StanceWorks Video Transcript

Foreign I know what some of you guys are gonna say I should be working on the car not turning Laps on a video game but hear me out I think this is going to be a worthwhile time investment I’ve made a bunch of progress on the Ferrari this

Week I’m going to show you guys what we’ve gotten done but I’m also waiting on a bunch of parts and I figured in that downtime why not be as productive as possible by learning my way around Sydney Motorsport Park so I’ve built a Sim rig we’re going to get some stuff

Done on the car and then we’re going to come in here and we’re going to start turning laps and see how much experience we can get before we land on Australian soil since we put this car together for SEMA we haven’t spent much time talking about the car’s interior it’s without question

One of my favorite Parts because it turned out so well some of you may remember when we made our own carpet for this thing hand templating out each individual piece and laying it down ourselves we made our own center console and shift assembly we made our own kick

Plates even the door panels were taken apart slimmed down simplified and put back together to mimic something more like an F40 the only thing left in this car that’s originally from Ferrari is the dashboard which is why it’s going to be really really painful today because we’ve got to rip it all apart

I mentioned at the end of the last episode that later this week we’re hauling the car up to Sacramento to RS motorsport for a full roll cage build it’s a requirement by the rule book if we want to compete in the world time attack challenge

The amount of space inside of the car is extremely limited and will need to make use of every spare inch and on top of that we also need to connect the roll cage to the floor in legal spots as a result all of that carpet we hand laid has to get pulled up

For those that don’t remember we made this carpet out of a roll of Purl on felt which is what Factory Porsche carpets were made of back in the day and I chose it because of its period correct aesthetic and because it’s lightweight and to keep that weight down we decided

To glue all of the carpet in place in some spaces the carpet is covering sheet metal but in other places it’s covering Ferrari’s nasty fiberglass interior paneling it’s going to create some challenges on how exactly Riley and I want to attach the cage to the floor of this car and

How we can do it safely and on top of that everything now has a coat of glue on it and sand is everywhere if you don’t want to be finding sand in your car for years maybe don’t sand blast parts of it but with the interior out of the way we

Can start installing some more new components the next rule that we have to abide by is that we need a master kill switch something to separate battery power from everything else in the car in the event of a crash we need one inside of the car accessible

To me while I’m buckled in and then one way to activate that switch or a second switch at the base of the a-pillar on the outside of the car I’ve opted for these FIA style switches for multiple reasons one being that it’s nice to be able to remove the key and

Therefore immobilize the car but more importantly these switches have multiple prongs on the back side for both the ignition system and the alternator without them it’s possible to have a feedback loop where the alternator keeps the engine running despite pulling the key and killing the power to it

Inside the car one of the switches will go underneath our key but outside the car where we’re going to focus first I think I’ve got the perfect home for this kill switch we’ve got a hole in the cowl where the original windshield wipers used to sit and given the fact that the

Hood is provisioned for it I think this would be a nice Sleek place to put it as opposed to just sitting proud on top of the fender while someone might argue that this isn’t really the base of the a-pillar the shape and body of the Ferrari means

It has a very atypical shape and I think this still fits within the spirit of the rules and should serve all its safety purposes that and I don’t think anybody expects me to just drill a big hole through the top of my actual fender with the switch installed I’m really

Happy with the outcome it’s nice it’s low profile the touch of red looks good and most importantly it’s not an eyesore clearance to the hood itself is admittedly quite tight but it’s still usable and I don’t think there’s any interference in the event of an emergency

But now we need to run power cable from the battery to the front of the car for both kill switches and then back to the ECU to provide Power I’m feeding our power cables through the hole through which the original shift linkage passed through the perfect way to get power from the

Outside of the body through to the inside without drilling new holes now most of the interior parts that we ripped out will go back into the car but nevertheless I want to make sure everything underneath those panels and under the carpet is as organized as possible now for the electrical nerds out there

We’re going to run both of these kill switches in a series configuration so that if either is disabled the entire car will shut down but with the cables run through the car we can now crimp terminals onto the ends which means getting out one of my favorite cheap tool purchases a

Hydraulic crimper now I’ll admit that a hammer can do the same trick pretty effectively but ever since buying this tool I’ve been left with crimps that have yet to come off and they look professional so I’m quite happy with it after the crimp we can throw in some

Heat shrink and then hook it up to the switch and call the front end done inside the car I want to mock the switch up somewhere under the ignition switch but I’ve got to take care to make sure that it’s not going to interfere with my leg clearance once it’s all said and

Done I’d put it next to the can pad if I didn’t think it’d be tough to reach once I’m belted in but on the note of being belted in I’ve got another set of parts from send cut send and this time it’s new replacement seat mounts the ones we made previously

Were adjustable and offered some forward movement but it wasn’t quite enough for me to adequately reach the pedals so I redrew them moving the seat forward an extra inch and a half and it seems to have done the trick we can get them powder coated later down

The line but for now I want to get them installed on the seat and get the seat back in the car to confirm everything’s going to work and fingers crossed they should because I’ve retained the exact same seat angle and seat offset towards the center of the car

With the seat bolted in then comes the process of actually getting into the car and I’m gonna be honest this is already incredibly difficult to do I’m nervous about what it’s going to be like once there’s a roll cage in the way otherwise everything else feels pretty

Good although I think I’d benefit from bringing the steering wheel even closer to my chest foot clearance though is better than ever and I’m finally able to press the pedals without using the tips of my toes but there is one other problem my feet aren’t on the pedals the pedals are over here

You may have heard that these old Ferraris have a crazy offset between the pedals in the center of the steering column and it’s true and if my legs look angled keep in mind my left one isn’t even on the brake pedal yet that’s only the clutch honestly fitting me inside of this car

Has been one of the biggest challenges of building this thing and I’m not even a big guy I weigh about 170 pounds and I’m about five foot ten inches tall maybe 511 on a good day I don’t have much Headroom in here if I had a helmet on I’ve got you know maybe

An inch tops to the roof we’ve got so little clearance for the roll bar the roll cage all that type of stuff my legs are pointed way off to the side in the seating position which I want to try to rectify by maybe modifying these seat

Mounts or redesigning it again so that I actually sit angled inside the car there’s really not much room for me to move the pedals over because they would start encroaching on the wheel well just in all there’s not much space inside of this thing it makes for a lot of

Challenges but we kind of have to roll with the punches in the last episode I also mentioned that we have a haltec tms4 tire pressure monitoring system to install this wireless system will allow us to see tire pressures and tire temperatures using these four individual sensors to

Make it work all we’ve got to do is mount it and plug it in I’m using the module itself to make a drill template and we’re going to mount it right next to our PDM and ECU by the next episode we should have our backing support plate to mount on the

Other side of the firewall to give this some extra support With the can wiring shortened up everything is nice and tidy and the installed system looks right at home with all of our other haltech modules to install the sensors themselves it’s as easy as it could possibly be we simply remove our valve stem caps and replace them with the sensors

Haltec also offers an internal system but because I plan on changing wheels and tires regularly this seems like a better alternative it would be smart for us to rebalance the wheels and tires with these installed but I’m not too worried about it at the moment once I get the system paired we’ll be

Able to see our temps and pressures on the dashboard with that done we’ve crossed a few things off of the list but we find ourselves in a position where we’re waiting on a lot of other parts we need to mount for our other ignition kill switch I’ve got some parts and pieces

For a fire system install and I’ve got some modifications to make to one of our engine mounts but while we wait for UPS and FedEx to do what they do best or worst let’s turn our attention towards building a Sim rig every racing simulator begins with a

Good frame the so-called Sim rig itself luckily for me some of my track friends happen to build these Sim frames at position advance in Irvine California it was a given that I’d jump at the chance to support some friends and it helps that I happen to think they make a

Good product to boot so I purchased one of their minimalist Nero competition frames and brought it back to the shop as the heart of the simulator itself I landed on symmagic’s Alpha U their top of the line 23 Newton meter wheelbase that should do everything I’m gonna ask of it

Is this overkill for a first simrig yeah it probably is but you guys know me at this point there are no half measures in the stancework shop the position Advance frame supports pretty much every wheelbase on the market but I had to make some small adjustments by adding two holes in order

To bolt the Sim magic to it with the wheelbase mounted and out of the way we can turn our attention to the wheel and hub I went with symmagic’s GT Pro system and to say it’s incredible is an understatement from the aluminum Hardware to the carbon fiber construction to the magnetic shifters

And F1 style clutches this thing feels like a true race car grade part I’ll also be able to bolt any wheel I want to this thing including the wheel out of the Ferrari which I plan on doing later down the line for pedals I went with heusenfeld’s Sprint system primarily because I wanted

A pedal system that would offer realistic braking Force clutch actuation and throttle feedback given the fact that all of this stuff is wildly adjustable I can set it up to mimic the pedal assembly in the Ferrari down to the nth degree moreover I can even offset the pedals to

The right to mimic the pedal position of my own vehicle last but not least I used the same seat and seat mounts as the Ferrari so that the seating position is literally the same it should feel realistic from the feedback the input and the seating

Position and so now we just have to find a home for this thing and I converted a closet at the back of the shop with a footprint of just six by seven feet there’s hardly any space left in this room after setting up the Triple 32 inch monitors but honestly it is a

Perfect fit along with the triple monitors I also installed houstonfeld’s e-brake and simagic’s ds-8x sequential shifter which also has an H pattern within it I also took the opportunity to hang some stuff up on the walls and really make this place my own I’ve got a lot of Automotive art and

These small walls only giving a place to hang maybe a quarter of it but it’s nice to have a place for all this stuff nonetheless given that I’m hopeful that friends will come over to the shop and use the simrig I’m also counting on the fact that they will enjoy what I’ve

Decided to hang up just as much as I do but enough talking about this stuff let’s actually use this Sim Now there’s a lot to discuss when it comes to this simulator and I do want to spend some time talking about the hardware and how I feel about it as a driver but before we get there I want to talk about why I’ve built this simulator

And how I think it will help me as a driver first and foremost by learning my way around Sydney Motorsport Park without booking a plane ticket to Australia I’d be going in blind but now I can be prepared my vehicle of choice for learning my way

Around the track is the rbms e92 M3 it’s not a Ferrari nor is it mid-engine but it drives incredibly well and has a lot of balance the car is well developed enough within a set of Corsa that I can expect it to provide worthwhile feedback as I turn laps around the park

And it didn’t take long before I started to learn quite a bit first and foremost City Motorsport Park has some challenging turns the hardest of which I found to be the transition between turns 16 and turn 17. I went off here again again and again as I tried to

Push to go faster and faster most importantly I learned that if you load the car incorrectly it can send you careening towards a wall as can the transition into turn five and I think we can all agree I don’t want that to happen in the Ferrari in real life

Now some of you might be wondering how realistic is this really and does it actually translate to the real thing and the answer is well it’s reliable it’s not perfect but this is going to keep me from going in without any understanding of what the Dynamics of Sydney

Motorsport Park are like in actuality I won’t be quick when I arrive in Australia but I will be prepared and that’s what counts now for the Curious after about an hour of turning laps in the e92 and in my first ever session on osetto Corsa I

Managed to get my time down to a 141 245. now to be clear there is a ton of time left in this car and I’m still pretty slow but if you want to drive along with me at home that’s where I’m at and I’ll keep you updated

Now let’s talk about the hardware I’ve only got a couple of sessions in on a set of Corsa at this point but I’ve been driving on eye Racing for the last three weeks and I’m about to acquire my b-class license so I’ve got at least a

Bit of time under my belt and I’m happy to say I am blown away by this system the feedback the force and the detail within this magic wheelbase absolutely mimics driving a real car within minutes your brain begins to forget that it’s looking at graphics and perceives it as

The real thing now although this e92 is not a sequential in real life I’ve got the shifter set up as one so I can start building muscle memory for when I’m driving the Ferrari the using felt petals are absolutely incredible the braking Force required to actually bring the car to a stop feels

Like the real thing and to be clear I do know what the real thing it feels like some of you guys have asked in previous episode comments if I have any real world driving experience and the answer is yes I’ve got quite a bit of seat time

In a number of BMW race cars I’m not gonna say that I’m fast but I’m certainly not slow and I am confident and comfortable behind the wheel of a car around a track all of that of course is to say this simulator really does feel like the real

Thing minus a few critical points the way you communicate with a car in a simulator is the same but the way it communicates back is not first and foremost the simulator is Visual and it amplifies what you see with force feedback through the wheel and the pedals

Unlike a real car you can’t feel what the car is doing underneath you with your gut without a bit of caution this could create bad habits as a Sim racing driver Once you turn to the track but if you’re cognizant of it it can tell you how to

Use your eyes better than ever before with any luck I’ll be able to turn something like 10 laps a night from now until September and when paired with the track time I plan on getting in the Ferrari here in Southern California I think I’m going to be well prepped for Sydney

But I know what you’re thinking if we’ve got a simulator and a set of Corsa how do we get the Ferrari into the simulator so that I can drive it too or better yet so that you can drive it well the good news is that our buddy Mike Quinn has

Been hard at work developing a model of the Ferrari that we can import into aceto Corsa so that we can all enjoy it it’ll take some development time to make sure that it drives like the real thing but ultimately I’m hopeful that we can pull it off

Now with all of that said I’ve been having an absolute blast with this simulator and as much as it’s a tool it’s also been really enjoyable to use and if you want to join in on the fun or if you want to race me you should come

Over to the stanceworks Discord and join us there’s a link in the description or you can head to discord.gg stanceworks and join in on the fun whether it’s conversation racing or literally anything else as for what comes next on the Ferrari as said I’m in the middle of prepping to

Head to Sacramento which happens tomorrow I’ve got the windshield removed for the cage install but the bad news is it cracked as it came out which is going to make this a huge challenge to find a new one I’m also part way through a fire system installation which we’re going to touch

Upon in the next episode once I have the car back to the shop so if you haven’t yet you should subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode and I’ll see you next week