Day 2 Coverage of the Optima/USCA Qualifier in Texas

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Fair

The 3 day Ultimate Street Car Association’s “Optima Street Car” qualifier event in March here at Texas Motor Speedway was pretty epic. Vorshlag was in attendance and we have split our normal event write-up into three sections. The post that went live today covers Saturday’s Autocross and Speed Stop competitions. There’s also a listing of some used parts listed in our clearance page that came from our Mustang, as well as a discussion about Pro Touring and how SCCA’s CAM class relates to that.

We entered our NASA TT3 prepped, fully street legal 2011 Mustang and did fairly well in the Autocross (2nd) and Speed Stop (3rd) competitions on the Saturday of this 3 day event. We also placed 4th in the Design and Engineering challenge, which was a judged event. You can read more about how we did on Day 2 starting at this forum post.

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Vorshlag Mustang Wins at Optima Ultimate Street Car Qualifier

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Fair

Vorshlag and 7 of our testers and customers went to a Optima Ultimate Street Car qualifier event at Texas Motor Speedway the weekend of March 21-23rd. We did very well in our familiar red 2011 Mustang, which we run in NASA Time Trial, SCCA autocross, and other events. We write about this new “USCA” series of qualifier events, which are a series of 3 day competitions for streetable cars on 200+ treadwear tires.

Entrants have to compete in five different events, which we explain in this series of posts to the S197 Mustang build thread. This is the first of 3 sets of posts about this event, so stay tuned for more updates and links to the next two parts. Thanks!

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Vorshlag Wins at MSR and Goodguys

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Fair

We had a good couple of events this month and racked up two wins at NASA in TT3 and another win at Goodguys as well as many other subjects in the lastest S197 Build Thread (5-parter) Post.

The new 345mm Hoosiers were a big improvement to the 3802 pound (with driver and ballast) TT3 prepped Mustang GT on the Motorsport Ranch 1.7 mile course and we lopped nearly a second and a half off of our previous best lap times there. The red car won the class both days and set a new TT3 track record of 1:17.310. We talk about brake temps, tire pressures, wheel spacers, and all of the other settings and changes we made for this weekend.

Terry writes a lengthy discussion of our trials and tribulations relating to the factory ABS/Traction Control unit on the 2011 Mustang, as well as a new solution we are testing (shown above). Lots of tech to dig into on this discussion.

The white stripes, decals and overall “livery” on our car for the past two years was scrapped in March and we ran a couple of events “in the nude”, letting the red paint and beautiful flares/bodywork by Heritage Collision shine through. This was done in preparation for Goodguys and USCA “street car” events, as well as a new set of BFG Rival tires in 315mm front and 335mm rear sizes. and believe it or not, our test mule Mustang really is a street car.

The car looked mean in all red and we took the car to the Goodguys All American Sunday autocross in March.

When it came down to the Goodguys event we put in some good laps and won about about 2 seconds. Video from this event at NASA @ MSR are in the mega-sized 5-part post, posted today, linked here.

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New Rear Flares and Bigger Tires on Vorshlag TT3 Mustang

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Fair

Lots of changes have just occurred on our NASA TT3 classed 2011 Mustang to allow us to fit these…

The exhaust was also tweaked and then the car was re-tuned at True Street Motorsports, and we found out that it is now making 442 whp. Not bad for a bone stock engine!

Read about all of the changes and upcoming events in our latest S197 Mustang Build Thread entry at this link.

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What Is Up With AST?

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Fair

We have been asked this hundreds of times in the past couple of months: What is going on with AST here in the USA? The supply issues, lengthy production delays, supply issues, the repairs, the supply issues, the redesign of the 4100 (now the 4150), and the supply issues? The honest answer is – we don’t know all of the details, and might never know. We have unearthed a few new tidbits of information from multiple sources, after we did some digging.

This announcement forum post (linked here) lays out what we know, and backs up to go over some of the recent history with AST, even the much delayed 4150 redesign, and briefly touches on the fact that there is an all new AST importer for the USA. This new distributor seems to be scrambling to set-up a new AST dealer network, set new prices, figure out what to import, and more.

Is the AST 4150 model stillborn? What happened to the 4250? Will we ever see AST dampers in the USA again? Well, it is unknown what will be imported by the new AST distributor, or what changes they and AST Holland have in store. We all have to wait and see what happens over the coming months. We do know a few things, which are talked about in our forum post above.

We also touch on the other brands of monotube dampers we have partnered with that have covered the market that AST was missing for the past two years, while they faced delivery and production delays. Stay tuned for more updates – as we learn more we will share.

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Mega-Mustang Post for January Race Coverage

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Fair

We had one crazy January and attended 3 track weekends in the last five weeks, while also setting our all time single month sales record after ten years of Vorshlag. The word “Busy” doesn’t even begin to cover it. This record five part forum post covers all of the races, tire tests, TV shoots and a little bit of the other projects we’ve been working on for the past month.

Our first event detailed in these posts was actually December 28th, which was a TV shoot (for an upcoming episode of the Car Guy Show) and tire test at Eagles Canyon Raceway. We had a large group of Vorshlag personnel and some Vorshlag testers along as well.

We built a new light and loud exhaust system for our TT3 Mustang using Magnaflow mufflers, and this seemed to cure some sensor problems we were having (broken catalyst was the likely culprit).

In early January Terry and Amy drove in the NASA Texas opening race weekend for 2014 at MSR Houston. They racked up two wins and the car’s 9th standing track record, but also incurred a spot of damage when Amy decided to jump a curb at high speed. That was fixed just in time for the last January race they entered, the Polar Grand Prix at MSR Cresson.

The SCCA held their first Club Trials event, where Terry and Amy once again drove the red Mustang again, to a first and third place overall and top PAX time.

We brought more of the Vorshlag crew to this SCCA event as well as a lot of friends, customers and testers. We had a lot of fun and hope the SCCA holds more Club Trials again in the future. Again, to read about all of these events and more, start at this post # 273 and read through to post # 277. Thanks!

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Progress on LS1 Miata Alpha Project

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Fair

Many of you know that Vorshlag has a lot of experience with the three generations of MX5/Miatas for chassis, wheel/tire, suspension and braking upgrades. This is a great chassis that has been sold in huge numbers, which any shop that dealt with autocross and track customers would be supportive of. One thing that is common on Miata owners upgrade lists is power upgrades. Vorshlag isn’t really an “engine tuner shop” but we do have one solution that always adds power.

What you might not know is that we started developing an LS1 V8 swap into the NB Miata chassis about a year ago. This quickly became our most involved swaps we had ever attempted, and in the end only the basic body and interior are going to be left unchanged. Each OEM system we tried to keep intact restricted reliability, so system after system has been replaced.

Late in the Fall of 2013 we made a lot of progress on this Miata LS1 swap and completed our prototype front tubular crossmember replacement. This beefy unit will allow us to have the room we need for the engine, oil pan and custom full length exhaust headers to fit, which the stock front subframe would not. This crossmember also allowed us to upgrade the hubs from the small OEM 4×100 hubs to stronger 5×114.3 hubs from the RX8, which also came with the aluminum control arms and RX8 uprights from this chassis as well. The tubular structure should add chassis rigidity to this convertible chassis as well.

The end goal is to use an 18×10″ wheel at all four corners with a 285mm wide tire, which should help tame the 450 hp LSx V8 that was built for this Alpha car. Once this car is on track and sorted we will look at kit production schedules, so look for this one to be rolling sometime in 2014. You can read the latest updates on this build thread starting here.

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2014 Race Season Plans

Posted on December 29, 2013 by Fair

After the 2015 Mustang was delayed we had switched our 2014 race season plans to building and campaigning a BMW E36 LS1 race car. But then our customer service work increased to a point where we haven’t had a chance to complete our own race car. And our TT3 Mustang wasn’t selling, so what do we do?

Since we had no takers we decided to keep our winning TT3 Mustang, make it even better, and keep racing it next year! Read the latest 3-part update on our S197 Mustang Build thread to learn what we have in store.

Many of those “wish list” items we didn’t get to develop or exploit will get a chance in 2014 on this red 5.0 Mustang. This list includes all of our favorite things: bigger tires, better aero, less weight, and more power! Stay tuned in 2014 as we push the envelope on the S197 chassis further and further.

Have a Happy New Year from all of us at Vorshlag!

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Vorshlag Mustang Wins TT3 at ECR, Sets 8 Track Records in 2013

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Fair

The latest series of posts in our S197 Mustang Project Build Thread covers the last NASA Texas competition event of the year, where we had some struggles with the car as well as some serious on-track traffic issues. The details are in the post, with lots of pictures and video.

Even with all of the challenges we saw on that Nov 1-3rd race weekend, we managed to pull out two more TT3 wins (winning at 13 of 14 NASA Texas events) and two 3rd place finishes in the same car that weekend, plus set the 8th TT3 track record this year, securing all track configurations run on the NASA Texas calendar in 2013. We didn’t miss a single race on the schedule and had an excellent year overall.

Now we’re gearing up for 2014 and have both our near stock Black 2013 Mustang GT and our TT3 winning 2011 Mustang GT for sale. The prices on both cars were lowered today, so check them out and spread the word. You can start reading this big 3-part build thread entry here.

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Chassis Work on E36 LS1 ST2 Build

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Fair

We have some updates to the build thread that we started in September 2013 for our BMW E36 LS1 project. This car is being built for NASA ST2 and TT2 classes, so it will have a full cage, fire system, FIA seats, and all of the wheel to wheel safety gear.

In hits, our 2nd update to this build thread, we cover the work from the past two months. This includes stripping and selling an hail damaged, engine-less E36 M3 4-door “donor chassis” that gave up all of its delicious M3 bits.

Once the M3 subframes were removed we had them bead blasted, then welded in several reinforcement kits and had them powder coated. The ST2 chassis also got a lot of attention including seam welding and additional reinforcement kits installed.

Last up we start talking about the cage that is going into this car, which has the main tubes already bent. This update has a lot of pictures showing what goes into a typical BMW race car build. You can begin reading the latest forum updates here. Enjoy!

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