So, I autocrossed the Super Coupe this weekend...

It was interesting.

Lets just say the brakes SUCKED!!!!

I'm reasonably certain the check valve for the booster is shot. The booster doesn't help much when there is 15psi of boost in the manifold just before you stomp the brakes for the first corner. That was a rather rude awakening as I damn near cleaned out all the cones on the outside of the corner. The good news is as the vacuum comes up the brakes start to work properly and since you are STANDING on the binders, the fronts lock up. So much for the ABS system. That light came on in the first run and hasn't gone out yet. It took most of my first two runs to figure out how to modulate the brakes.

The rear shocks are more done than I thought they were. They have no rebound left in them. Touch the brakes, the nose doesn't dive, but the back end sure reaches for the sky. Maybe I should have installed those shocks that came in last week.

The gearing was all wrong for the course layout. First was too short, second was too tall. Two of the corners were 180s with damn near pivot cones. Either the engine was at the red line with the car sideways and back tires howling, or it was climbing out of the hole. The truck transmission doesn't like the 2-1 shift at all. No really, AT ALL. I tried it twice and decided I'd rather drive it home with all 5 gears rather than just the last 4. Give me a wide course with sweepers and I promise you I could put it in the woods...backwards, with a smile on my face.

That brings us to the rest of the suspension. The rear suspension feels vague. There must be a fair amount of flex in the bushings. The front wasn't too bad, turn in was pretty good for a 3600 pound car, but it took the rear awhile to catch up. Until you hit the gas that is. Then you better have a good grip on the wheel. When it does catch up, it does so rather abruptly and sideways. It also has some wheel hop in the rear when the traction runs out. I vision the wheels moving inches front to rear. The wife and daughter don't push as hard as I do, so I couldn't ever see exactly what it was doing.

It's going to take some sorting to say the least. I love the engine, I'm ambivalent about the transmission, and the suspension needs help to say the least.

All in all I had an absolute BLAST. The course was a little painful for a large heavy car, but still fun.

Best of all I ended up within 4 seconds of a box stock BRZ driven by someone who has been autocrossing for longer than I have. I'm happy.

Back in the day I knew a guy that ran one in FS. He was actually pretty competitive, but it took him a while to figure out what the car wanted and how to drive it.

Awesome, I love the SCs!

You have the fix for all that right in the ol' back yard. Yank, plunk, run wiring...

In reply to bravenrace:

It's definitely going to be a learning curve. I'm used to autocrossing 1700 pounds of rotary fury on R-comps, not 3600 pounds of supercharged goodness on street tires.

This is going to be primarily the hot weather car. I hate running in July and August in the Abomination. I'm fairly sure it's like sitting in an oven set to bake at 350.

Hmm that car weighs as much as mine plus the usually-winning Swift GTI combined Still a lightweight compared to a P71 though

Curmudgeon wrote: You have the fix for all that right in the ol' back yard. Yank, plunk, run wiring...

Tempting, very tempting. The only problem is I'm lazy.

I forget what year you have, but if it's an 89, it's got a 1.20" front sway bar, so that's not bad. Springs and shocks will help. Obviously, replacing anything that's worn out will help too, but eliminating wheelhop is difficult in these cars.

As for brakes...the 89-93 ABS system is problematic. If it's shot, you're probably better off eliminating it altogether. This swap is documented at SCCoA. If you find some 93+ spindles, 94-04 Mustang GT calipers are a bolt-on, and have a much better pad selection. The stock rear calipers are the same as the Fox body Mustang, so there's a decent pad selection there.

Don't shift to first. That's what the torque is for.

i'd do one of 2 things for the brakes- either get a hydraboost or just go manual. there is a reason the engineers at Buick didn't use a vacuum brake booster on the turbocharged Regals in the 80's- and you pretty much found it out at the first corner.

does anyone make stiffer bushings for those cars?

novaderrik wrote: i'd do one of 2 things for the brakes- either get a hydraboost or just go manual. there is a reason the engineers at Buick didn't use a vacuum brake booster on the turbocharged Regals in the 80's- and you pretty much found it out at the first corner. does anyone make stiffer bushings for those cars?

How about some kind of vaccume pump?

neon4891 wrote:

novaderrik wrote: i'd do one of 2 things for the brakes- either get a hydraboost or just go manual. there is a reason the engineers at Buick didn't use a vacuum brake booster on the turbocharged Regals in the 80's- and you pretty much found it out at the first corner. does anyone make stiffer bushings for those cars?

How about some kind of vaccume pump?

That's what I was thinking, it's a much easier fix than hydraboost and you won't have to operate unpowered brakes.

Will wrote: As for brakes...the 89-93 ABS system is problematic. If it's shot, you're probably better off eliminating it altogether. This swap is documented at SCCoA. If you find some 93+ spindles, 94-04 Mustang GT calipers are a bolt-on, and have a much better pad selection. The stock rear calipers are the same as the Fox body Mustang, so there's a decent pad selection there.

I've tried finding the swap info and keep pulling up threads on why swapping out the ABS will never work right. Do you have a link to the tech for this?

Autocrossing land yachts is fun.

psychic_mechanic wrote:

Will wrote: As for brakes...the 89-93 ABS system is problematic. If it's shot, you're probably better off eliminating it altogether. This swap is documented at SCCoA. If you find some 93+ spindles, 94-04 Mustang GT calipers are a bolt-on, and have a much better pad selection. The stock rear calipers are the same as the Fox body Mustang, so there's a decent pad selection there.

I've tried finding the swap info and keep pulling up threads on why swapping out the ABS will never work right. Do you have a link to the tech for this?

ABS delete

You should be able to find the info you need in that thread. The ABS system has its own computer, so I don't know why you couldn't just eliminate the ABS system (which is horrible on those cars) and replace it with non-ABS stuff. At that point, it's just hydraulics.

I did some digging into the brake system on the SC this afternoon. I found out something fairly important. The ABS system is gone. Completely. It looks like someone removed this:

And replaced it with what looks to be the master cylinder and booster off a standard non-SC T-bird. It probably wouldn't be a problem except the non SC T-bird uses a four port master cylinder with diagonal paring. The LF and RR on one circuit and the RF and LR on the other circuit. The SC uses a three port master cylinder with conventional pairing. The front on one circuit and the rear on the other, with one line feeding the rears. As set up now, the rears are tied into one rear port, the fronts are tied into the two front ports, and the other rear port is plugged. I'm betting the fronts are doing all the braking because the rears aren't getting enough fluid to make the pads do more than touch the rotors.

A little more reading turned up the fact that the master cylinder for a '93 Crown Vic will bolt in with minimal trouble and work properly since it has a front/rear pairing just like the SC. It also has the same bore and stroke as the SC master and three ports rather than four.

More of the crappy work done by the PO.

I guess I know what I'm doing to it next.

That looks like the crazy ABS system my Turbo Coupe had. I'm guessing it does something to help everything work properly under boost and when they replaced it with a system from a non-boosted vehicle, that's where the problems presented themselves. Very interesting...

Will wrote:

psychic_mechanic wrote:

Will wrote: As for brakes...the 89-93 ABS system is problematic. If it's shot, you're probably better off eliminating it altogether. This swap is documented at SCCoA. If you find some 93+ spindles, 94-04 Mustang GT calipers are a bolt-on, and have a much better pad selection. The stock rear calipers are the same as the Fox body Mustang, so there's a decent pad selection there.

I've tried finding the swap info and keep pulling up threads on why swapping out the ABS will never work right. Do you have a link to the tech for this?

ABS delete You should be able to find the info you need in that thread. The ABS system has its own computer, so I don't know why you couldn't just eliminate the ABS system (which is horrible on those cars) and replace it with non-ABS stuff. At that point, it's just hydraulics.

Thanks, I read the 30+ pages and now have a complete shopping list.

That's awesome, dude. In the late 1990's, my BIL auto-crossed his SC. He loved that car and was always working on it to get the suspension right for the courses.

That ABS system was used on some GM stuff, too. They were bad about the 'toilet ball' (accumulator) going bad.

EDIT: You need to change your screen name to Ahab.

I autocrossed my SC seriously for a year (including two national tours) before I blew the engine. The car got 3 regional FTDs in the space of four events at one point--it was a hoot. That build made 446 lb-ft of torque at the wheels, so there was no point on the course too slow for second gear. But ultimately, I killed the 3.8 with a combination of oil starvation and detonation. I still have the car, but I retired it from autocrossing.

But before I ran that car, I ran my 94 LX. It was the only car I had at the time, and I had a ton of fun with the automatic and anemic 4.6L. Probably the most fun I had with it was at the Huntsville tour in 07 (I think). I was in SM, and I was in the middle of the run order. I made my first run, and the announcer called something like "And Will crosses the line, taking the lead in SM...in a THUNDERBIRD?! I lost the lead about 8 seconds later when the next SM car crossed the line, and I never came close to getting it back, but the surprise in the announcer's voice was priceless.