Project Update for August 30, 2012: I haven't updated this thread in two months, but we have been busy as ever here at Vorshlag in that timeframe, and a lot of work was done to the Mustang. After the two weekends of race events in the Mustang in June (Optima @ ECR + Ford Dealer @ ECR event) we took a break from racing that car and concentrated on other projects we had going on at the shop. We thrashed around the clock for 4 weeks, tested, and then went to Colorado to support
Brianne Corn's Pike's Peak Subaru STi at the 90th running of the PPIHC event. That month is a blur. We also started build projects on a
2013 Subaru BRZ, dove headfirst into a new
1999 Miata LS1 swap, made some strides in our
BMW E46 LS1 project, and prepped and sold our
$2011 GRM Challenge winning E30 V8. We took on another turn-key E36 M3 LS1 swap, bought another car or two, and have been refocusing our service shop on the things we are really good at.
In my last post I was saying that we might not update this Mustang thread for a while because we needed to develop some parts to allow the big rear tires to fit. No, not the monster
345/45/18 Hoosiers, just the relatively tame
315/35/18 Kumhos on our Forgestar 18x12" rear wheels. These wheels
should fit within the confines of the stock rear fender contour and inboard wheel constraints (if lateral axle displacement can be kept in check), but the stock style rear swaybar mounting location is sticking
right in the way (see lower left picture), and this is where we are seeing the rear tires rubbing time and again. Whoever thought this was a good routing was not a "car guy", who would immediately see this is the inner wheel width limit.
We have to add spacers to push the wheel outboard and then they can rub on the fender lips and/or cut into the tread. We've been fighting this all year. Why try so hard to make 315s fit inside the fenders of this car? Well because we have tried tires with these widths - 255, 265, 275, 285, 305, 315 and 345mm - and the car goes faster/is easier to drive/has more rear traction with each step up in tire width. We've determined the 345 tire was a bad call (too wide and too tall - yes, as many of you told us before I raced on them), but the 315 is still a great size to use both front and rear. I prefer the 315/35/18's tire height but Hoosier only makes a 315/30/18 in 18" diameter so that's what I went with for the Solo Nationals.
Mustang racing on 315mm Kumhos with 18x11 front, 18x12 rear wheels, rub free. 75 hp worth of graphics are missing?!
We also needed some unique suspension parts other than just camber plates and shocks (that we cannot get) to sell for the S197 market - Vorshlag is a business, after all. There are hundreds of shops selling the same old Mustang doo-dads and bolt-on bits, so we wanted to look for something new, unique and different - either that we designed and built ourselves or someone new in the S197 market could come up with. To make room for the rear wheels we had purchased components to use in the design and fabrication of a splined/NASCAR style rear swaybar, to move it away from the rear tires + to give us a cool new product that would have lots of adjustment and probably be lighter, too. As the splined bar, mounts and other parts are arriving I saw this S197 Mustang rear suspension photo on the Whiteline Flatout Facebook page...
Whiteline S197 prototype Panhard and rear swaybar
Hmm, there are a lot of new parts in that pictures. Whiteline UCA + mount, LCA arms + relocation brackets, Panhard bar and reinforcement, a new rear swabar, and big fat end links. I was staring at this picture for a second, not sure of what it was that caught my eye...then
BOOM! The light bulb goes off: I yelled "They've routed the rear swaybar backwards from the stock bar! That clears up tons of inboard wheel room!!" Instead of hanging from the chassis via two stand-offs and attaching to the axle way out by the wheel, the Whiteline swaybar bolts right to the axle housing and has end links that grab the chassis. This routing now removes potential tire rub at the swaybar!
Matt heard me shouting in my office and ran over to take a look and to double-check my logic. Vorshlag was already on Whiteline's mailing list from several talks we had at SEMA and PRI, and we were talking all year about doing the buy-in to become a stocking Whiteline dealer. They make bushings, control arms, reinforcement brackets, swaybars and end links for lots of cars, and are the go-to brand for Subarus and EVOs, which are two car models we sell heavily to. But when I saw that their new S197 parts were finally coming out I did more digging. Then I saw their brand new Watts Link, which was unique from all other designs made for this S197 chassis, and I got on the phone, fast. This was another solution that we had a need for...
Long story short, about two weeks ago we got our hands on the latest yet still pre-production S197 Whiteline Watts Link kit, their front and rear adjustable swaybars, and their rear upper control arm (UCA) and chassis bracket. We also picked up their new production S197 Panhard bar kit + reinforcement bracket, just for pictures and to keep in inventory. After that round of parts shipped they heard we were running this car at a
Global Time Attack race at Texas Motor Speedway at the end of this month, so they sent us their rear lower control arms and relocation brackets to test for that race. These bits aren't SCCA ESP legal (well... we found a way to make them legal, but are not pursuing it just yet), so they are not going on before the SCCA Solo Nationals
next week. At the GTA event this car will get the LCA bracket + arms, a lower rear ride height (finally!), and then we will have a 100% "Whiteline equipped" S197 (we will then shoot some on-track video at GTA which they can use in their SEMA booth). Look for that update late in September.
Left: The rear swaybar (shown above) is solid and 27.5 mm dia. and routes very differently than any other. Right: Whiteline Endlinks are beefy!
The Whiteline parts look incredible, with materials, bushings, finishes and design aspects I'm not really used to seeing in the "Mustang Market". Why is that? Well my
theory is that I think there are actually only a couple of real innovators in the Mustang aftermarket world, and then everyone else copies these one or two companies' products, and pretty soon it all looks the same. Then many times production goes overseas and it becomes a "race to the bottom" on price. I have also seen many older aftermarket designs from previous generation Mustangs (Fox/SN95) get re-hashed for the newer Mustangs (S197), too. Whiteline came in to this new (for them) market with fresh ideas from their other car markets, introduced an all-new Watts Link layout and design, and
completely new swaybar routing. They have innovated instead of copied or rehashed, and fixed issues for me that I don't even know they intended to (more rear wheel room!). Again, this is my theory and I mean no offense to companies in the existing Mustang market. If you are at one of those Mustang companies and are reading this, I was referring to
you guys as the only "real" Mustang innovators, OK?
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