Ride, Mustang, Ride Jan 3, 2002
We have been wanting to do a V8-powered project car for some time, and the stars and the moon finally got into the correct alignment to send a 1990 Ford Mustang GT into our lives. The car already has a brand-new 5.0 HO crate engine under the hood, fortified with a Ford Motorsport "B-grind" camshaft, shorty headers and some other tricks.
The rest of the Mustang is a little on the tired side, however, making this the perfect starting point for a project car series. The stock, worn-out brakes couldn't even last one lap at our new test site, although the car did post 14-second runs at the drag strip, even with the blown limited-slip, 2.73:1 gears and junk tires doing everything possible to slow us down.
We're still gathering information and putting together a plan, but Baer, Steeda Autosports, Unorthodox Racing and Tokico will be involved.
Steeda Feb 28, 2002
Project Mustang is well on its way to legitimacy after several recent developments. A couple of trips to Body Werkes now has it looking rather respectable in its two-tone pewter splendor, and a trip to Steeda Autosports in Pompano Beach, Florida has done wonders for the chassis.
Two words for you Fox-body Mustang enthusiasts out there: subframe connectors. Of all the pieces that Steeda bolted on, none made a bigger overall difference than the stiffening braces that they place at various points around the body. They transformed the once floppy Mustang into a car that was actually rather rigid feeling and solid.
Which is not to downplay the quality of the suspension pieces that Steeda makes. Indeed, after touring their production facility, it's no secret why Steeda is one of the leaders in the Mustang aftermarket. Their suspension pieces are elegantly simple, strong and light. Steeda's stated goal is not to use super exotic materials or trendy parts just to be cool, rather they prefer to make parts that work and don't require the entire car to be reengineered to use. We were impressed.
Our Mustang also visited the dyno recently for some baseline runs and some minor tweaking. Our baseline runs were performed in third gear, since we didn't feel our junky tires could hold up to 150 mph dyno runs in fourth gear. According to our dyno operator, third gear runs generally read a little lower than runs performed in a 1:1 gear, although they're fine for comparing changes.
Our baseline runs grabbed us just over 200 horsepower and 255 lb.-ft. of torque at the rear wheels. According to our dyno guy, this equates to about 240-245 horsepower and 300-310 lb.-ft. of torque at the flywheel. That's right where we felt our car should be, considering the modifications it has had already.
Unfortunately, minor tweaking such as air filter replacement and timing adjustment showed little change in the dyno curves. This probably means that some other restriction is limiting power. Most likely, that restriction is the balky factory exhaust with its four cats and crappy bends. That will be fixed soon.
Research Project May 31, 2002
Since our visit to Steeda back in January, the Mustang has been mainly a research project while we wait for parts to arrive. Although some shiny new toys in boxes have shown up, we don't quite have all the pieces yet to move to the next phase.
The prettiest of the stuff to arrive has to be Baer's Sport brake kit (http://www.baer.com) for the Fox Mustang. This bolt-on kit is designed to fit inside 16-inch Pony wheels and replaces the pathetic front disc/rear drum (yes, we said "drum") brake setup with a 12-inch front and rear vented disc arrangement complete with aluminum four-piston calipers and a specific master cylinder. Baer claims that the beauty of this system is not only how well it works, but the ease of installation, especially when compared with other brake kits out there.
We opted to go for a five-lug conversion since the wheel choices became much larger at that point. Witness the deal we snagged on eBay: a set of 17x8-inch 1995 Mustang GT wheels with worn out R1s for $215. Eventually we'll have to go to 17x9-inch wheels if we want to have a real shot at being competitive in Street Modified, but for $215, these eight-inchers are a great place to start sorting things out. Now all we have to do is find some tires for them.
More research was done out West when we visited Mac Products(http://www.macperformance.com) in Temecula and Central Coast Mustang (http://www.centralcoastmustang.com) in Tehachapi, Calif. The folks at Mac produce some cool, and exceptionally reasonably priced power enhancers for Mustangs, and their 70mm throttle body and cold air intake bolted right on with no fuss at all. We also acquired one of Mac's Pro Chamber exhaust systems, which they say has all the advantages of an H-pipe and an X-pipe combined. A trip to the dyno should prove interesting with these pieces installed.
Our visit to Central Coast Mustang was eye opening as well. CCM's Dennis Hilliard is a major proponent of the GT40P heads that Ford installed on Explorers and Mountaineers fitted with the 302 V8. When installed on a Mustang, these heads can give an instant 25- to 35-horsepower boost. Best of all, CCM can sell you a set of new (as in "BRAND NEW") GT40P heads, prepped and ready to bolt on, for just over $600. That's an unbelievable bargain for that kind of horsepower, and one that we'll be experiencing personally this summer.
The other major change we've made since the last update is the installation of our Eaton limited-slip and a swap of the stock 2.73:1 rear gear for a set of 3.55:1 gears that we got from Roush Racing (http://www.roushracing.com).
This change really woke up the car, and increased performance notably. Our 40-70mph acceleration times (in third gear) dropped nearly two seconds.
The biggest problem now is getting all the torque to the ground. The Mustang's rear suspension design is horrid. The Steeda pieces do a lot to correct some of the shortcomings of the Fox chassis' inherent design, but we think they may need some help. We're thinking of augmenting the Steeda setup with a torque arm and Panhard rod from Griggs Racing. These pieces should allow us to eliminate the upper control arms that bind whenever the rear axle moves at all and sends wheel rates through the roof.
Rolling (and braking) Jul 9, 2002
Our car now rolls, as installation of the Baer brake kit was a snap. Going to the five-lug brakes required the use of five-lug wheels, requiring 17-inch tires. Once tires arrived, we could get back to work.
We went with the track-proven Goodyear Eagle GS-CS for autocross duty, while on the street we'll ride on 245/40ZR17 Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D2 tires. It has been a while since we have run Goodyear tires on a project car, so we're anxious to try something new. The Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D2 tire is built in Europe for high-speed use, although its tread pattern suggests good wet-weather performance.
During our recent work, we had a small revelation: We're building a clone of the '93 Cobra R, sort of, and the Tri-Bar wheels only reaffirm this fact. The car looks awesome on the late-model wheels. It also rides and handles better.
Look for a nice synopsis on the Mustang in the September issue, while the project should get going in earnest soon after.
Work, Horse Aug 28, 2002
Project Mustang has finally seen some autocross action, so the official process of evaluating and sorting has, at long last, begun. Our first autoX outing, with the Steeda G-Trac pieces and Goodyear GS-CS tires in place was a remarkable success considering the car has not really been tweaked much, if at all, yet. We finished a close third in Street Modified (behind two AWD cars in the rain) and we were faster than E Street Prepared.
Let's first address the subject of Fox Mustang rear suspensions which are notorious for doing extremely odious things in the heat of battle. The problem with the Mustang's rear end, unfortunately, is its inherent design. The rear suspension of the Mustang is a four link. It has two nearly parallel links out near each end of the axle to locate the assembly, then two links that attach from the diff housing to the chassis that are at about an 80ยบ angle to each other. The reason for these non-parallel arms is to control both lateral and front-rear motion of the axle with as few pieces as possible.
In theory, and in limited practice, it works. But problems soon crop up when the car is pressed a little harder. Since the various control arms move in non-parallel arcs to one another, they eventually bind as the arcs begin to conflict. This bind effectively stiffens the suspension and send the wheel rate skyrocketing, resulting in a loss of traction and snap oversteer.
Basically, there is no way to "salve" this problem using the stock suspension geometry.
The Steeda pieces that replace the factory pieces will bind, as well. Any control arms that simply replace the factory arms will also bind, there's just no way around it. What the Steeda pieces do, however, is use specific bushing densities to keep the bind as controlled and linear as possible when it does occur. It's a band-aid, certainly, but if you must run stock-type suspension due to rules/packaging/budget requirements, it's a pretty effective band-aid.
The only way to truly "solve" the bind problem is by running a completely different type of rear suspension alltogether. This means either a Panhard rod/Torque arm setup, or Steeda's five-link setup. The PR/TA setup uses a Panhard rod to control side-to-side motion of the axle, and a torque arm that attaches from the differential to a poin near the transmission to control axle twist and front/rear motion. It's a good solution, but it has it's drawbacks, namely lack of ground clearence, axle hop under braking, and legality issues in certain racing arenas.
The Steeda five link also uses a Panhard rod to control side to side motion, but uses a pair of parallel upper arms to control axle windup and front/rear motion. It doesn't have the ground clearence issues of the torque arm, but the extra hardware on top of the axle necessitates the use of side exit exhaust.
Great volumes have been written by fans of both systems on the internet, but we hope to do an actual test in the near future to uncover the good, bad, and ugly of both of these types of systems.
In the meantime, now that our Mustang handles a lot better, we needed to do something to help keep us in place better than the SN95 spec seats we were using. Some Corbeau Corsa II seats fit the bill, being that they had the holy trinity of light weight, comfort and reasonable price sewn up.
Now we get to start tweaking. We're playing with some different brake compounds on our Baer Sport kit (KFP Blues seem to be a good place to start), and Steeda says that if we use adjustable upper control arms we can get a little more bite out of the rear end by setting the pinion angle more precisely. They also say that their five-link is THE hot setup for the Mustang rear. We're also going out west to visit Griggs Racing and Maximum Motorsports, two heavy hitters in the Mustang performance wars, to see what kind of good they have cooked up for these cars.
Look for the first full installment of Project Mustang in the December issue of GRM