Turbo V6 Mustang

[zeitgeist57]

Well done on the entire package! :thumbup:

[Toph6888]

Video from buckeye miata club today. As others who were there noticed, the course was extremely tight and i learned i desperately need an alignment, still a lot of fun though. Mustang is running strong and i think its finaslly through its shakedown as there really isnt anything the car needs besides more run time for me to get more seat time.

 

[Toph6888]

Finally got the car onto the alignment rack at my work. Overall the alignment wasn't as bad as I thought in terms of camber/caster, but the tires definitely were pointing all different directions.

 

Before:

 

After:

Note: it looks like toe in the front is off, but the rack has plates that allow the car to move, so after I adjusted the front, I adjusted the rear, and the slight movement changed the reading on the front from side to side. There is a total of 1/16" of toe out, 1/32" on either side.

 

I talked with some other guys about my mounting of my front control arms since my K member has two allocations for mounting, and I have it currently in the lower one. My front control arms are almost level with the ground with the car being slightly lowered, so they suggested that I put the control arms in the upper mounting location to try to improve roll center, so I'll probably work on that later this weekend.

 

I also had put camber bolts into the struts to arch the wheel away from the coilover due to extremely tight clearances. The only problem with that now is that I can only get about -1.7*camber on the driver side on the top hats, so I'll have to take some camber back out of the bolt to let me put it in on the tophat. Hopefully that all makes sense lol.

[zeitgeist57]

LOL'ing at the accentuated "DERP" graphics

[Toph6888]

Spent a lot of time fixing up some issues on the mustang since the last autox.

 

Last BMC event, about halfway through the run I lost most of my brakes. Neat. Thankfully I had already shed a lot of speed and was able to get it back to the pits, and was then able to limp it home.

 

After reviewing what happened, I realized I had a clusterfuck of parts all around the power steering reservoir/master cylinder.

 

1) The battery connection from the trunk battery wire to the starter/fuse box was right under the master cylinder. Some shade tree mechanic (who me? couldn't be! then who? Ya I did it) decided to get a replacement bolt on terminal connection, clamp the starter/fuse wire onto said terminal connection, bolt the terminal connection to the socket on the battery wire, and then electrical tape the shit out of it. SOLID.

 

2) The master cylinder lines had been remade and overall were ok, but during hard braking the master cylinder would flex so much that the lines would rub up against the electrical connection for the battery/fuse box/starter. Neat. Also, there wasn't enough flex in the hard lines to really allow this much movement.

 

3) During hard braking, due to the hydroboost and the "vent to atmosphere" power steering reservoir cap, whenever I would slam the brakes, a small jet of power steering fluid would shoot out of the cap. The best part of this: it was aimed directly at said master cylinder hard lines and the electrical terminal.

 

So essentially over time the power steering fluid destroyed the electrical tape, and a small metal edge made its way through the tape due to the rubbing against the master cylinder lines. The master cylinder lines was that replacement Ni/Cu hard line, so it was softer than steel lines, and the electrical terminal eventually ate its way through and poked a hole in the brake line = loss of front brakes. NEAT.

 

Second win: Because the electrical terminal was now slightly exposed, I realized why sometimes during hard braking I would lose my gauges, and that was because the battery terminal was shorting out against the frame. SECOND NEAT.

 

So the past two weeks I have been working on moving EVERYTHING away from that area that I can.

 

Bought a new battery connection box and mounted up out of the way of everything.

 

Then I moved the valve cover catch can to where my AC big bottle thing (maybe an expander?) since I don't have AC in the car, and that moves it to a much easier to deal with location on the passenger side firewall.

 

Next I put in my new wilwood adjustable proportioning valve. Decided to say fuck hard lines all together and bought all -3AN lines to replace everything. I decided to go this route because I already did the rears and have had no loss in pedal feel, even though everyone says I'm gonna die with soft lines "expanding", and because if I do have issues with losing a line again, it will be easy to replace. Getting all the right adapter fittings sucked, but I got it all bled last night and everything feels pretty good.

 

And finally, I bought a new reservoir cap for the power steering fluid, drilled a hole, put in a brass fitting and used epoxy to seal/hold it in, and then bought a master cylinder reservoir for a motorcycle and ran a line as a secondary catch can for any power steering fluid that hence tries to escape the system. Seems like a lot of BMW guys do similar things on their cars...

 

I have another autocross this weekend on Sunday, so hopefully all these changes help the car in terms of dependability. Still need to play with the prop valve to get it proportioned right, but should be able to take care of that on Saturday.

[Toph6888]

Went to Mid Ohio this weekend for Carfest 2016. Did acclimation program (super novice) on Friday on track at Mid Ohio, and then did all the autocross sessions on Saturday AM/PM and Sunday AM / Sunday PM (BMC event).

 

Fiance was with me too in her mini, she had a blast. It was tough getting her there, but she got comfortable once she realized how the passing worked.

 

 

 

Overall it was a great weekend and a lot of fun to finally get the car on the track that it was built for. Either the 3rd or 4th session I got the car up to 120mph on the back straight easily before my instructor suggest I focus more on learning the line than trying for top speed lol. I was able to do 120 at or just after the kink, so the car still has some power in her which was fun to find out.

 

By the 3rd and 4th session we were finally getting some speed in the corners and really feeling what the car was doing, overall it did better than I thought it would. Responded very well and any time that it was about to step out it was easy to bring it right back in.

 

During the 4th session my shifter took a shit though. On the back straight we were going about 110 and I was in 5th, started slowing down for the turn out of the straight and reached to shift down from 5th to 4th and the shifter was jelly. Tried for 3rd, no luck, tried for 5th, no luck, coasted around the next two turns, and then finally got it into 4th and just stayed there the whole session. Thankfully the car made plenty of torque and I was able to keep the speed up enough to where they were actually some of our better runs.

 

Pulled it in the pits and it was done-zo. A bunch of set screws that set spring tension had backed out and some of the plastic bushings were gone. Neat. Missed out on the 5th session of the day, but a friend was coming up for the sat/sun sessions so he stopped at jegs and brought me a steeda tri ax shifter that we replaced sat am. Much better than the cheap $50 shifter I had been using for the past 2.5 years.

 

Busted shifter

 

 

Overnight parts from japan, err, columbus

 

Main take away from the track day was to just get more comfortable with braking and carrying more speed through the corners which will come once I can get some more seat time. Also, after the session coolant temps were great (180-190*F on the track at all times) but oil pressure was starting to get a bit low off track (oil temps around 210-220*F, no cooler and oil pressure around 20psi) so my instructor suggested trying to run 5W40 over my current 5W30 to try to help keep the pressure up on the track when warm.

 

Autocross sessions were pretty fun, had some good competition on a very fun (but short) course with a ton of elevation change for the size

 

Best run from Sunday AM:

 

Best run from Sunday PM (this was a buckeye miata club points event, so they changed the course up a little bit):

 

Finally starting to feel comfortable with the car on the autox, but still need to get comfortable with braking later/accelerating through corners better. Overall everything held up great!

 

Will hopefully be able to make 2 or 3 track days next year at mid ohio and start finding some more time.

 

Edited September 6, 2016 by Toph6888