S550 mavisky's "LOUDCAR" Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

[mavisky]

Swapped out the Steeda rear camber adjusters for the SPC camber arms. The arms are lovely, but the guys doing the alignment weren't the happiest. Sent the car in with them at max negative rear camber and the car was at like -3.5 degrees. As such they had to play around with re-positioning the inner hex to get it right but finally got the rear settled at around -2 dergrees on both sides with a slight amount of toe-in. We quickly confirmed the front alignment settings (-3.2 degrees camber and a mild amount of toe-out) and I went to attend the AXS autocross series at Atlanta Motorsports Park again. The track was again incredibly tight with me just buzzing the limiter in 1st a few times at the end of the longest straight but with the complexity we still had a fairly long course. I ended up winning my class and running the fastest time of the day with a 49.5 second run which give you an idea of how tight the course really is if you're taking that long and it's all in 1st gear in my car.

Anyway, here's some photos from the event.

New SPC arms going in.







Throwing some sparks from the titanium skid pucks on the bottom of the splitter.


Here's the only video I was able to capture from in car.

Kyle Mavis on Instagram: "When your GoPro Audio dies you make the most of a bad situation with some sick hair metal. * Big thanks to the team at @atlantamotorsportspark for hosting another event with an even better track layout than last time. With g

48 likes, 2 comments - Kyle Mavis (@flatplanefury) on Instagram: "When your GoPro Audio dies you make the most of a bad situation with some sick hair metal. * Big ..."

www.instagram.com

and from outside the car

Kyle Mavis on Instagram: "Love seeing the titanium sparks from the Professional Awesome splitter pucks. Definite 90's F1 vibes on a much smaller scale."

42 likes, 1 comments - Kyle Mavis (@flatplanefury) on Instagram: "Love seeing the titanium sparks from the Professional Awesome splitter pucks. Definite 90's F1 vi..."

www.instagram.com

 

[mavisky]

Latest event and another 1st place finish and fastest time of the day.

2nd fastest run of the day as the footage for my fastest run was corrupted. Run was starting off decently but over the first crest the car crosses a set of steel plates for the tracks wet skid pad and this threw the car into a fit. The car threw a service stabilitrac light on the center gage cluster and moved the car from Track mode to Normal mode. First time I've ever had this happen and this was the only run it happened on all day. Still resulted in one of the top 3 fastest times of the day. for some reason the audio also glitches about halfway through the video and dropped in volume.

The run after this the system stayed fully functional and was able to drop a full 2 seconds off of my time. In the end I was able to set the fastest time of the day at that point by about 3 seconds so called it a day and headed home to shower and pick up my daughter to bring her back for the trophy ceremony. One other car ran an even faster time later, but with a cone penalty he slid back behind my time overall. Would have stayed and got a few more runs to get my money's worth, but I have an event on Sunday the 13th with the Peacthree Porsche Club, an event on the 20th with the SCCA, and a local one our city puts on the 25th and 26th where the fastest car gets $500. Needless to say saving the tires a bit was in my best interest today.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Good run and have not noticed, but are you planning a trip to Lincoln for the Solo Nationals? If not do put that on your " Bucket List " for next year as the competition is insane and you will find all the little tricks that folks might be using , plus if there have been any tire compound changes, etc. I have a sneaky suspicion the dominance of the Yokes may be severely challenged with the solid results coming from RE71RSs this year. I hope to canvas the area and Classes to see how the CR-S Nankangs are doing because that has also been another surprise tire, though I expect to see it as just another semi competitive choice since they redone compounding, etc. means there are not as many folks even able to acquire the new rubber yet.

 

[mavisky]

Good run and have not noticed, but are you planning a trip to Lincoln for the Solo Nationals? If not do put that on your " Bucket List " for next year as the competition is insane and you will find all the little tricks that folks might be using , plus if there have been any tire compound changes, etc. I have a sneaky suspicion the dominance of the Yokes may be severely challenged with the solid results coming from RE71RSs this year. I hope to canvas the area and Classes to see how the CR-S Nankangs are doing because that has also been another surprise tire, though I expect to see it as just another semi competitive choice since they redone compounding, etc. means there are not as many folks even able to acquire the new rubber yet.

Won't be out in Lincoln unfortunately. No great way to get out there and can't take the time off from work.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Put it on your 2024 Calendar , guarantee it is Autocross Nirvana and everyone who careens amongst the cones has got to make it there. It ends up being a huge spectacle, party, and huge courses. We reran last years East and West Courses for the Midiv Championship and the East Coast was 1.1 miles long - my son had the fastest door slammer time with a 73 second run, so pretty dang fast average time.

 

[Ludachris]

Latest event and another 1st place finish and fastest time of the day.

Why am I not surprised?

 

[mavisky]

Ran my second event of the weekend yesterday. A lot of time standing in parking lots in 95+ Atlanta heat.

Ran this event at Atlanta Motor Speedway where I usually run with the SCCA, but this event was with the Peachstate Porsche Club. Much faster course (actually had to go to 3rd on one of the straights) and a nice flowing course that still saw the best times at right around the 1 minute mark. Compared to the 6 runs we get with SCCA we got two sets of 5 runs with PCA which was appreciated. It turns out with this event it was needed too as I was struggling on the faster course with so many of my recent events being much slower. Braking points were off, had a massive spin on one run, and generally struggled to find speed. While they have a ton of different classes for all of the different Porsche models there, the rest of us are lumped into either stock or modified non-Porsches so I had no idea what I'd be up against. In the end I was in 3rd most of the day in class behind my buddy in his well build 2014 GT and a guy with a supercharged Miata on some sticky tires. Ended up putting down my fastest time on my 10th run of the day to just sneak ahead of the Miata and claim 2nd. Waiting to see the final results for the overall times, but the guys in the Cayman GT4's and Boxster Spyders were putting down some seriously fast times in their lighter PDK equipped cars with stickier tires than I run in my usual classes.

Edit- Results came in and just snuck out 3rd place by 5/1000 of a second over one of the 718 Boxster Spyders.


Fastest Lap

Big spin with a scary moment of the car pointing at some massive concrete barriers and a 6" curb.

 

[mavisky]

Put in another SCCA event two weekends ago and finished 2nd again behind my buddy in his 2014 Mustang GT. Need to get back ahead of him as he's now got one more class win than I do this year after I missed an event.

I'm going to be softening the rear bar as the car is a bit twitchy on corner exit and running the front and rear bars on max to try and limit roll has helped some with transitions, but I've had to really tip toe around corner exit. This high bar setting paired with the super high rear spring rates is probably what led to the spin from the Porsche event. I'm leaving the front bar where it is for now but I'll be looking to add Steeda's front ride height spacer kit which should raise the front 1/2". This should transfer some weight back to the rear axle (tiny amount), but should also help keep the splitter off the ground. When it's riding the titanium pucks it's basically going to an infinite front spring rate and understeering. It also gets me warning and concerned discussions in grid about course workers seeing sparks under the car while it's out on course.

I'm going to also add in Steeda's DSC controller which should help out some, but eventually I'll need to probably move to a stiffer spring rate up front to keep the car off of it's nose. Wanting to try some stiffer shock valving and the small ride height adjustment for now though.

 

[mavisky]

Well wrapped up the final 2 events of the season this past weekend. First video in 2 events as I discovered I had a corrupted memory card in the GoPro, but got that all fixed thankfully.

No major changes to the car at this point. Had purchased a Steeda DSC magneride controller, but for some reason it's not working with my car. Steeda and I are working with DSC to try and diagnose what's going on here and why my car is being finicky. With that in mind I headed out into some of the worse weather we've had all year for two tricky events.

Event 1 was the AXS season finale at Atlanta Motorsports Park. Event started 40 and raining. Given the state of my now year and a half old Kumho race tires, I played it safe and put on the Michelin PS4S thinking I wouldn't be giving up that much grip in the rain and would have a much safer drive to the event. I had also already locked up my class win on season points in all of my previous events, so not finishing top of the pack wouldn't ruin anything major. This strategy worked perfectly until the rain stopped and the course dried. Being the first one on course meant that my runs were almost all in damp weather. Meanwhile the last two heats had runs with an almost completely dry track and were able to put some blistering times down. As such ended up finishing third in class for the day which was only the 2nd time I've ever run at this event and not put down the fastest overall time of the day, much less in class.



As you can see though, definitely still some moisture in areas like heading up the hill after the start. Car grabbed a ton of oversteer trying to put the power down up hill here. Also, due to overcast skies my car was peaking their sound meters. Unfortunately one of the pre-requisites for them building this new racetrack was a sound ordinance at all times that is only removed on July 4th. They're trying to make amends to get this lifted so they were being extra cautious this day. Thanks to the AWE controller though I can force the exhaust valves to stay closed.

Event #2 was the SCCA Champion of Champions event. After getting whooped on street tires, I threw the Kumho's back on as it was dry by my house. When I got to within about 20 minutes of the location, it was obvious it had still been raining some over night south of Atlanta. Another damp 50 degree day with moisture on the ground. Not actively raining, but it didn't dry out until the very end of the day. The issue with this event is that you run 2 different course (reversed, but with some changes) for only 3 runs a piece and my car sat for about 4 hours in between runs. Given the surface temps and gap in runs I was never able to build heat in the tires on the rear and only barely got any temp in the front tires. On top of that these tires are now ancient and without getting smoking hot they're way down on overall grip. You can see how little grip the rear has in both runs as I try to power through the finish.

Damp morning run

Dry afternoon reverse run

 

[Vettel-ish]

Sparks! Great nickname for that car!

 

[mavisky]

Sparks! Great nickname for that car!

LOL, you're not wrong. It's gotten to the point where I get alerted about them almost every event now. Thankfully it's just genuine concern that something horribly wrong is happening with the car. I guess not everyone grew up watching F1 car's in the 90's shooting showers of sparks all the way down the straights.

 

[Tonymustang302]

That looks awesome. My GT3 buddy took my stock gt500 to an autocross event (his tires were bald) and was blown away at how well it performed On ps4’s.

 

[302BOB]

sparks breed sparks..........be careful....................they are a few ticks behind cautions.........................

 

[mavisky]

That looks awesome. My GT3 buddy took my stock gt500 to an autocross event (his tires were bald) and was blown away at how well it performed On ps4’s.

The 500's have all the positive handling characteristics of the GT350, they're just trickier to manage on the autocross course due to the extra weight and extra power and torque. I couldn't imagine trying to manage 760+hp on any of the autocross layouts I've ever run on.

 

[mavisky]

Finally swapped out the factory trunk lid and spoiler for a trunklid from a wrecked 2018 GT and added a Verus UCW onto the car. To fill in the holes left in the center I used a carbon fiber filler plate from APR. It's nearly impossible to find a Orange Fury trunklid without spoiler holes of some kind and this one alone took me 2 years to find at a decent price. This allows me to keep the OEM trunk and GT350 track spoiler on the shelf for re-install later if I want. Hoping to get the stripes back on this weekend and then she will be good to go for rear aero.

 

[Ludachris]

Finally swapped out the factory trunk lid and spoiler for a trunklid from a wrecked 2018 GT and added a Verus UCW onto the car. To fill in the holes left in the center I used a carbon fiber filler plate from APR. It's nearly impossible to find a Orange Fury trunklid without spoiler holes of some kind and this one alone took me 2 years to find at a decent price. This allows me to keep the OEM trunk and GT350 track spoiler on the shelf for re-install later if I want. Hoping to get the stripes back on this weekend and then she will be good to go for rear aero.

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You're like me - never wanting to mess up the stock piece. Chew up a donor piece instead.

 

[mavisky]

You're like me - never wanting to mess up the stock piece. Chew up a donor piece instead.

Mostly true. Cutting into that factory hood was an adventure and the rear diffuser and front splitter took aome material out od the stock units too.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

I have a pristine silver Mach 1 hood for someone who wants another hood so they can cut into one and have another that is stock , like LudaChris mentioned. Located in Blair , Ne. so you would need to be relatively close to get. Already painted silver , so it you have a silver S550 it would not even need painting $ 750.

 

[Ewheels]

Finally swapped out the factory trunk lid and spoiler for a trunklid from a wrecked 2018 GT and added a Verus UCW onto the car. To fill in the holes left in the center I used a carbon fiber filler plate from APR. It's nearly impossible to find a Orange Fury trunklid without spoiler holes of some kind and this one alone took me 2 years to find at a decent price. This allows me to keep the OEM trunk and GT350 track spoiler on the shelf for re-install later if I want. Hoping to get the stripes back on this weekend and then she will be good to go for rear aero.

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What made you decide on the Verus wing?
At least in my neck of the woods, I see a lot more APR GT250's, AJ Hartman wings, or even 9Lives.

 

[mavisky]

What made you decide on the Verus wing?
At least in my neck of the woods, I see a lot more APR GT250's, AJ Hartman wings, or even 9Lives.

Honestly it was a bit of a cost/vanity choice. This was actually my good buddy's wing that was on his car when he sold it two years ago so I was able to have it delivered to my door for only $1,500. The Verus wing is also the cleanest install of all of the units I looked at and comes with the all important dog bones.

A wing from 9 Lives Racing would have given more downforce, but I just couldn't deal with the fact that they couldn't be bothered to design it to use or even cover any of the stock holes on the trunklid and didn't want to spend hundreds having all the holes filled and then repainted. Shame too as they're literally right in my backyard here north of Atlanta.

Same issue with the AJ Hartman wings with their massive center mount configuration and they're far more expensive as well.

Archetype makes nice looking wings that use the factory mounting location, but won't release any data on their actual functionality and they may be some of the priciest wings out there.

APR's wings mount clean, but I had consistently heard from many that their wing profile was less than ideal and they also don't offer any data to contradict that.