Fortsch Motorsports

Fortsch Motorsports moves to "twos"?

7/12/2016

LONG POST WARNING!!

Where have we been?

It's unfortunate that over the past few years, we've fallen silent. This has been due to a slew of different things but most predominantly it was due to the fact that we no longer have a Race Car. This decision that we reached back in 2014 was an extremely difficult one, but we felt it was in the best favor to release our assets and take a different path for the time being. Being a low budget team, it was extremely hard to keep going and an opportunity to relocate came up, and we felt it was best to pursue that. The lack of update when it happened was mostly because of how quick everything happened. Over the past few years, life has thrown a bunch of bumps and curves that we can not prepare for. In 2014, my Father was diagnosed with Lung Cancer and as a result now has only one and a half lung remaining and is doing his best to get through each day. In late 2014, my Mother was diagnosed with what they thought was Bone Cancer and subsequently, passed on in early 2015.

With everything happening so closely together, I took the time that I could to distract myself from the evident hurt that these bring on you. During this time, I've since discovered my passion for Motorcycles. It's painfully obvious every time I sit down on a bike and start it up, that my love for racing is still as new as it was the day I got my Ministock, if not more. The only issue is, I'm tired of being that guy on the bike who rides like an $#@. I'll be perfectly honest and completely transparent, I'm tired of being stuck on the streets. I want to take it to a track, where I can rip on that throttle in a safe environment. That is exactly what I'm going to try to do!

What do we have?

For the time being, we currently have a 2013 Suzuki GSXR 1000 in our 'garage' how ever, there's an issue with this bike. As far as track concerns go, the bike is too big. It has the straight line speed but the cornering has a lot left to be desired. With that, I'm wanting to move down from a 1000CC to a 600CC bike. I feel like this would be a great idea to learn on since CCs doesn't always equate to performance, weird huh? The difference is that a 600CC, though it's not as fast is lighter and can corner better which is exactly what you want on a track. Now, as far as the bike itself goes, it's currently damaged. The bike had an argument with a fence and ultimately came out half victorious, half not. It essentially obliterated the fairings but left the frame and suspension in tact, minus the left handlebar which is now hanging by the wires.

I won't lie to you, I got this GSXR when I was working near full time at Dollar General so I decided financing was the best idea to get a reliable bike.. Well, shortly after picking the bike up I was cut hours at Dollar General. Went from 40 to 32 hours then down to 12 and ultimately 0. So, I'm looking at returning it to the Dealership and sticking to four wheels as a daily and getting a track specific bike.

What is it going to take?

Dedication. Simply enough, it's going to take dedication and time. Due to the life situation that I'm currently in, funds are low and we're putting all of our efforts to stay a float. This is something that I'm going to keep pushing for and will get done within hopefully three years. I've had the pleasure of communicating with a few companies such as Comet Racing Leathers to get discount Sponsorships, how ever, funding just was not there. As you can see on the left, that was a draft for a custom fitted suit for track days and race events at a great price - but the money just wasn't there. So what I plan to do is to slowly build up on what I need. Buy it one at a time. This is going to tease me and make me want to get on the track even more but you do what you have to do. I still have quite a bit of practice left to be worthy of entering any race competitions, how ever, I will try to get as many track days under my belt once I get situated. I'm going to seek out private parking lots to help with cornering practice and such like that but the biggest thing right now is to get a bike road worthy. I'm unsure if I want to open up sponsorship packages as I have no solid track time as of yet, but as you all know me, I'm very open minded and am under the ideology that "anything can happen" and I could in theory meet that one individual who wants to help fund the team.

In summary, I don't know why I'm posting this - I just wanted to let everyone know I'm as a live as I can be and there is intent with Fortsch Motorsports, we just have to find our time.

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Changes to the schedule

1/27/2014

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The last update that I made was a promise to update you guys on the progress of the Dodge Daytona within the month and unfortunately, I did not hold up to that promise. Now, before you get mad at me it was all within good reason. After taking everything (I mean everything) that has to do with the front suspension off, I took a little break from tinkering with the car and during that break I began negotiating with a fellow racer who lives near Auburndale. This negotiation would help me move to where I want to be in my racing. I have kept it tight lipped just in case the deal did not go through but fortunately it did! Today was the day that I got rid of my Dodge Daytona for a 1984 Ford Mustang with a 1990 Mustang GT body kit on it. I'm in love. It has doubled my spark for racing and I can not wait to get cracking at getting it back to being race ready.

Even though my personal desire is to move up to a bigger and better class, this is the next best step for the budget that I am equipped with. This Mustang is equipped with a 2.3L 4-Cylinder Motor so it is classified as a Ministock but if I am able to recover enough funding I am wanting to turn it into a Modified Mini Stock, which would still be a 4-Cylinder series but will be a little bit more of a race car than a Ministock, due to the rules allowing more tuning and adjustments to the car itself.

With that being said, sponsorship is now officially open for the Mustang and even though my number 56 is special to me, I might open up a donation reward that will allow you to choose the new number (depending on the availability of said number) as well as get their name on the car. I'll leave you with some of the current photos of the car and will update the blog as we get further along on the car.

If you're interested in sponsorship please click here!

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Work continues!

12/13/2013

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Despite my lack of updates, we have not stopped working on the Daytona. I won't be posting pictures in this update as all of the pictures are pretty much the same, it includes looking at the car without the part. I'll instead bunch them together on a slideshow probably in the next update which will more than likely be titled "Progress Pictures". I just felt like I should let you guys know that the K-Frame was pulled out entirely and has been looked at. We've put on a new factory stock A-Arm on the right side and after we get wheelbase measurements we'll work on squaring it up to specs. We're anticipating the new A-Arm to be pushed back a little from the hit it took prior to my ownership but we haven't confirmed it yet.

I'll keep you guys up to date, thanks for reading this blog!

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Off Season Developments begin!

12/6/2013

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Car on track for the final time of the season

Now that the season has came to an end at Citrus County Speedway, you won't be seeing the #56 Dus-T Ministock on track. Instead, you'll be seeing parts of it laying around the Fortsch Motorsports yard. There is a lot of things we have written down that needs to be done, and we've only just started working on it for the off-season, chances are we'll find more as we go along! I'll be using this blog to update you guys on the less important parts of Fortsch Motorsports / my racing career.

Let's start off with what I have to do to the car right now, sha'll we? This list is relatively short but it's extremely important, because without these modifications the car will remain out of contention for a win. We at Fortsch Motorsports are wanting to show exactly what we can do, in the hands of both the driver and the mechanic. Here's what we have to do:

Replace K-Frame
Replace A-Arm
Replace Rack'N'Pinion & Tie Rod Ends
Repair RF (Right Front) shock

Left Front before disassembly

My goal with the changes that we are making is to improve the overall handling of the car. The way it currently is with the Daytona is that the right front is pushed in from previous accidents prior to my owning of the car and also has some minor damage from my driving which happened when I hit the wall. We have fixed all of the mechanical aspects of the damage but one issue remains; The RF (Right Front) is pushed in. It's pushed in enough to make a difference on the setup to where we can't put any camber into it, which I've stated before if you've been following my reports on the iRacing.com Forums. For those of you who haven't, that's basically part of the reason on why the car doesn't turn. Aside from that, the previous owners apparently had clobbered the right front up pretty badly and instead of putting it on a frame machine and repairing it properly, they decided to take it upon themselves to fabricate a stock appearing part, but while doing so they also managed to mess it up. It is in decent enough shape to race and can fly with the right setup but it is not good enough for me. We are wanting to eliminate the fabricated parts and put on dependable, stock parts.

As of right now, I have gotten quite a bit off of the car and I'm just about ready to take off the K-Frame, which basically holds everything that relates to the front suspension. It holds the rack and pinion which connects to the steering and tires, it also has the A-Arm which connects to the knuckle which then connects to the shocks and springs. I'll leave it as that and just post more pictures for you and will post again when I have made more progress. Tomorrow might be a slow development day, but Sunday should be pretty decent.

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Welcome to the Fortsch Motorsports Blog!

12/4/2013

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David Fortsch of Fortsch Motorsports will be updating this blog throughout the year as development continues on the race car and the team. This will act as the general blog so you can get updates as they become available, versus just the important news.

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