S550 Vorshlag 2015 Mustang GT Road Race Build #TRIGGER Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

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At this point, my 2023 season of racing with the Mustang was FUBAR. And sadly, we had just finish prepping the 2006 C6 Corvette for sale, along with fresh paint, so I wasn't going to race that again (it moved to the same Max1 class as the Mustang, after we added heads/cam/intake to that in early 2023).



This was the worst feeling in racing - after a long thrash to get this much anticipated Mustang ready for a race season, it was all over in seconds. I was resigned to co-driving with Amy in her 2023 BRZ, which was fun, but... just not the same as a car with power.

UPGRADING THE FUEL TANK LIFT PUMP ASSEMBLY

At this point my head was still spinning, and I didn't have a solid plan for what to do next. I was lost. The 6.3L engine was supposed to be our "training wheels" engine for the 2023 season, an easy 480 whp lump that we could run while the suspension was sorted, ABS perfected, while we added aero, and we made the Mustang just a fun all around track car. That wasn't possible now - so I tried to concentrate on other unfinished business on this car while coming up with contingency plans for the engine.



Before the 2nd dyno day we had the leaks from the top of the plastic drop-in fuel pump assembly. Instead of buying another plastic unit and drilling the overflow / return line for the -8 AN bulkhead in another new plastic fuel pump lid, I decided to upgrade to the proper parts - this $740 Aeromotive billet aluminum drop-in fuel pump assembly was ordered. This is a very well made part that is made explicitly for the S197/S550 Mustang fuel tank, and I highly encourage anyone attempting the fuel system upgrades we did to go with this route. Save yourself the hassles and potential leaks / fire problems with drilling the stock plastic piece!



At the same time I opted to buy the proper tool to remove the locking ring that holds these fuel pump assemblies into S197/S550 tanks, instead of using a pair of screw drivers and a lot of cursing. We have needed this for years, and it was worth every penny.



Instead of having a hole drilled in plastic, this billet aluminum piece has two -8 AN ports in the top, as well as these wiring pass-thrus built into the unit. There's also a bracket built in to take the stock S550 fuel level float, which Brad transferred over from the stock assembly. This Aeromotive unit is made to take as many as 3 pumps - it can be your main pump assembly for up to 1000 hp - but we're only using one pump as a lift pump to feed the Radium remote surge tank, which will have two pumps inside. That single can then work then at lower pressures / higher flow, which is more than enough pump for a lift pump.



We ordered this with one 340 LPH Walbro pump for the lift, then dropped it into the tank and began wiring and plumbing to the top. We could not use the plastic bowl that the OEM pump assembly uses, of course, nor the jet pump line from the other side. The overflow from the surge tank feeds down onto this side of the saddle, so the crossover tube to the other saddle hasn't been a big concern on track (again, after 6 events now).



This was plumbed and wired up cleanly with the supplied connections at the top. And Brad really wanted to replace the "randomly placed" M6 rivnuts, but we left them for now - the top aluminum cover panel we have more than covers the hole in the floor. The Fragola -8 AN hose ends lined up perfectly with the AN-to-ORB fittings we added at the Aeromotive junction, shown above. The cleanest, safest install I could think of for the stock fuel tank. We might not have an engine for the car at this point, but we no longer need to worry about a fuel leak when the stock gas tank is filled!

BORROWING AMY'S HPR454 ENGINE??

In January of 2021 the folks at HPR started building this 454" stroker engine for Amy's 2013 FRS - which we were doing an LS swap with. This '12 FRS used to be her primary track car, and was now being built for the Optima series with a Darton sleeved gen IV block, big Brodix heads, an 8 CW crank with 4.125" stroke, and an unusual "pin guided" rod and piston setup.



We had a small part in this craziness as we machined both the width of the big end of the lightened rods to make them even lighter, as well as make room for these aluminum spacers that were needed to fit into the custom designed Wiseco pistons - which were cut with a "square" opening for this pin guided setup. So instead of the rod being located at the crank on the big end, the piston would be located the rod fore-aft at the small end, on the piston pin.



This was done to remove bob weight from the rotating assembly, and this 3D milled piston and lightened rod combo have a lower bob weight than a titanium rodded LS engine. We had originally planned on a 4.250" stroke 468" engine, but being one of the partners at HPR, I agreed to test out a new 8CW 4.125" forged crank from a new supplier. We made that into a long snout version to utilized an LS7 style dry sump pump - as this car intended to have an air conditioner where an external belt driven dry sump would be (see Optima series use).



Amy and I helped Erik assemble the short block throughout early 2021, at night and on weekends, and we got this 454" bottom end put together and ready for more parts in Feb 2021. Amy paid for all of this craziness, and it was to be her engine for the next several seasons.



Erik had installed and degreed the initial .660" lift hydraulic roller cam, and the shortblock was bagged up - awaiting a new cylinder head to test. Then the supply chain totally broke down, we couldn't get valves and some other parts for a long, long time.



In Feb of 2022 this first set of HPR / Brodix BR7 series set of heads arrived, which Erik had worked with a leading CNC head porter to come up with various port styles with various volumes and valve sizes. Parts took months to arrive but in early 2023 hpr started getting a steady flow of these custom Brodix heads in, Titanium valves started flowing again (Ukraine supplies a lot of Titanium for valves), their in-house valve guide machine was online, and in early March of this year we had the final heads for Amy's engine.

After the February dyno disaster, Amy saw how distraught I was over losing the 6.3L engine. I explained the still lingering engine parts shortage of the Pandemic would extend that rebuild for many more months, and I was going to be dropping out of TT events this season.

Then this saint of a woman offered up her 454 engine for use in #Trigger... I didn't dare ask her for that earlier. My head exploded, and this "doomed 2023 season" was no longer over! Amy freagin rocks.



A few planning sessions at lunch with Erik and we changed what intake the 454 would use, and Erik spec'd out a shorter duration camshaft but with .750" lift, using these Crower 1.9 ratio shaft rockers. On March 31st of 2023 I picked up the complete 454 engine - and it was going into my Mustang!

ADDING A DRY SUMP OIL PAN

Normally at this point you might think we would be out shopping for a 5+ stage external dry sump oiling system, but this engine was stuck with some decisions made 2 years earlier for another series in another car. And this was not my engine, it was borrowed from my wife from her real race car, so we decided to stick with the same plan: use the GM LS7 based 2-stage pump, which is driven off the front of the crank.



We looked at various aftermarket dry sump pans that were made to work with the LS7/LS9 pump and were not sure we had the room to fit any of them with the stock crossmember / mounts / headers from our LS550 swap. So after much discussion, I went looking for a stock LS7 pan. These are NLA new from GM, so I went looking for a good used pan, and after a couple of weeks of fruitless searches, the folks at LGM hooked me up. I cleaned that used pan up in our parts washer (it had been on an engine that didn't live), then I ran it for a few cycles in the sonic cleaner at HPR. We also replaced the pickup screen with a new GM unit (which luckily is still available).



Then I ordered every piece Improved Racing makes for the LS7 - a drop in oil pan baffle, their windage tray and their crank scraper. The drop in pan baffle was installed and I took the cleaned up pan and the rest to HPR for installation (this was done in mid March, before I picked up the engine - showing the story a bit out of order here, apologies).



The fine folks at HPR then clearanced and tweaked last two these items made for a little 427" LS7 (4.000" stroke) to fit this higher stroked 454" version (4.125" stroke), and they got all of these items safely installed on the bottom with ample clearance. Does this crank scraper and windage tray help with oil flow slosh in corners? After a number of events I can say this: No, it seems like it does not. I will cover these oil pressure issues we saw in long left hand covers with this setup - not dire, but concerning - in another post.



I then bought yet another ATI balancer and hub to fit the longer LS7 style crank snout, then the Katech red 2 stage oil pump. This is unlike a traditional wet sump oil pump for an LS - the LS7 style system used a unit that has two pumps in a longer package, and these work in tandem.

One pump is the "scavenge" pump, which sucks oil from the pickup screen in the oil pan and pumps it out the side of the pan to go to the top of a remote oil settling tank (or dry sump tank). The "second stage" pump sucks from oil the bottom of the remote settling tank and pumps it through the engine to create oil pressure. I will show more and label the lines when we get to the plumbing of the system, further down in this post.



One of the last items HPR modified for this 454 long block was the LS7 oil pan, which has 3 ports cast into the pan for the various stages and pass-thrus. Brian at HPR "port matched" the pan ports to the LS7 oil pan gasket, which matches up with the port matched Katech 2-stage pump. This ensures we have the most flow and least pressure drop possible with this setup.



There were dozens of other little parts and details that went into this engine, some of which I will share later in the build thread and others that would bore you. This covers the main chunk that involved the dry sump oiling system, at least on the engine itself.

MOUNTING THE DRY SUMP TANK

In early March, when we had decided to move this 454" engine with an LS7 style dry sump into the Mustang, it was time to purchase and mount the dry sump settling tank. We searched for days and looked at many factors, but in the end picked this "short and fat" Peterson fluid systems 3 gallon tank. A taller / skinny tank would have been a better for actual oil settling, but it came down to the final placement we picked and our lack of allowable height there.



What I thought would take a coupe of days to find the final location and mount, actually spanned 2.5 months. Some of this was us having to wait on other items, but the final fitting of the hood happened in the first week of June. These various parts delays made me nearly crazy, as I missed competition event after event, borrowing cars to try to bank some points for the Texas region SCCA Time Trial series in Max1 class. This was a very frustrating time, but we had other delays outside of this oil tank mounting.



Most of this mounting work was completed before the engine even left HPR for the last time on March 31st. Frankly we needed the engine out of the way to do some of this fabrication work, often working inside the engine bay to access a cut here and there. This giant tank was not easy to mount - not even a little easy.



The first round cut put the tank too close to the tire, so we had to move the tank back into the edge of the outer firewall. We had to chop out that "shelf" (see above left), then relocate some wiring pass-thrus we had already wired and run with the 385" engine. But eventually the cuts were made and the tank fit around and above the tire. The top of the tank would still hit the hood, but I had a plan for that.



To cover the hole in the firewall shelf we had cut, Brad made some paper templates then transferred those into cardboard. This CAD template was mocked up and perfected before going to aluminum. This cover would sit very close to the tank, to maximize clearance to the hood.



Austin worked with Brad to get these 3 pieces TIG welded into an assembly that fits in the bottom back corner of the engine bay. It took some patience, cooling between welds, and some skill, but he got it all seam welded together perfectly. Brad then sanded and smoothed the welds to make it look like art which nobody will ever see once installed.



This final assembly essentially made just another firewall block off plate, with integrated mounting flanges that were part of the original design. This perfectly seals off the cone shaped hole in the shelf and attaches to the back of the firewall as shown. Then it is sealed off with seam sealer.



Once Brad riveted and sealed this in place, the engine bay side was masked and painted in a matching semi-gloss black. And all of this will be well hidden underneath the Peterson tank, but I'll still know it was done right.



With the oil settling tank mounted (and with plumbing added a little later), Brad crawled through the engine bay and marked where the hood would touch. We had the hood just mocked up in place, as it was interfering with the oil fill cap and that upper forged 90deg -12 AN fitting.



And this was the last little bit that waited until June - cutting two clearance holes in the inner skin of the Anderson Composites carbon hood, By then the engine ran and it was time to add the hood for track testing, so this leftover hood from my 2018 Mustang GT got a little trimming, as did the plastic firewall cowl panel, which you can see above right. Whew!

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Ah, one more thing! We had to make some changes to the ECU mounting tray, which sits just behind the glove box, as the slight change to the firewall required an extra touch of clearance.



While it was out to be trimmed, Brad added a dimple die holes, too - he can't be stopped! So yea, adding that dry sump tank was a journey, but mounting it close to the engine and as high as possible is extremely helpful for feeding oil to the main pressure pump. We will show more of that plumbing below.

454 LONG BLOCK INSTALLED

On April 3rd we got the longblock weighed and then started rounding up any missing pieces we needed to attach the same flywheel and clutch from the 6.3L before, which barely had any use or wear.



Since it had a new crank there was no pilot bearing installed, so we went with the F-body style SKF option for this, which was tapped into place. Should have had that sooner to allow HPR to press that in place before the crank went in, but that was 2 years ago.



Now the TOB should always be measured and checked, and sure enough we needed to shim the back of that for proper engagement with the RAM HD unit we had. More parts to order, another week long wait, but eventually that was done right. Brad got the flywheel installed and torqued the new ARP bolts, then the twin disc pressure plate and clutch discs.



With the clutches and slipper plates aligned, the transmission was stabbed and bolted to the bellhousing. We always want to do this out of the car if we can, as it makes the alignment of the input shaft so much easier. We then took the engine + transmission assembly and put it on the adjustable engine tilter, then got the engine hoist ready to shove this lump into the engine bay.



To save time we kept the radiator + upper support in place, and it all went in fine. Brad (with a grimace!) and I got this assembly tilted / shoved / angled / and bolted to our LS550 swap drivetrain mounts in about 20 minutes, without scratching anything at the firewall or radiator. The engine bay is enormous and an LS engine is pretty small.



We had the drivetrain bolted in on April 12th, and Brad went on to connecting some wiring and oil system plumbing - but the BTR intake manifold was the big delay. It would be 2 months before that was finally here, modified, and ready to go in - and I was losing my mind with these delays. I made a terrible decision to use this BTR intake.

ADDING ACCESSORIES + CRANK POINTER

We wanted the tuner to have a proper timing pointer for use with a timing light, as stock LS engines have nothing. HPR had set TDC when they installed the cam and ATI balancer, so we wanted to just reinstall the pointer that was on the 385" LS6 engine onto the LS7, and set that based on the timing marks on the balancer.



Well of course the old timing pointer kit made for the "short snout" LS timing cover didn't fit the LS7 style cover, which has the extra oil pump stage inside. This PRP-8527 kit was made for the longer front timing cover of the LS7, so I bought one of those.



We swapped this in place of the Mighty Mouse pointer made for the LS1/2/6, and it was lined up with TDC on cylinder one, which had been marked by HPR when they built the shortblock and installed the ATI balance.



The various accessories were installed again - alternator, LS7 style water pump, thermostat housing, ICT Billet power steering delete pulley and the ICT manual serpentine belt tensioner.

MOUNTING OIL CATCH CAN AND COOLANT RESERVOIR + CRANKCASE VENTING

On the wet sump 6.3L setup, we had mounted the Peterson vented air/oil separator catch can and Canton coolant reservoir in the back right corner, where these were both then at the highest part of the engine bay - as shown below.



This was supposed to be how the engine bay would be setup for the first season, but instead it lasted for a couple of weeks when the 6.3L expired. Now the massive 3 gallon Peterson oil settling tank takes up that coveted spot in the engine bay, so we needed to relocate both of those items to a new home.



Brad and I looked at the spaces we had left to fill and decided to push the coolant reservoir to the front right corner, and fit over gap in the engine bay sheet metal. So he made a template, then an aluminum bracket, which bridged this gap - and pushed the top of the tank away from a depression in the hood structure above.



The Canton coolant tank bolted right to this new bracket with its unmodified bracket holes. Then it was time to mount the Peterson vented crankcase vent - air / oil separator can (shorten all of that to "catch can"). The previous bracket got one additional panel and some rivnuts, to hold the clamp for the round catch can.



Above you can see the Peterson round clamp, which has a flat bracket that attaches to the new panel. Then the catch can was slid into place with the Vibrant 1/4 turn ball valve on the bottom for the drain. This later got a hose that was routed under the fender line - and we now drain the liquid oil and water out of this tank after every track day (it captures very little liquid oil). One of the two "inlet" ports on the oil catch can was blocked, as we had planned to only feed this from the dry sump tank, instead of from both valve covers like we did on the wet sump 6.3L.



Venting the crankcase and dry sump tank was tackled next. This is a somewhat complex subject that might get its own tech article later - I am going to give the highlights here. We started by running a -12 AN Fragola hose from the TOP VENT port on the dry sump tank (the highest port on the conical upper portion) downhill to the oil catch can.

Yes, this tank will be under pressure at times, likely NOT under vacuum. This is only a 2 stage LS7 based dry sump system with a single scavenge stage, and its working on a big 454" engine. Ideally we would have 2-4 scavenge stages and an external dry sump pump, but I also want a toilet made of gold - we don't always get what we want, baby!



Next we added a low cracking pressure check valve (see above) that we sourced from Earl's (not cheap). This opens when the crankcase makes more than 1 psi of positive pressure, and the hose that passes through this leads uphill and allows excess crankcase pressure (including water and oil vapor) to travel from this valve cover port to the normal tank scavenge inlet port at a "Y" with a -12 AN line. The check valve prevents any backflow from the dry sump tank, if the crankcase briefly does make vacuum.



Now when we first posted this arrangement on social, we got some negative feedback from the less informed portion of the peanut gallery, but again - this is not a textbook perfect dry sump system. "Everything in racing is a compromise", which this is. Pretending that we would see sustained crankcase vacuum with this 2 stage dry sump pump setup is just a fairy tale.

The reality is MOST dry sump systems (even 3-4 stage) on bigger LS engines like this do not see a vacuum in the crankcase, so that pressure has to be vented properly, or you will start blowing out seals and gaskets. We've seen people with similar systems that had to add 3 or 4 oil catch cans and fighting oil spraying everywhere - we're doing this right.



We've preemptively accommodated this positive pressure and routed it through a proper check valve into the correct port on the dry sump tank. And any excess pressure / vapors from the big dry sump tank can then leave the very TOP of that tank (where there should be no liquid volume) and then go to the Peterson catch can. At the time we built this oil crankcase plumbing, with input from HPR, the folks at both that shop and Vorshlag were confident this would work.

And indeed it has worked, to the point that we haven't leaked a DROP of oil from this engine bay - not from the dry sump tank, lines, or catch can or engine, in 6 events to date. You can see the amount drained from the catch can after a full 4 sessions at a Time Trial event we won on 8/12/23, above. It is a couple of ounces, and the most we have ever pulled out of this catch can.

CUSTOMIZED BTR INTAKE, NEW INJECTORS, FUEL RAILS, AND VALVE COVERS

Now a big cause of delay in getting this 454 engine running, and added tremendously to costs incurred, is this monumentally bad idea: a modified BTR Trinity intake. We customized this BTR Trinity short runner intake manifold to work with the 454 engine / Brodix heads / 112mm throttle body. This ranks now as the second biggest mistake of this build, right behind just the thought of "use a Holley EFI" on anything! DON'T USE THIS INTAKE MANIFOLD on any Naturally Aspirated LS engine. It is an utter abomination of bad design choices.



Dozens of hours of custom machine work, welding, porting, and other details which spanned 8 freagin weeks piled up to make this terrible intake manifold setup. It was a huge mistake, which I will show in multiple dyno graphs (next time). While it might look "pretty", this does not make something FAST.



The first problem was the "get the next version coming" wait - this intake had been out for barely a minute with a 102mm TB opening, but supposedly a 105mm version was coming. We blew 3 weeks and many blown promised deliveries, so we punted and bought the only "old" 102mm version that was in stock anywhere, which arrived April 27th. Really wish I could get those wasted 3 weeks back - I trusted the wrong sources. We also got this HUGE 112mm Nick Williams DBW throttle body.



Some poor advice I listened to was to lop the 102mm TB flange of the BTR intake off and make this 112mm TB fit. Maybe you can see what we wanted to do here: above is the BTR intake mocked up with a 112mm TB and our existing 4.5" intake tube. "Easy!"



We have heard many times that the 102mm TB is choking these over-427" LS engines, so sure - "More airflow!" is better, right? A massive amount of work began, where we first designed and machined this adapter on our CNC mill.



Everyone hustled to make this happen, both here and at HPR. Jason designed then Hodges CNC machined these 112mm adapters, Austin welded them on and did some porting, and Brad did all of the final fitting and assembly.



After we had the Trinity in hand, Brad started by lopping the 102mm flange off one day and we had a new 112mm flange welded on 2 days later. After a mock-up check and some measuring here at the shop, it all went to HPR for final port matching.



There Brian did some internal porting and sanding on the throttle body inlet - simply beautiful work. He brought all of this back to Vorshlag for another mockup and measuring on the engine to mark the BR7 Brodix heads intake ports.



He scoped down each port, marked the mismatch, then took the two pairs of intake port sections back to HPR for port matching and more sanding / clean-up.



All 8 intake port flanges were blended to match the Brodix head's CNC machined intake ports and the newly enlarged 112mm intake opening was blended to perfection. This doesn't get any better for smooth airflow - and I was very hopeful we could finally outpace the typical MSD + 103mm TB with this very customized Trinity + 112mm. Ha!



We got it all mocked up and installed the optional BTR fuel rails, which fit well enough. These were installed with a new set of ID 1080 injectors, which we needed over the smaller injectors we had on the little 6.3L.



Brad got the Nitrous Outlet 4 port steam vent kit installed and fitted around the BTR intake, which has plenty of room everywhere for this system with the main "tower" mounted at the front right corner of the block. With the intake and 112mm throttle body mocked up Brad was then able to finish the mods to the existing 4.5" cold air system we used before, which used to neck down to 4.25" for the 103mm TB. We also spec'd the pieces needed to hook the BTR fuel rails into the existing fuel system - which we had built with -10 AN feed and -8 AN return line sizes, in anticipation of a bigger engine someday.



The amount of metal we added to the neck of this Trinity upper plenum was significant - and now it was time to blend the outside for aesthetics. Both Austin and Brad spent some time with die grinder and sanding wheels getting this smoothed out before powder coating, and Brad did additional work to get the flange flat and drilled/tapped for mounting the 112mm throttle body.



Brad then used our new media cabinet to blast the black painted finish off the BTR intake's 3 main sections, then I took it all to our powder coating shop nearby. By now 5+ weeks have been gobbled up waiting on and modifying the Trinity intake, and I'm missing more and more SCCA Time Trial competitions, but I keep telling myself all of this added cost and delay will benefit the car in the end, with much more power than the plastic off-the-shelf intakes and small throttle bodies...

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A week later the red powder coated parts were done and shiny - I went by the powder coat shop 3 times trying to hurry them along.



Its now late May and I am pushing hard to get this car to the tuner in a week, so I can hopefully make the June events? Brad reassembles the now RED AF intake and I'm getting excited, as it looks really good.



Yes this is a 24.1 pound behemoth and its 5.4" runner length makes for math that is way too short for NA engine use under 10,000 rpm, but I still think all of this work will be worthwhile. There is no 112mm gasket so Brad makes one from this Fel-Pro gasket material - tracing the CAD drawing we made for the flange adapter and cutting out out with a razor.



Literally the same day we got the intake back from powder it was installed and looked AMAZING. We got the Katech tall valve covers powder coated red as well and this really makes the engine bay "pop", but in the end, would the added work to make this fit help performance?

FUN WITH THROTTLE BODIES

Then we lost TWO MORE WEEKS fighting a wiring problem in the new throttle body - which was beyond frustrating. Time was just slipping away, and every month I didn't have this car was another missed SCCA Time Trial event - where I was now "bumming rides" in the wrong cars, not scoring many points for the regional Max1 championship. I won the first event in a borrowed 2020 GT500 with 2 laps behind the wheel, but my luck at finding co-drives soon ran out.



Holley EFI has a certain procedure to check DBW throttle bodies within their EFI system. When we connected the NW 112 it just would not get through the TPS Autoset wizard. You have to do this before you can even think about starting the engine. We called Holley, then did a bunch of testing on the TB, and even put it on my C6 to test it there with a "known good engine harness".



Nothing was working right - there are two TPS circuits inside each Drive By Wire throttle body, and one was simply dead. We tested it on the C6 and nothing. We tested the Ohms and it was dead. We boxed it up and sent it all to Nick Williams. We got it back over a week later, still broken but with a note that the jumper harness it came with is pinned wrong. Not re-pinned or with a note how to fix it, just that it was pinned wrong. Nice!



It arrived back from at 5 pm one Thursday, after Brad had already left, but Stephen and I were still here at the shop. So we checked the wiring on my C6 LS2 engine harness (see above left) and sure enough, this jumper harness was just made wrong. Again, it came with the throttle body, and was supposed to be wired to GM color coded protocols. Two wires were swapped, but once we found the problem I tried to de-pin and re-pin this myself, but my close up vision is shot with my contacts in. Stephen was able to see things clearer and got this harness re-pinned that night - on June 2nd.



The next day Brad re-checked the Ohms of both TPS circuits and found that this was working now - Gah! Two weeks burned for another wiring harness problem! Brad cleaned up the jumper harness with proper wire sleeve and heat shrink at both ends, then we got ready to install that onto the otherwise completed intake setup.



On Friday, June 3rd we had the NW harness re-pinned, connected, and the Holley EFI would finally register both TPS circuits and allow us to perform the "TPS Autoset". And as soon as I heard that throttle blade "thunk" I knew we had a working throttle. WOO! This was a breakthrough after another couple of weeks of massive frustration and delay. It would soon be time to crank it!

OIL SYSTEM PLUMBING

Earlier I showed some of the new oil line plumbing work, namely the crankcase venting from the valve cover to the oil sump tank and then from there to the catch can. But there were also lines from the LS7 pan to and from the dry sump tank, and changes to the lines from the oil pan to the thermostatic bypass/remote oil filter housing. Much of this happened when the intake manifold was being built, or during another stage where we were waiting for someone else to complete work.



Let's start back at the end of the 6.3L engine era, where we pulled the Accusump - we're going to a dry sump, so why would we need that?? (ha! we would later add this back in August 2023, but that's a whole other story for next time). The dry sump tank itself has 4 ports, 3 of which we utilized.



At the left side of the LS7 oil pan we purchased and installed this Setrab oil filter adapter (above left) and added a port for another oil temp sensor. On the right side of the pan we utilized a Peterson adapter manifold, which goes to the 2-bolt LS7 oil pan outlet to two AN-12 fittings. Brad built the "in / out" lines from the dry sump tank with -12 AN Fragola 3000 series hoses.



Finding the markings for what port is what on the LS7 pan proved difficult, so once we verified that we marked them on the pan for reference - in the picture above left, the port marked "IN" is coming from the bottom of the dry sump tank to the suction side of the pressure stage pump - hopefully with a big head of oil that has settled to liquid. The forward port on the pan marked "OUT" goes from the scavenge pump's outlet out to the top inlet at the dry sump tank, where the possibly foamed oil settles down through the screens in the tank to become liquid again.

NOTE: We later upsized the "IN" hose from the bottom of the settling tank to a -16 AN (see above right), which I will describe in a later post. Yes, even with only a -12 hole at the oil pan, going up to this larger -16 AN line STILL HELPS FLOW and should be the standard for the "feed" line to the pressure stage pump for any external dry sump system on a V8 engine. PLEASE OVERSIZE YOUR OIL FEED LINES.



The external oil lines were all -12 AN at this point, and everything was far enough away from exhaust heat to not be a worry, as you can see - except for the Setrab filter adapter itself, visible above left, which was near one header primary.



Brad pointed out how close we were getting with this I agreed that a heat shield here would be a good idea. He built this from a scrap piece of a stainless steel sheet and covered the "hot side" with DEI gold foil reflective covering, to keep radiated heat away from this area. The oil temp sensor wire that was added to that upper port was wrapped in thermal tape and routed behind this shield, too.



Last thing I will show in this section is one of the reasons why we bought this Peterson dry sump oil settling tank - it has an actual dipstick! THIS IS INCREDIBLY RARE in the aftermarket dry sump oil tank world (we have had to make dipsticks for both ARE and Aviad tanks), which is sort of baffling. The availability of an actual dipstick and measuring procedure was a big plus! I wanted to NEVER lose the dipstick (it happens on dry sump cars!) so Brad made this dipstick holder, located near the tank.



The way to check the level is to get the car running and the oil warmed up, then either at idle speed (1000 rpm at this point) or running at 3000 rpm (some discrepancy here), you stab the dipstick into the small hole in the upper screen in the tank, until the handle bottoms out on the filler neck flange (see above). You can make a mark "between 2/3 to 3/4 full" and run it there. Again, this is FAR from an exact science, but it is this way with all dry sump systems. There is NO clear guideline on the perfect level among any brand of aftermarket dry dump tank.



How much oil do we need to run in our dry sump tank? We started at 10 liters of oil filled through the tank, then run through the engine and cooler. After issues on track we ended up with 16 liters of oil - in a 3 gallon tank!

Obviously that is more than 3 gallons, but there is more oil in the cooler, filter, pan, hoses and elsewhere. We used advice of "keep adding oil until it starts to puke from the breather line, then you are full". Well we haven't found that yet, but we're running out of dipstick length. We added a mechanical oil pressure gauge above for "first fire", to verify the new sensors we added to the Holley (which hadn't been programmed yet).

FIRST FIRE OF HPR454, MORE HOLLEY DASH AND TUNE ISSUES

By now its June 5th and I'm really trying to get the engine started, then to the dyno, then track tested, and ready for an SCCA TT event June 17th and an Apex Time Attack on June 24th. Neither of those events happened in this car, of course, because of problems we encountered that were traced back to other issues. I will explore more of those items in the next post, which took a while to resolve after we got the car on track.



First step was getting the new tune loaded, after we fixed the Nick Williams throttle body issue. Once we had a working throttle body we loaded the new start up tune Jon sent and tried to get the dash to work, so we could monitor oil pressure during priming. It wasn't playing nice.



We made a series of videos to document our frustrations and to send to our tuner for help. The Holley dash was rebooting constantly while trying to crank the engine - with the coils and fuel pump disconnected - to build oil pressure. When voltage dropps below 10.0 volts cranking, the Holley dash would not only reboot, the "tune" in the ECU would just go away - we would then have to resync the laptop with the Holley software / tune to the Holley ECU, then re-run the TPS Autoset, or it would NEVER start. It would pop up errors to "Run TPS Autoset before starting".

It kept doing this dash reboot / TPS issue until we would top off the battery overnight. Much later we chased down this to a bad battery (a nearly brand new Optima yellow top) AND an intermittent short in one of the Holley supplied CAN cables. This was found many weeks later, after much frustration and cursing and pulling my hair out at various events where the engine wouldn't start.



Eventually, after all of this cranking, we did get an oil pressure prime - and then our first oil leak from the Katech valve covers. We talked to HPR and they suggested to switch over to some Yella Terra YT5132 extra wide gaskets, which they had in stock down the road from us. That has been leak free ever since.



On June 6th, after a few tweaks to the start-up tune, we got it to crank and fire - as shown in the video linked above. Throttle response was all wrong (it was setup for the 103mm) but it was running well enough to idle, build temps / pressures, and test some things before going to the dyno. But we still needed to fix a few things before my first drive with the HPR454 engine.

MORE TEDIOUS REPAIRS BEFORE DYNO TUNING

As the engine was getting fire up we noticed a few leaks and things that needed to be addressed. Another rear axle CV boot was leaking grease, which had happened with the 6.3L engine and we didn't catch it. How? The spring was touching the CV booth - and this is something we literally machine custom MCS parts to avoid!



I ordered yet another pair of GT350 rear axles, as this is still the most cost effective fix for a bad boot (read my 2018 GT build thread to see why a "boot kit" repair isn't feasible). We tracked it down to a mis-match of parts that a former technician missed, but once the shock was removed I saw it immediately - we then swapped in our correct "super offset" lower T-bars on the right rear. No more interference.



While that axle was out Brad noted some fluid coming out of the inner axle shaft, at the seal on the axle housing itself. Looks like it was nicked the last time a tech installed the axle on that side. This $8 seal was delivered from the Ford house on June 9th and Brad got that installed, with the axle was out.



With the axle seal fixed on the housing, the new GT350 (with an intact CV boot) was installed and the nut torqued at the rear hub. It was getting close driveable now, but since we would go from here to the tuner right to the track to test, I wanted to make sure we had some other aspects updated.



We swapped the 190F thermostat for this 180F unit a week earlier, then all of the stem vent lines were purged and the system topped off with a vacuum fill.



Our last performance / reliability upgrade before dyno tuning was adding our production S550 brake cooling deflectors. I didn't want to run the PP1 undertray at this point, as we wanted to see ANY leaks from the new engine and so many changes in plumbing, so there were no splitter ramps to feed these deflectors. I wasn't too worried - I didn't plan to run more than a few laps after dyno tuning, and these will still scoop some turbulent under-car airflow and shove that towards the brakes.



A silly nod to vanity - the "6.2L" badging on the sides had to go. I had ordered up a few options (above left) and went with the boomer style "454" badges. Easy fix to denote the new larger engine change.



Here we are on June 8th, the Mustang has a new heart transplant, and is running and leak free. It seems to be running well enough for a start-up tune, so we do another weight check - and the 3362 pound is about where we were before, now with 1/2 a tank of fuel. Brad had reinstalled the nose and the car was ready to drive.



We ran the engine for about 10 minutes at idle to make sure cooling fan worked, the Improved Racing bypass thermostat opened and circulated oil in the oil cooler, and to clean up a few loose ends. It was running well and ready for a test drive...


At this point it is Friday June 9th and I was ready to test drive the car with the new engine - and it was a complete DOG on my first drive. The throttle response was terrible, but even when that came in, the engine felt like it had 80 hp. Would not even turn over the rear tires in anger. I shortened the test drive and loaded this car into my trailer, right after I parked it next to Joe's 2010 Mustang GT, which we had just wrapped up. That also went out to MSR Cresson a couple of weeks later, and I ended up driving them both on track the same day, back to back.



The black S550 went to my new garage out at MSR Cresson on June 10th, where it would sit in my garage there for a couple of weeks while it was initially tuned, plug wires were built for it (twice), then tuned further.

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HOW ARE WE STILL FIGHTING CUSTOM SPARK PLUG WIRES??

The car sat in my MSR garage for a number of days while tuner Jon was busy with other projects. He got the throttle mapping cleaned up for the 112mm pretty quickly (below right video), and that made the engine much more responsive. But when he drove the car, it was still a total dog. Barely running, but it idled great. We all scratched our heads and wondered WTF could be wrong? It was firing on all 8 cylinders during our First Fire tests at idle - I checked the header primary temps myself.



This was the same set of plug wires we built and verified with the 6.3L engine to 430 hp before it died, but Jon insisted that the wires were the culprit. Maybe they were damaged somehow during the engine swap? It would be my luck. On June 14th I bought the first set of MSD's 8.5mm "build your own" LS plug wire sets and shipped it to him.



Jon built a new set of wires based on the lengths we utilized for our remote coil wires. Then when one got buggered up, a second kit was ordered, then he got all 8 cylinders firing under load. Pulled the plugs to show the proof and sure enough, the MSD plug wires did it. I ran 100X better. WEIRD!



The two videos above had me jumping for joy! The engine was idling cleaner and "hitting harder", and after a little bit of tuning he had the 454 laying stripes of rubber on the MSR paddock. WOOO!!!! I told him to "MURDER THOSE TIRES!" It was finally time for dyno tuning, June 22nd.

PAINFUL LESSON LEARNED: Avoid custom plug wires on LS engines, but if you insist on unusual coil placement and custom wires, use this MSD plug wire kit shown above. We had continuous problems with the Taylor and ICT plug wire kits along the way, costing us 4+ weeks of delays and mountains of frustration.

3RD DYNO SESSION - JUNE 27, 2023

On June 27th Jon got the 454 engine dyno tuned for the first time, but it burned pretty much an entire day. Swapped plugs once to verify that they were not fowled, and some more time was spent with the intake tube we built. He did the initial tune on his old Hub dyno and finished up on the Dynojet 248 wheel dyno.



He struggled with some of the aspects of the Holley, but mostly it was the numbers, which were simply NOT what we expected, so he kept at it. We chatted with him and the HPR folks during the dyno tuning day, and he finally bypassed our 4.5" cold air inlet with this bell mouth inlet and corrugated hose setup, which was straighter and had less MAP drop over a pull - barely.



On both dynos it made 627 whp and 525 wtq on 93 octane fuel. These numbers were far below what we had expected - given the specs of the heads / cam / and the insane amount of work we spent on making this BTR intake and 112mm throttle body come together. Compared to a similar HPR 468" he had tuned before on the same hub dyno (Meeker M3, which made 686 whp) it was down about 60 from that MSD intake / 103mm TB equipped car.

Peak power was made between 6850 and 7100 rpm, depending on the run. Temps were just awful in the dyno cell - 105F degrees - and the correction factors can only fix the air so much. But still, this was frustrating AF. I'm still searching for the missing 60 whp on this thing.

TRACK TEST #1 - MSR, JUNE 29, 2023

As disappointed as I was in the ultimate power numbers, I was excited to finally come drive the car on track. I loaded up Joe's blue 2010 Mustang GT and hauled out to MSR Cresson on an early Thursday morning member day.



I got out there by 7:30 am, unloaded the blue 2020 Mustang, then went to pick up the 2015 Mustang from the shop at the track where Jon tuned it. I drove over to the Sunoco station and filled up #Trigger with some 94 octane fuel - enough to make sure I could make enough laps to matter without fuel starve. I can fill the tank now without spillage, yay.



My goal was to just get initial test laps - not FAST laps - in both Joe's 2010 Mustang Gen2 swapped widebody S197 and my 2015 Mustang LS454 on this balmy June Thursday. I took two sessions in #Trigger and one in Joe's Mustang, just checking things for rub, weird noises, smells, temperatures, etc. These were first laps ever in either build, so I came in and jacked up both cars after driving, looking for any issues. I was by myself, so I had nobody there to help check temps / take pics / support in the hot pits, so it slowed things down a bit.

I took it very easy in both cars. This member day they were running the 1.7 mi course "backwards" (1.7 CW), so the lap times would be meaningless to our normal 1.7 CCW test times. There were also some serious race teams out there, so I just stayed out of their way and made "installation laps" in both cars. Took a lap, came in, got out and checked temps and pressures, went out a little faster, came in to for checks, etc.



I had to get my laps in early, otherwise I'd get overheated and the temps that day got into the 105F range. I took all 3 of my sessions in both cars in the early morning hours, before 11:00 am. I had a cool suit with ice in Joe's S197 and used that, but we had yet to install the chiller in the S550 - and I have to wear full driving suit on these member days. It got hot a muggy fast!



During the 4 hours that I was on site, Jon ran over and made some quick tuning changes to the Holley EFI tune on the Mustang. Once I took some laps the 5 year old Bridgestone's finally chewed through the outer "crust" they had built up, but my best lap in the #LS550 was still with me starting on pit lane, ha! More importantly neither car had any issues and neither leaked a SINGLE drop of fluid. That was amazing for two brand new builds, both of which had diverged so far from stock.



I almost didn't even post this video, but its kind of funny. It shows a number of things - the weird "tuning glitch" where the engine shuts off (more on this later), but the video camera slips and ruins the video halfway through, then I had a spin - my first in ages (the engine shutting off mid-corner will do that). I kept it on track, and nobody else was driving at the moment so it didn't slow anyone down. But the forward acceleration was brutal, the ABS brakes worked (there was some question! more on that later also), but the throttle response on and off was VIOLENT.



Jon worked on the throttle response a couple of times and pulled logs to check the oil pressure issue, which we fought for another 2 months after this point. But the handling was great, as expected since this was the same MCS RR2 setup we pulled off my red 2018 GT in 2019. I drove #Trigger back into the trailer unbroken. Also drove Joe's 2010 into my garage out there without issue - that thing is a GRIP MONSTER with the 335/345mm Hoosiers and big aero.



This was our very first test of an S197 ABS swap onto any car with just the junkyard sourced ABS brick from a 2011-14 GT - not using the Ford Racing computer - which was a big deal, even with modest 1.12g stops on these crappy tires (compared with the modest 1.21g avg peak lateral grip, this was a win). And the forward acceleration of .58g in 3rd gear was pretty monstrous, so that made me pretty happy - when the engine didn't shut off after left hand turns. So this was a relatively successful "quick test" for both cars. I was back at Vorshlag by 1:30 pm, exhausted but ready to dig into the next round of fixes.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Yikes, that was all pretty negative and a downer - but that was the first half of 2023 for me with this car. This grew into a 5 part post, getting us from late January through the end of June. I will stop here, as some of you might not have the endurance to read a longer post. As I write this we have completed 5 more events in Trigger, and two of those 5 events were wins, so it does get better as we go. No other disasters - yet!



We really got busy with fixes and upgrades over the 8 weeks that followed this late June track test #1, including: a change of the intake manifold and throttle body and retuned the car for MUCH better drivability, made oil system changes, changed the entire front end (fenders and nose), changed to GT500 spindles, upgraded to Hoosiers on 18x11s, then went a new front end, then to 18x12" wheels with 315mm A052 tires, added a driver chiller, tie down hooks, changed batteries, added cameras, swapped ABS computers, and more.



We also added some "minor aero upgrades" - I will cover that next time.



I better stop here before my fingers fall off from typing. I likely have over 30 hours tied up in writing this update, not including all of the videos and pictures and edits it took to get here. So much more to share and lessons to impart - learn from my mistakes!

Until next time,

Terry @ Vorshlag

 

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Project TRIGGER Update for January 17, 2024: I started writing this post in January 2024, after wrapping up the first post covering the first 4 track events in our S650 Mustang Darkhorse. We've been testing with both cars extensively through late 2023, and the craziest thing is - in November the Darkhorse ran quicker at the same track that Trigger ran there in August, at a Time Trial event I won in the 2015! Luckily Trigger has dropped FOUR seconds there after we fixed a bunch of issues... both cars are fast, and Trigger is now STUPID FAST. It is the fastest car on a road course I've ever driven or owned, by far.



On my last update on the Trigger project back in September we only got through the 454" LS7 install and FIRST track test (June 29th, 2023), which was pretty much an unmitigated disaster. We have made MASSIVE improvements since that first track test in late June - and we have run TWELVE additional track events (one autocross) in the car, and it got faster each time. This round of updates only covers the Trigger project work through August, 2023.



The improvements to this car were hard fought, and this Forum Entry shows a lot of what we had to do to overcome some bad advice, poor product quality control, wacky software issues, and more. Some of the work shown above is from after August, when we had some major breakthroughs in September and early October. THAT is when the performance got ridiculous, and I will cover that next time.



Trigger has since dominated every Time Attack we have run it at since October, knocking down class wins and overall "FTDs" (Fastest Time of Day) on 200TW street tires. The change in this car's performance from June (below left) to December (below right) was nothing short of miraculous, but we had help from a number of key players. Again, this update only covers the work through the end of August 2023, but we're not going to stop sharing this tech!



After the end of the 2023 TT season took the car to a new shop who added a Haltech EFI, tapped into the S197 ABS unit, and managed to add Motorsports Traction Control. I'm excited to see how this car performs in 2024, but for now strap in for a massive five part forum update to catch up with the MAJOR strides that Trigger has seen in 2023!

POST TRACK TEST UPDATES + MACH I FRONT SPINDLE UPGRADE

This part picks up one day after my June 29th test, on Friday June 30th. The day after this first track test I unloaded Trigger, but after only a few laps I knew something wasn't right. At this point we were not sure of what was holding up the car, but I had already entered Trigger for an HPDE event on July 5th, along with Koenig's Silver 2002 C5 Corvette (after a big round of updates) and McCall's 2004 CTS-V - that cars first laps ever after major rework at the shop in 2020-21 (see below).



I needed to get more laps and try a few more things to nail down what the engine "rev limiter" trigger really was. I also wanted to ditch the FIVE year old RE71R tires for some better preserved FOUR year old Hoosier R7s. I also needed to be at this event with my two customers' cars going (for their first laps after major work at Vorshlag) + a bunch of college racing buddies coming for a Texas A&M Sport Car Club reunion. We were taking Trigger at all costs!



So the Mustang came into the shop that Friday and went up on the lift for a thorough inspection after its first ever laps. Since the car had been at the tuner for nearly a month we had accumulated a number of parts that we had planned to upgrade on various systems as well.



The only fluid leak we could find was VERY minor, and frustratingly it was something we had replaced a month earlier. The axle seal was nicked when the axles were swapped out for fresh GT350 units, just more bad luck. Oh well, that was fixed and 6 months later now we have not seen a drop or other issues with anything relating to the axles, CV boots, or these seals.



Next up was an upgrade to the 2022 Mustang Mach I spindles. There is updated steering geometry buried within these spindles, adapted from the late 2020 GT350R and 2020-22 GT500 (the 2024 Darkhorse has similar spindles). These uprights use a very different front wheel bearing which is held in with 4 bolts vs the single nut torqued to 250 ft-lbs like the other S550 spindles. We installed 4" long MSI brand "GT4" wheel studs at the same time, as part of a planned 18x12" Apex wheel and tire upgrade coming later.



When Brad was installing the new spindles I took the time to mark the movement that we always dial in between the spindle and strut. The MCS damper has a significant slot in the upper hole which can be utilized to add 2-3 deg of negative camber - but it comes at the loss of inboard wheel room. If you can balance this correctly this slotted hole adjustment + camber plates can make for two reliable camber adjustments.

This slot trick just takes a LOT of time to dial in right, but it always has to be done. I've got a video I need to finish when we did this adjustment on the 2024 Darkhorse as MCS RR3 coilovers went on that - check it on YouTube soon.



With the spindles swapped we didn't have time for a full blown "Laser" alignment so Brad got the camber dialed in to -4.3 up front again and set the toe to zero.



We had an inkling that the issue I saw in my handful of laps from June 29th was low oil pressure triggering a tuning "safety" that was putting the car on a rev limiter (below 30 psi above 3000 rpm). All of the existing oil was sucked out of the tank (it is impossible to drain from the bottom without removing it) and the rest drained from the LS7 pan. Why change it now? At this point the brand new engine had made a LOT of dyno pulls, gone through various start up tests and test drives, and a handful of laps on track. A sample of the Motul5W50 was saved and that plus another sample was later sent to Lake Speed Jr for analysis.



Brad took the oil filter apart and we inspected the pleats, as did our engine builder Erik Koenig. We saw nothing alarming. This time we added 12 liters of oil to the dry sump tank, plus whatever was still in the oil cooler and lines. We were hoping that the low oil pressure issue was maybe not enough oil filled in the tank? The Peterson folks make an oil level dipstick and we followed their procedure for checking level, but there's no concrete answer as to what level that should be. We're going by the age old advice for dry sump tanks: "Fill the tank gradually until it starts to puke oil on track - that's the right limit!"



Brad removed the headers to add some DEI heat shield above the collectors, which my feet appreciated. This stuff is great - adhesive on one side, filled with a fiberglass insulation in the middle, and a dimpled aluminum outer later that acts as a reflective shield.



Another much needed upgrade in this Texas summer heat was this dfusermotorsports.com driver cooling system. Unlike to the ice water driver cooling systems we have utilized in the past, this one makes its own cold water from a closed system using a miniature air conditioner. Brad made a very fancy bracket assembly to bolt this into the back seat area. Later on we ducted fresh air from the side window, per company owner Bill Agha's suggestions.



This unit was just free standing in the rear, pumping out heat back into the cabin, but cold water into my cool suit vest. This unit had a remote display and controller, which was mounted within reach of the driver in a spot we had saved just for this purpose. I can turn it on/off, adjust water temp, and see water temp readouts and any trouble codes on that LCD screen.



I briefly talked about the rear tie-down changes at the end of the last post. Why? Because I had stupidly used these oval holes in the rear frame rail to strap the car down once (above left) and it ripped one side pretty good. Strapping through the wheels is CRINGE, using the optional Ford Performance tie down points in front of the rear wheels is a huge hassle (above right) and at the end of the day - I'm lazy.



We looked at the rear of the subframe and found a spot that looked sturdy. Jason drew up a design and Austin CNC plasma cut them. These unique rear strap anchor points tie-down hooks bolt to the rear subframe right under the rear swaybar brackets (which actually fixes some closeness of the swaybar to the rear coilover springs). These wouldn't really work on a car with stock muffler locations, but it works on Trigger! SUPER easy to reach under and latch to, well, at least until we have a rear diffuser.



With the car now making "not embarrassing" power levels the HPR and Vorshlag decals went on the hood. The folks at TrackDecals sent us some 2023 season Apex Lap Attack decals with the "454" displacement number as the cars new entry number. These replaced the recycled "54" number boards I had on the doors.



It was time to install the Sony HDR 1080P camera on a RAM mount on the center dash panel, as well as the AiM SOLO mount - just like we had on the 2018 GT. We had an AiM GPS sensor on there already but of course it was not connected to the Holley dash. These 1" RAM ball mount bases and arms mounts hold the devices well, and this panel is easy to remove and replace on any S550.



The last upgrade done in this hectic 2 week period was the installation of these MOMO 18x11" wheels and 315/30R18 Hoosier R7s. These were leftover from 2019, when we last used them on the 2018 GT. The hope is that these tires would scrub-in and have some life left (they were stored in climate controlled shop those 4 years). These were not our long term wheel upgrade, just something that had more life than the 5 year old Bridgestones. I loaded the car up to try more laps at ECR...

DRIVERS EDGE HPDE AT ECR 2.7 CW + TAMSCC REUNION, JULY 8, 2023

This was an event that was thrown into my orbit a few weeks earlier, and it was a reunion for a lot of college racing buddies. I had two customers with cars we had worked on debuting their new setups here, too. It was sort of a rushed day, with another buddy's birthday party at 5pm that we had to leave a bit early to make. I like the folks at Drivers Edge but had not run with them in years.



Since I wasn't "known" within this group, I got stuck in what I felt was the "wrong group". This group was the TAMSCC group for that day, and there were a lot of old dudes going VERY slowly. Our first session was parade laps without helmets, FFS. The second session was just painfully slow with a lot of passes.



In the 3rd run group I got moved to their faster "Pink" run group, and the traffic was less painful. The video above isn't filled with fast, impressive laps. It shows two very frustrating, problem filled laps. At this point we had figured out it was oil pressure related - the "stutter" after left hand turns was worse then ever before. Both laps above were 2:06 on the 2.7 mile CW course before I threw in the towel. These laps were SLOW and I was beyond frustrated with the issue.



I was able to look at the oil pressure readout on the craptastic Holley digital dash several times this day and see it dip into the low 30 psi range after left handers, which would cause the tuning safety protocol to pull power and essentially put it on a rev limiter. Between every session I was adding more oil and more oil to the 3 gallon dry sump tank, texting the engine builder continuously. Ending the day I had added + 4 liters from our fill at the shop, to 16 liters plus whatever was in the coolers and lines! At least in this hot July heat I had my cool suit working, so I didn't "lose my cool".



We got some good pics of the various Vorshlag cars, and for as badly as Trigger was doing, Koenig's C5 was taking the laps like a champ - with two drivers! They put TANKS of fuel through that Corvette and the brakes, cooling, and new clutch all worked perfectly. McCall's CTS-V (below) had one or two small "triggers" on track, also likely oil pressure related - tuned by the same tuner with the same safety protocol in the software.

The lateral g (1.5) for these two 2:06 laps were better than our test laps on the RE71R tires, as were the braking (1.25) or forward (.55) g numbers, but still not what I had hoped for. As you will see we found more grip later in the season with some changes to the brakes (Ford Racing ABS computer) and fresher set of A052 Yokohama 200TW tires.

THE SMOKING GUN - LOW OIL PRESSURE / TUNING TRIGGER

So the point of going to this event was to gather more data, but the Holley is simply TERRIBLE for syncing data to video - I've never been able to make it work, as there is no GPS data or time sync. See, the Holley EFI loses clock time every time you power off the battery disconnect, so I simply cannot sync data to any video.

I cannot emphasize this enough - DO NOT use Holley EFI if you are road racing and want to analyze your data. Holley EFI can ONLY communicate with Holley digital dashes, and their GPS sync ability can be compromised, which turns your data into one big jumbled, useless mess.

With the help of our tuner he was able to SHOW that the safety protocol he added was indeed triggering the "engine limiter" due to low oil pressure, which I felt after virtually every left hand turn. Since we had the Katech Red LS7 style 2 stage pump, and a 3 gallon external oil tank, we were looking elsewhere for the cause. How many thousands of C6 Z06 drivers have driven on track and had this issue, and I'm not aware of it? We weren't exactly making HUGE grip on the crusty old RE71R tires and it was seeing sub-30 psi above 3000 rpm - maybe C6Z owners just don't know?



This low oil pressure issue would continue to cause us major grief for the next FIVE track outings, which included two SCCA Time Trials, an SCCA autocross, and two dedicated track tests. The various changes, fixes, and upgrades we tried ended up being a complete waste of time, but I wanted to test these potential "Fixes" before we went straight to an external dry sump system. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE - DON'T SHORT CUT A REAL DRY SUMP SYSTEM!

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BATTERY + HOLLEY WIRING PROBLEMS

As if the oil pressure issue wasn't enough of a headache, we also had major problems with a new Optima battery and the entire Holley EFI and digital dash systems. We worked on all of these issues for months before finally figuring out what needed to change and why.



One of the major Holley issues we found right after this ECR test was how S-L-O-W the data comes off the Holley Dominator. Our tuner had the data rate for sensors jacked up to 100Hz for some sensors, which didn't help, and the logging would easily "max out" the data files every time we started and ran the engine for more than a few seconds. For that ECR weekend where I made a handful of laps in 3 sessions it took TWO AND A HALF HOURS to download the data via the wired port. Never seen anything like this, even since the days of dial-up internet.



Plus, without a time stamp or GPS sync, the data was just all a jumbled, near useless mess. We had no way to sync this data to actual track driving, because all of the data files look essentially the same - a max file sized jumble of numbers. So we went and bought this Holley GPS upgrade, and also a 3.5" Holley dash. I will try to explain why I tried "throwing good money after bad".



The Optima yellow top battery was struggling - as were the 8 other Optima batteries in various shop cars and trucks at the time. We had a Cartek remote battery kill that would shut off ALL potential battery drains when the car was shut off, so this was a bit of a head scratcher. But as you can see in the video below, when voltage would dip under 10.0 volts during cranking of the engine, the Holly dash would reset - or worse.



This became a regular issue at events, every time we went for a test drive, or even loaded the Mustang into the trailer. We kept that damn Optima on a battery tender and it would still just lose voltage, but even with "90% capacity" it would often dip under 10 volts. Then the dash would reboot, and often the tune would disappear...



I'm not joking - I have the receipts, and it did this "lost the tune" issue over 50 times over a 2 month period (and this happened on TWO OTHER cars with Holley EFI). Even after we had topped up the battery, if it had this fault the car would not start, ever. Not until you reloaded/resync'd the tune and re-ran TPS Autoset via a laptop. This meant I could never take this car ANYWHERE without a laptop and a battery jump box. It happened at the alignment shop, it happened at the dyno, and it happened at the track more times than I can count.



Nothing frustrated me more all season than the miserable experience I had with Holley EFI. Not the crappy battery issues, the frustrating oil pressure triggers, or other teething pains we had. THIS WAS IT - Holley EFI. The dash was "stuck" with the factory installed screen layouts and variables, and we could make no updates.



I ordered the Holley 3.5" dash, as that has an SD card slot and touch screen so you can reload the tune / TPS Autoset wizard right there. But no... the Holley Dominator was on V6 of their software, the 7" Holley dash was on V4 and the 3.5" Holley dash was on V5. And NOBODY ON PLANET EARTH could get the damn firmware flash to upgrade either Holley dash to the newer software version to work. We had FIVE different tuners try to fix this, spent hours on the phone with Holley "Support", and even mailed them off for weeks. NOPE, never could fix this.



The 7" and 3.5" dashes were both "stuck" with the factory installed screen layouts and variables, and we could make no updates to either. We kept losing the main 7" display on track for extended lengths of time, too.

Holley EFI has some major hardware, firmware, and support issues at all levels. This issues on this car are not unique, and it has been seen by the highest levels at Holley. Six months later they still don't have a fix but they "are working on it"!

ANDERSON "GT500" FRONT END UPGRADE

We had ONE week between events, as the SCCA Time Trial schedule was marching along, and I was tired of borrowing cars or using Amy's BRZ in Max1 class to try to sock away 4th place points until Trigger was "ready". We had some upgrades planned and we moved on to those and hoped that adding more oil would help the triggering issue...



This 3 piece Anderson setup had been purchased earlier and I was anxious to get them on before tackling front and rear aero additions. We needed this to clear the wheels and tires this car needed for 200TW class competition.



The "Type-ST" nose was modeled after a spy shot of the 2020 GT500 that Anderson found in 2018, so while it LOOKS like the 2020-22 GT500 it shares none of the dimensions. Luckily they built it with wider fenders in mind, but not quite as wide as the actual GT500.



The 2018 Mustang GT nose and front fenders that I just had our painter spray gloss black now came off and on went the dull black fiberglass GT500 style nose and GT350 style fenders from Anderson. These were not lighter than the factory bits, but were chosen because the fenders were .75" wider per side - and we needed the room.



The tubular bumper beam was built to fit inside the turn signal openings for the 2018 GT front nose, but those were about 3/4" lower on the GT500 Anderson cover. Brad had to modify the mounts, move them down 3/4" and fit them to the new nose.

UPGRADE TO 18X12" APEX WHEELS

The new Anderson GT500 nose and 3/4" wider front fenders went on to clear these new 18x12" ET57 Apex forced "VS-5RS" wheels in anthracite grey - with a substantial spacer up front. This allows us to rotate wheels front to back since we are running the same 315/30R18 Yokohama A052 tire at both ends.



This is a significant upgrade from the 19x11 or 18x11" wheels and 305-315mm tires we had run on the 2018 GT, and earlier on Trigger here.



We ordered these wheels back in March, along with a set of tires, the MSI 4" front wheel studs, and the 30mm MMR spacer. It has been killing me to wait 4 more months to actually use these sticky tires and wider wheels, but I wasn't willing to trash the new tires on the dyno and we needed time to fit the front front end.



These forged 18x12" wheels came in at a light 19.7 pounds each, with a 1600 pound load rating. That is a tick on the lighter side, as some wheels we have spec'd were made to 1800 pound ratings - but 1600 load rating is pretty common for race wheels. At least Apex Wheels has a "50% replacement" policy - you bend or crack any wheel they make, they will replace it for 50% current retail pricing.



This 315/30R18 Yokohama Advan A052 tire is to be our main setup for Trigger for all 200TW classes. We have utilized this exact tire size/model in 3 cars now over 3 racing seasons, as well as 3 other sizes on 2 other cars. I can say this now with some confidence, until and if someone makes a faster tire that is wider in 200TW, we will stick with this. If someone makes a tire in a wider 335 or 345mm size AND its faster than the 315mm A052, we will change the bodywork to fit that. For now the A052 in 315mm still reigns supreme.



Back in April 2023 we test fit this wheel and tire package with the OEM 2018 Mustang fenders and GT nose. While we could make the rear fenders clear the 18x12's, these poked by 3/4" up front (see above). Which is what led us to the 3/4" wider Anderson Type ST fenders and nose.



We had hoped this 30mm hubcentric spacer would be enough, but we ended up adding another 3/8" worth of slip on spacers up front to make the wheels clear the strut bodies on the inside.



That makes for an "ugly stack" but the MSI wheel studs don't care. We've since run a dozen track events with this stack up front and had zero issues.



Out back it needed a couple of small spacers to work also, but that's OK. We altered and added to this rear spacer stack later in the season after seeing a tiny bit of rub. Of course we also relocated the rear emergency brake cable brackets, just like we did on the red 2018 GT, to gain more inboard wheel room. Brad also put some P-clamps on the remote reservoir hoses to make sure they never contact the inside shoulder of the tire.

ABS TEST 1 (RE71R TIRES)

During July of 2023 we ran 3 measured ABS tests with one change between each one. This short video below is for the first test, and is self-explanatory - it shows what we were testing, on what tires, and the results.



The braking with this S197 ABS with 100% junkyard sourced parts and REALLY crappy tires (5 year old RE71R!) was 1.14g peak stopping.



Good results, for the money spent, but I knew we can do better. Next up - a tire change, but NO change in the measured stopping power??

ABS TEST 2 (A052 TIRES)

Shortly after installing the fresh 315mm A052 tires we ran the above test one more time...



But look at this - we achieved the EXACT same peak g stop of 1.14g. So the tire excuse was no longer valid, as these were Fresh A052 200TW tires. Maybe we hit a programming limit within the OEM S197 ABS unit???



Time to change the program...

ABS TEST 3 (FORD RACING ECU)

At this point the Ford Racing M-2353-CA ABS computer was out of production (it has since gone back into production!) and we found one from a race team. Brad installed this in place of the junkyard 2011-14 GT computer, with no other changes. We re-ran a few days later on the exact same A052 tires and same test track in Mexico as Test #2.



Now this data was looking better, with a 1.27g peak stop from 70 mph (up from 1.14g). This test on a dirty Mexican street far exceeded the braking forces we EVER achieved on the 2006 C6 Corvette on a clean / hot track with the same 315mm A052 tires or even Hoosier R7s. The C6 had a much improved Mk60 ABS swapped in place of the OEM unit, and was also upgraded C6 Z06 brakes with GLOC R16/R12 or Hawk DTC-70 pads.



And the Mustang braking even got better on track with the Ford ABS brick, too! And with aero, even better (in December 2023 with these same tires and aero it logged 1.7g stops at the MSR 1.7 track!)

OTHER FIXES AFTER ECR TRACK EVENT

The HPDE event uncovered more issues that needed attention, and between the fender/nose change, the new wheels and tires, and ABS tests above the shop tackled all manner of upgrades. Let's cover them.



The 3.5" Holley dash arrived and Brad got to work making a nice bracket that put it within eye sight of the driver, and in a pinch I could use the touch screen in the hot pits (potentially to reload a tune). This was on the wrong firmware version, which nobody could ever update, so this was a paperweight for the entire 5 months it was installed into this car.



Our Petersen vented oil catch can was drained and a thimble full of oil came out. Brad opened it up to see if something was blocked, but nope - everything looked in order. We checked this after ever track event and noticed a little more oil after every track day, but never all that much.



Next up was a corded microphone mount for the Sony HDR video camera that was mounted on the dash near the windshield. After the first two events we noticed some wind noise, and I had used a remote mic on this same camera with major sound improvements in the 2018 Mustang, but it was some janky clamp setup that I had stuck on the E-brake handle. I wanted something more permanent, so Brad built a spacer to mount the 2-bolt 1" RAM ball mount where I felt it would be out of my way but nearer to the perfect spot for an in-car mic - near the shifter.



We used a short 4" RAM mount arm, another 1" RAM ball mount with a 1/4-20 threaded shaft and mounted the mic a wind sock "dead cat" cover there. This worked perfect all season, well until someone (likely me!) leaned on the mount and broke the cheesy plastic mic holder. I've since bought a better mic and holder but will use the same mounting spot.



Last up was a solution to a driving problem I had at the ECR HPDE - if you watch that terrible video you will see that I had trouble heel-toe downshifting, and kept missing the gas pedal or brake. Maybe the gas and brake pedals were too far apart? So Brad made this super nice gas pedal extension - after I ordered one from AMT for the wrong GM gas pedal.



He took a piece of scrap aluminum cut it to size, bent it to match the curved GM pedal we had in the car (CTS-V), attached some grip tape, and bolted it to the pedal. It looked GREAT but ended up making the situation worse - so we took it off after this next event. I kept hitting the gas AND brake at the same time with this pedal extension, and really it just took wearing the right driving shoes and some practice to get it right.



Well that was an extremely hectic week of work on Trigger between ECR events. It was time to get the car outside, clean it up, and the results were not displeasing. Time to load up for the car's first SCCA Time Trial - once again at ECR.

SCCA TT, ECR 2.7 CCW, JULY 15, 2023

After the handful of laps at MSR and the three brief sessions at ECR with Drivers Edge, it was time to throw our hat in the ring with SCCA Time Trials. The season was well underway and I desperately needed some points in Max1 class to hope to salvage a regional championship for the 2023 season.



We towed Amy's BRZ to ECR (78 miles away) with the '22 Maverick, which worked well enough (we've since started towing that car with her '24 Bronco) and I hauled Trigger in the big enclosed trailer. We got our paddock setup in a GREAT spot near the clubhouse. Stephen from Vorshlag joined Amy, me and Jon Miller (white BRZ in Amy's T3 class) for the day.

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I drove the Mustang in all 5 sessions, including a "sighting" session (that didn't count for times) where I took Jerry Cecco for a ride. In short, the day went pretty badly in Trigger. The engine was running great other than the oil pressure trigger.



Once I got tire pressures set I fought the gas pedal extension, and kept hitting brakes and gas at the same time. I would have removed the pedal extension except for the fact that we were fighting such bigger issues: changes to the tune, battery issues, Holley dash issues, adding ever more oil to the oil tank, and bugs. So many grasshoppers!



All of my best laps were pretty slow, netting a 2:03.1 lap before lunch. Stephen helped setup a remote login for tuner Jon during lunch and he reset the minimum oil pressure trigger from 38 psi to 30 psi.

The battery got a little low during the lengthy amount of time it took him to download logs and reset the tune. I should have charged the battery while we ate lunch but it was to hectic and hot, we needed a break inside some air conditioning - and I forgot. Our jump box we had at the time was a PoS and when it came time to fire up the car after lunch for more TT sessions it was a total train wreck. Once we located some jumper cables, then of course reload the tune and TPS Autoset, we were able to get the car to started - and I had missed TT "red" session #3, but they let me take laps in the "green" session at the front of the slower TT group.




I was afraid to shut it off, so I kept the engine running (hopefully charging the battery? Nope!) in grid for a solid 20 minutes, then went out and ran another 2:03.1 lap with the updated tune. I was driving terribly, fighting so many issues and frustrations. I kept hitting the brake and gas pedal at the same time, and messing up downshifts - this was driving me nuts! During the video I briefly go over all of the issues we fought that day, plus I call out when the Holley dash decides to reboot mid-lap. The oil pressure triggering was less than before, but still doing it on the latter half of the first lap and continuously during subsequent laps.



We had to reload the tune before the 4th session, and by now it was hot as hell 96F degrees and I was miserable. I needed to drop 0.2 sec to move from 3rd to 2nd in class, but couldn't do it - ran a 2:04 lap. After my last session it wouldn't start after Impound, so we pushed it to the trailer. This was one of my least enjoyable Time Trials ever.



Trigger scored a dismal 3rd place in class / 5th fastest overall. Amy did better in her BRZ and scored 2nd place in class and 19th out of 41 Time Trial entrants at this very hot July event.

OPTIMA BATTERY YEETED INTO OCEAN, ABS UPGRADE + OTHER FIXES

We once again had a busy week making changes to the newly built Trigger, with a number of fixes and upgrades happening before another track test was scheduled. First up - we replaced this hoopty battery!



We bought this Optima Yellow Top group 75/25 and made a special mounting tray for this battery because nobody else made a good mount for this "new" to Optima battery. We put this same Optima into several race cars, and all of those caused problems. This damn thing just won't hold a charge for more than about a day, so it has to live on the tender. After dying multiple times at that last ECR event, I was DONE with this brand. Something happened when the parent company was bought out before the pandemic, the plant moved, and every battery we have bought from them since has been problematic.



We have been replacing these expensive gel cell spiral wound AGM Optimas with good old wet cell lead acid batteries from O'Reilys parts stores, which have a 7 year warranty. This has fixed numerous issues in multiple race and street cars we pulled Optimas out of. The issue was that our special "Optima" specific group 75/25 tray has to be modified each time - and Brad tackled that here.

This was mounted into the trunk of Trigger on July 20th, 2023 and has had ZERO issues since. We can ignore the car for weeks, never putting it on a battery tender, and it just fires right up. No more sub-10 volt problems cranking, nothing. It just works.



Next up was the swap from the OEM 2011-14 Mustang ABS computer and replacing it with the M-2353-CA Ford Racing computer. This was done before ABS Test #3 (above) and it made an improvement on our street test and even on the next track test.



This swap is normally pretty painless but with how we have the S197 ABS brick mounted in the S550 here, it is of course a lot more work. Brad got the computer swapped then flushed and bled the brakes in preparation for the next track test at MSR.



Since the Holley dash seemed EXTRA special and super sensitive to drops in voltage (where it would reboot, slowly), it was time to make some improvements here. First, Brad took out the Holley supplied dash harness cable and found a ground short. Did I mention how much I loathe Holley wiring? The injector harness had two mis-wires on this car (which is how we had only 6 cylinders getting fuel in January '23) and now this. Good grief! Brad fixed that and laid out the battery isolator module we had ordered a week earlier - to keep flaky voltage from the battery from killing the power to the dash.




In essence, this large unit was a capacitor bank, that smoothed out short term voltage drops to the dash. This upgrade, the Holley cable fix, and replacement of the Optima battery solved the Holley dash reboot issues, which was progress. We haven't had a sub 10 Volt Holley "YEET the tune" issue since these changes, too. It can and will still happen if we let the battery get to low, but the new battery just hasn't failed us, not once.

We also measured the room to the hood and strut tower brace above the BTR Trinity intake, which along with the 112mm TB, makes the car impossible to drive smoothly.



We also had ordered some new "carpets" and I asked Brad to install that along with the A-pillar plastics. See, I was building this car to run in SCCA Time Trial "Max1" using an alternate ruleset from SCCA Solo CAM-C - which was allowed until a rules change in Dec '23. CAM-C allowed us to run a little more aero, a little less minimum weight, and had some other rules that were a bit more forgiving. So the drop-in carpet and A-pillar plastics made us more legal for CAM.



Last up I asked Brad to remove the beautiful gas pedal cover he made. I've since learned how to heel-toe this car and haven't hit both pedals at the same time since. I've also gotten used to the drop-in fabrics which are easy to remove to clean, and the dang things fit really well. Gotta get some D&E points for this if we ever run Optima, ha!

TRIGGER TRACK TEST #2 + BRZ TRACK TEST #6 - MSR, JULY 22, 2023

This was a rare, cool Saturday morning in Texas in July, and we towed both our 2015 Mustang #Trigger and Amy's 2023 BRZ out for more testing. MSR had a weekend member day, which was unusual, and only one week after the disastrous ECR Time Trial we actually had a pretty dang good test in both cars, setting new Personal Bests in each. I will only cover Trigger here in this thread.



The BRZ made 3 sessions and 5 total stints, with me knocking down a 1:22.5 and Amy a 1:24.5 - both new personal bests. I drove the Mustang and ran a 1:18.8 and a 1:19.1 in 2 of 3 stints, with no real issues - which itself is a win! Erik and Jerry joined us for the day, too.



The major trouble we kept running into here was the TERRIBLE throttle response with the 112mm throttle body. I was regretting the decision to not only use this LARGE throttle body but also the BTR Trinity intake, and ALL the work that entailed. If you watch the video linked below you can see how much time I'm losing trying to apply throttle in lower speed corners - and this is only a 3rd and 4th gear track. Second gear is completely unusable.



The video shows a big 4 wheels off after that 1:18.8 lap, where I pushed the braking zone into that first turn after the Start-Finish line a little too late. This was my one big "4 off" in Trigger for the season, and I managed to take a cone right into the nose.



Took about 15 laps over 3 stints in Trigger, and my two fast laps were hot lap 1 in each of the later stints, which about right for the A052 tires. The first handful of laps were always trouble free with respect to the oil pressure trigger, but laps 3 and beyond still suffered from some low pressure triggers in long left hand turns. Still, much better than it was before, and at this point we're running an obscene 16 liters of oil in the dry sump tank.



I was much happier with the performance of the car, and the overall reliability, after this test day. The oil pressure issues were still there but minimized. The battery issues were gone, and we never had to reload the tune or lost the dash function. Removing the throttle pedal extension worked and I got used to the pedal spacing. The biggest issue was still the VIOLENT throttle response, both tip in and throttle off... it was a handful!

SCCA AUTOCROSS LSP, JULY 23, 2023

Between Track Test #2 above and this autocross (which was the next day) we didn't unload Trigger from the trailer. I towed it out to Lone Star Park for an SCCA autocross, running in CAM-C class.



This was our first autocross in Trigger, and it was more than a bit of a handful. This throttle response issue was out of control, being that you are constantly in and out of throttle in these low speed events. Then magnify that with 2nd gear, which is just BRUTALIZING the rear tires. It didn't help that the course was super bumpy, and the temps were scorching Texas summer hot, too.



The video shows what I cannot find words to adequately describe - this 112mm throttle body was a TERRIBLE idea, and I'm already looking for a way to get into a whole new intake manifold and smaller TB. I ran the same mid 54 sec run in runs 2 (above) and run 3 (a tenth quicker), but was fully 3 seconds behind the CAM-S winner and FTD, ugh.



I felt like I barely won CAM-C, against a normal street car, but placed a dismal 16th in PAX and only 8th quickest time of the day. Not good, we have a lot to do to improve autocross results! (we did not run this car in an autocross again in 2023)

MORE REPAIRS, DRIVER COOLING UPGRADE, MUFFLER COVER AND NOSE REPAIR

The week after the Autocross we got busy with a customer's car and that car's first Track Test. After that was completed we had two weeks until the next SCCA Time Trial. We had some things to repair and a major upgrade to the intake manifold to tackle.



As soon as the car was on the lift for inspection Brad noticed some brake fluid seeping out of a rear brake caliper and it was CAKED with brake duct inside the brand new forged Apex wheel. Time for me to clean that wheel quickly!



I had recently discovered some new Armor All "heavy duty" wheel and tire cleaning foam. I rinsed the barrel and then laid on the foam, and let it do its work. This is one of those color changing foams and when it turned white, I scrubbed the wheel and rinsed the inside and out. I ended up cleaning all 4 wheels, but this one rear was the nastiest with the brake fluid leak.



I dried the wheel in question then flipped it over to inspect the inner spokes - that is where a modern aluminum wheel will show failures before they break in the form of micro-cracks. None here or on the other 3 wheels, and the brake fluid luckily didn't damage the glossy wheel finish, so that was a tragedy averted, ha.



With the wheels cleaned and inspected, this rebuilt rear S550 Mustang GT caliper was installed along with the G-LOC pads, and the old leaky caliper was sent back as the core. Maybe this was the source of some "unsure stops" at the track test, where I sent the car over the curbs after my fastest laps? Yep, we're gonna blame the caliper!



Next up was an upgrade to properly route cool air from outside the cabin into the driver cooling system from dfuser.com, which we mounted back in early July. See the unit was not pumping out water very cold once the cabin reached over 100F deg, and Bill from that company strongly suggested getting cool outside air routed to the unit's intake side, to keep from using already hot cabin air for the cooling. We found these double 3" inlet duct plastics and one of them fit perfectly between our 4-point roll bar and the B-pillar window. Brad pulled the inlet cover off the little air conditioner to see where to point the other ends of the hoses.



With the layout of the cooler now clear Brad mounted the second double 3" duct to the face plate of the cooler, then routed a pair of 3" dia Mishimoto flexible brake duct hoses from the inlet to the cooler.



This was a HUGE improvement in driver cooling system efficiency, which I would go on to use for the next few months of Time Trial events in hot weather. Nothing worse than being in a hot cabin with a 3 layer driving suit on in Texas summers!

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With the evidence clear that the rear caliper failure made me go four off and crater the cone at Track Test #2, it was time to fix the damage to the fiberglass front nose (see above left) - a fairly large crack in the lower splitter piece. We picked up a fiberglass repair kit with some woven glass fiber cloth, resin and hardener.



After sanding the area to give the resin something to "bite" into, Brad added the glass cloth on the inside and outside of this crack. When the resin setup and was sanded, it looked pretty damned good after the first application. "Good enough - paint it!"



With a couple of coats of SEM "Trim Black" paint it was a perfect match and a hidden repair. Nobody ever needs to know...



Last up in repairs this round was a cover for the giant Magnaflow mufflers in the trunk. At this point I held out hope we could fix ALL of the issues, get the car sorted and fast, and make it to the Oct 15th SCCA Time Trial Nationals event at NCM. After asking for some scrutiny, one of the SCCA TT board members told me that the open trunk might get tagged in Max 1.

We laid out plans to make an aluminum metal cover for the mufflers. Brad made this in two pieces, and started with the forward portion shown above - from a cardboard template. He left ample cut outs for all hose pass throughs, of course. We weren't looking for an air tight cover, just a best effort to close up this hole and prevent hot mufflers from getting touched directly by curious ding-dongs when the car was in Impound with the trunk open.



The rear section is this raised 3 sided box, made from a single sheet of aluminum from another cardboard template. This has flanges at the front and sides to attach to the rest of the trunk, with rivnuts and bolts connecting this piece in place.



The finished cover looks really good and we never had to remove this during the 2023 season after this was added in late July. But it could quickly be removed if we needed room for service. Probably should have installed this sooner but we have been knocking down problems at break neck pace.



We had OEM fender liners in place but they were not attached to an undertray, because... well we hadn't gotten around to installing that yet. See, on this radical of a new build we were always looking for leaks and other things that an undertray or splitter would hide. Luckily we never had any leaks, but the floppy fender liners had rubbed up against the front tires, unsupported at the bottom. Running without the undertray we had on hand was a mistake, and adds a LOT of drag. It also makes our brake cooling deflectors much less effective. We just... had so much to do between every outing!



The Anderson Type ST fenders came with these fiberglass "extensions" that filled the gap the 3/4" wider fenders needed, and now was the time to install those + add some aluminum supports for the fender liners, as we were still not ready to install an undertray or splitter just yet. At least with this bracing the OEM + Anderson fender liners wouldn't be flopping around and catching the tires.

"UPGRADE" TO MSD ATOMIC INTAKE + 103MM TB

Now this was planned for a number of weeks, but I was very hesitant to implement this because... well I hated to give up ALL of that hard work and potential power of the modified Trinity intake and 112mm throttle body. But damn, y'all this car was impossible to drive smoothly and quickly. We thought long and hard about any number of "short runner" yet taller intakes, like the FAST LSX HR, Holley High Ram, or any number of Hi-Rams with modified uppers. All of those would require cutting a LARGE hole in the carbon fiber hood, creating a visual impairment. We still might do this, but not if it means cutting the hood and looking over a giant mail box!



At this point we had to punt and go back to a "known good" intake and throttle body - the LS7 MSD and 103mm Nick Williams DBW throttle body. We knew it would give up SOME power, but we also had seen too many HPR built 454-468" LS7 engines with this intake make 630+ whp.



I had to identify what exact ID 1050 injectors we had in the car to be able to order the correct MSD fuel rails, as the rails we had on the Trinity were unique to that BTR intake. After identifying the right fuel rail kit that was ordered as well as the MSD Atomic LS7 plastic intake.



We had a 4.5" straight connector on the 112mm throttle body so I tracked down a 4.25" to 4.5" silicone adapter from HPS, to go to the new smaller 103mm TB and join the existing 4.5" cold air. With all of the parts ordered, Brad pulled the Trinity for the last time...



We have purchased a number of these MSD Atomics, and while I hate the way they look and it sucks to have to fix so many of their crappy manufacturing defects, I cannot ignore the simplicity and power these make. This is THE most powerful plastic intake on the market for LS7 heads, bar none. It wins every test when they are put up against any plastic OEM style "long runner" intake, and damn near all of the shorter runner intakes, too.



I ordered the correct fuel rails for this intake and our injectors, but the NW 103mm TB was out of stock at the only supplier, SDPC. Well we had a brand new one on the LS2 C6 - which was about to go for sale - and we stole that one for a few weeks until the supply came back online. That cathedral port LS2 had the best intake for THAT cylinder head style - the FAST 102 LSXR - which wins all of the intake test for cathedral port LS engines. Don't ask me why but it edges out the MSD Atomic for that port, but not the LS7 style port we have on Trigger's 454" engine.



I got the plain "black" unit and Brad got to work cleaning up all of the jagged plastics. NOTE: do not expect to install this in a day, oh no. You might spend several hours removing casting flash, sanding down imperfections, and even adding epoxy to get the base to seal correctly to the upper cover. We highly recommend that you SMOKE TEST this intake before you put it on your engine. We have learned this the hard way - these can leak air from a dozen different places.



So that was mocked up, and the fuel line changes were done, but we still had some work to do. I just... hate the way these intakes look, and the long 8.5" intake runners would definitely shift the peak power down from 7000 likely to 6400-6600, like these always do. Sure, it might gain some "area under the curve" (ie: mid range power), but damn - I almost don't WANT any more mid range power (in the autocross it would rev up to about 4500 rpm in 2nd gear and just blow the tires away easily).

Look how much wasted space above the top of the intake we have just to the strut brace? GRR... I know we can do better than this, but let's move along here and get this one running and re-tuned and dyno'd.

MORE TROUBLE WITH STEAM VENTING + "FITTING" THE MSD

We had the intake, fuel rails, and fuel plumbing wrapped up with the new MSD on August 1st, but it took fully a WEEK later to get all of the right pieces for the 4 corner steam vent system. The intake was not bolted down to the heads as we were waiting on the steam vent kit.



We fought putting together a real 4 port steam vent install on the LS2 in the C6 and this was no easier. The last MSD we did on a car was backwards and in a different chassis, so this kit made for this exact intake should work, right? Ha! Brad put it together per the instructions, as seen above right.



The "tower" that sits at the front of the driver's side head near cylinder 1 is really hard to configure right to clear the MSD, so Brad drilled and tapped the TOP of this cylinder. Then a 90 deg fitting went into that and the old hole was plugged. This allowed the two braided -3 AN lines to route back along the top of the Katech valve covers and under our fuel rails to get to the back two steam ports on the backs of each head. It was just packaging challenges, nothing new.



Next up was a considerable amount of work that needed to be done to make the intake actually fit this Brodix BR7-BS head. The original intake port gasket O-rings that came with the intake were ALL pinched from the get-go, so those were also replaced. The gaskets these come with are just trash.



Brad spent a couple of hours sanding down this lower edge on both sides to work with this cylinder head. Don't know why this needed to be done, but its just a common issue with the MSD. Lots of taping, sanding, vacuuming, cleaning, and test fitting.



Once the intake fit properly the bolts were finally installed and carefully torqued per MSD's instruction sequence. You can see the close-up of the final, modified steam vent tower above right. The old routing would not clear that corner on the intake - between that, the fuel rail and the valve cover, it gets tight.



The final exit for the steam vent tower goes to the same line on top of the radiator hose, as shown above right. Then it was time to top off the coolant system and let it run for a bit to warm up and open the thermostat.



This short video shows the engine running with the old tune on the new intake. It would need a complete re-tune with the new throttle body and intake.



The cooling system was pressure filled with this cap adapter and compressed air system. The existing 4.5" ID cold air system lined up easily with the new reducing coupler at the smaller throttle body - at least that went smoothly. That got us ready for the dyno time, but we had only two days until the next SCCA Time Trial and I needed a WIN. I was really down on points with borrowed cars.

DYNO TEST #4 - AUG 8, 2023

We only had about 4 days until the next SCCA Time Trial and all of the install and modifications to the MSD took longer than we had hoped. We had no time to schedule our normal tuner Jon, but luckily a former Vorshlag team member was now doing tuning work and was familiar with the Holley Dominator EFI. He met us at the Vorshlag shop on August 8th (or August 2nd, we have some record discrepancies) and we hauled the car to X-Factor Racing down the road in Princeton to use their DynoJet 224 chassis dyno.



It was staggeringly hot that day, with recorded temps between 97-104F deg in the dyno area. We worked through the heat and the cooling system on Trigger barely registered 195F after a dozen pulls. We ran into some issues with the inductive lead on the roller, but we made several 620 whp pulls in a row and quit adding timing and fuel when things dropped off.



Donnie tuned the car on the dyno then worked with me on driveability issues with a little back roads of Mexico street testing. The idle was still a bit lumpy but the throttle tip in and drop out no longer jerked the car around, so I was hopeful it would be easier to drive on track. I made this little video above after we got back to the shop.



We got this weight check August 10th, after the dyno tuning and the last of the task list and right before loading it into the trailer for the SCCA Time Trial Aug 12th at MSR Cresson.



Loaded up in the trailer, with the BRZ going on the open trailer behind the Maverick once again. This would the hottest race of 2023! Luckily both cars had functional driver cooling systems installed.

SCCA TT, MSR 1.7 CCW, AUG 12, 2023

This was our second SCCA Time Trial in Trigger, and I hoped it would go better than the 1st time - where I scored a dismal 3rd. If we had any prayer of winning Max1 for the season I HAD to score wins here and at every other event for the year. We towed two trucks again and were setup and ready with plenty of time before the TT meeting. Long day - we didn't leave until 4:30 pm when the truck's temp gauge showed 112F deg, phone showed 106F.



This was by far the hottest Time Trial I had ever done, and I did all 4 sessions - because I'm a masochist! After the first session (free for all, no times to grid by) I was gridded P2 for Session 2, behind Stan Whitney's 2020 GT500. We had both run a 1:19s, he had a 1:19.6 and I had a 1:19.8. We both ran 1:19.0's in session 2, with me just a hair quicker. Session 3 I ran that 1:18.9 and he had a 1:19.1. 4th session he went to grid - to dare me to go out, too! - and I ran a 1:19.1 to Stan's 1:20 - heat soak finally getting to the supercharged GT500. This was a crazy close battle all day!



Session 1 was 83F, Session 2 was 85F, then Session 3 was 95F, and Session 4 was 103F! My driver cooling system was low on fluid so it stopped working - I didn't realize that until later - we now have a "top off" procedure before every event. Also, instead of disconnecting my cool shirt vest every time I get in and out of the car, I leave it connected and put it on while seated (so it doesn't lose water at the quick connects each time). The throttle response was much better with the smaller 103mm TB but it was still VERY easy to lose rear grip in 3rd gear simply from acceleration. You can see a BIG tail slide drifty boi move at the end of this video...



That was my session 3 with one good hot lap and one junky, slidey lap. A very prepped GT3 RS 911 (somehow in Max3??) snuck ahead of me in Session 3 - he ran a 1:18.7 to take FTD. I don't ever want that to happen again!



Trigger was running well, still doing the low oil pressure trigger thing, and it would only do it in Lap 2+ a lot, with only some triggering in the last triple left hander on Lap 1. So it's still there, but manageable. I had to really push hard on lap 1. First 2 sessions I didn't get good temps in the tires and/or had traffic to deal with, so my best laps were on hot lap 2 - when these A052 tires were boiling and the oil pressure trigger was the worst.



In Session 3 I was fastest overall so P1 on grid, which meant I could set the pace on the out lap, and got some temp in the tires and hit it hard on hot lap 1, which was my best. This way I avoided the oil pressure issues of lap 2 and beyond. Track temp was 126F as measured when I came back in from that session. Not ideal.

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At this point I had put 16 liters of oil in the 3 gallon dry sump oil tank, adding another liter today. Still could not fathom how it could run out of oil in a corner with this much oil in the tank. Coolant temps were fine all day (195F) but at this point we still cannot see oil temps on the craptastic Holley dash - only if we connect to the ECU via a lap top to "look at the data" afterwards, which is still a jumbled mess. Handling and brakes worked great.


In Sessions 3 and 4 I made my first hot lap, got a good time, took a cool down, and came into the Hot Pits. And sat there in the car looking at live timing on Race Hero, watching my main competitor Stan's lap times in real time. After a few minutes of seeing everyone's times dropping off due to tire heat, I'd fire up the engine and drive back into paddock. This way if I needed to go out and maybe hunt for a tenth of a second, I was ready and right there. Good strategy.



At the end of the day the SCCA TT group had a trophy ceremony - the first in this Region's history for a Time Trial. The "gold medal" for first was cheesy but still appreciated. Gave people an excuse to stick around and drink a frosty beverage before rolling out.



Amy drove her '23 BRZ to 3rd place in T3, only .03 out of 2nd and 0.4 sec out of the lead. Vorshlag tester Jon Miller won T3 in his BRZ, and I took the win in M1 class, which was a first for this car. We all went to Braum's for ice cream afterwards - winners get sprinkles!

LAST OF OUR POINTLESS OIL SYSTEM FIXES WITH LS7 BASED DRY SUMP

After this mid august SCCA Time Trial we had a TWO MONTH break before the next SCCA event in mid October. This gave us time to test one more round of Band Aids to the LS7 dry sump system. This was the last hurrah before I threw in the towel and bought an external dry sump system.



Again, after ever track event we check the oil catch can, and Brad found a little fluid in there this time but not much. Where the heck does that 16 liters of Motul go? Well it sits in the tank, and some in the engine and some in the cooler... but not enough in the bottom of the pan on long left handers!



This Accusump addition has fixed low oil pressure situations in wet sump LS engines for us before, and this 3 quart system is huge. It is the same unit we had in Trigger for a while with the LS6 engine, but that engine was not long for this earth. So it needed to be completely discharged of pressure, disassembled, and thoroughly cleaned.



Luckily Brad kept the brackets he made for this monster sized Accusump and it went right back in with a 37 psi sensor - so it will dump if oil pressure gets under 37 psi. Seems a tick high, but we will see if it works...



The last thing that was theorized as a potential oil flow restriction was the main -12 AN hose that went from the external Petersen 3 gallon dry sump oil settling tank to the "suction" side of the LS7 oil pan. So about $230 worth of lines, fittings, and hose ends were ordered to up-size this to a -16 AN hose as well as re-routing it for a shorter run.



This plumbing trick usually reduces oil pressure loss across long hose runs - even with a -12 size at the pan, the larger -16 hose will reduce pressure drop / improve suction from the LS7 oil pump pressure pump. As we would find out at the next track test NONE OF THIS HELPED OUR SITUATION.



This is when we sent the two Holley dash units off to the 5th tuner to try to have him update the firmware so they would communicate properly with the ECU and we could finally modify the screens and get the GPS sensor to work, which would be a huge improvement for this Holley system. After 3 weeks of trying he gave up and shipped them back. We also sent two oil samples from the HPR 454" engine to Lake Speed Jr's company for analysis (all good).

LAP TIME COMPARISON

For a quick reference of "where we're at" we always like to list lap times with video links for the car in the forum post plus a few others to compare to at our Motorsport Ranch Cresson 1.7 mile, CCW test track. I have 800+ laps over ~24 years at this track, and drove all of these laps listed below at this track / configuration, with either AMB transponder or AiM Solo lap times. The cars in this list include our NASA TT3 prepped 2018 GT, 2024 Darkhorse, and of course the star of this entry, our 2015 Mustang #Trigger - all 3 tests on the MSR 1.7 CCW from this post are in bold. Just know that we have gone significantly faster than this as I write this, but I'm only listing what we have covered so far.

MSR-C 1.7 mile CCW:

• 1:31.619 - 2024 "Brembo" Mustang GT, 255mm 300TW tires, bone stock, Track Test #1
• 1:20.348 - 2018 Mustang GT, NASA TT3 prep, 305mm RE71R, MCS RR2, 474 whp (fastest this car every ran on 200TW)
• 1:20.677 - 2024 Darkhorse baseline stock, 180TW Trofeo RS tires, Track Test #1
• 1:18.417 - 2024 Darkhorse, -3.5 deg camber with SPL arms + Vorshlag plates, 180TW Trofeo RS tires, Track Test #3
• 1:28.064 - 2015 Mustang #Trigger, first test laps 6/29/23, 627 whp, 5 year old 305mm Bridgestone 200TW (junk!), Track Test #1
• 1:18.878 - 2015 Mustang #Trigger, testing 7/22/23, 200TW tires 315mm A052, 627 whp BTR Trinity + 112mm TB, Track Test #2
• 1:18.933 - 2015 Mustang #Trigger, 620 whp, no aero, MSD Atomic, 200TW tires 315mm A052, SCCA TT 8/12/23

WHAT'S NEXT?

Of course I didn't get as far as I would have liked, but at 5 parts and 20K words, it's time to wind it down for today. Here's just a brief glimpse of what we will cover on this project next time.



We tackled some major mods in late August, including a big front and rear aero package. And guess what? It made the oil pressure situation MUCH worse! After that we added this A.R.E. 4 stage dry sump system, and DUH that was the answer! Then we focused on making the now ultra reliable package even faster, upgrade from the Holley to a Haltech EFI, and more. We will delve into all of these upgrades, and cover more track tests and Time Trial wins, next time.

Thanks for reading!

Terry @ Vorshlag

 

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Project TRIGGER Update for August 20, 2024: It's been 8 months since the last update to the TRIGGER portion of this thread, which is our shop's S550 Mustang LS swap test mule and time trial competition vehicle. This car did a lot more events through 2023 and we made a lot of BIG changes during the 2023 season.



On my last update back in January we left off on work and events completed in August 2023. We were still fighting low oil pressure situation that triggered below 30 psi when the engine was above 3000 rpm. I was pretty flustered, and while the time period we covered last time started out fairly positive it ended fairly negative. Well good news - this time we start off with a hot mess of a car, then we make some key changes, and by the end of this time period we taste the sweet smell of victory!



The improvements this time started off a backwards order - we first added front and rear aero treatments, tested with that and the LS7 dry sump + oil line size increases, THEN we finally tackled the 800 pound Gorilla by adding a proper external dry sump system. So let's jump into to this round of updates and see the performance increases each time out. We also replaced the Holley EFI and added a proper AiM digital dash, and now we even have proper data logged videos.

PHASE 2: LET'S ADD AERO?

This was one of our best ideas for this project, as adding downforce almost always drops laps time. But the timing makes no sense, and as you will see below this barely nudged lap times down, because the oil pressure issues got SO much worse. The plywood front splitter on Trigger was a departure for us, as most of our former front splitter elements were made from aluminum.



We built splitters out of aluminum for a decade, but after a particularly costly (to me, as I ate a ton of the fab hours) multi-layer aluminum splitter on this S197 Mustang above, we decided to look at other splitter material options.



I am proud of the aluminum splitters we have built on numerous cars in the past, but the cost of 3/16" aluminum sheet went NUTS during the pandemic and didn't come back down - plywood is 1/10th as much!



We had just built a plywood splitter for this customer's CTS-V (above) during 2022, and it ended up lighter, less costly, and less time consuming to build than our previous aluminum versions. We did this with a $45 piece of 1/2" thick plywood as a test - but have since moved splitters to denser / better plywood.

This one worked so well on track in 2023 that we decided to go with a plywood splitter for Trigger. And while that might not make sense to everyone, we all have budgets. I also knew we'd probably need to make 2 or more splitters for this car for the different classes we wanted to run it in. Anyway, let's start out with the front splitter and then we will cover the massive rear wing.

FRONT SPLITTER CONSTRUCTION

I am showing a lot of detail in this section as this will likely become the basis for a "how to" splitter article elsewhere in this forum. We had used plywood in the past but I felt that the aluminum units had a weight penalty. On this project, which has already exceeded my minimum weight plans considerably, we needed to keep weight down. So after conferring with Jason here in Engineering and some outside aero specialists like Mike at Professional Awesome and Johnny at 9 Lives Racing, we decided to go with 1/2" MDO plywood.



Jason knew about this specialty plywood supplier that had a huge indoor warehouse in Ft. Worth called Ft Worth Plywood Company (well, the name is descriptive!) I went by there with my F350 not really know exactly which of the half dozen options we saw on their website was the right choice. I asked up front and they sent me to their most experienced shop foreman and he knew what a splitter was, so that was a plus. We walked around and looked at several options but he suggested this fully primed 1/2" thick MDO plywood, which was about $114 per 4x8' sheet. We had a number of splitters we were planning to do so I paid and left with these 3 sheets.



Back at the shop Brad started by stringing the car along the front axle centerline (the furthest back we can go with the splitter), the front fender opening, and another string down the center of the car. We then measured the "outer track width" up front then measured what the enclosed trailer would fit.



The rules in question (above left, click to see higher rez) changed at the end of the 2023 season, but we built to the "new" rules because we used the (at the time legal) alternative classing rules for CAM-C from SCCA Solo for the forward 6" extension. But there was no allowance to make the splitter wider than the car (it simply isn't mentioned) so we kept the width the same as the maximum track width we had. We only had about a 4" width gap from the tires to the fenders in the trailer to work with without having to remove the splitter to load the car (which matters to me), so it wasn't a big loss there.



Now that we had the envelop to work in, Brad could start on a new template from 1/8" press board. This stuff is cheap (less than $20 for a 4x8' sheet) and rigid enough to work with for transferring the final shape to the plywood. If we messed up here it was $20 worth of material, not $114 worth of MDO. We started with one of our existing S197 templates to get the rough shape of the wheel openings (track S197 and S550 widths are very similar) and he cut out the front tire openings so we could get a good look at the front.



The SCCA Time Trial Max 1 rules (2024) and CAM-C rules (from 2023) limits the rear edge to the front axle centerline (common rule) and the front edge to 6" beyond the bodywork. Now we have legal aftermarket bodywork on this car, and this Anderson GT500 nose has a little splitter lip that is included and attaches to the nose, and its all fiberglass I could have argued that this WAS the front bodywork, but the peanut gallery was squealing while we were showing our work. So I took the hit and Brad modified his magic 6" stick to have a notch in it at the rear, so it could follow the "bumper cover" and not the add-on splitter lip piece.



We used many of the tricks we utilized in the past to get this template perfected. More time spent on the template means less mistakes or time wasted on the final part. Brad and I worked with Jason until we were happy with the final shape, and I ran it by the rules makers to get approval.



The SCCA TT folks got a BIG letter from me about this and some other "alternative ruleset" issues. They weren't happy about the CAM aero rules we were using for 2023 but they allowed it, as it was in the rule book. For 2024 they changed the Max aero rules in TT to match the CAM rules, then divorced the rule sets. It was a fair concession.



One of the SCCA TT Max rules I had an issue with respect to the allowed splitter tunnels - the surface area they had in the old rules didn't even meet the OEM installed tunnels in undertrays for a 2016 GT350 - which had 2x the surface area Max allowed! I sent many pictures with measurements to back up my case, and it was one of the things that pushed them to update the aero rules. So for 2023 I ran the (allowed at the time) alternate CAM-C aero rules, which had NO limit on splitter tunnels - and ran two of these giant Professional Awesome units.


The image above is a second splitter with a 12" front extension that we made for NASA TT1 class use in early 2024

Sorry that section got a bit wordy but I wanted to explain what DRIVES our design of a front splitter - the RULES. We always want to maximize the size of a front splitter: forward, rearward, and laterally. And also run the biggest tunnels we can fit in there. Why? Because you can NEVER MAKE TOO MUCH FRONT DOWNFORCE.



We still wanted to be able to get this splitter off quickly, if we needed to work on the car at the track. We looked at multiple options for a rear mount quick release setup (all of which get very complicated when you actually go to build and use them - lots of experience with these) but settled on this slip in bracket for the rear edge.



I didn't like how little of the rear splitter surface area the bracket could hold, and the previous mount was too low. We scrubbed that and made a much bigger panel that held the splitter over about 6" forward of the trailing edge (vs 1" before). This required a few semi-circles to be cut into the splitter to tuck up into a flat recess of the front crossmember.



A week later we came back and added more holes to mount this to the subframe, with some guide fences for the sides. The extra holes make the bracket / panel more rigid, and the side fences make it easier to slide the splitter into this pocket.



With the rear mount completed using the press board template, Brad traced that onto the MDO plywood and we got to work on making the front mounts and setting the height. We had actually settled on a 3.5" front ground clearance, which happened to line up with the bottom of this GT500 nose - so we needed no air dam this time. We tested this height with our Race Ramps and it cleared, barely (below).



We tripled checked and the splitter was level with the chassis, but we planned to run some rake on the ride heights to make the front edge dip down for a more aggressive splitter angle. Again, we were trying to work with this front nose, which we thought we'd keep for a good long time (we only kept it on for about 4 months).



When it comes to exposed splitter struts, we have used numerous brands and types. We have been moving all of our splitters to these carbon graphite rod versions from Professional Awesome and really like how they perform - they are rigid in tension but can buckle in compression and not sustain damage for a light "off". If they are damaged, it is easy and inexpensive to replace the rod and reuse all the ends. The image above shows the rough layout where we had four of these units planned. Two would go inside the grill and two would land on our custom tubular front bumper beam - this aspect was planned LONG ago.



The two "inner" rods lined up well with these mounting points on the front frame rails, where our bumper beam bolted on. Brad was able to simply bolt the upper mounting flanges to these exposed bolt threads with another nut. Then he passed the carbon rod through the grill (just opening up one "cell") and down to the splitter plane and the "pretty" lower mount.



For the two outboard mounts we needed to make some steel weld bungs that were threaded for the upper strut mount. We used some 1" dia steel we have in stock and whittled these short bungs on the lathe. Then Brad sculpted the back side to match the 1.75" OD tubing from our bumper beam.



We lined those up, tack welded them in place and checked our alignment. Then Austin TIG welded those to the beam in place. Once that cooled Brad ran an M8 tap down into the bare hole that was machined on the lathe. We could have tapped these on the lathe but this was quicker.



Brad then masked off the tubing and painted it gray after the welding was complete, then made a short length of M8 threaded stud (cut the head off a bolt). This was then secured in the upper strut mount with Red Loctite, then threaded that into the bumper beam.



With the upper and lower anchors in place the graphite rod was cut to length and secured between the two compression fittings. The two inner mounts had some Professional Awesome titanium skid blocks added to the lower mounting bolts. These are sacrificial pucks and should wear before the splitter ever takes any damage. Plus, they make sparks!



At this point we had a nice splitter, built to the max limits of SCCA Time Trial Max rules. Many would stop here, but we wanted more downforce than a flat splitter would provide, so it was time to tackle the next step - tunnels. If designed and placed properly these will create more downforce and could redirect some air for other uses - like front brake cooling.

ADDING TUNNELS TO THE SPLITTER

Brad used a router to smooth the leading edge of the splitter, and the top edge as well. In hindsight we could have used a much more aggressive radius on the lower edge. With that complete it was time to lay out the PLACEMENT of the Professional Awesome Large splitter ramps. These are plastic tunnels that are very large and we had to weigh a lot of variables to find the best location and orientation of them both.



We reinstalled the lateral string at the trailing edge of the front fender openings, then looked at the placement of our fender liner openings - which normally would line up with the factory 2018-23 Mustang GT PP2 lower undertray tunnels. We wanted to utilize the airflow from the ProA tunnels to feed our brake cooling, too.



These ProA units are about 5x bigger (projected surface area) compared to the factory PP2 tunnels, so we had to test fit the new units several times to make sure they fit within the space from the front bumper cover to the fender openings (just barely).

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After finding the perfect placement (consulting with engineer Jason, Brad and me) it was time to cut the openings for the tunnels. These need VERY large openings, as you can see below. Now here is where many of you may disagree with my decision but we put them on TOP of the splitter plane. They are normally placed with the plastic mounting flange just BELOW the splitter plane - but I was worried that scraping of the splitter could damage the lower mounting flange of these $300 tunnels.



That proved to not be the case in practice - we have since remade this with the tunnels bottom mounted, where we routed channels into the bottom edge and flush mounted the tunnels. Brad used a belt sander to shape the lower edge of the splitter leading into the tunnels, which somewhat smoothed out the airflow, but this was FAR from perfect. Again, learn from our mistakes - mount the tunnels with the flanges on the BOTTOM of the splitter.



In the images above we have the ProA tunnels mounted to the top side of the splitter, and on the top right image you can see the brake deflectors clearly in the exhaust area of the tunnels. This led to exceptionally good airflow to our brakes, and overheating is not an issue now. We later noted some front end LIFT that this exhaust of air caused, once dumped into the fender wells and fender liners. We tackled that fix with fender vents at a later date.



The last images I will show are the "edge attachments" we added. A small section of angle is added to the outer edges of the splitter which mates up to an aluminum panel at the edge of the finder/air dam. So now we have the 4 splitter struts at the front, these two push-pins at the fender, and the rear plate that holds the splitter along the back.



I was happy with this method of attachment, the tunnel placement, and the overall shape of the splitter. It would evolve further over time, but it worked pretty well the first time out.



As great as this splitter looked, the biggest aero change that is noticeable from a great distance is the rear wing. It is a little crazy.

C-PILLAR MOUNTED DUAL CARBON REAR WING

This is a monster wing, and we we used the SCCA CAM / SCCA TT MAX rules to mount this as high and far back as the rules allow.



I will be the first to admit that the S650 Mustang GT3 car was our inspiration for this "C-pillar" mounted wing, but this is also done on other GT3 Cup race cars. The advantage is it is not only a swan neck design - which puts the mounts on the top side of the wing, which is doing less work than the bottom side - it also cleans up the trunk mounts. This also works well when you can put the wing way up above the roof, which both rules package we run allows for.



We saw the GT3 wing mounting in late 2022 and reached out in early 2023 to 9 Lives Racing, then procured one of their giant, carbon fiber, dual element wings. We ordered this with large carbon end plates, made for a swan neck mount - which are located on the top of the main element.

Now I took a lot of pictures during this time, but it would bore most of you. And then again some of the things we did might help some competitors figure out what took us a lot of hours and attempts to learn, so I'm not sharing some things on purpose.



Let's cover the highlights. After assembling the multi-piece rear wing assembly we mocked it up the maximum 6" behind the car and 10" above the hood, from the SCCA CAM-C ruleset (and later adopted as the SCCA Time Trial Max aero rules). We made mounts from press board, then upright pieces of the same mock-up material on the outside of the car that the wing hung from.



We took the cardboard then pressboard mock-up pieces, scanned those, and Jason turned them into CAD drawings. Multiple iterations of these were done in CAD before we cut the first uprights on the CNC plasma table.



The plasma leaves a bit of a rough edge, which Brad cleaned up with a belt sander and some other tools. Austin (above right) added a brushed finish to the main surfaces with the burnishing tool, too.



Brad cut slots in the C-pillar / rear glass surround, and our aluminum chassis mounts slid down into place and bolted to the chassis along several points. Then the outer wing uprights were mocked up (above right) to these chassis plates, then marked, drilled, and bolted together. This way we didn't have to fish a giant piece of aluminum down into the chassis. If we needed to run an event in a class without aero rules, or if we wanted to change the wing placement with a new set of external uprights, the chassis side pieces could stay in place. This proved to be a smart move.



We made some changes until we were happy with the stiffness of the wing structure, added 272 pounds of ballast to the carbon wing (I wasn't too fond of standing on the wing, but this more than covers my weight), and then it was time to modify the rear Lexan for clearance.



With a slot cut away to allow for the chassis side brackets that sit just above the rear glass, the Lexan was reinstalled and the final wing assembly was complete. People doubted we knew what we were doing, and I even heard from someone at Ford (they had multiple wing upright failures on the GT3 Mustang), but our setup is super strong and has been on the car for almost a year as I write this with zero issues, no wobble, and no deflection on track.

BLOCK ALL OPEN GRILLS NOT BEING USED

Anyone who looked closely at this Anderson Type ST "GT500" styled front end would see some VERY large grill openings that didn't do anything but add places for air to get trapped underhood.




Brad discussed this with Jason and me, and we agreed that now would be a great time to start blocking off these openings. The outer two lower grills were especially large and just asking to be blocked off. Brad started with a cardboard template...



That was transferred to some ABS plastic sheet, which he safety wired in place. Sounds sketchy, but it lasted for 6+ months like this, and we even added more block off plates to some unused portions of the upper and lower center grills at a later time with the same attachment. Less high pressure air getting underhood to cause lift is always good.

VERSION 1 OF AERO: COMPLETE!

After a couple of weeks of work, several tweaks to the uprights, a lot of time spent on the splitter, and the blocked off front grill openings it was time to show the first version of aero on Trigger, September 7, 2023. We were loading up on that Thursday for a track test the next day, which I will detail below.



Now this aero package would change several more times over the next few months but the basics are still there - the 9Lives Racing dual element wing, the Professional Awesome splitter struts and tunnels. We would later change the placement of the wing, moving it down and forward, but I will show that in a later installment on this forum thread.

TRACK TEST 3, SEPTEMBER 8, 2023 (FAIL)

We had high hopes that we had solved the oiling issues with the line size bump and Accusump, but even if it wasn't totally "Fixed" maybe we could still get 1-2 laps in without triggering the low pressure engine retard. The hope was that the added aero would add enough downforce to still drop lap times significantly. I made some key mistakes here...



I trailered the car out to MSR Cresson on a member day without anyone to help or shoot pics, and that was my first tactical error. See, whenever you make MAJOR aero changes to a car you should have someone there to look for and hopefully capture the look of the car with pictures and/or external video. I could feel things behind the wheel, for sure, but I had no spotter to tell me if the car had front end lift (it did), rear suspension squat (it very much did), or anything along those lines.



Above is in-car video on the new fast lap in Trigger, a 1:18.716. This technically was 2 tenths quicker than the previous best / winning time I ran without aero in August (1:18.933) at the last SCCA TT, but the car was such a hot mess. The low oil pressure started triggering happened right away, then when I armed the Accusump it dumped in the first corner and never worked again. The aero made the issue worse.



My best lap was in the first session when it was 81F, where I made 3 lap attempts and didn't get clear track and a good drive until lap 3. I went out twice again in the next session about an hour later but it was already 86F and climbing. Low oil pressure issues all day. I was really hoping that changes to the Accusump - only arming it after the first hot lap and now seeing a light when it was "triggering" - would help. The Accusump would indeed "dump" when it saw less than 37 psi, then it worked for one corner. The problem was the Accusump could not recharge until my cool down lap. So it was a "single shot" fix, and was not going to solve our issues. A dead end.



Who would have thought that adding more lateral grip with the downforce made the issue worse than before?!? (duh) Adding aero was a great upgrade, just done in the wrong order. A buddy showed up and he shot ONE picture of the car, above right, but apparently he had never worked a digital camera before and that's what we got, above. (facepalm)

When I left the track I was hot, tired, and just utterly disgusted. I was frustrated that we had burned the previous 2 weeks building the splitter and wing mounts and not actually addressed the real problem - we needed to move to an external dry sump oiling system. We had 5 weeks until the next big event we were scheduled to run in this car, on this same MSR 1.7 CCW course. I worried that THIS was the end of our 2023 season with the car, and that we didn't have time to resolve this.



When I left the track, the temp gauge on my F350 showed 119F degrees, and on the way back to the shop I had the first blowout on the trailer that I've had in ages (I would get another a month later). Old tires and high temps just combined to make my day "extra fun".

ADDING AN EXTERNAL DRY SUMP OIL PUMP

That heading above sounds so simple - just add an external dry sump pump! But no, don't believe the videos and con men - adding a dry sump oiling system is a LOT of work. This is not a decision that anyone should take lightly. We ran our narrow body C6 LS2 car with a wet sump (with an Improved Racing baffle) successfully for 2 seasons on the EXACT same 315mm A052 tires, and had none of these issues.

The LS7 based "dry sump" system is just generally considered SO BAD that it can indeed be worse than the GM wet sump oiling systems - as we have seen. Yes, I said that - the LS7 "dry sump" is worse than many wet sump systems, especially the earliest C6 Z06 cars with smaller dry sump tanks. We had a huge 3 gallon tank, and it still didn't work.



This conversion to an external dry sump pump and new pan involved many thousands of dollars in parts, lots of phone calls to HPR and ARE, way too much custom machining, and many hours of plumbing and fiddly work. We gobbled up all 5 weeks of time we had until our next event, getting all of this built and dialed in. So now let's cover how we solved the low oil pressure problem, and look closer at why the OEM LS7 dry sump parts just could never work on this setup.

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WHY DID THE LS7 DRY SUMP SUCK?

The two main components we surmised that were causing the most low oil problems with the OEM LS7 based "dry sump" system were the factory LS7 oil pan (below left) and the 2-stage internal oil pump (below right). This was after looking at reams of data, discussing with our tuner and engine builder, and consulting outside oil system experts.



We had upgraded both items beyond stock - the oil pan had the Improved Racing baffles and windage tray, and the stock LS7 2-stage oil pump was swapped for the higher volume Katech red pump. We had even port matched the pan to pump interface, and of course we had the huge Peterson 3 gallon oil settling tank (the stock LS7 oil tanks are pretty awful). Why was it still so bad?


Our 2006 Corvette's stock LS2 wet sump oiling with Improved Racing baffle ran a 1:19.7 time in competition, and logged oil pressure was fine

But as we noted with data, the oil pressure would dip below 30 psi in long left hand turns on Trigger. After conversing with HPR and others we feel that this was mostly due to the high lateral Gs that these modern 200TW tires can produce. 1.4-1.5g lateral grip is far more than a stock C6 Z06 could ever see without slicks until these new tires came around. Again, our narrow body C6 above with the exact same A052 tires and a wet sump and had no issues - and several of the T2 class track record I set with it in 2022 still stand 2 years later.



The stock LS7 pickup screen is offset a bit to the driver's side, but the engine is slinging oil opposite of that with crank windage. And even with the Improved Racing oil pan baffle, windage tray and crank scraper we still had issues. That high lateral force + the natural windage direction allows the single LS7 pickup screen to be uncovered, and the high flow volume of the pressure stage of the pump would drain the remote oil tank to a point that the engine would lose oil pressure within about 6-10 seconds of left hand cornering. We had run out of Band Aids (bigger hoses + Accusump) and further track use would damage the expensive HPR 454" engine.



The first part of this fix was to move to an ARE Dry Sump pan, and replace stock LS7 unit. Now if we were running in a series that banned external oil pumps this company does make a "better" pan for use with the internal 2-stage LS7 style pumps, but the time for half measures was over. With the added grip of the new aero + Hoosier A7s we had planned for another series, it was time to jump all the way in and add the external oil pump with 4 stages; this pan was setup for 3 suction stages and a single pressure stage.



This particular ARE pan was part of some old / unused inventory that Erik at HPR had on hand. We noted that the 3 suction stages were setup with -10 AN lines / internal screens. We upgraded to their more modern -12 AN screen / fittings, as we planned to run all -12 lines from the 3 scavenge stages to the pump, then -16AN lines for the combined suction line to the tank and back to the pressure side pickup.



ARE dry sump systems supplied us with their normal "Y-body" (Corvette) pump, which has -12 AN inlets for 2 of the 3 suction stages, a -10 line one scavenge and the pressure output, and a -12 on the combined scavenge output. We upgraded all of the -10 outlets on the pump - going to a -16AN on the pressure output and a -12AN on the weirdly small 3rd scavenge stage. The image above right shows what we planned for. Maybe there's less room on a Corvette to plumb all of this, but on our S550 Mustang we had ample room for the bigger -16AN lines, so we made that upgrade.



This image above from HPR shows the the same ARE pan plumbed for an identical ARE 4 stage dry sump pump, with 3 suction stages plumbed from the pan to the pump, then the one output stage to the "inlet" side of the block (where the oil filter would normally feed). This setup had the one -10 suction stage line (the middle stage) and the smaller pressure output fitting at the pump, but a -12 line run to the feed. We upgraded all of these on our setup.

MAKING A NEW ENGINE MOUNT

To fit an external dry sump pump to an LS engine, the factory air conditioner almost always has to be removed - as the passenger side of the block where the compressor rests is the best spot for an external oil pump. Why? Because of how the engine rotates internally slings oil to this side of an oil pan, so the scavenge ports (in this case, 3 of them) need to be on that side, and those need to be plumbed with as short a runs as possible to the pump.



As soon as we tried to mock-up the 4-stage ARE pump we had an issue - it ran into the Vorshlag LS550 swap mount on the passenger side. If we weren't stuck with this Corvette drive setup it would have worked, but this is what we could get FAST. So we hung the engine from a cross-engine brace and removed the right side engine mount.



This was a tricky fix, as there is a big "cup" in the S550 subframe where the factory hydraulic rubber bushing sits, and which we kept on our LS550 swap mounts. That had to come out, so we made a somewhat unusual motor mount design, which uses a poly round bushing that goes in almost all of our other LS swap kits. That nests down inside this cup. The design was drawn up and CNC plasma cut.



Then the tubular motor mount for that sleeve was built, which bolts on the block side with 4 bolts. The mating piece that goes into the cup in the S550 subframe is a separate piece. These two bolt together for a non-solid engine mount.



We kept the drawings and fixtures in case we ever need to add a dry sump to an LS197 or LS550 again with this Y-body pump setup, we can make these again. With the ARE 4 stage pump finally mounted, we could bolt that up with the new engine mount in place and lay out all of the -12 and -16 fittings, so those parts could be ordered.



Unlike most myths, we cannot possibly stock every single type / angle / size fitting and hose end at our little shop. We do have a good number on hand, but mostly order fittings on a purchase order from Fragola for any given job. We were tight on time so we overnighted parts from a wholesaler that is in town, paying 2x as much, but time is money.

SWAP OUT THE LS7 TIMING COVER + BALANCER HUB DRIVE

It was time to pull off the LS7 front timing cover, which has an enlarged front section to house the wider 2 stage pump (a wet sump LS has a single stage pump, which draws oil from the wet sump pan and pressurizes it to the engine).



FIRST set the engine to TDC on cylinder one, as the timing chain has to come off and go back on. Mark the timing sprockets "dot to dot" when you get everything uncovered. The old balancer hub was pulled and removed, then the timing cover, then the Katech pump came out.



This is the back side of the Katech 2-stage internal oil pump for an LS7. A wet sump single stage LS pump looks very similar. That hole shown is where oil pressure feeds into the block - this changes with an external oil pump, which feeds pressure through a hose to a port on the block where the stock oil filter is located. Keep this in mind for steps shown below.



Behind the Katech pump was the longer LS7 style lower timing sprocket - which drives the oil pump on the extended section shown. The external dry sump setup is made to work with the shorter LS2/LS3 front timing cover, and that means changing to the shorter LS2/LS3 lower sprocket for the timing chain. That also means that our "long snout" LS7 style crank has the 3rd keyway removed, as that gets in the way.



After the longer LS7 sprocket is pulled, the shorter lower timing sprocket is warmed up to about 200F in the toaster oven, and then it can slip over over the (cold) crank. That gets a bit of a whack to get it started... while still warm (and slightly oversized).



Then the old sprocket is slipped on backwards, a big washer, then a crank bolt is used to press the new sprocket onto the crank - which has a light press fit.



The timing chain and upper sprocket were reinstalled, as well as the tensioner. All of the bolt torques are shown above. And again, the sprockets were already aligned "dot to dot". Something HPR warned us about was that we had to cover the oil feed hole from the LS7 pump, which is the same as the wet sump LS engines. That hole is marked in image above right.



We didn't see a good part to do this with, so we created a new product and now sell that at HPR and Vorshlag for these "dry sump upgrades". It is bolted on with some RTV on the backside, and stops a big pressure dump behind the timing cover. Now some shops don't know to do this block off, and there were some wide eyes when we posted this on socials at the time, and we sold a number of these block off plates that likely solved some issues - again, thanks to HPR's guidance.



The new balancer provided by ARE came with the cogged belt drive behind the balance, to drive their Y-body pump. A cogged drive on the front side of the balancer would work better for a car like this - we have the room. But we were pressed for time and this Y-body setup was in stock at ARE and all we could get for weeks. ARE also included a spacer for our "long snout" crank - of course we also needed to machine that to actually fit.



Next step is to install the new balancer hub and cog drive we have to measure to make sure the press fit is right. THIS IS ALWAYS WRONG. "Trust, but verify" with any off-the-shelf part, and we have yet to get an ATI balancer that actually fits a factory spec'd crank snout. Time on our lathe and get this .015" mismatch down to a more manageable press fit of only .002 to .003". Otherwise you WILL break the end of the crank and/or strip the threads off.



To get the hub installed onto the crank you need a longer crank bolt. The LS engine family has two lengths - the normal "wet sump" short length and the longer LS7 "long snout" length. To install the balancer hub you need to use the longer LS7 bolt in a short snout crank and for a long snout, well... we made a special custom longer bolt for HPR by welding two bolts together, so we borrowed that for our long snout crank setup. The longer bolt is used to pull the balancer hub down to a certain point, then the proper length ARP bolt goes in to draw it in the last fraction of an inch.



The shorter LS3 front timing cover was installed - use the LS1/6 or LS2/3 timing cover version depending on what cam sensor you have in the front cover. Then the "long bolt" was used to pull the new ATI balancer hub installed. We had a .002" gap from the cog drive to the lower timing cover seal, which was in spec. Once the hub is almost installed, switch to the proper length ARP bolt and torque that. The new balancer is bolted to the hub. We also swapped our timing pointer (your tuner will love you if you add this!) to the shorter version.

SWAP THE OIL PAN

This is a big part of the upgrade - getting multiple scavenge ports to pull as much oil out of the oil pan as quickly and efficiently as possible. Some systems use 4 suction stages - one for each "V" bank of cylinders. Sometimes there's even a suction stage from the camshaft valley, if you have an aftermarket block with that segmented off. So a 6+ stage system isn't unusual. But this is a somewhat budget friendly (ha!) 4 stage system, with 3 suction stages in the new low profile pan.



We dropped the front subframe down a tick (when we had the engine hung from the cross brace) and removed the LS7 oil pan. The ARE dry sump pan has a baffle over the 3 suction stages, and the unit itself is shorter. A new FelPro gasket (for an LS1/2/6) with a little RTV to hold it in place went onto that pan, that and the new pan was slipped in place.



Now some of you might wonder - "hey, can't you lower the engine now?" And yes, in some instances the shorter dry sump style pans do allow for the engine to be dropped 1-2 inches or more. We would need all new engine mounts and some other changes. But in this car the balancer would drop down onto the EPAS steering rack, plus our headers and exhaust would be wrong.

And our giant Tremec T56 Magnum would be too low then. So no, we didn't lower the engine. This is a 3600 pound car and moving the center of mass for the 420 pound engine down 1-2 inches is not worth the tens of thousands on costs and fab work for that tiny, immeasurable gain.

ADDING THE COGGED BELT DRIVE

Like camshaft timing belts, a Gilmer drive or cogged belt is a pretty common way to drive an external dry sump oil pump. These cannot "slip" and handle some real torque going through them. If you set them up right they cannot just fall off, but it sure seems scary that there is no tensioner or cover over this belt.



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With the timing cover sprocket + cover swapped, the redundant internal oil passage covered, new balancer and cog drive installed, and new ARE oil pan bolted to the engine - NOW we could finally bolt on the ARE pump to the block. Putting the cog belt and pulley on the pump should be easy, right? WRONG.



The shaft on the ARE pump is made with a keyway, and comes with a key installed. Yea, pull that out and throw that away. The cog belt pulley that comes with the kit doesn't have a keyway, and is made to be an adjustable press fit. This is an "undocumented feature".



The pulley itself is this multi-piece assembly. The bolts that hold this all together are too long and hit the pump housing. So shorten the bolts 5mm or buy new bolts that are only 30mm long. Some trips to the hardware store and overnight shipments happened for weeks while we chased down all of these strange issues, fitting upgrades, etc. Whoever says putting a remote dry sump pump on is easy is lying to you.



Once we finally got the new pulley system installed with the right hardware and no key for the grooved shaft, we could slip the belt on (yes, you just slide it on by hand - there is no tensioner) and give it a twist. The top right pic shows how much tension you want. If there is more than a 90 deg twist, shim the pump away from the block with washers until you get this tightness. If you get less than 90 deg twist, call ARE for a new belt.



After all of that running around, machining multiple parts on the lathe, custom tools and bolts, a new product we developed to block off that internal passage, a new motor mount, the new front cover / sprocket, totaling two weeks of chasing this task - we had the pump bolted onto the block, the belt drive corrected, and the oil pan on.

PLUMBING THE DRY SUMP SYSTEM

All we have left is A LOT OF PLUMBING. There are so many ways to do this wrong, and only a few ways to do this right. We could write a book on the numerous mistakes we have seen done with dry sump plumbing. I showed an engine on a stand upside down at the top of this section, and HPR did the plumbing on that engine for their end customer - which removes some chances for mistakes. The plumbing diagram from ARE is painfully incorrect, still to this day.



This part of the dry sump install is very fiddly, but because we could spec and install all of the plumbing and make the hoses without an external vendor supplying things (wrong) from some kit, it had the least amount of jack-assery of this whole upgrade. We had HPR to help guide us on this plumbing work as well.



Plumbing is still a time consuming job, and this ate up about a week of time - mocking up fittings, ordering parts, then building and testing all of the hoses. Then ordering more parts and making the final routing. Why not keep an infinite number of fittings on hand? Well some of these are $40 each and you might need 6 versions of a bend for the same size and style hose. We all have budgets!



We plumbed the 3 suction stages from the pan with -12 AN Fragola hoses to the pump. The main pressure hose from the pump to feed the engine is a big fat -16 AN monster, and the main suction lines to and from the Peterson storage tank are also -16 AN lines. Larger sized hose shave a smaller pressure drop per foot of hose, so the larger diameter hoses should give us the most pressure. I spelled out the routing at the start of this section.



Due to my paranoia about the oil pressure, we stuck with the 5W50 Motul "Sport" oil and put in a new filter for the remote setup, then sent off a sample of the oil to be analyzed. We fired up the engine and checked everything for leaks - none! (we have since switched to 5W40 and might go to 5W30)



The oil pressure looked VERY good, so we called in a gunslinger tuner Donnie to check the Holley EFI system for a quick tune up - he took out the oil pressure "triggers" for the old low pressure safety scheme. That cure might have been worse than the symptoms, and we were confident we'd have enough pressure with the external pump now. We did leave the low oil pressure warning light wired up, and Donnie added a low pressure warning on the Holley dash.



We had spent the better part of 5 weeks removing the parts above and replacing them (except the water pump and radiator hoses) with this external dry sump oil system. There was a lot of cursing, frustration with incorrectly supplied parts and custom machine work, and a lot of overnight orders and stress. This is not an easy job, especially when you are converting from wet or LS7 dry sump to this external dry sump - and we had installed ARE external dry sumps before. It is always a staggering amount of work - so you were warned! (all of those old parts shown above have been sold).



Brad painted both sides of the "small" splitter and reinstalled that, then I took the car for a short test drive to get some fuel. We had the 2024 Darkhorse for a whole week by this point, and I was beginning to wonder if Trigger would get replaced with this high tech S650? The Darkhorse ran a 1:18.4 lap with stock tires and camber in November 2023 - a time which we had not beat in Trigger by August of 2023!



With the added weight of the aero parts and external dry sump system we took a weight of the car before loading up. It was heavier than ever, which made me a little worried, but I had faith that the oil pressure issue would be fixed and we could be onto a major time drop on track!

TRACK TEST # 4 - MSR CRESSON 1.7 CCW - OCT 12, 2023

This was what we were building up to - a short run on our 1.7 mile test track on the Thursday before a scheduled competition on Saturday October 14th. I ran the car out to the track myself early on a Thursday to run ONE session, which would give us part of the day Thursday and a full day (Friday) to fix anything wrong with the car.



I was nervous, as I had signed up for the Apex Lap Attack event for that Saturday - we couldn't really afford to have something major go wrong, otherwise I'd have to scrub that event.



After a semi-quick first lap spent watching gauges around the big left hand corners, I sped up and took 2 hot laps at speed - finally full power without any oiling issues!! It was such a rushed test that I took no video and I don't even remember who took the 3 pictures of the car on track. Looking at them now the massive front end lift and rear squat shows a terrible aero balance, but I was so excited that the car WORKED that I didn't see that until days later.



The aero + lack of oil pressure issues - and the removal of that engine retard from a sub-30 psi trigger - was worth a nice TWO SECOND DROP in only two shake down laps. I was not near the limits of the tires and hadn't started pushing entry speeds into corners to take the advantage of aero. We still had a lot of work to get this car dialed in with respect to suspension / aero / etc, but at least it is "semi-fast" and reliable now. Whew!

The Holley dash was still a hot mess and logging the oil pressure / syncing that with video was still impossible for me. But I watched the dash readout like a hawk while driving, which is partly why the times were a bit slow. Yes, even with the 2 second drop in this car's Personal Best, I was off pace.

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APEX LAP ATTACK - MSR 1.7 CCW - OCTOBER 14, 2023

Two months had passed since our first Time Trial win (SCCA TT, where we ran a 1:18.933 best lap) in Trigger, built around that series Max1 rules with 200TW tires and max CAM-C aero limits. We now had access to all 620 whp of the HPR 454 all the time, with the oil pressure issues fixed. Two days before this event we had tested the new 4 stage external A.R.E. dry sump upgrades at this track - now we could finally sustain oil pressure around long left hand turns (something the LS7 based "Dry sump" could NOT do). I didn't even unload the Mustang from the trailer from the test day earlier that week, because it went so well. Brought it back to the shop, left it in the trailer, and turned around and took it to this Time Attack event.



This Apex event was on our favorite test track - the Motorsport Ranch 1.7 CCW course - where we scored that first TT win in August (barely). I was hopeful that the oiling upgrades and aero tweaks we added in September would improve cornering and braking. We had never placed well at any Apex event in other cars - running in our 2006 C6 or 2023 BRZ I had podium'd in one of the five classes, but never had a win. I hoped this time would be different. The 1:16 lap from Thursday might be competitive, if we can back it up?



They shoved Trigger into their fastest class (LA1) even with street tires, running against lighter cars with the same or more power, the same or more aero, and on Michelin slicks or Hoosiers. I was worried that I'd be lucky to score 2nd or 3rd in class, with these obvious disadvantages. With only two laps in this car EVER that didn't suffer from the low oil pressure trigger, and almost no laps with the new aero, I was treating this more as an extended testing session. I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I got to grid early and gridded myself P2 for the first session - after the first session, cars are gridded by best lap times.



The fastest driver at Apex Lap Attack events for a while was a driver in this stripped yellow C7 Z06 race car on slicks, full Motec, built engine, sequential transmission, proper race tires, Bosch ABS, and full aero. I built a big gap on the out lap but caught him pretty quickly going into Big Bend. WHAT IS GOING ON!? During hot Lap 1 the gap closed up and he POINTED ME BY? How... how is this happening?!! I saw him dive into the pits without completing a full lap, so he had some kind of issue.



Passing him slowed up my first lap (1:17.0), but with no traffic I pushed hard on hot Lap 2 (1:15.98 best). I was freaking out and came into the pits, and that was the fastest lap for the first session - and a new PB by a few tenths. That put me P1 on grid for Session 2, where I pushed harder on lap 1 and got to a 1:15.564, another new PB by a half second. That lap was with traffic and a pass, too, so Trigger was actually WORKING.



I was still under-driving the high speed corners, so the 3rd session I was bound and determined to push more - but had a botched downshift on lap 1 (1:17.0), then pushed on for 2nd hot lap and found a 1:14.693 - another new PB! Session 4 was a wash, but that 1:14.6 time was the Fastest Time of the Day by fully 1.1 seconds! YES YES YES YES YES!



It wasn't a perfect day, but the weather was pleasant, and we even had a partial eclipse. The eclipse was weird, but the car worked well - even with pretty terrible aero imbalance and high speed understeer. My minimum speeds in high speed corners were all still too low, but I was still learning the limits of the aero.


In-car video of the new PB for Trigger -

This new Personal Best lap time made for an improvement from the August SCCA TT event by more than FOUR SECONDS. That was simply wild to me and the whole crew, and showed us how much potential the car had and how much difference aero can give you.



Zero issues all day, solid oil pressure even with 1.53 g lateral and 1.58g braking, and even with 200TW street tires we still managed to win. Very happy with the results!



My closest competitor that day - Aamer - sparred with me at this event / course again in 2024 - we both found time and I was on Hoosiers that time, so Trigger dropped even more. I will cover that another time.



This event was the absolute HIGH WATER MARK for me in 2023, and if the car had been this well behaved a few weeks earlier we would have taken it to the SCCA Time Trial Nationals at NCM (I had cancelled my entry with the oil pressure problems and delays in getting the dry sump system finished). I'm planning to make that event in 2024, as the car is quicker and more sorted now.

OIL PRESSURE ADJUSTMENT ON DRY SUMP PUMPS

One of the things we noted once our tuner Jon looked at the mish-mash of jumbled data that is Holley's norm was that the oil pressure was too high on track at speed.



Erik from HPR recommended that we dial out the relief valve on the ARE pump, which is accessible from underneath. Each turn is supposed to drop 20 psi, but we got the dang thing turned all the way out with the minimum threads showing and it was still too high. This led to some valve cover leaks and a little wasted power, but I'll take that over low pressure! We fixed this fully in 2024 - I'll cover that another time.



Much of what we learned on dry sumps is shown in this short 1:22 minute video, linked above.

LAP TIME COMPARISON

As always we like to list lap times with video links for the car in the forum post plus a few others to compare to at our Motorsport Ranch Cresson 1.7 mile, CCW test track. I have 800+ laps over 25 years at this track, and drove all of these laps listed below at this track / configuration, with either AMB transponder or AiM Solo lap times. The cars in this list include our NASA TT3 prepped 2018 GT, 2024 Darkhorse, and of course the star of this entry, our 2015 Mustang #Trigger - all 3 tests on the MSR 1.7 CCW from this post are in bold. Just know that we have gone significantly faster than this as I write this, but I'm only listing what we have covered so far. We get to tackle a lot more events at ECR and MSR later in 2023 and unto 2024.

MSR-C 1.7 mile CCW:

• 1:20.348 - 2018 Mustang GT, NASA TT3 prep, 305mm RE71R, MCS RR2, 474 whp (fastest this car every ran on 200TW)
• 1:20.677 - 2024 Darkhorse baseline stock, 180TW Trofeo RS tires, Track Test #1
• 1:18.878 - 2015 Mustang #Trigger, testing 7/22/23, 200TW tires 315mm A052, 627 whp BTR Trinity + 112mm TB, Track Test #2
• 1:18.933 - 2015 Mustang #Trigger, 620 whp, no aero, MSD Atomic, 200TW tires 315mm A052, SCCA TT win 8/12/23
• 1:18.417 - 2024 Darkhorse, -3.5 deg camber with SPL arms + Vorshlag plates, 180TW Trofeo RS tires, Track Test #3
• 1:16.637 - 2015 Mustang #Trigger, 620 whp, with aero, MSD Atomic, 200TW tires 315mm A052, Track Test #4 11/12/23
• 1:14.693 - 2015 Mustang #Trigger, 620 whp, with aero, MSD Atomic, 200TW tires 315mm A052, Apex Lap Attack win 11/14/23

WHAT'S NEXT?

I worked a long time on this massive 5 part forum entry and still barely got us through October 2023. There was a lot of ground to cover, especially with the aero and dry sump work, but I wanted to get to our "break through" event where everything finally started to work - the October Apex event. I was hooked after this win, so we started to develop a splitter package for Apex and NASA, both of whom allow for more front downforce tricks.



In December we attended a NASA Time Trial and won TT1 class on street tires. Then we purchased and installed wider bodywork to fit 335/345mm Hoosiers. We also lowered our rear wing to reduce rear downforce, and changed springs and some other things to work on the aero and suspension balance. In December of 2023 we removed the Holey EFI and installed the first of two Haltech EFI systems, and our AiM MXG dash again. I will cover all of that and more next time.

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Project TRIGGER Update for December 4, 2024: While I have been busy writing various project updates and articles for Grassroots Motorsport Magazine, we have been busy racing and developing our S550 Mustang #Trigger. I took some time in November to bang out an update, to get this project caught up with the end of 2023 before we slip into 2025!

On our last update, we left off on work and events completed through mid October 2023, after we had finally solved both our dry sump oil pressure issues as well as added aero. That combination of changes led to a big lap time drop at MSR Cresson, an Apex Lap Attack win and FTD. The let us finally tackle new areas to develop on this car, instead of just chasing the same oil pressure issues like before.

The very next day after that Oct 2023 Apex event we got to work on a big round of aero enhancements, then tackled the final SCCA TT of 2023 and secured a win, FTD, and the regional championship. Then in early December we attended a NASA Time Trial and won TT1 class on street tires. Shortly after that we removed the Holey EFI and installed the first of two Haltech EFI systems, and our AiM MXG dash again, with tuning work from Rapscallion Motorsports. Let's get to it!

FINDING BETTER AERO BALANCE

Coming off the October 14th win and "FTD" from the Apex Lap Attack event, I was super stoked - all I had ever gotten were 3rd place trophies (a series we sponsored) with them in 2023, running in 2 other cars. Even with the quickest time of the day, we knew we had barely scratched the surface of Trigger's potential, and the rear aero imbalance needed to be improved. After the event pictures came in from the Apex track photographer, some of the issues were visibly apparent.

We could see the rear suspension squatting at speed with that usually high mounted wing uprights we made to the rules limit. The day after that event we quickly came up with plans to change the rear wing height and fore-aft placement, upgraded the spring rates to counter these rear aero loads - as well as made plans to build a larger splitter to use in Apex, NASA and GTA events. We could also see the upper wing element was deforming above 125 mph, but that was a simple fix.

We also worked on improving the front splitter's rear mounting plate, added splitter end plates, reinforced the splitter on the top side to reduce deformation under load, and then opened up and made proper vents for he new carbon front fenders. All of these changes would hopefully improve front downforce.

LOWERED REAR WING UPRIGHTS - VERSION 3!

The wing uprights we used at the October 2023 track test and October Apex event were super tall - built to the limit of the rules in CAM-C and NASA TT1. These were fully 10" above the roof and the wing went 6" behind the car. Both October 10th test and the October Apex event showed we had WAY too much rear downforce, so we decided to lower the wing mounting 6" down as well as move it forward by 7". This will change the lever arm on the wing and reduce downforce.

As you can see in the CAD drawing above and the version 3 uprights below, this was a significant change. Not everyone noticed this, but we sure did. The DAY AFTER the Apex event we cut our version 3 uprights for this same 9LR dual element carbon wing.

It didn't take Brad long to transfer the mounting holes from the Ver 2 uprights to the newer, lower units. Those were then bolted onto the chassis and then the dual element wing assembly was bolted to that.

Once Johnny at 9LR explained to me why the top element was bowing, the last "upgrade" we needed was to install the dual element Nylon spacers that they had supplied. These fit into the slot gap between the two elements and provide the smaller upper element with strength from the bigger / stronger lower element. Lesson learned: Read the instructions.

REINFORCE SPLITTER + UPGRADE MOUNTING PLATE AT THE CROSSMEMBER

Even after minor use in August (above left) we could see that the rear splitter mounting plate was bowing. And after the Apex event (above right) we had a major deformation in the middle of the splitter itself - it was sucking the center down and scraping the track. That's not what you want.

The rear mount repair was one that Brad and I brainstormed about. We added some mounting holes and removed some others. The center portion that was bowing down was reinforced by adding some 1/2" thick spacer blocks that the new bolts enough through, into the bottom of the subframe.

That rear splitter mounting bracket setup worked perfectly for more than a year before I tore it up in a crash (Oct 2024 - more on that later!) The reinforcement was done initially here in October 2023 with some extruded 1.5" x 1.5" x 1/8" wall aluminum angle, bolted fore-aft on the top side of the splitter. The countersunk bolts went through the splitter from the bottom for a smooth surface.

That worked pretty well for a few months, but we added even more reinforcement when we changed the front fenders in early 2024.

BUILD FRONT SPLITTER "END PLATES"

This aero change was a bit controversial when I first posted it, but Jason here at Vorshlag had his reasons for adding this. In the year since we added these "end plates" to the splitter on Trigger it has become more common to see end treatments like this, and we have even altered it since this initial design. We also took inspiration from OEM designs here.

At the time we ran an 18x12" Apex wheel and 315/30R18 Yokohama A052 "200TW" tire with this "GT500 style" (Anderson Composites Type-ST) front nose and 3/4" wider fenders. As you can see above, the tire protrudes from the front covering of the bumper cover and fender a good bit along much of the tire's height. And that is NOT beneficial for drag.

We wanted to make both a "Tire wall" (aka: wheel wicker) as well as an endplate for the splitter. The endplate captures some of the air on the top side of the tire wall and splitter and holds it in the working zone there, and more importantly it promotes air evacuation from the wheel well, to create more front downforce. And yes, it does add some drag, but we desperately need front downforce. We used .080" thick aluminum sheet to make the curved "tire all" and the vertical end plate.

We did not come up with this out of thin air - the OEMs have been doing this for a while. The image above left is of the C7 Corvette Z06 and a 2020 Mustang GT500, both of which have smaller versions of this exact same design. We made them into a welded aluminum piece that bolts to the fender and lays atop the splitter.

The change in "high speed front end grip" (ie: front downforce) was significant and noticeable. It plays a part in the aero package of the car, and works well for the overall aero balance. It isn't perfectly balanced at speed, but it is a lot better - and the mod below helped that even more.

LARGER FRONT FENDER VENTS

Another front downforce enhancement trick is to vent the fenders. Air from the splitter tunnels dumps into the front wheel wells - some of it is going to the brake deflectors and out through the brake rotors and wheels. Much of the under car air that ends up inside the fender liner of front these the wheel wells, and needs to go somewhere - otherwise it causes lift.

We had these "GT500 style" fiberglass fenders that already had an existing (very small) vent opening - so I drew out what we wanted to do in blue tape and Brad cut these triangular openings, which were much larger.

This gives the high pressure air a place to exit, but the flow of air needed some direction - after making mock-ups in cardboard, these curved ABS plastic deflector panels were made and bolted into the triangular openings.

The leading edge of these deflectors met at a large rectangular hole in the factory fender liner. That opening was heated up and "bent" to match the shape of this opening with a heat gun. A 2-piece plastic rivet connects the fender liner with the ABS plastic vent panel (yep, that is all we have needed - been using this vent for over a year now).

You can stick your arm in this opening, and the curve shape of the exit, the actual opening, and overall layout was guided by aero engineer Jason. This also made a bigger aero balance adjustment than we had hoped, but it would be a while before we were able to properly test this on the MSR 1.7 course.

MAKE FANCY PANELS AND DOOR WINDOWS

Before the last SCCA TT of 2023, to make this car 100% squeaky clean legal and protest proof for CAM-C class (and thus Max1, as we run the "alternate ruleset), we needed to add lightweight door windows and inner panels. Before October, the car was too slow to protest, but now that we were much faster, it was time to close some up rules gaps we had on Trigger.

We ordered these Lexan side windows from Plastics 4 Performance out of the UK with the rear window and quarter windows. These were 4mm thick and came with a protective film on both sides, which we never took off - because we have no intention of ever making these go up or down - they just need to be sitting inside the door. Glorified ballast.

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That seem silly to you? Well it is - but that's how rules often end up. They want you to have the penalty of the weight of the windows and door panels in the door, so you never bother to take out the stock stuff. We can't run with the "windows up" in either SCCA autocross or Time Trial, but alternate materials ARE allowed in CAM, so we ran these lighter Lexan side windows.

We ended up with a silly solution like this - legal Lexan side windows that never roll up. A simple aluminum bracket bolted to the window holds them inside the door. They can come up and down slightly, but can't be held up extended. It is legal and only added +5 pounds per door.



Likewise, we do have to run inner door panels in CAM class, but the material is open - so they do not have to run the OEM door panels. We used aluminum for an upper top cap section, to close up the window gap a bit, and ABS plastic for the panel itself. This was also 5 pounds per side.

Since we were going to the trouble of making a door panel I asked Brad to make a hole and mount the factory door latch assembly, which he had cut out of the OEM door panels. That makes the door easier to open from the inside, which is a win. Ideally we would have added some nylon strap "door pulls" but the doors are never going to have windows, so we just pull them closed by grabbing the top of the door.



Personally I feel that SCCA TT should allow for gutted doors and NO side windows when you have full Level 3 safety updates - a full 6-point cage. That way we could make the cage SAFER by pushing the cage's door bars out to the skin of the doors. We've done this on numerous race cars, like this E46 above.

Pushing the door bars out to the door skin gives you an extra 8-12" of lateral room between the driver and the door bars (this EVO X had fully 12" of cage pushed into the door cavity), but the SCCA is still thinking that Level 3 safety equipped time trial cars are "street cars". Someday they might get it - caged cars do not belong on the street, so why not let the cage be built even safer?

SCCA TT, MSR 1.3, NOV 11, 2023

All of the prep work above was done to get the car ready for this last SCCA TT event of 2023. I was hoping to show the gains from the new "improved aero", but due to traffic and rain, the car wasn't really able to show its full potential on the tiny 1.3 mile MSR course.



And while I did win the Max1 class and set FTD by over a second, the video below shows how badly my best lap of the day was botched (aka: blocked).

Even a year later while writing this I'm still frustrated watching the above video. This car had a sub 1 minute lap in it that day, but this 1.3 mile course is so tight it is nearly impossible to pass if you catch the back of the field. It really has to be perfect on lap 1. That lap still set an M1 class lap record on this course, but I'll try again for the 59 second lap another time.

BUILD A BIGGER SPLITTER FOR NASA/APEX/GTA

We had some success with the 6" extension splitter as shown in the last post, at an Apex Lap Attack event in October 2023. But that series had essentially no aero limits once you are bumped into the top LA1 class, and we could also run Hoosiers and other race tires. Likewise, NASA TT1 class had a more generous aero allowance than SCCA Time Trial. We also had our eye on GTA's "Super Lap Battle" Limited class, who runs at COTA in the early months of each year.



Jason and I gathered up the rules from GTA Limited and NASA ST1/TT1 and figured out we could make a compromise splitter that was 12" extended forward and a significantly wider. Now, practically, I still wanted to be able to drive the car into our enclosed trailer with the splitter on, so we measured our lateral clearance in there and made this "big splitter" only a few inches wider than our "little" SCCA splitter.



The finished 12" extension splitter (top, above) looks very similar to the 6" long CAM / Max legal splitter (bottom, above). These have the same Professional Awesome "large" plastic splitter ramps and minimal aluminum structure - we would later go back and add a LOT more structure to stiffen these both up.



We started with another sheet of MDO, used a 12" measurement forward and cut out the outline. We were still adding the ProA ramps on top of the splitter, but again we recommend flush mounting them on the bottom - which we did later.



Brad got this built and painted in a full day of work, and a new set of longer ProA splitter struts hold it on the leading edge.

We were still just barely able to load this into our trailer with the splitter installed, but due to the extra width we initially left in this version, it would not clear the trailer's internal fenders. That meant we had to load it backwards, which I did NOT ever want to do again! We came back later and removed those extra lateral inches to allow for forward loading, which works so much better.

NASA TT AT ECR, DEC 2, 2023

Did a single day of a NASA TT weekend, entered in TT1. We also entered the Darkhorse in TT3 but Amy only ran it in HPDE4. Both cars were teched and log booked for the year - in December.



I gridded Trigger in P2 for the first session, as there were some bonkers TTU cars gridded behind me. 30 cars signed up in TT. Weather was a chilly 40F in the first session. I had the 2nd fastest time in that session (1:59.85) back from P1 by 2 tenths, even with a weird and unexplainable 4 off, and my best lap was not until until Lap 5 - which these A052 "street tires" don't like to run that long.



I gridded P2 again in the next session, and I was stuck behind an Ariel Atom for several laps while his tires warmed up, and it took until Lap 3 to get around him. My fastest lap was again very late in the session, with a 1:59.1 on lap 4 followed by a 1:59.3 on lap 5, then I ran out of fuel. Made it back to the scales in fumes, still 546 pounds over my TT1 minimum weight for the power this car makes, and that was a new personal best here. I put 15.5 gallons into a 16 gallon tank after that! That was the quickest TT time up to that point, so I would be starting P1 in the next session (no traffic!) But then it rained HARD and nobody went out in that one.



At the same time I listened to another racer who saw the car squatting the rear at speed, and I admitted that I had an aero imbalance with a high speed push - and I listened to this fellow who convinced me to take the upper wing element off for the next session. I took that off, and raised the main element to the highest angle of attack. I went out in the 4th and final session in P1 at 4:20 pm to a dry track.



And while the "aero balance was better", OMFG the car was slow! In this session I only managed a best of a 2:02.4 lap - fully 3 seconds off my own pace earlier! About half the field DID go faster in that last session, so it was a GOOD session to push in. My silly "aero test" was costly, and I threw away the session. Two TTU cars got faster in that last session and snuck ahead, so I also threw away FTD. I still won TT1 class, but I felt pretty crappy about that lost session - what time could this car have run if I hadn't taken the 2nd wing element off??



After switching out the crusty RE71R tires in a previous session, we put the Pirellis back on the Darkhorse. She ran a full session on those, then I went out with Amy in the last HPDE4 session, but we could both feel a problem on a front tire right away. We came right back in to check, and sure enough, it had chunk and corded a front tire. We swapped back to the old RE71R tires for the drive home, so I never got to drive the Darkhorse on ECR for a baseline lap.



Big lessons learned here, and I won't make the mistake of chasing a "perfect aero balance" by crippling downforce at one end. I had hoped the new "big" front splitter would make more of a difference than it did, but we kept at it in 2024 and found more front downforce in later iterations of the car. Still, to finish the year with a TT1 "win" (in a class of one) and a new personal best at this track was nice. Turns out we did this on 7 cylinders, as we had a dead ignition coil...

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END OF YEAR RACING RECAP

"I'm not gonna lie, they had us in the first half!" We left 2022 excited to finally hear the 6.3L stroker engine fire up, only to have two miserable dyno sessions in early 2023 and losing the main bearing on our final pull. Then a mad scramble to get the 7.4L engine (which was built to be used in Amy's widebody FRS), finish the longblock, then the LS7 dry sump.



The 2023 racing season included a huge amount of changes and development with this car, as seen in the two pictures above, which was separated by only 6 months! We started the SCCA Time Trial season with stock fenders, relatively narrow 18x11" wheels, no aero, and no oil pressure. We fought problems with the Optima battery, the Holley EFI, and two different intake manifolds. We ended with a 5 second lap time drop at our main test track, some real victories, and a few lap records.

We were also busy all year developing parts for and campaigning Amy's 2023 BRZ in another SCCA TT class, but even with no wins she took the regional championship for T3 class. And by some good fortune I took the M1 championship in Trigger. I won the M1 class 4 of 8 times, but one of those was in Stan's borrowed 2020 GT500. With the 2 drops I actually only won the class by 1 point, so Stan really saved the year for me with that offer to drive his car for one session that day. The losses I had were all in borrowed cars, mostly Amy's T3 BRZ.

I had paid for and planned to go to the SCCA TT Nationals, but bailed out due to the oil pressure issues. We fixed those only a WEEK after TT Nationals, but so be it. The car wasn't ready and I would have been TROUNCED. I went in 2024 but well I'll save that story for another time.

POST SEASON UPGRADES

We had a number of things we wanted to tackle to get ready for the 2024 season. The problems we had with the Holley EFI on this car were pretty epic. If voltage ever got under 10 volts while cranking the starter, the tune would simply DISAPPEAR. This happened regularly on 3 different cars with Holley EFI. We had numerous wiring faults in Holley EFI harnesses. And the fact that Holley EFI will ONLY work with Holley dashes is a huge disappointment (and an "undocumented feature") that wasn't fixed until late 2024 (too late to save me as a customer).

HALTECH EFI UPGRADE AT RAPSCALLION

There were several upgrades we had in mind that almost any other high end aftermarket ECU could handle: traction control, auto-rev-matched downshifts, flat throttle upshifts, launch control, and of course being able to communicate with an AiM dash - and that brand's industry leading predictive lap timer, logger, and more. We picked Haltech EFI and we bought that from a relatively new shop called Rapscallion Motorsports.



We waited until the end of the season to upgrade. We mounted the AiM MXG logging dash beforehand, and dropped the car off on December 5th, 2023 for this work - two days after the last NASA event. Billy at RMS did a "Baseline pull" with the Holley EFI to get some numbers, check data, and turns out - the engine was down 110 whp! It only made 512 whp, and with some investigation that found that the #4 coil was dead, and all 7 others had heat issues (they would warm up and crap out). Ran the Dec 2nd NASA at ECR event like this!



They replaced the one bad coil and got the Haltech 2500 Elite EFI system installed. Then they wired in the various sensors, tied into the AiM MAX-G dash with CAN, and tuned the same 7.4L HPR LS7 based engine. The new setup made 607 whp on their DynoJet, which is a bit of a "heart breaker". That's within 10 whp of what the engine made previously with the same MSD / 103mm throttle body setup on another dyno.



After we got the car back to Vorshlag we replaced the remaining 7 coils with Delphi branded coils. I had been cheap when we built this car and used the absolute cheapest RockAuto $18 coils, and now I stepped it up to the $40/each coils. Big spender!



We did a lot of clean up work after the Haltech install in January of 2024, but I'll talk about that in the next installment. The RMS work was finished Dec 29th and we did a track test as I was picking up the Mustang....

DH TRACK TEST TEST #4 AND TRIGGER TEST #5 - MSR 1.7 - DEC 29, 2023

Last track test of the year but it was a busy one! This was a Friday, and the last day of the year we could be on track. Amy and I both drove the Darkhorse to do some tire testing - on a new set of 305/315 Trofeo RS tires and a new set of 295mm A052s tires, and the results were.... very close. We were joined by Vorshlag shop manager Brad and engine builder Erik from HPR.



I also drove Trigger in several stints while Billy from RMS tweaked the new Haltech 2500 EFI tune and a new traction control system he whipped up. Trigger ran a best of 1:15.10 and the DH ran a best of 1:19.6, which was good for both cars considering the cold weather and newness of the tune on Trigger.



I won't get into the Darkhorse testing this time but the Trofeo RS was slightly quicker than the A052 tires. What mattered more was how Trigger was driving after the Haltech upgrade - and the traction control that we dialed in all day. This lap below was from my 3rd session.



If you watch the video above, on my second and best lap I had to back out of it a little to keep from running over a Corvette, so that 1:15.1 was a little compromised. But hey, traffic happens on a lot of our test days as well as at competition events.



Having Brad there shooting pics with a real camera, we noted a lot of things back in the shop the next week. There was a lot of deflection in the big splitter at speed. If you click on the high rez versions of the pics above, the center is deflecting down so much at speed it is touching the ground. Air is also getting above the splitter when it deforms like this, which isn't good. We addressed this in 2024 with a lot of added structure on the top sides of both splitters.



And the flames that we had been hearing about all summer were finally caught in pictures by Brad here. This is always in decel / braking zones or downshifts, and it is harmless. But boy does it freak out racers behind us!

WHAT'S NEXT?

This is a good place to stop, as that Dec 29th test event was 2 days before the end of 2023 - and as I write this, we are only 3 weeks from the end of 2024. Time sure flies. There is still a whole YEAR'S worth or racing (2024 season) and development to show, and it was quite a bit.



In February 2024 we tackled some major safety upgrades on Trigger with this TrackSpec roll cage kit that we fit and welded into the chassis. As usual we were in a hurry and weren't able to take the 100+ hours needed to lighten the chassis properly before adding the cage, so this nearly 175 pound kit added to the already portly chassis' total weight. We also took the time to powder coat a lot of sheet metal panels and wing uprights, so at least it got prettier.



Above is a preview of what the car looked like by June of 2024 - with a full carbon fiber body. This Anderson Composites all carbon JTP widebody kit was sort of on a gamble - there were not reliable published fender width increases. I bit the bullet, we added it and it was more than wide enough to clear the 335mm front and 345mm rear Hooiser A7s, which we added to Jongbloed 18x12.5" Front and 18x13.5" Rear wheels for use in NASA and Apex events. We also went to wider 18x13" wheels for our 200TW street tire setup, again using 315/30R18 A052 Yokohamas. These changes, plus several more, helped us drop even more lap time and reset almost all of the class track records we set in 2023.

We will cover much of this in the next installment.

Thanks for reading!

 

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Project TRIGGER Update for July 16, 2025: The 7 months since the last update in this thread (the first half of the 2025 season) with Trigger have been pretty a prolonged nightmare. But in this entry I will instead cover the first third of the 2024 season, which had its ups and downs, but some good results. We eventually made huge strides with this car in safety, aerodynamics, tire fitment, traction control, power, and other systems.



The early part of 2024 saw the Mustang get the full widebody carbon fiber Anderson fenders front and rear, which let us put massive 335mm front and 345mm rear Hoosier A7s on, plus a giant splitter for events like NASA and Apex where we could run these DOT R-compounds (above). We continued with 200TW tires for the SCCA Time Trial series (below), but still had our share of struggles the whole season.



This early third of 2024 we at least left the functional Haltech 2500 EFI and MSD intake + 103mm Throttle Body setup alone, still making 620 whp - without the need for spending or craziness. I wish we would have left that engine setup alone, as it worked pretty well after the traction control was dialed in. But as you've seen in this build, we're always pushing for MORE! Even when that has a tendency to add hassles, costs, and failures. Learn from my mistakes?

BIG PLANS, RULES CHANGES AND MORE POWER = HOOSIERS NEEDED?

We run in three different Time Attack series in Texas: SCCA, NASA, and Apex Lap Attack. In 2023 making 620 whp, this car was able to just stay inside the TT1 class (and do pretty well) in NASA with 200TW tires, and we won Texas Region's SCCA Max1 class in 2023 on 200TW tires that year as well.



A rules change announcement in early 2024 for the Apex Lap Attack series (which felt 100% aimed at our car) made Trigger stuck in the top class (LA1) even with 200TW tires. We felt like this car should not have been competing with Prototypes, boosted V8s, and tube frame race cars on Michelin slicks and sequential transmissions. But with more power planned for the 454" engine later in 2024, Trigger was stuck in LA1 class, and for NASA might even be pushed to TTU class. At this point adding Hoosiers would help for those 2 series.



It had been a good decade since I had run the big 335/345mm Hoosier A7s on my TT3 classed 2011 Mustang (above left), and to fit these monster tires we needed wider bodywork. And while we eventually installed the full Anderson Composites carbon JTP widebody kit (above right) on our S550 here, we still stuck with 200TW tires for SCCA TT Max1 class, which remained our primary series & class to build and compete in for 2024.



But building for two wildly different sets of classes and very different rules led to a lot of additional spending - we now needed to reinforce both splitters (small for SCCA/LS Fest + bigger for NASA/Apex/SLB), and then wider wheels for both the Hoosiers as well as for the 200TW tires (to better fit the wider bodywork). Not only were we adding LS Fest (200TW) to the 2024 schedule, we wanted to add Super Lap Battle at COTA (hoped to run Limited class on 200TW). This led to a lot of spending, a 6 week thrash of prep, and also a number of compromises. Advice: be careful what you wish for, and try not to run in every possible class in one car.

TRIGGER GETS CAGE + WIDEBODY = AN INSANE 6 WEEKS OF WORK!

The roll cage was a safety upgrade we needed to make for a while, as the carbon doors we added in 2023 do not have any crash protection. We only had a 4-point roll bar (behind the driver) and I was rolling the dice with my safety. With a plan to enter SCCA TT Nationals at NCM, a track surrounded by concrete walls, a roll cage was beyond required.



After research we ordered this Trackspec motorsports roll cage kit, which arrived on February 5, 2024. As if this wasn't a big enough job, we also decided to do the carbon widebody conversion, which arrived a week earlier - meaning, we needed to tackle both a cage build and a major bodywork swap at the same time. This was poor timing, but plans from the "winter off season" (which is about 2 weeks in early January) led to this convergence of projects.



Super Lap Battle was creeping up March 8-10, 2024, but I had hope that we could tackle both of these big projects AND add new wheels and a bigger splitter, do some testing, and make that event. We were not even remotely close to making that impossible deadline, as these projects snowballed and other delays set up back. We did test with the new aero and 200TW tires at a March 2nd NASA TT event, but the car was 2 seconds off its previous pace, so we scrubbed SLB for that year.

TRACKSPEC CAGE INSTALL

This actually went fairly well and was wrapped up in barely 2 weeks of shop time, from removing the glass and dash, installing and welding in the cage, painting the bare metal, and putting it all back together again. That was because we used a cage kit from TrackSpec Motorsports - pre-cut, pre-bent, marked and ready to weld in. It really went in fast!

• Using a cage kit vs a Scratch built roll cage: LINK

Instead of writing this section twice, I encourage you to go to the forum section linked above where we cover many steps of this TrackSpec cage install, as well as a 7 minute video that we shot during and after the installation. Check that out. Brad and Austin from our shop did a great job on this task!

ANDERSON COMPOSITES CARBON JTP WIDEBODY KIT

This was something we had looked at years ago - a carbon body kit from Anderson Composites called the JTP kit (below left) that we had only seen on a few drift cars. There was no information on how wide this kit was, how it fit, etc. We debated this kit on our red 2018 GT in 2019 as well as the Clinched widebody kit (below right), which comes in thermal formed plastic and also full carbon (over $6000).



After a good call with Zach at Anderson, we made the decision to roll the dice and bought the last JTP kit they had in stock, and he gave us an amazing price. It arrived in Late January and it looked amazing. Everything was light and I test fit the rear and was shocked that it added a full 2" of width. The front added a similar amount as well.



Now due to time constraints of these concurrent projects - the cage, splitter upgrades, Haltech upgrades, new wheels needing to be ordered and more - we chose to tackle only the FRONT fender install for now. This meant that the Anderson fiberglass "Type ST" nose and front fenders would be removed (bottom left) and we would need to reinstall the 2018 Mustang GT plastic nose we had on in late 2022 and early 2023.



We had built the tubular bumper beam to fit with the factory 2018 GT nose, and had already modified it to work with that - before we ever added a splitter. That 2018 bumper cover was already painted and we barely had any track time with it, so it still looked great. Just a lot of work to get it re-mounted then fit the two inboard splitter struts through that. Brad got the carbon fenders on the front and we began testing with various wheels and spacers to figure out how much room we had to work with so we could order the first of what became TWO new sets of custom wheels. I ordered wheels from two companies because the first set was taking much longer than promised.



This wheel delay pushed back our move to Hoosiers by about 2 months, as both sets of wheels were late. So we planned on running the same Apex 18x12" wheels we had run in 2023 for the first few events of 2024, until either of the new wheels arrived. Brad used the green "laser" to line up the inboard mounting holes for the splitter but I'll show that install in a section below.

IGNITION COIL BRAND CHANGE + HALTECH EFI UPGRADES

This is another lesson learned - the brand matters. I had joked about this for years: since the LS V8 uses 8 ignition coils (vs the 1 coil for 8 cylinders for 70+ years), how much can the brand of the ignition matter? We've seen coils as cheap as $12 each and as much as $120 each. When we first built this car back in 2021-22, I picked the cheapest no-name branded LS coils on RockAuto, and they lasted a little over 2 years.



During the Haltech 2500 install and tuning work in late 2023 by Rapscallion Motorsports, they had one coil die on the dyno. They found a name brand AC Delco coil from the local parts store and that fixed it, but we were not willing to gamble on the other 7. I ordered Delphi branded coils and we replaced the other 7 in February of 2024 (about $30 each).



The crew that installed the Haltech had it basically shoved inside the glove box and it was time to properly mount that, as well as tie in some additional sensors to the AiM dash. Then we needed to wire in the new traction control dials to the Haltech.



The rear view camera screen we had placed in the center stack panel, but it died in 2023. That was removed and Brad made a flat panel to house the two Haltech dials. Two dials, once changes the allowed Tire Slip and the other how much Engine Power (gain) to pull when that threshold is reached. These are both 12 position dials.



REINFORCE BIG SPLITTER + REMOUNT THE OEM NOSE

As was visible in our late December 2023 test, the splitters were bowing in the middle at speed and contacting the ground. This led us to add lateral reinforcement above the splitter to join the fore-aft 1.5" angle aluminum braces that kept it from bowing front to back.



Brad had already mounted the 2018 factory bumper cover at this point and drilled holes for the splitter struts through the lower grill plastics, shown above right. The splitter was now attached but it has a big 2" gap to the lower GT "splitter lip". We need to cover this gap with an air dam, and since i am short sighted, we would end up dong this task twice.



The lateral brace was tricky - we didn't have room for another piece of 1.5" aluminum angle, as the splitter ramps and new 2018 nose left us less volume to work within. This was when we decided to use a 1" square aluminum tube. It would take more work to fit this - note all of the holes for access to the bolt-thru nuts use to secure it in place - but it ended up saving head space and fit within the narrow confines of the 2018 GT nose.



After that was in we still had the 2" gap. Now I have since realized that I made this much harder than it needed to be, and garden edging (an "L" shaped plastic part that comes in rolls) would have been SO much easier. Stubborn me didn't want the Home Depot solution, so Brad mounted lots of short pieces of aluminum angle that followed along the curving path that the air dam needed to bridge the gap. Needlessly fiddly.



I even drove across town to buy a 4x8' sheet of 1/8" textured ABS to make this piece, but we've since used that for numerous other projects so it wasn't a total waste. The air dam plastic overlaps the lower edge of the factory plastic lower "splitter lip", so we can alter the angle of the splitter for some testing (or so we thought). Brad then reinstalled the old aluminum "end treatments" from the previous nose with one additional brace at the bottom.

INTERIOR PANELS, WINDOW NET, ETC

We had a lot of raw aluminum panels, trays, and even wing uprights that were raw aluminum. It all looked a bit "agricultural" and we planned on semi-gloss black powder coating a while ago. As soon as we had modified the rear bulkhead covers to clear the new cage, all of the raw bits were removed and taken to the powder coat shop.



I told them we were on the clock with races looming and they got it all turned around in just 6 days, which is outstanding. As soon as these were picked up (Feb 26th) Brad got to work installing all of the low gloss black panels.



Everything worked out perfectly except for the fire suppression bottle mount, which was in the middle of the back seat area. With the new diagonal tube placement it could not work, so Brad quickly made another mounting bracket but slid it behind the driver, for better clearance to the cage. That had to be spray painted but you'd never know unless you really looked.

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Two quick videos above - these are right off my phone, no editing, nothing fancy. The first one above left shows the cage as it was prepped right before paint. The second one at right shows the painted cage and these powder coated interior panels in place before the rear Lexan and seats were reinstalled. Just click on the images, as always.

The rear wing uprights in black look SO much better, and Brad put all of the dash bits back in place. For the moment we had no glove box door, and I was worried that this would make the car not legal for SCCA Max classing. We also ditched the A-pillar plastics and carpet, but after asking the SCCA rules board they pointed out that Level 3 Safety regulations made all of that unnecessary. We could even remove the side door panels, door glass, carpets, center console and headliner with the addition of the full cage.

Because I am a masochist, I also ordered a window net mounting kit and a custom window net from Stroud Safety. Our crew welded on the brackets and the net fits the opening perfectly, as it was made to our template from the car. I haven't used the dang thing once, as I feel that nets are more of a hindrance to exiting a car quickly than the small benefits they bring in driver containment. And I am not W2W racing so I don't have to use it.

The video linked above shows a wider version of the "big" 12 inch extension splitter, which we built for use with NASA, Apex and SLB rules. But after measuring our trailer we realized that loading the car would be a nightmare with this, and decided to chop that extra width off instead of using the extra width those series allow. We also show in this video how we redesigned the splitters mounting holes to allow the same set of 4 splitter struts to work on this bigger splitter and the tiny baby 6" SCCA legal splitter, which makes life much easier when swapping before a race.

One of the rear quarter windows (2.5 pounds each) had to come out to access part of the cage and weld a junction of tubes - just the right side shown above. Instead of paying some windshield company $200 to come out and bond that glass back in, I asked Brad to just install the Lexan quarter window that we had bought in 2023 from Plastics4Performance. It was class legal for SCCA and didn't make much of difference in weight (3/4 pound lighter). Since we didn't have the big wheels and Hoosiers yet, I installed fresh letters and kept the same class lineup: M1 for SCCA, TT1 for NASA, and LA1 for Apex.

We weighed the car on Leap Day, Feb 29, 2024 - and it definitely gained some weight. We knew what the cage kit weighed, and we used the whole dang thing. Sadly we removed almost nothing as we added the cage, so it was nearing 3500 pounds with nearly a full tank but without driver. Oof.

On March 1st it was time to load up the car, with a fresh set of sticker A052s mounted to the forged Apex 18x12's - which looked comically small with the wider front carbon fenders. Again, we didn't have the time to cut the rear fenders and install those over-fenders, so for this one event we had carbon from the doors forward but still sported the factory steel rear fenders. Loaded up and ready to test the next day at MSR Cresson, which was a NASA TT...

NASA TT - MSR-C - MARCH 2, 2024

Due to so many unknowns, I only signed up to run for Saturday, as I wasn't chasing points or trophies with this series this year - especially on street tires. This was just a test to see if the car was ready for Super Lap Battle a week later (it clearly was NOT). When the 3-piece wheels arrive and we had fresh Hoosier A7s mounted, then I could take this NASA series more seriously. I knew what the car ran here on the 1.7 CCW course in October of '23 (1:14.6) and December (1:15.1) on these same tires and same basic aero package. Power wasn't touched, either.

Amy and I were sick from the night before, so it was a rough wake up call at 4:45 am and rolling out with the trailer at 5:30 am. Arrived at the track at 7 am, unloaded, got the car annual teched, then off to the TT meeting. Went on track at 8:45 and I started up front thinking I'd be fastest - Ha! That was optimistic.

First session was a total mess with aborted laps by everyone after some dumb kid in a Rush that was in another group accidentally came out on track right in front of me on our first hot lap. Aborted that lap while they were black flagged furiously, then I ran a crappy 1:16.828 lap. Yikes, so took another cool down, and ran the same time within .01 sec on another attempt. I was scrubbing in a new sticker set of 315mm A052s, getting them ready for SLB the next week. Came in, scaled at 3750 lbs, fully 650 pounds heavier than our declared TT1 weight. Yeesh, the extra weight from the cage and other additions was adding up! This was a TT2 car on street tires, once you do the NASA calcs.

The car was pushing, and not making the front grip it made in December on the same basic setup. Second session I went out P2 behind a TT3 car, and on the out lap I let him build a gap, but not enough. I caught him going into the fastest corner (Big Bend) and was following too closely - I guess the wash from his aero threw off the front grip even more, and I had 2 wheels off at 90 mph - cooked my lap and ruined the session. Couldn't get quicker than a 1:18 and they mistakenly gave me a 4 wheel off and DSQ. That meant I had to do another session, as the "warm up" first session times don't count, and I had a DSQ in session 2.

Billy the tuner had loaded a tune for the traction control, but it was not working at all, and even with just 620 whp it was hard to drive out of corners on these 200TW tires. I managed a 1:16.6 in the third session of the day, but the car felt terrible - lacking front grip, and shock changes didn't help. I went to impound after that session, and waited in line to be weighed. After sitting idling for two minutes I noticed the coolant temps start to rise, and at 220F I shut off the engine. As the line pulled up to scales minutes later, I went to crank the the engine and nothing happened. Click.

Ended up pushing the car across scales and aborting the last TT session. Just disgusted with the car at this point, with such a terrible start to the season, especially after a six week THRASH to get so much work done. I wish this setup would have been done a week earlier and I could have tested privately at a member day, but we only finished the car prep the day before.

With our only technician leaving for vacation Monday I had nobody working in the shop the next week (we were still down a tech), so I aborted my SLB entry due to the poor showing here and lack of ability to fix anything. Being two full seconds off this car's previous best on the same tires at the same track!? Not worth the $1800 entry fee and embarrassment from what would be a poor showing at COTA.

Got a tow over to Rapscallion Motorsports and after cooling down a bit, and a quick whack with a hammer, we got the starter to work - but it was clearly running hot. Later we would find that the little Mishimoto fan was not up to the task of idling this engine for more than 1-2 minutes. And much later we found a leaking steam vent line at the back of the engine, so it never built pressure. Left the car at Rapscallion for some more tuning work to try to get the new Traction Control working and we loaded up the Darkhorse to take back to the shop.

AERO TWEAKS AND OTHER REPAIRS

A week after leaving Trigger at RMS they had the traction control working now, so I picked it up March 9th. Just a quick 5 hour round trip, but with issues leftover from the last TT event, this wasn't the time to do another track test and it was a super windy day.

After Brad was back from vacation March 11th, we got the Mustang back into the shop and Jason, Brad, and I looked at what had changed that could explain the 2 second loss of lap time at our main test track - and the loss of front grip. I was complaining about lack of front downforce, and some of the photographs that I paid for showed some front end lift. There was a lot of work tackled on this car once again over the next 2 weeks, so I'll try to cover it quickly but completely.

We made a plan to lower the front lip and change the angle of the splitter, close up a GIANT pair of holes that the 2018 front bumper cover left, add some front fender vents, replace a missing fender liner and extend that to cover some openings, install the wider carbon Anderson lower side skirts, and add a Gurney flap to the vented hood. Lots of little things that hopefully add up to some gains.

The first fix was this somewhat ugly plastic cover for these lower openings - I mentioned that you could walk a large rabbit through these openings, so the new Race Roll patches covered up these holes. I didn't like how these looked, and we ended up making these in metal later in 2024, but they were fully functional.

Another potential big source of front lift is air trapped under the front fenders, being fed from the massive splitter tunnels that aim air at this area (and through the brakes). We taped out a cut area after conferring with lead engineer Jason and Brad got to work cutting the brand new carbon fenders (ahh!) There was also some questions for the SCCA TT Board about max body width that I sent in (see above left pic).

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After cutting the opening, and making a template in cardboard, Brad then made a curved vent panel from textured ABS plastic sheet. That was bolted to the fender, and a lower aluminum panel / bracket seals off the bottom plane, and helps the ABS hold its shape. There was also a missing fender liner that was replaced, and both liners were cut and formed to feed these fender vents in a smooth manner. Not F1 level good, but pretty good for a nasty little Time Attack Mustang.



These wider carbon fiber lower skirts from Anderson are about two inches wider than stock, and that can help out under the car, so it was time to install these. The factory skirt mounts with crappy plastic push pins, so Brad drilled out those holes and added massive M8 rivet nut threaded inserts.



Of course these skirts don't even remotely line up to those holes, so he then drilled a new set of holes and riveted the damn things on at the right spot. They otherwise fit nicely and nest into pockets of the fenders at the front and rear nicely.



This carbon hood from Anderson was purchased in 2018 and used on my red 2018 GT for 2 seasons. We took that off when we sold the car and it has been on Trigger since 2020. Now it was finally time to cut on it - to open up the "GT500" style hood vents considerably. Brad, Jason, and I once again met and agreed upon a series of slats to remove - that would later mate up to a radiator exhaust vent hood we would make much later in 2024. Always smart to be planning ahead when you are chopping up expensive carbon fiber bodywork!



The pic above shows the GT500 style carbon hood 3 pairs of slats removed, so a lot more air should be able to exit naturally. Now to goose that airflow - adding a Gurney flap.



This is just a piece of aluminum bent on the sheet metal brake at a ~30 degree angle, then using our shrinker / stretcher it got a bend laterally along the centerline of the hood - matching the shape of the hood openings. That was riveted in place, masked, and painted semi-gloss black (pro tip : paint it before you rivet it on!) This little lip should enhance airflow out from under the hood, hopefully reducing lift as well.



One thing we temporarily tested was reinstalling the factory cowl panel. We did this on the 2018 GT when we ran this hood at higher speed events like COTA and it reduced the back of the hood lifting up several inches at speed. And above right you can see a new panel Brad added to our single air filter box, which is force fed from an opening in the grill. This now closes off the airbox and seals to the hood - that should keep the cold air fed into this box from bleeding out to the underhood area. He also cut a slot in the panel for the hood prop, making it easier to stow properly.



There is a massive hole in the back corner of the front fender wells on the S550 - in all models. We made a set of these "close off panels" from that ABS plastic sheet again, cut to shape and formed a bit with a heat cut. The green "laser" shows the cut line for the template, which was applied to the ABS version that bolts in place. This should keep air from bleeding out of the front fender area and going under the car, which could potentially disturb airflow from the splitter and cause lift.



A new ride height setup was added to raise the rear ride height 0.5", then lowering the front .25", adding .75" more rake to the car. The front splitter was dropped at the leading edge to a 1.0 deg down angle. (NOTE: this later led to problems with the air dam, explained below)

The starter issue from the March event led me to simply buy a new starter from a better brand (AC Delco, which is what we use on customer builds), replacing the cheapo brand from RockAuto we used before. Hey, it was 2020, and everyone was broke! This starter was then installed with some DEI reflective heat wrap, to keep header heat from cooking the solenoid again (it has since worked flawlessly for the last year - again, parts brands do matter).



Finally we had Billy the tuner remotely log into the Haltech to change the trigger temperatures for the fan to kick on and off. As you can see in the video above, we did some extended run testing afterwards and now the fan kicks on with coolant temps of 200G and turns off again at 195F. This worked fine on a cool late March day, but as we found out at LS Fest, it was still insufficient for long periods of idling in very hot weather. The thin Mishimoto 16" diameter fan simply did not have enough airflow for hot day idling, as we would later learn. (And also - the rear steam vent port leak, which was impossible to see)

TRACK TEST #6 - MSR - MARCH 23, 2024

I hauled out to MSR on a member day to test ALLLL of the changes above, as well as to dial in the new traction control. We always would rather test big changes in private before showing our ass at a competition event with new parts. I was hoping to see the car - still on fresh A052s - get back closer to those 1:14.6 lap times I ran in October of 2023. We got to the track and it was SUPER windy, which is not the best conditions to test a car with lots of aero, but I was hopeful and went out in two sessions for 25 minutes of driving trying to find the time....



I was making laps but the car was fighting me, and the aero changes did not make the time drops I had hoped for. After my first session with a couple of attempted hot laps, I checked over the car and noticed that a major "flutter" I felt above 125 mph was the splitter opening up a gap above the air dam! The dam thing was too short.



The lap times were.... the same as at the lousy NASA event 3 weeks earlier, almost to the tenth of a second. Ugh. I could reproduce this lap time over and over, but nothing more. Traction control was still not operating as planned and after several tweaks I was fed up with that. But this gap above the air dam was more of a concern at the moment. I screwed up, didn't leave an overlap of the airdam to take up for changes to the angle, and that opened up a gap that nullified all of the front downforce.

After two test sessions and many lap attempts with no improvement, and the wind just was not dying down, I called it. So Amy and I we loaded up the car and sat inside the trailer and sheltered in place while a bit of a storm blew through, which you can see in the video linked in the image below.

I should have checked the forecast before wasting a day coming out here, but we had an SCCA TT event in a week and learning that the air dam was too short was something we needed to know, so that could be remade in time. Frustrating second day at the track in this car for 2024, but we still learned something.

TALLER AIR DAM AND OTHER REPAIRS

After the test day shown above Trigger didn't need much, but the air dam clearly wasn't tall enough. Air was indeed getting over the top and causing lift, so I asked Brad to re-make the air dam but 1" taller. Brad had to swap out the 12" splitter for the SCCA Max legal 6" splitter for the next event, too.



That taller air dam was made fairly quickly with more ABS plastic sheet (he also later made a taller one for the 12" splitter we use for NASA and Apex), and the new overlap of the OEM lower splitter lip is clearly shown in the images above. This will give us the ability to raise or lower the front lip of the splitter, changing the angle of attack, and still keep air from going above the splitter. This extended air dam is pretty common and something I should have spotted before the last test. My mistake.



The Mustang was then cleaned up and readied for another SCCA Time Trial the next weekend, with the 200TW tires mounted to the little 18x12" wheels and stock rear bodywork for one last time...

SCCA TT, MSR 1.7 CW, MARCH 30, 2024

We took both the 2024 Darkhorse and Trigger to this SCCA points event, but I will save the DH updates for a separate post. We're just going to focus on Trigger in this write-up. We were running the same MSR 1.7 course but backwards, going clockwise. And while it is the same length I've never matched my CCW times here in any vehicle going back 20+ years.



I won Max1 class that day by a good bit, but not as much as we should have. My fastest lap was in the first TT session, a 1:17.6 lap (fully 3 sec slower than my Oct 2023 1.7 CCW time) My competitor Stan got faster throughout the day and ran a 1:19.0 at the end of the day, so pretty close for a street car GT500. Dusold was there in his Pikes Peak twin turbo Camaro, and I was ahead of his times in the first 2 sessions, but he got some issues worked out and 1:15.0 at the end of the day.



The issues with Trigger were numerous, and all within me - I had a migraine for 24 hours and I couldn't hold down food or even think straight. I never felt like I put a good lap in, and the clutch and synchros were giving me fits, with the clutch not disengaging all the way making both up- and down-shifting difficult.



Immediately after this event we ordered the Tilton ST-246 clutch that I should have installed long ago. Once again, brands matter - and Tilton is in the top tier of clutch brands for a reason. Painful expense, and I still to this day cannot make myself throw out the ClutchMasters twin disc setup (so much money).



I ran that 1:17.6 lap on lap 3 of the first session, and it was straight garbage. I kept pushing all day and ran all 4 sessions, but had a nasty off in the 3rd session that damaged the splitter and splitter rods. Pushing, pushing, pushing to just get nothing. I ran the 4th session anyway, and saw a predicted time that was faster but was blocked on the last corner - I felt like the car should have been in the 1:15 or 1:16s. It was a windy, windy day which is never good for aero cars - but this car has run 1:14.7 on the same course backwards here on street tires before! Being 3 seconds off this car's Personal Best was super frustrating.



Honestly I was once again leaving with a win, but embarrassed. I didn't even compile the data with the video, as it just wasn't worth watching. I was hoping that in the near future with the Tilton fewer shifting errors, and a wider track width with the new 18x13" front wheels for 200TW tires that the car would be magically faster...

REPAIRS, CARBON REAR FENDERS INSTALLED AND JONGBLOED WHEELS ARRIVE

At this point I was committed to the carbon widebody kit and had ordered two different sets of wider wheels to replace the 18x12" Apex wheels we used with the Type-ST front fenders and nose we had on the car earlier (see below). The first set to arrive (and second set ordered) was an 18x12.5" front and 18x13.5" rear Jongbloed racing 3-piece set.



I was on this delusional kick that the Big Hoosier Magic of 2012-15 that we experienced on our 2011 Mustang would unlock huge amounts of time. It did unlock 1.5 seconds at MSR Cresson, which ain't nothing, but it wasn't the 2-3 second gain we had hoped for. I suppose some of that is just how good the 315mm Yokohama A052 200 treadwear tire really is?



These 3-piece wheels are very light, but the wheel mounting holes were incorrect - they came at 1/2" diameter (worked up through S197) but did not fit over the larger M14 studs used on the S550 and newer Mustangs. Not what we wanted to be doing before test fitting the wheels, but we drilled them out larger with an M14 bit. Then recut the conical seats with a special 60 deg chamfer bit we ordered. I wouldn't be upset but we did spec out the M14 lug hole diameters on the Purchase Order.



With that out of the way we could start test fitting these ultra wide wheels on the rear with the Anderson JTP rear over-fenders in place. These add a LOT of tire and wheel room out back, so it was time to mount some fat Hoosier A7 tires to these wheels.



Above left you can see the 18x13.5" wheel bolted up with the stock rear fenders, and they stick out over 2 inches. The front already had the Anderson flared carbon fenders on, and the new 18x12.5" front wheel clears easily. I took some old 345/35R18 Hoosier A7 tires I won back in 2015 (?!) that were still "new sticker tires" and had them mounted up. Wait, 9 year old tires? They were "free" and never mounted, so what could go wrong? (that proved to be a really bad idea) We mounted these up April 2nd, 2024 and it was time to order new 335/30R18 A7 fronts.

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