Gen 3 FFR#48 Type 65 Coupe R Build

[John Dol]

Awesome guys, have fun at the track!

John

[Martin]

I love that "I SEE WEAKNESS" on the front !

Bob

I hadn't noticed that.

It needs to be a mirror image view so it helps put pressure on anyone in front of you. Anything to win right?

Martin

[Vman7]

John, thanks for the well documented build Mark D. sure is a great help! I love the modified E30 hinge, sure that would be a great idea for others who go with the new front airdam.

I can't stop reading this thread over and over, I keep learning something new each time.

Between you and Karen, have to be the coolest race coupes around!

David

[Mark Dougherty]

Thanks guys it has been fun to work on this coupe with John.
Sub 2 minutes here we come

[johngeorge]

6 days to finish building the racecar, load it into the trailer, tow to VIR, and run a 2:00.414 @ VIR on the 2nd session out! WAHOO


It is all a blur now, days mixing into each other. I towed down to Marks Friday night 3/17/17, work on car for 5 1/2 days, load it on the trailer tow it to VIR Thursday 3/23/17, test Fri-Sunday 3/24-26/17.

Middletown Maaco finished painting the body, and it looks amazing. It was all ready for us to install on the frame but we still had a long list of things to do before body got installed. First things were to do alignment setting camber/caster/tow/ride height/test bumpsteer/scale/etc.. On top of that we did a full nut/bolt check as usual for race prep.

Then it was time to put the freshly painted body on the frame!





Wow! it looks GREAT!!! A LONG list of things to finish on the car before departure for VIR we methodically checked things off the list. Mark, Brendan and I worked tirelessly to get all critical things required for the test completed.



You can see the monumental list of what needed to be completed with numbers which day had to get done.



Finally done Thursday at 2pm, drove it out of the garage to take some pictures! looks fantastic with all the stickers. Harassed some of the neighbors by driving it up and down the street, it felt real good!

[johngeorge]

We then had to figure out how to get this very low car loaded into the RV, queue ramps on ramps.





And it fit inside the toy hauler with inches to spare and without having to cut any cabinets! Yay! I was worried some cutting was required. We did however have to remove the front splitter and rear wing which is easy enough to do.





Build Weekend #5 pictures: http://www.johngeorgeracing.com/gall...?/category/394

[johngeorge]

Off to VIR now, a 6 1/2 hr tow from Hershey PA. Mark and I drove down in my rig, while Brendan, Sean Lingle and Chris Allen (SpecE30 racer) towed Chris’s trailer down. Brendan defected and will crew on Chris’s E30 for the weekend, while Sean and Mark are with me on the Daytona Coupe.

Wayne Patterson, a fellow FFR Challenge car racer, will arrive Friday morning at the track to also help crew on the car. With Dad not attending Wayne offered to cook for us! Thanks Wayne.

I had rented a garage anticipating lots of setup changes, Garage 9 was to be our home for the next 3 testing days.



NASA events are as such, Friday test day with 4 x 40min sessions, Saturday practice in the morning, qualifying around lunchtime, 25min race afternoon, Sunday qualifying early and a 40min race in the afternoon. We had our work cut out planned making changes every session.

First things first, we had to get the car through tech. Being a new car, it needs a new NASA logbook. Waiting in line we took some nice pictures with the crew (from left to right – Brendan Dougherty, Mark Dougherty, Sean Lingle)









and it passed NASA tech!

[johngeorge]

The first session of Friday was to be an installation lap, check to make sure all is well, no aero installed. We identified couple of issues and fixed them without problem. The car felt great right out of the box! time for some aero for the next session.

I start out session2 easy, slowly build speed. The car feels solid, no flex whatsoever, and is neutral balanced, no real oversteer or understeer. Our setup from the old Cobra #48 is very applicable to this chassis!









Some great pictures taken by a fellow FFR forum enthusiast boBQuincy.

Mark took a quick video of my driving by at speed. The sound of the car is awesome! White really stands out, Mark said he easily identified me coming down the hill onto the front straight both by sight and sound.

[johngeorge]

Lap times kept dropping as the session progressed, with me still feeling out the car I set a flyer, 2:00.414! on the second session of the day! Here is the fast lap incar.



Full session video here:

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

What is impressive is the entry of the high speed esses in 5th! at 135mph, and exiting at 141mph! felt super planted no drama.

I am also not maximizing the braking yet as we are dealing with some pad knock-back issues. Top mph was 149mph. The car just works and is super stable, a pleasure to drive.

My complaints after the session were: steering was too hard, squirmy under acceleration and slightly twitchy at high speed. We remedied this by changing the power steering to be more power assist (KRC pump has multiple pressure fittings and you can easily change the feel, I went to stock to what the original pump came with), and adding more rear tow-in to add stability. After the session the crew checked over the car as usual and found both outer CV boots had been cut and spewed CV grease all over the new frame!



Mark and Sean cleaned up the nasty CV grease and not having new boots made our own out of a plastic bag and zipties!



We also added zipties to all the grooves of the inner and outer CV boots to stop them from expanding under speed. We should have done this before the event but it slipped under the radar.

I highly suggest adding zipties as shown below in both inner and outer CV boots before you go drive it!



Session 3 we tried less rear wing, and the car oversteered too much. Good! we found the limit! so we set it back to where it was at 8deg instead of 3deg. The racepak dash warning light came on for low fuel pressure in left handers. So the crew fuel cell dived finding the problem and fixing it – I run 2 fuel pumps one of the fuel pumps on the right of the cell had its power wire come loose.

The last session of the day was a fun race. I started mid pac and made my way to the front chasing a fast Porsche 911 in the GTS4 class. I was gaining on him until the hood started lifting about 2″ in the back on the straight-a-way.



I decided to come into the pits, except Mark/Brendan/Sean/Wayne were watching the race and not in the garage. I convinced a fellow racer to tape the hood down and went back out.

Rejoining the race, it got a little exciting as I had to go off-track to avoid a fellow racer from making contact, it seems I came up on him so fast he didnt have time to see me. After the race came and found me, apologized for the incident and was glad nothing was damaged.



After a successful day we had dinner and toasted to a great first outing with some champagne.



What a team! I am so grateful to Mark, Brendan, Sean, Wayne, Jim Schenck, Dave Smith and all the FFR guys and gals for making all of this possible. It took us around 29 days to build from the ground up a racecar capable of 2:00 at VIR! that is no small feat.

[johngeorge]

Saturday practice we raised the ride height by one turn as we were bottoming out on the frame. We decided to run as low as possible and found the limit! Next session, qualifying, we changed rear camber/tow again based on tire temps. I qualified 3rd overall with a 2:00.591 and was ready to have a great race. The start was fast and fierce with me in the top 4 racing hard, getting into 3rd on the back straight passing DJ’s BMW I downshifted into 4th at the top of the hill and there was a big vibration. I had the clutch disc go bad before and this felt early similar. I decided to come right in to save the car, a good thing as I could not get it back into gear. I coasted off into the paddoc and used the starter to ‘get me going’ enough for the engine to turn over and start allowing me to drive back to garage#9.



Brendan/Sean/Mark jumped on the car removing the trans/bellhouse/clutch diagnosing a bad pressure plate! Wayne and I ran for parts finding a stock 1992 Mustang GT pressure plate in stock at Autozone! we hurried back the guys did a great job installing it.

The bad pressure plate:





Brendan installing the trans again.



New pressure plate installed



This job was made much easier by thinking ahead early in the build making panels removable (Brendan gets credit for this!) Glad we thought ahead!

We had difficulty with the transmission getting it back in place, so we took it back out and cut unneeded stubs off the transmission to make it easier to install.

[johngeorge]

Sunday had 2 sessions scheduled, qualifying early and race in the afternoon. Before qualifying we made yet another spring change stiffening the car further as Im still bottoming out. We didnt listen to Jim’s logic and put in 750lb springs instead of 700 in the rear. The car had oversteer. I set a 2:01 time putting me 2nd overall for the race.

After qualifying we wend to take some pictures of the car.

[johngeorge]

I had talked to NASA officials on Saturday to see if I could jump in a HPDE4 session to give Sean a ride in the daytona coupe at speed, my way of saying thanks for helping in the build, and was able to get that done. Withe 700lb rear springs we went out for his ride. Respectfully working through traffic we finally got clear track, Sean in the passenger seat bobble head moving forward under braking everytime, we set a flyer 2:00.8, then came in for tire temps/pressures.



During that run the fuel starvation in the left-handers reared its ugly head once again, so after the session we all decided time to pack up and head back home. No sense in running a 40min race with fuel starvation! that would hurt the engine which is the last thing I want to do.

We packed up and left for Mark’s house. Wayne flew out earlier Sunday.





Brendan and Chris stayed for Chris’s race later in the day where Chris finished 3rd out of 27 SpecE30’s, way to go Chris!

All pics taken from VIR: http://www.johngeorgeracing.com/gall...?/category/395

A great first weekend out with the new car! Mark, Brendan, Sean, Wanda, Matty, Shannon, Jim, Dave, Tony, all at FFR, Mom, Dad, Marina, THANK YOU!! Without you none of this would be possible. Thanks again!

Next race will be at NJMP Lightning May 5-7, 2017. I have a long list of ToDo before the event including going through NH registration/inspection so it can be road legal!

[Vette1972]

John & Crew,

Excellent video and the car is really fast! Everything looks great and the technical info is exciting to understand how the car performs in race conditions. Thanks for taking us along for the ride. Good luck with the racing season.

Len

[R Thomas]

Thanks again John & Mark for allowing us to follow along on your adventure. Looking forward to what's to come in the future. Enjoyed all the video at the track good things coming for you with this car.

[John Dol]

Great stuff, and with a second hand pick up truck engine.
Hats off gentleman, that looked like an incredibly fun, although challenging weekend!!

John

[jmccabe]

John,
Whenever I was bored ,I sat down and watched you guys all weekend !

Jeff

[jkrueger]

Great job. The car looks super fun to drive.

JC

[HCP 65 COUPE]

Man the car looks like it runs awesome, love the Ferrari pass in the last video must feel good to pass a 200k car like that.

Looking at the car and driver lightning laps at VIR your about 44 seconds a lap faster than a viper ACR. Man that's impressive not sure if its the same track layout tho, all that time for around the same money as a loaded Mustang GT thats super cool. Wish the OEM's would stop adding power and start taking weight reduction to the next level.

[R Thomas]

Has been fun watching you guys build this car up and get it on the track, performance looks amazing. A couple of quick questions if you had a street version would you feel Air Conditioning required? And are you looking at adding the stock hood locks to the sides or did hood pop open for some other reason?

[Doug @ Forma]

... Looking at the car and driver lightning laps at VIR your about 44 seconds a lap faster than a viper ACR. Man that's impressive not sure if its the same track layout tho, all that time for around the same money as a loaded Mustang GT thats super cool. Wish the OEM's would stop adding power and start taking weight reduction to the next level.

C&D runs the 4.1 mile Grand West Course:



From the map shown in his lap video he wasn't running the infield section, which would explain the difference. His lap is super impressive (and looks like a riot), but not comparable to C&Ds lightning lap, unfortunately.

[METAL C6R]

Doug, I noticed that, as soon as I saw what time John posted I started doing research, car and driver indeed does the long course. Corvette times I have seen are similarly "slower" due to the track difference

I did find a lap time for the imsa by corvettes running the same track at 1:46, but that's not a fair comparison. 2 entirely different racing classes.

I wanted to do a fair comparison on forza but that's dlc I don't have yet lol

[Sgt.Gator]

On the CV boots swelling problem: The Driveshaft Shop sells their CV axles in a Road Race setup....the only difference from the regular drag race setup is they slip WD40 style plastic straws under the boot next to the axle then install the clamp to let the pressures equalize.

[Mitch Wright]

John and crew, impressive first outing, the car looks great and really quick. Well done.

[HCP 65 COUPE]

Oh wish it was a true comparison but that time difference makes alot more sense now.

[METAL C6R]

http://fastestlaps.com/models/dodge-viper-acr-mk-v

Looks like the viper acr set a 1:57.03

[johngeorge]

Made a speed-up of the whole build and testing at VIR from footage of the livestream! check it out.

[johngeorge]

http://fastestlaps.com/models/dodge-viper-acr-mk-v

Looks like the viper acr set a 1:57.03

Yup, I should be around there in NASA ST2 trim! will work on that next time we get to VIR I'm hoping for that time.

Not bad for a kitcar

[GoDadGo]

John,

I just wanted to thank you for letting us watch this build and for the amazing ride alongs in your old open top and your new Type-65 Daytona.
It is unbelievable how much better your lap times are a V.I.R. in a brand new platform.
You really seem to be a lot more comfortable in the seat of your new ride.

Steve

[jimgood]

Nice work John and Mark!

Just out of curiosity, did you build two front air damns? I would be inclined to do that just to have a spare for the occasional off. But then I guess that's kind of like getting a prenuptial agreement. Kayn aynhorehs and all that.

[Russ Thompson]

WOW! great job to everyone, man you guys are animals! :-)

Thanks for the great track stuff, the coupe looks fantastic out on the track, oh, and even when it's parked! :-)

[myjones]

Not bad for a kitcar

UGH John;

Repeat after me, "I bought a race chassis and a body from Factory Five"
Kit cars are what the posers sell
Dale Berry
7L Hemi 33

[Garry Bopp]

Cool "speed up" video!

Garry

[GoDadGo]

UGH John;

Repeat after me, "I bought a race chassis and a body from Factory Five"
Kit cars are what the posers sell
Dale Berry
7L Hemi 33

Amen Sir Dale Berry, Mr. 7L Hemi 33, Amen!

[johngeorge]

Huge day yesterday, the car has passed NH State Inspection!!!!! I am thrilled I can drive this beast on the street now.

The whole process wasn't as painful as I remembered, first I had to go get a NH VIN from state police. Trailer the car to certain locations specified, I went to Machester NH DMV as that was the closest one they had, 8am-10am, bring all pertinent paperwork (FFR certificate of origin, FFR bill of sale, engine receipt, transmission receipt, rear end receipt, brakes receipt) wait in line till its your turn, and nicely talk to the DMV personal. They wanted to see block #s, which on the coyote I did not know right away, after googling I found #s passenger side of engine right above oil pan in front of the engine mount. This number sufficed his block # needs. Once that was done, take the paperwork he gives you into DMV, get new VIN entered into the system after a small fee.

Next step was to register the car. Take paperwork obtained from VIN assignment, along with certificate of origin, and go to your NH town's clerks office, for me was downtown city hall Nashua, NH. I re-used my Cobra plates so have that old registration in hand too. They then registered the car, gave me the correct paperwork to take to any State Inspection shop in NH.

The Dyno shop I use (Granite State Dyno, Hudson, NH) also does state inspections!! yay for me. Car getting a thorough check up, passing without issue.




Next its dyno time!! I need 4 tunes. Unlimited, 359RWHP tune, 341RWHP tune, and 329RWHP tune, for my racing class depending how wide tires I run.

The car was a huge hit everywhere it goes! people just love the looks of it.

Car strapped down on the dyno.




and unlimited numbers are 365RWHP/376RWTQ! Not bad for a stock 2013 F150 Coyote takeout.


I was able to tune for 359HP and 341HP, but ran out of time as the shop closes at 5pm to detune it even further to 329HP. That will happen at a later date. The de-tuning is super simple to do with the drive by wire system, I can command the throttle to close partially at certain RPM, think of it as a variable restriction plate.

[erlihemi]

That is awesome John, you're off to a great summer!!

[WIS89]

John-

Awesome! The car is insane, and I enjoyed the summary videos as well as the on track video. You handle that things pretty darned well Sir!

Street legal, it's kind of a funny thing for a straight up race car. The roads in the Northeast won't know what hit them.

Congratulations again on a great build, and a terrific racing machine. Thanks to you, Mark, and Brendan for having us along during the build! I wish you nothing but success with it.

Regards,

Steve

[johngeorge]

Getting ready for the first NASA NorthEast race this weekend (May 5-7, 2017) at NJMP Lightning track!

Things on the to-do list include:
change bad axle boots by replacing axles, put zip-ties between each groove to stop cv boot from expanding at speed
pad knockback - install pad knockback springs behind the caliper pistons
pad knockback - Modify rear brake brackets to 'clock' the caliper at the 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock position
change master cylinder to be bigger in the rear to help with pad knockback by increasing volume and reduce pressure (have too much rear brake anyway)
Mess with rear upper control arm to move it as far back as possible to help with tow change in suspension travel.

So, this past weekend I got all of this accomplished


caliper piston holder contraption to remove one piston out of 6 and put spring behind piston


caliper spring I purchased from McMaster Carr
Line Product Ordered Shipped Balance Price Total
1 1692K55 Confined-Space Conical Compression Spring 1" Overall Length, 0.72" x 0.281" OD, Quantity= 8
2 1692K64 Confined-Space Conical Compression Spring 1" Overall Length, 0.975" x 0.5" OD, Quantity= 4


inner end of the piston what it looks like.

Moving on to axle changes

add zip-ties in cv boot grooves


replace the Mark Dougherty band-aid at the track cv boot 'solo cup bag' fix axles


paint new rear caliper to spindle brackets

[johngeorge]

I had sent Jim @ FFR one of my rotors so he can design the part to fit.


re-designed bracket gets sandwiched between spindle and hub


Unfortunately I sent him the wrong rotor, a 14" rotos, when I run 13.2" rotors.. lets just say it was off by 3/8 of an inch, my bad! So, I had to chop up and re-drill his fancy laser cut bracket, then weld it up as the material I cut off made bracket too weak.


the cut bracket bolts to the other hub bracket.


ready for welding


Ohh yes FFR welder Jon Dean cringes when I tell him I welded something with my flux core welder!


painted, and even left the grade 8 bolts in there for added safety


and its installed!

[johngeorge]

back of caliper.


top of caliper bracket mounts


moving upper control arm back


moving caliper to the front of the rotor meant moving the brake line too.. Yes that is CV boot grease, that stuff gets EVERYWHERE. I will clean that dont worry.


Street wheels on and everything fits!

Now to figure out the master cylinder issue.. When we initially built the car I thought the front master was 3/4" and the rear master 13/16". At the track I noticed I had way too much rear brake, and cranked the balance bar adjuster all the way forward and was still locking up the rear brakes. Something was amiss! Well, I found out why.. the master cylinders were backwards of what I had thought, the bigger master in the front, and the smaller master in the rear. With master cylinders, the smaller it is, the more line pressure it generates, but moves less volume. The bigger master is opposite, less pressure but more volume, which is what I want in the rears as it also helps with pad knockback by having more fluid volume it will 'set' the pads faster.

To fix I just swapped them around putting the 3/4" master front and 13/16" master rear. Easy fix! and on a quick street drive test slamming on the brakes now locks up the fronts first. Cranked little more rear and now brakes feel like they works as intended. Mission accomplished, I will set the brake balance at the track at speed, having cable adjuster in reach of driver is very handy.

more pics here: http://www.johngeorgeracing.com/gall...?/category/397

[Bill Waters]

John, Mark;

The front race bumper/splittter obviously needs to be easily removable. Did you guys use Dzus-style fasteners to accomplish that, or what?

Thanks,

Bill