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I guess these big, powerful, heavy cars can just get the brakes too dang hot and the harsh XP20 Carbotech pad material we are using is embedding itself into the top layer of the clear coat on these wheels. Wouldn't be a problem on a street car or with most street compound brake pads, but this is the reason why so many race cars use grey, black or silver wheels. Live and learn... race wheels need to be some shade of "brake dust color", just to be safe. The other "flat grey" set of 18x12's we have looks excellent and has seen much more track time, of course.
So the lower grill opening got yet another screen, this time back in the stainless 1/4" spacing mesh we used before. Ryan and I talked about the Kevlar radiator screen and the few hotter than normal sessions we saw at Miller (and once at ECR) with that installed, so he fabricated another mesh screen surround frame & insert for the CS Lower Fascia. It was something to test again, we verified to be better at TWS, but there were other restrictions that happen when you "mow the grass" off track. I'll talk about that in my TWS race write-up, heh. We would have put the old screen back in but a customer with a 2012 Boss
really wanted to buy that first screen from us, so it was sold off about a month ago. This now "screens" all incoming air to the radiator and air filter, since the upper grill is blocked off.
We made a new splitter for testing and use TWS (at left) that was approx. 4" shorter than the splitter we used at Miller (at right)
The big job I asked our fab crew to tackle before TWS was
MAKE ME A NEW SPLITTER! Yes, it seems like a lot of work, and it was, but it paid off with a balanced car at speed (more on that below). The 10.25" splitter we used at Miller was a big too aggressive, and too much of a good thing (front downforce) turned into a loose car at speed. I'm really more surprised than anything that this worked... because "all of the textbooks" say that a splitter stalls past 6" in length. Well, this one sure didn't, and the 10.25" length unit just kept on pushing down on the front wheels. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we ducted the hood, added the waterfall deflector, and blocked the upper grill, but the "long" splitter was overpowering the rear downforce. Ideally I would have liked to keep the long version and tried a wider 2D wing element with a longer chord (and possibly a more efficient design with more downforce at a lower AoA) on the rear, but the budget for a new wing just wasn't there, either in time or money.
Luckily we had made 2 identical water jet aluminum splitter elements before we went to Nationals, so Ryan and the crew cut down the "spare" unit by 4" in length and made a 2nd full splitter. Still the same width, and still much larger than the surface area of the '12 Leguna splitter, and much stiffer. Since we might want to test this original 10 incher again later (on this car or another S197), I had them keep the old splitter intact and make a completely new unit from the spare piece. The new 6" unit has a new 1" square tube lower spacer, new strut mounting tabs welded in place (closer to the leading edge), new pin mounts at the back, everything. And we painted this one black, too.
Of course we learned some lessons from building the last splitter and this version one went a lot faster, and mounts faster/easier/better, too. Subtle tweaks here and there. And even though this 6" long unit is as low as the 10" long splitter before, the shorter front length makes it able to load the car into the trailer with the front end attached again. We still have to use a lot of ramps, but it works without scraping. Much. Huge time and hassle savings, though.
Now that we have a fully functional, remote controlled winch we can pull it in or out of the trailer with ease. And as you can see in the picture above, we have re-installed the OEM side view mirrors. Why? Well it can't really be called a street car without these. We pulled these off for the high speed track at Miller, as we were looking for every way to reduce drag. For that one event, where there wasn't any "leaving/returning" to a hot track, it almost made sense. At any other Time Trial or HPDE, where there is more passing.... not so much. If it was a pure race car we would install a multi-element rearview mirror at the top of the windshield (like a
Wink mirror) plus a "school bus" convex side mirror on the driver's side, mounted to a roll cage just inside the car.
Another upgrade we did to our TT3 Mustang before Miller but finally got around to getting pictures of was an improved set of front brake backing plates for cooling air ducting. These finally match what we've been making for our customers for months and replaced the first versions we made 2 years ago. The original set for this car was a bit compromised and we have since made about a dozen sets for customers using the 14" front Brembos. Now we're finally making a production batch and will have them for sale soon in our
Mustang S197 Brakes section of the Vorshlag website.
We did a lot of suspension, safety and other track prep work to another Boss 302 Leguna Seca last week (shown
here) and Brandon got some good pics of the improved ducting plates we made for his car, too (check out the ghosted composite image, above). We also added a Whiteline Watts, rear control arms and brackets, Vorshlag/Bilstein StreetPro suspension, 5300-K springs, and more before he heads off to do the Big Bend Open Road high speed event.
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