After the twin attack of COVID and the challenges of a new car in 2020, my expectation for 2021 was that it would line out to be the year I’d intended 2020 to be. Annoyingly, it was more of a 2020 redux and so it goes…
Looking back at 2021
The year started off with the non-racing-but-sorta-related trip to the one-day rally class at DirtFish. It was very informative and loads of fun, but was unfortunately also the high-water mark of car-related fun for the season. (No, I won’t be switching to rally racing, but I did seriously look into what’s essentially the dirt/gravel equivalent of Time Attack. I even bought a car that I could convert to task.)
The big off-season change was the new differential, due to the old one grenading itself at Pacific Raceways, which was now using a finned Ford Racing cover to help with the (I assumed) overheating and contained a new, “let’s see if this works better” rear gear ratio of 4.10:1. Conclusion? Definitely did not solve the problem with blowing gear oil all over the trunk, but the new gearing most definitely did help the car jump off the corners. More than one driver came up after a race to comment about how that big ol’ Mustang would launch out of corner exits.
As well as my perpetual challenge figuring out just how much fuel was in the cell, an issue at the first race—not diagnosed until after the season—meant I ran the whole season with an ABS system failure. Unbelievable. (How I managed the lap times I did impresses me almost enough to counteract the stupidity of not investigating the brake issue more deeply than I did… but new car also means new baseline for what’s normal, so there’s that.)
Looking forward to 2022
Because the ABS issue meant I’d ruined a set of new tires, and there was a deal on offer for a set of one-session takeoffs, I bought a “new” set of 315s: the maximum width I could run on my wheels. They just fit in the wheel wells, but that’s when the car sits, so it’ll be interesting to see if that still works once I’m being “dynamic” with the car on track.
Since I had finally found a fault with one of the ABS sensors (due to the wiring melting!), I’m confident to the point about not worrying about it anymore that this particular issue is over. First race will answer the question definitively, though.
Having thought more about the issues with the differential and some experiences I had with the M3 back in the day, I came to the conclusion that I was definitely overheating the gear oil and the associated increase in pressure was what was forcing everything up and out of the breather tube. A diff cooler to go with the finned cover, plus a more robust breather system, and that problem should be solved. Again, though, I’ll have to wait until the first race to confirm.
Since 2020 didn’t let me really start to settle into the car, and 2021 had seen enough problems crop up to slow down my progress in learning its differences from earlier cars, surely 2022 will see me finally get comfortable with it, right? Right?