Janine and I had been in Europe for a couple of weeks, Nurburgring and SPA, (details in an upcoming post) and were heading back for a weekend at Road Atlanta. Before we left for Europe I ordered a set of Scott Ahlman's new 4-way adjustable struts for the Tungsten GT. Plan was to arrive from Belgium Wednesday evening, install Thursday and leave for Road Atlanta Friday. In the communications during our trip and after he had shipped the struts, Scott realized that since my car has butterfly doors some installation details may vary (the doors are connected to the top of the front strut mount), Scott decided he wanted to see the installation first hand - so he was driving 12 hrs to lend a hand. Also on the way to us, he would go by Kurt (Topshot) in Detroit, who had also ordered a set and was going with us to Road Atlanta. Where else and with what other car would you have one of it's chief designers show up at your house to help you turn a wrench?
We landed and drove to the designated rendezvous point to meet Scott, the local bar; best thing for jet lag or a long drive. From there we went to our place where we found a nice UPS delivery of Scott's new strut package - Christmas is early. Opening Scott's package was like lifting the lid on your first Apple product, just awesome. Damn those things are pretty. The workmanship of the product is superb, a beautiful addition to the GT. Like jewelry. Scott tried to explain some of the engineering concepts with his 4-way system, he even drew some nice intersecting curves and talked about spring rates, jounce bumpers and stuff. I of course nodded in complete understanding. The only thing I truly understood was that HE actually DOES understand it, as I found out later in the upcoming weekend.
This upgrade for me was not about putting on the latest cool mod or shiny part on my GT. My car has 5700 miles, I bought it with 200 and at least 3000 of that has been on a track somewhere. All agree the stock suspension has definite limitations for sport driving. As fine a job as the development team did with the FGT, they still were constrained by the need to develop a car that anyone could drive and enjoy. Ride comfort is a big thing for car companies and compromises are a part of the process. Tuning any car for track or race environments is a purposeful step and generally leads away from comfort and certain safety needs, so the faster or more aggressive we want our driving to be in this car, suspension tuning is one of the first things to review. I have a good feel for the car on stock suspension and had run into certain barriers in my experience with the car regarding roll and yaw on some tracks. I was in fact one day away from buying a system when I heard of Scott's plans to develop his set up. That was all I needed to hear. Scott has years of race suspension development experience in Indy and Champ cars and of course was the chassis engineer for the Ford GT. I knew this would be a good system.
The installation for the rear set took about 20 mins. Truthfully it's more work taking the tires on and off than it is replacing the strut. No remote reservoir, one nice simple beautiful package. Now if you don't have butterfly doors, the front's would be the same quick install - but of course I do. I love the butterfly doors, love love love. But the gas lift strut that operates the door is anchored at the top of the strut attach via a machined bracket that sits over the shock strut attach point. So to remove the shock strut, you must pull the door bracket and that requires removing the evil fender liner. I hate that thing, hate hate hate. A couple of months ago I had tried to pull one and gave up two days later. But here I was again, no way around it. There is a trick to it and even if you watch someone do it, you'll still not like it. But it does come out and about 20 mins later your new struts are ready to drive. Some pictures below. If you don't have butterfly doors, party on.
Scott had some ideas on the initial settings he thought would be best. First though we test drove the car before the install to get a feel for the car and to settle it to measure existing ride height. My car is lowered about 1" front / 3/4" rear. You can preset the ride height on the strut, but it's important to remeasure after a settling ride to verify. Scott preset the strut height based on my existing set up and what we decided would work for my driving style and desired alignment specs - lowering will effect camber so best to pre-plan. We came out within a 1/16" and the alignment is ideal for what I want. Easy. If you bought these, it would be good to know your existing alignment specs in case you were planning to change your ride height with this installation or if you wanted to vary some alignment. My final set up is actually pretty much factory specs.
All done. We went back out on the road and shook the car around good. I could feel certain very different characteristics in how the car behaved. I gave Scott some feedback and we planned a small tweak. As you can see in the pictures, the adjustments are easy to reach. You can make changes on the ground without removing tires. The fronts require only that you turn the wheel full one way so you can reach around to the strut, the rears are fully accessible under the clamshell. One click makes a big difference so don't go crazy. We were back on the road and the car felt flat and direct. Hugely different, I liked it. But we were just at normal in town traffic speeds. True testing was just a day away. Kurt rolled in so Scott hung around an extra day, I guess to help Kurt drink all my expensive liquor. Which they did.
On Friday, even though he faced a 12 hour drive home and was already a day late leaving Scott was still talking set up and working with Kurt on some adjustments we had learned from my set up. What a guy. He is very dedicated to making sure the system works the way you want it. The driver experience is very important to Scott, I felt like I had a race team behind me. Eventually we said goodbye to Scott and he pulled away behind the silence of his mostly electric car. Seemed odd to have a race engineer come by to set up cars with monstrous horsepower and then leave in a hybrid. If I wasn't in such a hurry to go to the track, I would have written a song about it. But it was time for us to leave too.
Saturday dawned clear blue and 80 deg at Road Atlanta. Steve Davison (Steve57) drove up from Texas to meet us. Awesome to have 3 FGT's together on a fun track and great weather. And Janine would keep us honest in her 911. Scott stayed in touch by wireless. First run was interesting. I had been driving a Lotus Cup and Radical for the past couple of weeks in Europe, so it took a moment to get used to a big heavy car again, but it was really different from before. First blush was the car was very aggressive, flat and extremely responsive. Turn ins were immediate with little perceivable body roll on the nose and the rear of the car felt even quicker. Maybe too quick for me, I'm not a pro driver. I reported to Scott I'd like to tone it down a notch. He gave me a new setting for the rears for the next session. Wow, what a change. The car became an athlete. An absolute athlete. The nose points with the first hint, stable and agile, the rear is compliant with no objection or mind of its own. I felt confident that I was in command of the car, not it or the track. Speeds went up and the times went down. Lap by lap I was falling in love with the car again. It was really amazing. The fronts as precise as it now was, I was really impressed with how this setting provided for such great feel of the rears. The GT deserves supreme respect in the oversteer department and at 700 hp I am always a bit careful coming out of turns with anything but positive camber. But now the car rotated like it had four wheel steering. Session after session the fun continued and the car performed as requested. Kurt will likely report on his experience on his own, so I won't put words in his mouth but I think his experience was similar. He was running a slightly different setting. I wanted to return to the first setting, more aggressive, but honestly I was having so much fun that I couldn't imagine it getting any better. The car could bomb into the braking zone with no hunting on the nose and the rear would follow through in the turn perfectly under any power regardless of how aggressive I was trail braking. It felt sound, solid. Although I know that in time I may move toward more aggression in the set up as I gain experience and more feel for the car, but now it's just pure fun. I think the beautiful thing too is that the Ahlman system is so tunable and Scott understands the car so well that we will end up with settings based on the track and driving desire.
Sunday was a ditto performance with weather, friends and fun. Overall my lap times went down about 10 seconds, some because my driving has improved since I was last here, but mainly because I now feel very confident in with the car's handling. I'm super impressed with the struts and even more so with Scott's dedication to making my driving experience the best possible. Thank you Scott, for your a great product, professional support and for the new car. All I can say is wow!
Front strut
Beautifully appointed
For butterfly doors when you release the gas strut you need to hand your door from something
View of the butterfly door bracket on top of front strut with fender liner out
We landed and drove to the designated rendezvous point to meet Scott, the local bar; best thing for jet lag or a long drive. From there we went to our place where we found a nice UPS delivery of Scott's new strut package - Christmas is early. Opening Scott's package was like lifting the lid on your first Apple product, just awesome. Damn those things are pretty. The workmanship of the product is superb, a beautiful addition to the GT. Like jewelry. Scott tried to explain some of the engineering concepts with his 4-way system, he even drew some nice intersecting curves and talked about spring rates, jounce bumpers and stuff. I of course nodded in complete understanding. The only thing I truly understood was that HE actually DOES understand it, as I found out later in the upcoming weekend.
This upgrade for me was not about putting on the latest cool mod or shiny part on my GT. My car has 5700 miles, I bought it with 200 and at least 3000 of that has been on a track somewhere. All agree the stock suspension has definite limitations for sport driving. As fine a job as the development team did with the FGT, they still were constrained by the need to develop a car that anyone could drive and enjoy. Ride comfort is a big thing for car companies and compromises are a part of the process. Tuning any car for track or race environments is a purposeful step and generally leads away from comfort and certain safety needs, so the faster or more aggressive we want our driving to be in this car, suspension tuning is one of the first things to review. I have a good feel for the car on stock suspension and had run into certain barriers in my experience with the car regarding roll and yaw on some tracks. I was in fact one day away from buying a system when I heard of Scott's plans to develop his set up. That was all I needed to hear. Scott has years of race suspension development experience in Indy and Champ cars and of course was the chassis engineer for the Ford GT. I knew this would be a good system.
The installation for the rear set took about 20 mins. Truthfully it's more work taking the tires on and off than it is replacing the strut. No remote reservoir, one nice simple beautiful package. Now if you don't have butterfly doors, the front's would be the same quick install - but of course I do. I love the butterfly doors, love love love. But the gas lift strut that operates the door is anchored at the top of the strut attach via a machined bracket that sits over the shock strut attach point. So to remove the shock strut, you must pull the door bracket and that requires removing the evil fender liner. I hate that thing, hate hate hate. A couple of months ago I had tried to pull one and gave up two days later. But here I was again, no way around it. There is a trick to it and even if you watch someone do it, you'll still not like it. But it does come out and about 20 mins later your new struts are ready to drive. Some pictures below. If you don't have butterfly doors, party on.
Scott had some ideas on the initial settings he thought would be best. First though we test drove the car before the install to get a feel for the car and to settle it to measure existing ride height. My car is lowered about 1" front / 3/4" rear. You can preset the ride height on the strut, but it's important to remeasure after a settling ride to verify. Scott preset the strut height based on my existing set up and what we decided would work for my driving style and desired alignment specs - lowering will effect camber so best to pre-plan. We came out within a 1/16" and the alignment is ideal for what I want. Easy. If you bought these, it would be good to know your existing alignment specs in case you were planning to change your ride height with this installation or if you wanted to vary some alignment. My final set up is actually pretty much factory specs.
All done. We went back out on the road and shook the car around good. I could feel certain very different characteristics in how the car behaved. I gave Scott some feedback and we planned a small tweak. As you can see in the pictures, the adjustments are easy to reach. You can make changes on the ground without removing tires. The fronts require only that you turn the wheel full one way so you can reach around to the strut, the rears are fully accessible under the clamshell. One click makes a big difference so don't go crazy. We were back on the road and the car felt flat and direct. Hugely different, I liked it. But we were just at normal in town traffic speeds. True testing was just a day away. Kurt rolled in so Scott hung around an extra day, I guess to help Kurt drink all my expensive liquor. Which they did.
On Friday, even though he faced a 12 hour drive home and was already a day late leaving Scott was still talking set up and working with Kurt on some adjustments we had learned from my set up. What a guy. He is very dedicated to making sure the system works the way you want it. The driver experience is very important to Scott, I felt like I had a race team behind me. Eventually we said goodbye to Scott and he pulled away behind the silence of his mostly electric car. Seemed odd to have a race engineer come by to set up cars with monstrous horsepower and then leave in a hybrid. If I wasn't in such a hurry to go to the track, I would have written a song about it. But it was time for us to leave too.
Saturday dawned clear blue and 80 deg at Road Atlanta. Steve Davison (Steve57) drove up from Texas to meet us. Awesome to have 3 FGT's together on a fun track and great weather. And Janine would keep us honest in her 911. Scott stayed in touch by wireless. First run was interesting. I had been driving a Lotus Cup and Radical for the past couple of weeks in Europe, so it took a moment to get used to a big heavy car again, but it was really different from before. First blush was the car was very aggressive, flat and extremely responsive. Turn ins were immediate with little perceivable body roll on the nose and the rear of the car felt even quicker. Maybe too quick for me, I'm not a pro driver. I reported to Scott I'd like to tone it down a notch. He gave me a new setting for the rears for the next session. Wow, what a change. The car became an athlete. An absolute athlete. The nose points with the first hint, stable and agile, the rear is compliant with no objection or mind of its own. I felt confident that I was in command of the car, not it or the track. Speeds went up and the times went down. Lap by lap I was falling in love with the car again. It was really amazing. The fronts as precise as it now was, I was really impressed with how this setting provided for such great feel of the rears. The GT deserves supreme respect in the oversteer department and at 700 hp I am always a bit careful coming out of turns with anything but positive camber. But now the car rotated like it had four wheel steering. Session after session the fun continued and the car performed as requested. Kurt will likely report on his experience on his own, so I won't put words in his mouth but I think his experience was similar. He was running a slightly different setting. I wanted to return to the first setting, more aggressive, but honestly I was having so much fun that I couldn't imagine it getting any better. The car could bomb into the braking zone with no hunting on the nose and the rear would follow through in the turn perfectly under any power regardless of how aggressive I was trail braking. It felt sound, solid. Although I know that in time I may move toward more aggression in the set up as I gain experience and more feel for the car, but now it's just pure fun. I think the beautiful thing too is that the Ahlman system is so tunable and Scott understands the car so well that we will end up with settings based on the track and driving desire.
Sunday was a ditto performance with weather, friends and fun. Overall my lap times went down about 10 seconds, some because my driving has improved since I was last here, but mainly because I now feel very confident in with the car's handling. I'm super impressed with the struts and even more so with Scott's dedication to making my driving experience the best possible. Thank you Scott, for your a great product, professional support and for the new car. All I can say is wow!
Front strut
Beautifully appointed
For butterfly doors when you release the gas strut you need to hand your door from something
View of the butterfly door bracket on top of front strut with fender liner out
