The Mustang Forum for Track & Racing Enthusiasts

Taking your Mustang to an open track/HPDE event for the first time? Do you race competitively? This forum is for you! Log in to remove most ads.

  • Welcome to the Ford Mustang forum built for owners of the Mustang GT350, BOSS 302, GT500, and all other S550, S197, SN95, Fox Body and older Mustangs set up for open track days, road racing, and/or autocross. Join our forum, interact with others, share your build, and help us strengthen this community!

S550 HPDE Prep - Need advice

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

For connecting 3” hose to the fog light opening, I used 4” to 3” galvanized ducting I found at Lowes. The plastic bracket that supports the fog light works perfectly to support the duct work. (Though I did have to get longer screws to attach the fog light brackets.)

The other parts in the picture are aluminum flanges and high temp hose sourced from Aircraft Spruce. (Clamps were from Lowes and/or local hardware store.)

7ED5941C-12BF-4919-9456-E536888E789A.jpeg
 
I'm just trying to see what folks are doing and how they're doing it. I'm leaning toward the "fog lights" opening since I never use them and it'd get rid of a couple of useless (to me) articles to make room for a useful article.
That was my thought too. But, after installing the ducts from the fog lights, I found it worked find in the driver side and the windshield washer reservoir is in the way on the passenger side. Tomorrow, I’ll be looking at mounting the air intakes on the lower grill. Others here said that avoids the windshield washer reservoir issue. If that works out, I’ll leave reservoir and reinstall the fog lights. One way or another though, I’ll have brake cooling in time for an HPDE at VIR Easter weekend.
 

JDee

Ancient Racer
1,797
2,001
Exp. Type
W2W Racing
Exp. Level
20+ Years
5 miles from Mosport
That was my thought too. But, after installing the ducts from the fog lights, I found it worked find in the driver side and the windshield washer reservoir is in the way on the passenger side. Tomorrow, I’ll be looking at mounting the air intakes on the lower grill. Others here said that avoids the windshield washer reservoir issue. If that works out, I’ll leave reservoir and reinstall the fog lights. One way or another though, I’ll have brake cooling in time for an HPDE at VIR Easter weekend.


Interesting. Keep us posted if you don't mind.
 
You can upload photos directly to TMO by using the Upload a File button.
 
Hey guys. Brake ducts are done. I snapped a bunch pictures; will try post the most relevant soon. Currently making a gas pedal cover that’ll let me adjust the space between the brake and gas for blipping the throttle. Will post some pics of that too.

Question: HPDE is less than two weeks out. Still need to flush brake fluid. Can’t find Motul locally and even the nearest race shop is out of stock. Found Pentosin super dot 4 at Advance Auto. Boiling points are higher than stock fluid but a little lower than Motul. Has anyone used the Pentosin? Any concerns about using in S550 gt?

I appreciate your input.
 
I believe the current Ford fluid is Pentosin DOT4 LV fluid. The specs appear to be nearly identical. ~505 degree F boiling point. Not terrible.

It’s nice that Ford put a higher temp brake fluid in from the factory. (Of course the owners manual specifies “Motorcraft” brand brake fluid.)
 
@JDee, you asked me to keep you posted Re my brake cooling efforts...

I used a hole saw and then dremel to cut out the outer sections of my lower grill - dirty looking stuff is plastic “sawdust”:
B7CBEB58-FA15-4E4A-BAAB-7DEAAE9C70DF.jpeg

I cut and bent aluminum flanges to mate up with the back side of the grill openings. The flange on the left is what I started with:
0FA69D54-469D-46B9-80D4-71F4BAEA7EAE.jpeg

This is how it fits - not perfect, but close enough:
13291B20-335F-46BF-A359-B26DF2121E58.jpeg

I ran small bolts from inside the plastic part (on back of the grill opening) thru flat tabs I made on flanges and attached cheaper low temp hose:
D98D4F26-01E7-4E82-8F3E-59099F2749D9.jpeg

Routing it like this clears the windshield washer reservoir. You can see that I used more flanges to connect low temp ducting to high temp (orange silicone). Doing it this way will allow me to replace the section of duct that’s subjected to rubbing/wear, without having to remove all the plastic under the car and I don’t think I’ll need to take the wheel well liner loose either:
25C6528D-0AAA-4547-BAAE-BE33F657E896.jpeg
 
I painted the part of the aluminum flange that’s visible from the front of the grill. With the flanges painted black and the black duct/hose, it’s barely visible after installing. But, you can see from the picture that the flange doesn’t match up perfectly with the opening:
AF919360-A8A0-45BC-9312-D9561DB8E957.jpeg
 

TMO Supporting Vendors

Top