S550 Honey Badger GT350 Build Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

[ArizonaBOSS]

Pro Secrets

 

[honeybadger]

I’ll do a full update once I get to RA, but made some updates to the front end and re-ducted the trans and diff coolers.



Now all loaded up and off to americas national park of speed! Got a lot of the zoo with us. Major, Winston and Frank are coming too - so if you’re in the area, stop by and meet the crew!

 

[cholmes1]

My goodness. That trailer is immense. How many cars are you taking to RA? Is the front living quarters? I see the AC unit and awning.

Safe travels. Have a great race weekend

 

[honeybadger]

My goodness. That trailer is immense. How many cars are you taking to RA? Is the front living quarters? I see the AC unit and awning.

Safe travels. Have a great race weekend

Ha. It’s ridiculously long. 50ft end to end. 28ft garage with 14 ft living quarters (including the gooseneck). It’s just about the best way to do this. Cruises 60-85 mph easy peasy with the big truck and you can disconnect to run errands.

 

[JDee]

Ha. It’s ridiculously long. 50ft end to end. 28ft garage with 14 ft living quarters (including the gooseneck). It’s just about the best way to do this. Cruises 60-85 mph easy peasy with the big truck and you can disconnect to run errands.

Just out of curiosity, what mpg does it get loaded? As a young 'un about 40 years ago I spent some time driving tractor trailers. US legal they'd get maybe 3 mpg.
Just wondering how much better diesels are now?

 

[honeybadger]

Just out of curiosity, what mpg does it get loaded? As a young 'un about 40 years ago I spent some time driving tractor trailers. US legal they'd get maybe 3 mpg.
Just wondering how much better diesels are now?

Took this a wee bit ago. Truck pretty much only tows - I’d say 80% of the mileage is hauling this trailer around

Trailer tips the scales roughly 20.5k. Truck has the high output Cummins with 4.11 gears. So hauls great. Mileage is terrible unloaded. Like 12-13. Ha

 

[Fabman]

Took this a wee bit ago. Truck pretty much only tows - I’d say 80% of the mileage is hauling this trailer around

Trailer tips the scales roughly 20.5k. Truck has the high output Cummins with 4.11 gears. So hauls great. Mileage is terrible unloaded. Like 12-13. Ha

View attachment 103795

That's all I get in my ecoboost Tremor....12/13 unloaded and 7/8 towing. 4:11 gears.

 

[Ewheels]

Granted I'm not pulling a 20k lb 100 ft trailer but pulling a Uhaul car hauler, I get 15mpg.
21-22 mpg unloaded. Ecoboost hybrid.

 

[5.2 liters of democracy]

Granted I'm not pulling a 20k lb 100 ft trailer but pulling a Uhaul car hauler, I get 15mpg.
21-22 mpg unloaded. Ecoboost hybrid.

I love that Kevin's trailer gets longer every time. This is my favorite meme.

 

[JAJ]

Nobody seems to have noticed 7,923.9 miles covered in 92 hours, 11 minutes and 3 seconds. 85.96 miles per hour for a whole lot of hours... Must have been driving down in Mexico.

 

[Dave_W]

Is that an original R-Package NA Miata lurking in the background?

 

[honeybadger]

I love that Kevin's trailer gets longer every time. This is my favorite meme.

Dammit tony

Nobody seems to have noticed 7,923.9 miles covered in 92 hours, 11 minutes and 3 seconds. 85.96 miles per hour for a whole lot of hours... Must have been driving down in Mexico.

pretty close. Texas speeds are pretty high. that's all I'll say, tho

Is that an original R-Package NA Miata lurking in the background?

Not an R package, but an original 94! Done quite a few laps in the ol' girl. Fantasic way to learn about momentum. there's pretty much zero way to go fast on street tires, "weekend warrior" coilovers, and about 4 hp. No ABS was a real treat too.

 

[honeybadger]

Shakedown from yesterday. Only 1 trouble free session. Just working through some dumb teething problems like loose fittings and melted clutch lines

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[biggsy]

Hey Kevin,

You might’ve mentioned this at one point but why didn’t you go with paddle shifting ?

 

[jaylarold]

After watching your video yesterday, I'd say you got the sound figured out Sounds like the GT3 car

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Wicked and I think you went the right direction with a sequential gearbox --- just seems like a more involved way to go imho.

 

[Tonymustang302]

I love that Kevin's trailer gets longer every time. This is my favorite meme.

To tow his 986k race car

 

[honeybadger]

Unfortunately it was a weekend of attrition for me. Right off the trailer, I had a gear oil leak from a loose diff cooler fitting. Fought problems like that all Thursday - so only got 1 good session before EOD.

Here's a video of a clean lap

On day 2, the car started cutting out on lap 4 of the first session. At first I thought it was fuel starve since I got a half second fuel pressure warning (you can briefly see on the dash). I chased that for half of day 2 before I confirmed it wasn't causing an issue.

At this point, I gave in and started proper diagnostic with help from Chat GPT reviewing my logs. We (I?) ended up finding that my injector duty cycle was going crazy when it would cut out (jumping from 47.1 to 327!) That indicated it was a signal issue. After diving deep into the RPM signal, I discovered that RPM was jumping more 100 rpm in 10ms - so I had a trigger issue.




I did a trigger scope capture that looked good - so I don't think it was a permanent issue. that's when another test led to me realizing it only happened when the car would vibrate - which was getting worse. Felt like driveshaft - only happened from 104-110 mph. Sure enough - that was it. I checked angles and all were good. By this time, it was afternoon of day 3 and I was spent. I ended up calling it and packing up.

Once home - I got my dial indicators and I found that my driveshaft adapter had 0.15" of run out. well - that would do it. Not sure how I forgot to check that after blowing up a drive shaft, but I did.

So my theory is that the vibration got so bad it caused the crank angle sensor to go bananas and give bad RPM readings - this then caused the ECU to try to adjust to an engine jumping 100+ rpm in milliseconds, which meant it dumped fuel in and it cut out.

 

[honeybadger]

Now - onto the good news. An eager ear will hear how crispy those downshfits were. The auto blip is dialed and it's downshifting in 40ms now. this will be a huge time saver.

Second, I got my brake cooling under control. Dropped my caliper tems from 450 to 390 with the new ducts and hoses. Brakes felt AMAZING. Added over .25g in performance and no inconsistency.

Third - I changed the front springs to 700 lbs/in (previously 550) and the rears to 900 lbs/in (previously 800) and it felt sooooo much better. virtually no roll and grip was still amazing. Car was so much more stable under braking.

looking ahead - I am working on a custom trans adapter to solve some unique-HB challenges. Also going to strip some weight out of it - so stay tuned for some big updates to oil cooling, oil tank location, and fuel cell.


Andddddd - time for some tri y headers

 

[honeybadger]

Hey Kevin,

You might’ve mentioned this at one point but why didn’t you go with paddle shifting ?

Part cost (additional 3-4k investment) and part wanting to keep a bit of the engagement for me right arm. The faster the car gets, the less I care, though. I can feel the time I am losing having to take my hand off the wheel.

After watching your video yesterday, I'd say you got the sound figured out Sounds like the GT3 car

I'm really loving how it sounds!

Wicked and I think you went the right direction with a sequential gearbox --- just seems like a more involved way to go imho.

100% the right move. just prohibitively expensive. I wish we could get them down to 6-8k so they were more affordable