Having made some decisions on bar choices after Nationals (BMR front swaybar went on for the last event of the year for the Nebraska Region as well as a Des Moines Valley Region event at Adventure Land) the only thing that really remained was the shocks/struts. After Nationals I made some calls to various manufacturers and distributors to entertain the idea of replacing the factory shocks and struts with some serious hardware. At a cost of about $3200 I could get a set of MCS shocks and struts and really transform this car and then later upgrade. Great I thought, I even had the money, but the wait time was astronomical with no guarantees of availability before the season started. I opted instead to hold out for the Koni Sports that were due out "any minute." When the Koni Shock sale started and The Tire Rack had the 2015 Mustang Koni's listed as available I jumped on the first order! Thus began the biggest journey of this build so far... when would they arrive?!
Before we get there, lets talk about the car. After Nationals I installed the front swaybar in the stiffest setting. I knew this would be A LOT of work to make it work out perfectly right and boy could I not be any more wrong. We ended up running a modified version of Roger Johnson's west course in which the bar actually helped out A LOT. About the only real change tot he course was a squaring off of Teddie's Ring of Hell Fire. Tire pressures on the Bridgestone Potezna RE71R were a 32F 34R setup which helped the car rotate fine. One thing I noticed, with the help of my soon to be 2016 Co-Driver was that the full stiff position on this bar actually destroyed the front bushings on the bars.
After chatting with Kelly Aiken at BMR Suspension about the issue he told me that BMR never really anticipated the bar being run at full stiff and seeing the deflection it was seeing on my car. He sent out a bunch of new bushings and told me a full rework of the bushing design was going to be done to eliminate the problem (which was due to the grease fittings thinning out the top too much). I did notice a touch of push in the car and had plans to drop the bar down to the middle position anyway. I replaced the bushings and prepped for the DMVR event at Adventure Land in Des Moines Iowa (well Altoona, but same difference).
The DMVR event was a real eye opener for me on just how fast these cars accelerate in a straight line. One of the biggest features of this course was a very long basically straight section. The end of said straight was a curb, ditch, fence, and ditch away from a major road so it turned into an abrupt left hand turn... well.... like normal, I bonzai rushed the corner after making an epic exit to the turns at the beginning of this "straight". Nothing says frightening like 435 HP, 400lb*ft of torque and stupid short gearing going 70+mph in 3rd gear in the parking lot of an amusement park with the "screwed up" zone being a very totaled car and possibly seriously hurt me! It was a great event for me and a real confidence booster. I met some new friends and saw some old ones and in general had a blast!
If you'd like to see the videos from either of those events, head on over to my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/UrPeaceKeeper
Enough yabbering about the "distant" past, on to the "present"!
April 10th, 2016 - NRSCCA Solo #0 (Non Points)
So having ordered said Koni Yellow shocks and been given several different shipment dates for them, I came to the realization that nothing will have changed from the previous year's setup for this event. The only change I made was adding my co-driver who is former ESP 1998 Cobra driver Justin Eckles. Justin co-drove with me at the end of last year after we talked about co-driving together in 2016. He wanted to save some money and not beat up an otherwise very nice Cobra by running it in ESP. I was and still am glad to have him on board! Having only run in the car once, he'd still be learning the car. I was too so this was going to be a lot of learning! To compound the continued learning of this car was the addition of data in the form of SoloStorm and it's connectivity package.
If you aren't familiar with SoloStorm and what it entails, let me explain it to you in better detail. SoloStorm is a data acquisition program for Android devices. It uses a Bluetooth OBDII reader and Bluetooth GPS receiver in conjunction with the accelerometers, and camera to provide a fairly comprehensive picture of what you and the car are doing on course! Setup is extremely easy and for the most part is intuitive in it's use. It is a GREAT investment and the ability to compare my runs to Justin's runs to anyone else who drives the car's runs is extremely powerful. I am finally able to see where the fast guys are kicking my butt! On that same note, Justin can see exactly where the few places are that I'm actually faster than he is!
The course was a first time design from one of the up and coming locals driving a NC Miata. It definitely had all the makings of a Miata course but was ridiculously fun! I know I'm going to love the courses he comes up with in the future. I just hope he learns to open them up a bit more though as this course was pretty tight for a sight on the Nationals concrete! The car really felt great out there aside from the complete lack of shock control from the factory shocks. The car wasn't pushy and put down power well in the places it could be used. Justin would go on to place first in FS, I'd go on to place 5th of 10. One second covered the spread from first to fifth place.
Here is my best run:
And Justin's best:
The take away from this event was quite simple... while our lines are very similar (SoloStorm had some massive GPS drift and it makes it look weird) Justin was using more throttle sooner and in just about every location. This resulted in a one second improvement in time. This was the largest difference between our runs. There was some minor line differences, but for the most part it was within the noise. The one area I was beating Justin was the start, but as soon as the first corner came around it was game over as his more aggressive throttle use took over any small gain I had at the start by the time we had both exited the first major corner.
And this is the power of SoloStorm. But it gets better too. I can break down each section of the course and find out just how different we were. It will display the distance both of us traveled, it will display the average speed, the fastest speed, the time and a slew of other variables for the section. It will also show bar graphs of throttle usage, speed, and many other things. I'm usually not one for over analysis of every run, but it is nice to know some of these details to know of areas I'm giving up time to other drivers!
A new to me face showed up at this event that carried enough of a name to perk the ears of some of the competitors. Brian Meyers has graced the Nebraska region's events in his 2016 Mustang GT/PP. He is unbelievably quick and a great guy too! I'm glad he is becoming a fixture at events to set a high benchmark for Justin and I to reach for.
April 23rd, 2016 - NRSCCA Test'n'Tune
As with all NRSCCA Test'n'Tunes at LAP-N, they are surely going to be interesting. To add to this, the Koni's showed up and were installed the weekend before. Let me say this, if it wasn't for a few things, the install wouldn't have taken 8 hours... but as it is, Ford has done some things that are frankly insane. The most annoying aspect is the fact that the front spring perches are super small but the perch guard is massive.... so massive that the rented spring compressors do not fit properly around it and as you compress the spring is digs into the paint on the struts. The rear shocks require drilling out the upper shock mount to a half inch. The change in the car's attitude and behavior was massive though.
During the test'n'tune, Justin and I took our time to come to decisions on what changes we were making. We had 4 hours and were honestly only limited by tire life, fuel life and our desire to do it. We started with the shocks completely soft and the front bar in the middle position. Interestingly enough, after some 18 total runs, we decided that a turn up from the softest position in the front and full soft out back was the best feel.
Brian, Justin, and I did a bunch of car swapping. After driving Brian's car, we both decided that the full stiff rear bar he was running was simply too much rear bar and it hurt our driving even though our times were basically the same. Justin ran essentially the same time with the front bar in the middle position. Brian also drove my car and he had some positive things to say about the way the car transitioned and changed directions but really hated the slight mid corner push the car had. Given that this test'n'tune course was unusually tight for a nationals level course, we didn't feel like changing the bar setting at all. Brian also had some good tips for my own driving and I appreciate his feedback and I even put it to good use later in the day!
April 24th, 2016 - NRSCCA Solo Points #1
The weather for today was supposed to be rainy. I woke up and it was spitting here but wasn't raining. What little moisture did fall was sporadic at best. I was dragging two new guys with me to the event and spent a lot of time helping them out with their first event. As Solo Novice Adviser for the Nebraska Region, that was kind of my job! ;) With the settings set at the same position as the T'n'T the day before, I had a good feeling about the course. The course was a slightly modified version of the T'n'T course but run in reverse. I had high hopes for doing well because the course was so similar. Really the only changes were to add a less straight start to the course... in the process of doing so they made a really tight decreasing distance slalom straight off the start followed by some "quick offsets" that lead into a left hand turn, a few more quick offsets, a 180 followed by, you guessed it, more quick offsets, into a bunch of sweepers until the finish. Simple course.
Yeaaah.... not so much. So on the drive to Lincoln the wind was blowing the car around so I put it in comfort steering mode to save the wear and tear on the arms.... my first run was ruined by this decision. By the way, comfort mode is awful, absolutely awful, for autocross. It speeds up and slows down the steering assist based on what it feels is appropriate... I got it turned off before the second set of quick offsets. It completely ruined my run. The car was pushing something fierce in this direction. All of the opening radius corners that made the T'n'T course fun and worth driving turned into decreasing radius pains in the butt. This course definitely favored a much looser car setup than we had. We were hedging our bets on National style courses and that hurt us. We played with tire pressures and shock settings once again, finally settling on 1.5 turns from soft up front and a half turn out back.
My best run was my last run... here it is:
I apparently completely forgot how to drive between the T'n'T and this event... I stopped backsiding cones in the slalom, I stopped backsiding critical cones that would have decreased time by a lot and my position suffered as a result of my head-up-rear driving. Go figure right?
Justin did better:
One of the biggest differences between Justin and I in these runs (aside from him kicking my rear!) was in the third set of quick offsets, I was on the rev limiter for a solid 3 seconds, Justin had a big lift in the middle of what was a solid WOT run for me. I think he lost some time there and that cost him first place. His last run was actually his fastest run by a few hundredths of a second but I was in the car and there was some discussion during the run that is too distracting. He was definitely going faster than what his final time was but had a big slide in the third set of quick offsets that caused him to basically shut down the car and ruined what was most likely a class winning time.
Brian was kind enough to send me a link to his video on YouTube. I'll post it here for you guys to compare the runs:
Also, the tires for this car are getting really heavily worn. The fronts are at the wear bars and lack anything resembling a shoulder. The rears look better and have a shoulder but honestly are close to being on their way out too. I have a set of 285/35/19 RE71R's on order that will hopefully be here before Spring Nats. The fresh tires and better course design will be extremely beneficial to our driving! I can't wait at all!
Until next time!
