Here is my prototype sent off to Cobra. Does anyone know of the available materials used for the rings.



chr

 

The rebound adjuster for the KW. It is a separate piece but works very easily. Just unfortunate that Aston chased beauty before function on the tower brace. Still workable.

 

Nice!
The "rings" are called eyelets,
and you can get them in brass-plated (as pictured), zink-plated (silver), brownish (rare) and stainless.
You find them at a saddlery-shop or the e-net, they are also used for ships, tents...

Thomas

 

I thought they were grommets

I sent Cobra a picture of the 06 Ford GT seats. I am hoping they can do something in black brass .




chr

 

What a chassis -



Weighs in at 3451 with 1/4 tank. Using Rich's data (Time to Get Nimble) we could be at 3379 with new chairs.

Of course these things never go as planned.

chr

 

Last night I got to thinking about the ride height and I remembered Kanga supplied us with the GT4 specs for ride height so I dug around and found the spec.


.
I got worried we had blown the ride height which would have blown the setup. Turns out we had the front right, but used the wrong reference at the back. Luckily we over lowered by .100 to the reference we used which put it to spec at the right reference location. Interestingly the shop manual uses fender to ground clearance which is a testament to their manufacturing tolerances. Muscle cars are good to 1/2 inches - You could never use the fenders on a muscle car - LOL. We had to set it down on 2x6's and drive off - the jack won't go underneath.

We deviate from spec because we setup with a forward chassis rake of 3/8". Interesting spec calls for a parallel bottom to ground. Perhaps the sta-bar mount is not in the same plane as the front cross member. We'll have to check that out.

 

We ran the car without crashing it. Here is the ride height loading on the trailer.





We blew the ride height pretty badly. I say that because we introduced bump steer on the back straight. It is off camber and the car was wandering. I was a bit alarmed until I figured out what I think we did. Because we did not have the requisite ballast in the car, we over lowered it. When we did that we dropped into a non linear section of the bump steer curve. I could be wrong about this, but I assume Aston knew how far they could lower it without compromising the suspension geometry. When we got it back the first thing we did was check the difference with 75 kg of ballast in it - it lowered it another .1875 (3/16) inches. That means we were running nearly .600 lower then we were last fall.

My good friend an co-driver Mike Walters is a pretty good size guy and he said we could feel the mud flaps dragging on the back straight. At 157 lbs I did not experience this, but I did experience the bump steer.

The bullet ran great all day. In fact it seemed like the more heat we got into it the better it ran. We run clean oil and brake fluid every time we run. When we ran it last fall the oil was black when we got it home. I was in shock and asked our machinist about it. He laughed and said "no telling what you guy's blew out of that thing". This time the oil was a very light honey color.

The Brakes - By the afternoon I was using the brakes as hard as our Mustang and it stopped every time. The pedal was getting longer and longer until finally at the end of the day I got "Low Brake Fluid Level Drive Safely". We pulled it and and took it home. My best lap of the day was a 1:29.16. I wish the pedals were adjustable. The throw of the brake pedal leaves us lower than where we need to be for optimal heel and toe. I need to try to figure out away to lower the gas pedal or get com-pliancy out of the system. I have my eye on the Brembo GT-S calipers. The O.Z. wheels are back cut quite a bit in the spokes and there appears to be plenty of room radially out. Brembo has a template you can down load and print out to scale so we are going to give that a try. Stuart is trying to fit a set on a V12 with the same wheels so I am kind of holding out for him.

The Transmission - and absolute thing of beauty and joy. So easy.

The Engine - We were not getting passed and we were tripping the traction control in 3rd gear coming out of turn 2. The acceleration from 6700 to red line is astonishing. We are done with the traction control. We've left ti on for both days, but it is just becoming such a nuisance.

KW V3 Coil Over - We started with everything maxed. Mike went out first in the morning and complained the car was skipping thru 7. I took it out and did not have any problem thru 7 but it was under-steering pretty bad thru 6. At lunch we dropped the front rebound from 16/16 to 12/16 and that got us hooking up again. Next time we run it we will start at 14/16 and see how it goes. I have Vivid Racing checking to see if we can swap a little more spring rate into the dampers. Sometime I wish i would have just called Penske. Their stuff is so easy to work with as far as changing spring rates.

Our settings

Front Rebound 12/16 Front - Compression Maxed
Rear Rebound Maxed - Compression Maxed


Here is our new ballast system. When we set it up for the street we will distribute as in the work shop manual. For the track we will pile it all in the drivers chair.


We pulled the AIM camera from the Mustang and put it in the Vantage so we have some video. I just have to figure out how to upload it.

We pulled the upper control arms apart today to check the bushings

Fronts settled at 2.7 lbs.
Rears settled at 3.

Lastly our plastic gasp cap worked great and we did not have a CEL the next day.


Even with bump steer, the car is very easy to drive fast.

chr

 

Which rear wing are you driving?? looking real good and probably good for some extra downforce.

 

Rich - thanks for the heads up - when ordering the V8 is specifically listed. I think the problem will be radial with a 380 mm disk and the caliper sitting on top. About 1/2 inch radially, but the caliper configuration could kill it on an 18" wheel. That said, If I get it to work on an 18" not sure I will be able to run the caliper width with the BC's.

Jan - Both the splitter and rear spoiler are CF from RSC .


x-chr

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpHY...ature=youtu.be

Last session of the day - "after hours lapping" so we had it to ourselves. What a great day

chr

 

Hi Chr... I have followed your thread.
while off topic my son has a 5.0 coyote engine with both engine and transmission tuned...2013 model

We are crazy guys and work 6-7 days a week during the summer...anyway long story short...we had a day off so we had our cars out on our favorite s road that goes into a great straight run.

Today for some reason his hood by the windshield started to flex crazy at 125 in the straight. We backed off and took to my garage but the hood hinges seems fine and tight. The hood seems fine...not bent. This has not happened before...

We removed the sound stuff that covered the two vents...still flexes around 90...

Running my car 09 AM not a problem or any flexing. So nothing on the road or cross winds.

Since you know mustangs better then most any ideas what is screwed up?

Thanks Duke

If I do not answer quickly I am leaving for a job in Alabama tomorrow...

 

Duke - been out of town just got home. My first and only Mustang is my 03 SN95 Cobra and I only purchased it because I loved the look the later SN95's and the Cobras had IRS. Without the IRS I would never have purchased it - LOL.

My thoughts on your situation.

There is too much air being trapped under the hood. The SN95 Cobra had a fiberglass hood the two vents for heat extraction. When we started running it on the track we punched out the plastic flaps so that we could get the largest opening possible. In addition to helping cool it, it also relieved pressure under the hood. I spent a lot of time at SVTPerformance.com. There are very, very knowledgeable Mustang guys there. One in particular did a lot of functional testing of the cooling system and pressure testing with respect to high speed one mile runs with his SN95 Cobra. He designed his own hood which had very deep tunnels to get the air out of the engine compartment.

We eventually stored the stock hood and installed a TruFiber hood to assure we were exhausting as mush as we could out of the engine compartment. That said we never had any trouble with the stock hood once we punched the vents out. My thought, based on the work done at SVTPerformance, was to evacuate the most air we could out of the compartment.

Some things for you to check -

(1) Are the hood stops properly adjusted? They are rubber tipped threaded pins that the hood closes against.

2) Ford runs an air dam of sorts under the cars which create low pressure behind the radiator to help pull pressure out. You could take a look under the car just aft of the radiator and make sure that piece is still fixed. I have heard of that piece coming loose and affecting the pressure in the engine compartment.

Here is a picture of the TruFiber hood on our Cobra. If he is going to run high speed stuff ,he may want to consider a good after market hood. This one is CF but they can be had in other composites and there are other vendors to consider also.


I would at least check the stops and make sure the under carriage trips are properly fixed.

Another good source for Mustangs is corral.net. It's not a reference I use, but I know there is a very large enthusiast following there.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

cliff

 

We have set the Vantage up several times for the street and track. It is a time consuming process and we still struggle with repeatability. Using a floor jack to get the car onto the blocks was a complete nightmare so based on the reviews here I purchased a Quick Jack to try to ease the pain. I also purchased some beautiful lite weight foam blocks from Race Ramps to set the car on. That did not work out very well because at track height the car is so low to the ground we cannot add any risers and we could not get the car high enough to slide the block under the tires.




Frustrated we opted for building our on blocks to be used as a permanent setup stand.



The blocks are cut from 4X6 and it is a two tiered system. In order to get a good setup you need really good repeatability. You have to get the friction from tire scrub isolated. On the top blocks we screwed some ABS plastic with the shiny side up. I ordered some slip plate material from Longacre. It sits on top of the ABS and is very, very, slippery. We have used news paper and plastic bags previously, but were unable to get it to work because we did not have it sliding on a smooth surface. I am pretty sure that would still work if it was placed on the ABS. This system really works well - the car just sits right down.


A couple of the frames being fabricated. The 'U" shape welded on the side is to help with handling.


It took us awhile to get it all setup and tested. The Quick Jack has to be positioned such that it lifts the car and then comes back to point where the blocks slide underneath. We messed around for awhile until we got it.



We taped off the floor and painted references so we could repeatably position the car. The long stripe is to position the car side to side (put the drivers side tires on the line and drive in. The small transverse line you can just see is where the car needs to stop with its front tire contact patch sitting on the line. The quick jack then gets positioned 12" behind the center-line of the front wheel. This is only important because we do not want to have to re-level every time we work on the car. The white tiles are level within .5 degrees to each other and we were chasing our tails trying to perfect it. This was not good enough for repeatability so we added feet to the frames so that we can assure the entire stand is level as well as each block level to itself.


The Quick Jack is so nice and the system so much safer that what we were doing. Our goal is to align in under 8 hours. This will help us get there. It is heavy, but it is all modular so the individual pieces are not too bad and it stores well. It feels great with the car sitting on solid blocks.

Side note - using Kanga's 80 mm ride height, you will have to drive the rear tires up on 2x6 to get the jack under the car.

 

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