The Albuquerque Stripper - Who says a Mustang can't land a kickflip?

[BeastAR]

If you don't mind me asking, where do you get your racing tires from...?

Sponsored

 

[PaddyPrix]

If you don't mind me asking, where do you get your racing tires from...?

If you're a NASA member, you should be able to get an account with Track Day Tire to get a decent savings on Hoosier A7, R7 and Toyo RR, RA1, and R888R. I believe they also take Toyo bucks, so if you're progressing through the HPDE ranks, you can get heavily discounted/free tires depending on your size.

I purposely run 18x11 squared, because the IMSA and Trans Am teams also run very similar sizes, 305/30-18, 305/35-18, and 315/30-18, and you can get a "scrub" (used race/qual tires) for about $100/ea. For those, I've reached out to a few fellow and local racers and shown some interest and since we're at many of the same races, I can just grab in person. I've also had good luck with JB Racing and GT Racing, but shipping is ~$25/tire, and when you add in things like mount + balance of the usual ~$25/tire, at $150/tire, I'd almost rather pay a few bucks more and get more life out of a new one to beat on.

This weekend just further reinforced how crazy the performance falls off, and how the tires more than almost any mod dictate your day. At pro paces, a quarter second could separate fifth from fifteenth. I've been told by some that unless rules dictate THAT set must qualify and race without being changed, usually it's brand new for the race, then the next heat cycle is for another day's qualifying, and then its last 1-2 are practice/warmup, before finding some schlub like myself to take them. At about $100/tire, if I can get two HPDE days from them (6-8 cycles) that brings me to a total tire cost of about $200/day. Compared to a $1600 set of race Hoosier's which might only be good for 2 days, which ugh, is then $800/day. If running something like a set of $1600 Toyo RR gets 8 days, that's then $200/day, and slightly cheaper since you're not at the tire shop every night, something often overlooked when people are trying to put a season's budget together.

 

[ice445]

You clearly have some talent. Wrangling a beast at 10/10 with non ideal conditions takes a lot of skill. I'm sure you'll finally get all the factors right sooner than you'd expect ;)

 

[kz]

Went through the entire thread - awesome effort.

Question (for my own selfish interest) - have you figured out CAN mapping (or another way) to get data from Race Capture ? I was thinking at least brake pressure and steering angle ?

 

[PaddyPrix]

You clearly have some talent. Wrangling a beast at 10/10 with non ideal conditions takes a lot of skill. I'm sure you'll finally get all the factors right sooner than you'd expect ;)

I hope you're right, these 2nd and 3rd place trophies are looking lonely without their sibling... and I'm not a monster going to split their family up

Went through the entire thread - awesome effort.

Question (for my own selfish interest) - have you figured out CAN mapping (or another way) to get data from Race Capture ? I was thinking at least brake pressure and steering angle ?

I haven't yet, still fighting too many things, but in about a month, we'll have our summer break where it's just too hot to race in our deserts and I'll have all this time going to waste and doing things like CAN mapping just might be a way to spend a day if I don't have anything else broken taking priority.

I wonder if we can try finding some buddies who have an AIM *and* a Race Capture --
https://wiki.autosportlabs.com/PodiumConnect_AIM

They have a locked/locked program where I can't easily check a definition file (or maybe I could, I kinda do it for a living) but I'd need my hands on the software which I don't yet have. However, when doing the export/import, while that's an example pic, it makes me wonder if those CAN values are exposed and true, if so, something like brake pressure is very easy to test with the key on, engine off, should show if you're watching live.

I think fellow Mustang enthusiast Chris Wynne has a video/article on their site somewhere showing how he found the wheel speeds through trial and error, so you could probably do the same with the wheel, and just start whipping it back and forth to find the only value moving with the key on, engine off.

 

[kz]

Only thing I found were someone's mapping for GT350 on Autosport Lab's wiki - I tried using them for brake pressure and steering angle (which were two parameters I am most interested in) and while brake pressure seems to work OK (scaling might be off), steering angle does not (again - might be a scaling issue - it reads something but incorrectly). I am little ignorant on how to try to improve it, not sure how to read raw data having Race Capture only so could work on the scaling for the values I have.

https://forum.autosportlabs.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=6197

 

[PaddyPrix]

Avenged the brake failure that would have led to my first podium in TT1 in February with a pair of class wins instead, which I would say was a fair trade -- to say the least. Getting pretty hot out here, but Saturday was unexpectedly cool for the first few sessions, so put down a PB in traffic and have plenty of data showing that I got better at parts of it, properly learning a tricky turn or two that just didn't get a clean enough lap to maximize and show off. Sunday got warmer as expected very quickly, so called that a day kinda short, but everybody suffered equally.

For the first time, didn't touch a thing on the car setup, and worked on the loose nut behind the wheel instead, although for only a few laps at a time. Car felt amazing, and I know there's a ton more in it, just bad timing and execution as you can only get so many laps before you catch up with traffic, sometimes you can squeeze through without any disruption, sometimes not.

I guess it was bound to happen eventually, right?

 

[1 old racer]

Congrats my friend

 

[PaddyPrix]

Well, this week sucked.

So last weekend, I decided to go brush up and try a few things out on the Auto Club Speedway Roval as a refresher before the NASA race, so went out with Speed Ventures. Saturday was actually kinda fun, ain't gonna lie. Went to go play with some other cars, and the guy running the grid thought that I and the 775awhp Porsche were slower than the stack of Corvette Z06's in the next lane. I mean, a 50/50 chance.



Turns out he was kinda wrong. Unbeknownst to him, I'm kinda built/spec'd for NASA ST2/TT2 (8:1 power/weight), and so are the Spec Corvettes, it was fun running with them for a bit. I've been trying to keep my tire costs down by running NASA and Super GT Cup, so I'm either trying to punch well above my weight with GT4 Mustangs, or taking bald tires to go face Time Attack cars on curvy tracks that are half my weight. I didn't have much tire to start the day off with, as evidenced by the lack of wear dots on the outer, middle, or inside tread areas, so trying to get 4 sessions over 2 days, and another 2 instruction sessions might be a stretch.

Little did I know I was correct, but for completely different reasons.

So Saturday came and went, didn't do the afternoon sessions because the track heats up and the times tend to suffer, so shut it down early and hung out with my Camaro buddy who came up for his 2nd time on the track.

Sunday started off alright, video coming soon, and did battle with some suped up BMW's that were flying, as you'll recall they're now turboed. Had some fun flying through traffic with some of them, and running with some much more powerful ZR1's which gave me quite a scare in one session as I got run off the course in a spot with a very thin patch of grass before meeting up with a wall. I thank my friends and family watching over me which somehow prevented me from wadding it up, and had to cool down and not commit murder... for the students, who were all in Mustangs.

First session went well, 2 s550's and one stripped out New Edge SN95

Things were looking up, first lap out I was moving pretty good, and predictive said I got a great exit speed out of the playground, which means I'm flying faster down the straight...

Coming into T1 hotter, carrying more speed into and through T2, into T3... oh man, still showing up, LET'S GO! ... then ... well, who knows what happened, coming out of T9, I just started coasting. No boom, no loud noises, no metal on metal, just no more fuel... I was just freely coasting. Dropped a gear, so the clutch, transmission, and differential seemed fine. Still have electricity, so I'll assume power is good, and at 70mph, I'm slowly dropping speed. Wish I had a performance pack for the oil pressure and vacuum, and can't navigate my tablet with the gloves on, but it's the last thing I should be playing with in the fastest group they've got.

Got to test out my ZL1 Addons front tow hook, which worked, yay, and got pulled off the track for the 2nd time ever (ran out of fuel 1st time). I hate to be that guy, but yeah, pushed everybody back like 5-10 mins because I was on the latter half of the track, whereas if I was before turn 9 they could just pull the me out the early exit. Had to pass the students on, which sucked, but now have to figure out what's going on, because I don't want to miss the final NASA ACS race. Sucked even more because the cancellation policy is 7 days notice, and being next Saturday, kinda already screwed me if I can't get it working again.

Thankfully, I've got my tow vehicle, so it's not a huge burden other than getting it up on the trailer, which, being the smart guy I am, realized that anybody with a towhook on their car essentially becomes a winch with the appropriate hook to hook tow strap. Who knew that Porsche race cars are also tow trucks in disguise?

Flying blind, I called around and grabbed a fuel pump, hoping that'd work. Nope. Using the Ford Manual, I then moved suspicion to the Fuel Pump Control Module, which was a 3 hour round trip. Stopped over at a buddy's and borrowed a trailer with the idea that if it was, I could make a surprise showing at the track and break some hearts, but alas, that was not to be the case, as it too was not enough to get things to turn over. Went back up, returned the trailer, and stopped by the track to watch all my buddies struggle with the heat, and with the previous weekend, wondered what could have been. Oh well.

Buddy was good enough to lend me his OBDLinkEX cable which is to be used with Forscan, and had to figure out the Windows 10 config/driver, and after figuring that I'd have to return my car back to stock for it to detect the PCM, did so, then realizing that starting my car with full e85 on a stock tune was a bad idea, put the e85race tune back on, and while it complained, it was able to run the previous profile just fine. Cleared the DTC's and grabbed some of the fuel demand, provided, voltage, and fault state codes from the PCM, and it appears that it's the high pressure fuel pump on the direct injection gen3 Coyote is the one doing me a dirty. Not all of these are evenly scaled, but when I tried to start (orange) by turning on the fuel pump, the high fuel demand (cyan) jumps to 18370 kPa, and the actual (magenta) slowly builds to 12020, and about a half second later, the fuel pump fault is then triggered. I guess it's a good safety mechanism, as starving the motor at the speeds and rpm's that I'd put it through would no doubt lead to a catastrophic failure, just a bummer that I didn't have something to Forscan until just now, and it being a free download is all that much more of a reason to have it.

So, now I've got like the next 3 months off with the next race in October. Kinda bummed, but oh well, that's how it goes sometimes. I'm going to get this fixed up, and after that, got some projects that I'd like to get accomplished, but we'll see what comes up next. Ideally, I'd like to run the Super GT Cup event at Streets of Willow, but I don't know if I can get the pump quick enough, and having never done SoW before, might be a good one to sit out. We'll see what Monday brings.

 

[ice445]

Bummer. I believe the high pressure pump is driven off the passenger side exhaust cam. Hopefully the pump itself is the culprit and you didn't wipe a lobe from oiling issues.

 

[PaddyPrix]

Bummer. I believe the high pressure pump is driven off the passenger side exhaust cam. Hopefully the pump itself is the culprit and you didn't wipe a lobe from oiling issues.

Yeah, curious to see how that plays out. You're right that it's in that area. If you've taken your gigantic engine cover off, it's under that strange hard foam block and in a really hard metal jail cell of sorts, an attempt to shield it from a front collision and spray fuel all inside the engine bay at a really high psi. Auto Club just happens to be an e85 Coyote's biggest enemy, as coming onto the bank at a hard left will put all the fuel on the driver side, and if you're under 3/4 a tank, you're likely to starve it, under 1/2 a tank DEFINITELY starving it. Not only will you throw misfire codes, but if you're a total idiot, you can really make some bad things happen. The cam would be a bummer, but I think even if it somehow skipped a tooth or something, the engine would at least still start, but it'd sound like total garbage.

My buddy checked for pressure at the rail the other weekend when I was running around, and said it just barely leaked out, so we're talking like 1# of fuel pressure. Replacing the in-tank unit, the FPCM, and now the high pressure pump, there's just about nothing left of the system, and the checking of fuses, relays, and voltages to the connector harnesses showed the rest working fine.

 

[bnightstar]

Sad for the fuel pump but those DI engines have that problem happen from time to time more known issue on the F10 540i-550i's but hey you learn something new everyday. Hope your engine is fine. Also on the track I use forscan lite with the bluetooth odb2 that I use for data recording. And at home I have an ancient PC for more complicated stuff than reading trouble codes. Good for you that you learned how to use Forscan sorry to be in such situation. Enjoy your week.

 

[ice445]

Yeah, curious to see how that plays out. You're right that it's in that area. If you've taken your gigantic engine cover off, it's under that strange hard foam block and in a really hard metal jail cell of sorts, an attempt to shield it from a front collision and spray fuel all inside the engine bay at a really high psi. Auto Club just happens to be an e85 Coyote's biggest enemy, as coming onto the bank at a hard left will put all the fuel on the driver side, and if you're under 3/4 a tank, you're likely to starve it, under 1/2 a tank DEFINITELY starving it. Not only will you throw misfire codes, but if you're a total idiot, you can really make some bad things happen. The cam would be a bummer, but I think even if it somehow skipped a tooth or something, the engine would at least still start, but it'd sound like total garbage.

My buddy checked for pressure at the rail the other weekend when I was running around, and said it just barely leaked out, so we're talking like 1# of fuel pressure. Replacing the in-tank unit, the FPCM, and now the high pressure pump, there's just about nothing left of the system, and the checking of fuses, relays, and voltages to the connector harnesses showed the rest working fine.

The car runs 90% port injection on cold starts so it should still run (on pump gas), but I'm assuming the e85 needs more flow in all situations, so that doesn't apply here. Interesting how pump flow under lateral g's becomes an issue with e85. Ford used the 3.5 ecoboost setup with only one hpfp to save on cost and complexity instead of one for each bank. Guess you found the limits of their design, lol.

 

[Boston23]

Just finished the entire thread. Awesome read and build.!

 

[PaddyPrix]

Sad for the fuel pump but those DI engines have that problem happen from time to time more known issue on the F10 540i-550i's but hey you learn something new everyday. Hope your engine is fine. Also on the track I use forscan lite with the bluetooth odb2 that I use for data recording. And at home I have an ancient PC for more complicated stuff than reading trouble codes. Good for you that you learned how to use Forscan sorry to be in such situation. Enjoy your week.

Honestly, I can not believe I've gotten this far without using it. I'll go as far to say that anybody seriously working or racing their car should at least have a laptop and the usb-obd cable. Being able to pull dataframes and watch the problems happen live is soooo valuable, especially when your problem won't trigger a DTC. I mean, at this point, I've bought two non-returnable parts that I didn't need to, about 25 gallons of gas for my tank, and a few hours driving up and back for something I could have known for a $50 cable and a free program. Here's hoping others can at least learn from my mistakes, they suck.

The car runs 90% port injection on cold starts so it should still run (on pump gas), but I'm assuming the e85 needs more flow in all situations, so that doesn't apply here. Interesting how pump flow under lateral g's becomes an issue with e85. Ford used the 3.5 ecoboost setup with only one hpfp to save on cost and complexity instead of one for each bank. Guess you found the limits of their design, lol.

I'm just guessing it's a freak thing, since they can run E15, and we're letting e85 work as a technicality somewhat. Sucking down 1/3 more fuel might be just too much demand for my system limping, but I'll know for sure when I swap the pump in and can verify what the pressure should look like on a normal start.

As for the limits, there are only two Gen 3 Coyotes that I'm aware of capable of doing 160mph sideways, myself, and @Flyhalf. Considering they'll be destroying ACS after this year, I'm pretty sure our little asterisk of fame will go away. Unless Ale wins the Nats, he'll stay famous longer.

Just finished the entire thread. Awesome read and build.!

Thank you very much.

Sponsored