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

[David Fisher]

Great vids and Mike's descriptive prose brings it all to life.

Thanks for sharing, guys.


On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Brent Stewart <bjbstewart at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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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