S197 BOSS 302 Race Car Build Thread Build Thread

[TMSBOSS]

Drew

A short trip through the kitty litter is not the worst thing.

You were smoking the field. Firm up the K member and then hope that mod is not outlawed. Lol
Your old parts have a new home. Fronts were joined with a fresh set of JRIs for the rear yesterday. Alignment is finished. Corner balance next week.

Tracy

 

[JDee]

Great video! Love the hand signal at about the 38 second mark to the yellow Vette! I find myself doing that same thing about 5 times on track days to the straight line bullet fast/slow as hell in the corners crowd. Frustration.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

There has been a lot going on in life lately so I have not had a chance to update this thread. I will probably get around to that this weekend or during the Christmas week.

The good news is that the OEM K replacement w/ reinforcement is done, tested, and highly effective, and the car is VERY fast.

 

[Grant 302]

Yeah, it only took watching a 3 1/2 hour video to hear about your K-member issues.

 

[67GTA]

@ArizonaBOSS, I know you’re running the T56 magnum xl & Exedy hyper single - are you running the OE slave cylinder? Any adjustments or shims needed? I recall reading some discussions on which slave to use with that clutch, but couldn’t come up with it in a search.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

@ArizonaBOSS, I know you’re running the T56 magnum xl & Exedy hyper single - are you running the OE slave cylinder? Any adjustments or shims needed? I recall reading some discussions on which slave to use with that clutch, but couldn’t come up with it in a search.

I am running an OEM GT500 slave cylinder, with a 1" spacer from KohR Motorsports. Works great. I don't know if KohR has that spacer on their website but if you call them (after they get back from Daytona), they should be able to figure one out for you.

 

[jbr3712]

ArizonaBoss..After going through this whole thread I was wondering...any plans down the road to go to a newer architecture..S550 or something else? I realize you recently put some amazing parts on your car with the Cortex SLA and cambered rear axle but I’m curious about a few years down the road? Hopefully the answer is No lol cuz I learned a ton from this thread alone.

Thanks

Jeff

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

ArizonaBoss..After going through this whole thread I was wondering...any plans down the road to go to a newer architecture..S550 or something else? I realize you recently put some amazing parts on your car with the Cortex SLA and cambered rear axle but I’m curious about a few years down the road? Hopefully the answer is No lol cuz I learned a ton from this thread alone.

Thanks

Jeff

Hi Jeff: I don't have any plans to switch race cars anytime soon I'm looking at picking up a "fun" DD option sometime in the beginning/middle of 2021 that might have potential to become a race car at some point down the line but that's way too far off to really consider at this point. My goal will be to continue kicking butt with the BOSS as long as possible

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

OK guys let me start the backlog of updates today...still quite a bit going on in life right now but I'll attempt to remember what was going on last year up through the beginning of this year.



I think when we last left off, I was confirming the stability of the repair and reinforcement of the CorteX SLA with the factory subframe.
@Grant 302 mentioned a 3.5 hour video that touched on some of the points of issues and fixes with my car; you can watch that video (Featuring FIlip from CorteX and Gene Martindale of SVT test-driver fame) here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=864658463948992

What's important to know here is that we are pushing this car to (and beyond) the limit of what was ever intended from the factory components; while the "normal" versions of the aftermarket stuff I run doesn't have these issues, we are making some of the factory stuff work in order to get around some significant classing penalties in NASA for using those aftermarket components (aftermarket K-member, for example).

SO. NOVEMBER 2019:

After getting a fresh factory K-member installed and reinforcing a few of the brackets that came with the CorteX SLA kit (again, doing it this way avoids some significant classing penalties), my next event of 2019 was the "Mondo" event with ProAutosports. This is event is held annually on Thanksgiving weekend and it is one of the events that I look forward to most out of the entire year. Due to some scheduling conflicts in 2018, I hadn't been able to attend with the Mustang and compete with my friends at this track since 2017. The good news is that I hadn't forgotten how to drive, and I had an arsenal of sticker Michelin S9M race slicks to run for the weekend.

On top of that, I was fortunate to have TWO very skilled photographers document my weekend (one a close friend that runs a company P1 Images here in AZ, the other a contract photographer from my sponsor APEX Race Parts), so we got some great shots of the car on and off track.

You can see the full APEX write up (with a whole lot of photos) in their blog post HERE

Also in that blog there is a writeup recap of my weekend; I ran the second fastest lap out of any car the entire weekend, by 0.092 seconds, behind an Audi R8 LMS. So the combination of suspension, tires, and driver(?) were working well (including generating up to 1.6Gs in flat-surface cornering!)!!

Here is the video of that lap (it doesn't look like much but this is hauling the mail at this track). Unfortunately I forgot to correct my brake pressure PID in the AIM software when I updated the dash overlay, so that wasn't present for this weekend.

One other key thing to note about this weekend, that we didn't find out until January, was that the car had been running on around 405 RWHP PEAK since (we think) the fuel cell went in in 2018. When I switched to HP Tuners in January we dynoed the car and it was WAY low as noted above--these were basically AI power levels; down about 60hp from my last dyno. We found a bunch of weird codes/issues with HP Tuners that didn't show when I was doing my normal scans with SCT, and were able to rectify those (again, in January 2020). So this car has been punishing a lot of competitors and winning a lot of ST2 races with SIGNIFICANTLY lower power levels than I thought--really a testament to the suspension product that CorteX puts out, especially when combined with the Michelin slicks.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Next up: December 2019!



After a successful shakedown of the reinforcements for the SLA-on-Factory-K at the Mondo event, the final event of 2019 was right around the corner at my "home" track of Wild Horse Pass East.
Since I would be running the Michelin slicks for the first time at NASA, and didn't have time to dyno or de-tune (lol) between events, I chose to register in ST1 (6.0:1 power to weight) instead of ST2 and just show up and run.
The track record for ST1 was a little "weak", as well, so I was aiming to go out and try to smash that in basically an ST2 car on slicks with no other changes
For reference, the ST1 track record was 59.211 seconds while I've run mid-57s in ST2 trim on R7s with 470whp...

Saturday was going pretty well, I put the car on the overall pole for the race group with a 58.1 second time and managed to crank off a 57.9 during the race which set a new ST1 track record.
Video of that lap here:

I was leading Saturday's race overall and working my way through traffic about halfway through the race, when I happened upon an ST2 car for some reason fighting to get around a Spec Miata.
I was lapping both of these cars for the SECOND time during this race, but it was clear that they were totally focused on each other with some serious Red Mist happening. I tried to get by in one spot on the track but their actions prevented me from safely completing that pass. I decided to wait it out until the straight where it would be very easy to get by these two.

Unfortunately, their battle continued on the straight, and the ST2 car made an aggressive move to his right (but didn't see that I was there on the far edge of the track). In order to prevent from getting the driver's side of the car completely destroyed, I bailed out to the right (into the dirt) and went for a little 80mph off-road ride, which ended up obliterating my splitter and wrecking the front bumper cover. I retired from the race from the overall lead because of this incident :-/

Video of that incident here:

Aftermath photo. It doesn't look so bad from this angle but all the radiator enclosures and the radiator itself were damaged/bent, and the splitter attachment points on the bumper cover were all destroyed.



After the wrap and replacement parts were added up, this was about $2500 worth of damage that needed to be repaired. Thankfully, both of the other drivers in the incident stepped up and covered the repair costs. So at this point I was only inconvenienced by having to do a whole bunch of unplanned work to get the car back together.
So that was the end of my December event weekend (on Saturday). @captdistraction and I left the track to do some Booze Therapy, and I came back the next day to load the car into the trailer and get it home.

Next up...Jan-Feb 2020

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Next up: January 2020!

Loading the car into the trailer before heading to Vegas for NYE2019--tuning appointment January 2!



The beginning of the year is usually pretty busy for me; traditionally I support my partners at Stinger Motorsport with their efforts in the King of the Hammers off-road race at the end of the month, which usually involves me being out of town for 7-10 days. This wouldn't be an issue for most people, but it typically leaves only a few days to get back to AZ from California, and get the car finalized before one of my favorite events of the year: The NASA AZ/So-Cal Crossover at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway over Valentine's weekend.

In order to make that schedule work out, I need to complete all or most of my prep work on the car before leaving for that off-road event. In 2018 this meant scrambling to install the Cambered Axle and full CorteX suspension setup before leaving. In 2019 it was getting the car repaired, upgraded, and wrapped after the COTA crash at the 2018 NASA Championships. For 2020, the scramble was to get all of the bumper/cooling/splitter replacements onto the car before I left Arizona.



While parts for the front end rebuild were on-order, I had a January 2nd appointment with my trusted local tuner Tony Szirka at UMS Tuning in Mesa, AZ. I have known Tony and his team for a long time and for 2020 I wanted to finally work with him to set up both a "max effort" tune that would let me run the car "unlimited" when not at NASA events (or at NASA, but on DOT tires) and also a reduced power tune that would allow me to run the Michelin slicks in ST2 at NASA.

Unfortunately, when we did the "baseline" dyno on the car with no changes, it only put down a measly 405 horses at the wheels. WAY down from the 465-470 I was expecting that I had seen on prior dynos.
This shocked both of us, especially since the car didn't seem to have any running problems (nor had it exhibited any problems or codes via SCT in years). For this tuning session, I ended up switching to HP Tuners due to my partnership with them, and their software was able to find a number of weird issues triggered in the ECU, which we were able to correct. We think a number of these issues were due to the installation of the fuel cell replacing all of the stock fuel tank/sending system--which means that I've been running on ~405 WHP since NASA Nationals at COTA in 2018, and all of the 2019 season. Considering how well the car had performed (race-results wise) in the tail end of 2018 and 2019 with that little power, I was excited to see what the car would do with the power I was SUPPOSED to have



At the end of the day, we were only able to get 445 WHP out of the engine, which just happened to land exactly where I needed it to for a "reduced power" tune to run slicks at NASA. The downside is that this was all the motor would ever have to give, and there was no "max effort" tune to be had. At this point I decided that it would be time to refresh the engine over the coming summer break, provided that it didn't pop in the meantime. The short block has 5 seasons of hard use on it, I'm guessing the rings are getting tired. Overall it was down on power about 10% from what I expected.

I then verified the results on a local Dynojet that the car has been on a number of times, getting 440 WHP peak out of the car at this time (within 1% of the results from they Dynapack dyno).



In the meantime, the replacement Ford OEM parts started rolling in at my parts dealer of choice here in the valley. That meant time to get the 2013 brake ducts re-riveted in, and cut the hole for the front tow hook before shipping the bumper cover off to be re-wrapped.





While the bumper cover was getting re-wrapped, I decided to duplicate a set of the radiator block-off plates that got mangled in my off-track shunt.
Here are the raw forms traced from the remains of the Watson block-off plates:



Wrapping these in some "Carbon Fiber" vinyl I had laying around was faster than waiting for paint to dry on these...so wrap it is!



Mounted up to the car. Ultimately, these required a lot of post-trimming to even fit the bumper cover on, and I ended up just scrapping them altogether after many hours of work since I could not get the bumper seated properly. I will get some better radiator boxing done in the future, but this was an interesting learning experience but ultimately a waste of time. Oh well.



Fresh bumper cover installed!



After that it was time to hit the road to California for the 2020 King of the Hammers! (To be continued)

 

[jbr3712]

Do you still feel the L & M intake cam swap was worth it and it’s just that the motor is just a bit tired. I ask because I was considering doing that cam swap as well.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

@jbr3712 not sure if you had seen this post with the results of the L&M Cam swap but yes absolutely I would recommend them. January 2018...also the last time this car saw the dyno before January 2020! Maybe I should check on it more often!

The results are in and they are (pleasantly) surprising. Roughly 30whp and 20wtq over previous setup, gains in every part of the rev range, no losses anywhere. Won't have a chance to drive it in anger until February but this should be fun Also, my shipment from @cortexracing is on the way, so things are about to get very interesting

Bottom to top (all setups utilizing tuning from AED, 100-octane race fuel, on the same Dynojet dyno at Arizona Dyno Chip in Chandler, AZ):

Blue: Boss engine w/ stock airbox and zip tube, long tube headers, no cats.
Green: Added CJ intake, VMP twin 67mm TB, FRPP CAI.
Red: Added L&M/AED "Intake Only" camshafts (stock exhaust cams retained).

View attachment 17683

We were thinking the cams were only going to be worth ~15hp at the tires with no losses so this was a very nice surprise, and puts me right at the limit for classing (good). CJ cams were another possibility but Shaun maintains that while they will make more power up top, you will lose double your gains in midrange torque.

 

[Fabman]

@jbr3712 not sure if you had seen this post with the results of the L&M Cam swap but yes absolutely I would recommend them. January 2018...also the last time this car saw the dyno before January 2020! Maybe I should check on it more often!

You have the "Intake only" cams right? I have those same cams waiting to go in but nothing to compare them to since I haven't run this motor yet. Any idea how much of a power bump one could expect?

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

You have the "Intake only" cams right? I have those same cams waiting to go in but nothing to compare them to since I haven't run this motor yet. Any idea how much of a power bump one could expect?

Yes, the "intake only" cams, with factory boss exhaust cams (I can't remember if these are the same as GT exhaust cams or which one was which in the Boss.

Dyno graphs for each combination of mods are in my post above that I quoted, click the "expand" then click the "attachment" link.

 

[Fabman]

Yes, the "intake only" cams, with factory boss exhaust cams (I can't remember if these are the same as GT exhaust cams or which one was which in the Boss.

Dyno graphs for each combination of mods are in my post above that I quoted, click the "expand" then click the "attachment" link.

From what I have been told, the Gen 2 Coyote uses the Boss exhaust cams and valve springs. Can't swear to that though.

 

[Fabman]

Yes, the "intake only" cams, with factory boss exhaust cams (I can't remember if these are the same as GT exhaust cams or which one was which in the Boss.

Dyno graphs for each combination of mods are in my post above that I quoted, click the "expand" then click the "attachment" link.

Those are impressive gains, especially the Cobra Jet setup over the BOSS 302 intake.
The cams are way worth doing also.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Alright, on to the "End of January, aka: KING OF THE HAMMERS 2020" Update:



For those of you that have been following this build thread for a while, you may recall that my partner Stinger Motorsport participates each year in the King of the Hammers off-road race; billed to be the toughest one-day off-road race on the planet. In 2018 we showed up and DNF'ed after numerous mechanical issues during the race. In 2019 we finished with an hour or two to spare on the clock for the evening (with less in-race drama, but drama nonetheless, than 2018).

Our "car" is a fully fabricated off-road chassis from Bomberfab, and runs in the "unlimited" class for the race. The race takes place in Johnson Valley, California, and combines high-speed, open-desert running with extreme rock-crawling. The combination of engineering and technology required to do both effectively is quite unique and results in what you see above.



Each year we rent at least one camper trailer from the site RVshare.com (useful--check it out) and drag these from Phoenix out to the California desert. This one sleeps 5-7 people and has its own bathroom/shower, etc.



Aaaaanyways. Once you get out to the middle of nowhere in the desert, the temperatures range typically from about 85-90F during the day down to around 35-40F at night, then add the wind chill. So in between drinks the idea is to stay warm!!





One of our buddies brought along one of Elon's flamethrowers



Wandering Shao-Lin Automotive Monk Bill Caswell was even on-site this year and we ended up getting to meet and drink beers with him at one of the evening parties in our part of the encampment!





One of the main downsides of the location for many of us is the lack of cell phone reception on-site. Those that have Verizon are usually able to get signal but everyone else is screwed. Filip from CorteX drove out to come camp with us and help out with the car, and the lack of reception made things pretty challenging to meet up. But ultimately we found him and the partying continued

Getting some updated lighting/electrical routing figured out:



Truck loaded with supplies for the remote pits on race day:



Our car on the "grid" getting ready to start the race:

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

(Continued from prior post)

Once our car has left the starting line, we can't give them any assistance other than if they stop at a remote pit location--and we had those locations covered with other personnel. So that means 8-14 hours of downtime during the race, watching speeds and GPS positions when we could get cell data, or if we were really lucky, to see our guys on the jumbotrons during some of the live race footage from stationary cameras or helicopters. This year, I had a few friends from Phoenix at the event and they were kind enough to pile a few of us into their Raptors and cart us out to actually watch some of the race on the course!



We ran into a guy selling hats in the crowd, supposedly for benefit of military families. We bought some and doubled-up to prevent sunburn, lol



For us, the race portion of this year was relatively drama-free with respect of the mechanical health of the car, so we were able to 1) FINISH the race and 2) finish about 3 hours earlier than we did in 2019!
We ended up missing the race qualifying and starting around 105th out of 120 cars, but finished 26th or 27th out of barely over 30 cars to even cross the finish line. Another big win for us!



After the race, we stayed on-site with our film crew to get photos and a bunch of videos. Not sure if we will be seeing the videos anytime soon but here are a couple photos of us screwing around.









One of the food vendors on-site this year had this old fire truck with a full brick-oven pizza oven in the back! They were driving around camp giving people rides and beer from an onboard keg, blasting party music. And the pizza was pretty legit, too!



That's all for the King of the Hammers from me for 2020. I'm still getting the dust out of most of my crevices.
Next up, Chuckwalla 2020!

 

[Fabman]

(Continued from prior post)

Once our car has left the starting line, we can't give them any assistance other than if they stop at a remote pit location--and we had those locations covered with other personnel. So that means 8-14 hours of downtime during the race, watching speeds and GPS positions when we could get cell data, or if we were really lucky, to see our guys on the jumbotrons during some of the live race footage from stationary cameras or helicopters. This year, I had a few friends from Phoenix at the event and they were kind enough to pile a few of us into their Raptors and cart us out to actually watch some of the race on the course!

View attachment 17963

We ran into a guy selling hats in the crowd, supposedly for benefit of military families. We bought some and doubled-up to prevent sunburn, lol

View attachment 17964

For us, the race portion of this year was relatively drama-free with respect of the mechanical health of the car, so we were able to 1) FINISH the race and 2) finish about 3 hours earlier than we did in 2019!
We ended up missing the race qualifying and starting around 105th out of 120 cars, but finished 26th or 27th out of barely over 30 cars to even cross the finish line. Another big win for us!

View attachment 17965

After the race, we stayed on-site with our film crew to get photos and a bunch of videos. Not sure if we will be seeing the videos anytime soon but here are a couple photos of us screwing around.

View attachment 17966

View attachment 17967

View attachment 17968

View attachment 17969

One of the food vendors on-site this year had this old fire truck with a full brick-oven pizza oven in the back! They were driving around camp giving people rides and beer from an onboard keg, blasting party music. And the pizza was pretty legit, too!

View attachment 17970

That's all for the King of the Hammers from me for 2020. I'm still getting the dust out of most of my crevices.
Next up, Chuckwalla 2020!

Great post, awesome pictures. I almost feel like i was there.