This is the Build Thread for Boss Lite - 2011 Mustang GT. Reply below.

So after years and years of hanging out here and learning a ton, I’m finally doing a profile and build thread. Calling my car a “build” is a little optimistic, as I haven’t really done very much. And I don’t tend to take many pictures. But I’ll share some random stuff that I’ve got.

This is the car when I got it, totally stock with 25k miles.

it was my first Mustang and my first rwd car with a stick and real power. It replaced my old Saab Viggen, which I also loved. So the Mustang was a big change for me, very different type of car obviously.

I was just starting to get interested in track driving but the Mustang was always going to be a daily too and it got used as such. So any track mods had to be street friendly.

I went to my first track day, a Track Night event at Palmer in MA, with the car totally stock and it was frankly kind of terrifying. It didn’t help that crazy tstorms were rolling through. Car was swimming around both literally and figuratively. Palmer is a kind of intimidating place to learn, awesome track but not much room for runoffs and lots of granite to hit.

First things first, I got rid of the 245/40/19 worn out all season tires and got some Apex 18x9.5 with 275/40/18 Michelin super sports. Immediately went way faster. Of course.

I did a few events with just the new wheels and tires. I tried some good track pads on the stock GT brakes but that wasn’t nearly good enough. And the suspension was soooo soft. So I swapped in the usual Boss brembo setup together with what vorshlag used to call their Street Pro setup - Bilstein sports with the old Ford P springs and their camber plates. Adjustable PHB to center the axle. I can’t find any pics but you all know what this stuff looks like.

Now I was off and running. I ran the car this way for a very long time. I was giving up some time on track with the relatively small 275 tires. But the car worked very well overall, it wasn’t falling on its face on the track, and was a great platform to learn on. And still totally street friendly.

The rear axle gradually got upgraded as things wore out. I was burning through axle seals so I installed the GT500 caliper brackets and rotors. Replaced the LCAs with maximum Motorsport parts, and eventually wound up removing the entire axle and getting an Eaton trutrac installed. That install was above my pay grade. So brought the axle to a shop.

Along the way I got greedy with really sticky 305’s on track so eventually I picked up another set of LMR SVE wheels and built a little trailer to haul them along behind the car.

I like that 305’s stack up as high as our S197s lol. Compared also to my 235 blizzak snow tires. Love how much tire you can get under our cars.

I was annoyed with the stock slip n slide leather seats. So I bought a used set of 2012 Boss seats from a member here. Awesome. Not a true race seat but huge improvement and perfect for this in between-er type of car that I wanted to keep very stock and streetable. I use these with a schroth 4 point harness and HANS device on track.

I had to swap the passenger sensor pad from stock seat into the Recaro to clear an airbag light. But otherwise these seats paired perfectly with my 2011 airbag system. No codes or lights.

Glass roof mustangs are very cool

Nice write-up. Impressed with the fact that you daily it year-round. I used a Miata as a daily driver year-round for about 10 years before I got my Fiesta ST, including 115-mile round trip commutes. Same as you, just threw slightly narrower snow tires on for winter (I had them mounted on steelies). Us Yankees are practical.

Where did you get your axle work done?

Thanks! I got the Eaton installed at a place called Mitchell Drivetrain in Shrewsbury MA. They are great.

Looking to improve cooling on my stock GT, I installed a Fluidyne radiator and the Ford Boss style oil cooler setup.

Unfortunately the Fluidyne leaked and has been replaced with a stock Boss radiator which so far has held up well.

In what was by far the most frustrating problem to chase down on this car, I finally traced a persistent random misfire to the engine harness having worn through and shorting out. This took me about 2 years to finally find and fix the root cause, in the meantime I replaced all the usual things you would think of - spark plugs, coils, sensors, maf, injectors, fuel pump, etc. It wasn’t all for waste, as the car had about 185,000 miles on it and all these things needed replacement anyway. But the root cause were these three shorted out wires which led to coil packs. Holy cow this was frustrating.

2011 wiring harness is discontinued. 2012 harness works perfectly but requires the updated 2012 VCT solenoids which requires pulling the valve covers. I never had any problems with the old ones that I know of but the newer 2012 design is supposed to be a good upgrade for reliability.

Top side of engine looked pretty nice and clean at 185,000 miles. Just regular 5k oil changes with Mobil 1.

That almost gets me to current day. At 196,000 miles and with a leaking rear main seal, I bit the bullet and decided to get a lift and do the job myself. “While I’m in there,” I did a new clutch and got my transmission refreshed with new synchros and a simple rebuild. Lashbrook did the rebuild and they are great. They sent me back all of the old parts they replaced. Everything looked pretty normal.

I went with a Ram concept 9.5 twin disc clutch and aluminum flywheel. I’m loving the clutch. Nice light pedal, easy pick up point, quiet, you just don’t really notice the clutch which I think is the best praise you can give a clutch. I haven’t had it on track yet. Aluminum flywheel is fun and spinny as expected but it does have a low frequency resonance from 1500-1800 rpm if I lug the engine in gear. I don’t care for that. But I suppose I shouldn’t be lugging the engine at 1500. Everywhere else it’s great.

Clutch and transmission were all original. MT82’s get a bad rap but mine held up well. Of course I’m at stock power and my redline is only 6900. I think that makes a big difference. More boring and slower engine, longer life who knew.

Anyhow this was a fun project and I learned a lot. It wasn’t really too hard with the lift. Now I can mess things up in a bigger way than before!

@stevbd What sizes are the SVE wheels and tires? Great build.

Thanks! The track wheels are 19x11 LMR SVE R357, 50 mm offset with 305/30/19 tires, square setup.

Nice write up for sure. That track hobby can be a slippery slope, the track bug is hard not to comply with. After seeing all your photos, I noticed in 1 that your front dampers are pretty much in the center of the strut hole. Some camber plates might be in order to get it to more of a track alignment. Welcome to the build thread !!

dragoon said:

Nice write up for sure. That track hobby can be a slippery slope, the track bug is hard not to comply with. After seeing all your photos, I noticed in 1 that your front dampers are pretty much in the center of the strut hole. Some camber plates might be in order to get it to more of a track alignment. Welcome to the build thread !!

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Thank you! Good eye. I have vorshlag camber plates. I run them in the upright position on the street (center of the strut hole) and move them to max negative camber on the track. This is a somewhat polarizing approach, not everyone loves it as admittedly it’s not as precise an alignment on track. But it’s worked well for me overall.

Love your Mach 1 btw.

Where exactly on the body was the harness rubbing?