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Aidan (who is an amazing friend) picked up a truck for me. So now I don't have to drive the car to events which is nice! I'll be driving down next weekend to pick it up from him. 1997 f350 crew cab, 460. Pretty excited for this. Between Katy and I, our biggest vehicle was currently the foxbody. This is gonna make metal runs, Argon runs, and HD racing runs soooo much easier.
Katy and I have both been crazy busy trying to get the cars ready for June 23rd at The Ridge. She did MM front and rear coilovers on the mustang as well as Delrin bushings in the rear control arms and sphericals in the upright. Stupid mustang ps system leaks all over so she's also replacing it with an electric power steering kit after this trackday. Which will be nice, because it currently dumps all of it's fluid in my back parking area.
I'm trying to finish up my wiring. Racepak is soon in the future, which will simplify things under the dash. Although, with leftover money from the truck, I may buy a trailer. Kinda going back and forth still. Weighing options because I'm gonna need one for wrls which means about 500-700 in uhaul trailer cost. Depending on how many times I use it this year, I could probably see another 150-300 in trailer costs. Seems like an investment to me hahaha, also I hate spending money renting/borrowing when I can buy.
Apparently, my flex section inner braid decided that it was going to contract...which is a neat trick. At first I was just gonna send it for this trackday, but I fired it up sunday with the Burns muffler on and it was much quieter than I remember the burns being. So they're getting cut out and new non-flex inners are getting put in. Learned my lesson there. New hubs/studs for the season as well.
I'm not sure if I'll get to it before this trackday, but I'm going to make a new sway bar bracket that will basically place the swaybar at the lower edge of the crank pulley or below it. This should put the endlinks at a better angle as well as the sway bar. Should be an afternoon of fabrication and fix something that has bugged me about the ls swap. Ground clearance is still my biggest complaint.
Have you welded the torque boxes on the Mustang yet?
Back "before the turn of the century" , when I was drag racing 5.0s, we found that doing anything to stiffen up the control arms/bushings usually led to tearing/cracking in the unibody control arm mounts. Probably more apparent with drag launches, but road race G's are going to put a lot of stress on them as well...
Have you welded the torque boxes on the Mustang yet?
Back "before the turn of the century" , when I was drag racing 5.0s, we found that doing anything to stiffen up the control arms/bushings usually led to tearing/cracking in the unibody control arm mounts. Probably more apparent with drag launches, but road race G's are going to put a lot of stress on them as well...
Huh, I hadn't heard of that before! It does have a cobra irs set up in it, so we aren't using those mounts anymore though These chassis love to break at any point that they can lol, soooo flimsy. But we still love them for what the are
Had my first trackday of the season yesterday. Been looking forward to this one since Katy signed up and we were going to be in the same session together. But it went pretty meh. We were both pushing really hard to get our cars done over the past two months, but hers overheated Thursday which meant she missed he alignment and her **** was all over the place because of the new suspension. So we focused on getting mine together. I was having problems with wiring that were probably due to me wiring things with very little sleep. I also missed my alignment, but said **** it and decided to go anyway.
Got less sleep than I should have the night before, and I was having clutch engagement problems as soon as we dropped the car in the paddock. I was also trying to finish up wiring my oil pressure and coolant temp warning lights that morning (more on that later).
First session out went decent. I was having some shifting problems, and there was lots of traffic. Got a pretty open lap at the end and posted a 1:59 which I was pretty happy with for my first time at the ridge with this car. Apparently, that got noticed because they told me they wanted an instructor to ride with me, check my pace, and bump me to A. I said I didn't really feel I was ready because I wanted to learn the car a bit more on this track and try to get some sort of consistency. (even if it's slow consistency lol) They pushed it a little more, so I took one of the organizers out.
Second lap out I cooked it way too hard into 13 and ended up going off track as well as flat spotting the **** out of my tires. Completely my fault, but I was also a bit upset that they were trying to force me into a group that I told them I wasn't comfortable going into yet and put someone in my car when I just wanted to figure stuff out still. Went back to the pits a bit embarrassed because I did the thing that all instructors hate and I don't like being that guy
Back to the Oil/cts warning lights. I got them hooked up right before my second session. During the session, through almost every turn, and any high braking zone, the light would kick on for oil pressure. I had it set to go on at 20psi. I added a half a quart before the third session to see if it would help at all, and it did on one or two turns, but it's still kicking on a lot.
At the start of the fourth session, I tried to get the car into gear and it wouldn't go. Thinking I had cooked the fluid again, Katy and I bled it. I missed that session. Turns out I bent the pedal somehow. I bent it back, but then it wouldn't come back up all the way. At that point I threw the car onto the uhaul trailer and we headed home.
It might have been a good thing honestly. I was in a shitty mood the whole day and probably a bit too tired. The truck towed great at least! Got a whopping 7.5mpg towing at a steady 70mph, but made it all the way there and back with no issues at all. So that was good. But all in all, both Katy and I were pretty depressed after putting so much time and money in over the last few months. Didn't even take any pictures, so this is a pretty boring update.
After the whole oil light thing, I'm not sure what to do. Questioning a bit of why I'm doing all this, especially for an hdpe car. Seems kinda pointless at times. But then again, I guess life kinda is too. So maybe cars are just like life? Idk.
Sorry to hear about the organizers trying to bump you up to a faster run group. I too am always paranoid I will be pushed past my driving limits, and strive to aim for maximum enjoyment, as opposed to outright time.
Hopefully you will have more stress free trackdays in the near future, and when that perfect day does come, it all seems worth it in the end.
Cannot wait to see you guys at Laguna come October.
05-24-2019, 03:27 PM
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, when I was drag racing 5.0s, we found that doing anything to stiffen up the control arms/bushings usually led to tearing/cracking in the unibody control arm mounts. Probably more apparent with drag launches, but road race G's are going to put a lot of stress on them as well...
These chassis love to break at any point that they can lol, soooo flimsy. But we still love them for what the are 
