S550 Honey Badger GT350 Build Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

[1 old racer]

Question, you have the side skirt fitting tight around the exhaust exit without any or very little gap. Are you going to trim for heat transfer or install a metal plate around exhaust exit. I really like what you are doing so far.

 

[honeybadger]

Side pipes are insane. If you’re wondering if you should do side pipes, you should do side pipes.

 

[1 old racer]

Love it!!!!

 

[Voodoo Blues]

Beautiful looking work Kevin. Thanks for the sound clip. I’m very inspired.

 

[honeybadger]

Question, you have the side skirt fitting tight around the exhaust exit without any or very little gap. Are you going to trim for heat transfer or install a metal plate around exhaust exit. I really like what you are doing so far.

Sorry for the late reply. Was thrashing to get the car ready for the dyno. I am planning on doing that. I have some 16g stainless sheet I plan to use for a heat shield. Just ran out of time before the dyno. On the bright side, it didn’t melt on the dyno. Ha

Beautiful looking work Kevin. Thanks for the sound clip. I’m very inspired.

Thanks! If I can inspire any bad decisions, I’ll do whatever I can to support

 

[honeybadger]

Okay, lots has happened in the last couple days. I’ve been thrashing and not documenting well - so more story time and less visuals.

So to recap, on Thursday I drove the car for the first time up and down the street. After confirming the drive train worked, I knew we could make our dyno appt today.

We made it to the dyno and I seriously felt like there was a 40-50% chance of things not going well. On my test drive on Thursday, the car was overheating just doing 20 mph down my street. And it makes noises I’m not really calibrated at hear yet (the clutch sounds like a tractor, the gear box sounds like it has rocks when not loaded, etc.) So essentially I had little confidence things would work.

My master Aussie tuner remoted into my laptop at 7am from across the world and my local dyno operator, Josh, began putting the engine through some mild load. Here’s an example of what the first hour or two sounded like

Basically, Josh would target a specific part RPM or part of the fuel table and Jono (the tuner) would make real-time edits to even it out. Not going to lie, she wasn’t super happy under medium throttle In the early day. But Jono is a serious master and a true perfectionist. So he kept at it until he got the fueling perfect. First time we did a ramp pull we made high 400s up to ~6.5k



First pull to 8k and it made made 553 on the first ramp pull with no ignition timing and cam timing adjustments. My previous best with a voodoo was 540 that was with 30 degrees of timing and max effort. Needless to say, I was pretty blown away.



In the end, we landed at 575 whp, 467tq with a bit of cam timing refinements a couple degrees of ignition timing. This is with only 23 degrees, so it’s UBER conservative. There’s easily 600 in this beast with 30 degrees of timing and some lower ambient temps (91 and humid when we were tuning this AM). My favorite part about this line is the relative flat power curve from 7100-8200. This car is always going to be in max power at WOT during shifts. Hell. Yeah.



Here’s a dyno pull up to 8600

Really hard to describe in words how loud this car is. It’s the most violent sounding car I’ve heard outside of F1 or some NHRA stuff. Reminds of trans am stuff. Going to be so rowdy on the race track

I’m going to go to sleep now. According to my watch, I have a 60% sleep debt this week. Time to catch up

 

[Fabman]

Okay, lots has happened in the last couple days. I’ve been thrashing and not documenting well - so more story time and less visuals.

So to recap, on Thursday I drove the car for the first time up and down the street. After confirming the drive train worked, I knew we could make our dyno appt today.

We made it to the dyno and I seriously felt like there was a 40-50% chance of things not going well. On my test drive on Thursday, the car was overheating just doing 20 mph down my street. And it makes noises I’m not really calibrated at hear yet (the clutch sounds like a tractor, the gear box sounds like it has rocks when not loaded, etc.) So essentially I had little confidence things would work.

My master Aussie tuner remoted into my laptop at 7am from across the world and my local dyno operator, Josh, began putting the engine through some mild load. Here’s an example of what the first hour or two sounded like

Basically, Josh would target a specific part RPM or part of the fuel table and Jono (the tuner) would make real-time edits to even it out. Not going to lie, she wasn’t super happy under medium throttle In the early day. But Jono is a serious master and a true perfectionist. So he kept at it until he got the fueling perfect. First time we did a ramp pull we made high 400s up to ~6.5k

View attachment 95654

First pull to 8k and it made made 553 on the first ramp pull with no ignition timing and cam timing adjustments. My previous best with a voodoo was 540 that was with 30 degrees of timing and max effort. Needless to say, I was pretty blown away.

View attachment 95653

In the end, we landed at 575 whp, 467tq with a bit of cam timing refinements a couple degrees of ignition timing. This is with only 23 degrees, so it’s UBER conservative. There’s easily 600 in this beast with 30 degrees of timing and some lower ambient temps (91 and humid when we were tuning this AM). My favorite part about this line is the relative flat power curve from 7100-8200. This car is always going to be in max power at WOT during shifts. Hell. Yeah.

View attachment 95655

Here’s a dyno pull up to 8600

Really hard to describe in words how loud this car is. It’s the most violent sounding car I’ve heard outside of F1 or some NHRA stuff. Reminds of trans am stuff. Going to be so rowdy on the race track

I’m going to go to sleep now. According to my watch, I have a 60% sleep debt this week. Time to catch up

That’s awesome!

 

[Voodoo Blues]

These dyno details are super cool. All the info you share is generous. May I trouble you, after you get some rest, for a couple of engine build details?
It looks like you have kept the stock GT350 intake manifold, is that right?
And you have VCT locked, right? So if you make cam position changes, you do some unbolting, move the degrees desired and retighten bolts? (I'm a bit uneducated about the full design Ford has with the Coyote/Voodoo VCT.)
I know you've gone cross plane crank (so have I) but did you have the stroke increased over stock?
And lastly, for now cause you know this never ends, on your dry sump set up, I'm very curious what height oil tank you were able to fit. The location is roughly passenger side firewall/footwell, right? I'm trying to decide between a 2.5gal that's 24" high x 7.5" total diameter (best recommendation if it'll fit) and a 2.3gal that's 16"h x 8.5" total diameter. I'm not a fabricator like you so will be paying someone. All my tech guys know right now is that I told them I want to place the tank about where the battery used to be, as low as practical. Minimal modifications are the goal but we know to expect the unexpected. I think saving 8" off the tank height is likely to save a lot of trouble. What do you think?
Thanks Kevin!

 

[Voodoo Blues]

Oh, also, is this dyno session running E85 or some other fuel?

 

[GAR944]

As an Australian, the fact you had a tuner from here made me laugh.

"Johno", we puts "O's" onto the end of a lot of things, made me proud to hear that engine sing in that dyno pull.

Love seeing people doing stupidly awesome stuff and this build is the definition that should be used as reference. May it all come together as you envisioned.

 

[Dave_W]

Side pipes are insane. If you’re wondering if you should do side pipes, you should do side pipes.

The best part about side pipes is getting flames to shoot out on decel. Because flames, Flames!!!

 

[honeybadger]

These should help evacuate some air, right?



Just waiting on a delivery from @5.2 liters of democracy to complete the look now!

 

[biggsy]

dumb question but is the hole left after removing the GT350 OEM fender vent really that big or did you do additional shaping of the fender?

 

[Ewheels]

dumb question but is the hole left after removing the GT350 OEM fender vent really that big or did you do additional shaping of the fender?

I was just about to ask the same thing. That opening looks substantially bigger than oem GT350.

 

[302BOB]

I wish I knew about these when I was working...........The loss of my Bosses Hot air might have helped me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[honeybadger]

dumb question but is the hole left after removing the GT350 OEM fender vent really that big or did you do additional shaping of the fender?

Definitely had to add material. It's not bad on the top half, but the bottom half is missing a ton of material compared to what I added. Here are some more in progress photos

 

[biggsy]

Ahh okay. Makes sense.
That’s a honeybadger level project task not a biggsy one lol

I can stop my search for Anderson Composite 350 fenders haha.

 

[honeybadger]

Ahh okay. Makes sense.
That’s a honeybadger level project task not a biggsy one lol

I can stop my search for Anderson Composite 350 fenders haha.

it's not as bad as it looks - just time consuming. I'm hoping to do some CF ones in the future once I learn how to make moulds

 

[honeybadger]

here at Cota for a shakedown. Been a couple weeks of super late nights and not everything got done, but she’s ready enough to try and see if she’ll party!

 

[dragoon]

here at Cota for a shakedown. Been a couple weeks of super late nights and not everything got done, but she’s ready enough to try and see if she’ll party!



View attachment 96058

Keep it within the kurbs there Kevin !!