Project Update for June 13, 2012: I am still recovering from last weekend's
Optima Faceoff at HOT ROD Power Tour series of competition events. Wow, what a crazy two days! So much to talk about, the TV coverage was insane, and we did really well - considering all of the things that went wrong with the car and set-up. I have spent the last two days just cropping pictures and editing videos. I am still trying to wrap my head around the results (official results won't be out for "at least a week"), the car/set-up issues we ran into (all of which were my own damned fault), and the event itself.
More Event Prep
Let's back up and show some of the last minute prep work done before this event - a lot of little things piled up in the days before the Optima event. I figured there would be a lot on the line (and even more than I had bargained for!), so we wanted to get the car set-up, reliable, and ready. We did a pretty good job, but made some key mistakes - again, mostly from my tire selection and poor set-up choices.
The 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05 tires were mounted on the D-Force/Vorshlag 18x10" wheels, which were mounted on the car - and they looked great. To improve the front track width a bit for the track day, we went with 7mm spacers up front... it wasn't needed, but it "looked better" with them. I kinda knew there would be some TV coverage so vanity won out (and there was a LOT more TV crew than I had ever dreamed of). This 295 tire mounts on the 10" wheel beautifully and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend a 295mm tire for these D-Force wheels now. We've tried a 315mm race tire on these wheels and it was way too much, but this 295 fit great. The height was a little short but it was workable.
This set of mounted and balanced wheels and tires is for sale! $1800 + shipping and they are yours ($2650 retail, mounted and balanced). Used for two days, still have tons of tread.
As you can see in the first pictures we also pulled off the big "93" numbers and "ESP/TTS" class letters from the side doors and front of the car, as Optima has their own decals and numbers for these events. Part of the repairs from the "windshield incident" required
two new hood hinges, as we noticed when pulling the hood that both of them were torn to shreds (as seen above, right). We had the local Ford deliver those, painted them in red to match, and put the hood back on. Well, not before some PDR guy came by to look at the hood damage, who promptly man-handled the bent rear corners so badly that he cracked the paint. Never even tried to use the heat gun to get the paint warmed up. "uhhh... thanks?"
Since we had planned on running both the rear wing (track) and rear spoiler (autocross + speed-stop) at this weekend of events we did some tweaks to both rear aero packages. For the wing base plate mounts that bolt directly to the trunk structure, Ryan made some new lower "shims" (above left) that better match the curves and contours of the trunk, which turned out nicely. For the rear
spoiler, two additional "struts" were added to the outer edges, which mounted forward to existing holes in the trunk (to some wing base plate mounting holes). These two front struts joined the existing 4 rear struts to make for a much more rigid structure. Now you can really push on the ends of the spoiler and it doesn't deflect.
Like we do before each track event or autocross (and for customers, now that
Vorshlag is a NASA Approved HPDE tech shop), the car was given a good pre-track inspection. Ryan began by swapping over to the track pads (R4) and rotors and flushing the brakes with Motul RBF600 (which we now stock and sell). He noticed a bit of wear on all of the caliper and pad mounting hardware, which isn't a surprise considering how many times we've swapped rotors and pads (autocross set vs track set). The dust seals were FRIED and had burned to a crisp. So new caliper bolts, pad retaining pins, and dust seals were ordered. The dust seals had to come from Italy so those would have to wait, but the hardware was swapped along with the track set of rotors and pads before the event. These R4 track pads take a bit to get up to temp, so I had to be mindful of getting the brakes hot for the speed-stop and autocross events (this would bite me in the ass later).
An odd safety item we needed for this Optima event was a fire bottle "mounted in the car with a metal bracket". We called a fire extinguisher supplier and had two Halon bottles (one for Mustang, one for the E30) with roll bar mounts ordered over a week before the event. Of course
these didn't arrive in time (and still haven't, two weeks later), so Ryan had to fab something up
the morning of the event. It's a cheesy little 2.5 pound "BC" type bottle mounted to a metal bracket with a quick release (hitch pin), but it met the letter of the rules. The mount was plenty strong, but a little hinky looking - still better than some other set-ups we saw.
One car
actually caught on fire at the track event as it was leaking transmission fluid onto exhaust all day, pouring smoke out while on track, and it
finally was enough to burn. The track personnel couldn't get his fire bottle out quickly enough and they had to use one from the paddock. So there
was a solid basis to this rule. We will chuck this 2.5 pound extinguisher (the bottle was on the harness bar upright) and mount the real 5 lb Halon bottle into the Mustang if/when it arrives.
Well this portion has already gotten long... I will start another update tomorrow.