DPE

Disclaimer: There's no point to this post, just informational and perhaps interesting to fellow track junkies . Went down to Hallett on Sunday, a wonderful track about 30 miles west of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I have roughly 3000 track miles in a variety of cars, but relatively high powered RWD cars have not been on my list until now. I was up at Mid America Motorplex in April (near Omaha), but sadly it has been under water since June and I believe still is due to Missouri river flooding.

Anyway, Hallett is a 1.8 mile, 10 turn road course with about 80 feet of elevation change. It's what I would call a technical track, in that there aren't any long straights and you deal with a variety of corners. There's even one called 'The Bitch', which lives up to its name. I have probably run there 10 times, though mostly in AWD cars. The exception being an RX-8, which is the best chassis this side of Porsche but a bit of a letdown in the engine room.

My car is equipped as shown in my sig, with the Konis and Steeda HD mounts being new additions. I opted not to do springs, given I take a lot of road trips and occasionally end up on terrible roads or crappy parking lots out west, and for the purpose of seeing if shocks alone (with Steeda mounts just to max negative camber) would tighten things up sufficiently. From what I could tell, the car isn't under-sprung from the factory, just underdamped. I also recently redid the brake cooling ducts, trimming away all of the extraneous bracketry on the inside of the CS/Boss airdam, and shimming the washer fluid bottle out 3/4" to get a straighter shot for the passenger side duct.

My impressions, in no particular order:

Engine/Drivetrain: Despite being considered archaic and underpowered now, I sure do like the 4.6L V8. Just a great motor in 2010 tune, even if it isn't a 5.0. Transmission just works; you can't rush it, and if you miss a shift it seems to take a bit to retry and obtain the gate you were looking for, but rarely an issue. My one concern was overheating. First session was fine; temp needle came up a bit, but no biggie. By the second session we were at 90 degrees roughly, and the temp needle came up to about 80%. The sessions in the afternoon were at 100+, and after 4-5 laps I had to run easy or hot pit for a minute to get temps back down. Never let it into the red, and no lights appeared, so hopefully it's fine. Motor never missed a beat, and it was hotter than hell so I'm not bitching, but I may consider some cooling upgrades if there are any known to make a difference. I see a couple radiator options out there, but when I see the generic 'runs 30% cooler than OEM' it makes me wonder a bit. Probably just shouldn't track my car on 100 degree days, but dammit, it had been 4 months since my last track day so I wasn't going to miss one due to heat! Oh, and the diff puked fluid even with the turkey baster in place, but not enough to invoke my homemade catch can which I had ready to deploy if necessary. Still, need a permanent fix on that, which I suspect will come in the form of a 2011 GT500 diff cover with the vent up on top and a plug in the axle once I confirm someone else has done this and met with success.

Brakes: I am very impressed with the OEM brakes on this car. Granted, I have a good brake cooling setup, Carbotech race pads and Motul RBF600 fluid, but even so I'm impressed. Relatively small brakes stopping a relatively heavy car with a decent amount of power, and absolutely nothing even resembling fade. Hallett is 'easy' on brakes, but even so. I assumed I'd need Brembos, and I may get them one day for the sake of less heat cooking the bearings up front and such, but I'm not in a hurry. Heel-toe is very easy as the pedal stays nice and firm, and I just didn't have to worry about them.

Chassis: Koni Sports FTW. All the slop in the OEM setup is gone, replaced by very direct responses to inputs and solid damping. Ran the first session at full soft as I was in a hurry and forgot to turn them up, and even then they were a dramatic improvement over the OEM shocks. Turned up one full turn at all four corners and left them there the rest of the day; even better. Definitely worth doing as a standalone mod without upgrading springs. I'm sure springs would make it even better, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything. I suspect the Steeda mounts with camber maxed to negative didn't hurt either. What I mostly noticed about the chassis was that I didn't end up thinking about it all that much. I could just focus on driving, and not 'driving around' some flaw in the car. The only real quirk was in quick transitions at high speeds you could really feel the rear axle shifting laterally. Offputting at first, but once I figured out it doesn't really effect the car's stability all that much I didn't worry with it. I may try a PHB with stiffer bushings just for fun because they are so cheap; I think a Watts is probably the right answer from what I've read and what I felt on track, but I also didn't come away feeling like it was a must-have. Or at least that's what my wallet tells me. . The car was well balanced; pushed a bit but could be coaxed into oversteer with power or trailing throttle. I also very much liked how, with a relatively quick turn-in, the car takes a set with some slip angle immediately and really allows you to steer with the wheel or the throttle comfortably. I ran with TCS off and DSC on for a few sessions until I got a feel for what it was doing, and then just turned everything off for the last one. Better with everything off .

Overall a great time. There was a 427 Trak-Pak (?) out there that was quite fast on r-comps etc., and then a Roush RS3 as well. Not sure what the RS3 entails, but I could see a blower when he had his hood up and assumed it was a 5.0. Nice looking car. I don't think he was running much faster than me though, but I also would imagine the heat was making it even worse for him. In watching a few laps I was running around 1:35 on a 'good' lap running CCW, for anyone familiar with Hallett. Don't think that's a lap record . My buddy in a well-modded (suspension-wise) RX-8 was about a dead heat with me, which is annoying because he has a sewing machine rotary in there yet satisfying because he's a better driver than I am and his car has obscene grip. And given he's catless, he shoots fire out of his exhaust regularly which must make him faster? Also kinda funny because I get better mileage than he does both on track and on the drive down. The rotary: "All the crappy gas mileage of a big, powerful engine without all of that annoying horsepower and torque."

Anyway, that's my story. Hope to get to Heartland Park in October, then back to Hallett in November if we're luckly. Very happy to discover that an 'old school' muscle car with a few tweaks turns into a legitimate sport coupe when asked to do track duty. After a Taurus SHO, Contour SVT, two WRXs, an STI, an RX-8, a TSX (yeah, I know, but it's highly underrated!), and a Mazdaspeed6, I can say with certainty that the Mustang is the most enjoyable car overall for someone who is very particular about cars. It's not the best in every category, but it looks the part, sounds the part, and most importantly feels like a driver's car more than I expected it would.

parchisi

Glad you enjoyed the Stang on the track! I spent some time in Enid, OK, drove by Hallett a few times going to/from Tulsa, and always wanted to make it out there for a driving school/track day, but my '93 Cobra at the time was never quite in track-ready condition. Now that I have a trackable car, the closest track is 4 hrs away and constantly changing work days rarely allow opportunity to do anything

Sleeper_08

Thanks for taking the time and preparing a carefully crafted note.

Your comments about the rotary Wankel engine were interesting. I thought about an RX-8 when buying my Mustang but the V8 won the contest, especially in my case with a little help from Roush.

How did you find the heat affected you? Twenty five minutes at those temps would have killed me. After having this problem in the spring Norm suggested I look at a Cool Shirt. It really works well.

http://www.coolshirt.net/

DPE

At Hallett on a race weekend they typically do five 15 minute sessions, and by afternoon the car wasn't even lasting that long so heat on the driver wasn't an issue. Noted some of the guys racing wheel to wheel (the track has multiple events going on at once; spec Miata, Legends, Formula Cars, GT1 and GT2, etc.) who had to wear Nomex had those coolshirt deals on, but despite having to wear long sleeves and jeans I was ok. I'm also very heat tolerant; just doesn't get to me in all but the most extreme cases. I'm a lot less good in the cold . Another helpful factor was the $40 I split with my buddy to rent a race port (carport with room for two cars). Just a metal roof over concrete basically, but man, it really helps to have the cars and drivers sit in the shade on a hot day.

The RX-8 is a fantastic car; probably a better track car than a Mustang. Certainly a better chassis, seeing as how it was built from the ground up to be a sports car. And it's a Mazda, who just knows how to build a proper handling car better than most. The lack of power doesn't manifest nearly as much on track, because you are cornering so much faster than just about everyone else (and thus you still make decent time on the straights). Just day to day though, you really have to whip it to get to the powerband (6k-9k+), which is fun but ultimately you don't ever get the 'thrill' of speed in a straight line like you do with a V8. They also consume engines about ever 50-60k miles if you drive them hard (sometimes LESS if you drive them easy), and consume fuel at a remarkable rate. I wouldn't hesitate to get another one if it was just for track duty, but as a car I take to the track, take on long road trips, my wife drives to work about half the time (company truck for me, so I don't see the Stang much during the week), and just for going to the grocery store, the Mustang is more enjoyable overall.

Argonaut

Great track report, enjoyable to read. Its really nice to get the observations and comparisons between cars from someone who has actually driven different vehicles on the track.

Regarding cooling - the trouble with the Mustang is we don't have real gauges. The water temp gauge is little more than an idiot light and as for oil temp, we don't have any information. You could see that the needle was high and the temp above normal but in the end you don't know what the water temp really was. Erring on the side of caution (as you did) is the smart thing to do until/if you install some real guages.

Regarding the chassis and the Mustang's handling: Motor Trend does an annual "Best Driver's Car" feature. Right now online they are publishing some excerpts from the upcoming edition. Their test driver is Randy Pobst (if anyone reading this doesn't know who he is, google him. Lets just say he's a pretty good driver). His comments after driving the new Boss LS edition are very positive, you might even say 'glowing'. Its great to see positive comments coming from someone like him. There are still a lot of folks who think the Mustang is only good for going fast in a straight line but articles like this are changing people's opinion and the automotive press is finally spreading the word - the S197 chassis can indeed turn right and left with some of the worlds "best handling" cars.

Norm Peterson

My car has a number of the same upgrades as yours (Konis, HD mounts, GT500 wheels) and is also still on the OE springs. I also have Sam's front and rear bars. So I'm curious about a couple of the detail things.

What size and make/model tires are you running? Inflation pressures?
What are you running for camber? Track and street settings if different.


I agree, the springing is pretty good. Only once in a while during a particularly hard braking event does the "OE-ness" become evident.


Amazing what only one turn can do. Have you considered staggering the front and rear settings yet?


I think NOT having the newer model's EPAS is to the advantage of the older cars. The most recent issue of C/D had a third party evaluate the new GT and several other under $40k cars for "best handling". The only serious issue found was "steering feedback", and the car still came in 3rd.


I'll be pondering the lateral axle shift that you noted - it's not something I noticed at an autocross I ran earlier this year, and I'm wondering where any speed sensitivity might be coming from.


Norm

DPE

On the cooling, I believe I'll either get real gauges or one of those digital OBD2 deals like the old Dashhawk that can display the data from the factory ECU and you can set it to warn you when certain thresholds are reached etc. Obviously I'd prefer to know my baseline before just throwing money and parts at the cooling system to upgrade it, but if someone or several folks can say with certainty 'I had those problems and I bought X and that fixed them' that would be a good start.

I'm familiar with Pobst; if he thinks the S197 is that good, then it pretty well must be good. Unless he's on Ford's payroll . Even so, I've driven the cars I've mentiond on track regularly plus sampled an E92 M3, an E46 M3, an E36 M3, an M Coupe, an EVO 8, a modded 350Z, etc., and driven all of those cars out in the twisties or at least down a few local roads with some bends, so I have a pretty good feel for what works. Not trying to say I should be a judge of such things, but I can say among affordable performance cars with more than 2 seats I've tried a lot of them in the past 10 years. And the Mustang starts out pretty good and with a few tweaks moves to 'very good' in the chassis department.

Norm, running Sumitomo HTRZ IIIs in 275/40/18. Started with pressures around 38psi, and they came up pretty evenly which was a good sign the car was using both ends roughly equal. The outside tires a couple psi higher at the end of a run than the inside, but close to the same front to rear. Not a great tire, I know, but not a bad tire and I had to start somewhere. And they're cheap! Hope to go to NT-05s next time, but we'll see what the budget allows early next year.

For alignment, I just maxed the Steeda upper mounts and then found the most level spot in my garage and came up with about -2.0 RF and -1.5 LF. Toe measured out at 1.5mm out RF and .5mm out LF. Definitely margin for error there, but did not have time to really do it properly with a laser level and such or get to an alignment shop that actually knows what they are doing. Felt fine and tracks straight and the tires seem to be wearing evenly (as evenly as they can given track use, but nothing odd is what I'm saying), so that's where it sits for now. I'm probably set for the rest of the season and once I get new tires this winter I'll take the time to do it properly or take it to a good shop.

I did consider staggering my front and rear settings on the Konis; if i did anything, I'd crank the rears up a bit more than the fronts to perhaps stiffen the rear more and get a little more rotation out of it. But with a new car on a track I only see once a year (for the past few years, anyway), once I figured out it worked 'fine' with even tire pressures and even shock settings I spent the day just working on my driving. Two guys I go to the track with regularly are the really particular types that will tweak this and that on the car after each session. The other guy I go with pretty much doesn't dick with anything and just goes out to have fun driving. I'm somewhere in the middle. I'll tweak what I can to solve an issue and have a sense of 'changing x should result in behavior y', but if the car is working well I generally spend more time working out my vast number of driving issues before getting into the settings of the car. If I get back to Hallett this year though, I'll be tweaking the car a bit more .

EPAS does make me a touch nervous, though my most 'sensitive' car guy friend has driven a couple 5.0s and seemed to think while they did lack feel somewhat you could still feel comfy with how the steering worked. I have not tried one, and it really wasn't a factor in my 2010 vs. 2011 decision, but I didn't hate that I was getting a conventional rack. Seems like one has better odds of decent steering feel with hydraulics vs. electronics.

As for the lateral shift at high speed, it MAY have something to do with the particular spot on track. Known as 'the bitch', said turn begins with an uphill gradual left after a reasonably long straight and then you have to blindly start back to the right just before cresting the hill and dropping down the other side. The car doesn't unload to a huge extent, but no doubt it gets a bit light there. Could allow the axle to 'float' a bit? Hard to say. Just a real sense of some shifting going on back there, and nothing to pin it on but the axle itself. In the course of fixing up my rear diff this winter I may also get a panhard bar with stiffer bushings just to see what kind of difference that might make. There is another very abrupt medium speed transition at Hallett (4 to 5 for those that know it) but where you make the transition is relatively flat and grippy and I didn't have that odd feeling of shifting parts in that spot. Or anywhere else on the track. Anyway, something to think about next time, but it doesn't slow me down much. Not ready to throw a Watts link on there to try and fix it yet, unless Christmas this year is VERY good to me. No doubt a Watts would tame that behavior and provide more confidence, I'm just saying it's much more a 'want' at this point than a 'need'. Going to Arkansas this weekend with a couple other guys for some runs through the twisties, so after that kind of driving my wants may turn into needs .

Swoope

nice write phil!

lots of good info.

lots of the rx8 people run it. help for you..

http://www.ultra-gauge.com/ultragauge/index.htm

beers