Vorshlag 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT - track/autocross/street Project

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So how was the Mustang on the NT-05s? It was terrible, the tires overheated quickly, and they made a LOT of noise. I was told by many folks they could hear me from a mile away, just due to the howling of the tires. In my first session where I went 10/10ths on every lap I only managed a best of 2:05.9. I could get a half of a lap of hard driving before the rears would start to boil and I had to back-pedal coming out of 3rd gear corners. I had to watch out for overheating on my out lap. 2nd gear was completely unusable on the exit of Turn 11, so I left it in 3rd and skated around delicately. The car had a MASSIVE push all day (even after lots of set-up changes), especially after the right front got hot, so the car would just push push PUSH worse if I didn't take a cool-down lap.

The same steering feedback shudder we've been fighting for a year was still present (new steering racks are still on national backorder until the end of June), and the brakes sucked. It took me the first two track sessions before I figured out that the booster just wasn't working at speed, and I had to brute force the brake pedal to get it to stop. It made heel-toe downshifts tricky, and I did a lot of left foot braking to be able to press hard enough (and would swap feet mid-braking zone). By my 3rd session I could finally get into threshold braking on all corners. After I figured out the work-around for the busted brake booster, and once I finally listened to JasonM, Ed, Mike and Amy (thanks for coming out to help guys! It was huge) about taking one hot lap followed by one cool down lap, I started dropping time. 2:04s were followed by a lone 2:03.9. Here are some abbreviated results, but all are linked here.



Name..........Fastest Time.. (Car)
Louis Gigliotti.........1:59.772 (LG ZR1)
Dave Michaels.....2:01.904 (LPE 5th gen Camaro)
Terry Fair...............2:03.967 (Vorshlag S197 Mustang)
Todd Earlsey........2:05.756 (Evo-D EVO-9)
Brian Finch...........2:06.052 (Royal Purple 71 Camaro)

So my 2:03.9 lap ended up being the 3rd fastest time overall, which was a bit of a surprise. That is slower than I've run in the same car on narrower tires here before, but it was the best I could muster that day. Maybe it was the conditions, the heat, the NT-05s, and a bunch of broken parts (steering rack + booster), but I still wasn't happy with the laps in the Mustang. I also regretted the 550 #/in front 275#/in rear springs, which have done nothing but make the car push since we put them on (when we added the Moton Club Sports). Those have since come off and we've gone back with the previous set-up of 450F/175R. It always rotated better, put power down better, and didn't have this awful push. (I'll retest this set-up this weekend at ECR).



During the last few later afternoon sessions the heat was rising and the times were too - nobody was going fast. I knew I wasn't going to find much if any more time and the rear tires were cooked. I had been talking to Ed during my sessions, who was relaying to me the announced times lap by lap. The Ford "Sync" system linked to my iPhone via Bluetooth works VERY well, and we had some of the best 2-way on track comms I've ever seen at ECR. Ed would call me before I went out on course, I'd answer, and just cranked up the radio speakers. With a full face helmet he could hear me talking back to him, too. He spotted traffic for me, told me lap times, and most importantly - calmed me down when I was over-driving the car. That's when we managed the 2:03 lap time - with a strategy of cool down laps then hot laps.



They allowed competitors to run on track almost as often as they liked, and each time they announced "we have an empty grid" I would scramble up there, if I wasn't already in line. So after six track sessions (?!) I was pretty burned out and had spent very little time out of the car and out of my driver's suit. The crew that was there was keeping me hydrated between sessions, and the camera guys were constantly adding and removing cameras to the car between sessions. The handful of minutes I stepped out of the car I was peeling off the driving suit and damn near passed out in our trailer - out of the sun. I still ended up doing another 3 or 4 on-camera interviews, as the crew figured out that I was running top 3 times, and since we did well enough in the autocross to possibly be an "overall" contender. Goldberg was super nice and really liked the car, and kept encouraging us to keep pushing it out on track. So I kept going out, over and over, pouring more and more fuel into the tank.



I inadvertently left my Sony HD video camera on after my 2nd track session (stupid!) and killed both the battery and filled up the SD card after, so I didn't get much in-car video of my own. This week I purchased a mega-over-sized battery and two more SD cards, plus a wired remote from Sony so I can control and see when the damn thing is recording.


Some of the many TV cameras set-up at the ECR portion of the Optima Faceoff

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My last two sessions the lap times simply weren't there. Ran some 2:04s, lots of 2:05s, but it was just too damned hot. There was a camera crew by the pit wall and a crowd was gathering, including the TV host Goldberg... and with the rear tires overheated, I started hooning. A lot. They were loving it, waving for more, so I kept stepping the tail out in turn 11... and then into 3, and 7, and basically in front of each big camera station on course. I was hooning my ass off - cameras make me stupid. I also had Ed on the phone telling me that the announcer and the crowd were eating it up, and they were betting how much I'd hang it out each lap, so I gave them more and more, and started kicking the car all the way through 11 sideways.



Now I still don't condone the "sport" of drifting, but if "driving a little loose" gets me on TV, I'm gonna do it. It's not hard - we used to mess around after autocrosses back in college (TAMSCC!) and set-up these impromptu drift sessions. This was long before the Drifting "sport" became a fad, before the e-brakes and the banged up cars, and decades before Ken Block and funny shoes. We were just a bunch of autocrossers "practicing". So if this event makes it into a TV show some of this clowning might get shown. The camera guys kept telling me "this is great stuff!", and the car wasn't getting any faster, so who knows?

Lingenfelter Performance and Design Challenge

One more "competition" for the weekend was a "performance and design" subjective thing. Again, I thought this was for a full 25 points, but it ended up only being a 5 point deal so it didn't alter the results too much. Compared to the crazy hardware that is typical at these events, our car is pretty plain and I figured we'd do poorly in this part of the challenge.


Left: The winner of the Design Challenge, Rodney Moore. Right: The Design Challenge judges talking to me about the Mustang (it got 5th place)

The top guys from Lingenfelter, Optima and Wilwood came by and checked out the car and asked several questions. The point of this judgement was visual improvements, of which we have done very little. I told them, hey, this is our suspension test mule so it's not about looks... but we've made this rear wing set-up, the rear spoiler used on Friday, added this LS splitter, these "Vorshlag" wheels are ours, and most importantly these are our camber plates and other suspension bits. I guess it helped and the Mustang scored the last point in 5th position.

Top Ten Track Shoot-out

This was another non-points event they held, run after the day's "BFG Hot Lap Challenge" track time was done. The ten fastest cars were called up to the grid, lined from fastest to slowest, and they wanted us to make a 5 lap sprint to the checkered flag. The announcer said it was all about getting to the flag first, and I tried to ask someone on pit road if this was indeed the case. Ed was talking to me on the phone during the whole session again, and passing along lap times, announcer's and crowd's feedback, etc. As far as we knew it was about working your way up through the pack and getting to the finish line first. They lined up Lewis' ZR1 in front, then the LPE Camaro was supposed to be 2nd (but it caught on fire late in the day, then was pouring transmission fluid onto the exhaust by now and wasn't allowed to run) so they moved me up from 3rd place. The rest of the field was behind me, but all I had eyes for was the ZR1 Corvette. They sent us out 15 seconds apart, and we were supposed to NOT pass on the out lap (yellow flag out lap were the rules for the day), but after the green flag dropped it was on.

I tore ass through pit-out and was catching the ZR1 by turn 3. I knew how each of the top 10 cars were performing from running so many sessions that day - everyone was running hot, taking cool down laps, or only making 1-2 lap sessions. I felt like I could push the Mustang 10/10ths on a 5 lap sprint without slowing down more than a second from my fastest time all day. Driving Flat Out for each lap wouldn't make for the fastest peak time, but it could allow me to pass faster cars. And the only one faster left was the ZR1. So on the out lap I hauled ass, caught up to Loise's Corvette, and painted his mirrors red with Mustang. I wasn't going to pass him on the warm up lap, but I was letting him know I was back here. "Hi, Louis!" He saw me swerving back and forth, as I was baiting him to push it hard on the out lap. That boosted ZR1 had about 1 fast lap in it, but the Mustang could lay down 5 heaters...

He fell for it by turn 5, put the hammer down, and we were in a sprint race on the out lap! Come on, heat soak that intercooler! By the time we were at the green flag I think there was 8 or so car lengths between us and he was hanging it out trying to gap me. I pushed as hard as I could on the first timed lap and ran a 2:04 to Lewiz's 2:00. On lap 2 the ZR1 was cooking, the intercooler was heat-soaked, and I got a hasty point by into turn 3, which I took with a smile! Ed was hooting and hollering, saying that the announcer and the crowd was going nuts! "Pass him! Pass him!" I got around the ZR1 and opened up a huge gap. The ZR1 slowed to a 2:38 on lap two. Now that I was in the lead I drove like a man possessed, pushing to the limit, and the tires quickly overheated.


Left: the field got bunched up like this after a couple of laps, a good half lap behind me. Right: Pulling in first felt good!

I didn't care - these tires sucked and I'd NEVER be driving on them again, so I was eager to sacrifice the set. Ed told me that my gap was big and nobody was catching up, the crowd was going nuts, so I started pushing too hard... and hooning a little. Then started hooning a LOT. The crowd on pit wall was waving and shooting video, and I think I was waving back while going sideways. By the 5th and final lap I had a big gap on the field and was catching the last car, and still yawing through any turn that had a camera. I took the checker, then a much needed cool-down lap. Damn, I wish my camera was working during that session... that was THE most fun I've had behind the wheel in my life. Pushing the car, passing the ZR1, hooning for the crowds and cameras, and Ed egging me on via bluetooth. That was a smile that took hours to wear off!


Goldberg giving me the thumbs up after I made it to the checkered flag first. Parc ferme, P1!

I pulled into pit road and Goldberg was telling the TV crew, "I want Terry's Mustang RIGHT HERE, in front!" (Amy was standing next to him). I pulled up to where they wanted me, climbed out, and was drenched in sweat. I thought I had won the "top ten shootout", but they decided to award the win to the fastest lap driven, which was the ZR1. Again, by now we were all used to the "fluid nature" of the event structure (there was some interesting radio chatter, arguing one way or the other, even after the checkered flag was thrown). Fair enough. The camera crew went to interview sponsors, the LG crew, and others. Of all of the events during the weekend, this was where I felt I did the best. I knew who got through 5 laps fastest and had a huge blast doing it.


Left: LG crew being interviewed after winning the top ten shootout. Right: Me, Lou, and Louis talking after the top ten laps.

After we were done with the cameras, Loueis made a crack about the out lap "All I could see in my mirrors was red, you ass!" We all had a good laugh waiting for the cars to cool down and the final camera work to wrap up. I've known the guys at LG for over a decade and Louis is a friend of mine, so all of my wise cracks (like misspelling his name!) are in good humor. They brought one damned fast car to this event and clearly had the fastest lap time all day, and in the top ten shootout, and I begrudge them nothing. I've owned and raced multiple Corvettes myself and wish dearly that I could own one (I don't race Corvettes for business reasons, but that is all), especially a ZR1 as badass as theirs!

Overall Placement

Once that little pit row gathering ended, I took the car back to the trailer and peeled out of my driving suit, then started guzzling water (Amy and I were laid up all day Sunday with the after-effects of dehydration). The guys took care of the car and got everything shut down. Our whole crew piled into a truck and drove up the hill to the awards presentation at Optima Prime.It was 6pm on Saturday and we still had no idea how our car had placed. I still had no clue that we had won the autocross, nor did I know I placed so poorly in the Speed Stop. I knew fairly well that we were 3rd fastest in the track portion, but that was the only thing concrete. The big questions was: who was the overall winner, and who would get the invite(s) to the BIG Optima Shootout in November? (held right after the SEMA show)

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That once-a-year street car shootout has been televised on Speed for a while and that was the goal: get an invite. They had warned us that the invitees were more about the "spirit of the event" and not necessarily the fastest cars, but we held out hope.



Left: one of my on-camera interviews with Goldberg, "I don't know what to do with my hands..." Right: After the Top Ten Shootout

They rattled off the top 3 finishers in each category, with the Speed Stop winner (Todd's EVO), Track day winner (Louis' ZR1), the design competition winner (Rodney Moore's beautiful 1970 440-six pack Cuda), then they rattled off the autocross winners... I wasn't third, I wasn't second, then they rattled off "with a time of 30.5".. hey, didn't I run that time? "Terry Fair". Whu.. hey, that is me?! I was completely FLOORED, as I thought all along I had done no better than 3rd place in the cone carving. On stage they asked me, "How did you get through that tight course so fast?" I said something like "I tried to make the car as narrow as I could!" Did I mention that cameras make me stupid? I probably looked like Ricky Bobby in this clip for every TV interview I did. "I felt like I was in a space ship..."



After they did the complicated math for the 5 scored categories, the overall placings were: Todd's EVO in first, L3w1z' ZR1 in second, and my Mustang + Brian Finch's Camaro tied for third. The two invitees to the "big show" in November ended up being two excited entrants with interesting stories (both of whom did the "Long Haul" for HOT ROD's Power Tour) that weren't too terribly close to the top of the time sheets in any given event. Again, "spirit of the event" and all. Heck, after finding out that I placed 1st in the autocross and 3rd overall I was so relieved that I didn't care about not getting an Optima Ultimate Street Car Shootout invitation. Not much, anyway.


The Optima Qualifier Events - Should You Enter?

It's hard to describe how insanely fun and different this event was. The same mega-trailers that were at QuikTrip Park were relocated to the top of the hill at ECR in the early hours of the morning, again - I had never seen an autocross or track event of this magnitude, with this level of sponsorship support and camera coverage, especially at our little club track! The various crews of Optima series folks outdid themselves on Saturday with big man lifts and cranes out on course with manned TV cameras covering 90% of the 2.5 mile road course. They had AMB transponders; portable lipstick cameras on several cars in each session; multiple radio channels for TV crew, race control and corner workers; and the SCCA corner workers did an excellent job flagging, as usual. Lunch was delicious catered Bar-B-Q, free to all entrants, and the TV hosts + Optima folks + race control crew were all super friendly and professional all weekend.


Left: Our crew getting the car ready between sessions. Right: The plague of grasshoppers did a number on the cars!

This Optima series is run like nothing I have ever seen in the SCCA, NASA, or any HPDE group. Even pro level road racing series don't have crews that work like this. Amazing, slick, punctual, professional and well worth every penny of my meager entry fee. I got so much track time, tons of autocross and speed stop runs, a cool T-shirt, free food, an unforgettable experience, and we might even see the little red Mustang on TV if we're lucky. Not bad for 230 bucks! After reading this, if you thought this sounds like fun, and you have an Optima Qualifier event near you - by all means, do it! Sure, running on 200 treadwear street tires can be a buzz kill, but everyone is on the same type of tires (here's a hint: use the Michelin PSS!). Yes, there are some tuner shops' crazy cars and a few semi-professional drivers that are regulars in the series - but as you can see, three local NASA regulars did pretty well in the overall results at this one.

Just be prepared for a little more emphasis on the TV show aspects than the straight forward competition events you may be used to, but it was still very competitive. Not knowing the standings from each event in real time was frustrating, but all part of the show! Go in with the right mind-set and you will have a blast. And who knows - you just might end up on TV (they will be filming at several Optima Qualifiers and making a series of shows leading up to the November shootout; I'll post up when we know when/if this event's show goes to air).

What's Next?

Man, its been a week and a half since this event and I'm still smarting from the poor placings in the Speed Stop and Track portions. I will look back, remember all of the things wrong with the car, and just shake my head. There was nothing we can do about the steering rack for the past few months (short of pulling one from a wrecked 2011+ car), but the brake booster issues, crappy tires, spring rate/set-up problems, and unscrubbed tires and brake pads were all bone-head mistakes that could have been avoided. I didn't take this event serious enough to do any testing on the NT-05s, where we could have made some adjustments. Knowing how much TV coverage this event got I wish I could go back and do some things differently. Hindsight is 20:20...

It's hard to follow that crazy event with a lowly track day or autocross, but that's what we've got planned. Luckily we had two weeks and a weekend off of any sort of racing, to recover. Ryan has already rebuilt the Mustang's front calipers (dust seals, hardware, new brake line, new fluid, etc), swapped out to the softer springs, and fixed a number of little things that plagued the Mustang over the Optima weekend - I'll cover this in my next thread update. The Mustang has a few more track events to attend this year before we move it to a more dedicated ESP-autocross-only preparation plan for the remainder of 2012. We're taking it back to ECR again for an HPDE "fun track day" Saturday, June 23rd. For details on how to sign up, click here ($150, unstructured track day - join us!). We'll run the 315 Kumho V710s, the "old" (softer) spring set-up on the Motons, and I will play with rear aero Angle Of Attack (AOA) at this event (we started to tweak this at the end of the Optima event).



Hopefully with these fixes and real R compounds the Mustang can crack the 2 minute mark (I ran 1:57s back in 2008 with a junkyard 5.7L in the E36, having zero track experience at ECR). The American Iron track record is 2:00 flat, so beating that is the goal. Amy is bringing our E46 330 "TTD" car (shown above) for some laps on fresh 285/30/18 Hoosier R6s to try to outrun our existing TTD track record, which was a 2:12.9 (set by Paul Costas in our BMW 330, 2 years ago, on crapped-out Yokohamas). This car has been getting worked on lately, and is now streetable again (new high flow cat). Sunday I will swap out the rear wing for the spoiler and Amy and I will run the Mustang at an SCCA autocross at Texas Motor Speedway, testing the spring set-up changes on a known site and the known-good Kumhos. After that we have a 2 week break we will try to use to design and build some new rear suspension bits.



We've also started to finally attack another in-house project car, specifically with the goal to be able to enter these "wide open" street car type track events, like the Optima Challenge, TX2K, OLOA, UTCC, and more. This is using our white E46 BMW 330Ci chassis, a big nasty LS motor, with goals of light weight, lots of tire, and some custom aero. Check our BMW E46 330 LS1 "Alpha" build thread soon for more details. We couldn't ever really find a good racing class to build this E46 LS1 swap mule for - everything we came up with had some goofy limitation or classing restriction. Building the E46 Alpha for these unlimited street car events let's us show some more of our race prep services, tests our production E46 LSx swap parts, and yet keeping it streetable (working windows, wipers, lights, defrost, ABS) helps us relate to more of our customer's needs. It also lets us enter a variety of street car competition events with it. We've begun tearing into this car this week for a full-on "track terror / still streetable / no rules" build. Because if I do another Optima event, I'm not going to take a knife to a gun fight again!

Cheers,

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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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Costas had driven this BMW at a NASA TT event in 2010 here at ECR and set the track record for TTD at 2:12.9, which is still intact, but did it at the time on some shredded 265/35/18 Yokohama A048s. Our goal this day was to see if we could beat that time on a better prepped version of the same car (it's now at the limit for TTD preparation for points). This Bimmer now has a fresh M54 motor, fresh 285/30/18 Hoosier R6s, but the race seats have been removed and an emissions legal exhaust has been added (3" high flow cat), so who knows? Amy and I planned on swapping sessions between both cars, but with only one video camera and one lap timer (the dreaded G-Tech RR) we would have to do some gear swapping.



The driver's meeting was at 7:30 and immediately after they wanted the Advanced group to go on track - which Amy and I were both signed up for. Amy managed to get several laps in the BMW, but I was still mounting the video camera, wiring up the new Sony remote to that (which worked great! Now I can turn the camera on/off, record, zoom, and even snap pictures from this small remote that can be clipped to the E-brake handle - all while strapped into the race seat). I got out for one lap before the checkered flag, so I didn't bother to record that session.



The ECR crew was running everyone in about 20 minute sessions, split between the Advanced, Intermediate and Beginners groups. A few weeks ago the pre-registered car count was pretty low, under 22 cars, so I started hustling up some attendance online, along with several others that were going. We saw some SCCA autocross regulars that heard about the event from my Facebook postings and e-mail bombardments, many of which had never done a track day before. After today they were now hooked! With about 30 entrants in the beginner class it was nice to see a lot of new folks trying out an HPDE track event for the first time. Fresh blood - This is what its all about! Now they know first hand how much they need camber plates and better suspension parts...



Lots and lots... and lots of Mustangs. I think the final car count was 48, which was excellent considering that this was only one day past the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year, and we saw 101°F temps!) and the first event put on by Five Star Ford. Excellent event, catered food, relaxed atmosphere, instructors, perfect SCCA corner workers, and the usual great ECR track crew.



Costas (black GT-1 Camaro) had the field covered with his hardware and talent, bringing the lightest, most powerful, tube-framed race car with the largest tires. If you got it, bring it! His videos showed a best lap of 1:51, which is mind-bogglingly-fast, and betters the NASA TTR record by a good 4 seconds. He'd be foolish not to bring this car to the October NASA event to potentially get his name in the record books again. His buddy Mike brought his Gold/Orange GT-1 Camaro for some fun laps, but it's not nearly as wild and wooly as the black one. He's still having a lot of fun tracking it each time I see him out there.



Brian Hanchey of AST/Moton USA brought out his new track toy, a 2005 GT with some go fast goodies and suspension. This was his first track event or any real outing in the car, so he and Moton-USA VP (and AI Camaro racer) Mike Patterson wanted to get some shake down laps in after it received a new motor and some other ex-World Challenge bits (big Brembos, engine stuff, Torson T2R). He arrived on some heavy 18x9.5" wheels and 255mm BFGoodrich 300 treadwear tires that came with the car, but I thought those skinny tires were holding the performance back a good bit. I had brought the 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s on the D-Force 18x10s to show off and possibly sell, so we mounted them on his Mustang for one session. These were better enough to drop his best lap time by about 2.9 seconds - NT05s still are not my favorite track "street tires", but they are a damn sight better than 255 BFG Comp TAs! Once again we realized that tires matter.



He got a lot of good laps in, blowing out the old track cobwebs and getting some good data logged on the car and set-up. He had to deal with some needless overheating issues at the event, but after checking data today he saw that it had a theoretical 2:06 lap (with merged sectors from other laps; this sector analyzing is done all the time) - which isn't too shabby for 200 treadwear street tires! Throw on some big fat R compounds and it is knocking on the golden 2 minute barrier. We've turned a few wrenches on this car (made custom race seat slider brackets + some exhaust mods), but most of the drivetrain work was done by a GRAND AM race team. The motor and exhaust sound MEAN on this car and once this hotted-up motor is dyno-tuned and running on real tires, this unassuming black GT will be a track terror. Brian really convinced me to quit screwing around and BUY the damned Torsen T2R, which he raved about in this car.




Vorshlag BMW and Mustang - On Track Impressions

So the track day event ran super smoothly, but how about some lap times in our cars? Amy went out in the BMW for 3 sessions, where I timed her from pit wall during part of one session (I came in early - after the steering rack's "death shudder" started), but we were mostly out on track together at the same time - hence very few on-track pictures of any of our cars or others' in the Advance group. It wasn't until days later that I had the in-car videos rolling to know the lap times in the Mustang, but we never got times in the BMW.



She and I both ran the BMW on track at the same time as Hanchey's Mustang, who was running a new AIM Solo GPS lap timer ($399, or $699 with optional wired OBD-II data option). That little timer unit is nice, and I want one. The OBD-II data stream was quite impressive. The Solo has a great mount, easy to read display, on-board battery, predictive lap timing, it already had ECR in its memory, etc. If you are on the fence about what lap timer to get - just go to Bimmerworld (or your favorite AIM dealer) and get an AIM Solo and be done with it.

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The BMW felt damn near perfect - brakes were awesome (just some HP+ pads on the stock rotors + good lines), handling was flat and grippy (AST 4200s + 285mm Hoosiers + Powerflex bushings throughout), and the power was surprisingly peppy and easy to put down (OS Giken diff FTW). This lower mileage M54 is a lot better than the original lump we raced with in DSP in 2009. Old blue was pretty darned quick and we both passed most of the cars in attendance while driving it. We can tell from looking at Hanchey's laps during the same session when he was running behind us that the BMW ran at least a 2:09 laps, and more likely 2:08s. This is little better than speculation, but I did manage to get a 2:10 lap timed on one of Amy's many laps. So it easily beat it's old TTD record, now that it is on big Hoosiers. Tires matter.



Here is Amy's best lap in the Mustang (2:03.2), with some footage of me in the BMW. Click for 720P video

Here's Amy making laps in the Mustang. If you watch her in-car video above you will see me in the BMW, briefly, coming back on track. Yea, I uhh.... had an "off" in the BMW, but nothing got hurt, other than my pride. You see, I was dicing it up on track with Hanchey's Mustang for a couple of hot laps, was screwing around and got the rear tires REALLY hot drifting through Turn 4-5 (on accident!), then took Turn 6 as fast as before... but the rear tires had zero grip. Back end stepped out a little, which I counter-steered, added a little throttle. Didn't help. I added full lock and full throttle. Nope, still coming around. Felt like it was in slow motion, the whole time I'm thinking "What the hell, I don't EVER go off of tracks sideways!". Went for a ride, going off on the inside of the exit of Turn 6. Weirdest off I've ever had. No harm other than some grass packed in the tire bead (since fixed), no foul - except Amy drove by right after I got back on track, so she totally busted me.


Left: Amy's "look of displeasure" is obvious! Right: My driving talent on full display. I was merely "exploring an alternative line"...

Amy said she had a blast driving both cars, but really liked tracking the Mustang better. It's just always going to be so much quicker on any sort of road course, with nearly double the horsepower. With the same drivers, and on similar tires (R6 vs V710), suspension (AST 4200 doubles vs Moton Club Sport doubles), and preparation level (both cars have cold air/tune/header/custom exhaust) the Mustang was a solid 10 seconds a lap faster than the BMW. It is hard to ignore that. I enjoyed the hell out of the BMW, right until I drove it off track like an asshat. Embarrassing, but I share it all here on this thread. Great stress test for these well used and abused D-Force 18x10s... not a scratch. This set is 5 years old and has been used on 3 cars, including our E36 Alpha car, my M3, and this 330. Zero defects.


In-car video of Terry in the Mustang for three hot laps, 2nd session of the day. Best lap of 1:58.2. Click for 720P video

OK, now that I've taken my licks, let's get to my good laps in the Mustang. This video above is from my first "full" session on the track that day (remember, I only got one "installation lap" in the first Advance session of the morning's session #1). The cooler temps we saw earlier in the day once again made for the best laps, but at least this time I put in a better drive early rather than late, unlike two weeks ago at the Optima event. Still, this was only my 3rd time tracking this car on R's, and the first time there weren't HUGE problems (cording/bloated front tires at MSR-H, diff fluid pouring on the rear tires at TWS). I still found some driving improvements in the later sessions, like using 2nd gear exiting corner 11, but the rising ambient and track heat negated any lap time improvements. Hanchey rode through with me in session #5 for two hot laps and he enjoyed it, but we only managed to run laps of 2:01.2 and 2:00.4 times.

The steering rack's death shudder reappeared this time, like at TWS, but unlike two weeks ago at this same track when I was running street tires. So the issue gets worse on sticky R compounds, as we've proven time and again. Driven hard enough for enough laps it would eventually go crazy and get into a violent shudder, plus sometimes trigger an engine fault as well, like it did in my video above after three hard laps. Shutting the engine off and back on would clear the engine fault/limp mode, but not the steering shudder. Only dipping below 45 mph would temporarily stop it, but it came back as soon as you crossed back above 45. When this happened badly enough (only to me, not Amy) I would just come in, shut it off, and pop the hood and let everything cool down and "reset". Even on normal laps it was still shaking pretty good - we've just gotten used to it. New replacement steering racks should be available from Ford and Ford Motorsport "soon" - after months of "it's still on back-order" (I have heard that Ford continues to find bad *brand new* electronic steering racks in the 2013 production lines, which is why there has been none to spare for Ford Motorsport or repairs. The word is they've fixed the QC issues at the Mexico plant that makes these units).

The Mustang's brakes worked flawlessly this time out, so that was a big plus! During the two weeks since Optima we replaced the original vacuum check-valve at the brake booster, which wasn't expensive. We weren't sure if the power assist would work until we revved the piss out of it on track. Well, once on track it was obvious - that fixed it! No telling how long this valve has been bad or "going bad", and leaking down vacuum, but hopefully this is the end of our "brick-like brake pedal" after long acceleration runs on track and in autocrosses. Keep this in mind if you run into similar a lack of brake assist.

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Our change back to 450F/175R spring rates was huge on track, just like it improved the street ride. The bad front end push we saw at Optima went away; now the car could turn-in easily and accelerate better, so this spring rate set-up stays until we find some reason to try the stiffer rates again. We had some serious rear tire rub in the rear with the 315s on the 18x12s... first from the tire to the fender lip with too much rear wheel spacer, then from the tire rubbing inboard on the stock rear swaybar with less spacer (I pulled 7mm of spacer off after the 3rd track session). The permanent fix here is to run less spacer and remove the stock rear swaybar - by making our own rear swaybar of an all new arrangement. The stock bar routing (and all aftermarket bars follow this) will always limit inboard wheel/tire room on this chassis. More on this in a future post!

Overall, I was very pleased with the performance of the Mustang this weekend, especially compared to the dismal performance on street tires just two weeks ago. The brake booster repair, the spring rate change, and the move to wider Kumho tires transformed the car - to the tune of 5.7 seconds faster per lap. Running my 1:58.2 lap in a heavy street car like this is pretty darned quick, considering the NASA TTS track record is 1:58.4, American Iron record is 2:00, and the CMC record is 2:04.2 - and those are set in October, when it's not 100 degrees, in real race cars.

I'm going to go ahead and say this, because it was obvious to anyone that watched laps at this event: our mildly tweaked Mustang GT was faster than anything else in attendance, other than Costas' 2200 pound, tube-framed GT-1 monster. Faster than the 2013 GT500, faster than the many Boss 302's, faster than the gutted race cars on Hoosiers (there were a surprising number on Hoosiers or Continental slicks), supercharged Lotus 7 on slicks, and on and on. Even with a girl driving. I don't get to say that often, as there's usually a bunch of prepped race cars at some events that can always beat a real street car like this. Having the fastest Mustang at a Mustang event was pretty cool - because we're not a "Mustang shop" per se, and don't have a big power set-up on this car. It's just a bone stock 5.0 motor with two bolt-ons.


On Monday the wing was removed, the street tires went back on, and Amy drove it to work with the AC blowing - like she does every week

So hopefully that statement doesn't offend anyone that was there, but... damn the red car was moving! Felt good to run a sub-2 minute lap at ECR again after all these years running in relatively slow cars at ECR since 2008. Major adrenaline rush, big grin for days, pulse pounding good time! And all of you reading this know exactly what we've got on this car - it is not crazy, the opposite of exotic, and we hide nothing. These 2011+ Mustangs really can get you to work and back and still haul ass on track, with the right mix of parts. Anyone could go buy a 2011-2013 Mustang GT (spend $20-30K), copy the parts we've used, and go just as fast or faster. It's easy. Call us - operators are standing by! ha! It really just boils down to running big enough and sticky enough tires (people that say 315s are too big for road course use on a 3500 pound car are misinformed), the right wheels to make those fit, the proper suspension parts (which we're still improving), a little brake cooling + good pads, and a few motor bolt-ons and a tune.

One thing to mention: both cars were easy to drive fast. We've got the brakes working very well on both and this is a brake intensive track. The handling and damping on both is exceptional, and this is a bumpy/shock intensive track. True, Amy and I both have many laps at this track (I probably have 20-25 hours on track at ECR) so that helps, but neither of us is some driving savant (look no further than my BMW mega-off at this event for proof of that). Sure, my times are a little quicker than Amy in the higher powered Mustang, but I have a lot more seat time in this car and just ran this car it at this same track two weeks ago; she has never run the Mustang at ECR. Racing these cars was relatively easy, and if it weren't for the lingering steering shudder (that only seems to affect our car this badly) it would have been a completely stress free drive. I missed having a good race seat to keep me planted in place in the BMW, and I let the Hoosier's tendencies to overheat in 100°F conditions sneak up and bite me, but otherwise it was a breeze. I will also note that driving the Mustang on R compounds at a 1:58.2 pace was much easier than sliding around on street tires doing no better than 2:03.9! There was a complete absence of hooning in the Mustang this time around. Hooning is hard work...


What's Next?

We've cancelled all previously planned track and autocross outings for the month of July, for a few reasons. One, because it iss freagin' HOT in Texas from now until August; many of our local racing clubs stop having events from June-August. Today it was 108°F in Dallas and it will be in the triple digits all week. Those are miserable conditions to race in. We could see 30-60 days of over 100, easily. Amy and I got a touch of heat exhaustion at the Optima weekend, and got another round at this past weekend's ECR events, so we need time to recover. We spent last Sunday in pain, trying to get fluids and electrolytes back into our systems. Once you get heat exhaustion it is too easy to "re-get it", so we need a break.

Also, there are some lingering repairs we might finally be able to fix on the Mustang - like the stupid freagin' steering rack! Just heard that these are scheduled to be back in stock June 29th - so we've got one on pre-order (along with a T2R!). Upon inspection on Monday, it appears that the rear brake caliper piston dust seals are now fried, too, but the fronts still look fine. We'll get some new rear seals coming and swap those. Considering how many autocross and track hours of abuse this car has seen in... coming up on two years, this is a pretty good lifespan for dust seals.


Tire rub sucks! I am damned tired of this condition making the handling intermittent and weird. We are finally going to remedy this.

Lastly, we have a list of new parts to design, build and develop for the S197 Mustang. Going to too many races lately has delayed this considerably. The stock-style rear swaybar flat will not work with a 315mm tire under stock fenders, and it has to be replaced. I refuse to go to smaller rear tires just because Ford routes the swaybar in an inefficient manner. If we can keep the car off of a race track for a few weeks we can build the custom, splined-tubular steel rear swaybar set-up we've been meaning to make for the last year (we now have pieces coming to make this). This will allow the 315mm rear tire to finally fit inside the fenders under heavy lateral loading (it has 1" of clearance now to the bar, but under load the tire is still hitting the rear swaybar). I cannot remember an event yet where the rear tires haven't been rubbing on something - that has to stop. We're trying to make a very tunable rear bar that can work for both semi-serious track/street cars as well as dedicated track cars, so there are some modular bits to work out. We also really want to make a better Watts link than we've seen offered - something that is beyond the "Bolt on Billy" crowd. No bling, less weight, just a new design that has better lateral location and tunable roll center without the need to be 100% "bolt-on".

It might be a month before I update this thread again. We have a LOT going on at Vorshlag HQ, including three job openings, and four other major project cars that have been getting worked on in the past month - and another LS1 swap chassis we're adding to the already large array of BMW chassis we've tackled. The E36 LS1 swap kits are selling like mad, with three kits sold in the past three days - and people still don't know about half the sub-system kits we've added in the past quarter (which aren't even on the website yet), not to mention the ones we're about to release.

In any case, I better wrap this up. Once again, thanks for reading!

Cheers,