After an intense battle on CorvetteForum.com, Lou Gigliotti brings the strong sauce. He makes a superior product, and stands by it.

LGMotorsports.com

Buying a set of plans can be a little scary because you don’t know what the plans are going to be like, and the final product will be completely up to your own skill level in assembly. Quite a few of these sets have already been sold, and everyone seems happy with them. Aside from the benefit of working from plans being very budget-conscious, it allows you to tweak the final product to your specific needs. Not only do these plans have the templates to cut the large panels, it has a complete parts listing from Home Depot, which makes for a very handy shopping trip.

I gathered all of my materials, cut out the templates, traced the pattern onto the wood (I used cheap, light, 1/4″ OSB), and cut out the two large patterns. The patterns have large arcs on them, which fit the interior just fine. However, with the rigidness of the wood, any little imperfection in your cut can cause fitment issues. I cut just outside the lines, then trimmed the panels down to fit.

After test fitting the panels, I wrapped them in carpet, and screwed them together.

The plans have you letting the carpet wrap around the front of the top panel, but not the rear of the top panel, so that the carpet can run up the hump into the hatch area, under the factory rear carpet. My factory carpet was in horrid shape, so I chose to use a piece of the same carpet I was using for the kit to cover the hatch area, and I had it run from the hatch area down the hump and tuck under the top panel of the rear seat delete.

After a final test fit of the panels, the last thing to do is to fasten the panel down with a piece of metal strapping. If I were to make any complaint about the kit, the photo that shows where to attach this to the chassis isn’t very clear. But if you look at the floor pan of your car, it’s actually pretty obvious where it goes, so use your common sense here.

I first bolted the strapping to the chassis, then bent the front up at a slight angle, so that when the RSD is in place, the front of the strapping is making contact with the underside of the top panel. I lifted up the front of the RSD just enough to squeeze my arm through, and using a pen I traced an outline of the front edge of the strapping onto the top panel. I used this as a reference for where the strapping should be fastened to the underside of the RSD.

I was very happy to discover that once the strap was fastened to the bottom of the RSD, and the unit was slid back into place, the rear edge of the strap was able to slide down over the top of the stud so that I see no need to bolt the kit down. The strap keeps the RSD from moving front to back, while the whole thing is wedged in tight enough between the side panels that it cannot move side to side. And because of the way the RSD fits into the contours of the side panels, it is difficult to get the kit to lift up. However, it’s easy to stick your finger down behind the top panel to pull the strap up and remove the RSD.

As for weight savings, the entire piece weighs 11 pounds. I’d previously removed 86 pounds from the rear seat assembly, sound deadening and tar, so adding the RSD back into the car still results in a net loss of 75 pounds. The OSB I used is pretty flimsy, so I wouldn’t trust it to hold a whole lot of weight. But it’ll be perfect for my use.

Overall, with a shipped price of $20 (at the time of my purchase), I consider these plans a no-brainer. It all depends on what your time is worth, but even at minimum wage I doubt you could create the template and parts listing quick enough to make it worth your hassle. Go ahead and order up a set, you’ll be glad you did. I’m certainly satisfied.

As the Mustang takes another step toward becoming a dedicated autocrosser and loses it’s status as a semi-daily driver, certain niceties are no longer a necessity. A little extra road and engine noise, a little extra heat, and the option of hauling around more than a single passenger become less of an issue. Insulation, sound deadening and the rear seat are sacrificed in an attempt to make this car compete for Biggest Loser. So, what’s it all weigh?

Lower back seat:	11lbs
Lower seat bracket and seat belts:	8.5lbs
Upper back seat assembly and attached carpet:	30lbs
Sound deadening (under carpet and behind rear hatch side panels):	25.5lbs
Tar:	11lbs
TOTAL:	86lbs

86 pounds isn’t too bad for an afternoon’s work. And while I’ve done tar removal before, this time isn’t wasn’t so bad - it all came up pretty easily.

This is a very cool site: AllstateGarage.com

The school was put on by CENLA Region of the SCCA. It was a great way to get some seat time, dust the cob webs off the driving gloves, and shake down any bugs in my car. They set a cap of 36 drivers, which were divided into three groups of 12. Each group of 12 was then divided into six drivers and six course workers, which would swap half way through the heat. The three groups each took turns on three different courses, and then everyone got a short autocross at the end of the day. As far as I’m concerned, I got to run the courses in the most favorable order, from good, to better, and finished with the best.

First up was an acceleration and braking course. A simple straight line where you accelerated as quickly as possible, then broke at the last possible moment to get your car stopped before hitting a cone at the end of the straight. It seems pretty simple, but most people (myself included) seemed to brake too soon the first few runs, and ended up with 30 or 40 feet to the cone. With six cars in the drill, you get to go again almost as soon as you get off the course and are able to make the loop back around through the grid. Making a guess, I’d say I got in at least a dozen runs, probably a few more. This course brought out my car’s first flaw - too much rear brake bias. At first I wasn’t too concerned, thinking I could just adjust it out with a quick twist of the bias knob. Unfortunately, the rear brakes already were tuned to the least amount of rear bias possible. Even having to manage the rear locking with no ABS, I got zero brake fade and modulation was very good.

The second course my group got to run was a slalom. Imagine a very tight oval where one straight was a slalom, and the back straight was the grid. Again, with only six cars running the course at a time, it seemed like you were running again almost as quickly as you could pull through the grid. The course was a little tight as the U-turn leading into the slalom was so tight I couldn’t get enough speed to enter the slalom as quickly as I’d liked to have, meaning I was actually still accelerating through the first couple cones of the slalom. If I’d had a lighter, less nose heavy car, I probably would have been fine. But not with my pig. Here I noticed the lack of turn-in response in the Sumitomos I was running. We got a light sprinkle during the middle of this, which I think actually helped because it put more emphasis on “smooth.”

The third course set up was a short straight with a constant radius loop to the right, then to a decreasing radius turn to the left once you crossed back over the center line. Here the Sumitomos impressed me with the level of grip they had for such an inexpensively priced tire. I was also very impressed with the car’s very neutral handling around the loop, as I was expecting quite a bit of understeer. But then on the decreasing radius that followed, a second problem with my car popped up; it seemed as soon as the rear started to step out, I was getting some massive axle hop. The axle hop was causing the car to lose it’s composure and the whole thing would wash out into a slide until it’d scrubbed off enough speed to regain its grip. This emphasized the reward on smooth driving, because as long as I was smooth and not over aggressive, the rear wouldn’t step out and I wouldn’t get the axle hop.

Then came our little lunch break. What followed was the final event, a short autocross that put everything together. Up to this point, the Ratty Little Mustang ThatCould had been run continuously the whole day. It got driven during my runs (duh), and because I was running with a co-driver, when I was corner working for a course, the car was being driven by him. We autocrossed over 3/4 a tank of gas out of the car between the two of us that afternoon. Other than the brake bias and axle hopping, the car took everything we threw at it. Quite a testament for a $4100 (at this point) underachiever. The short course was around a 30 second course, and my times were right in the middle of the pack.

I’ve got to say that CENLA put on one hell of a well organized event, and gave all of us in attendance plenty of good instruction and seat time. I’ll probably do it next year.

I was on a high all the way home, as well as the rest of the evening in anticipation of Sunday’s event, “The Tortoise and the Hare.” And this event didn’t let us down. Even with 64 drivers, we were still able to get in five runs each. That’s right, five. This shows how well organized and how good these guys are at holding these events.

We got there a little early on Sunday, and decided to try and tune out the axle hop by seeing if we could soften up the rear shocks. While doing this, I made a little discovery. It seems that while very diligent in checking the nuts and bolts under the car and in the engine compartment, I completely skipped over the shock bolts in the hatch area. When I put the shocks in, I apparently only tightened the nut to where the shock body started turning, and never went back with a pair of wrenches and snugged it down. This, obviously, completely cured the axle hop problem. However, with the solving of one riddle, up pops another. When the car was sitting in grid, it started running a bit hot unless someone kept their foot on the gas to the tune of about 2000rpm, at which point the fan would keep the air moving through the radiator quick enough to keep temperatures at bay.

Over the runs, with the exception of a spin, I got a little faster throughout the day and my final run netted a time of 51.562. While good enough to rank 38 out of 64 in the Pax, it only got me a fourth place finish in ESP’s class of five. The good and bad of it all is that first and second in ESP seem to be quite competitive in the region, ranking third and sixth overall with some very respectable times of 45.318 and 46.018. These guys shared the same WRX, and a second WRX took third. Yes, I got beat out by a station wagon.

All runs available here: www.youtube.com/shortlinegarage

Other times of note were a few other Mustangs in SM, who got best times of 47.494, 49.558 (very neat 08 Roush), 51.511 and 52.104. All in all, I am very satisfied with the outcome of this event. I have a few bugs to work out of the car, and I have a lot of improving to do if I want to keep up with Matt and Damon. A lot of improving. On to the next one…

According to the web site, V-Force will be unveiling it’s first custom bike at Daytona Bike Week, February 29, 2008, and Vinnie and Cody will be touring with Rob Hassay’s ProTour for the next 12 months.

I wish these guys the very best of luck in their new endeavor!