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All my fender and hood vents are finished. 8 in total. Friend bought a bankrupt body shop and offered me a deal I cant refuse to get the car painted as they start to get things rolling. Paint next week! My car is only in a few dozen pieces, going to be a long weekend of wrenching.


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Off to paint in the next day or two. Team logo is finished. Need to do rear shock bolts and tires and load it onto trailer.
Parts still to install. Bump steer tie rods, torque wheel bearings - big torque wrenches busted today :(. Caliper upgrade front. Rear Moroso studs - gave up waiting for arp. Kenny brown rear grip kit. Oil level sender - waiting for an adapter to fit oil pan. Finish hooking up diff catch can/vent.
All the fab work is done minus front splitter and side splitters.
Then it’s just wiring for kill switch, guages, trip to dyno, and last step is weight reduction. I removed the door guts today. But there is some wiring and sheet metal to take out.

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I don’t swear much, but I did today. After hand sanding the rear dtc-70 pads for the 14 inch rear rotor upgrade I thought the brakes were binding. Turns out my coil over is rubbing on the rim. I will put washers on tomorrow so I can unload from trailer and sort out what’s wrong. Could be my coil overs are a bigger coil than what most people run. 3.38 inch, 86mm is the coil diameter.

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The bad news.
1) My friend installed the caliper adapter wrong on one side. It’s to put 14 inch rotors on the rear. It mangled the rotor surface. I took a flap disk to it, but it’s a mess with grooves and pitting. I would be concerened if it was a front rotor. After dragging the car onto the trailer and off I went searching for the binding problem.

2) the coil over does touch the rim in the rear on one side. A 1/4 inch spacer will fix it. I don’t want to run rear spacers. It’s related to the coil diameter at 3.4 inch, everything out there is 2.5. I didn’t want to buy a coilover set this year. But ….

3) rear wheel studs, arp are not available, I need a set due to needing the spacer. The moroso will take a lot of work to fit.

4) while the body shop let me sand down the car, but they seem to be in no hurry to work on it. I’m bringing tools today to work on battery relocate and kill switch wiring, otherwise I’m running out of time.

5) working on fitting the bumper and brake ducts tonight

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Yea….that sucks. I was able to pull my helper springs and get clearance.
any possibilities of using a shorter spring? Not the best solution but not a huge budget hit.
The other side clears, just though. I have to look, maybe the shock isnt properly centered through the body hole. But no matter how I slice it, I think I need to run a small spacer. With the 18*11 wheels and running a tire thats about a 305 ( its not a 315 ) in size. Im hoping to not have a clearance issue to the fender. Now the coil overs are on the upgrade list, however I spent enough so far I want to hold off on those for next year, only one event I will make with this car this year. I did get my fire bottle and radio gear for the car this weekend ! Just autosports labs stuff Im wating for.
 
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The rear axle is not centered by at least 1/2 inch. Thats why the coilover touches on one side. It causes the one shock to stand more upright. Centering the axle ( when I install the rear grip kit ) will help, probably still need a spacer.

Did a week of prep work and the body shop isnt planning on touching the car for a bit, so it looks like Im still hauling gear and supplies there so I can continue to move forward.

I bought a 1/2npt to 20mm adapter so I could run the stock oil leverl sender in the race pan. The sender doesnt fit in the adapter as the body is too long and wide :( so it looks like no oil level sender will be in the car, I will wire it so the oil light isnt on. If I would have realized this I would have welded in a bung to the oil pan before I installed it, grrr. Lesson learn, test fit EVERYTHING before you commit.
 

Dave_W

Cones - not just for ice cream
984
1,277
Exp. Type
Autocross
Exp. Level
20+ Years
Connecticut
Could be my coil overs are a bigger coil than what most people run. 3.38 inch, 86mm is the coil diameter.
If that's the OD, it's probably a standard 2.5" ID spring. Hypercoil lists a 2.5" ID 6" long 350lb spring at 3.35" OD, and an 8" long 100lb at 3.384" OD. Different rates & lengths from manufacturers using slightly different alloys will probably differ a few tenths.
 
Goes real slow at the body shop…..and I’m experiencing how itchy fiberglass work feels! Kill switch wiring is almost done, fire bottle is mounted but I still have to run the lines. Diff catch can is done, battery relocate just requires me to cut the factory battery terminals off and tie into the firewall posts I installed. 5 weeks until the race :)

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Ordering the Kenny Brown K-link, just trying to get a set of coil overs and proper springs for the k-link setup. Fingers crossed I get them in time.
After speaking with KB on lap times, its seems like a no brainer to get the part. Probably makes more of a difference with the 5.0 than the 4.6 though.
Got primer on the car last night.
Almost done making tow hooks.The crash bars must be a hardened steel, had a heck of a time drilling through the rear one.
 
Got super lucky. Paint lids off and was about to mix paint, then the power went on and off a few times before cutting out. Semi rolled and took out the power lines. Timing is everything, that would have been a expensive waste of paint as the booth went dead. It’s going to take hours to get power online. Emergency vehicles everywhere.
 
First color done ! Decided to paint the rest minus the front bumper tomorrow. I still need to bodywork the bumper and it and it will be on and off lots as I make a quick removable front bumper/splitter. So the bumper will get painted later. Body shop wants their space back. Tow hooks almost done.

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arp studs are delayed again, so I dont think I will get them in time.

Finally got around to hooking up HP tuners, disabled pats\vats, the car starts with the non chipped key, yipee! But it now has a check engine code and is in failsafe mode. I tried to disable the auto transmission so it stops flashing the overdrive light, I disabled the emmissions codes as I have removed that from my car as it was plugged. I will have to see what the codes are tonight, tomorrow Im supposed to go to a friends to finish the wiring, his nickname is the "12 volt wizard". The plan is to get the car running from the racing switch panel instead of the key, get the lights tied into the switch panel and get the exciter wire to the alternator done from the kill switch.

And I got the audi TT on the road for the first time, fun little car withthe paddle shifter...It still needs work and paint...I have to learn to stick to one project at a time !
 
I’m going to have more time info fixing the fiberglass/building splitter than anything else on the car ( came caged ). Holy moley, what a huge amount of time. It will be removable no tools and only a couple minutes. I think the ground clearance of splitter will be 4 1/4 inch. That’s a little lower than I wanted. And I only realized that the lower rad opening is much wider than the rad, just makes ducting a little more work :(

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