S550 Honey Badger GT350 Build Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

[Scootsmcgreggor]

Looking good Kevin!

How are you tooled to make the longer bends in the rear bulkhead? I have a project coming up where I'd like to make some long bends, but don't have the space or money for a giant press brake.

 

[honeybadger]

Looking good Kevin!

How are you tooled to make the longer bends in the rear bulkhead? I have a project coming up where I'd like to make some long bends, but don't have the space or money for a giant press brake.

Sure thing. I used this as a base for my design

Mines super quick and dirty, but effective. Made out 1/4in thick angle iron


for the hinges, I used 1/2in solid rod inside a thick tube with 1/2ID

 

[Scootsmcgreggor]

Duuude thank you!

 

[honeybadger]

FInal fitment of the rear bulkhead before I took it out to paint. It's drying now and should be ready to go in for the final time tomorrow. Awhhh ya.



Also - got a special delivery today. I have a bit of an ambitious exhaust project to try and squeeze into the next couple weeks and some titanium bullet mufflers are just what the doctor ordered. I'm hoping to lower the tone of the engine note a bit and remove some of that rasp/metallic sound that somes with long tubes and catless midpipes. After I heard the much larger Ti mufflers on @Tonymustang302 's car, I knew they were going to be the ticket. The do wonders for rasp and that metallic sound. While his bigger mufflers also helped tone down the volume a lot - i'm told these won't do much on that front.


I have a bit of an ambitious place for the exits

 

[Vettel-ish]

 

[honeybadger]

Story time!

It was eventful weekend at the badger house. On Thursday, I put at a bat signal on the Link ECU facebook group looking for some help with a base map. I had a couple local race shops I was talking to about tuning the car, but I've been having a ton of trouble getting on their schedule. I was hoping to make COTA in two weeks, so I decided to see what my remote tuning options were.

I was fortunate that a gent named from Australia replied to my post and we started talking. He's a big mustang fan and appears to be quite the tuning wizard. He got started right away building me a base map from scratch (this is a ton more work than tuning an OEM PCM where things like the fuel table, knock parameters, RPM limiters, sensors, etc. are all setup and calibrated). On Saturday we jumped on the phone for about 1.5 hours and began setting up the ECU and working through some tests. We found a couple issues, so we jumped off the phone and I got to work fixing them.

1. Car wasn't building oil pressure - I primed the oiling system a little over a month ago, but it all drained back and it took a bit of spinning the dry sump pulley with a drill to re-prime the system. Okay - easy fix.

2. Trigger 2 wasn't working - the ECU uses the intake cam angle sensor on bank 1 as trigger two. I traced my wires and the wires to the connector itself all checked out. So it must've been the custom leads I soldered on and potted. Okay - easy fix. I had a couple spares and re-did both sides. That was soon fixed. Here's a blurry picture - thanks phone. But trust me - it looks great and came out clean and no OEM connector to fail.



Trig 2 is working (trig 1 is the crank angle sensor and that's the green one, blue is trig 2)


3. My accelerator pedal sensor was acting weird. These sensors have a "main" and a "sub" signal (main is the main, obviously, and sub is for redundancy so that if one wire shorts out, the ECU still gets a signal). Two issues, we only had the sub signal. Main wasn't showing up. Second, it was jumping between 4.74v and 0.24v, so resolution was crap (basically the ECU was seeing no throttle or full throttle). Best I can tell, I have a faulty sensor. New one is ordered.

APS acting weird

youtube.com

With 1 and 2 fixed, we were able to try firing the car on Sunday evening.

Car is ready for startup!


We disabled the throttle pedal and used the software to control the throttle body. I jumped back on a call with Jono and we began finishing up some settings. We then turned the car over....and she didn't fire. Boooo

So we began more troubleshooting - Jono fired each injector and coil pack 1 by 1 to see if we had fuel and spark. We heard each coil and each injector click in the right order - okay so firing order and wiring was correct. Twice we had the car backfire while testing the spark - scared the bajeezus out of us the first time. Legit sounded like a shotgun blast. haha

We started playing around with the trigger offset thinking the ECU just didn't know where TDC was and therefore timing was off. We got a few hits a couple of times, but still wouldn't fire. We signed off and Jono went and talked to Adam, a lead engineer at Link ECU, and he was like "are you using smart coils?" And there we had the answer. I missed that in my planning had been resuing the OEM coils which don't provide enough spark under compression unless they have an igniter. So my options are two either add igniters to the system or swap out the OEM coils for smart coils. I've chosen the later becasue if the igniters fail, I'm screwed. With smart coils, I can just run to the Nissan dealer and pickup a new set since we're going with R35 GTR coils - widely regarded as the best OEM coils in the industry and they're proven up to 2000hp in the GTRs.

So while I'm waiting on parts and needing to modify the harness, I am taking care of a few other things Jono and I talked about.

1. I'm adding a flex fuel sensor after learning about how the ECU uses the data to interpret and adjust the fuel tables. I'm not smart enough to articulate the reasons to others yet (got homework to do), but it offers more than just the ability to run a mix of petrol and E85 -it gives the ECU more data to work with, which is safer, and it simplifes the work it has to do with the fuel tables.

2. I had the same Ford Performance LU47 injectors I've been using all along. I am swapping to ID1050s for more headroom and better performance. Jono shared some feedback about why he prefers them (better spray pattern, they're all calibrated and tested before shipping, consistency pack to pack, etc.) and it seemed like a no brainer. Plus, Injector Dynamics posts more detailed specs, which gives Jono more info to fine-tune in the ECU programming.

So my current status is I am waiting for new parts to come in so I can fix the spark issue and upgrade the injectors. Bummer to have to wait, but making progress regardless.

Oh - and the rear firewall / bulkhead is basically done. Once I get my black rivets, I can remove the clecos and be done and move onto the windows! The firewall is held in with a combo of rivets and 3M sealant. I then painted over the sealant. Came out great, IMHO.