The Mustang Forum for Track & Racing Enthusiasts

Taking your Mustang to an open track/HPDE event for the first time? Do you race competitively? This forum is for you! Log in to remove most ads.

  • Welcome to the Ford Mustang forum built for owners of the Mustang GT350, BOSS 302, GT500, and all other S550, S197, SN95, Fox Body and older Mustangs set up for open track days, road racing, and/or autocross. Join our forum, interact with others, share your build, and help us strengthen this community!

5.1L coyote swapped - Further cooling mods for road course

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

So I had a fun shake down day at WSIR on Friday with my 2007 coyote swapped car. a little background on the car which will eventually lead to my question. the chassis is an 07 Shelby GT that had a high mile Vortech supercharged 3V and was pulled June of last year for a coyote swap. I built a naturally aspirated gen2 based 5.1L coyote mated up to a built tr-3650. The engine features 11.5:1 compression with ported heads and locked out custom grind comp cams. on a dynapack hub dyno the car makes 525/391 to the wheels while the rev limiter is capped at 9400. I added a ECT sensor into the water outlet housing on the driver side cylinder head in addition to the CHT sensor on the back of the passenger side head to read temperatures to the ECU.

Getting to the question. At WSIR on Friday ambient temp was around 109 degrees. This was the first real testing day in summer heat to evaluate cooling performance. longer sessions of the day were between 20-25 min. Most of the temp maximums for the day were ok, Trans - 210, diff - 250, oil - 260. for triple digits the car did awesome however coolant temp was very high especially in the hottest part of the day around 232-235. I have following cooling system setup - fluidyne radiator, 190 degree t stat, 13/14 gt500 fan, and shrouding around coolers. My oil cooler is divorced from the cooling system and is oil to air.

What are some other things to try to get coolant temps down? I've done most of the normal cooling system upgrades but am still running hot. My thoughts were to either roll the radiator forward 20 degrees like vorshlag did on their 2010 spec iron coyote swap car and/or get a custom radiator made that's much thicker with dual slim fans. What are your thoughts?

tempImageZq42wG.png

tempImaget5qIzi.png

IMG_2094.JPG
 
Last edited:

JDee

Ancient Racer
1,801
2,005
Exp. Type
W2W Racing
Exp. Level
20+ Years
5 miles from Mosport
Great big center hood vent mounted 2 inches behind the rad.

https://racelouvers.com/ford-mustang/mustang-2005-2009/

Made a tremendous difference in heat on my car. Went from 248 on long straights down to 220. Plus downforce for free dropped lap times by a full second on a 1:35 lap. Also added side vents but they don't do nearly as much as the center vent did.
 

Mad Hatter

Gotta go Faster
5,239
4,228
Santiago, Chile
What size oil cooler do you have?? If the cooler is the one on the upper left... it seems way too small... (or is that for the transmission?) Specially with those really good dyno numbers!!!

Could you show us the dyno sheet?? Would like to see the trade off for the cams at lower rpm. Was that on race gas or E85?
 
the black cooler is for transmission, the large mishimoto cooler is for oil.

the dyno chart shows 2 different dyno sessions. the smaller checkered lines are session 2 when we were playing around with timing changes. the solid lines are final dyno numbers. the power really starts to drop off after 8500 but the limiter is higher for extra gear if I need it. I have my shift lights set up so theyre all lit solid at 8500 when power is gone and they flash at 9200 when the limiter is approaching. the VE tables show only 107% at 7k and drop to low 100s by 9k. I will play with timing further later to try and extend the power band a little further but for now its ok. bottom end is pretty much gone below 5k but you can get to throttle very early and dont have to constantly fight the tires which is very confidence inspiring.

Final numbers were on E70 (still a little pump gas left in the tank when filled) the car has AEM infinity and is true flex fuel.

IMG_1988.jpg
 
Great big center hood vent mounted 2 inches behind the rad.

https://racelouvers.com/ford-mustang/mustang-2005-2009/

Made a tremendous difference in heat on my car. Went from 248 on long straights down to 220. Plus downforce for free dropped lap times by a full second on a 1:35 lap. Also added side vents but they don't do nearly as much as the center vent did.
I wanted to do the center vent but also wanted to keep the shelby GT stripes and hood scoop. I have trackspec vents on the left and right of the scoop, did you try side vents first and then the center?
 

JDee

Ancient Racer
1,801
2,005
Exp. Type
W2W Racing
Exp. Level
20+ Years
5 miles from Mosport
You're turning 9K rpm with a Coyote?
I wanted to do the center vent but also wanted to keep the shelby GT stripes and hood scoop. I have trackspec vents on the left and right of the scoop, did you try side vents first and then the center?

Center vent, then side. Side vents didn't add a lot, if anything. I used the Verus ones because at that time Race Louvers didn't have side vents, they do now. My lap times did not drop nor did engine temps with the side vents. They might help cool down between sessions but I put my hood up anyway so no benefit there.

Race Louvers vents are wind tunnel tested, you will see their vanes are shaped and angled differently as you go front to back. I duplicated the angling of the vanes in the Verus side vents to what the Race Louvers used in the center vent but I don't believe that helped anything either.

Aesthetics and track cars often don't go well together for a lot of reasons, flying track junk a big one. My center vent went in right in the middle of the two big black stripes. I could largely care less what my car looks like other than it has to be clean and straight. But I do care a lot about how well it goes.
But to each his own.;)
 
You're turning 9K rpm with a Coyote?


Center vent, then side. Side vents didn't add a lot, if anything. I used the Verus ones because at that time Race Louvers didn't have side vents, they do now. My lap times did not drop nor did engine temps with the side vents. They might help cool down between sessions but I put my hood up anyway so no benefit there.

Race Louvers vents are wind tunnel tested, you will see their vanes are shaped and angled differently as you go front to back. I duplicated the angling of the vanes in the Verus side vents to what the Race Louvers used in the center vent but I don't believe that helped anything either.

Aesthetics and track cars often don't go well together for a lot of reasons, flying track junk a big one. My center vent went in right in the middle of the two big black stripes. I could largely care less what my car looks like other than it has to be clean and straight. But I do care a lot about how well it goes.
But to each his own.;)
Yes 9400. Built balanced and blueprinted.53EAB0A6-52AE-4349-B11C-3B840C2D2D7F.jpeg
 
1,289
1,113
Exp. Type
HPDE
Exp. Level
5-10 Years
Philly Metro Area
If you have an opportunity to go on the track with no one else or very few on track with you, remove the grill and see if that makes a difference. If it does, try a different grill or just 3/8" or 1/2" steel mesh.
 
Agreed with the others on the hood vents.

Fully box the radiator, I see that you have the top of the radiator boxed up. What about the bottom?

Also just run a fan without shroud. Since it looks like it's just a track car, the fan should just be big enough not to overheat the car in a red flag situation and driving in the pit.
The guys from Racelouvers did some testing on that
 
Agreed with the others on the hood vents.

Fully box the radiator, I see that you have the top of the radiator boxed up. What about the bottom?

Also just run a fan without shroud. Since it looks like it's just a track car, the fan should just be big enough not to overheat the car in a red flag situation and driving in the pit.
The guys from Racelouvers did some testing on that
This is a great article. I will be trying no shroud. I will be also boxing in the coolers better and also planning to roll the radiator. Hoping that all this will greatly improve cooling efficiency.
 

TMO Supporting Vendors

Latest posts

Buy TMO Apparel

Buy TMO Apparel
Top