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So after I won the autocross I was told to park in the Winner's Circle area with all of the car show class winners and previous day's autocross SM and PRO class winners. Lots of people came by to shoot pics of the big red Mustang, which was fun but weird to watch. Honestly the this car had so little to do with the win, at least within this class - it was mostly about getting through a painfully tight course as cleanly and close to the cones as possible. I think I could have done as well or better in a rental automatic Mustang, and I got beat last year by one of the Pro driver's in his wife's automatic and stock 5th gen Camaro convertible. These Goodguys courses are super tricky and don't emphasize the car's performance all that much.
Amy and I parked the car in the car show area and ran into the Fuzzy's Taco Shop that is inside TMS. We ate some good Tex Mex and warmed up, then went around and talked to some friends we saw also parked in Winner's Circle area, like Stuart in his GT500 SuperSnake and Wade in his 32 Ford. They told us the whole awards presentation was moved up an hour due to the weather, so we hopped in the car and got in line, then drove past the bleachers and announcer tent to get our winnings.
Official Results: https://www.good-guys.com/slsn-ac-14
Vorshlag Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ocross-at-TMS/
Left: Amy was not pleased when I took this picture while she was thawing out from the cold. Right: The Goodguys goodie bag was immense!
A nice trophy accompanied the awards packet (linked at the beginning of this section). Free set of tires from BFG and gift cards and deeply discounted certificates from other sponsors - nice! Can't get Rivals with this but it will help ease the pain of that $1300 set of tires (again - ouch!) that we got to run this and the USCA event. After that we followed the mass exodus leaving speedway, loaded up in the trailer, and headed home by 1 pm - which has to be a record early end time for us at any given autocross. The other event we
would have been at if not for Goodguys, the Texas Region SCCA Solo #1, had 193 entrants and ran for most of the day in these same miserable conditions, so we lucked out on our early departure that day!
Some Random Mustang Work
We work on a lot of cars in our service and race prep shop, and one of those recently was
Vorshlag Tester Mark Council's 2012 Mustang GT, who is also the OKC Region SCCA Autocross Chairman. We've already swapped his car from 3.55 to 3.31 gears, which he really enjoys for autocross and track use (no 2-3 shifts in parking lots and fewer shifts on track as well). This car has Forgestar F14 18x11s, AST 4150s w/550F/250R springs, Vorshlag plates, Whiteline swaybars, and a Torsen T2R.
We had installed a
Cobra Suzuka GT kevlar racing seat into his car a while back, using the custom S197 bracket we make to go with the Cobra slider and Cobra side mount brackets. He loved the new
Corbeau S197 Harness Bar, new seat and 6-point harnesses and raved about how much more control he had gained with this seat. He drives the car to events from as far as 5 hours away, and does a lot of track and autocrossing in the car, on both street tires (295/35/18 BFG Rivals) and R compounds (315mm Kumho V710s).
He loved the new driver's seat so much he went ahead and sprung for a passenger seat upgrade, which any track instructors or passengers will greatly appreciate. If you do one seat you really should do the other side as well. To save a bit he went with the steel framed fixed back
Cobra Monoco seat on the passenger's side, which was about half the cost of the kevlar Suzuka. It only has about a 2 pound penalty in weight over the composite seats, and being a Cobra product, it still looks great and has very high quality construction and materials (I ordered some more of these seats for inventory). He skipped the slider on the passenger side and we just mounted the seat fixed to the bracket, fairly far back and lower than it would have been with a slider - which is what we often do on the right side seat.
Another change he had in mind was a new rear Upper Control Arm assembly. After reading what we had to say about poly bushings, Del-Sphere and all of the other variations on the upper arm and mounts he went with some brand new "ultimate" UCA from BMR, shown below. The instillation was straightforward, but still time consuming. You need a lift, removal of the back seat, and a BIG torque wrench for the main bolt (which should be torqued to 250-300 ft-lbs, depending on the brand - see your manufacturer's instructions) to tighten the mount to the chassis. The pinion angle also has to be adjusted, and there is even a second set of holes in the chassis mount for potential geometry changes.
The upper control arm is one of those places where a spherical seems like the right choice, as this bushing has to pivot much more than the LCA bushings do. And to match the new upper arm's spherical he went with a Steeda spherical bushing replacement on the axle side of the UCA arm axis also, per our suggestions.
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