ITS Ford Mustang(s) Build - Stripper Stang Part II

Woo hoo, machine shop finished and engine headed back to the Stangwerks. We plan to build it up tonight and drop it in on Thursday. Damn sure is a lot of work butit is good to have it turned around quickly.

Also got news our new wheels are shipping Monday so we're going to ditch about 9.5 lbs of rotating weight once we get them on the cars. 9.5 lbs down, let's see, about 300 more to go.......

Crank in, pistons in, rods and mains torqued:

rebuild.JPG
 
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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.

first.JPG


second.JPG


[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.

sunset.JPG


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
 
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Should have said this much earlier...welcome to the "no one else has built this car for IT so I will" club. Took me about 6 years to get reasonably competitive.
 
So, the really important question: How many BMWs and other real racing cars have you bashed into with your cheap-o 'merican POS...?

;)

K

EDIT - For those of you not in on the backstory, when I was on the ITAC and it was proposed that these cars would be a good fit in ITS, we ACTUALLY had people object to including them, in public and "official" SCCA communication channels, on the grounds that this would be a problem.
 
So, the really important question: How many BMWs and other real racing cars have you bashed into with your cheap-o 'merican POS...?

;)

Well, I did have a very minor incident at VIR where I cut off another fellow in T3. He then had to hit my left rear quarter and caused a bit of damage, but nothing to his car.

Yes, I remember those days of discussion around the pony cars. Pure and utter ridiculousness and exposed the bias some SCCA members have against domestic cars. "It'll spoil the look of the class" was the best line I remember from one of the CRB or ITAC, I can't remember which.

I'm not joking about the interest with the cars though. People do seem to like seeing them in a sea of Miatas and Nissans. The only other IT car I've seen gather more interest from passer bys is Jeff TR8. Generally the comments there are from folks who are astonished that a) they are actually seeing a TR8 b) it is racing c) it is winning.

One more picture of more development, finding the fundamental vibration modes of the driveshaft. Measurements were made with the driveshaft in the car and out on the bench using an acoustic transducer, A/D converter, and some analysis code Jeff G drafted up in MatLab.

Jeff G has his Ph.D. in acoustics, specially engineering vibration type work, and his daytime job is as an acoustical and vibrational engineer for John Deere. Jeff G is convinced his car has a bad vibration that we've tried to kill to no avail. He thinks the driveshaft is the culprit and that we can tune it out by properly balancing the driveshaft.

Me, I was just watching and drinking a beer. My car has a vibration that certainly gets to be pretty bad around 5400 RPM, about our max RPM for a variety of reasons. I think he's on to something and he's devised to tests to check the theory out. Ford had a 110 mph governor on the V6 cars and a numerically low rear end ratio so it is likely they would never see the drive shaft speeds we run and thus no problem would ever be observed.

hammer.JPG


signal.JPG
 
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I don’t think I have posted on this thread before but I have read it religiously. You have done a great service to the community by documenting the builds. Most people have no idea what it takes to build a car that has not been developed yet. When people complain that they have developed their car and it is not competitive I point them to this thread. When people say “I will build the car I have rather than buy a car” I point them to this thread.
 
...so you are quite literally tuning the drive shaft?

That one looks like a B-flat.

K

Basically. Jeff just sent calculations indicating one of the vibration modes that most affects his car will hit around 4933 RPM and others after that. In consulting with a smart fellow at one of the driveshaft places here in NC it turns out they're already well aware of the phenomenon and have dealt with it on numerous cars over the years.

I don’t think I have posted on this thread before but I have read it religiously. You have done a great service to the community by documenting the builds. Most people have no idea what it takes to build a car that has not been developed yet. When people complain that they have developed their car and it is not competitive I point them to this thread. When people say “I will build the car I have rather than buy a car” I point them to this thread.

Thanks for the thanks, glad you enjoyed it. Somewhere along the way we picked up the "Bag of Yay" phrase which was used to described any situation, subassembly, job, or part that was going to end up causing us a buttload of work and/or make our build difficult. Suffice to say, in building any new car there are lots of of these situations. Looking back it'd be pretty easy to draw a build plan for one of these cars and significantly reduce or eliminate all of these problems so at least we're proving we can learn. But you know, building a car is fun because learning and solving problems is enjoyable and exercise for the mind. Those Bags of Yay, while annoying, are part of the process and milestones for how progress is measured.
 
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I bought a car

I ended up redoing almost everything, at least a little



6 in one, 1/2 dozen in another


this thread is one of my favorite anywhere. How's he doing balancing on the driveshaft?
 
Race cars are highly personal for most of us. It'd be a bit hard to get a car, even if "perfect" to someone else, and not end up changing quite a bit of it. I know I've had my fair share of that scenario with my old Z. The Z was an old race car, and with many previous owners, so it came with a lot of issues that were solved in some rather unconventional ways.

In the end I think that we got most of the problems sorted out and it went on to become a reliable and fast race car. But it was never *my* car. I tried as best I could to make it so, but unless you're starting from scratch it is a difficult goal to obtain. And, as soon as you're finished building a car from scratch that is yours, it isn't too hard to have a look at it and find all sorts of ways to improve it for V2.0. Such is the nature of race cars.
 
Negative on the main cap. It could have been installation error. It could have had a small crack for quite a bit of time and finally revealed itself. The vibration harmonics could have had something to do with it, but I doubt it. We won't ever know, but at least the rebuilt motor is doing just fine and doesn't seem to have issues. Its making more power than mine and has already survived twice as long as the one with the main cap failure.
 
So, the really important question: How many BMWs and other real racing cars have you bashed into with your cheap-o 'merican POS...?

;)

K

EDIT - For those of you not in on the backstory, when I was on the ITAC and it was proposed that these cars would be a good fit in ITS, we ACTUALLY had people object to including them, in public and "official" SCCA communication channels, on the grounds that this would be a problem.

Yes, I remember those days of discussion around the pony cars. Pure and utter ridiculousness and exposed the bias some SCCA members have against domestic cars. "It'll spoil the look of the class" was the best line I remember from one of the CRB or ITAC, I can't remember which.

yes, it's difficult to be on a committee and hear such utter crap, especially when it's trounced out as a legitimate reason to exclude a car from a class. "Ruin the look of the class". OMG!! After my shock of hearing that, it dawned on me...Who will SEE the class and how will the damage manifest itself!?!? Our 3.4 average spectators at each event!??

That was one of the more disturbing things I heard while on the ITAC.
And I took obvious heat for publicizing that particular comment. In my eyes, you shouldn't say something on a committee that serves the members if you don't want the members to hear it. I still think that the ad hocs should publish minutes, attendance and voting records.

The only other IT car I've seen gather more interest from passer bys is Jeff TR8. Generally the comments there are from folks who are astonished that a) they are actually seeing one b) it is running c) it is racing without long streaks of fluids, and d) it is winning against actual other cars running at the end of the race.

One more picture of more development, finding the fundamental vibration modes of the driveshaft. Measurements were made with the driveshaft in the car and out on the bench using an acoustic transducer, A/D converter, and some analysis code Jeff G drafted up in MatLab.

Jeff G has his Ph.D. in acoustics, specially engineering vibration type work, and his daytime job is as an acoustical and vibrational engineer for John Deere. Jeff G is convinced his car has a bad vibration that we've tried to kill to no avail. He thinks the driveshaft is the culprit and that we can tune it out by properly balancing the driveshaft.

Me, I was just watching and drinking a beer. My car has a vibration that certainly gets to be pretty bad around 5400 RPM, about our max RPM for a variety of reasons. I think he's on to something and he's devised to tests to check the theory out. Ford had a 110 mph governor on the V6 cars and a numerically low rear end ratio so it is likely they would never see the drive shaft speeds we run and thus no problem would ever be observed.

hammer.JPG


signal.JPG
 
I can testify to just a small percentage of the hours these guys have in these cars. It's ginormous. In 2 years they probably have close to what I have in the TR8 in 10.

I imagine it is a lot like what Speedsource did with the RX7 and Bimmerworld with the 325, just done after hours in a home garage. Pretty cool to say the least.

The net of it is we have an awesome group in ITS right now in the SEDiv. Guys are turning incredibly fast lap times in cars that 5 years ago were many seconds off the pace. As a group we have 6-7 programs that can run times equal to the near pro efforts from a few years back. Pretty amazing. And the Earpstangs are right there in the mix.
 
I don’t think I have posted on this thread before but I have read it religiously. You have done a great service to the community by documenting the builds. Most people have no idea what it takes to build a car that has not been developed yet. When people complain that they have developed their car and it is not competitive I point them to this thread. When people say “I will build the car I have rather than buy a car” I point them to this thread.

The thing you quickly learn is development is NEVER done. Ever. Always something to improve.
 
I figured I’d provide another update on Team Stangwerks.

We’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the last seven or eight months:

*Suspension binding in the rear is now identified and we’re reconfiguring the “trilink”. I think our ability to put down the power we have will greatly improve.
*Green car finally received motor V2.0, which had to be removed last month to fix a crank scraper oil leak.
*Green car finally received the proper rear end ratio to avoid fifth gear.
*Both cars received better tunes, but, they both stopped responding well to A/F targets causing some fueling issues.
*Red car broke three tranmission tail shaft housings; green car did not. We have ideas.
*Proper spring rates were decided upon.
*Chased pinion angles and fixed driveline vibrations.
*Konis went off to Lee for revalving, we were not optimal. We’ll be much better.
*New headers are designed but not yet constructed.

We’re now in various stages of each of these points and winter maintenance is also occurring, all new bearings, brake calipers, and fluids. As usual, we’ve done all the work on everything and are certainly improving our skill set.

We’ve also booked a date here and we’ll take one of the cars down for a proper suspension study:

http://www.morsemeasurements.com/what-is-kc-testing/top-ten-questions-that-kc-testing-answers/


With two cars it is somewhat affordable to split the study, about the cost of a set of tires.

Team Stangwerks finished up the year pretty well with a one-two finish at the SARRC at RRR. We certainly didn’t expect to do that well, but on the other hand we worked hard on the test day and finally got a suspension setup that was somewhat reasonable and gave us some traction allowing us us to get off the corners equal to other cars. Also contributing were the points leader missing qualifying, Steve E not making it, P3 through P6 having a serious dogfight, Jeff Y getting of six once poorly and giving me an opening, but still, Jeff G drove a strong race and won. Here is some in car, although it doesn't include the finish. The finish had me on Jeff G’s rear bumper 0.251 seconds apart. Fun race.

http://youtu.be/hsZDN8VTHnU



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And we had some good racing at VIR in the ECR.

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And a good SARRC race, although Jeff G broke a tranny and had to drop out. Jeff Young drove well and took the win with Plucker a close third.

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Looking forward to a great 2014 and fun racing with good friends!
 
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