FoxBody Red Fox Build Thread Profile - Fox Body Mustangs

[Peter92lx]

If you have plans to run bigger courses the 4.10s are going to hurt as you'll need to shift more or hit rev limiter.

I don't have any plans to run any bigger courses. The big places I used to run are gone now. I turn the motor to 7100rpm since the springs and lifters can handle it. With that much RPM my TKX gearing and size tire I can get to 70mph in second gear. The event I just ran was one of are faster courses and I didn't even get to 6k rpm in second. I do run track days but those are for fun.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

I have to agree with your assessment of Robert and Tracey Lewis's Black Beauty CP car , and concerning all the mods, I am sure 95% of their Competitors would like to know how much of the work was done ----- National Championship after National Championship, that is one untamed Mustang!!

 

[Peter92lx]

It was another good day for autocross yesterday. I mean the event didn't go as well as I wanted but I still had fun. I finished 4th which was fine I was hoping for better but what do you expect on Yokos that have close to 100 runs on them and two of the guys that finished ahead of you have new Yokos. i was a little over half second off the lead. The course was fun with an interesting figure 8 at the beginning. It had a nice 5 cone slalom which I was able to navigate pretty good this event. If you watch the video from the outside of the car you can see I just run over the edge of the third slalom cone.

Here's a still shot of how close I was to knocking the cone over.



Luckily the front and rear are the same track width. The car felt good through the slalom it seems to transition really well side to side. It also seems to be good when you are loading it in a consistent manner. But when you load it like under braking it was to bring the rear of the car around. This event when ever I was going into the 180 corners hard on the brakes the rear would want to start to come around on you. If you watch the video right after the slalom you go through an offset gate then into a 180 corner right as you enter it had on the brakes the rear would start to come around. It also seems to like to push the front a bit when you try and corner exit like the turn just as you exit the figure 8 heading towards the slalom its fast and I'm on the gas it's pushing a bit. These are the same issues the car had last event. We tried to set the front sway bar to the stiffest setting but really didn't make a change to the car.

My plan right now it to make another change to the car but what that is right now is up in the air. There's also a lot of setup things I should really check on the car. I haven't checked the bump steer rear of the car for a few years and I haven't checked it in the front since installing the SLA. I also need to put the car back on the scales to check the corner weights and cross weight I haven't done that since the SLA install. It would also be good to figure out the roll centers front and rear then figure out the center of gravity. I'm going to try and get some of this stuff done before the last event but we will see. I have plenty of stuff on my off season to do list.

 

[Dave_W]

If the entry-loose is predictable and controllable, I'd say keep it. You can use it to rotate the car more on entry before the apex, so when you get back on the gas on exit, the bit of push doesn't matter because you've already done most of your turning. The key is not turning in too soon - you want to exagerate the late apex line. It's a driving style/line used a lot in FWD cars.

 

[Peter92lx]

If the entry-loose is predictable and controllable, I'd say keep it. You can use it to rotate the car more on entry before the apex, so when you get back on the gas on exit, the bit of push doesn't matter because you've already done most of your turning. The key is not turning in too soon - you want to exagerate the late apex line. It's a driving style/line used a lot in FWD cars.

The entry-loose is predictable and controllable it also starts to fade as the rear tires warm up. The other thing I have to remember is the car might not like to be driven like I did before with the strut suspension. I might need to change the way I enter and exit corners to take advantage of the new front suspension.

 

[Peter92lx]

My 2024 racing year has come to a close. I wasn't to bad of a year. I wish I could have finished stronger but I did learn some new things and feel like I have a good car to take into next year. I ended up finishing second at this event which I was happy with. I finished 3rd in the championship for the end of the year same as I did last year. I feel like I have the car working better just need to work on some parts of my driving. The course yesterday was good. I did struggle with the slalom at this event. When I paced off the spread of the cones I noticed they increased in distance the further you went into the slalom. I just couldn't get a good rhythm through it and always seemed late. Here's my fastest for the day. I only ran my class runs and didn't take any extra runs.

I changed the spring rate for this weekend and the car felt better. It still has a corner exit push and still has a bit of a corner entry rotation that I need to build more confidence with. I only took my 4 class runs and skipped my 4 extra runs. After the last event I started to notice a weird sound from the transmission. I thought it might be the throwout bearing but it appears to be an issue with my transmission. Something that affects first and reverse. Planning to pull it out and send it back to Tremec to see what might be the issue. I have a TKO 600 I can out in it's place that JBA is going to let me barrow until I get my TKX back.

Winter updates

The plan this winter is to work on getting the brakes updated a bit. I want to add the S197 ABS module to the car. I also want to go back to manual brakes instead of the vacuum boosted brakes. I would like to do with separate master cylinders for the front and the rear brakes. Then I can size the masters for the front and rear brakes. I've been looking at using the Wilwood 340-16928 which is a tandem mount that has master cylinder mounts with a balance bar. Then installing the Maximum Motorsports manual brake conversion I've had forever. I've also thought about going crazy and switching to Tilton pedals for the car. I've thought instead of doing hanging pedals going with floor mount pedals using the Tilton 850 series 72-856. It's an underfoot pedal assembly so I think you can move it back further then the normal ones with the masters in the back of the pedals. Not sure if its even possible since I don't have the car to take measurements from right now. I've used floor mount pedals in the past but it was on an open wheel car. Not sure how they would feel in my car.

I'm also going to work on checking the bump steer in the car since I haven't on the new front and the rear hasn't been checked in a few years. I also want to get it back on the scales to to weigh it and set the corners weights.

2025 racing plans

The first event of the season is Jan 12th for the SCCA. My hope is to make that event but not sure if that is going to happen. Then I'm going to run a 4 event series with the Racing Byrds in Las Vegas. The Racing Byrds events will be two days with tons of runs. The down side is it will cause me to miss 3 of the SCCA events this year and take me out f the running for year end points since you can only drop 2 events next year. I currently have 11 events planned with hopefully a couple more I can fit in but we will see. I might miss more events after March since I'm going to send my shocks in to revalved for heavier springs.

Summer Plans

I've decided this year I want to take a break from having the car out of commission for the summer. The past 3 summers I have had the engine out rewired the car and replaced the front suspension. I decided in 2025 I'm not going to do anything major to the car. Normal maintenance is fine but no major work on the car. The only way is if something happens that requires me to do major work on the car.

 

[Peter92lx]

Just wanted to post up an update to the car. The brake updates didn't go as planned. I got the manual brakes installed on the car with the Wilwood 340-16928. Unfortunately I couldn't get the ABS to work. The ABS module didn't like the rear sensors or something else. So I ended up removing the ABS from the car for now. The system is still all wired up so it will be easy to swap. Here's a picture of the ABS installed under the dash. I ended up making a mounting bracket using the bracket for the S197 and the 04 Cobra to make it work.



Here's the a picture of the Wilwood 340-16928 installed. I ran into the a issue with the reservoir hitting the strut tower so I had to clearance it to make them fit.



So far it's working good took the car for a test drive and it stopped good. It was kind of weird having to use so much effort to stop the car. The boosted brakes were so touchy. Now it seems easy to modulate. We have an event this weekend so I can test the new brakes and get used to them. I'm finally putting a new set of tires on the car so it will be nice to have some grip for a change.

 

[RinerAuto]

I like the ABS mounting location

There should be a way to troubleshoot the ABS. I think it connects to OBDII so you should be able to scan for codes or see data.

 

[Peter92lx]

I have the OBD2 hooked up and I can see the codes it mainly complains about the rear wheel speed sensors. But it does have a couple other codes. I mainly ran out of time to look into it. The car is wired for it so I can run tests on it without affecting the brakes for now to find out why it might have had an issue with the rear sensors.

 

[RinerAuto]

Gotcha. To test the speed sensors (assuming stock VR sensors) you can connect a multimeter to the two output wires set the meter to measure AC voltage, then spin the wheel and see if you read any AC voltage.

 

[Peter92lx]

Lat weekend didn't go to plan. I was feeling really confident in the car. It was fast on some really old 90-100 lap Yokos so I figured with new ones the car was going to be even better. That wasn't the case. The car was a mess it had tons on of oversteer like I haven't felt in years. I was crazy how the car was totally different on the new tires and not in a good way. I have a feeling the increased grip in the car with the new tires is causing the rear to bottom out on the bump stop. I can shorten the bump stop by around 1/4 inch and maybe get away with raising the rear a bit maybe an 1/8 to add some more shock travel before the bump stop. Unfortunately I can do anything with spring rates front and rear other then go down in rate. The springs in the car right now are pushing the upper limits of the valving in the shocks. My plan is to have the valving redone after the March 1-2 event in Vegas.

The current plan is to shorten the bump stop and maybe raise the rear ride height up a bit more. I lowered it around 1/8 when I first did the front suspension so the car didn't have so much rake angle but at this point it might help a bit. With shortening the bump stop and raising it a bit I could get back around 3/8 of shock travel. The bump travel is limited by the fact the upper control arm will hit the frame if I let travel anymore. I've thought about having the upper frame rail notched where the control arm will hit to gain some bump travel. Someone also mentioned running the Kenny Brown upper arms on the car since they have more frame rail clearance. Not sure how I feel about that I've seen a couple broken ones and some with other issues. Not sure if the new MKII design is better. They are $900 dollars so it's not a cheap test to see if it will be better.

The front suspension I decided this weekend was a good time to check the bump steer on the car and as I thought it was off not really bad but it had a fair amount of toe in and out during travel. I was able to tighten it up really good so I'm happy to get that done.



I've done it before so it was easy to get the car level steering locked into place. I will have to check the toe setting now since I know they are off since I had to make the bump steer stack taller on both sides. Not a big deal I have a string alignment kit from BG racing that makes it pretty easy and I've found I can get really accurate with it after setting it myself then having tested on a alignment rack.

Now I have to get back to it. I have the rest of this day and next weekend to get the car ready and I feel like it's not but it's going to be the best I can make it for the first Vegas event. I'm hoping some of the changes I make to the car will help. Then before the event it March I will have my TKX back from repair and I can figure out something to get more clearance for the upper arm on the IRS.

 

[Dave_W]

A hack you might try is to add a tall, soft bump stop to act like a progressive spring. The idea is to reduce the sudden change in effective spring rate from x to infinity that causes snap oversteer when the axle hits the current short, stiff bump stop. Creating a longer ramp in the effective rate increase may make the onset of oversteer more controllable. Just an idea.

 

[Peter92lx]

A hack you might try is to add a tall, soft bump stop to act like a progressive spring. The idea is to reduce the sudden change in effective spring rate from x to infinity that causes snap oversteer when the axle hits the current short, stiff bump stop. Creating a longer ramp in the effective rate increase may make the onset of oversteer more controllable. Just an idea.

Thanks Dave I'm going to give that a try. My plan is to bring an assortment of bump stops to the Vegas event to do some testing see if I can find a good combination to hopefully make the oversteer less sudden. It only takes about 30min to swap bumps stops on the rear so it should be pretty easy.

 

[Peter92lx]

Last weekend was the first event of a 4 event series I'm running this season. It's with a group I used to run with a couple years ago when they were doing the NMCA Autocross West series. Now they have a new venue at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Before this event I set the bump steer and I corner balanced the car. I was able to get the same weight on the front tires with me in the car but the rear of the car I still have to get better. The passenger rear is always lighter then driver side rear. I went into the event with shorter bump stops and I raised the ride height a small amount in the back.

Saturday
This event we got a lot of runs each day you run 4 3 lap sessions throughout the day. It's nice since between runs you have over an hour you can make changes to the car to make it better. Which was very helpful since the first laps out showed we had solved the parts of the issue with the rear being unpredictable. But it was still really loose and making it hard to put the power down. The lap times after the first 3 runs put me mid pack. We decided during the second set of runs we would check tire temps and make adjustments as needed. We found during the second set of runs we had a bit to much pressure in the rears since the center of the tire is heating up faster then the inside and outside of the tire. So we decided to take a couple of pounds out of the rear tires which felt like it helped but lap times were still mid pack and far off the top 3 cars. During the lunch break looked over the car to see if we should go to a softer taller bump stop. What I found is the car wasn't even hitting the bump stops. Based on what we found it seemed more like the weight wasn't transferring to the rear of the car well enough. So we took some rebound out of the front shocks and took some compression out of the rear shocks. The car worked far better it planted the power better and was over all more predictable. My first set of runs after the lunch break I dropped a second off my time. Then going into my last set of runs we took a bit more compression out of the rear and dropped around another second in time moving me up to 5th place. Now I will say it wasn't all due to the suspension changes after all the runs I was getting way more confidence in the manual brakes. I was starting to brake deeper and later into the corners. i would get some mild lock up but it was easy to back out of without sacrificing much of my braking. These aren't my fastest runs from Saturday since my batteries died in my GoPro cameras

Sunday
Going into Sunday I was feeling pretty confident in the car. The second day the course is run in reverse. Running the course in reverse it was going to be a hill climb. The lot we run in has a pretty good slope to it. Nice part a lot of the corners are on camber so you can run through them fast the downside is you really need to be on top of corner exit since you are climbing the hill on the straights. The second day started out rough and was rough pretty much all day. I just wasn't getting the course and running about mid pack again. I was struggling in the first section and the car was having a hard time going into second gear which was costing me a lot of time. Plus I was over driving the car to much and costing me time. The set of runs were coming so I decided to take another to clicks of compression out of the rear and we added two pounds of pressure to the front tires. I also decided I would shift the car to second before the first turn. I knew I could run first through the first two corners but I was loosing a bunch of time trying to get it into second on a part of the course I should been accelerating. That made a big difference I was going way faster into the box before the first braking event. I cleaned up my driving and was awarded with 1.2 second drop in my time to finish Sunday just 0.022 out of third place. Unfortunately a mile off the leader who was just incredibly fast in a very well setup car. The weekend ended up good I was happy with the car and looking forward to the next one at the end of this month. These are the in car and outside of the car cameras from my fatest run.

Before the next one I do need to address a couple issues. The front brakes are really worn out and needed to be replaced which I did yesterday. The other is power steering fluid is getting to hot. I think between the reservoir getting heat from the headers and the cooler not being in good air flow was getting the fluid to hot. The good news is my TKX should be back tomorrow from Bowler so I can get that in before the next event. It will be nice to have my TKX back.

It was a good weekend of racing with a great group of friends. It started out rough but ended really good. The team at JBA was a huge help this weekend getting the tire temps and pressures done and Mike from JBA for the setup advice. They really turned a rough start to a weekend into a strong weekend to build on.

 

[Dave_W]

From the side-mount camera, you're pretty good at threading the chicane, but you seem to be leaving a lot of room to the inside on some of the sweepers. 0.022 seconds at 40mph (average speed) is only about 2.5 feet. If you had saved 3 feet in driving the course, you may have snatched that podium spot.

 

[Peter92lx]

From the side-mount camera, you're pretty good at threading the chicane, but you seem to be leaving a lot of room to the inside on some of the sweepers. 0.022 seconds at 40mph (average speed) is only about 2.5 feet. If you had saved 3 feet in driving the course, you may have snatched that podium spot.

It's definitely something I have to work on. When I was in the car it looked like I wasn't leaving that much room but watching the video after the event places I thought I was running tight I was way off.

 

[Dave_W]

Are there any highways in your area that have a rumble pattern between the travel and breakdown lanes to warn drivers of drifting over? I use those to learn where the edges of the tires are - especially the right side. Just creep over until you think you're an inch or two from the rumble pattern, then move a bit more to see if you actually hit it or were further away than you thought. Obviously, not something you want to do with a lot of traffic around. If you're not trailering you car, you can do it on your way to an event to give yourself a little tune-up.

 

[Fabman]

Are there any highways in your area that have a rumble pattern between the travel and breakdown lanes to warn drivers of drifting over? I use those to learn where the edges of the tires are - especially the right side. Just creep over until you think you're an inch or two from the rumble pattern, then move a bit more to see if you actually hit it or were further away than you thought. Obviously, not something you want to do with a lot of traffic around. If you're not trailering you car, you can do it on your way to an event to give yourself a little tune-up.

There’s an old oval track saying: “if you don’t whitewall the tires (on the wall) every once in a while you aren’t trying.”

 

[Peter92lx]

Just a couple of updates for the car. The front brakes on the car were very worn out and they really needed to be replaced before the first event. I've found the Hawk DTC 60 work really well for me so I just went with another set and a fresh set of wilwood rotors.



The other issue I was running into was the power steering was overheating. I thought the cooler I had on the on the car with the factory power steering pump would be fine but it wasn't up to the heat the KRC pump is creating. I also added some heat shielding to the reservoir to help with the header heat.





The car is currently at JBA getting my repaired and updated TKX installed in the car to finally have it ready for next weekend. When I sent it back to Bowler they updated to their Carbon Edition spec. Looking forward to the next event. Not making any other changes to the car and I think I'm starting at a good point at this event with the cars handling.

 

[Fabman]

Just a couple of updates for the car. The front brakes on the car were very worn out and they really needed to be replaced before the first event. I've found the Hawk DTC 60 work really well for me so I just went with another set and a fresh set of wilwood rotors.

View attachment 101141

The other issue I was running into was the power steering was overheating. I thought the cooler I had on the on the car with the factory power steering pump would be fine but it wasn't up to the heat the KRC pump is creating. I also added some heat shielding to the reservoir to help with the header heat.

View attachment 101142

View attachment 101143

The car is currently at JBA getting my repaired and updated TKX installed in the car to finally have it ready for next weekend. When I sent it back to Bowler they updated to their Carbon Edition spec. Looking forward to the next event. Not making any other changes to the car and I think I'm starting at a good point at this event with the cars handling.

I went through power steering woes as well.
I found that going from traditional PS fluid to Amsoil PS fluid significantly reduced foaming which is what boils over, blows up hoses etc.
I also used a tube and fin type cooler. For reference, the FR500 PS cooler is about twice as big as the one I used, and what I should have used.
In my case (3 valve pump on a 8200 rpm coyote) the motor was able to spin much higher than the pump was designed to so ultimately I ended up with a EPAS rack and that was the end of my PS problems.



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