SN95 RinerAutomotive's CAM-T Mustang Build Thread Profile - SN95 Mustangs

[RinerAuto]

These look really cool but I've never got a chance to use or see one in person. I feel like getting one of these would just make me want a real sequential even more, lol.

Neither had I. It is super cool. However, I am having problems with grinding in 2nd gear. I never had grinding before with the Steeda shifter.
Current thoughts:

• Still slightly out of alignment?
• I didn't have issues on autocross so may be a cold oil/transmission issue or RPM
  • Ashley did have issues, but maybe not fully engaging clutch?
• Maybe it's revealing I have a synchronizer issue with 2nd gear or stretched clutch cable

 

[RinerAuto]

We completed our first autocrosses with the new shifter and new radiator last weekend. I thought I had the shifter alignment all good, but as Ashley was driving to grid the second gear shift was grinding. I had about an hour until event was going to start, so I tried messing around with the alignment of the shifter. No matter where I placed it, it wanted to grind 2nd. I took out the 1mm shim plate and tried some more. Finally got to something halfway decent. I'm wondering if it's temperature related.

On course I had no issues shifting to 2nd. Ashley did have issues on the second day. For her I'm thinking it might be she's having trouble fulling disengaging the clutch. I think a hydraulic clutch may be in my future. But the 1-2 shift felt same speed as before, which is what I expected. I didn't think the shifter would be faster at shifting, actually it might be slightly slower. But I got it for the 2-3 or the 2-1 shift, which I attempted one 2-3 shift and 3-2 shift during autocross, but decided it was faster to bounce rev limiter momentarily then to shift.

From Fabman's suggestion I am going to try Amsoil ATF to see if that helps with the cold shifts. Otherwise, it may be the 2nd gear synchronizer and that will have to wait until off season. So I would probably reinstall the Steeda Tri-Ax for time being.

As far as the radiator, Sunday was HOT but coolant temperatures remained manageable. I had the fan set to turn on at 200 degF. While on course and throughout the runs the coolant temperature would climb 15-20 degrees, but would come back down after the run ended. I wasn't seeing any more 230-240 degF coolant temperatures. So I'm happy about that. For efficiency, I think I would prefer a little higher than 200 degF, but the car is mainly raced on course and not driven on the streets.

Autocross results and videos will be coming soon...

 

[PatientZero]

I wasn't seeing any more 230-240 degF coolant temperatures. So I'm happy about that.

Holy cow! If I see 210° I'm gonna start looking for something wrong. Last event it was HOT outside and I had a co-driver. I never saw over 203° sitting in grid. I realize you have a SBF but that is way hot IMO. I can't imagine what your oil temps are if your coolant is that hot.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Plenty of vehicles will run a little hot at an autocross , but please don't make folks nervous about temps in the 210 range as that is the normal operating range for many Manufacturers ( 205-210 ).

 

[PatientZero]

I'm not saying 210 is bad. I just know on my car if it got to 210 something is wrong. On a Coyote with the Ford Racing controls pack the fans don't kick on until 217, that's partly for emissions and fuel economy though too. In my opinion though, 230 or 240 is way too hot.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

No argument that 230 or 240 is warm, but not unusual for some autocross courses , especially on a super hot day. My comment was just to reiterate to folks who may be just starting to autocross , that a 210 temp is very normal. Frankly, on really hot days you will see a bunch of folks with sprayers cooling down the engines ( hood up , radiator being doused with water ) as well as the tires, since once done there is no air going over anything to help cool things down. Plus, most folks want the engine cooled down for efficiency.

 

[RinerAuto]

Yea 210* I'm not worried about, but 230-240 is too hot for me especially after just a 30 second run. But that is 30s of basically full power which is not seen on anything other than a road course.

I could run cooler I think if I turned my fan setting down more. I also installed a 180* thermostat at the same time, but felt 200* was a better fan operating temperature. I don't want to run too cool or too hot, but Golding Locks and just right

My tuner originally set the fan to 217* as that is most stock cars for efficiency. I'll also note that I did not open the hood or do anything to cool the engine and ambient temperature was in the 90s with a heat index into the 100s.

 

[RinerAuto]

Autocross event at NCCAR, which is a road course in North Carolina. This was the first event with the S1 Sequential shifter, see post #162 above. The course...let me say...was challenging. I think they used all of the cones they owned. It was fun though, just was difficult to get a clean run.

*Disclaimer, results have sill not been posted, so going off of unofficial results from what I can remember at end of the day.

There were 4 drivers in CAM-T, most of us only got one clean run. Unfortunately, my only clean run was 2 seconds slower than my fastest scratch runs and slower than the person in first's (Nwanagu) only clean run. I was looking forward to having a good battle with him as he's a national level driver and is going to nationals, but we ended up battling the course. There were only two heats, so Ashley had to work on course during my runs. Oh yea, the course was changed from when I and Ashley had walked it in the morning. The course was over 1 mile long and fairly simple so we only walked it once and headed back to paddock. Apparently, there were some people that suggested changes that they did to the course. So mine and Ashley's first runs were going in blind basically. Only I didn't know the course had changed until I was driving, I never heard an announcement (there could have been one) or mention during the driver's meeting. Luckily, Ashley was able to watch my video some before her run.

For ladies class there were 2 drivers. Ashley was able to get 2 clean runs out of 5 total. She improved greatly from her first to last run. I had to work during Ashley's runs so I couldn't give any feedback or helpful tips. I think she did quite well figuring out the course and pushing herself to go faster. Higher speed courses and ones with off course distractions (ie grass) like this one get in her head. She finished 2nd in Ladies class.

I don't have any overall results. It would be nice to be in top 10, but I don't think so with that "slower" clean run. @Dave_W I would be interested in what you think of the course design for this one.

Video:

 

[RinerAuto]

We had an autocross event with the local club we are trying to win trophies with. This was event #5 out of 8. Going in Ashley and I are both first in class and I think I am 1 or 2 in overall PAX.

The course was easy to read and fast. It had a fast right hander which put me into a 4 wheel drift, which was fun. Not sure how much it was hurting my overall time though. Again the back 180 sweeper was the most crucial element to get right and was the biggest difference between Ashley and I. I was able to get a good run out and hold throttle through the following elements, where Ashley checked up at the following elements. But I think she was thinking she couldn't fit through there, albeit it was tight. She also was having trouble with the shifter still. She did several runs starting in 2nd gear so to have to shift. But it was a little tougher getting off the line and she didn't like it. This probably played into her finishing order for this event.

For results in ladies class, Ashley pushed but couldn't find the pace and finished 3rd in class. Not quite the result she wanted, but there will be two drops at the end of the year. So I'm still confident she will lock in first place in Ladies this year.

For my class, I was able to lock in first in class by almost a second after PAX and had Top PAX at the end of my heat with one heat left to go. I had a rerun, I was currently sitting first in PAX and the cars in the last heat were slower street cars (DS, ES, HS, GS, etc). I was overly confident that I would keep top PAX and decided not to take my rerun. Well... that was a mistake as I watched several cars jump me in PAX by hundredths and thousandths of a second. By the end of the day I was 0.195 seconds behind top PAX and 0.008 seconds behind fourth. The top 5 were really close and the top 11 were all less than 1 second behind top PAX. But I am ahead of my main competition for that end of the year overall PAX championship, so it was still a good day.



Video:

 

[RinerAuto]

Been looking at the front suspension recently. Checking alignment and found one side had gained +1 deg of camber. It looks like my upper control arm bracket had shifted slightly outward. I've been thinking about redesign possibilities for this upper arm bracket. But everything effects everything.

I need just a little bit more negative camber, here are options I've been thinking:

1. Increase length of lower control arm - With current arm I can screw out rod ends some to lengthen, but limited on how much and strength is always a concern. Also this increases track width even more.
2. Lower upper control arm - This requires a new upper control arm bracket and presents a lot of challenges to lower it any more than it already is. Additionally this changes the suspension geometry a lot. Lowering the upper control arm while leaving lower as is will decrease FVSA length, increase negative camber, and raise roll center height. Only one of those is good.
3. Adjustable length upper control arm - This is pricier and adds more complexity. But maybe finer adjustment. Also don't know if I can shorten upper arm any without causing contact with coilover spring.
4. Raise lower control arm to top hole (2" over stock) - this will be similar to number 1 above but I won't have to screw out the rod end. It will however change suspension geometry. If upper arms stays as is this change will increase negative camber, raise roll center height, decrease FVSA length, and change anti-dive. Again not all of those are good things to be changing.
5. Push upper control arm bracket in more - there is still some room between the frame and the upper control arm where I could move inward. But right now I am limited by the bolts touching the frame. I could redesign the upper control arm bracket to use carriage bolts or something else low profile. This will give me more negative camber without a lot of the other effects. Or maybe cut and weld in pockets in the frame to allow more room?

Like I said every option has its pros and cons. Suspension design is all about compromise. Not sure what I'm going to do at the moment, just thinking out loud.

 

[Dave_W]

@Dave_W I would be interested in what you think of the course design for this one.

A slalom on a curve is always going to be tricky because you're not getting into an even, balanced rhythm. Instead of turning the same amount in two directions (R-L-R-L), you're turning more and less amounts in the same direction (RIGHT-right-RIGHT-right or R-Straight-R-S). So it's going to feel wierd from the start. Add to that the uneven spacing / pointer directions they had (R-R-L-R-L-L-R) and there's no rhythm at all. So everything you're used to about driving "normal" slaloms goes out the window.

Generally, I'd call this a "technical" course. There are traps that can catch you out if you're not using good technique - looking ahead, picking the correct line through multiple gates / elements, trading off one corner for another, painting outside the lines, etc. I was brought up with a local club that often does "technical" courses, so I'm used to them. For instance, I always pace out the distance between each cone in a slalom because some evil course designers will space them tighter or looser as you get into them, and not knowing that means you're mowing down the last couple cones because you got behind, or left time on course because you didn't accelerate through the slalom. I'll also sight down the line of slalom cones to see if any are just a bit off center. If you have a club that usually does "straight-forward" course designs and then they do one "technical" course, you'll usually see a much larger gap between the experienced drivers and novices for that event. You may even see a big difference in the lines taken by the experienced drivers and the novices.

Watching the video, I found myself doing two main things -
1) Really look ahead. I was usually trying to see 4 slalom cones ahead. In a normal slalom, you can get away with looking only 2 cones ahead because you know which side the car needs to be on each cone. Looking ahead is just fine-tuning your arcs through the slalom. But with this course, there wasn't a guarantee which side the car was supposed to be on each cone. So you're looking ahead to determine major side-to-side moves of the car, which needs a lot more time to happen, so you need to be looking a lot further ahead to have that time.
2) I'm ignoring the upright cones and concentrating on the pointers. It's the pointer cones that are most important, because they're telling you if you need to move the car a whole car width one way or the other, or if you can keep it straight (and if you can accelerate or have to decelerate). I try to pare down to the bare minimum what I need look at to determine the course (mentally filter out the "sea of cones"), and with this course it's the pointers.

It kind of goes back to my theory that you should never feel surprised when driving the course. If you do, you're not looking / thinking far enough ahead. And maybe need more course walks.

Which reminds me that you mentioned they changed the course after the walks. If the changes affected the line, I probably would have allowed drivers to take one quick walk to see the changes. But if they just changed a slalom "cone" from a pointer and one upright to a pointer and two uprights, that's not changing the line - it's just making it a bigger penalty to hit. I still would have mentioned it at the safety (driver's) meeting, though.

The other thing I noticed more with Ashley is that she could have gotten more to the left before the Chicago box to open up the entry to it, instead of coming at it from "behind" it.

I'm not sure any of this helps you, as I think you know it already. I guess the other thing is that everybody will at some time find a course that's just not their cup of tea. I've had events where the whole day I'm thinking, "I don't know why I'm so slow today." And then the next event I'm back to normal. Blame it on the phase of the moon and put it behind you.

 

[Dave_W]

I was currently sitting first in PAX and the cars in the last heat were slower street cars (DS, ES, HS, GS, etc).

It's the slow cars you have to watch out for in PAX, because they have such a good factor. They only have to be a small bit faster to climb the ranking.

The PAX times were super tight! All top 5 within two tenths, and 3 of the top 5 were less than one one-hundedth off the next faster driver. That's some serious competition!

You pointed out the same thing I saw in Ashley's runs - you were able to take the 3-cone element after the turn-around flat, and Ashley was breathing the throttle and using more steering. Part of it could be not having a good feel for the width of the car. But also, you might have been moving a bit more to the right before that so it straightened out your path through those 3 cones.

I have a trick I used for getting a feel for where the right side of the car is. Around here, there are some highways that have rumble strips at the white line between the right lane and the breakdown lane - on the right side of the car. I'd drive as close to those grooves as I thought I could get without hitting them, and then move over another couple inches to see if I hit them. If I didn't hear the rumble, I knew I was thinking the car was wider than it actually was and try again. After several days of doing this on my (long) commute, I got pretty good at being within 2-3 inches. Don't try this in heavy traffic or with a trooper behind you, though.

 

[RinerAuto]

Which reminds me that you mentioned they changed the course after the walks. If the changes affected the line, I probably would have allowed drivers to take one quick walk to see the changes. But if they just changed a slalom "cone" from a pointer and one upright to a pointer and two uprights, that's not changing the line - it's just making it a bigger penalty to hit. I still would have mentioned it at the safety (driver's) meeting, though.

It was very technical but also fast, which don't always go hand in hand. I found it hard looking ahead on a road that was also turning and then inclines as well. But a new challenge to overcome .

Ashley and I were one of the first to walk the course. The course had all single sided cones so just a long twisting slalom. Since the course was so long and seemingly simple single sided we only walked it once. In between the time I walked and the drivers meeting (~2 hours) the course had changed to some double and triple sided cones. I'm sure they made an announcement, but the site is so large we didn't hear it (if they did). So first run was....Surprise!! Obviously still had a blast, was just hoping to beat Jon.

 

[RinerAuto]

I have a trick I used for getting a feel for where the right side of the car is. Around here, there are some highways that have rumble strips at the white line between the right lane and the breakdown lane - on the right side of the car. I'd drive as close to those grooves as I thought I could get without hitting them, and then move over another couple inches to see if I hit them. If I didn't hear the rumble, I knew I was thinking the car was wider than it actually was and try again. After several days of doing this on my (long) commute, I got pretty good at being within 2-3 inches. Don't try this in heavy traffic or with a trooper behind you, though.

Ha nice trick. I definitely benefit from more seat time. I just need to get Ashley to daily the car. I'm sure she'll be the talk of the school and her students will want to go see the car They already pester her for videos and the YouTube account.

 

[RinerAuto]

I've decided to make some suspension changes. I finally got around to measuring the suspension points and found that with my current setup the front roll center is around 1.25" above ground. I was hoping to be more in the 2-3" range. So I'm a little low, which could attribute to the body roll and tires hitting the body.

From post #170 above, I am going to raise the LCA mount to the top hole, which is 2" higher than stock. This will raise my roll center to ~4.5" above ground and increase my camber gain. More importantly, I can get to the -4 deg static camber number that I want to try.

My tire wear is really good, but I am still wearing the outside edge more than the inside. Thats the reason for more negative static camber. The higher roll center will also decrease body roll, but it could also limit front grip if I go too high. Also, I might need to change my front sway bar, but we will see how it goes and how it feels at the next autocross

 

[PatientZero]

This shows how little I know about suspension design. The way you just described roll center is exactly opposite of how I thought it worked. Probably for the best if I never try to adjust it.

 

[RinerAuto]

This shows how little I know about suspension design. The way you just described roll center is exactly opposite of how I thought it worked. Probably for the best if I never try to adjust it.

I'm no expert, but the CG rolls around the roll center. So further away the RC is from the CG then the more leverage it has and thus more body roll. But you need body roll for grip. I think I'm raising it too much, but all I can do at the moment and want to see how it feels. If it's bad then I'll move the LCA back to the middle hole.

 

[Dave_W]

Do you know your CG height? A guesstimate is height of center of the water pump pulley. Let's say it's 21" above ground -- going from RC 1.25" above ground (19.75" RC-CG) to 4.5" above ground (16.5" RC-CG) is moving the RC about 20% closer to the CG. If the handling is balanced now, I think you definitely want to soften the sway bar a chunk.

 

[RinerAuto]

Do you know your CG height? A guesstimate is height of center of the water pump pulley. Let's say it's 21" above ground -- going from RC 1.25" above ground (19.75" RC-CG) to 4.5" above ground (16.5" RC-CG) is moving the RC about 20% closer to the CG. If the handling is balanced now, I think you definitely want to soften the sway bar a chunk.

I forgot to measure CG height last time I borrowed scales, so I've been estimating it to be 20". I'll measure water pump pulley to estimate. But I need to borrow or buy scales to get a good value.

I wouldn't say it's balanced... it's good but always room for improvement. I'm glad you brought up sway bar. Spring rate and sway bar stiffness impact roll along with RCH. So I could need a change there as well if I change RCH. Slippery slope suspension changes are....

I'll note I'm still in the decision process on which way I'm going. I'm kinda leaning towards trying it and see, then I know. Maybe after next event I'll know that I have to do the work to get it changed back I'll post up some screenshots from SuspensionAnalyzer tonight with my current geometry and possible changes.

Saw this on another forum that I thought was interesting:

 

[RinerAuto]

Disclaimer: some measurements were approximated, but geometry is close. Also steering and coilover not accurately represented in below screenshots.

My current geometry with LCA raised 1" from factory and upper control arm in lowest setting:


If I raise just the LCA to the top hole which is 2" from factory the RCH moves up a lot the FVSAL gets a lot short, but the camber gain increases. Really this doesn't seem like a good idea.


But if I also raise the UCA arm one hole (each hole is 0.5") with the LCA the RCH drops and the FVSAL increases, but camber gain decreases slightly. The instant centers raised up, which I'm not sure what is good or bad about that yet.


This is why I'm unsure of what I'm going to do quite yet. My current setup really isn't bad. But I may try raising both the LCA and UCA one hole each just to see how it feels and learn what these changes actually do. I was reading corner-carvers forum and someone was talking about they increased grip by changing the LCA from sloping up from the frame to the spindle to sloping down from the frame to the spindle.