean A6 equipped lap I was running a high 1:56 predictive and the motor laid down after Turn 11 and I limped across the line to a 1:57.5 lap. Even during the final 3-lap shootout segment it laid down right before the Start/Finish line on the last lap. We noted several CELs for the O2 ("stuck open rich"), and now one for a Cam Sensor, too.

We have been chasing these CEL issues for months, especially at ECR, and I felt like we needed to make some exhaust system changes to try to alleviate this. I had hoped we had the issues fixed after True Street found the Throttle Circuit wiring short and we later replace the throttle body and integrated TPS sensor. Sure, anything under 3/4 tank will fuel starve now, which is not an easy fix, but something else is still borked in the O2 circuit/exhaust system. I felt like it was time to remove the catalysts and see if we had one that was broken and/or plugging up one side of the system.

New Lightweight Exhaust System for TT3 Use

Turns out that was the case, as we did indeed have one broken catalyst matrix when we changed the exhaust two weeks later. Before we attacked the new exhaust the guys fabricated new rear mounts for the splitter, which I bent badly with my off in the soft mud of ECR at the TV shoot. That took a couple of hours, as I had really done a number on them and the old ones had to be junked.



The old exhaust layout (shown above) we've been using on this car for the past 3 years is rather traditional - dual 3" pipes from the ARH 1-7/8" long tubes, ARH cars and X-pipe, and a custom dual 3" over the axle system we built using rear mounted large case mufflers (Flowmaster Series 44) and some tips in the stock location. This system was lighter than most off the shelf systems but still pretty lengthy and had a lot of tubing. It was modified once back in early 2012, but has remained untouched ever since. The slip-ft joint that comes with the ARH headers had a tendency to leak so it was spot welded in place and each time the exhaust was removed we had to cut the tacks. My curb incident at Hallett last June broke the tacks and it was a little leaky ever since.



We knew we had at least one catalyst that was smashed and possibly both had a broken matrix inside and needed to be replaced. But I wanted to get some weight out of this car if possible (we can always add ballast to the trunk) so we went with a system layout we had used before, on Mark Smith's Boss 302-S race car (shown below).



That system above proved to be about 42 pounds lighter than the stock stuff it had before and it picked up so much power he had to have a restrictor added. When we sound tested the new system it was louder but not unreasonably so. The result was lighter and more powerful? Sign me up!



The old X-pipe was removed and the cats were inspected. Yep, both of them were clogged up. Driving over some curb somewhere probably smashed the internal matrix and ruined them both. So they were cut off and the Magnaflow stainless 3" mufflers were acquired (we're a Magnaflow dealer now, in case you guys need anything). We also added 3" V-band clamps and flanges to the header collectors, which made me happy as they are the least leaky type of exhaust junction.



On this system we moved the mufflers further back and set them under the recesses made for the exhaust under the saddle style fuel tank. Yes, there is a fiberglass heat shield between the mufflers and the fuel tank, and we added some DEI gold foil reflective insulation there as well. The turn-downs are also pushed further back and now dump just under the axle housing, with the heat of the exhaust not near the axle. We've run the car at two race weekends since and had zero rear axle heat issues.



The guys made some custom rear exhaust hangers and the system was buttoned up in less than a day. Ground clearance is still excellent and the sound is... well.... it sounds like a race car now. I certainly wouldn't recommend this for a street car or daily driver, but we don't need ear plugs driving it on track, so it is appropriate. The Magnaflow mufflers should last for years to come, too. Listen to the in-car videos from the race coverage below to hear the sound.



There was some weight savings, of course, but also some extra room around the rear axle. We run the ride height at back of the car very low and it was getting tight between the axle tubes and the over the axle 3" pipes under full bump travel. Parts of the old system will be reused at some date on another S197, as that 304SS custom over the axle section still looks great.

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above



As I drove the car down to the corner gas station to fuel up (and a police car pulled somebody over right behind me, yikes), the "System Fault" message above showed up on the touch screen of the car. WTF? This happened right after we fired up the car, so the rear O2 data was likely wigging out with no catalysts upstream to affect the exhaust stream emissions. We kind of figured that would happen (and we will have the car in for a retune at True Street soon enough), so I hoped this wasn't an issue that would pop back up (it didn't all weekend). A full tank of 93 Octane Shell fuel went in the tank and we loaded the car in the trailer.


NASA at MSR-H Jan 18-19, 2014

We didn't do many improvements to the TT3 Mustang for this season opening round of NASA Texas, but if you've been reading this forum thread for a while you know why. We only just decided to stay in TT3, after the red Mustang didn't sell in November and the 2015 Mustang was delayed likely until August. I had planned on making some upgrades, but as you read at the top of my post, January got a little insane around the shop and left very little time to work on our own cars. So we're just sticking with the existing TT3 set-up and the classing formula has changed for us. The exhaust change was done more to eliminate the CEL issues we kept running into, which we hoped would mean less trouble on track. I doubt it added any power, but we will re-dyno the car soon to make sure. We've been down 10-11 whp for the last year and a half, from the highest tested 430 whp dyno number the car made back in 2012. Plus we tend to run 30-40 pounds over minimum weight, so we're safe if we accidentally unlocked 3-4 hp.

Back in November I had blew my last set of Hoosier contingency tires on a new set of 275 A6s for the ST2 car, which meant I had no fresh tires to use for TT3 on the Mustang in January. Hmm, that wasn't too smart, but I didn't make a good guess on what we'd be doing 3 months later. Instead of forking out $1400 for a fresh set of sticker 315s we decided to just run some used scrubs and hope for the best. Fresh tires can be worth 1-2 seconds per lap, so I knew going into this race weekend we were venerable. But the TT sign-ups were a little light, and some TT3 competitors had last minute problems, so we thought we might get lucky and sneak in the win on used tires (2 race weekends old).

The other mistake we made this race weekend was NOT bringing any of our Vorshlag crew members with us. If we would have had Ryan there wrenching and Brandon shooting pictures this would have been a smoother race weekend, for sure. We get so buried with the "other stuff" during a NASA weekend that I overlooked some issues with the car. But Amy and I went down there solo, and the results were as predicted - a bit of a mess.



The track configuration at MSR-Houston is run once a year on the NASA Texas race calendar and every year they change the direction, as this track can be run Clockwise and Counter Clockwise. Amy and I looked and we hadn't run this 2.38 mile course CCW in... ever? Hmm, that's strange, we've run here a half dozen times, but it has always been CW. So we'd be learning as we drove, and sharing sessions since we're running the same car together again this year. At least we only pay one entry fee this year, from our new "Team Vorshlag" team entry. We will keep doing this until we can afford a two car trailer and two race cars, which might not ever happen.



Our crew finished up the new ligthtweight exhaust Thursday night and loaded the trailer so Amy and I could leave Dallas by about 2 pm for the 5 hour haul to south Houston on Friday. We had planned on meeting up with some friends who had scoped out a good paddock spot and got there just at the sun was setting, unloading the car in the dark and getting our 2014 Annual NASA tech performed. Our paddock was shared with two other enclosed trailers and racers, Paul Costas' GT1 Camaro and Matt White's Coyote powered SN95 Mustang ST1 race car. We were all parked right where it is marked "Grid", as our TT track map had one mistake as the actual grid was held much further down the main straight. Our trailer grouping was right there at the pit wall and when standing up on Paul's trailer's observation deck we had the best views of the track in the paddock!



I had looked at the old track records for this track layout and of course there was nothing for TT3, as this class was new in 2013 and this CCW MSR-H layout had not been run since 2012. I was hoping we could slot in between the old TT2 (TTS) and the old TTA class records, if we won. Setting a track record on old scrubs that had seen 2 previous race weekends on them might be tough, and without running Friday to learn this track layout or work on the set-up, we might be in trouble. I was also worried we might run out of tires for day 2, so we brought another mounted set of scrub 315/30/18 A6s, just in case.

2012 TT Track Records for Motorsports Ranch Houston (2.38 CCW) (prior to this race weekend)
Class Driver Car
TTU Eric Purcell Radical 01:41.896 Jan-09
TT1 Joe Woodhead Chevy Corvette 01:38.402 Jan-12
TT2 Sean Farrah Nissan 350Z 01:40.172 Jan-12
TT3 .... n/a
TTA Josh Smith Mistubishi Evo 01:42.914 Jan-12
TTB Wynn Suebhongsang Honda S2000 01:43.134 Jan-12
TTC Norman Wilhelm Subaru WRX 01:47.241 Jan-12
TTD Blake Clements Mazda Miata 01:49.319 Jan-12
TTE Josh Price Acrua Integra 01:50.969 Jan-12
TTF Ken Brewer Toyota MR2 01:58.367 Jan-10

Our car sailed through annual tech (and we're a NASA approved HPDE Tech shop, so I suspected it would) and we had a good dinner in town with Costas and his wife Anna, then bombed up to our hotel for the night. We got to the track early Saturday morning and the weather was a bit brisk, but the forecast looked good. Amy rode with me on the first TT session, which we call the "Warm Up". This session does not count for times and is used for gridding purposes in TT session 1 only. I was pretty slow in the Warm-up, as Amy is a terrible passenger with me, and fumbled my way around an unfamiliar circuit. I was 9th fastest in TT with a 1:45.5, not a good sign.


Saturday TT Warm-up (at left) and TT session 1 (at right)

I was planning to only run Saturday in the TT Warm Up and TT session 1 only, leaving Amy two sessions later in the day to get her up to speed. So that meant I needed to lay down my best lap of the day in the first timed TT session, which luckily I did. I found about 4 seconds from my laps in the Warm Up, probably from figuring out the proper line and losing a passenger, and dropped to a 1:41.457. That ended up being the 3rd fastest TT time of the session, behind Weather's TT1 C6 and Costas GT1 Camaro. It also proved to be our fastest time of the weekend, which I will explain below.



That 1:41 lap felt pretty good, but it was far from perfect. I knew there was time left in a few corners that I had hoped to work at on Sunday. For the rest of the day Saturday, Amy took over in TT Session 2 and 3, as planned.



Meanwhile our paddock area was pretty busy all day, as Costas dealt with some coolant leaks and other issues on his GT-1 Camaro and Matt had to rebuild the front end of his car after a big off. Later Costas was forced off on the back straight during a GTS/Super Touring/Super Unlimited race and tore up his splitter as well. A lot of us were pitching in to help get that car put together as he re-did the intake gaskets, repaired the splitter (using two piece of plywood and a truck tire to flatten the metal), and chased a few other fixes. There was never a dull moment in our little mini-paddock all weekend! Costas' write-up on his website better describes all of the race incidents and repairs that he and Matt had over the weekend.



Amy took her time getting up to speed and ran a 1:48.2 in the TT session 2 but was already down in the 1:44s in TT session 3 when she had an accident in the end of the final session.



She said she missed a 5th to 3rd gear downshift (rev matching wasn't close enough - she normally goes through each gear in a downshift) which locked the rears at high speed and sent the car into a spin. That spin sent her up and over the high curbing on the inside of Turn 4, where the car got beached and was stuck for a good half hour. She spun at the very end of the TT session and the track crew (3 trucks worth!) worked hard to get the car off the curb without ripping the splitter off or tearing up the underside of the car. They used a lot of boards and ramped the car down, but at one point it was stuck with 2 wheels in the air. We now call Amy by her new nickname "Curby", hehe...



I was watching from a half mile away and knew something had gone wrong. I couldn't see any damage but the car was really stuck. Amy finally borrowed a phone to call me, and said "I broke a wheel. Bad. Bring a spare, quickly." So I borrowed a vehicle and grabbed an extra front wheel and tire and a jack and zoomed out on course, which at this point was closed for racers during the extraction (there were 2 race groups left for the day). They had the car extracted and were flat towing the car VERY SLOWLY on a broken wheel and flat tire, dragging the splitter, but I quickly stopped them. Using two jacks we got the wheel changed in about a minute while it was parked out on the back straight, but the car wouldn't start so they flat towed her in. Once we got the car back into the pits it was getting dark fast (these pics have been brightened up a lot) and it was getting very hard to see.



After a long day in the sun and wind, talking to lots and lot of folks, and helping Costas with his many repairs, we were all dead tired. But with some volunteer help (thanks Toth and Robert!) and a borrowed LED drop light (thanks Marc!) we pulled the RF wheel again, swapped it to the left front (the spare set of scrub tires were really bad) so we'd have the freshest A6 on the Right Front once again (most turns were left hand). On jack stands it was hard to get under the car and see much but it looked surprisingly OK, so I spent the next half hour fixing the front toe problem - it had almost 2" of toe out. Again, it was pitch dark by now and I was there without our normal crew of Ryan and Brandon, so I didn't see the very obviously badly bent RF Lower Control Arm. I really should have asked for another set of eyes, as this was a major piece of damage that was missed, which was on me. I would have put the car in the trailer at that point and just called it a day.

The broken wheel was obvious, and it failed exactly as it should have considering the massive curb hit the car took. The wheel absorbed a lot of energy as it deformed. Once we had the toe more or less back to zero, it still ended up with the steering wheel at a 90 degree angle to its normal setting (covering up the tach and gauges while driving), but it was getting too late and COLD that I punted and figured "we'd just drive it and shift by ear". We wrapped up our paddock for the night and walked over to the Saturday night NASA dinner and annual awards banquet. We had a great time there eating and drinking and catching up with friends, listening to this "School of Rock" band made up of a bunch of kids. They rocked the house, no lie.



They handed out NASA Texas regional awards for all of the W2W and TT classes, with Amy getting a 3rd place trophy for TT3 while I got 1st for 2013. We wrapped up at about 9 pm and then hit the hotel, exhausted. By the end of Saturday several folks in TT had picked up some speed and we fell from 3rd to 7th fastest, but stayed about 6 seconds ahead of the other two TT3 competitors and had another new track record set (this car's 9th) for the weekend. Here's the end of day Saturday TT results in PDF form.



We rolled out Sunday morning and the entire area was blanketed in heavy fog. You couldn't see 100 feet and traffic on the highway was doing about 40 mph. The fog delayed the first session by half an hour, until the corner stations had enough visibility to see each other. That morning Costas was bugging me to take a closer look at the car and slap on some caliper heat indicator decals at the same time (more on this later), but I was too damned tired to do it.

What's wrong in this picture? The RF wheel should have -3.5° camber but it was more like at -0.5°. This wasn't super obvious to the naked eye

I went out cautiously in TT session 1 on Sunday more as a shake down test than anything else. I was pretty slow but I just wanted to see how the car felt, as I had a feeling something else might be broken. The car had a wicked push in left hand turns, but it was manageable. I came in early and was not all that fast, but the car was in one piece. Obviously the RF lower control arm was badly bent, and we were "missing" about 3 degrees of negative camber. This made the RF wheel go into a slight positive camber setting (see picture above) under load - not good for grip!

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above


The brake temp indicator strips on Costas' calipers showed how much one caliper got hot in a session after a brake duct hose came loose

I went out again in TT session 2 and was pushing hard for another 1:41 lap, or quicker. I had watched some other drivers doing some CRAZY lines (some of them well outside the marked boundaries of the track) and noted a few places where I could save some time, while still staying on what I considered the track limits. I knew that there would likely be some pushback once people started sharing some of their videos and pictures of cars going waaaaay off course (that did happen later, as predicted). I will always show all of my best competition laps so I stuck with the "conservative line" that did not go around the outside of any curbs, over the line of the marked pit out lane, or using the paved runoff "beyond the paint". This statement will ruffle some feathers, but so be it - I think that we should all stay on the course as marked and not go 4 wheels off to gain an advantage. The TT director and Regional Director met about this and then issued a letter after the event. They noted that all future NASA Texas TT events will have supplemental regulations to clearly define the course limits for the TT group.



So back to the race weekend. I was mired in traffic in TT session 2 on Sunday but I finally got around a TT1 Corvette that held me up for two laps and was good to go. I finally had some clear track and was pushing on hot lap three, hoping to finish the lap without catching the back of the field. About halfway through this lap I noticed two cars slowing rapidly ahead of me - a TT1 Corvette and a TT2 EVO, who were now on their cool down lap. I caught them fast heading into turns 8-9-10. The Corvette saw me at the last second and jumped out of the way to let me by, which opened up the mirrors for the EVO. He tried to get offline in the middle of Turn 10 but it was too late and I was pushing too hard. I had a quick 4 wheels off and on trying to get by him while saving the lap and leaving enough room to pass. Stupid mistake, and nobody got close to anyone, but I shouldn't have tried to go two wide in that corner, even with the point by. Trouble was I could see we were catching the back of the field and knew this was my only shot at a fast lap, due to the early traffic I ran into.



Well crap, 4 wheels off DSQs the whole session for me, and the grass packed up the lower grill so it would have run hot, so I quickly came into the pits. I was on a low 1:41 lap on the predictive timer, too. I negotiated with Amy to let me take another shot and I eventually took two laps in TT session 3, then we performed a hot pits driver change and she took another 2 laps in the same session. Why would we do that driver change? Well honestly we were trying to get out of town early (and skipped session 4). She wanted to get some laps in, but I wanted to try to set another fast lap to secure the win for the day, too. Because in TT sessions 1 and 2 we had nothing but junk lap times. Turns out you are not allowed to swap drivers in a single TT session - we had asked the TT director beforehand and he said it was OK, but he since learned that isn't allowed. Oh well, live and learn.

Terry riding along with Amy, trying to pass along some pointers

Somehow I still ran a 1:41.5 that day, about a tenth slower than Saturday. And after seeing the damaged front Lower Control Arm I'm shocked we were that close with the extreme lack of camber on the RF corner. Of course if we would have seen the bent LCA we would have NEVER run the car like that on track. That was simply a stupid oversight. Oh well, gotta credit Ford for making a tank of a control arm that took a curb impact like that and still raced all day Sunday! Craziness...


photo by John Roberts

After the 3rd TT session we let the car cool down, packed up the trailer and headed on our 5 hour journey home. We missed the crazy 4th TT session where a lot of records were broken, and one driver made a mysterious 4 second improvement. There was all sorts of controversy that led to an official investigation and new rules regarding track for future events. Didn't affect TT3 so I mostly stayed out of it, but I was getting calls and texts for a week about this. And looking at the pictures and some videos of TT cars after the event, many were clearly exploiting track limits to gain time. Like I said, this is something that will be addressed at the opening meeting next time so there are no magic laps at the very end of the weekend (without any scales checks).

• Vorshlag Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/NASA-at-MSR-H-011814/
• NASA Results: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/NASA_Texas_Region/2014 - Official Results/1 Houston_January/
• Paul Costas' race write-up at WDMS: http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch215.htm

One thing we didn't have problems with (for the most part) were CELs and traction control faults, yay! I think I had one fuel starve moment but no Check Engine Lights, and the engine ran STRONG all weekend. This is the first time in many months where we weren't chasing CELs, so the busted cats were likely the cause of some of our recent troubles. The motor pulled solid from 4000-7000, but on Sunday without any visibility to the gauges it was hard to tell when to shift. I watched some of our Sunday in-car videos and I was short shifting at like 6200-6500 a lot, and Amy was shifting at around 5000-5500. There was simply no way to see the tach with the steering wheel cocked 90 degrees out and it was hard to discern the RPMs from the much changed exhaust note.



We ran a good old chunk of ballast in the trunk (and were scaled twice at 40+ pounds over each time) to make sure Amy wasn't going to end up light when she ran. We really need to look at a "quick change" ballast system so we can switch the weights between the 2 drivers quickly, as it is easy to forget that on grid. The lighted and switched transponder circuit was much appreciated and we never once made a lap with it turned off or unplugged. Should have done this switch panel years ago (see above left).

I'm glad we made it out of there with as little damage as we did, and was thankful that we could score two class wins and a track record on such worn out old tires (especially the mis-matched set on Sunday). Looks like our 1:41.4 lap time fell right in between the old TT2 and TTA records, but it is clear that we left a lot on the table - since I was able to nearly match my Saturday times on Sunday with a bent control arm and three degrees of missing camber on the right front, so that new lap record is fairly soft. I suspect with better familiarity with the track, better driving and fresh tires this car could have run a 1:39 or so, but who knows? NASA Texas won't run this track configuration again until 2016, and I have no idea what car or class we'll be racing by then, but at least the new TT3 record is safe for two more years. Still can't believe this heavy stick axle Mustang has 9 standing TT3 track records now.



With only 3 cars in class we didn't have enough in TT3 to get Hoosier contingency (you need 5 cars to pay to 1st place and 7 to pay to 2nd) but that's not unusual for this first event of the year, with potential sketchy weather in January. The race weekend went smoothly and the weather cooperated, so we got lucky there. Amy and I both had a blast and talked to probably 75+ people who came by and wanted to see the Mustang closer. The car sounded GOOD and the times were OK. Our yardstick class American Iron (with Spec Iron) was about 3 seconds back, with the top car posting a fastest race lap in the 1:44.2 range.



The wide variety in the TT field was fun to watch, with Costas GT-1 Camaro just accelerating like nothing else. I didn't see him much on track with the 5 second lap time gap between us, heh. Track records were broken in seven classes (TTU, TT1, TT2, TT3, TTB, TTD & TTE), so people were driving fast down the entire roster.

Overall I don't feel like I drove all that well at this event and should have been a bit quicker. The layout in this direction was trickier than I expected, as you really had to respect the pit wall near the edge of the track at the exit of turn 17, and we saw several cars back into that wall in W2W races (mostly Spec Miatas, and always with "help"). Being 5 hours away from us it is hard to get a lot of seat time at this course. compared to the other tracks within 1-3 hours of us (ECR, MSR-C and TWS). I really wish we would have done the Test and Tune event here on the Friday before, which would have let us both get more seat time on this unfamiliar layout. Oh well, don't always get to take that extra day away - especially on the busy month we were having at the shop.

Post MSR-H "Curb Repairs" and Track Prep

We didn't have a lot of time after we got back from Houston before we had to get ready for another Time Trial type event the following weekend. So we looked at the damage on Monday, explored any potential upgrade ideas, and then bought another stock Lower Control Arm and inner and outer tie rods.



Of course we looked at the Ford Racing 302S/R front LCA with a taller ball joint and new rear bushing, but that was an expensive set of parts ($1300+) that really only made sense if we had the stock rubber rear LCA bushings still on the car. The new Ford Racing bushing is much smaller than the normal beer can sized fluid filled mush, but it is still rubber. We had already replaced both LCA bushings with the Energy Suspension polyurethane long ago. There wasn't a lot of time to evaluate other options, and we were so impressed with how the stock arm failed (non-catostrophic, and that LCA's deformation saved the subframe and steering rack) that we ordered another stock lower arm instead.



The problem was that the new arm came with an all new hydro bushing attached to the ends, which had to be removed. Kyle and the guys spent a couple of hours burning off the old bushing and getting it off the arm, then prepping the stub for the Energy poly bushing, but they got it on and it works like before. The inner and outer tie rod were also replaced, as they were bent. We couldn't know how the $1000 Ford Racing steering rack fared until the next race weekend. One front stainless brake line was pulled a bit too far when the bent LCA was unbolted and it POPPED down (it was preloaded badly) so that line was replaced with another from stock. A couple of V-band clamps that were smashed on the curbing were also replaced, the car was inspected thoroughly by real techs (not me!) and they found nothing else wrong. Another 8 quarts of Mobil1 15W50 and a Wix filter were changed and that "junk" set of old A6 tires on the white wheels were mounted up. That set of tires had 3 race weekends on them and were long past the "good" rubber, but oh well.

SCCA Club Trials, MSR Cresson, Jan 25th, 2014

This was a new event held by the Texas Region SCCA during a normal Club Racing weekend (Double Divisional, Super School, Club Trials) that they called the Polar Grand Prix. The Club Trials event was only being held on Saturday but the low cost promoted several to enter, once the word got out. $75 for 5 sessions and $125 if you didn't have a transponder. All sessions were timed and there would be a "competition" of sorts. We didn't know much more than that, but Amy and I signed up in the first hours it was opened, 3 weeks before this event was to be run. The weather on Saturday morning started out COLD (27 degrees in the morning!) but it warmed up into the low 60s by days end. Amy and I actually towed out to Cresson the night before, got teched by the SCCA Regional Executive Bob Neff, and scored a great paddock spot early.



The SCCA is trying to court new club racers by having a PDX/Club Trials group run at their Club Race weekends. I am very much in support of this and hope they can take the extremely good turnout for this event and do it again, and not as a separate event as they are thinking of doing - to work as a ladder system you have to keep your DE and Time Trial folks running at the same track weekend as the Wheel to Wheel folks. I am going to keep reminding them how well this works in NASA every time they bring up excuses of why its "so hard" to have 30 extra people at a race weekend of 100 drivers.



The entry cap for this event was set at 30 cars so we quietly promoted this to many of our local customers. Of the 28 entries they got about a third of those were Vorshlag customers and testers. Everyone arrived with some track background (for the most part) and there were five NASA TT licensed drivers in attendance as well - me, Amy, KenO, DaveW and Eric.

The reason they kept the entries so low was to keep all of the PDX/Club Trials folks in the same run group, and running the 1.7 mile course at MSR only allows for 30 cars to fit on track at once. And with 26 out there at the same time (we had a couple of no shows - one car broke and another was stuck in an ice storm in Austin) of wildly varying speeds, it got a little crowded. The first Club Trials run session (of 5?!) was a lead-follow at 60% speed with the experience TT folks leading smaller groups to show them the line. It was 32 degrees and there wasn't much grip on the cold and dusty track anyways.



Our second CT session was a bit of a clusterfox, as there weren't any established times to grid cars in order. I went out first and KenO was behind me. We tried to bunch up the field but we caught the back of the group at the tail end of the first hot lap. We were passing 3-5 cars per lap and couldn't get any clear track. In the driver's meeting that followed we more clearly defined point by signals (some folks were confused) and it ran smoothly for the rest of the day.

continued below

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

continued from above - last one

Now I'm not super familiar with the MSR 1.7 mile course, as NASA TT always runs the 3.1 mile configuration - because we have too many entries show up to fit on the 1.7. With 40-50 TT entries we need the extra course length to spread out and have enough room to drive at speed safely. But most of the 1.7 is part of the 3.1 course, so I knew the basic lines and such - just didn't have any good 1.7 mile course times to compare against from the past. I had run the 1.7 course many years back when we had the BMW E36 LS1, and I remembered some 1:20 lap times from that light, V8 powered race car. So when I saw the 1:23.103 lap from the 2nd CT session I was a little bummed. Still, that was with passing 2 cars in traffic and the car was a bit bouncy.



Stuart and Doug Maxcy from Maxcyspeed & Co were at this event to support their customers and Stuart noticed some rear suspension things on our car. Between my 2nd and 3rd track session he suggested a substantial rear shock compression change (full soft) to allow the car to put power down better. The rear was very traction limited, partially from the old worn out tires and partly from the cold.

I was being lazy and not using the shock adjustments to their best advantage, for changing conditions with the car and track. We had the rear shocks tuned well for new sticker A6 tires being used in warm weather, plus using the full fuel load and extra rear ballast like we run in NASA TT. Since this was SCCA Club Trials we had no minimum weight to worry about that day, so we pulled the ballast and ran less fuel. In addition the used tires we brought didn't have the grip levels of the normal fresh tires we race on, and the track temps went from the high 20s to the low 60s in the span of a few hours. Stuart's calibrated eyeball spotted how the car was behaving from the side of the track, suggested that I use the adjustments of the shocks to help fine tune the car as the track warmed up, and he was right - his tip was much appreciated. It helped us find some of the five seconds that my times dropped from the 2nd to 3rd sessions (track temps and traffic played a part as well)

I led KenO once again and we both got two full hot laps in before we caught the back of the field. We set our fastest times of the day in this session, which was in the high 50°F range.



Well that sure felt a lot better. With a little more familiarity with the course, a little more track temp, two clear laps, and the rear end settled down from the shock change, I managed to drop 5 full seconds in this session. My first hot lap was a 1:19.253 and my second lap was a 1:18.675. Looking at the other race groups, other than a few Formula Mazdas one GT car (a GT2 Corvette with a 1:18.414 on Sunday), this was one of the faster laps run that weekend. That lap felt really good and while the tires were a handful and rear traction was still limited, it was one of the better feeling laps I've driven in a while.

• Vorshlag event picture gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/SCCA-MSR-01514/
• Event results: http://sowdivscca.com/raceresults/2014/20140125/

Since they don't really have any classes set-up for Club Trials yet they used SCCA Solo classing and even PAX factors for the results. I think the results kind of speak for themselves on how well that works, heh. Even with a terrible Street Mod multiplier my PAX time was still at the top of the list, seconds ahead of the rest. I was just happy to have the quickest raw time by 4 seconds, which is more than I was expecting. Amy ran in CT sessions 4 and 5 and had fun getting down to a 1:23 lap time. She finished 3rd overall in RAW and 7th in PAX.



Since we were sharing the car I worked with a couple of drivers in sessions 4 and 5 as an instructor. After hopping in with Mark Council in his 18x11" / 295 Rival / AST equipped Mustang I helped him find 2.5 seconds on his lap times. It was just small adjustments to his driving line, pushing his braking zones and actually having him short shift in one spot. Then I hopped in with Jan with her similar 18x11" / 295 Rival / MCS shock equipped Mustang and worked on a few things as well.



Kyle and Brandon from our shop came to offer track support for all of our customers that joined us. Kyle fixed a number of items on 4 or 5 cars as well as kept the Mustang fueled, pressures set, and oil topped off.



Brandon snapped a gaggle of great pictures and we kept many of the Club Trials folks warm and hydrated, as our trailer became the shelter from the wind and sun. All in all this was a great event and I really hope the SCCA can find a way to make this a regular part of their Club Race weekends. I feel that without this the W2W programs will continue to wither and die, and this region has admitted as much openly. We will do whatever we can to support racing in this area, and will be at whatever PDX/Club Trials events that they hold in the state, whether it be SCCA or NASA.

What's Next?

Luckily February is pretty dead - as the weather here in north Texas is nasty and unpredictable this month. It will be 70 degrees one day and 25 degrees the next; luckily we have a climate controlled shop, so we don't get bogged down in the cold or heat. Our annual Vorshlag Open House and SCCA Solo Annual Tech day is going to be held on Feb 22nd, plus we have some customer races and test days for race car builds going on this month, but nothing in our Mustang. Looking at March we have way more events than we could possibly enter. Some weekends have two or even three events to choose from, yikes.

Vorshlag's Upcoming Race Schedule (Feb-March)

• Feb 1st - Cars & Coffee Dallas. We drove the red TT3 Mustang to this event on Hoosiers, parked with the SCCA folks, I was interviewed for a TV show there, and I will cover that in my next post.
• Feb 22, Vorshlag Open House/ SCCA Solo Annual Tech day. Everyone is welcome, come by for a look at the shop and current projects, get some free food, talk to a bunch of racers.
• Feb 22, Open Track Day at ECR. I sure wish we didn't have our Open House conflicting with this event, because we have a lot of customers that will be out there on the 22nd. We might have a technician out there for trackside support anyway.
• March 8-9, NASA @ MSR Cresson. Time Trial will likely run the 3.1 whereas all other groups run the 1.7. HPDE and TT slots are open - sign up now!
• March 21-23, Ultimate Street Car Association, Texas Motor Speedway road course. We will beg/borrow/buy some big Rivals and run this autocross/track/speed stop competition in the TT3 Mustang.
• March 21-23, NARRA race at NOLA Motorsports Park. Man I really wanted to go to this but I promised Jimi Day I'd make his USCA event at TMS that weekend
• March 23, Texas Region SCCA Solo #1, Pennington field. We'd probably be doing this if we weren't already triple booked
• March 22, ChumpCar World Series at Texas Motor Speedway. 12 Hour Special Event, "The Cowtown Grand Prix". We will be there supporting a customer while we also run at this same venue with USCA!?
• March 29-30, Track Guys Event @ Texas World Speedway 2.9. We are signed up and will be at this Mustang-centric HPDE weekend with the TrackGuys crew, running the TT3 Mustang. Should be fun!

Running at TMS road course should be fun with the USCA

So that looks a bit nuts, with too many choices. We can't make all of these but we'll pick at least 3 weekends in March to compete in. We're also knee deep in a lot of customer projects, the FR-S should be kicking into gear, the LS1 Miata needs to make some progress, and I want to get the Rallycross SN95 Mustang started here pretty soon. It is all about time.... even working 12-14 hour days we cannot get it all done. And we cannot bring any more people on board because we're out of room, so my "new building search" is crucial. I'd really like to get some mods done to the TT3 Mustang, if we can squeeze it in. A new rear wing? The wider tires? Maybe a new set of shocks? We'll see what the budget and shop time allows.

Don't forget - our 2013 Mustang GT is slashed to $25K. Please spread the word!

More soon!

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Feb 8, 2014...

Terry, it's a bummer to hear about your experience with the Continentals. I purchased a set because of the price, but if you can't get them up to temp, what the heck am I going to do?

Well, it was December 28th, and the weather was fairly cool. We're going to try them again in March at TWS at the TrackGuys weekend. I'll get more laps on them then, and some heat.

I think the real question to be asking here is: how long will that car continue to be Amy's "daily driver"?

Well, Amy now has a 740iL we got for her to daily drive in, which we've restored and upgraded in a bunch of ways (740 project build thread here). She loves this big German cruiser and hasn't been daily driving the Mustang for about 8 months. Still, we drive the Mustang on the street from time to time - to go get fuel, to run over to the shop that does the engine tuning, or to go to special events locally. We went to Cars & Coffee last weekend (drove out on Hoosier A6s!) and she had a ball driving it across town and back. It does get a lot of stares with the decals and wing, heh.



At the USCA event in March we have to do a 50 mile street drive in the car on the Friday of this 3 day competition, but we'll be on BFG Rivals for that, so I'm not worried. The Mustang still has A/C. sat nav, satellite radio, and all of the creature comforts.