ITB Mustang

[Ron]

Thanks for the plug on our car. Our car is very track specific. At Savannah we are really strong. The track is flowing and fairly flat. We struggle at Road Atlanta as there are many heavy braking zones and quite a few uphill climbs. VIR is better but I don't think we have enough for the top guys, yet. You can make them handle pretty well and they are easy to drive you just have to work hard on all the little things. We have threaded spring plates on all four corners so we can corner weight the car and change ride height. We cut apart Koni double adjustable front shocks to change the mounting setup so that they would bolt up to the front spindles. We built a custom NASCAR style front anti-roll bar.
The power is there, once again you have to do all the little things, crank scrapers, windage tray, low drag rings, pan evacuation system, proper headers, I could go on. We have spent countless hours on an engine dyno trying different things to make power. It's there you just have to work at it.
On the weight side we are on our third car. You have to look at every option to reduce weight, including sandblasting the entire bare chassis to get all the old paint and under coating off. That was a fairly cheap ($300.00) item to do and the car was much lighter after we had it done. When our car is set up for sprint races we have rolled across the scale at 2,600 lbs. That is a weight I thought we would never see but we did get there. I was convinced years ago it was impossible but I proved myself wrong. I even think you could get to the minimum but you would have to give up a good cage, use the 4 speed, small front brakes, 13 inch rims, no fuel cell, hell I could go on but you get the idea.
Brakes are another concern, proper cooling is mandatory! I have seen an ITB mustang at Road Atlanta go down into the 10 A/B turn complex and go for the brakes only to find the floor, thank goodness for gravel traps! We have built hats that sit over the rotors for proper cooling and built ducts and backing plates that cool from the center out. EBC makes proper pad compounds, even endurance pads that lasted all 13 hours last year at VIR.
90% of what we have done does not cost a ton of money. I really enjoy trying to always improve what we have. We never show up at the track without trying something new to make the car faster. With 3 kids and running my own business weekends are hard to come by, bu nights in the shop are easy.

[quadzjr]

Ron after the last race at savanna that I talked to you and your friend.. It encourgaed me to possibly build one myself. Even though many thigns you have done may be free time and expereince have an unlimited price associated with it.

Have you tidy-up the wiring since then? I remember you were sayign you had issues with the wiring just before the race.

[Ron]

Yes, we sourced the problem to a bad O2 unit that was giving us fits. The reason we needed it was that motor did not get enough dyno time and we were trying to jet the carb, what a nightmare. It poped our data box and tach, every time we went out it was something else, thats why there were wires everywhere tywraped to everything. Mixed into that was the seperate wiring harness for our lights for endurance racing. It is a seperate harness we built so that we could quickly fix lighting issues for VIR. At night that track is DARK,DARK,DARK. Did I say that it was dark therer at night!

[CRallo]

Thanks for the plug on our car. Our car is very track specific. At Savannah we are really strong. The track is flowing and fairly flat... <snip>
...the shop are easy.

wow you guys are serious!! don't you have a life?! lol sounds like a car I gotta see someday...

[quadzjr]

wow you guys are serious!! don't you have a life?! lol sounds like a car I gotta see someday...

Racing is life.. atleast it's mine.

[CRallo]

Racing is life.. atleast it's mine.

i know, i know

same here man... same here :cool:

[Ron]

I should say that I have it pretty good. My dad raced in IMSA in the 70's and his old race engineer is still a very close friend of the family. He is the motor guy, thats all he wants to do. I just have to work on the car. Like I said, 3 kids, a great wife, and self employed, time is what I need more of, so I just slip down to the basement a couple of nights a week and work on stuff. It is my escape from life. My family knows that its daddy time. Sometimes its for several hours, others just one. I am very lucky to have a complete workshop with welders, drill press, ect...
Also, we have been at this Mustang thing for a while. I first started with a 1971 ford capri with the 2 liter for a few years. But body parts and such were tough to get. Thats when we got car 1. It was a purchased car off of ebay for really parts, we ran it for a season and realized it was a handful to drive but made good power. Car 2 was a converted AS car that had a very nice cage and many little things done that were great. It was built by Dayton Brooks. Thats where we really started trying to make the car handle, Good shocks and springs the front sway bar, delrin and aluminum bushings in the front, steeda rear end, YES we spent some money on that car. But it was heavy and after having to put 2 front clips on the car we decided to build our own. After looking at hundreds of cage designs and finding and early year donor we went to work on building the lightest car we could. Car 3 is where we are now. It took a year to build in the basement, we skipped a year of racing and pulled off all the stuff off of car 2 and that is how we got here.
We have spent some money over the years and some of the stuff we have is a little over the top but we are having a great time. For those of you that don't know my dad shares the driving duties with me and it is something I never thought I would get to do. I know there are many teams like ours (father/son) but having grown up being dragged all around the country as a kid watching him race it is a treat to share it with him now. 5 years ago, as a fathers day present, I took the car and dad to VIR for drivers school and the rest is history.
Bottom line is this, we have tried lots of stuff over the years. I have read all the books about mustangs, and there are quite a few. In every book you pick up little tricks even in the circle track ones. I would be glad to share what we have done with anyone who wants to know, well 90% of what we have learned. I don't know it all, but god knows we have tried it.