| I had the pleasure of Attending North Woods Shelby Club annual Club event at Blackhawk Raceway in South Beloit Ill. Biggest upgrades for this year: 1) New 13" StopTech front rotors. My old set was FUBAR'd with too many different brake pad compounds, improper break in procedures and uneven pad deposits. They were fine on the street but once I go to track events they were awful. The new set was a little shaky (literally) on break-in but after 20 minutes of track time they had FINALLY found their happy place. I am using Hawk DTC-70 pads with StopTech ST-40 calipers. If you are really pushing the limits of your brakes expect to consume about 1 to 1.5 sets of pads per weekend (2 day event with five 20 minute sessions). 2) New Tires. Toyo R-888, 265-35-18 front, 295-35-18 rear. Warning, these tires are a LOT wider compared to other brands of tires the same size. The rear tires were about a 1/2" than the Advan A048's I previously used. To get the rear tires to fit I had to do a mild fender roll. For the record you can do a fender roll without cracking or damaging the paint in any way provided you don't fold 45 degrees beyond the original angle of the fender lip. I used an Eastwood style fender roll tool. Overall the grip on the Toyo's are spectacular. I believe they had significantly more grip than anything I have used on the Z to date. 3) 4 wheel steering delete from SPL. Since my Z has the electric style unit it was pretty easy except for pressing out the bushing on the spindle. If you plan on using any type of bearing press tool don't even think about doing this unless you have a decent air impact tool, its a big time saver. Initial impression with the system deleted; street use the only thing I noticed is when you do medium to fast lane changes at highway speed you loose just a smig of responsiveness. On the track; I gained a lot of predictability on corner exits under hard acceleration. Overall the positives far out weigh the negatives. 4) SPL bump steer kit. I was surprised that my Z didn't need a whole lot of spacers. I am using a Tein Flex coilover kit lowered about 1.5" total drop. I had the car on a lift, took the front spring out, attached a laser gun sight to a 36" level and bunged it to the tire. I pointed the laser to a wall in the shop about 40' away. As I moved the suspension plus and minus from normal ride height I took measurements on how far the tire toed in or out. I think I only applied enough spacers to add up to 3/4". Since it didn't have much "bump" to begin with I am not sure this had a huge effect on performance. When I measured how far the laser moved I started with 12" of total toe change (remember this is being measured 40 feet away) and ended up with about 2-3 inches of total toe change within the usable suspension sweet spot travel range. 5) Alignment. Basically had a mild setup. Front Camber = -1.6 degrees, Front Caster = 8.6 degrees, Front Total Toe = 0.01in (basically zero toe), Rear Camber = -1.0 degrees, Rear Total Toe = 0.09in (just a little toe in improved high speed stability). These settings worked out pretty good. The fronts could probably use more negative camber and maybe a little toe out to help with initial turn-in on the track. When looking at front tire wear the outside half would wear about 30% more than the inside. Next year I will probably go back to the alignment shop and try increasing front negative camber and see how it effects everything else. If it doesn't look too out of kilter I will just change to the higher setting while at the track. 6) Corner Balance.
Total Weight = 3705 - (me) 222 = 3483 vehicle weight with a 1/2 tank of fuel.
LF = 1044, RF = 981
LR = 868, RR = 812 Cross = 1740, 49.9%
Left = 1745, 50.1%
Rear = 1542, 44.2%
Total = 3483 (without Me) I need to loose some weight :( I should be under 190 @ 6'0". 7) Full 2.5" intercooler piping with Ash Massive intercoolers. Power delivery really woke up when you rev over 5K. I had to adjust my boost controller down 3psi due to decreased pressure loss. Now that's awesome. I didn't get it dyno'd yet this summer but from my previous one at 460rwhp I figured it increased to about 480-490rwhp @ 17psi boost. Now on to the track time results. My reference vehicle AKA faster than me was this:
 It's a 2013 Laguna Seca Edition Mustang.
- 56" wide rear race wing
- Upgraded Front Splitter
- Supercharged
- E85
- Full Slicks
- Brembo Race Brakes
- Full front K member tubular suspension upgrade
- Race coilovers
- Tons of cooling Upgrades During the weekend he was only running about 3-5 psi of boost due to belt slippage/tension issues. But even at that low boost level he is still running about 580-600rwhp. He could do about 700rwhp @ around 8.5 psi if the belt didn't slip. I compared my best lap against his. Overall he was 3.656 seconds faster than me. I consider that to be pretty decent given our differences in vehicle setups. The reference is in Red, I'm Green. Graphs in order from top to bottom.
LatACC in G's (Cornering)
LonACC in G's (Braking/ accelerating)
GPS Speed
Total difference in lap time. Slope up = Me slower, Level line = Me Equal, Slope Down = Me faster than reference lap. Overall he was faster everywhere except in turn 3 where I gained about 0.50 seconds. Some tidbits of data
Top Speed: Z = 115.8, LS = 124.6
Max Corner G's: Z = 1.20 G, LS = 1.26 G
Max Decel G's: Z = -0.93 G, LS = -1.08 G
Max Accel G's: Z = +0.53 G, LS = +0.51 G
Best Lap: Z = 1:23.963, LS = 1:20.305
 Corner Map, Racing Clockwise.
 Keep in mind that Green = straight, Blue = Left turns, Red = Right turns. That is how you cross reference the data in the graph (solid colored bar above the graphs) to the track map. For reference I am 4 seconds faster than last year which is HUGE for a 2.1 mile track. We need more Z's at this event so we can take over :)
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Blackhawk Raceway Data Analysis - 
