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

[Dave_W]

Nice job! Talk about "sea of cones" - do they feel they have to use all the cones in the trailer when setting up the course? First time watching the video, when you exited the curly-Q/spiral crossover and headed back, I thought, "Holy cow that's a tight slalom coming up" until you just drove past it and I realized it was a wall.

 

[mavisky]

Nice job! Talk about "sea of cones" - do they feel they have to use all the cones in the trailer when setting up the course? First time watching the video, when you exited the curly-Q/spiral crossover and headed back, I thought, "Holy cow that's a tight slalom coming up" until you just drove past it and I realized it was a wall.

Yea there were definitely some novices there and they decided to err on the side of caution and clarity. Must have taken hours to pick those all up when we were done.

 

[mavisky]

Exterior view of the looped section on polished concrete. This was my slowest run and you can see the car understeer at the sharpest section and I nearly have to stop to get it to rotate.

 

[mavisky]

In the first event of this year I finished 2nd to a very consistent driver who's won the CAM-C class and has been steadily upgrading his car over the offseason. At that first event I was 0.529 seconds behind the winning driver over a 56 second course. (This driver consistently places in the top 10 overall raw times on the day in our region in CAM-C)

Over the last month (missed our 2nd event so it's been 2 months since the car has been on course) I made a few updates to the car that resulted in some great results this weekend. With the upgrades made over the last month I was able to not only close that gap, but actually win the class for the first time since getting back into autocrossing with a narrow 0.104 second margin of victory on a short 36-37 second course. Even more impressive is that this full weight GT350 street car (with some junk still left in the spare tire well that I forgot to remove) finished 5th overall on raw time with Brent close behind in 7th overall. Given the shortened course the total time gained was probably closer to 7 tenths of a second with a simple spring/bar change over last season and I have to thank Steeda for all the hard work that they did in developing the following setup as the car is unbelievably neutral and drivable now. The really impressive thing to me is that this time gain was over the already improved handling from the Ford Racing spring and swaybar setup I had on the car previously. Impressive for a bolt on spring and swaybar setup.

Current Suspension Setup:
Steeda Dual Rate Magneride Springs
Steeda Competition Swaybar Setup
Steeda Adjustable Swaybar Endlinks F&R
Steeda G-Trac 2 Point Front Brace
Steeda IRS Subframe Brace
Steeda IRS Alignment Dowels
Steeda Polyurethane Vertical Links
Steeda Camber Plates
Steeda Rear Camber Adjustment Kit
Steeda Low Profile Jacking Rails

Brent (the other driver and TMO member) and I have been talking about getting our cars to a regional event to get a better idea of where we stand at a higher competition level in our class as even our cars aren't built to the limits of the class.

 

[Stan Whitney]

Congrats on the win with the new setup. Nice payoff for all your hard work.

 

[mavisky]

Congrats on the win with the new setup. Nice payoff for all your hard work.

Thanks. Very happy with the car's handling.

Finally got some pics from the car on course and it's really gripped up. Sadly the audio didn't record on my GoPro all weekend and the GPS didn't track either. So I only have awkward silent video without any GPS track layout or speedometer data.

Car leaning in and dragging the outside edge of the splitter. Kind of shocked to see this much body roll even with the massive spring rates in this thing and the bars on the car. Should I be looking to ratchet up the front and rear bar? It's so well balanced I'd hate to risk upsetting that.

 

[JDee]

Thanks. Very happy with the car's handling.

Finally got some pics from the car on course and it's really gripped up. Sadly the audio didn't record on my GoPro all weekend and the GPS didn't track either. So I only have awkward silent video without any GPS track layout or speedometer data.

Car leaning in and dragging the outside edge of the splitter. Kind of shocked to see this much body roll even with the massive spring rates in this thing and the bars on the car. Should I be looking to ratchet up the front and rear bar? It's so well balanced I'd hate to risk upsetting that.

View attachment 86144
View attachment 86145


View attachment 86146
View attachment 86149


View attachment 86147
View attachment 86148

If you stiffen both bars by the same relative amount I would think it would likely not upset the front/rear balance? I have never done this so I am not able to say for sure what affect it might have.

 

[RES_22]

Is it pushing? Does it want to push? Does it want to snap if you jump off the gas to correct your line center-off?

Don't mess with it if the thing is easy to drive and if it's fast .

 

[mavisky]

It doesn't push unless I over drive the corner. It's actually a little tail happy now so hoping that by going up a notch on the front bar and a notch in the rear will push the shift towards a more neutral balance. If not it's a simple endlink adjustment to put it back.

 

[RES_22]

Try the front bar change first...one change at a time.

 

[mavisky]

Made some bar changes yesterday and also threw on some additional splitter protection and support rods from AJ Hartman Aero. Lovely units, just wish I didn't have to pull the entire bumper off to mount them the way I have my car setup. Totally worth it though.

 

[302BOB]

Totally worth it though.

Dumb Pollock is an oxymoron, don't you think?.....You're way smarter than I look............Carry on with your mission to be the best, My Friend!!!!!!!!

 

[mavisky]

Stiffened both of the Steeda Competition bars to full stiff and went out for our points 4 event this weekend. Our run heat was 2nd of the day and only got 2 clean runs in. Run 3 had a little mist, but timing errors for about 4 or 5 of us which lead to a re-run. By the time we did our re-run the back asphalt section had turned to ice and we were literally 10 seconds off the run from 10 minutes earlier. Wrapped it up and called it a day and it looks like people only got one more run before they called the event or everyone just gave up realizing how slick and slow it was.

In the end still came out with the class win with a clean 2nd run and put up the 8th fastest raw time of the day. Car still felt good but with only 2 runs and a tricky course it was hard to determine if I was trying to overdrive the car given the inclement weather or if the car had been unsettled slightly by the bar changes.

Car felt great, but it felt like it was understeering more than tending to oversteer. May need to talk to Steeda about other bar options and combinations, but want to run an other event or two before I make more changes. 2 runs wasn't enough to really make a decision.

 

[Stan Whitney]

Stiffened both of the Steeda Competition bars to full stiff and went out for our points 4 event this weekend. Our run heat was 2nd of the day and only got 2 clean runs in. Run 3 had a little mist, but timing errors for about 4 or 5 of us which lead to a re-run. By the time we did our re-run the back asphalt section had turned to ice and we were literally 10 seconds off the run from 10 minutes earlier. Wrapped it up and called it a day and it looks like people only got one more run before they called the event or everyone just gave up realizing how slick and slow it was.

In the end still came out with the class win with a clean 2nd run and put up the 8th fastest raw time of the day. Car still felt good but with only 2 runs and a tricky course it was hard to determine if I was trying to overdrive the car given the inclement weather or if the car had been unsettled slightly by the bar changes.

Car felt great, but it felt like it was understeering more than tending to oversteer. May need to talk to Steeda about other bar options and combinations, but want to run an other event or two before I make more changes. 2 runs wasn't enough to really make a decision.

After more testing on my car, I am going back up in rear bar rate - lap times are faster for me on my known tracks. The 19mm comp rear bar feels safe and good, but mid corner feels a bit slow, and I find I'm using a lot more steering lock in the turns. I tried the base gt500 24mm bar and it is faster. Going to a 25mm bar next.
This is with the 38mm front bar in its softest setting.

I did some bar rate testing the other day across the 3 bars. 45# weight gave useful deflection to calculate rates.
Steeda 19mm full stiff - 127 lb/in
Gt500 base 24mm - 190 lb/in
BMR 25mm full soft - 286 lb/in

 

[RES_22]

Brian will likely tell you full hard, front and full soft, rear as a starting point.

 

[mavisky]

After more testing on my car, I am going back up in rear bar rate - lap times are faster for me on my known tracks. The 19mm comp rear bar feels safe and good, but mid corner feels a bit slow, and I find I'm using a lot more steering lock in the turns. I tried the base gt500 24mm bar and it is faster. Going to a 25mm bar next.
This is with the 38mm front bar in its softest setting.

I did some bar rate testing the other day across the 3 bars. 45# weight gave useful deflection to calculate rates.
Steeda 19mm full stiff - 127 lb/in
Gt500 base 24mm - 190 lb/in
BMR 25mm full soft - 286 lb/in
View attachment 86747
View attachment 86748

Yea I noticed I wasn't scrubbing the splitter mid-corner as much as the previous event, but it never scrubbed the first event when I was on the softer FP springs with the firmer FP bar. I am shocked that Steeda suggested that the best place to run their competition bars was on the next to softest setting up front and the softest setting on the rear, while I'm over here on the stiffest settings front and rear. Steeda's standard bar setup pairs the same 1-3/8" front bar with a stiffer 1" (about the same diameter as the GT500) rear bar, but they also have a 1-1/2" front bar and at this point I'm half tempted to try that with their larger rear bar, but don't want to drop $500 and hours of time playing the swap a bar game, especially since I have to partially remove the Verus rear diffuser to access the rear bar mounting.

 

[Stan Whitney]

Yea I noticed I wasn't scrubbing the splitter mid-corner as much as the previous event, but it never scrubbed the first event when I was on the softer FP springs with the firmer FP bar. I am shocked that Steeda suggested that the best place to run their competition bars was on the next to softest setting up front and the softest setting on the rear, while I'm over here on the stiffest settings front and rear. Steeda's standard bar setup pairs the same 1-3/8" front bar with a stiffer 1" (about the same diameter as the GT500) rear bar, but they also have a 1-1/2" front bar and at this point I'm half tempted to try that with their larger rear bar, but don't want to drop $500 and hours of time playing the swap a bar game, especially since I have to partially remove the Verus rear diffuser to access the rear bar mounting.

I may have missed it earlier, do you have the 1-3/8 front bar?

 

[mavisky]

Yes. Steeda's "competition bar combo" pairs the 1-3/8" bar with the smaller rear bar.

 

[Stan Whitney]

25mm rear bar (bmr) in the soft position is working on my car now. Back to matching my previous PBs before the steeda springs, and the car is much more rotatable on throttle lift mid corner. I have the front 1.5" steeda bar in full soft position, so about the equivalent of the 1.375 bar in mid position.

 

[blacksheep-1]

I love seeing this stuff, the weights on the sway bar, the splitter stuff, this is what hot rodding is all about, You look at something, and try to figure it out.
also, don't get too upset with the car's handling if you are finishing up front. An old racer gave me some real sage advise once...
" Slow cars ALWAYS handle"