[DeTomaso] Great day at Laguna Seca! (Video)

Tue Apr 2 00:38:44 EDT 2013

Well, after about 5 hours of video processing, they've made it to Youtube!

Bob: http://youtu.be/1sjGraIDjDg

Mike: http://youtu.be/a39-jtgcr4o

Enjoy!

brent

________________________________
 From: LS <lashdeep at yahoo.com>
To: "MikeLDrew at aol.com" <MikeLDrew at aol.com>; "detomaso at POCA.com" <detomaso at POCA.com> 
Sent: Monday, April 1, 2013 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Great day at Laguna Seca!

Sounds like a great weekend.

Where's the video???

Thanks,
LS

central 
wines-spirits   est 1934

625 e street nw

washington, dc 20004

centralwines.com

facebook.com/CentralLiquors 

202-737-2800

________________________________
From: "MikeLDrew at aol.com" <MikeLDrew at aol.com>
To: detomaso at POCA.com 
Sent: Monday, April 1, 2013 2:31 PM
Subject: [DeTomaso] Great day at Laguna Seca!

Hi guys,

Several PCNC members trooped down to Laguna Seca for a track day this past 
Saturday.   Normally they have a restrictive 92 (or eve 90) db sound limit, 
which keeps any Pantera firmly on the trailer, but for this day, they 
allowed 105 db.   That was enough to encourage me and Bob Benson to drive our 
Panteras there.   Brent Stewart hasn't had the time to install his vented brake 
discs yet, and Laguna is especially hard on brakes, so he made the wise move 
to bring his Porsche Boxter instead.   And Lori brought her track-prepared 
2000 Mustang (you can read all about this car here--it was a track rental 
car until she bought it from them for her exclusive use):

http://borellimotorsports.com/projects/2000-ford-mustang-gt

That's her getting into it in the first photo; she rented it a bunch of 
times before finally buying it.

Unfortunately the weather was bloody dire when we got there--unbelievably 
heavy fog and drizzle had the track slick, and visibility down to an eighth 
of a mile, not enough for the corner workers to be able to see the whole 
track.   Eventually it started to lift and they let cars out on track for a few 
minutes, before it would come back, and then they would close it again.

Bob was running Hoosier slicks so he didn't even bother unloading his car 
from the trailer.   I was on my street tires (20-year-old Z-rated BFG Comp 
T/A 245/50-15 front and equally old Euro T/A 305/50-15 rear), but Bob had 
brought my Hoosier slicks on my spare set of 8/10 inch Campy wheels in his 
truck.

By 10:00 a.m. it was our turn to go out (me, Lori and Brent).   I took the 
lead among our little group, and noted that the cars that had already done 
just a single lap were going MUCH faster than I thought I could ever possibly 
go, given my experience with Euro T/A tires in the wet.   I tiptoed onto 
the track, felt it get a bit loose in the first turn, and by the second turn, 
was determined that it was just impossible for me to drive safely in those 
conditions.   I would be a huge obstacle to the drivers of modern cars with 
grippy tires and all sorts of stability aids.   I limped into turn 5, going 
perhaps 20-25 mph, maintaining steady throttle, and at the apex, the rear end 
started to slowly, and seemingly inexorably, let go.

If my reflexes were sharper I perhaps might have been able to save it.  
But I could feel it going past 45 degrees and decided discretion was the 
better form of valor; I turned further left to snap the car a full 180 degrees to 
keep me out of everybody else's way.   Brent got to see the whole thing; I 
sure wish he had his GoPro running, as it would have been almost ballet-like 
I think!

So I sat there feeling sheepish as several more cars passed, before 
spinning it around and then limping back to the paddock.   The others only got two 
more laps before the track was closed again for safety reasons.

At 1130 we had another go; I decided to ride with Lori in her Mustang 
rather than face the humiliation of another slow, rotational display.   I was 
also concerned with the prospect of lighting up the back end coming onto the 
front straight and spinning into the wall.   Lori's Mustang was hooked up a 
lot better, plus she knows the line really well.   As soon as I got on track I 
regretted my decision not to drive my Pantera, because while the paddock 
was still wet, the track had largely dried out, and I would have been fine in 
my Pantera.   Still, it was fun riding with her, and seeing the alternate 
'school' line through Turn 9 that she learned when she took the Skip Barber 
course there.   It sacrifices exit speed from Turn 9 but sets you up better 
for Turn 10, and thus gives you a bit of extra speed for passing going into 
11, a useful thing.

After lunch conditions improved immensely.   The sun came out, it was warm 
and dry, with a light breeze--perfect!   I swapped to my track tires, and 
Bob unloaded his car and took it out for his first-ever time on Laguna Seca.  
Although he's been there countless times as a crewmember or spectator, he'd 
never actually driven there.   He had Viper Rich to follow around, and the 
two of them played among some really, really fast cars as Bob got to learn 
the line.

Then it was our turn again.   Brent and I headed out but Lori wasn't with 
us--she had been feeling ill and almost hadn't come down at all, but she had 
decided to try to tough it out.   By lunchtime she just wasn't up to it, and 
so she made the wise decision to pack up and head home while we were out on 
track (a three-hour drive).

Brent and I ran together for awhile, as I got to know how my brand-new 
Hoosier slicks (225/50 front and 275/50 rear) worked.   Compared to the street 
tires, the level of grip was just epic.   (Gray Gregory drove my Pantera on 
my street tires on the track at Reno, and while he loved the car, he said the 
tires were the worst he'd ever experienced!).   I did a couple of warmup 
laps, keeping Brent in view in my mirror, and then I started feeling my oats, 
buried my foot on the front straight, and was gone.

I forgot to mention that a rather stealthy PCNC member, all-around good 
guy, and lurker on the forum, Dave Luckenback, had come down to see what the 
fun was all about, and thoughtfully brought his helmet, so he was riding with 
me--his first time on a racetrack.   Bob Lucas and Darryl Johnson had both 
come down to spectate as well.

I gradually picked up the pace, and soon was running faster, MUCH faster 
than I have ever driven at Laguna Seca before.   I've run my Scirocco there 
lots of times in the past, and more recently (10 years ago), ran my 300 
horsepower (maybe) GT350 there, but a 540 hp Pantera on slicks is a different 
matter entirely.   I always ran at about 8/10ths, never wanting to really find 
the limits of the slicks (or myself!), but was still really carrying the 
mail.  

Here's a lap:

The first turn (really) is a complete enigma, Turn 2.   It's very wide and 
offers dozens of different ways to negotiate it--all of them wrong.   In all 
these years, nobody has ever figured out the right line through there.  
You can single-apex it, or double-apex it, and it never really feels right.  
Eventually you just learn to suffer through it and just give it up.   (When 
I double-apexed it, the front end would push wide and I would have to take a 
slower entry onto the straight, the only time I ever really got my car 
sliding).

While some people downshift to 2nd gear, you have to upshift to 3rd 
immediately at the exit, and I've got so much torque down low that I didn't really 
need to do that, so I would just leave it in 3rd, boot the gas at the exit 
and set up for the RH turn 3, a perfectly ordinary, flat corner leading onto 
a medium-length straight, to the faster-than-you-think turn 4.

Turn 4 is deceptive, because it's not quite 90 degrees, and has loads of 
runoff room.   You can't see the exit from the entrance due to a wall on the 
inside, so the natural tendancy is to go through it slower than you have to.  
Eventually I started remembering that and would push it harder, although I 
tried to avoid running to the rumble strips on the exit.   Doing so would 
be faster still, and is the 'right' line, but again, I was running at 8/10ths 
and like to keep a considerable margin for error.

Up to 6000 rpm in third, then into 4th, over 100 mph and then hard, HARD 
braking for the 90-degree LH turn 5.   I would always over-brake here, and 
never really went as fast through 5 as I could have.   Heel-toe down into 
third, and then up the hill, past the sound booth (NYAH NYAH, 105 db day!!!).  
If I took Turn 5 at anything approaching a proper speed, I would hit the 6500 
rpm rev limiter going under the bridge; I'd feather the throttle slightly 
and give up that extra 1% of speed, brush the brakes and then plunge into 
Turn 6.   The straight was too short to justify upshifting into 4th, as I would 
need it only for one second or so.

Turn 6 is my favorite turn on the track.   It's a LH uphill corner with a 
pronounced dip at the apex.   This makes it much, MUCH faster than it would 
seem at first.   Significantly, it leads to a long, steep uphill, so 
preserving momentum through Turn 6 pays terrific dividends.  

I feel I only got it right about two or three times during the day; I would 
always turn it just a bit too late and miss the apex; the one time I 
concentrated on the apex I turned it a bit early and ran wider than I would have 
liked towards the exit and that prevented me from giving it full throttle 
early enough.   But those two or three times where I nailed it, it was SO 
rewarding!

And the difference was palpable soon after.   I'd reach 6000 rpm and then 
upshift into 4th briefly, and set up for the blind approach to the top of the 
corkscrew.   (In my GT350, it never had enough power to let me get into 4th 
gear; instead I would just climb it in 3rd with the rpm slowly rising.  
540 hp versus 300 hp makes a huge difference on a steep hill!)

Again, since nobody was paying me anything to be here and there were no 
trophies waiting for me, I was extremely conservative entering the corkscrew.  
The truly speedy will crest the brow on the gas and then plant both feet on 
the brakes, slowing from 100+ mph to about 20-25 in no time.   I would 
instead lift off the gas prior to the brow, heel-toe down into 3rd and use only 
moderate braking.

Turning into the corkscrew is an experience.   It's a slow, SLOW 
left-hander, which normally would be a second-gear corner.   However, since you are 
effectively driving off a cliff, you'd need 3rd again right away anyway, so 
the technique is to just leave it there and turn in at about 1500 rpm in 3rd 
gear.   The track falls away so that you literally can't see the pavement at 
all; instead, there is a tree on the outside of the corner with an orange 
ribbon tied to it.   When you reach the turn-in point, you can only see the 
top of the tree, but at the apex you can see the ribbon on the trunk.   You 
look and aim there, straighten the wheel and plant the gas.   The car goes 
over the cliff, suddenly there is pavement in front of you again, and you turn 
right and accelerate.

You're now going downhill and accelerating fairly quickly.   Staying 
mid-track, you brush the brakes and then use maintenance throttle, 3500 or so rpm 
through the long LH sweeper turn 9, then hard on the gas until short, heavy 
braking and then turn into the RH turn ten.   This leads to a short straight 
where, if I got 10 right, I'd just touch the rev limiter in 3rd before 
pounding on the brakes, heel-toe down into 2nd, and turn left onto the front 
straight.

Up to 6000 in third gear, then into 4th, still pulling hard.   There is a 
LH kink and a blind brow under the bridge, where the car will get a bit 
light.   Occasionally I had the bravery to keep my foot planted over the brow, 
trusting the corner workers to be on their game and tell me if there was a 
good reason not to do that.   Most of the time, I would feather the throttle as 
I crossed the brow; although my concerns were perhaps unfounded, the car 
got light enough there that I could envision the rear end breaking free and 
snapping the car sideways.   Downforce would have helped here.

I never saw the tach here, but did glance at the speedo and saw 130+ mph.  
Now I'm hauling into a heavy, heavy braking zone, to slow for the enimatic 
30 mph or so Turn 2.   While once or twice I kept my foot into it until the 
last possible moment and then just buried the brakes, normally I would lift 
early, brake hard, then coast for a bit before the turn-in point, and do it 
all over again.

I have an old Wilwood racing brake system from Pantera Performance Center, 
circa 1993, with (as it turns out) some of the cheapest rotors Wilwood 
offered at the time.   They are 1.25 inch in the front and only .81 in the rear 
(at the time it was the thing to do, if you wanted to fit your stock rear 
calipers for use as an emergency brake; if I had to do it again today I would 
definitely fit wide rear rotors also, as I never bothered with the emergency 
brake).   For pads, I'm using Wilwoods BP-20 Smartpad (made for them by 
Raybestos) which has been a fantastic street/track pad for me in the past.

In the past though, I was running on hockey pucks--now I'm running slicks, 
which are capable of transmitting much, much more torque, so I found myself 
slowly reaching the limits of the brakes.

Things started to get a bit weird in front; I felt the front rotors warp, 
leading to juddering at the wheel, and due to excessive temps, braking 
performance started to fall off at the front slightly.   The pedal felt fine, so I 
wasn't boiling the fluid (good stuff from ATE), but the pads were just 
glazing I think.   This had the effect of transferring the front/rear braking 
bias rearwards.   The rear brakes were performing just fine and were seemingly 
happy, so with the front brakes falling down on the job (only slightly), 
the excessive rear brake bias caused the car to shake its tail at the limit 
under braking, which is a bit disconcerting, especially when the front is 
juddering, and you're going 130 mph into a hairpin.

So, when that started happening, I would dial it back just a bit, and the 
brakes would recover after a lap or so, and then I'd power it back up and it 
would happen again, so I just walked that fine line between 7/10 and 8/10, 
and had a blast for the rest of the day!

We were scheduled for two 30-minute sessions (30 minutes is a long time at 
that speed), and then a combined, everybody-who-hasn't-gone-home-yet session 
at the end of the day, but with storm clouds looming and a long drive ahead 
of me, after the second session, we all decided to pack it in.   I put the 
street tires back on, and while doing so, noticed that I had consumed a full 
50% of the front brake pads in just those two sessions, while the rears 
showed little wear.   The front rotors didn't look terrible, and had managed to 
unwarp themselves too, a nice bonus.

I loaded my track tires into the back of Bob's truck (thanks again Bob!!!) 
and then headed for home.   When driving down the hill, my brakes were not 
stopping well at all, and I was a bit concerned.   But brake temperatures 
continue to rise after heavy application, and will peak about 15 minutes after 
the vehicle has stopped, so I figured (hoped) it was just because the brakes 
were still crazy hot.

Fortunately, after a few miles of driving down the highway, performance 
returned to normal.   I had an uneventful drive home, stopping several times 
because I was never smart enough to eat, get gas, and pee all at the same time 
(!), through light showers the whole way.   That made my normal three-hour 
drive home a four-hour drive, but I didn't mind at all--there is no place 
I'd rather be than behind the wheel of my Pantera!

I have to give a shout out to Dan Jones and Dave McLain; the 408 stroker 
motor they designed and built for me performed flawlessly.   The carburetion 
is perfect, the substantial low-end and midrange torque meant I didn't have 
to rev the nuts off of it to get where I needed to go, yet it's built to hang 
together and will run hard right up to the 6500 rpm rev limit without 
falling on its face, lap after lap after lap.   Truly a job well-done there!

I now have some thinking to do, and won't be driving the Pantera on the 
track until I address some of the braking issues that cropped up, and thus 
won't be on-track in Phoenix.   I learned with my GT350 that brake cooling is 
the single most effective thing you can do to improve brake performance and 
lifespan at Laguna Seca.   I experienced some of the same conditions with that 
car (with stock brakes--.81 thick vented rotors in front and four-piston 
calipers with Porterfield pads), and installing a comprehensive brake 
cooling/ducting kit transformed it.   I have no ambitions of cutting all sorts of 
holes in the front of my Pantera to route cooling hoses to the brakes, but 
right now I have a call in to Cory Gehling at Collector's Choice.

Cory is a Viper guy, but he also makes Pantera parts.   One of his bits is 
a fairly straightforward brake cooling duct which bolts to the top of the 
lower A-arm, and just routes air flowing underneath the car towards the discs. 
  Here's the Viper part:

http://www.snakeoylproducts.com/product.php?productid=17530&cat=336&page=1

Years ago he advertised a similar piece for the Pantera, and I'm waiting 
for him to call me back to let me know if he still offers it.  Also, I am 
going to upgrade my front discs.   It should be possible to get much better 
rotors that will bolt up to my existing hats.   I haven't yet decided which ones 
to get; I will have a long talk with Dennis Quella (is there any other 
kind?   HAH!) and see what he can hook me up with.

Darryl Johnson took some photos of me, which I have posted here:

http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=39207

He also got photos of Bob and Brent, but I haven't received those yet.  
Brent stuck his GoPro camera on the top of Bob's wing, so hopefully he will 
have some fantastic footage (and epic noises!) to share soon, plus he got some 
footage of me driving the circuit for a few laps.   Hopefully those will be 
on Youtube by tomorrow.

I should also share an amusing anecdote.   Part of my preparation for the 
track was installing the three-point roll bar (custom bent for my car) which 
has been protecting my parts room from damage for the past 20 years.   It 
took some wrestling to get it in, as it is a PERFECT fit.   I found, much to 
my dismay, that installing the roll bar caused the #8 fuse to blow.

Huh?

That's right.   One of the bolts that holds the third leg to the main hoop 
penetrated the back side and would just touch the lens surround of the dome 
light.   I phoned Jim Seiferling and he explained to me that when we hooked 
up the dome light circuit together (which consisted of me printing out Bill 
Taylor's fantastic wiring diagram and handing it to Jim, and then Jim having 
all the smarts to actually implement it), apparently the dome light got 
hooked up backwards, so that power went to ground and vice versa.   The circuit 
still worked fine (the bulb doesn't care), but that meant the lens surround 
was energized 12V hot!   The solution was to simply reverse the wires.

At first I wasn't going to bother, but then I realized the other critical 
item on the #8 circuit was the wipers!   So I swapped the wires, and hey 
presto, it worked!

But now, the lens surround was grounded through the roll bar bolt all the 
time so the dome light was stuck on!   Fortunately I have a battery cutoff so 
it didn't drain the battery overnight.   For my drive home, I just removed 
the offending bolt, but in the long term I'm going to have to address that a
s well.

Amusingly, when I first discovered the problem, driving home from dinner 
Friday night (I forgot to mention, Lori and I had a wonderful dinner Friday 
with PCNC member Markus Woehler and Christy, and Don Coleman and his wife 
Denise--Don was the only Ford man in Modena at the start of the Pantera program, 
and was a guest speaker at the POCA Fun Rally a few years back), I found 
that when I booted the gas, the dome light would go out.   This is because the 
stroker motor made so much torque, that acceleration would literally bend 
the car just slightly enough to cause the offending bolt to break contact and 
cause the light to momentarily extinguish.   At first I thought the light 
was just winking on and off randomly, but then I figured it out and could 
extinguish it on demand (briefly) with my right foot.

My Pantera is MUCH stronger in the center section than a normal car, 
because when all the rusty sheetmetal was cut away, it was replaced with much 
heavier-gauge stuff, and reinforced beyond reason.   So it's likely that a stock 
Pantera flexes even more under those circumstances--there just isn't a 
simple, effective way to measure (or even notice) it.

I have the rear two halves of Byars' chassis stiffening kit installed, and 
will be installing the front halves before too long as well.

Anyway, it was a super day.   There is nothing like getting together with 
friends and wringing out your Panteras (and other cars) the way God and 
nature intended!

Mike
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