Headed down to jersey on Friday for a weekend at Lightning course. Anyone else going? Car is all prepped... Forgot how much I love my track pads after not driving with them since October. What a massive difference.

I know of at least one other mustang 5.0 going, hope to see some others as well!

 

Enjoy your race weekend, and stay safe! My first event wont be till late July.

But the snow is now 95% gone, and I put on my Barton shifter bracket and GT500s. Haven't driven it enough to tell the difference the bracket makes yet, but the GT500 mufflers make a huge difference. I love the tone and aural response to jumping on the throttle.

Anyway, good luck and have fun!

 

Yeah the GT500 mufflers transform the car sound wise. Make it much more fun to drive just cause it sounds awesome!!

Looking like reasonable weather for me this weekend fortunately. Can't wait!!

 

Tucked away in the garage staying dry until we leave in a little while Amazed it fit in the garage on the trailer!

 

Nice trailer! So how did your track weekend go?

 

Great - left stability control in "sport mode" most of the first day while I got the feel of the track and re-learned the car after the winter. Came off at the end of day 1 and all of day 2. Got the flow of the track down pretty well and had a blast. Room for improvement of course, need to do suspension, roll cage, and 6-pt harnesses and get some more seat time. But lots of fun, weather was really nice both days too, which always helps!

And towing worked out great! Nice comfy ride down and back

And of course a little video footage for anyone who is interested. I'm no pro, but it's fun!!

My best lap was ~1.23 or so

 

That looks like a blast! Good work. What was that first car you passed? Also, what tire did you go with for your track setup? How did you like it?

I finally registered for my first track weekend of the season. I'll be doing Grattan in July. Now I just need to get a designated wheel/tire set for the track, and perhaps the GT500 brake shields for a bit more cooling.

 

It was a Ford Daytona Coupe - not sure any details, very cool car and it looked to be set up for the track. He could pull pretty hard on me on the straights, but seemed to have a few mechanical issues as there were a number of times he pitted early. Looked like the below car

I decided to go with a harder tire for the track setup - 300 treadwear rating Sumitomo HTR Z III. I've used them before on my Audi and they held up well and also gave fairly good traction. They worked really well for me - pretty sticky but wore really well (i.e. did not wear much over 2 days). They do get a little greasy when pushed hard for a while, but I was getting fast 20 minute sessions before they started feeling a bit greasy. Need suspension mods before I go with stickier tires I think. I'm perfectly happy with these for now. Went 255/45/18 front and 275/40/18 rear

Sounds great for your first outing - bet it can't come soon enough!

I HIGHLY recommend brake cooling. I got brake fade in every session except my last (which was also by far my fastest, but I also bled out almost a pint of fluid, replaced with new RBF600) with the brake cooling which I also partially re-routed on Sunday morning between sessions to minimize bends. These cars are so heavy and build speed very fast... really could use bigger brakes front and rear. But I finally got them feeling good the last session. Also was concentrating on quick on and very quick off the brakes rather than being slow to release which I think was causing excess heat.

I need to bite the bullet and go with Castrol SRF fluid soon. Wet boiling point is ~100F higher than the RBF600 that I'm currently using...

Otherwise though the car did great. I like the tire setup as it's on the conservative side, tending towards understeer unless I really try to invoke some oversteer through lift throttle, trail braking, or power, so for where I'm at as a driver, it's right what I want.

The passenger side oil separator collected a decent amount of oil, but I think that's largely cause the engine has <6000 miles still. Did not burn an ounce of oil though from what I can tell, so that was great!

Still very happy with this car as a track toy. It's got a lot more capability with a few modifications and some driver refinement! Can't wait to get out again at Limerock on May 9th.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Glad to hear the Sumitomo's are working out well! To be honest I discounted them before thinking they wouldn't be sticky enough. Now I may have to reconsider.

I've been struggling with tire selection. I keep going back and forth between Hankook Ventus V12 Evo and Bridgestone Potenza S04 pole position. Thy are $193 and $233 in 275/40-19 respectively. The Sumis are $168 and 300 thread wear would be nice. How does the grip compare to the P-zeros that came with the track pack?

 

I think they are a bit less sticky but they wore MUCH better. I went thru a significant amount of the pirelli's in 3 track days, but the sumi's hardly wore at all. Per my iPhone lap timer I was pulling at best about 1.0g's on the sumi's and I was doing 1.05g's on the pirelli's last year. At different tracks so not a direct comparison and I have no skid pad data, but I felt the pirelli's were a little better overall. Sumi's did get a bit greasy when pushed hard for multiple laps. But I am sure I will get probably 1000 track miles out of them and would have only done maybe 600-700 on the pirelli's based on how they are wearing.

Friend at the event had star specs which were really sticky and he said he had like 14 days on them too I believe. Lasted far longer than he expected. He was about 5 secs/lap faster then I was (better driver, better tires, suspension upgrade and tuned) so hard to say how much the tires helped but they were stickier than mine

I really am happy with them tho as I paid only $130 or so for the fronts and maybe $150 each for the rears. I will deal with slightly slower laps for the impressive durability!

 

Nice video! I couldn't make it out, dont have my tires yet and needed to clean out the 2nd bedroom to start prepping the nursery. Nice to hear about the tires. What size rims are you running? Those rear tires are slightly shorter than your fronts. I'm still looking hard at the nt555 in 255/45/18 and 285/40/18. Switching to a 275/40 gives me more options though.

 

Yes the rears are slightly smaller diameter, but it caused me no issues. I need to do some suspension work before I think about a square setup. Little understeer with my current setup but the car is still a bit twitchy coming out of some corners and over risers.

The wheels are 9.5 width. They are GT500 wheels from the '07-09 cars. Little heavy but rugged and I got them cheap

 

Did a bit of reading on the HTR ZIIIs, they're growing on me... How do they hold up on hard launches? Realistically I probably won't be making it to anything but the 1/4 mile 1 or 2 times a year and the rest will be daily driving.