Bret Voelkel is the 2012 GoodGuys Autocross Champion - Lateral-g Forums

**george@ridetech** · #1 11-30-2012, 02:05 PM

As an employee at Ridetech it was pretty exciting watching Bret slowly racking up points across the country at the GoodGuys autocross all this year. Bret and a lot of us at work put in a lot of time, like a "family", to ensure a 1st place finish. While it is kind of promotional for our business.... it felt much more like a personal accomplishment for us. Bret worked extra hard for the win, putting in a ton of time, I'm personally happy to see him succeed!

GoodGuys did a good job of summing up the story:
"Ridetech founder Bret Voelkel has won the 2012 Goodguys AutoCross PRO class points title behind the wheel of his wicked '33 Ford hot rod. Voelkel sealed the victory at last weekend's Goodguys 2nd Fall Del Mar Nationals presented by Meguiar's by taking the PRO class event win in the '33 Ford, giving him enough points to take the season-long championship over rival Kyle Tucker of Detroit Speed. Driving a variety of entries throughout the season, Voelkel competed at 11 Goodguys AutoCross events across the country, winning the PRO class 4 times. He also won the year-end Street Rod Class title, making him the first multi-class Goodguys AutoCross Champion." Link to the story online.

Bret wrote an article about the 33 Ford, it concludes what the 33 Ford went through this whole year... Helps to show how much work was put into the car:

"As with any story, there is a "short version" and then the rest of the story.
Here is the short version of how we did with the RideTech 33 Ford this year:

Battle at the Banks – didn't run the car...steering not done
Nashville Goodguys – ran the car with old hard tires, no swaybars, and frontend chatter – finished 4th in Pro class
Midwest Musclecar Challenge – car ran great, then broke camshaft on the 4th lap
Optima Qualifier Texas – ran great, top 5 finish overall
Optima Qualifier Road America – ran great, top 5 finish overall, wore out clutch
Columbus Goodguys – 106 degrees outside, rearend posi problems, more frontend chatter – poor finish...10th overall
Motorstate Challenge – spun car twice, still finished 5th on the road course, but would not run for autocross
Run Through the Hills – broke power steering, coil died, still finished 8th overall
Goodguys Indy – everybody was close...5th overall
Goodguys Texas – got it all together...1st place!
Day at the Strip – tight racing...2nd overall
Optima Vegas event – Autocross – 5th, Road course - 12th, Speed Stop – 1st!, Design Challenge 18th...tied for 3rd overall!
Scottsdale Goodguys – very close racing...3rd overall
Del Mar Goodguys – the 33 worked great on this track...1st by a lot!
OVERALL GOODGUYS PRO CLASS and STREET ROD CLASS 2012 Champion!

And the long story... At RideTech we use "suspension research and development" as a great excuse to build hotrods. A couple of years ago we decided to do something that was a bit more "traditional" looking, something light, something that would show hotrodders that you didn't have to necessarily build a Camaro, Mustang, or Corvette to be cool and go fast.

Enter the RideTech 33 Ford. Starting with a Factory Five chassis and body, the project migrated from a simple "throw it together and go fast" deal, to a full on 3000 hour racecar/street car/fabrication exercise. [sound familiar?] The 33 actually uses a lot of used, fabricated, or otherwise pre-existing components. The 427W engine used to be in my 69 Mustang, and the Rankin clutchless 4 speed transmission was a remnant from the Jasper Engines NASCAR program a few years ago. The Winters quickchange rearend was bought new. The 6 piston 14" rotor Baer Brakes were left over from another project, as was the Holley Dominator EFI system, the MSD distributor and Digital 6A box, as well as the Racepak dash. We then spent from November2011 to May of 2012 fitting the body, fabricating the double paneled insulated sheetmetal interior, building the seats, making the stainless headers and oval exhaust system, fitting the Tilton pedals and IDIDIT tilt steering column, creating a full stainless rollcage, installing a Fuelsafe fuelcell and fire system, and making all the little hinges, handles, brackets, and riveted sheetmetal trim pieces that appear all over the car.

The 33 incorporates some suspension stuff that I had been wanting to try for awhile. The rear suspension is a "wishbone" design...2 bottom links and a single "A" arm on the top to control both lateral and axial rotation. While on paper the rear roll center seems a bit high, in practice the car is stable, predictable and fast. I intend to use this design more often!

The front suspension retains the original FF5 control arm pivot points, but we built new control arms that were just a little prettier, with delrin bushings and replaceable balljoints. The biggest thing we did to the frontend was to change the steering system completely. The car comes with a manual rear steer rack that is, in my opinion, just a bit small to get the job done with a 315mm tire on the racetrack. We installed a Woodward front steer power steering system. Because it was a complete custom installation we had the latitude to work with rack location and steering arm design to reduce the bumpsteer to under .050" through 6" of suspension travel. It is beautiful to drive on the street...or at 150mph on a rough racetrack!

We debuted the car [visually] at the Battle at the Banks event in Salem, In. on May 5th. We didn't run it there because the steering was not completed yet. The first driving event was the Nashville Goodguys autocross in May. With some old, hard tires and no swaybars, the car did well, but we knew there was so much more potential.

By the next week at the Midwest Musclecar Challenge we had swaybars built. We made 4 autocross laps and the car was just getting fast when the distributor gear on the camshaft died.

After that was fixed we took the car on the Hotrod Power Tour and the first Optima Qualifier in Dallas Texas. This was also the debut of the new Falken 615k tires. What a dramatic difference! The 33 ran top 10 in all the segments and nothing broke! Later in June we went to the 2nd Optima qualifier at Road America. We did very well there too but wasted the clutch. Back home to get ready for Columbus Goodguys.

I spent most of the ridiculously hot summer tuning and learning how to drive this thing! It was fast, but not as fast or smooth as I needed it to be. The biggest problems were the explosive acceleration [light car, lots o horsepower, and a really light carbon clutch], a front end chatter that I could not seem to locate, and an obstinate EFI system [or so I thought]. At the Run Through the Hills event in Sept. we resolved 2 of the problems: the EFI problem turnout to be a bad coil...it died, we changed it, and it has ran perfect ever since!

The last problem that we fixed was the very cool but somewhat temperamental 5.5" carbon clutch. We replaced it with a Centerforce DYAD unit. What a dramatic difference! It went from a juvenile delinquent to a refined warrior...and got REAL fast and predictable. NOW I could concentrate on learning how to drive the thing! We went to Texas Goodguys and won. We went to Putnam Park to test on the road course to prepare for the Optima race in Vegas...it was perfect, we changed nothing.

We felt really good about the Optima race in Vegas. The car was good and we were ready. I felt we could run top 10...

The crowds at the SEMA show loved the car! The first event was the autocross...we placed 5th! Next up was the road course...all was going well until the in car camera fell of the windshield and got tangled up in my feet. The race director very graciously allowed me to make another attempt. 1:52...3 seconds quicker than the 48 Hour Camaro last year, and good enough for 12th. On to the speed stop. I knew this was traditionally my weakest event and that the competition from the 1200hp all wheel drive, ABS equipped Nissan GTR [and several other cars] would be nearly insurmountable. Well, I have no idea how, but I won the speed stop! Now we were in good position to do well overall, assuming the design challenge portion went ok.

It must have...we tied for 3rd place overall!

So what's next for the RideTech 33? We're likely going to put some pretty paint on it. Other refinements will be cleaning up bracketry, wiring, building a hood/sides, and changing to air suspension. Now it'll get REAL fast!

We had a LOT of support throughout the year on the 33 Ford. Centerforce built us a great clutch. The Falken Tires are unbeatable, as are the Baer Brakes. Forgeline built us a really cool set of wheels. Holley went out of their way to get this thing to run [even with a bad coil J], Tony Woodward is a steering system genius, and Sunset Racecraft builds one badass Ford engine...and the engineers at Fox Shox made us all look like heros on the track. The triple adjustment capabilities of our new shocks has really proven its worth this year! Greg Schneider, Kurt Blackgrove and Dennis Neihaus at our RideTech shop built a fast reliable, cool looking 33 Ford. It was my privilege to get to drive it every week!"

- Bret

Original story on Ridetech's website