What an amazing build to follow

 

We started working on alignment today. -2.5 camber, 7 deg caster, 1/16 toe out.

With the street tires we originally set the height by making the lower front control arms parallel to the ground. That put the ride height right at 3.900 frame rail to ground. 80 mm lowers the chassis .669 inches from the 97 mm shown in the ride height thread, but I am unsure of what diameter tire was run on the comp cars. I cannot imagine getting it all with the springs with out compromising the geometry. Here it is lowered to 3.5 under the rails and we are setting the suspension around this height - 88.9mm



As a sanity check we tried to project a line from the lower pivot thru the ball joint using a laser. It actually looked pretty good. This picture is the end of a level resting on top of the roll bar which projects very closely to the center of the pivot. The red end we can see is pointed at the ball joint. Our height is achieved with a combination of a shorter tire and a small drop of the CO. I cannot imagine dropping the chassis another .350 using the stock pickup points. As we drop the chassis the ball joint rises - intuitively I feel like we would be moving away from optimization.

I plan to drive it to the track on the street tires and then switch. I hope it all fits -





Fronts - we are limited to 1 1/4 turn without crushing the brake duct tubing. Will be fine on track just need to be thinking in the paddock.


We drive the Cobra in the morning and the Vantage on Sunday. I am very excited to get to compare them.

 

We fried the alternator on the Cobra in the last session on Friday so it was out for Sunday. We spent all day Saturday aligning the Vantage. We ended up at

Height 3.5 to ground and rails parallel to ground

Front Camber - 2.5
Rear Camber -1.75 (maxed)
Caster 4 deg (maxed)
Front Toe out 1/32
Rear Toe in 1/16

We arrived Sunday morning with temps in 50s. We took the car out and it was horrible. It was so soft it was rolling over the front tires and under steering. The brakes were shuttering so bad I thought there was a mechanical failure.




We pulled the tires off of it and checked the brakes. We could not find anything wrong so we chalked it up to newness and continued on. We significantly raised the compression on the shocks and took it back out. This was a significant improvement and by the end of the day we had the compression maxed out on all four shocks. We were running fairly hard by the end of the morning and the brakes were beginning to wear in. Much of the shutter was gone.



The sun came out after lunch and all of our braking issues were gone. This car is an amazing vehicle. Once we got enough compression in it it really started to respond. It is very fast. My Mustang would not be able to run with it. It is much faster cornering which allows you to carry much more speed onto the straights. I hit the rev limiter several times. The shift light would come on, but it would keep pulling well beyond the shift light. At those speeds its hard to spend much time looking at the dash. I pre-staged behind a CTS-V and ran him down twice. The first time I gave him the position back and then caught him again at T7. We ran full out down the back straight and he could not pull away. We ran down the front and he missed the braking zone at T1 and I got him again. The Mustang will not run with the Caddy. By the end of the day I was driving the wheels off of it and it is an incredibly balanced car. You can put it anywhere. You have to be careful with the rumbles at PIR. I could put the car within inches of where I wanted it to be.



So -

KW V3 - C - serviceable for track work, but barely. KW makes a Club\Sport, but I don't know if they make it for the Vantage. The V3 most likely needs more spring. We are using the compression to hold the un- sprung mass up. I think rebound is good. We ran 75% rear - 60% front

Goodrich R1 - A - An easy tire to use. Good grip all day and the wear looks fantastic. Look forward to running on them and may switch over to them from the R7. May not have R7 grip, but very consistent.

Brakes - D - Suck - I will look for an alternative. They did work all day but, it is one place the Mustang would kill it. All day long I wished it had the braking of the Wilwoods from the Cobra.

Steering - B+ ratio is too slow.
Power train - A+ - wow - the stuff that goes on above 6k - wow
Chassis - A+ - would love to attach a better shock spring combo to it.

The speeds we carried from 4 thru 7 were just fantastic. The speeds we carried thru 10 and 11 were at times frightening.

Lots came to look at it and everyone loved the sound coming down the front. Quite a treat.

One last picture - The frame rails are parallel to the ground. Look at the wheel gaps. With some thing like H&R the frame rails could end up higher in the front.

 

Thanks for your detailed track day follow up. Look forward to seeing what you do with the brakes.

 

I have enjoyed reading through the thread as there are not many of us who have transformed these. My build has been a long and slow process since 2010!

Have you considered the Nitrons? I have been extremely pleased with mine that are significantly higher sprung than their standard kit and they are pillow ball top. Following the corner balance I am now at 49.8% with the car down to 3480 with a full tank and no driver. The little 4.3 is putting down 400 at the wheels! Car is extremely balanced now and has enough power to break loose a bit in third

 

 

FR500GT - Looks like Brembo is the easiest. The GT Series - maybe the GT-S. GT-R would get it done but $$ prohibitive would rather put it in my FIA.

Detomaso - Very, Very, Impressive. Can you share some on your engine mods. That is some serious stuff at the wheels? You have enough brakes?

x-chr

 

X-chr-started with power pack and sport pack upgrades then quicksilver exhaust, 200 cell cats, VAP headers, VAP dual plate clutch and LW flywheel, Rich's air box deletes and high flow filters, then spent half the day on a custom tune following the additions.

Cosmetically added the HRE P101's (20lbs for 20"X10.5"), N420 rear diffuser, RSC front splitter.

Just finished the installing the Nitrons and balancing the car.

Next up two piece big brake kit to increase stopping power and pull out more weight.

 

Thanks - Very encouraging, I am not too far from your build. Stuart is chasing upgraded brakes for me. I'm not sure the 2 piece hat and rotor are worth it ( am running Wilwood). No question they will help handling, but it will still lack stopping power if you track it. The R1 is plenty sticky enough - to me the OEM setup lacks torque. We never hit the ABS and never locked them up.

I am quite surprised you have that power at the wheels. My headers are still sitting on the shelf. VAP gave me 2 tunes 1) with headers 2) one with stock manifolds. Interesting to think there is still some magic left in the bottle.

We used Race Gas mixed to 95.

http://race-gas.com/"]http://www.race-gas.com/

Beautiful thing to drive. It would be so much quicker with better brakes.

chr

 

It seems these may be a solution. They say they are direct replacement for the GT Series and Brembo does have a GT series kit for the Vantage.

 

chr-
I was able to dig up the old dyno files from last summer, but could not find the files from last fall. I will try calling the shop.

In the testing that I did July 1, the temp was low to mid 90's out and before the tune (it had all parts mentioned above and AM sportpack tune). The car put down a max of 353HP and 289TQ.



Following a half day of tuning it put down 375HP at 7700RPM and 305TQ at 5260. Increasing the rev limiter was a big reason for the gains as HP continues up until redline as you can see below. I thought these were uncorrected as extreme heat and only 375, but these were indeed SAE corrected. Looking closer, they are only 1.04 corrected on a 96 degree day....this may be why the numbers read low?

 

Thanks for posting that Detomaso - I am amazed Aston left so much on the table. I might have to put mine on a dyno just to compare. The difference between them should be in the tunes.

chr

 

I'll be putting the V8VS 6-piston front brakes on my grey car sometime in the next few months (relocation budget allowing). Should help quite a bit on track. The pad size difference is substantial.

 

The last time I weighed it, our Mustang weighed 3649 with me and a full tank of gas. It runs 330 front rotors and 6 piston Wilwood calipers.

The Aston weighed 3700 with me and a full tank of gas - both cars are very similar horsepower and both run the same spec tire 275x35 DOT R compounds.

The Mustang will significantly out brake the Vantage. I don't believe the rotor size is the problem. I don't think the caliper is stiff enough or has the heat capacity to deal with running. If there was a way to run the GT-S caliper on the stock rotor I would try it, but it is sold as a kit so mounting brackets most likely are not compatible with the smaller rotor.

Rich - The V8VS is a 380 Rotor and a different caliper? It would be interesting to know what they run on the V12 - are they the same - If not, are they compatible i.e direct fit?

I don't think a bigger rotor is going to solve the problem. Luckily the 380 rotor is supposed to fit inside the 18 OZ wheels.

I am nervous about purchasing the GT-S, I hate buying paint.

I looked into pricing on AMR stuff. Add $2K. to price of GT-S

A little Brembo marketing



chr

 

What sold me on the V8VS upgrade was putting the pads side by side. These are both the Porterfield R4-S front brake pads, for the 4-piston and 6-piston calipers:



Between the slightly larger rotor and the much larger pad, there should be a substantial improvement in braking performance. The smaller pads have to work harder to stop the car, so they generate more heat, and that quickly wears them out.

The 6-piston calipers aren't a direct swap, they require a few extra things. I'm going to include everything as a package (calipers, 2-pc rotors, pads, fluid, and the rest needed for installation). Rotors are custom made for me (not Wilwood), and help bring the cost down compared to the OEM 2-piece rotors. Offering front-only package as well as front-and-rear. For the full front kit it'd be around $4500. For the full front and rear kit it'd be a little under $6k. (NOTE: These are estimates, not final pricing, and there are some options that can affect the price.)

I was going to debut the setup on my grey car but finances are stretched super thin due to all the products in development and my timeline for relocated getting pushed ahead by a full year (hello, anxiety!). But I'm happy to get things pushed out quicker if there's serious interest.

Hopefully this doesn't hijack your thread, happy to start another one if people are interested in ordering these braking packages.