The wannabe ST

I was just about to finally buy an exhaust for the fiesta. But I got offered this tire changing machine from a friend for only $500. It’s under one year old. My friend upgraded because he wanted to be able to do big off-road setups for trucks but this does up to a 275 tire which is perfect because that’s what I run on my mustang. This investment should pay for itself and make some money in no time

That’s pretty sweet! How do you plan to handle balancing?

There is a local stance shop that charges $5 to balance wheels so I plan to just take freshly mounted tires to them and have them balance it out. Eventually I plan to get my own balancer.

Finally had a chance to fully setup my tire machine. Bought a brand new 29 gallon 200psi compressor. I was using a small 120 psi 7 gallon compressor but it was basically run non stop and the tire machine would lack air while changing tires. With the new giant compressor it works smoothly.

I got to change a couple trailer tires for my dad and uncle. Then I got to throw some fresh cheap all seasons on my stock wheels.
I even got to patch a tire on my friends cayman. I quickly learned lower profile tires are harder to work with. And also stickier tires and harder sidewalls are much more challenging. But good practice.

If anyone ever find yourselves in the Riverside, CA area. I’m more than happy to change anyone’s tires. Just shoot me a message. Ideally on Instagram if possible.

Some late night after work track prep last night.
Gridlife Laguna Seca is this weekend. And just by looking at social media there’s at least 8-10 cars attending.
I swapped my wheels and tires, removed the bottom piece of the rear bumper giving it a bumper cut look, installed a tow strap, flushed the brake fluid with fresh castrol brake fluid, bolt check on the rear, removed wiper blade (maybe 1 pound and 1 minute of work lol)
Rear end should be ready to party.
getting the front end prepped tonight after work.



Now that the rear black piece is removed, I think a tubular rear crash bar and side exit exhaust would clean up the rear end nicely.

First day of gridlife Laguna is in the books.
there are 9 drivers in my class. Currently sitting P3. I’m 9 tenths behind P1 and 4 tenths behind P2.
had an epic sideways moment on the top of the corkscrew.

Is that a (series/sanctioning body's) transponder mounted in the passengers side of your grille?

Yes. It’s the transponder for gridlife. Their transponders are more sensitive than other series and it’s common for them to not get detected if it’s not mounted in a good location. So I mounted it front and center to avoid any risk of that.

Day 2 of gridlife didn’t go the way I expected. 2 more contenders showed up making a total of 11 drivers. And 7 out of 11 drivers pulled out brand new sticker tires for the day. One of the fits even had 6 tires not just a full set of 4.
i unfortunately missed podium by 0.117 of a second.
P1 and P2 are both fully gutted cars with cages. Full suspension and etc. one of them even has an aim dash in the car which seems insanely baller for sundae cup. they are basically built to the limit of the rulebook. Both of them got their weight checked because another driver contested them and one driver was 10 pounds away from minimum weight and the other way 20 pounds away with a full tank of gas.
I’m really off pace from my previous trip to Laguna. I did a 1.52 previously but my best of the weekend so far is a 1.54. These tires do have multiple heat cycles and RT660 do tend to fall off with heat cycles in my experience. I think a mix of heat cycled tires, poor weather conditions, and my group being the first to go after drifting made the conditions not so ideal.
drifting leaves lot of tire debris on the track for anyone who has never experienced it.
imagine a greasy track with debris everywhere.
I get one last session this Sunday morning to set a personal PB but it doesn’t count for podium, so I’m going fresh at 9am and sending it.

3rd day of Laguna Seca with gridlife was a foggy morning of driving. Lots of slipping and sliding. Lots of oversteer catching. I was able to do consistent 1.54s even with kitty litter all over the race line on the hairpin and puddles on the corkscrew.

these are the final results from the weekend. You can see even tho I didn’t qualify for podium sprint. I had the pace to be 2nd. Not bad considering the prep in some of these other cars.
this car started the weekend with 4 track day old RT660 and the pace fall off was noticeable.

I just realized how bad of a job I did showing my track prep and weight reduction I did this weekend.
for the tow straps they are racequip models front and rear. They bolt directly on to the bolts that hold the crash bar. The front did not need any grill modifications to fit. Just had to squeeze the strap into the grill. In the rear I removed the black trim piece. Some sort of cut, trim will be necessary if you plan to keep it. I plan to cut the bumper further to remove more drag and weight.
I bled the brake fluid with fresh castrol srf to avoid any brake fade.
oil changed with good ol Valvoline.
I removed a couple misc. bits to reduce weight.
I threw out some pieces before I got to weigh them.
These pieces are from my SE which is why I do not want to post them on the thread on this forum for ST models. I don’t want to add any potential confusion.
Wiper fluid container comes in at 2.8 pounds. I was actually really shocked by this. I even re did this one 3 times to make sure it wasn’t wrong.

The front wipers come in at 2.7 pounds.

Rear wiper was also removed but it weighs like nothing. It’s probably under a pound. I plan to remove the motor in the future too.


the horns are worth 1.3 pounds. These didn’t work on my car anyways so I should have took these off a long time ago.

the front wiper motor is 3 pounds. I thought this would be heavier, but I guess I was wrong.

then I took off 3 misc. black plastic pieces. One from the rear bumper, two from under the front of the car. Based on the shape and location I don’t think these were really doing anything for aero so I decided against keeping them and enjoying my 1 pounds per piece weight loss lol.

Here’s a few more pics from the weekend.

Went to buttonwillow this weekend for instructing and time trials with nasa. I wasn’t too big of a fan of the layouts they ran. We ran 14ACW and 13ACW. I’m just not a big fan of the additional a section. It just doesn’t flow well.
Besides that, the car was on continental ECFS for the weekend.
on the 14ACW layout I got a 2.17 lap and on 13ACW I got a 2.19 lap. Both days I had cars in TT5 class causing me traffic and they refused to let me by despite countless blue flags. Our head time trial guy told them I visibly had more pace and they had to let me by.
We had a total of 6 cars compete in the class over the weekend. I was able to achieve a 3rd and 2nd place finish.
I was under a second away from first when I got second. And I strongly believe I would’ve took it if it wasn’t for constant traffic on Sunday. The Saturday 3rd place was a fair one.
overall, the car drove to the track. Did its thing and drove home. Can’t complain with that.

also saw this really interesting trailer setup. Don’t even know what this would be called but it was intriguing to say the least.

Don't the competitors/participants, under NASA rules, get penalized in some way if they flat out refuse to obey the flaggers' signals?!?

Yes they got talked to after the first session they did it and every session after that they got their times disqualified. They seemed noticeably upset in the pits and they didn’t even attend the awards ceremony at the end. But in the awards meeting they even re stated that it’s a penalty depending on the severity of it. Some of the upper class cars were going really slow on cool down laps and they said going forward over slowing for cool down laps will also result in penalties.

Good to see that rules are being enforced. I watch English Premier League football every weekend and some of the rules there are continuously being flaunted! They are there for a reason. Ignore them and you get punished!