Project Update for June 26, 2012: Part 1 of 2... In my last series of updates after the Optima Faceoff event, I listed a lot of little things that we realized were broken or set-up poorly on the car. In the two weeks after that we attacked each of these items, except one: the whacked-out electronic steering rack. This is STILL on National backorder. Good grief, Ford.
Some Repairs & a Quick Inspection
One obvious area that needed to be addressed, and is a common failure point on any heavily tracked car, is the brake caliper dust seals. Caliper "dust seals" don't exist on real "race calipers", but are always found surrounding the outer edges of caliper pistons on
production street cars. And when you get the brakes to the 800-1200°F temps we have seen, these seals eventually catch fire and/or melt. It's not the end of the world - they just keep debris out of the caliper bores. Still, when damaged they can allow brake dust to migrate down the bores and past the piston's
fluid seals, which can then get into the fluid. Our car gets a brake re-bleed every few weeks and a complete flush every couple of months, so it's not a huge concern. However, it is something you should always look at when changing pads, if you have factory calipers with dust seals.
Ryan noticed the front seals looked rough a few weeks earlier, so we ordered new parts from Ford / Brembo. The dust seals had to come from Italy, but finally got here and weren't that expensive. He pulled the front calipers off and placed a thin block of wood between the opposing pistons (the front Brembo calipers have 4 pistons - two inner and two outer) and applied air pressure to the brake line inlet...
POP! This pushes the pistons out enough to remove them, two at a time (keep your fingers out of the way!) Once the pistons were removed, he peeled away the burned remnants of the dust seals and inspected the caliper pistons and bores, which looked fine. All of square seals that keep the fluid pressure in (at the bottom of the pistons) looked good too. Everything was cleaned with brake parts cleaner and blown out with air. Make sure it is all CLEAN. New dust seals were wrapped around each piston and back in they went, slathered and assembled with plenty of
fresh Motul brake fluid. It's a messy job that has to be done on the bench, so PROTECT YOUR EYES from spraying brake fluid, of course.
Our stock motor has been buzzed to 7500-7800 rpm literally hundreds of times now, and this previous Optima event was no different (1st gear autocross, track event, etc). Just as a precaution I asked Ryan to pull a valve cover off for a quick top end inspection. With a new valve cover seal ordered from Ford and in our hands (cheap), Ryan pulled one side apart for a look-see. Everything in the valve train looked perfect: no obviously broken springs, errant metal or unusual wear. Those cam-phasers make for a complicated piece of engineering! It all looked perfect so I guess our religious changes of Mobil1 synthetic oil has paid off for the past 11,000 hard miles of use this Coyote 5.0 has seen. Good to know...
Some suspension set-up changes were made as well - we removed the 550#/in front and 250#/in rear springs in favor of the previous AST4100 set-up that used 450#/in front and 175#/in rear springs. It rides SO much better on the street with these rates (even with Moton Club Sports) and it always rotated better with those, too. I was hopeful that these springs would make for some improvements in the "death push" we saw at ECR with those Nittos two weeks ago. For the next few weeks of street driving the 295 Nittos were pulled in favor of the set of identical 18x10s with 275 Bridgestones, the winged trunk was swapped back for the stock one, but the race pads (Porterfield R4) and rotors stayed on. Amy drove it and commented on the improved ride quality for her daily commute, so the softer springs were better there too.
Two days before the event last week, our 2001 BMW 330Ci went up on the lift for our usual pre-track inspection. It was also given a fresh two gallons (the normal seven quarts + one extra quart) of Mobil1 oil and WIX filter, an alignment check, basic nut-and-bolt torquing and paint pen mark-ups (so during later inspections any bolt rotation can be seen), a good washing, a brake bleed, and some small repairs.
The BMW was ready Thursday afternoon, so on Friday morning the Mustang went up on the lift to have the same inspection work and oil change done. The Hoosier A6s were already removed and the used 315/35/18 Kumho V710 tires were remounted and balanced back on the 18x11F/18x12R wheels again. The big wing and trunk went back on, a fresh nine quarts (we run an extra quart for racing) of Mobil1 10W40 went in (along with a WIX filter), and the alignment was re-checked. Once everything looked good it was loaded into the trailer for the ECR open track day along with eight extra wheels and tires (one set for each car).
Five Star Ford Track Day at ECR
This was the first track day event put on by a local Ford dealership, Five Star Ford in Plano, TX. They sell a lot of Mustangs and wanted to host a "customer appreciation event", and invited all sorts of modern Ford muscle (and anyone else that wanted to join them!) for a fun track day on June 23rd. There were lots of 2011-2013 Mustang GTs, 2012-2013 Boss 302s, and a bunch of other SN95/Fox/S197 cars. There was a large range of car prep and driver skill levels at the event, from "noob street driver" to "gutted race car on huge Hoosier slicks". Great variety of non-Fords as well with a Ferrari, some BMWs, a couple of Lotuses (Lotii?), a gnarly sounding C6 Corvette (Robert Baily, who ran in the Optima Challenge with me), and more.
Our Mustang's preparation level was kind of in the middle of that array - an air conditioned full interior, emissions legal exhaust, stock-engined (with cold air and headers), daily driven street car running pump gas...
but it was equipped with Moton doubles, race seats, lots of negative camber, a wing on the back, and 315mm Kumho V710s. It was not the most powerful or insanely prepped car of the event, but we did all right in it. For wild and crazy, Costas' GT-1 Camaro took care of that, where he once again brought a missile launcher to a gun fight.
He should just write "BFG" on the side (old school Quake gamers will know what gun that refers to). Can't blame him - if I had a similar car I'd bring it, too. He still had less $$ in his track toy than many folks in attendance, which is often the case.
Our 36' trailer had ample shade, and we shared chairs, drinks, tools, and some spare parts with a number of event attendees. Met some nice folks!
We rolled up at 7:05 am and the paddock was already packed. Lots of new folks who had never done track days, that actually followed the instructions and showed up on time! Give 'em a few years and they'll be an hour late or more.
We found a good spot up top to park the truck & trailer, right next to the tech inspection shed. We unloaded the Mustang, set-up the sun shade awning/tables/chairs, and then got to work. Amy and I brought our Mustang and our TTD prepped 2001 BMW E46 330 coupe, so we had to change tires on the BMW since it was driven and not trailered to the event. This car hasn't seen real track action in two years, other than
one short session here at ECR last December, right after the new motor went in. We dismounted the 18x10's with Yokohama AD08s and mounted the 18x10s with Hoosiers, after the Mustang was unloaded.
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