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

[LS]

Great sound...must've been a fun day.

 



central 
wines-spirits   est 1934


625 e street nw

washington, dc 20004

centralwines.com


facebook.com/CentralLiquors 


202-737-2800




________________________________
 From: David Fisher <fisher95020 at gmail.com>
To: Brent Stewart <bjbstewart at yahoo.com> 
Cc: LS <lashdeep at yahoo.com>; "MikeLDrew at aol.com" <MikeLDrew at aol.com>; "detomaso at POCA.com" <detomaso at poca.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 11:00 PM
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Great day at Laguna Seca! (Video)
 

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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