Project Update for December 2nd, 2013: After the October TMS road course autocross the next event on our race schedule wasn't for three whole weeks. The gaps between race weekends are getting longer as the season winds down. Of course I had something going on every weekend day between these events, but at least not any races. We were wrapping up the last of the work on the 2011 GT, both for this season ending NASA weekend at ECR as well as before the car would (hopefully) be sold an upcoming eBay auction (it wasn't). We were slammed at the shop during this 3 week break but we made time to finish the pre-race prep a few days before the Nov 2-3 race weekend, where we pick up below.
While the shop was working on getting the car ready, Brandon made the new TT race map for ECR, shown above. We took the satellite image and found that
the old 2008 track map we had been using for years was not drawn to scale. Our new ECR track map (above right) is not perfect but a lot closer to reality than the old map. We marked the "bunch up" and "go" green zones and marked the corner numbers the same as always, then made 40+ copies for the Time Trial racers to use in our meetings.
Pre-ECR Race Prep
This was the last NASA competition event we had planned for this car, so we worked hard to wrap up any unfinished projects and upgrades before we went to ECR. This included tweaks to the flares, brakes, and rear diff catch can system.
Jason worked on the flares, wrapping our black ABS work in red vinyl that matched the factory Race Red paint. Then he cut new stripes fore the sides and with Brandon's help they re-applied the strips to the flare section. This made them look less ugly than they did before, and was something we should have made time to do before going to Miller or TWS in the last few months.
Ryan re-routed the lines for the oil catch can/vacuum recovery system after seeing the hoses keep flattening out from a high vacuum condition. We've been chasing the correct routing for this system for months, and the way some Ford guys told us to do it wasn't working (they set-up these cars simply as an external breather, but we wanted to pull a slight vacuum on the crankcase). The vacuum source we were using was too strong, though, and sucking the hoses flat. We punted and temporarily just turned this system into a vented catch can system without vacuum (which we fixed after this race weekend; I will show that in my next post).
As I mentioned at Miller, the front Brembo calipers on this car have seen at least 100 cycles on and off the car. We used to swap rotors and pads between a street/autocross set-up and the track-only stuff. So some of the threaded mounting holes were starting to wear and had to be repaired (helicoil). We had picked up a spare set of new Brembo calipers to have on hand "just in case", and the Thursday before this weekend's events the guys in our shop were bleeding a little fluid through the calipers when one of the threaded hole for the banjo bolt/brake hose finally stripped. It was time to replace the front calipers (we had replaced the rears when we went to the 13.8" GT500 rotors out back), so they put on the new set and stuck the old ones in the "spares" pile to be rebuilt (for the 3rd time) and to have the stripped hole re-tapped and helicoiled.
Once the new Brembo front calipers were swapped on (along with new brake pad pins and clips + the existing Carbotech pads that we used at Miller & TWS), the rest of the car was "nut and bolted" and inspected closely. One change was made to the routing of the diff vent tube overflow line and that system was buttoned up. The "AGM" style, 14 pound Odyssey PC680 battery was charged up (its starting to get tired after 3 years of street and track use, so we will finally replace it after this next race weekend) and the car went into the trailer with all of our gear. We loaded the car on a well worn set of 315/30/18
Hoosier R6 tires but a fresh sticker set of A6s were mounted and balanced onto the "white" showcar wheels and those were loaded in the trailer, to hopefully be installed Friday night at the end of our planned test day.
ECR Test Day, Friday Nov 1st, 2013 - Day 1 of 3
With the trailer loaded I picked up Ryan at the shop at 7 am on Friday morning and we towed the 70 miles out to ECR, in heavy morning commute traffic. The plan was to get there around 8, find a good paddock spot for the weekend, unload the car, unhook the trailer, run some laps and tweak the set-up for a few hours, then swap on the A6 tire set at the end of the day, stuff the car back inside the trailer for the night, and head back to the shop in the truck. If all went well we'd come attack the NASA weekend on Saturday morning in TT3, already set-up and with me "mentally ready" to put in my best laps in an early session. Getting there Friday would also ensure we had a better paddock space for the weekend. I took a few (crappy) pictures with camera phone, and had the Nikon ready for use by Ryan, but there is not much photo coverage of this Friday test day.... because everything went pear shaped.
We actually got there by 8:30am (morning traffic was murder) but the weather was absolutely beautiful (the area had gotten 3 inches of rain the two days previous, though, so it was
very muddy off track!); low 60s with plenty of sun and breeze. We unloaded the Mustang and I noticed that the fuel gauge was almost on "E". Hmm, that was a mistake at the shop. :/ Should have fueled it up before it was loaded. We looked in the trailer and only had one spare fuel jug, which was of course
empty, for mistake number two. Oh well, no worries - the track has 4 grades of fuel at their pumps... right?
Wrong. The pumps were completely out.
Great! (they got a fuel delivery late that afternoon). I quickly went out on track briefly at the end of the first track session and made
one test lap but the car ran very poorly, bucking and popping like it was misfiring badly. Zero power and very worrying, so I immediately came in and talked with Ryan. We thought that with such a low fuel load maybe it was fuel starving EVERYWHERE? Weird. So let's resolve that by getting fuel before I fret too much.
Our next task was a hunt for fuel jugs. We went asking around in paddock and borrowed 5 empty fuel jugs from an American Iron racer, then took that plus our single empty jug we had brought and drove 15 miles to the nearest gas station. We filled up with 30 gallons of 93 octane fuel, put 10 of that into the Mustang and kept our 5 gallon jug filled for use later in the day. The AI racer gave us some cash for the 15 gallons we got for him, and we could finally get started for the day. So I went out a second time with more than enough fuel now and made another lap. No better - motor was still running very badly, misfiring, bucking, and popping, at both part throttle and WOT. Immediately came in since I didn't want to hurt anything.
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