Vorshlag S550 & S650 Mustang Development + 2018 GT, 2024 Darkhorse & #Trigger

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After cutting the opening, and making a template in cardboard, Brad then made a curved vent panel from textured ABS plastic sheet. That was bolted to the fender, and a lower aluminum panel / bracket seals off the bottom plane, and helps the ABS hold its shape. There was also a missing fender liner that was replaced, and both liners were cut and formed to feed these fender vents in a smooth manner. Not F1 level good, but pretty good for a nasty little Time Attack Mustang.



These wider carbon fiber lower skirts from Anderson are about two inches wider than stock, and that can help out under the car, so it was time to install these. The factory skirt mounts with crappy plastic push pins, so Brad drilled out those holes and added massive M8 rivet nut threaded inserts.



Of course these skirts don't even remotely line up to those holes, so he then drilled a new set of holes and riveted the damn things on at the right spot. They otherwise fit nicely and nest into pockets of the fenders at the front and rear nicely.



This carbon hood from Anderson was purchased in 2018 and used on my red 2018 GT for 2 seasons. We took that off when we sold the car and it has been on Trigger since 2020. Now it was finally time to cut on it - to open up the "GT500" style hood vents considerably. Brad, Jason, and I once again met and agreed upon a series of slats to remove - that would later mate up to a radiator exhaust vent hood we would make much later in 2024. Always smart to be planning ahead when you are chopping up expensive carbon fiber bodywork!



The pic above shows the GT500 style carbon hood 3 pairs of slats removed, so a lot more air should be able to exit naturally. Now to goose that airflow - adding a Gurney flap.



This is just a piece of aluminum bent on the sheet metal brake at a ~30 degree angle, then using our shrinker / stretcher it got a bend laterally along the centerline of the hood - matching the shape of the hood openings. That was riveted in place, masked, and painted semi-gloss black (pro tip : paint it before you rivet it on!) This little lip should enhance airflow out from under the hood, hopefully reducing lift as well.



One thing we temporarily tested was reinstalling the factory cowl panel. We did this on the 2018 GT when we ran this hood at higher speed events like COTA and it reduced the back of the hood lifting up several inches at speed. And above right you can see a new panel Brad added to our single air filter box, which is force fed from an opening in the grill. This now closes off the airbox and seals to the hood - that should keep the cold air fed into this box from bleeding out to the underhood area. He also cut a slot in the panel for the hood prop, making it easier to stow properly.



There is a massive hole in the back corner of the front fender wells on the S550 - in all models. We made a set of these "close off panels" from that ABS plastic sheet again, cut to shape and formed a bit with a heat cut. The green "laser" shows the cut line for the template, which was applied to the ABS version that bolts in place. This should keep air from bleeding out of the front fender area and going under the car, which could potentially disturb airflow from the splitter and cause lift.



A new ride height setup was added to raise the rear ride height 0.5", then lowering the front .25", adding .75" more rake to the car. The front splitter was dropped at the leading edge to a 1.0 deg down angle. (NOTE: this later led to problems with the air dam, explained below)



The starter issue from the March event led me to simply buy a new starter from a better brand (AC Delco, which is what we use on customer builds), replacing the cheapo brand from RockAuto we used before. Hey, it was 2020, and everyone was broke! This starter was then installed with some DEI reflective heat wrap, to keep header heat from cooking the solenoid again (it has since worked flawlessly for the last year - again, parts brands do matter).



Finally we had Billy the tuner remotely log into the Haltech to change the trigger temperatures for the fan to kick on and off. As you can see in the video above, we did some extended run testing afterwards and now the fan kicks on with coolant temps of 200G and turns off again at 195F. This worked fine on a cool late March day, but as we found out at LS Fest, it was still insufficient for long periods of idling in very hot weather. The thin Mishimoto 16" diameter fan simply did not have enough airflow for hot day idling, as we would later learn. (And also - the rear steam vent port leak, which was impossible to see)

TRACK TEST #6 - MSR - MARCH 23, 2024

I hauled out to MSR on a member day to test ALLLL of the changes above, as well as to dial in the new traction control. We always would rather test big changes in private before showing our ass at a competition event with new parts. I was hoping to see the car - still on fresh A052s - get back closer to those 1:14.6 lap times I ran in October of 2023. We got to the track and it was SUPER windy, which is not the best conditions to test a car with lots of aero, but I was hopeful and went out in two sessions for 25 minutes of driving trying to find the time....



I was making laps but the car was fighting me, and the aero changes did not make the time drops I had hoped for. After my first session with a couple of attempted hot laps, I checked over the car and noticed that a major "flutter" I felt above 125 mph was the splitter opening up a gap above the air dam! The dam thing was too short.



The lap times were.... the same as at the lousy NASA event 3 weeks earlier, almost to the tenth of a second. Ugh. I could reproduce this lap time over and over, but nothing more. Traction control was still not operating as planned and after several tweaks I was fed up with that. But this gap above the air dam was more of a concern at the moment. I screwed up, didn't leave an overlap of the airdam to take up for changes to the angle, and that opened up a gap that nullified all of the front downforce.



After two test sessions and many lap attempts with no improvement, and the wind just was not dying down, I called it. So Amy and I we loaded up the car and sat inside the trailer and sheltered in place while a bit of a storm blew through, which you can see in the video linked in the image below.



I should have checked the forecast before wasting a day coming out here, but we had an SCCA TT event in a week and learning that the air dam was too short was something we needed to know, so that could be remade in time. Frustrating second day at the track in this car for 2024, but we still learned something.

TALLER AIR DAM AND OTHER REPAIRS

After the test day shown above Trigger didn't need much, but the air dam clearly wasn't tall enough. Air was indeed getting over the top and causing lift, so I asked Brad to re-make the air dam but 1" taller. Brad had to swap out the 12" splitter for the SCCA Max legal 6" splitter for the next event, too.



That taller air dam was made fairly quickly with more ABS plastic sheet (he also later made a taller one for the 12" splitter we use for NASA and Apex), and the new overlap of the OEM lower splitter lip is clearly shown in the images above. This will give us the ability to raise or lower the front lip of the splitter, changing the angle of attack, and still keep air from going above the splitter. This extended air dam is pretty common and something I should have spotted before the last test. My mistake.



The Mustang was then cleaned up and readied for another SCCA Time Trial the next weekend, with the 200TW tires mounted to the little 18x12" wheels and stock rear bodywork for one last time...

SCCA TT, MSR 1.7 CW, MARCH 30, 2024

We took both the 2024 Darkhorse and Trigger to this SCCA points event, but I will save the DH updates for a separate post. We're just going to focus on Trigger in this write-up. We were running the same MSR 1.7 course but backwards, going clockwise. And while it is the same length I've never matched my CCW times here in any vehicle going back 20+ years.



I won Max1 class that day by a good bit, but not as much as we should have. My fastest lap was in the first TT session, a 1:17.6 lap (fully 3 sec slower than my Oct 2023 1.7 CCW time) My competitor Stan got faster throughout the day and ran a 1:19.0 at the end of the day, so pretty close for a street car GT500. Dusold was there in his Pikes Peak twin turbo Camaro, and I was ahead of his times in the first 2 sessions, but he got some issues worked out and 1:15.0 at the end of the day.



The issues with Trigger were numerous, and all within me - I had a migraine for 24 hours and I couldn't hold down food or even think straight. I never felt like I put a good lap in, and the clutch and synchros were giving me fits, with the clutch not disengaging all the way making both up- and down-shifting difficult.



Immediately after this event we ordered the Tilton ST-246 clutch that I should have installed long ago. Once again, brands matter - and Tilton is in the top tier of clutch brands for a reason. Painful expense, and I still to this day cannot make myself throw out the ClutchMasters twin disc setup (so much money).



I ran that 1:17.6 lap on lap 3 of the first session, and it was straight garbage. I kept pushing all day and ran all 4 sessions, but had a nasty off in the 3rd session that damaged the splitter and splitter rods. Pushing, pushing, pushing to just get nothing. I ran the 4th session anyway, and saw a predicted time that was faster but was blocked on the last corner - I felt like the car should have been in the 1:15 or 1:16s. It was a windy, windy day which is never good for aero cars - but this car has run 1:14.7 on the same course backwards here on street tires before! Being 3 seconds off this car's Personal Best was super frustrating.



Honestly I was once again leaving with a win, but embarrassed. I didn't even compile the data with the video, as it just wasn't worth watching. I was hoping that in the near future with the Tilton fewer shifting errors, and a wider track width with the new 18x13" front wheels for 200TW tires that the car would be magically faster...

REPAIRS, CARBON REAR FENDERS INSTALLED AND JONGBLOED WHEELS ARRIVE

At this point I was committed to the carbon widebody kit and had ordered two different sets of wider wheels to replace the 18x12" Apex wheels we used with the Type-ST front fenders and nose we had on the car earlier (see below). The first set to arrive (and second set ordered) was an 18x12.5" front and 18x13.5" rear Jongbloed racing 3-piece set.



I was on this delusional kick that the Big Hoosier Magic of 2012-15 that we experienced on our 2011 Mustang would unlock huge amounts of time. It did unlock 1.5 seconds at MSR Cresson, which ain't nothing, but it wasn't the 2-3 second gain we had hoped for. I suppose some of that is just how good the 315mm Yokohama A052 200 treadwear tire really is?



These 3-piece wheels are very light, but the wheel mounting holes were incorrect - they came at 1/2" diameter (worked up through S197) but did not fit over the larger M14 studs used on the S550 and newer Mustangs. Not what we wanted to be doing before test fitting the wheels, but we drilled them out larger with an M14 bit. Then recut the conical seats with a special 60 deg chamfer bit we ordered. I wouldn't be upset but we did spec out the M14 lug hole diameters on the Purchase Order.



With that out of the way we could start test fitting these ultra wide wheels on the rear with the Anderson JTP rear over-fenders in place. These add a LOT of tire and wheel room out back, so it was time to mount some fat Hoosier A7 tires to these wheels.



Above left you can see the 18x13.5" wheel bolted up with the stock rear fenders, and they stick out over 2 inches. The front already had the Anderson flared carbon fenders on, and the new 18x12.5" front wheel clears easily. I took some old 345/35R18 Hoosier A7 tires I won back in 2015 (?!) that were still "new sticker tires" and had them mounted up. Wait, 9 year old tires? They were "free" and never mounted, so what could go wrong? (that proved to be a really bad idea) We mounted these up April 2nd, 2024 and it was time to order new 335/30R18 A7 fronts.

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At the March 30th event I drove VERY poorly and had a high speed off track excursion, so Brad had to replace two of the Professional Awesome carbon splitter strut rods. They were frayed from the impact but they still held on in later sessions that day!



The next weekend we had scheduled to enter a NASA Time Trial event with the new Hoosiers and the bigger 12" splitter, so Brad made the taller air dam for this splitter version at this point.

CLEARANCING FOR REAR FLARES

One of the things that people associate with Vorshlag is putting BIG TIRES on everything, and that is a fair association. We have added giant tires and flares to SO MANY CARS that I have lost count. And it goes way back to my early days of track and autocrossing in the 1990s...



Always make sure the car owner is OK with the work involved, because this is a one way trip. There is NO GOING BACK once you add flares because you have to hack up the bodywork to make the wider tires fit underneath the flares. In 2013 we added flares my wife's 2011 Mustang (above left) and she was NOT on board, and I got into some trouble. No means no!



The front fenders on this body swap was easy, as it was a complete replacement carbon fender. But out back of this unibody chassis, we had to chop up the rear fenders and the underlying inner fender structure to clear the 345mm Hoosiers. The addition of the over-fender itself was cake compared to the clearance work underneath. We usually quote 12-15 hours to do this correctly on a steel unibody car for the rear. Brad used painters tape to make an arc and started cutting the outer skin with a reciprocating air body saw.



Once you are through the outer fender skin it is time to cut the layers of structure underneath away until you have the "bump travel" tire clearance you need. Brad switched to a our little Milwaukee M12 saw at this point. NOTE: There is all manner of foam and insulation inside the outer skin that is very flammable. Remember to have a buddy there with a serious water gun handy to put out small flare-ups when you start welding!



With the steel outer skin and inner structure cut away, it is time to check bump clearance. We mounted up one of the new Jongbloed 18x13.5" wheels with a 345/35R18 Hoosier and removed a rear spring, then raised that corner up until it runs out of shock travel OR the tire bottoms out on the flat horizontal surface of the inner fender structure. What we don't want is the sharp "point" of the outer fender curving down to dig into tread, as that can cut a tire. We keep cutting that structure out until the tire touches flat sections.



At this point we have the clearance we need but some serious gaps to fill between the now cylindrical inner fender structure and the outer skin, which has been raised several inches along its wheel arch. We need to close up this gap and restore structure to the unibody with steel sheet panels. Brad starts here with some cardboard to make a template for our filler panel.



At this point you transfer your template to some 18 to 20 gauge steel sheet. That's when Brad used the English wheel to add a bit of arc to the piece. That was then placed over the gap (with all mating surfaces sanded clean of paint) and a 2 man job of tack welding and holding is done. Brad was using a big hammer to hold the panel in place while Austin tack welded that to the outer skin.

Again WATCH OUT FOR FIRE. It might be wise to have a third person watching for flare ups with your water sprayer loaded and ready to put them out. If you see smoke under your welding hood it is far too late. Ask me how I know (yes, our crew caught part of the left rear fender on fire, but put it out quickly - with the nasty, powdery chemical extinguisher that made a MESS. The burned paint was repaired, and is thankfully all underneath the over fender)



The filler panels for the rear fenders were made in two parts and we used a skip weld tacking technique to keep from adding too much heat to the surrounding sheet metal. We let the panel hang past the fender so we can get a nice shelf there for easier welds on the top side.



Anything you can do to avoid overhead welding is always good. But you'll have to do some of that on the inner seams, which overlap the inner fender structure. Once you are happy with the coverage of the welds you can grind off the outer "shelf" that overhung the fenders. Brad used a flap disc on a 4" angle grinder here.



Post-Weld seam sealer was slathered onto all of the welded seams. After that dried the area was hit with self-etching metal primer, to prevent rust down the road. This is an important step that so many skip.



Now the actual flares could be fitted. This took another 8 hours to trim, mark, drill, rivnut, and fit together. After mocking up the fender we picked a spacing for the many holes we had to drill for exposed mounting bolts. This might not fit the car show crowd, but for racers who run into things, it makes for a quicker repair. Brad installed dozens of M6 rivnuts into the chassis.



The Anderson JTP kit includes 3 pieces per side for the rear, and the rear section shown above left bolts to the main over-fender portion. Then there is another lower section that ties into that and the rocker. The secondary sections were test fit with the main fender in place, then the holes to attach them together were marked, drilled, and thru-bolts and nuts were used.



We test fit the rear wheel and tire again and checked for clearance - and that fat 345mm tire was starting to eat into the added lip that these over-fenders had built into the outer edge. That's nice for structure, but we gotta let these tires eat. So that was marked on the carbon fiber fender and Brad trimmed that away to allow the tire to clear in the upward "bump" direction.



Once the lower portions were fitted they look seamless. Brad had to open up the oval hole for the fuel door to allow enough clearance for the door to open and close, but otherwise these fenders fit REALLY well. The glossy carbon finish is striking and the weight of these parts was a rounding error.

ADDING HOOSIERS + WEIGHT CHECK

Now it was time to mount the other 3 Hoosier tires - for the two fronts and the other rears. I put the 315mm Yokohama next to the 345mm Hoosier below for reference. Not even close...



This weight check on April 4th was the second time we put the Mustang on the scales since the roll cage was added. We had a full tank of fuel and the numbers were bleak - 3604 pounds, without driver!



We still had full interior to run SCCA Max1 class but the big tires and big splitter we wanted for NASA and Apex events. The wheels were very light but adding the 175 pounds of roll cage did us no favors.



With some extra wood ramps we were able to get this car loaded into the trailer on Friday the 5th before a NASA event on the 6th at ECR. We had our big splitter, big tires, and the full cage since our last NASA event. Let's see how it stacks up...?

NASA AT ECR, APRIL 6, 2024

This was a super frustrating day. Amy and I got a crappy parking spot because most NASA weekend entrants show up Thursday or Friday. We're just here for the day so we got what we got. At least we had Annual Tech for the log book from the March event, so I parked up near the front for the first session.



Well nobody parked ahead of me on grid, so I led out the first run group, the TT Warmup. Which went very poorly for me! Apparently there was some leftover fire retardant powder buried down inside the left rear fender (the one that caught on fire slightly, in the section above), and at speed that turned into a dust storm inside the car. I mean the interior was spotless when I got there.



The dust was SO THICK that I thought the car was on fire, but the smell was wrong. I came in quickly in that warm up session, never got a lap, but after checking everything I went back out again in HPDE 4 session and even an HPDE 1 session - just to make enough laps to blow all of this powder out of the cabin. What a mess!



I went out in TT session 2 and started at the back, because I had no official lap time. I set a huge gap to the field on the out lap and ran a 1:58.5 lap, which I felt was junk. I mean hell, I'd run a 1:59 on street tires here the year before, WTF?



It came down to several issues, but we finally traced the total lack of rear grip to the two 9 year old "sticker" rear 345mm tires that I won with Hoosier contingency way back in 2015. They just never switched on, and one rear tire's carcass started separating belts and was VERY MUCH not round in the 3rd TT session, which I had to abort. That pair of tires went right into the trash pile after this event.



I was actually pretty embarrassed by my performance, even with a new Personal Best at this track and in this car. I should have purchased new rear tires, but money was tight and I had these "new" sticker 345mm tires that I could not make myself throw away.



I felt slow and was holding up cars 2 classes down, but somehow I still won TT1 (which had some of my SCCA TT buddies) by 8 seconds. I took a bunch of short laps but was stalled out in traffic for most of the day and just had the ONE sub-2 minute lap. I had to clean up and shower at this event and head to a friends birthday party, so it was a long day.



I just rewatched my one quick lap from this event, and it isn't great - I was fighting issues with the clutch or transmission all day, a situation that is only getting worse. Back end is sliding all over the place. I was by no means proud of that win, and I was really chasing the faster TTU cars above me - I knew at this point we have a lot of work to do.

RESET, REPAIR, REPLACE - CLUTCH DISCS, TIRES AND ABS FAULT

The season was in full swing now and we had one week until the next Apex Lap Attack event at MSR. After the Mustang was unloaded it was time to get ALL of the fire retardant dust out of the car - Brad masked up and took the M18 Milwaukee air blower to the interior outside the shop. THAT got our the dust, followed by some serious vacuuming and wipe downs of all surfaces.



The clutch we have in this car at this point is a used ClutchMasters 850 series (8.5" diameter) twin disc that a customer wanted a refund on after driving it for 2 days on the street. I don't actually love this clutch, but it was an expensive unit that fit this transmission. To try to fix the shifting issues we ordered new discs as a last attempt to save this expensive clutch system.



Pulling the Tremec Magnum XL takes a bit of work - exhaust, driveshaft, shifter, clutch hydraulics, etc. Not a fun job but clutches do become wear items with 620 whp engines.



We were grasping at straws once the clutch and pressure plate was removed. The aluminum flywheel has a steel facing for the 8.5" diameter clutch face, and it had some hot spots. We had started with a hybrid organic / bronze disc stack and were moving to a straight bronze clutch setup with the new discs.



The wear material looked fine, just some hot spots. But it was out, so the new sintered bronze "race" clutch pack was installed. Hey, it is a $1800 clutch kit and I don't want to just toss it if this new set of discs fixes it.



The measurement for the free play from the hydraulic TOB to the pressure plate was checked and it was off, so an over-night delivery of the shims was ordered and that was re-shimmed to the ClutchMasters specifications by Brad (none of this work or parts fixed the shifting issues, sadly).

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Brad had all of the steel surfaces cleaned up and the twin disc setup went back together properly, and then the transmission went back in. Then the driveshaft, exhaust, etc. A lot of hours burned chasing this issue.



I never felt any tire rub at the NASA event on the first time out on the new wide Hoosiers, but both front 335mm tires were rubbing just barely at the lower spring perch. This left some weird wear saw tooth pattern right at the shoulders of the sidewall to tread. A small 3mm spacer was added up front and they never touched again. The fenders had a LOT of room up front to allow for this, we just kept it inboard too much.



The rear tire that had the belt issues is shown in the pictures above - I've seen this in REALLY OLD sets of Hoosiers, and ones like this that were "stickers" and unused but just stored for years. And that pair of 345/35R18 A7s were 9 years old. Even stored indoors, that is too long, so I had to spend $1200 for a new pair of rear tires...



I do hoard tires, and it hurt me to throw away "one-event old" tires (even if they were 9 years old), then had the new 345s were mounted. Hey, its just money!



After the clutch job was wrapped up the engine was fired up and was now throwing a new fault - "ABS Failure". We swapped out the M-2353-CA Ford Racing ABS unit with a spare we had in the shop and that was not the issue. After some additional testing one of the 4 speed sensor wiring channels was throwing the fault.



Brad re-wired that wheel speed sensor channel and that fixed the glitch. The brake lines were bled and the car was finally reset and ready for yet another back-to-back race weekend.

APEX LAP ATTACK MSR 3.1 - APRIL 13, 2024

This event's timing was too soon after these other events above, and we should really be doing more testing with so many issues cropping up. I just feel obligated to go to the Apex events because we are sponsoring the trophies for this series in 2024 (and again in 2025). The car was reset at Vorshlag after the NASA ECR event, which itself went pretty poorly, and this time I was ready to stay all day and shoot for FTD with Apex. Amy was out of town so I was there running solo (left house at 5 am, got home at 9 pm). I was hoping for a 2:11 lap time on this big 3.1 mile4 track, as I had run a 2:15 on street tires the previous October.



This 3.1 mile MSR course with about 27 turns is one I've run several times before - not my favorite, but I wasn't a noobie here. This Apex group is FAST, though. I started P1 in the first session and went out and ran a 2:14, but I wasn't leaving the yellow LA1 classed C7 shown next to me in grid above. Timing and scoring was down for session 1 so nothing counted, so I went out P1 again in the 2nd session (after they fixed the timing loop).



There is a nasty pair of transitions from the traditional MSR 1.7 to their 1.3 course on both sides, where the two courses are joined to make the 3.1 mile course. I had left the splitter pulled up a bit in anticipation of this bum[p sets of transitions, and it was indeed a BIG issue. I had to slow down a LOT at both transitions to keep from crashing the splitter over these very bumpy track portions. I remembered why I hate running a high aero car on this 3.1 course.



In the 2nd session I ran a 2:13.6 but Ahmer, my main competitor, ran a 2:13.1, and that was the last good session: 69F and mild winds. I went out again and pushed HARD in session 3, but the wind had really picked up, and it was warmer, and all I could managed was the 2:13.3 lap shown above. Most folks slowed down. I went out again in session 4, and ran a 2:13.8. I ran again in session 5 and had a 2:14 at 3:30 pm, but the times just wasn't there. Wasn't traffic, wasn't the car, I just didn't have it in me that day. Lots of laps taken, but I think that I missed the golden times session 2 - I would do no better than 2nd place.



This was a windy day and I still fought the transmission shifting issues - it wasn't the clutch. I tried wider shoes and then nearly drove off track pressing the gas and brake at the same time. My head-to-head battle against Ahmer in LA1 class was brutal, and he got me this time by 2 tenths, a well earned victory. I was pretty frustrated with my times, but 2nd in class was still 2nd quickest of the event. They don't have 2024 results posted, so you have to take my word for it.



I tried running without the Traction Control (still dialing that in) but that was a nightmare. Part throttle response was pretty nasty, and I worked with Billy at Rapscallion during the day between sessions, who was there pulling data. Felt like that the clutch fix wasn't the right answer and I suspected we had now worn the 3rd and 4th gear synchros too much. We have another T56 Magnum XL in the shop from Amy's widebody FRS, so we will look at that when we have time.

SCCA TT, ECR 1.65, APRIL 28, 2024

We had very little to do to the car after the Apex event, and that gave us a 2 week break until this SCCA TT event at ECR on the 1.65 mile CCW course. And the SCCA events mattered more, as they have a regional TT championship I was chasing on street tires, with the small aero. I had only driven this 1.65 mile short ECR course one other time in 2023, but it is pretty short and sweet.



We had both the '24 Darkhorse (T2 class, which Amy won) and Trigger (in a huge Max1 class) at this event. The weather was a mess on this day and started off wet in session 1, semi-dry in session 2, dry in session 3, and dry turning to wet in session 4. I ran every single session trying to get a quick time, and adjusted the traction control to try to keep the rear tires from spinning. TC was finally working well after tweaks by Billy at the Apex event 2 weeks prior.



I fought all day against a big Max1 class (7 entrants) and pushed through all 4 sessions, setting a best of 1:11.43 to win it in the last session. I couldn't top Mike Dusold's Unlimited 1 classed 1400 hp Pikes Peak Camaro's time, but we got close (within .5 sec).



As you can see in the in-car video above, I was still fighting pedal spacing / 3 pedal downshift techniques. This car's transmission seriously fought me for 2 years, and after a few too many botched downshifts I had wrecked the synchros in 3rd and 4th. It started raining pretty good on my cool down lap, so that first hot lap was really crucial to get the class win in this final session.



Data logging showed some decent numbers, with 1.5g lateral and nearly the same forces in braking. Looking at the video now I can remember how touchy the downshifting was, and it was holding back lap times. We later got an auto-rev matched downshift feature added, which really helps - when it works.



This was the last time we would compete in this car on the Apex forged 18x12" wheels. The offset is not right for the wider fenders, and in the later events we ran 18x13" wheels for 200TW events. We also noticed some extreme wear on the front rotors - I noticed cracks in both front rotor rings when loading up - which I will cover below. But a win is a win.

EXTREME ROTOR WEAR

These rotor rings made it 6 track days before they "popped" and this began a series of short lived rotors and investigations. We also noted some uneven pad wear, inside and outside pads, on the front calipers. We eventually traced this down to a foundry and metallurgy change that we don't have a great solution for even now in 2025. The company who used to supply our brake kits is now focused on off road trucks and Dakar rally, and not big, heavy, time attack Mustangs.



We swapped in new rotor rings before the next event, and a bit of brake fluid, but otherwise the car wasn't touched. This set of rotors only lasted 6 events, which we can easily track based on the timestamped images of work on the car and events we enter.



This was the length this new batch of rotors lasted - 6 events. Which was baffling, as the previous sets lasted 3 seasons.

WHAT'S NEXT?

I was going to keep going but that first 4 months of 2024 was intense with a LOT of events and shop work on this car, and I've already filled up 5 entries hitting the 20K character limit (about 20K words). Trigger started getting better and better in the summer of 2024, with big wins at the next two Apex Lap Attack events and new personal bests set at our main "home tracks" MSR 1.7 CCW and ECR 2.7 CCW. I'll cover that next time.



I also had a dismal showing at LS Fest Texas, and found a whole bunch of other things to fix. It was a season of racing, finding issues, then spending time and money upgrade & repair them, and keep testing - all with the push for SCCA TT Nationals in September.

More next time!

Terry @ Vorshlag