Captdistraction's ST2/GTR build thread Build Thread

[Fabman]

See that tube welded to the left frame rail?
That was one place I'd slide lead in so I could move it forward and aft to make percentages and also mounts some on the right since we had a maximum left side weight rule that would vary from track to track so it was nice to be able to adjust on the fly.

 

[Fabman]

Here's another one with a better shot. (Different car but same deal) This car needed two rails to make weight.

 

[captdistraction]

Bah, NASA ST Series:

Up to two hundred and fifty (250) lbs. of added ballast is permitted. All ballast must be of solid material (no fluids or shot pellets), safely secured in any location on the vehicle approved by NASA safety technical inspectors, and comply with Section
15.20 of the NASA CCR.

15.20: All ballast shall be solid metal such as steel, lead, or depleted uranium, and consist of a minimum of five (5) pounds per piece. Each piece shall be bolted in place with through-bolts, fender washers, and a locking-nut / system (e.g. jam-nuts, Nylock, etc.). All ballast shall be secured sufficiently and all bolts shall be of Grade five (5). Nylock nuts or metal crimping lock nuts should not be reuse

 

[Fabman]

Bah, NASA ST Series:
15.20: All ballast shall be solid metal such as steel, lead, or depleted uranium, and consist of a minimum of five (5) pounds per piece. Each piece shall be bolted in place with through-bolts, fender washers, and a locking-nut / system (e.g. jam-nuts, Nylock, etc.). All ballast shall be secured sufficiently and all bolts shall be of Grade five (5). Nylock nuts or metal crimping lock nuts should not be reuse

Piece of cake, you got this!


(I consider the lead shot in a welded tube to be solid)

 

[Fabman]

Drill 2 holes in the box tube and slip a piece of pipe through it and weld the ends to the tube.
You now have 2 holes to bolt "Through" and the BBs won't come out.

 

[steeda5]

Chris,

You have worked your ass off to get ur car back together. Go have some fun this weekend!

 

[captdistraction]

Race Report 1 (FINALLY - AMIRITE?!)

With the help and support from everyone and particularly my loving wife, I was able to make it out this last weekend to Chuckwalla Valley Raceway for NASA-AZ's Super Touring races. All the paperwork was expedited, I was given a clean bill of health, the car was weighed in (3670lbs with me, 10gal of gas, passenger seat, and some street wheels. I'll make a post tomorrow on an estimated actual race weight). So my concerns about classing were short lived.

After an uneventful tow to Chuckwalla Valley, we unpacked and setup shop. However, the weather conditions were not friendly on Friday evening as seen below:


Kidding aside, we spent the evening huddled in trailers drinking and benchracing. Rain followed the dust, which was everywhere and in everything. I've never experienced a dust storm quite so violent, you almost wanted to have ropes to lead you from place to place. After a scant 3 hours rest, the typical mazda owner alerted everyone to the clock striking 5:45AM by starting and revving the piss out of their loud rotary. The weather for Saturday was a mix of rain with more rain, so testing and qualifying was done on some street tires. Unfortunately I was held up with a number of aggressive but slower AI drivers, and not looking to make waves, my qualifying ended up being 6-8 seconds slower than I had expected had I found a clean lap or some gap that wasn't immediately removed. No big deal, I was starting 3rd in class and 4th overall IIRC, the weather had scared off a number of competitors for Saturday. That said, as I was pulling in the car to pits after my qualify session, power steering failed on the car along with a charging system alert. I had previously had issues similar to this on the last setup, but we never found it (as losing the motor shifted the attention elsewhere). With only 30 minutes to go to the race, we determine an alternator had likely failed. I had not brought a spare or ever considered such, but @ArizonaBOSS had one brand new in his trailer. While there was some doubt as to whether I could change it in time, I promised the audience that they'd see something special, and with help, we delivered on that. With 5 minutes to go the car was fired up, refueled and I was scrambling to get into my gear.

Once belted in I headed to grid, however they had released the field already. So I explained my case, and was released last out onto track, behind the ST3, ST4 and AI cars which had a seperate start. The weather was light rain, however the moment we went on track the rain became very heavy and visibility became a serious issue. That said, the green flag dropped and there was no time for other concerns.

For those with 30 min to kill:
https://youtu.be/JGeE5IxgKQs

Saturday's podium


Ultimately, the AI cars do hold me up a bit as other cars fall off the course and are otherwise unable to control in the rain. However they raced very hard, and being in provisional race 1, I didn't want to make an aggressive mood (especially if you watch for all the contact). I do, however, survive the race and end up on the podium in second place! Not a bad start for race one, car was parked with no damage, no offs, and the late to grid issue was considered a non-problem.

Sunday's Race 2:

The weather was a bit more in favor, so out came the R7's and down went the laptimes. The qualify session was mostly clean, though I wasn't able to put together a whole lap (again dealing with cars having offs creating local yellow flags). I started a few cars behind the leader in ST2, and was able to quickly work my way up, and for 25 minutes we have a fun chase all the way to the end. If I were more practiced and confident in making a move stick I would report a win, however, the #09 camaro holds me off (a 0.4second gap, pushing him across the line) and another second place podium was claimed.

More video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE3ZFmwsSm8

Sunday's podium


@ArizonaBOSS wasn't involved in the race and I'll let him detail that, however huge thanks to his help in getting my car ready after saturday's incident (before he himself had to get in his car and to grid). I had a great race weekend, and the people really made it fun.

Winning two trophies and bringing the home mostly problem free was huge for me, a great start and I now turn my sights to the March event at Firebird East. Not much will change on the car from now to then, perhaps some weight shedding, however will be a more challenging task against the local fast and experienced racers who will show up.

Some photos from the event:
Trophies and stamped logs!


Have no fear, half worn street tires are here (aka wet compounds)



wet qualify laps


dry qualify laps (faster)


Murica (aka ST2 in the SW US)


The bowl


bowl exit (where I would see some gnarly g-readings)


Chasing down two surprisingly fast ST3 cars, race start (miata on my driver's door too small to be seen)


The victor of Sunday's race


Climbing the hill to the back straight (S curve back to the left)


@ArizonaBoss and some chump in a yellow car for practice


Starting practice


Race Start, Saturday


Corgi + Sunset, farewell CVR

 

[VoodooBoss]

Nice results for your first time out in your Mustang. Congratulations!

 

[venom52]

Looks and sounds fantastic. Glad it's back up running strong and you're having fun.

 

[Fabman]

That's awesome! And well earned.

 

[drano38]

Congrats on a great running car, and driver too!
Looks like a successful weekend.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Piece of cake, you got this!


(I consider the lead shot in a welded tube to be solid)

lol I am the scrutineer for this series so might want to consider any rule-breaking suggestions to happen via PM

 

[venom52]

lol I am the scrutineer for this series so might want to consider any rule-breaking suggestions to happen via PM

The eye is upon you now.

 

[captdistraction]

PROTEST! CONFLICTS OF INTEREST!!! RUSSIA!

STOP CROOKED SUPER TOURING!

Both my car and I are overweight, no issues to report. Corner balancing to come soon, have some improvements done between the last race and this upcoming weekend at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park East Track (Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park East Track for short).

Some technical detail to be posted this week Happy to report I only had a couple bad NPT fittings/sealant, loose muffler clamp, and swaybar alteration as items on the maintenance list. Oil changed and ready to rock.

 

[TMSBOSS]

Be nice!!! The Russian's Did not do it. Likely its them Ukrainian surrogates!! OMG!! LOL!!!

So glad the new Mill is working out and seat time to maintenance time is getting to where it should be.

 

[302 Hi Pro]

Very nice to see you racing and bringing home a stamped race log. Has to feel great. Wishing you a very successful race season in 2017.

Let us know what you find on the steering and be sure to check those grounds.

All the best,
302 Hi Pro

 

[captdistraction]

Well, I was having too much fun and optimism, so I was due for some more crippling defeat:

Went to WHPMP East track to take on the Nasa Super Touring series again, and all was looking well. Resolved all the issues I was having in prep (I'll have more on that shortly) and the car was 100% ready to go (minus some corner balancing that I ran out of time to do). Weather was warm, but the track looked fast and clean-ish for WHPMP (which can often be a dustbowl).

In the morning warm-up practice session on Saturday, I took the car out with a modified rear swaybar setting (a mistake, adding bar took far too much rear grip away from the car, nearly spun it just getting around the track on warmup pace). As soon as the green flag was thrown however, my first 4th down to 3rd shift resulted in a explosion. I quickly pulled the car into some pavement area well out of the line on track, and could tell I lost a clutch. I thought perhaps I ripped the facings off one of the discs on the RXT, however the truth was a bit more sinister. After the session I was towed in and immediately went to work as I didn't want to lose the whole weekend to something like a clutch failure. With the help of many friends we had the transmission out of the car quickly, and discovered that the clutch lost of of the discs in an explosive manner, which sent shrapnel everywhere, including knocking a 3" hole into the trans housing and scarring everything contained within. However, undeterred, I took inventory of what I needed (somehow the flywheel escaped undamaged): a clutch kit, slave cylinder and possibly some fasteners. I wish I could blame this on a money-shift, but the telemetry doesn't suggest that was the case.

I initially thought about patching it up and running Sunday to try to get some points, but it was a futile effort as the only clutch that was possibly in town was the GT clutch from a 2011-2014 at a dealer at the steep cost of $1k. For something I'd use once and discard, that was too much. So I packed up and brought the car home.

I'm contemplating what to do next, but I'm pretty spent, so likely some time to lick my wounds, re-evaluate (again) my approach to this and see what I can do ensure I can at least make it through events, and back to back. I'll need to source a MT82 or at least the outer casing and the parts required to retrofit it, a new clutch system (looking closely at the exedy hyper single since a lot of the boss 302S cars ran it without issue and lots of positive feedback). While the car is down, I will likely take the time to try to improve its competitiveness by moving to wider wheels to match the class leaders and just use the time off to better develop the car and hope for more success. The biggest factor is just a truly limited budget (I just make enough to get to events, still working down the motor financing costs; no trailer yet procured).

I really hope I can get to a place to where its plausible for me to make events (a dream would be to be competitive in the series, but I know its the first year and things will happen). The crowd noise of "This is likely too expensive for you to do right, try something else" gets louder with each event, but we'll see.

Some pictures from the carnage:

 

[captdistraction]

On a more positive note, while my entry into the weekend was toast, I did at least get a couple other on-track sessions and helped 2 other cars get through the weekend (so hopefully I'm not just the recipient of good will and spread some of my own)

Our spec miata director had a brand new car, but didn't have a cool shirt system wired up (it was otherwise installed). So I spent a few hours friday evening integrating the switch and hardware to get the system running. Took a little while due to the tight confines of the miata and my need for perfection when wiring things up.

Saturday, another S197 car had issues with a clutch line popping off the trans. Those darned little clips had broken on his elbow, and previous makeshift fixes had failed. Luckily, with my car down, we had spare parts available to get that car back out on track.

Another friend showed up in a GT350R, relatively new to track though he had been to the Track Attack program. So I rode along for a session and gave some guidance, and later took him for a session in my S550 street car (the same one I had promised never to take on track) to demonstrate how to put some of the core concepts together

Mini review of the S550 (Performance Pack GT with GT350 monotube front struts and BMR springs, some wheel spacers and nothing else):

Fun easy to drive car. Its far more capable than my s197 was in street/track prepped trim. Front tires are definitely a limit, along with the brake pad compound (east is somewhat tough on brakes). The rear end was drama free, and it was mostly easy to rotate the car via the foot to overcome entry push. The car doesn't feel its weight, surprisingly. The engine is far too quiet however, since I use that noise as a mental gauge to how I apply torque with my foot. We tracked down a lot of prepped cars in this fairly stock GT, and in 20 minutes no one had caught us, which is comforting. I was able to be very consistent in my marks, and as the tires warmed up dealing with the added rotation and slip angles were not a problem. I think for all mustangs a differential like the torsen T2 is a must, its just that much better than clutch-based ones for drama-free control. I said on facebook that I believed the car to be a phenomenal bargain value for those looking for a capable car, but was laughed/trolled out accordingly (I still stand by that statement).

That said, I don't feel the need to update the racecar program to a S550 any time soon. The new cars are cool, different, and fun in their own way, but as the 302R showed at St. Pete this weekend, the old gals still have some tricks up their sleeves. That concludes the on-track use of this red car, but a fun experiment and a high point in an otherwise lowish weekend.

On another note, I'd certainly have given up if it weren't for the great people at the track. Both around the US and particularly in Arizona, there's a great network of people to race with.

 

[VoodooBoss]

Bummer. While the McLeod RXT/RST work fine for cars that are tracked occasionally, and typically fix the shifting issues, they don't appear to be up to the challenge of a full on race car. The Exedy looks like a solid choice but remember the 302S is running a different trans...

Contact Ben Calimer and see if he has a trans or casing. There seems to be plenty of them around so you should be able to find one for a reasonable price. Don't give up yet!

 

[j3st3r]

Chris, I hate to see the car and you down like this. I went through a very similar cycle with a previous car I had, and I know at some point in the whole ordeal I lost the excitement, and I knew from there it was an up hill battle. I hope you are not or dont get there. It looks from the videos and results that you are on your way to some fun, and success in that kick ass ride of yours, in the series. I know we have said this before to others in the TMO community, but if you need anything....give a shout. Wish I lived closer to you guys to be able to lend a helping hand in wrenching as well.

I do mean literally Chris....engine was first....then clutch