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

[Ron Earp]

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.

[Knestis]

...so you are quite literally tuning the drive shaft?

That one looks like a B-flat.

K

[dickita15]

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.

[Ron Earp]

...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.

[adamjabaay]

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?

[Ron Earp]

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.

[Racerlinn]

But you can't tuna fish.

[JeffYoung]

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.

[Ron Earp]

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/wha...sting-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





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



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.



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

[Andy Bettencourt]

Great stuff

[Ron Earp]

Finally found part of the last lap, the checker with a car length between us.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14rrb7oXmYc[/ame]

Work still continues with rear axle rebuilding, tri-link re-engineering, chassis setup, and some other odds and ends. I believe we've made significant strides in the rear chassis configuration/setup and will be able to put power down far sooner than we were able to in 2012/2013. That's really the key for us, to be able to capitalize on our good low and mid-range horsepower. At a track like say CMP we can turn in just fine and brake with the best of them, but lose on power application in the carousel, a very important section of the track, as well as T12. CMP doesn't have long straights so the RX7s can't kill us on top like Daytona or CMS, and if we can get that power down early without losing the rear we might do well at that track. And those improvements would help a lot at RRR where the race is to see who can lay down the pedal soonest in T6.

[lateapex911]

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.

[JeffYoung]

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.