S550 My babying track car Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

[Prashant J]

This is the Build Thread for My babying track car. Reply below.

 

[JDee]

This is the Build Thread for My babying track car. Reply below.

You're on the right plan with putting it on weight loss. Best bang for the buck there is.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Rule of thumb is every 100 lbs lost is worth a second on a two mile road course!

 

[Prashant J]

Rule of thumb is every 100 lbs lost is worth a second on a two mile road course!

100%. Especially important for me in that most of my driving will likely be at Waterford Hills (my local track) which is rather optimized for smaller momentum-based cars... so basically Spec Miata. Only chance at setting good lap times will be to work towards making the car agile and planted in low- to mid-speed corners.

That being said, it's probably pretty obvious too that most of what I've done to the car and my future plans are oriented around building feel and confidence more than anything else. As far as I'm concerned, stock power output is more than enough for now, and probably for a good while.

Aero would be nice, but almost certainly not needed. Although the immature boy racer in me kinda wants to do an aero package for fun

 

[LuxurySportCoupe]

Congratulations on the baby girl! I love the idea of keeping her car seat as a permanent fixture in the mustang! Mine gets swapped between my s197 or the '67 cougar. Our daughter is 2 now, and finally forward facing which is super nice. The tricky time is the stage when they're out of the clip-in/seperate base style seat, but still rear facing. It takes dedication, but it can be done.
I've not made it down to waterford hills yet, but I will say both Gingerman and Grattan are worth the longer drive for you.

 

[Prashant J]

Kinda random update, installed a set of Ground Control caster-camber plates a few weeks back. Obviously will be great for better dialing in alignments, but also using them as a way to ease into learning/doing my own alignments at home.

Overall it'll be a pretty dry track season with the exception of SCCA Targa Chicagoland which I'm running with a friend in a Caterham 7, so using the rest of the summer to figure out some more lightweighting ideas for the Mustang. One area in particular that's been slightly perplexing is seating and roll bars; as much as I love my stock Recaros, I'm definitely not a fan of their weight. I've been eyeing these OMP seats as a replacement (the hope here is that I could net almost the full cost of two of these from the sale of my Recaros), but I'm keenly aware that these must be paired with a roll bar - safety first! A Watson or CMS bolt-in bar seems like the way to go, especially with removability enabling the use of the rear seat for my kid, but then that forces on-road scenarios where I'd still be in a fixed-back seat without a roll cage to protect in a roll-over.

Might be a case of having to make that tough choice then: keep babying functionality and thus the weight, or drop seating weight and wait for my daughter to be front-seat-aged to finally hop back in the car.

 

[GAR944]

Kinda random update, installed a set of Ground Control caster-camber plates a few weeks back. Obviously will be great for better dialing in alignments, but also using them as a way to ease into learning/doing my own alignments at home.

Overall it'll be a pretty dry track season with the exception of SCCA Targa Chicagoland which I'm running with a friend in a Caterham 7, so using the rest of the summer to figure out some more lightweighting ideas for the Mustang. One area in particular that's been slightly perplexing is seating and roll bars; as much as I love my stock Recaros, I'm definitely not a fan of their weight. I've been eyeing these OMP seats as a replacement (the hope here is that I could net almost the full cost of two of these from the sale of my Recaros), but I'm keenly aware that these must be paired with a roll bar - safety first! A Watson or CMS bolt-in bar seems like the way to go, especially with removability enabling the use of the rear seat for my kid, but then that forces on-road scenarios where I'd still be in a fixed-back seat without a roll cage to protect in a roll-over.

Might be a case of having to make that tough choice then: keep babying functionality and thus the weight, or drop seating weight and wait for my daughter to be front-seat-aged to finally hop back in the car.

Might need a bit of a rethink about the ability to remove the cage and use the back seat. The rear bars go through where the seat backs would be. Its also not a 5 minute job. Try a few hours after the initial install has been done. Its a once in it stays in unless you need access to the fuel pump hanger of another hidden item. Consider it a 2 seater.
Nice looking seats, hadn't seen those OMP ones before. Be aware you also have a lot of electrics from the origional seats to consider and seat belt mounts as the stalk attaches to the seat frame, not the chassis.

 

[Prashant J]

Might need a bit of a rethink about the ability to remove the cage and use the back seat. The rear bars go through where the seat backs would be. Its also not a 5 minute job. Try a few hours after the initial install has been done. Its a once in it stays in unless you need access to the fuel pump hanger of another hidden item. Consider it a 2 seater.
Nice looking seats, hadn't seen those OMP ones before. Be aware you also have a lot of electrics from the origional seats to consider and seat belt mounts as the stalk attaches to the seat frame, not the chassis.
View attachment 103843

Try a few hours after the initial install has been done.

This I'd actually been counting on. I already go through a bit of a track prep/de-prep in the late Spring and early Autumn anyway, so the thought was that kid time in the back would be restricted to the few weeks between the car being in track form and going into and coming out of storage for the winter.

The electronics aren't a major issue for me, it wouldn't be the first time I've dealt with them as I've worked on a few road-to-race car conversions before where I had to address those to defeat some warning codes.

But point well taken about where the rear support bars go and the seat belt mounts. Gonna have to give that a bit more thought.

BTW just out of curiosity, what roll bar do you have in that picture?

Edit: did a bit of perusing through other parts of TMO, it seems something like this would be a way to overcome the seat belt buckle mount stalk issue.