I’ve intentionally not posted for a good while due to a whole lot of development work on the Mustangs and, the fact that this is the first year anniversary of the Stangwerks cars hitting the track. It has been a long year and I’ll summarize a few high points, some recent developments, and then probably call an end to this thread.
Both of the ITS Mustangs have accumulated quite a bit of track time since their first outing in May 2012 at VIR. The EarpStang has just shy of 50 hours on the meter, probably at least two thirds of which are on the track or the dyno. Off the top of my head I can count seven full track test days on that car and the same number of race weekends, although race participation has varied depending on the weekend. I know it has completed three ECRs, three Carolina Cups, and at least seven SARRC races. The car is still on its original engine, transmission, and rear end; rap heavily on wood.
Jeff G’s Mustang has about the same number of hours and races. Although it made its debut at the May 2012 CMP race, we took it to a race at Roebling during the summer for some additional development time. Jeff’s Mustang hasn’t had an easy life. It is on its third engine, third transmission, and second rear end assembly. It’s been a bit frustrating with the red car because in theory they were built to be identical cars and should have had similar lifetimes of components. Unfortunately that hasn’t turned out to be true ,and since the red car needed additional care it also got additional development, therefore, the two cars are now different in a number of ways.
The development of these two cars has consumed an exceedingly stupid amount of time. I can’t overstate that enough. These two cars have used all of my and Jeff G’s free time, as well as the time of others unfortunate enough to stop by on any day that starts with a M, T, W, F, or S, such as Jeff Young, my wife, or daughter. The latter two have particularly been affected since I’m not always doing what I should be doing when it comes to family time, something I’m going to change.
The Mustangs seem to attract a fair amount of attention on track, probably because they are “new” to IT, and also because a large number of people identify with them. We appreciate the comments from the corner workers, racers, and stewards who congratulate our efforts on bringing some domestic action to regional SCCA events. But, along with those comments are always questions about cost, and to put it plainly the cars are definitely not cheap to build and develop. The construction and development has consumed lots of bucks. Far more money than we’d anticipated and while I do have a spreadsheet with all the costs of building one of the cars, I prefer not to look at it and damn sure won’t be passing it along to the wife.
On a positive note, building and developing two cars simultaneously doesn’t take twice as long or cost twice as much as a single car. I’m not sure what the factor is, but it is certainly less than a factor of two, particularly on the time component since you get better at operations as you repeat them. This is generally true for most activities, drinking beer, womanizing, R&R transmissions, engine building, transmission assembly, and so on.
Since the last post in April we’ve finished Jeff G’s new motor, broken it it in, tuned it on the dyno, raced at RRR and raced at VIR. The new motor is working extremely well and we hope we have cured Jeff’s motor ills for good. If we haven’t, there might be an ITS Mustang for sale in the classified section real soon.
Our RRR race weekend was underwhelming with little to report. We thought we had a decent RRR setup based on our outing at the SIC, but we learned very quickly that we had some ill handling oversteering pigs we couldn’t tame. As far as we could deduce, as we have been changing wedge and basic setup for various tracks we have also been slightly changing the rear roll center in relation to the front and haven’t been keeping tabs on it like we should. Any car is sensitive to roll center, but the Mustang appears to be particularly so and it has a fairly narrow range where it wishes to be located. Anyhow, suffice to say I don’t think we finished in the top five and didn’t turn nearly as good a times as we did back in 2012 at RRR. We did get to meet Ron (Flatkitty) who has an ITS Mustang, the yellow one on this site, and that was a nice happenstance of the RRR weekend.
The VIR weekend a few days ago went considerably better. We already had some good setup notes from the testing races we’ve completed there. The cars have more hours on them at VIR than any other track so we felt we could dial in a spring, shock, and bar package that would do the trick. That, and some new tires, rewarded us with the best times ever for Team Stang at VIR and personal bests for both of us; 2:15s.
It is eye opening to consider that on the first test outing in May 2012 we had the green car down to a 2:20 at VIR and figured it might have a 2:18 in it with setup and driver development. Well, it had more than a 2:18 because the green car is still running all the original equipment it did one year ago (except rear ratio), but with a very different setup, additional engine tuning, and more driver seat time, the car ended up being five seconds faster than the initial tests. Goes to show that in IT you can’t assign enough importance to chassis tuning and we have certainly learned a lot about that aspect of IT racing a Mustang. Thanks to all that have shared their knowledge with us over the past year and a half and supported our efforts, particularly Mr. Dave Brown, The Oracle of Ford. Without Dave's help, and our close proximity to a SN95 parts breaker, work from Mr. Young and other racers, we couldn't have developed the cars to the point they are now.
Development is still continuing at team Mustang and much is in store, although I don’t intend to continue logging it on this build thread. We have a new engine for the green car on deck, new rear end ratios to try, new heads from Hoffman Machine, more exhaust work, traction devices, brake compounds, wheels, and of course we’ll never finish tuning the suspension. However, most days it is enjoyable and at least it keeps us out of whorehouses and strip clubs, so it isn’t all bad.
In conclusion, a video of team Mustang racing to a one-two finish at VIR. I hate that all the ITS regulars weren’t there, although if that had been the case we probably wouldn’t have pulled a 1-2 Ford podium, something that probably hasn’t ever happened in ITS. I finished first on Saturday, Chris Plucker second, and a MARRS fellow that went to the john during the podium shot finished third. On Sunday Jeff finished first, with Chris and I bringing up third and second, so we felt like all the hard work was rewarded.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekKUGztFARk[/ame]
The data in the video is offset a number of seconds so don't pay a lot of attention to the speeds on the gauge.
At any rate, while these cars might not ever be a car to have in ITS or a potential winner at every track, I think with patience and hard work they are enjoyable race cars. I know I'm planning on racing mine for the foreseeable future and look forward to continuing the development. Hope you enjoyed reading the thread as much as I enjoyed posting and sharing.
Ron
