Project LOUDCAR - 2018 GT350 - J0006 - Autocross focused street car

[mavisky]

Did a little detail work today. Fellas, if your wife is one of the many out there that's purchased one of those Cricut machines that makes little stickers and arts and crafts, turns out you can use it to decorate your racecar pretty easily. My neighbor's wife across the street had one so had her show me the process and she let me make these end plate decals that were inspired by the S550 GT4 mustang. Luckily 3M makes a vinyl that is a pretty good match in the sunlight. Due the metallic nature of the paint you have to compare the color on the side of the car rather than the top to get a better idea of how well it blends.

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[mavisky]

Stopped by to see my buddy Kris today who just upgraded his setup for his GT500 and picked up the last of the off-season upgrades for the car. Install was pretty easy, although it would have been even easier if I didn't put the wrong buckle in the wrong place at first. Did hurt a little bit to have to trim the plastics on the ground level, but it's part of playing racecar and no one ever goes into the backseat anyway.

 

[Aluehrs11]

Have you put the new tires on the car yet? I'm curious to see how they compare looks wise to the Kumhos. I've got the 305/30 Kumhos now and am looking for something a little taller. So I've been looking at the 295/35 Yokohamas.

 

[mavisky]

Have you put the new tires on the car yet? I'm curious to see how they compare looks wise to the Kumhos. I've got the 305/30 Kumhos now and am looking for something a little taller. So I've been looking at the 295/35 Yokohamas.

Definitely taller. In fact I'm taking out at least one of my front Steeda suspension height spacers now. Will try to get a pic Sunday at my first event from a similar angle to something I have of the 305/30's foe comparison.

 

[mavisky]

First event in the books. Finished 9th overall on PAX out of 140 drivers on a mid 30 second course where I dont think I got to full throttle once.

Still figuring out these Yokohamas. Tried to treat them like my Kumho V730's and ran them at 28 psi. They were gripped up, weren't rolling over too far, but also felt really soft on the sidewall. Talking to another driver who's also testing these out in another region and he was told to run them at closer to 37 by a nationally competitive driver there to help offset the softer sidewalls they have. Going to try that at the next event just to see. Car definitely feels gripped up though, but curious if other are at one end of the spectrum or the other on pressures. You can see how much the outside rear is folding under in the photo below.

Still haven't made it to a national event, but just got news on how stiff our local region is. My friend and I finished 7th and 9th on PAX at the first event and the next week 5 of our competitors went to the national stop in south GA. 5 of the top 10 in our region placed 1st or second at the national event. Still want to make it to one to test the level of competition.

1st in our region - 1st place CS
4th in our region - 1st place STX
6th in our region - 2nd place SSP
7th in our region - my buddy in CAMC
8th in our region - 1st place GS
9th in our region - where I finished in CAMC
10th in our region - 1st place STU
12th in our region - 1st place in EVX

I know that south GA doesn't bring out the stiffest competition nationally, but happy to be amongst this group of drivers in our division on a track where I barely went full throttle once in a car that's still full interior full weight.

 

[RobZ71LM7]

Swapped out the Ford Racing spring and swaybar kit for a full Steeda Suspension.

Dual Rate Magneride Springs
Compeition Swaybar Setup
Adjustable Endlinks front and rear
Front strut mount opened for further camber adjustment with Steeda camber plates (plates were already on the car)
Rear camber adjustment mount

This is incredibly close to the same setup I'll be running (Steeda DR springs and their comp sway bar kit with the softer rear bar) and tire size. What front and rear bar settings have you used? How do you feel about the rear spring rate?

 

[mavisky]

Right now the rear bar is on full soft and the front bar is on the next to softest setting per their advice. I need to run another event on these tires to see how I like the soft bar setting, but it's running pretty gripped up. I think some of the extra roll and movement I was experiencing was the soft sidewalls of the A052 and monkeying with the swaybars won't solve that.

 

[mavisky]

So I've spent the last month or two working on a re-design of the look of the vehicle and the quality photos are finally here to show it off.

I've always been a huge fan of the Mustang GT4 cars launched by Ford Performance so based the look on the factory launch livery and the livery from the Volt Performance race car.

I also purchased the Tamiya 1/24 scale model kit (which I've yet to build) and within the instructions was a great set of images that allowed me to utilize some basic photoshop techniques to conceptualize the general look of the car and since all the graphics were scaled I was able to actually pull scale approximate measurements of all the designs as well. Obviously went with the 06 number to reference the car's build number J0006.

I did have QSpek Vinyl cut the large white "billboards and numbers on the door" for me as part of their off the shelf offering, but utilizing a custom font. Beyond that I used a Cricut machine to cut logos and knifeless tape to cut designs on the rest of the car myself in my garage. In the end the design came out better than even I expected. It wasn't perfect and even since these photos I've tweaked some details like the front driver's side bumper not being level and the passenger side flag being the wrong direction. Overall I'm ecstatic with the overall look of the car and love the way it looks with the gunmetal Apex wheels.

 

[mavisky]

Well I knew these stickers would make me faster, but I didn't realize how much.

Sunday was my second event for the year due to a busy schedule. Unfortunately the Atlanta Motor Speedway hosts a Truck Show so half of our lot was full of lifted and lowered custom trucks so we were once again limited to a short track, but this one had some decent pace to it thankfully.

I'm still dialing in the new Yokohama's, but there's no doubt they're fast. I've settled on a 34 front and 32 rear currently, but I will need to bring the water sprayers for the next event to keep them cool for sure. We had the middle run session and my main competitor in his 2014 GT was again fast right out of the gate and I was playing catch up all day with him holding a half second lead over me most of the day and going into our 6th and final run he had stretched that lead to 6/10ths (40.5 to 39.9). We both lined up to fully send it and when I crossed the finish line I saw a time on the readout of 17 seconds. It turns out that someone had hit a cone in front of me and one of the workers had accidentally ran through the timing lights, throwing everything off for me and my competitor who was right behind me. This meant we both got a re-run immediately and with the tires boiling hot I figured I had nothing to lose at this point but to absolutely send it. Luckily I hit my braking points pretty close to where I wanted to be and the car rotated predictably where I needed it to. I knew I'd left some time on track in a few places, but when I crossed the finish line I saw a 39.9 on the screen. Due to the re-runs my buddy had gotten shuffled in front of me which meant I was the last run of the day for our class. I pulled into the pits and saw a time of 39.943 to his time of 39.983, a 0.040 gap in my favor and my first class win of the season. My buddy and I are both on 295 Yokohamas this year and it's shocking to see how close our cars are now despite his being a heavily lightened 2014 GT and mine being a full weight GT350.

At the end of the day this secured me 1st in class, 6th overall in raw time (only 1/1000th out of 5th), and 6th overall in PAX adjusted timing.


Video of my 7th and final run below.


Scraping the front splitter under braking.

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