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Mustang Dark Horse track use options

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In the V6L
So, until this thread, I hadn't really looked at the Dark Horse in terms of the stuff it takes to track it effectively. The remark above by @Stan Whitney where he said "The car has gt350 brakes, and 350 wheel and tire sizes." got me interested enough to look up the specs and see what's what.

The first thing I saw was "Four-wheel power disc brakes with EPB and Electronic Brake Booster [...] standard drift brake". So, like the C8, it's got brake-by-wire technology - no vacuum needed. Sounds interesting - it's been well-received on the C8, so presumably it'll be great here too. The drift brake is another interesting item - it'll definitely make track days a lot more fun.

As to the moving parts, the front brakes are a bit of a mystery, although not in a bad way, just a mysterious way. They're 390x36 mm, compared with the oh-so-close 394x36 GT350 brakes. The mystery is why they backed the rotors down by 4 mm. Makes no sense. Both cars have two-piece rotors, so presumably the Dark Horse will have SHW rotors similar to but slightly smaller than the ones that come with the GT350. Problem is, that piffling 4mm difference means they're not interchangeable! Who thought that was a good idea? The bigger question is the calipers. They're listed as "Brembo six piston 36 mm fixed aluminum calipers", which sound similar to the S550 GT PP calipers. The GT350 calipers have 34/36/38 staggered barrels to reduce pad taper under heavy braking. Apart from that, from an outright brake effectiveness standpoint, there isn't much to choose between them, but by making the parts close to the same but different, things like brake pads that fit and so on could be a pain in the butt. GT350 pads and GT PP pads aren't interchangeable because the pad depths are different - will the DH pads be yet another unique size?

The rear brakes, with an electronic parking brake, are more normal. 355x28 vs the GT350 380x28 (they are big because of the hub mounted parking brake) but otherwise seemingly quite competent. Again, it'll probably require a pad that's not the same as anything that's gone before, given that the rotor and caliper, at least in the Ford world, will be unique to the DH. We can always hope that Ford'll do what they did with the GT350 rear brake - it was a novel form factor for Ford, but it was the same as the Brembo outline that was used on the C7 Corvette - track pads were available right from the start.

As for the wheels and tires - the performance wheels are GT350 sizes and the performance tires are GT350R sizes. I've run the R MPSC2's on my non-R rims and they work great, so regardless what the DH comes with, it'll have lots of tire choices right from the get-go.

Overall, it should be a blast, right out of the box!
 
My closest Ford dealer, Serramonte Ford, just reached out and said I could order from them for only $10k over MSRP. I said no thank you :)
Smart...You can find your car at MSRP if you search........ADM's are legalized extortion in my mind.........when dealers turn into stealers.........I know!!!!...My $5k ADM for my Boss still stings me to this day............But I paid it because I wanted that Boss!!!!!!!!!!!!!...........ADM's are dealers greed knowing your need for speed.............end of story!
 

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