fast Ed
Ford lover
Last Sunday I was out at the Mosport development track, helping at a school being hosted by a Toronto area BMW dealer. Students came out with lots of higher-end stuff there, V8 M3s, a new 911 Turbo, and a guy in a Mercedes SLS. A couple of racer buddies are the guys running the event at the track, so they get a bunch of guys like me with a fair amount of track and / or race experience to assist as in-car instructors, same deal as many schools all over.
I've been in the process of getting suspension and brake parts swapped over from the first 95 MTX that I had from last year, that had the engine go soft, over to another green 95 MTX that I found on kijiji earlier this year for $700. I figured it was easier to deal with assorted small issues on the new car, and change over the Konis/Eibachs and Cobra brakes, than to bother trying to repair a 220,000+ km engine. We didn't get the rear struts & springs swapped over before Sunday, so I was running with worn out crap in the back, but good brakes all around and my Dunlop Star Spec rubber. This was going to be my last chance to get the car out on track before I'm running on the Mosport Grand Prix circuit at the end of the month helping out at the annual SVT event, so I said to heck with it, let's give it a go.
The "new" car still needs some more maintenance and minor repairs, but it made it through the day pretty well. The sessions were 20 minutes, so I only went out for about 10-15 minutes at a time to not beat up the car too much. When it gets warm there is an occasional hiccup at 6,000+, we have to investigate what is causing that, not sure if it is fuel or spark. We did new Motorcraft plugs and wires when replacing the rocker gaskets, the spark plugs were drowning in oil.
Anyway, the participants including instructor lapping were divided in to 3 groups of fairly equal numbers, this resulted in some of the faster student cars running at the same time as instructors. A good friend who is a fellow instructor ended up with the Mercedes guy, and related a funny comment to me ... the SLS driver wanted to know "Why am I not catching up to that old green Taurus?"
To be fair, this was early in the day, the guy's first time out on the Mosport DDT track (which is fairly tight), and that is quite a weapon of a car to be learning with. My friend explained to him that I have a fair amount of driving experience, along with "race pads (Hawk HP+)", and "race tires (the Star Specs)" on the Taurus, to soothe the guy's ego. By the end of the day he was doing not too badly in the car (Canadian sticker price, $198K), but I still got a chuckle from the story being related to me in private.
cheers
Ed N.
I've been in the process of getting suspension and brake parts swapped over from the first 95 MTX that I had from last year, that had the engine go soft, over to another green 95 MTX that I found on kijiji earlier this year for $700. I figured it was easier to deal with assorted small issues on the new car, and change over the Konis/Eibachs and Cobra brakes, than to bother trying to repair a 220,000+ km engine. We didn't get the rear struts & springs swapped over before Sunday, so I was running with worn out crap in the back, but good brakes all around and my Dunlop Star Spec rubber. This was going to be my last chance to get the car out on track before I'm running on the Mosport Grand Prix circuit at the end of the month helping out at the annual SVT event, so I said to heck with it, let's give it a go.
The "new" car still needs some more maintenance and minor repairs, but it made it through the day pretty well. The sessions were 20 minutes, so I only went out for about 10-15 minutes at a time to not beat up the car too much. When it gets warm there is an occasional hiccup at 6,000+, we have to investigate what is causing that, not sure if it is fuel or spark. We did new Motorcraft plugs and wires when replacing the rocker gaskets, the spark plugs were drowning in oil.
Anyway, the participants including instructor lapping were divided in to 3 groups of fairly equal numbers, this resulted in some of the faster student cars running at the same time as instructors. A good friend who is a fellow instructor ended up with the Mercedes guy, and related a funny comment to me ... the SLS driver wanted to know "Why am I not catching up to that old green Taurus?"
To be fair, this was early in the day, the guy's first time out on the Mosport DDT track (which is fairly tight), and that is quite a weapon of a car to be learning with. My friend explained to him that I have a fair amount of driving experience, along with "race pads (Hawk HP+)", and "race tires (the Star Specs)" on the Taurus, to soothe the guy's ego. By the end of the day he was doing not too badly in the car (Canadian sticker price, $198K), but I still got a chuckle from the story being related to me in private.
cheers
Ed N.
