S550 Honey Badger GT350 Build Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

[honeybadger]

Made more progress this weekend.

The chassis is now fully, fully stripped. Only the rear quarter windows remain. Car parts currently spread across two houses, two garages, and a storage unit. Ha



I'm estimating dad and I will have about 100 hours into just the seam welding portion of this project. It's extremely tedious and quite difficult to be consistent as there are so many variables (multiple different thickness of materials, bends that stretch the material, contaminates likes sealer/primer, etc.). But we're getting there. Interior cabin is fully prepped and outside probably about 1/3 prepped. About halfway through welding the inside.

 

[Bouncing Soul]

Body in red.

 

[Bouncing Soul]

(Double tap)

 

[honeybadger]

Made some progress these past couple of days. Interior is now entire seam welded as is the back exterior and driver-side wheel well. We just have the underside (which basically all prepped and ready for welding), the passenger side front wheel well, and the engine bay. Hoping to be mostly finished by the weekend - but will depend on how much time I lose taking the Miata to COTA this Friday.





Unfortunately we had an incident while seam welding the interior part of the wheel well. It turned out there was foam behind the panel we were welding and it caught fire and burned for a bit before we caught as the flames weren't visible (this is cavity between the inside/outside of the wheel well). Result was a fairly substantially damaged exterior paint on the wheel well. Booo.




Looks like I'll be repainting the entire car now - I'm thinking of going gray/white and wrapping in Ruby Red (or something close). But open to ideas.

 

[Vettel-ish]

Insane

Cheapest color if your going to wrap over it. That way more money for track events!

 

[honeybadger]

Insane

Cheapest color if your going to wrap over it. That way more money for track events!

I was leaning towards a simple single-stage paint that I spray on relatively easily so fixing body damage/covering new fab work was easy peasy.

 

[Tractor Junk]

My 350R is Leadfoot and my 302S is white. I can clean the Boss with spray detailer and a towel without ever actually washing the car. The 350R looks like a disaster if not properly cleaned. The white is also very easy to touchup.

 

[honeybadger]

Question for ya'll fabricators and the like. I have these two holes in the firewall from the HVAC system. What's your recommendation on filling this? Cutting out a piece that fits inside and tack welding around and then sand smooth? Or oversize it and weld it over the hole and then seal edges with a sealant?

 

[Scootsmcgreggor]

IMO the answer just depends on how OCD you are. Neither is right or wrong.

 

[Fabman]

Question for ya'll fabricators and the like. I have these two holes in the firewall from the HVAC system. What's your recommendation on filling this? Cutting out a piece that fits inside and tack welding around and then sand smooth? Or oversize it and weld it over the hole and then seal edges with a sealant?

View attachment 77850

View attachment 77851

Over size the patch and weld it. Don’t sand the welds you’ll just weaken them.

 

[honeybadger]

Over size the patch and weld it. Don’t sand the welds you’ll just weaken them.

10-4. Recommend fully welding? Or tacks around the perimeter and then using sealant?

 

[Fabman]

10-4. Recommend fully welding? Or tacks around the perimeter and then using sealant?

Skip welds are fine. Then sealant.

 

[AJ Hartman]

Not sure why I didn't yet but just followed this thread... with email notifications! Lookin good so far man.

 

[honeybadger]

OoooOoh one of my most anticipated parts came in today! I've been a bit sad about how long I am going to be out with this conversion/rebuild, but parts like this just confirm it's going to be worth it. Can't wait.

This is the coyote dry sump kit from Dailey Engineering - approved for CPC use only. This is kit is a pure work of art everywhere you look. Maximum weight savings and performance. Bill and team's attention to detail is bananas.







Integrated runners for the 4 stages - no unwieldly hoses and maximum clearances.


Weight removed everywhere possible


Ultra compact pump with those integrated suction runners




The ATI damper hub is custom machined to put the belt gear behind the balancer and reduce stress on the end of the crank.



Now if only I had an engine to install it on and a chassis to drop it into

 

[ChrisM]

The nice thing is you can put it on display until you've got something to drop it into, dang!

 

[Bouncing Soul]

What nice parts, wow.
I had just resolved to do GT500 pan but that makes it harder!

 

[honeybadger]

The nice thing is you can put it on display until you've got something to drop it into, dang!

I'm thinking of mounting it on my wall for a while. Better than collecting dust in the garage until I can install it! hehe

What nice parts, wow.
I had just resolved to do GT500 pan but that makes it harder!

The GT500 is a really great production-quality piece. Great price to performance ratio. I had zero issues with it outside of the FPC breaking the pickup tube mount. The FP350S pan is a bit better performer, but 2x the cost and pretty mediocre production quality.

This should be a marked upgrade over both - better cooling, rock solid oil pressure, and some free HP from pulling vacuum on the crank case. It is a lot more $$, though. This will run about $7k all in - the stuff pictured above was $5,900 and change

 

[Voodoo Blues]

OoooOoh one of my most anticipated parts came in today! I've been a bit sad about how long I am going to be out with this conversion/rebuild, but parts like this just confirm it's going to be worth it. Can't wait.

This is the coyote dry sump kit from Dailey Engineering - approved for CPC use only. This is kit is a pure work of art everywhere you look. Maximum weight savings and performance. Bill and team's attention to detail is bananas.

View attachment 78388
View attachment 78385View attachment 78386




Integrated runners for the 4 stages - no unwieldly hoses and maximum clearances.
View attachment 78387

Weight removed everywhere possible
View attachment 78380View attachment 78381

Ultra compact pump with those integrated suction runners

View attachment 78383View attachment 78382


The ATI damper hub is custom machined to put the belt gear behind the balancer and reduce stress on the end of the crank.

View attachment 78384View attachment 78379

Now if only I had an engine to install it on and a chassis to drop it into

Thanks for the beautiful pics. Always good documentation from Kevin. This will be a must for the rebuild when the time comes. If only it had a better name than "dry sump." It ain't dry (well I guess it is right now). I can't think of anything but inappropriate or inaccurate descriptors. Gorgeous engineering.

 

[honeybadger]

Finally got back to working on HB after a much need fall break to re-energize, tend to some neglected honey-do's, and catch up with some friends.

Before the cage install, I still needed to remove the rear package tray and the roof. Got started on removing the rear package tray. Had to tackle it in a few steps (step-by-step will be in a video I am currently editing) since there a million spot welds I needed to drill out.

Essentially I cut the main part of the tray out with a cut off wheel so I had easy access to the support structures on each side. Then tackled the spot welds. Still need to clean them up - but got the entire tray out



Almost 20lbs! nice

For the roof, there are a ton of spot welds on the front and back under the window trim. Drill those out and then you're ready to cut the sides. There's no elegant to do this from what I can tell. As you can see from where I pried the front corner up, the sides are rolled and then bonded to the side of the roof structure.




My approach was to cut about 1/4" from the gap between the main roof skin and the roof structure.



I've since done a bit of clean up of that edge with a cut off wheel. I need to finish it up with a sander to get it smooth. I have a detailer belt sander coming on thursday that should make it quick work.



For those interested, the roof is bonded with something like a bronze brazing. Not entirely sure - it's definitely not epoxy-like and it doesn't spark when the cutoff wheel hits it



With both off, we're ready to install the Trackspec cage. Tons of room for activities!



For those interested, roof skin was 9.8lbs. Carbon replacement should come in around 5lbs. So net savings of almost 25lbs. Between this and all the other crap I removed the from interior, we should more than offset of the weight of the cage. Final weights will be interesting.

 

[Vettel-ish]

Glad to see you back at it!

HB will be a sexy beast!