Vorshlag S550 & S650 Mustang Development + 2018 GT, 2024 Darkhorse & #Trigger

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EPAS CONTROL & POWER HARNESSES

Another OEM system we lost with this "CAN-free" car was the Electric Power Assist Steering, or EPAS. The 2011-14 S197 and 2015-up S550 models all went to EPAS, removing the hassles and dangers of hydraulic power steering pumps / lines / coolers.



This car has a junkyard sourced 2015 Mustang EPAS rack. We then purchased a "stand-alone" harness for the S197/S550 racks from Cortex (the blue/white wires coiled up inside the big red/black cables), then a power harness for this from a late model F150 (the outer coiled cables). This Cortex harness has some sort of circuitry to "trick" the EPAS rack to work without CAN signals. We lose speed input changes and the dash-mounted 3-mode selections using their harness, but I don't really care or notice.


The image above left shows both connectors - the control and power harnesses. The main power cable (#4) is fed from the power distribution through a 100 amp circuit breaker before going to the rack (see above right).



All of this works like a champ - I made a demo video last week, which shows how this works, even with the engine off. This is handy when you are pushing a race car around. We just power on the Cartek kill and - VOOM! - we have EPAS.

CENTER STACK SWITCH PANEL

We don't have the factory HVAC controls or radio - which is what takes up a majority of the center part of the dash. I like to call this the "center stack switch panel", and it is valuable real estate in most race cars. If the driver can reach part or all of this we can add buttons, switches and dials. We started with a cardboard template that Brad cut out, then I scanned that for a CAD version that Jason would ultimately create based on my layout.



For the Center Stack Panel on our Mustang, I wanted to spend a little more time on, really get this dialed in correctly. So many times on race car builds the center stack is a flat panel with switches, dials and ports added over a long period of time without any real long term planning or "cohesive plan". This area adapts as things like a cool suit or new systems that need switches get added (see below left).



I also wanted to use a type of rectangular paddle switch that is common in trucking, marine, and lately race car use. These come in 2 position, 3 position and even momentary push button versions, and can be backlit. I had a gaggle of these I got stuck with on a customer's build he flaked out on, so we had some initial switches we could start with. Long term I will get these custom made with laser etched lettering and symbols that are backlit, but these will do for now.




These rectangular holes are a REAL CHORE to cut out manually, so we created a design in CAD that we could cut out quickly on the CNC plasma table. Brad and I planned out the switch placements early on, along with some additional items: a 7" LCD screen (for a back up camera / lose cam), some USB ports, a digital volt meter, push button start, Cartek main battery kill switch, AiM remote memory card holder, and a control panel / readout for a driver cooling system that would we added later. We also had a comms port for the AiM dash.



Getting the shape of the panel to fit the center stack opening on the S550 dash took a couple of iterations, as did the final sizing of the rectangular switch openings. We also changed the layout of a few items after mocking them up in the car - with me strapped in the driver's seat - after finding the limit of my reach. The 4th version was just about perfect and Brad got that one painted up.



To mount the center stack panel into the dash required some custom brackets, which themselves adapt to the radio mounting area - which is further back and at an angle. Brad whipped these out and bolted them into the partially gutted dash structure. Later on the mounting holes to these brackets was added to the CAD file for the panel, to make later iterations quicker to mount up.



Once we had the layout right Brad wired in the various switches to a DW multi-pin connector, so the whole unit can be unbolted and removed quickly. As you can see above left there is a lot going on behind this panel, but the finished unit (above right) looks clean, purposeful and well thought out. Later on as we add more systems we might need another version but I think this one will last us a bit.



Brad also created a lower mounting bracket at the bottom of the opening, then a horizontal filler panel that that ties the bottom of the center stack panel to the lower console - fills in a section that is normally a plastic storage cubby. And that big blank section at the bottom of the panel is for the driver cooling system controller, which we will add later (basically an air conditioner for water that will go through a driver worn cool suit).



This is the completed center stack switch panel, along with the functional 7" LCD screen for a back up camera - which has been surprisingly useful on this car! I use this in my street car daily drivers, and every single time I back up this Mustang it gets used. With Halo style racing seats and a HANS device on this will be a welcomed addition for visibility behind. I bought this screen ages ago and I think it was about $50. The license plate frame with included camera and LED light was about the same amount, so for $100 we have a useful addition - an more D&E points for Optima, haha!

AIM MXG 1.3 DIGITAL DASH (DOES NOT WORK WITH HOLLEY EFI!)

This section of the project was an unpleasant surprise - which we learned about after the fact - Holley doesn't support any other aftermarket digital dash. AiM Sports made it sound like they worked with Holley HP and Dominator EFI systems, so I purchased an AiM MXG dash, but that was a lie. There is a nerfed Holley output that supposedly works on RacePak digital dashes, but you lose ~75% of the Holley data channels with that protocol.



We spent a chunk on this AiM MXG and the remote SD card holder, and spent a chunk of time mounting it all - all for naught. I really like AiM dash units because they (can) log data and I am familiar with their data analysis software. These units also have an industry leading lap timer and predictive lap readout feature. Words cannot describe how pissed off I was at the end of this section of work to realize that we HAD to use a Holley dash...



I will show the steps where Brad made the mounting brackets and panels - because we re-used all of this to mount the Holley digital dash. I wanted the steering column plastics installed, to keep the interior looking "finished" for a few racing classes we had in mind. The trimmed hole above fits the AiM and Holley screens.



I had purchased missing items like the factory gauge bezels, then Brad made a "gauge block off" panel starting with cardboard and going to aluminum. Sections of the angled and round bezels had to be modified to fit this blanking panels.



Mounting brackets for the blanking panel were added inside the back section of the gauge bezels, then the AiM dash template was used to transfer the mounting holes for this screen.



I was happy with the finished install, but very UNhappy to learn this screen won't work with any Holley EFI system. I will use a remote AiM SOLO lap timer for use on track for now, but that is more clutter on the windshield I was hoping to avoid.



We're not giving up all hope, however, and have a CAN integration specialist working on a custom box to help the to devices talk together. Its much harder than just "sniffing the CAN signals", but I will cover this in more detail next time - if we can make this work.

DASH INDICATOR LEDS

One of the things that can happen when you have a LOT of sensors and data displayed on a digital screen is DATA OVERLOAD. So we have some warning indicator LEDs we planned for and I purchased. These cover things like low fuel level and ABS warning lights, but also left and right turn indicators, high beam lights, and even Reverse light indicator. These have already proven useful in testing.



I purchased 6 of these units online at $8.95 each and Brad got to work on the layout and placement of each, testing with me in the car for each one.



These all are wired into another DW 12 pin connector for easier panel removal and work. The first one to be wired in was the low fuel indicator from a level switch in the top of the Radium remote surge tank. This was an optional item when purchasing the surge tank and lets you know as soon as the tank goes from "full" to just a bit under - which means you have about a liter of fuel left. This is a "BACK OFF THE LAP AND PIT RIGHT NOW" light.



We have also added a Reverse solenoid controller and when the transmission is shifted into Reverse the "R" indicator on the dash lights up. We have 4 other indicators that we will wire in as time allows, after the dyno testing is complete.

FLUIDS INSTALLED + STARTER BUMPED

By Mid-November 2022 we were ready to start adding fluids and bump the starter, crank the engine, and check oil pressure. This would also be a full plumbing system leak test.



I decided to use a Motul break-in oil for the first dyno test, which we would change out for proper Motul 5W50 Ester synthetic before the first track test. We needed THREE GALLONS of oil to fill the oil pan, filter, oil cooler and Accusump.



We filled the cooling system with distilled water and a touch of anti-freeze. We used a cheap AC Delco DOT3 hydraulic fluid for the brake and clutch systems - anticipating some small leaks, which of course did happen. This will be flushed and bled with proper Motul RBF600 or 660 once the initial dyno work and test driving is completed.



Filling the diff cooler system was a challenge. We had a "T" fitting high up in the system with a cap, just for this purpose. But since the cooler was above the diff housing, we would have to do a calculated fill. The pump acts as a check valve so once fluid gets pumped into the cooler is stays there (again, this is by design). We had to run the pump to get everything full, until it was coming out of the top hole (the normal fill line). Then added the amount that goes into the cooler. Doug used a long funnel and added the 3.6 quarts of Valvoline 80W90 diff fluid (Motul Gear300 was out of stock globally) and some Auburn Gear limited slip additive.

FUEL PRES REGULATOR MOVE, LOAD START-UP TUNE, CHECK SENSORS

One of the things Brad noticed when he want to add some sensor wiring was that the Aero fuel pressure regulator was in a tough spot to reach and had some plumbing that got a little to close to the exhaust header. After looking at this closely I agreed and set him loose.



After making a new bracket he relocated the regulator, re-routed the hoses, and made one new Fragola hose. That keeps the regulator as far away from the headers as possible without putting it too far from the fuel rail to be useful.



We had somehow missed adding a MAP sensor, so we ordered the correct LS6 style from AC Delco. There are two options for the one O2 sensor on a Holley - NTK or Bosch. We also ordered and installed the wide band Oxygen sensor, the NTK "0.9 Lamda" unit (for NA engines), from MAD Racing.

FIRST FIRE TESTING

All sensors were installed and wired, all fluids filled, now the battery was charged up. The starter had been bumped several times, even cranked, to fill fluids into the oil system.



We took the start-up tune from our tooner and Doug loaded that to the Holley ECM. We added fuel and cranked... checked fuel pumps, checked spark plugs, but it would NOT start.



We had to triple-check major sensors, like the crank sensor. We verified that I had ordered the right 58X reluctor sensor and that we had a 58x reluctor on the crank.



We were getting weird faults and then checked the distance from the crank sensor to the reluctor wheel, using a socket, marking the depth and checking against the sensor. That wasn't it.



After a two days of testing, checking, new tunes, phone calls and more cranking we found the issue - the Holley ECM will LOSE THE TUNE sometimes when the battery voltage to the computer dips below 10V when cranking. And sure enough, the battery would drop nearly 2 volts cranking (see above images) and we had to reload the tune and re-run the TPS setup wizard. This isn't a bug its a FEATURE, haha! (this is a MAJOR bug Holley... major).



On November 18th, 2022 we finally figured out the "tune disappeared" mystery and got it to fire up, which you can see in this ugly video. We still had a massive vacuum leak and the idle was high, but that was found later and the idle RPM calmed way down. We needed to bleed the brakes and clutch systems, but hearing the engine run was huge.

SPL PARTS REAR ARMS

If you followed our 2018 Mustang GT development thread you know that we had some of the earliest SPL Parts for the S550 Mustang on that car. We are an early tester stuff for their parts, and I know Sean and Turner from that company well - they are the current NASA Texas Time Trial directors and TT racers we see on track.



They sent us these upper rear control arms right after they went into production in 2022 and they look amazing - even with a schlub like me "modeling" them. Gorgeous parts they design in-house and have machined here in Texas, with some parts on their own CNC machines at their new facility. I was more than happy to test these out on Trigger!



It didn't take Doug long to swap out the stock, heavy steel upper arms for these new adjustable units. This will allow us to finally get more than -2.2 degrees of rear camber! (We ended up at -3.2 deg when it was aligned - see more below).

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Project Update for January 25th, 2023: We are now into 2023 but I have been cranking out the forum build thread updates! Several customer cars have been wrapped up and left, our C6 Corvette is pretty much completed all of the testing and product development we wanted, our 2023 BRZ arrived and is already 4 track tests into a detailed modification plan, and the #LS550 swap 2015 Mustang is running, driving, aligned and already been to the dyno.



We should be on track in a few weeks or less, if I can coordinate the tuner and reschedule more dyno time, but I'm happy with where we are. The Mustang makes glorious noises and I cannot wait to get it on track! Let's catch up on the last few months of work, where Doug and Brad have poured some hours into the final tasks, suspension tweaks, massive EFI work, two digital dash installs (ugh), first fire testing and more.



Many lessons have been learned on this build - and as always, I want to share those mistakes, misjudgements, and lapses in experience with you! Hopefully I can prevent one of you from duplicating some of the problems we ran into here. If so, then the work in writing this was worth it. Not trying to take your money with some ridiculous "you have to get us to build your car" fake expertise, just a shop owner who has made plenty of mistakes and is not afraid to share them.

NO FACTORY WIRING = MASSIVE ADDITIONAL WORK

This sentence above might be the best advice I can give anyone on a modern car (2010-up) that you think about turning into a race car. The amount of CAN network wiring in modern cars is staggering, and making any OEM sub-system work without the factory CAN network is daunting. Things like the ABS system, EPAS steering, climate control, factory gauges, or of course the Engine Control Management is extremely difficult and in some cases *impossible.

(*nothing is truly "impossible", with enough time, money and expertise thrown at it. I mean "impossible" in a practical sense. Some CAN systems we ran into were just not worth the extreme effort / cost / time it would take to make them "work" on our completely re-wired car).



Why do you want to re-wire a race car? Well... sometimes people say "to save weight" but that's not real. Sometimes to "make things simpler", and I can see that, but you have to know you will lose a LOT of functionality. I bought this car as a wrecked, salvage title car that had been picked over and put together from multiple leftover parts by The Parts Farm in Lyons, GA. They specialize in parting out cars at The Parts Farm, and they took every shred of wiring. What I asked for is what I got, but I wasn't very clear about the factory wiring - it would have been REALLY NICE to have kept the factory harness and sub-systems, then weeded out what we didn't need. Instead we got a car completely devoid of all wiring, fuses, relays and all computers.



What this lead to was an immense amount of wiring re-work to get the even systems to work as a "stand-alone" system - just having functional brake lights took some work. The S550 Mustang's ABS has not been made to work stand-alone (we tried on another chassis, too), so we swapped in an S197 ABS. The EPAS steering rack was made to work, but we lost some of the factory features. The wipers, turn signals, steering wheel controls, horn and some other systems proved to be so daunting that we have abandoned hope in getting them to work without major loss of features or complete replacement.



If you are building a 100% dedicated race car, maybe a loss of factory functionality doesn't affect you, but the loss of the factory ABS (which is REALLY GOOD on this S550) should not be overlooked. If you want a "dual purpose" track / street car (like we are building here - to be able to run some "street car" classes) you are going to really miss a lot of the features that the factory CAN System controls. Do not just think you can toss the CAN / wiring / ECU without major downsides. PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU GUT a modern car of wiring! This loss of CAN systems cost us a year of time if not more - this was the most frustrating and tedious aspect of this build. There was a LOT of work to lose the ~20 pounds of factory computers and wires on this build - again, not by choice.

CHASSIS WIRING

There were a couple of weeks spent in the trunk of this Mustang wrapping up wiring, bulkhead connectors, battery cables, the kill switch, circuit breakers, fuel pump and diff cooler wiring systems.



We had to wire in even basic systems like the cooling fan, brake lights, the horn and transponder, and other basic systems. These would normally be existing in a normal car with factory wiring, but again - we had nothing to start with.



Watching someone wire a race car isn't exactly riveting reading material, so I will just show some highlights of this work in these sections and focus on the unique things we have done along the way. The Radium remote surge tank has 2 pumps inside and we kept the stock in-tank fuel pump as a lift pump to feed the surge.



The Cartek GT "remote battery isolator" (remote battery kill) was added to a panel in the trunk, which Brad added a 200 amp main power circuit breaker do. The main battery cable from the Optima yellow top feeds right through this circuit breaker and the negative cable feeds through the Cartek.



The main battery cable goes through the rear seat bulkhead panel via an insulated bulkhead wiring terminal. We added a Deutsch 20 pin bulkhead connector in this same panel for the smaller wiring to pass through into the trunk as well.



This round 20 pin connector was added after a rectangular bulkhead connector was maxed out. Always plan your wiring ahead of time and you won't have to go back and add more bulkhead connectors, like we did here.



Adding this rear seat to trunk firewall was a good idea as we had the Radium surge tank with two fuel pumps, differential cooler pump and other flammable fluids and electrical bits going on back there. This is the trunk wiring almost finished, above. The negative cable goes from the Optima battery to the Cartek kill and then to a big lug on the chassis. If you trigger the Cartek it kills the ground to the battery and shuts down everything.



Once the battery / Cartek / 200 amp breaker were wired in, the main battery cable was run forward through the cabin to another bulkhead pass-thru at the engine bay firewall (can't find the pic), then routed down to the starter. The starter solenoid wires were run from the Painless Harness and to our push button starter.



This is just the same LS1 starter we sell for all of our LS swaps, and it works great. Brad wrapped the areas of the cable and solenoid trigger with some heat wrap, as they are close to the header. If we notice it getting heat soaked by the proximity to the ceramic coated stainless header we will add a heat shield around the starter - but so far, so good.



There are lots of little systems that we have wired in - the AMB transponder, a big loud horn, the brake pedal switch. I will cover the important systems in their own sections.

FUEL PUMP PDM CONTROLLER

Programmable Power Distribution Management or "PDM" systems are all the rage the last 3-5 years in Motorsports. These are used widely in industry (my John Deere tractor has a PDM, and OEM car makers use them also) to minimize discrete wiring runs from every switch to each powered motor. This bundle of wires is replaced with a CAN network that sends commands to the devices, removing a lot of wiring and relays from a vehicle, and allowing some basic ladder logic to control multiple systems - based on alarm conditions or "if/then" logic.



Sounds great, right? Well - it is! Right up until the point when your PDM takes a dump. I've heard from more than a few racers that they always keep a 100% backup PDM on hand for critical race weekends. Instead of a spare relay or switch, you need a spare PDM! Still, the desire to have this build on "the cutting edge" of PDM hotness inspired me to order the AiM PDM32 system. Twice.

After TWO YEARS of waiting for two orders from AiM Sports for PDM systems, starting back in early 2020, we threw in the towel. Each order we sent them was ignored for 6+ months and every time we asked for an update it was "8-12 weeks" out. We cancelled both orders and went another route. AiM Sports, being based out of Italy, had MAJOR supply chain and remote employee work issues getting these new PDM systems launched during the Global Pandemic. Even now in 2023, fully THREE YEARS after this new system was announced and released, they still have very real problems. I do not recommend going this route, for now, until more racers / guinea pigs have helped AiM work out the bugs in their PDM. And with a Holley, well... none of the display would have worked anyway.



Instead of waiting years longer, we ordered this harness from Current Performance. This "mini PDM" was a $225 unit made specifically for the Holley EFI system we are using. This can control 2 Fans 2 Pumps plus an auxiliary system. Pretty basic but it is a programmable "PDM" in the strictest sense of the definition.



We used one Fan control for the main radiator fan, the other for the diff cooler pump and fan, and the two fuel pump circuits control the two main pumps inside the Radium surge. We had the lift pump on the "aux" circuit but removed that and run that separately (some programming issues cleaned up and we will move that back). It communicates directly with and is controlled by the Holley Dominator ECM - which we have mounted right below the Current Performance box.



Brad modified the panel in the glove box area we built to hold the Painless Wiring harness' main fuse/relay panel. This is thru-mounted in this panel for easy access to the relays and fuses, for easier maintenance.



This little mini PDM worked perfectly when we fired up and dyno tuned the car, with the exception of the lift pump. Again, some programming changes should get that cleared up. All of this is hidden behind the glove box door, with the rest of the Painless harness and Holley ECM. And yes, there is an LED light that can be switched on (with the "dome" light circuit), to make maintenance even easier.

ACCUSUMP: PRES SENSOR + SOLENOID

One small oversight when the Accusump was installed - we didn't order the Canton triggering solenoid. This is what electronically "dumps" the pressurized cylinder into the engine's oiling system.



This large 3 quart Accusump unit barely fits between the frame rails so adding this solenoid to the end wasn't possible, but Brad built a bracket out of some 1/2" thick aluminum plate. This was shaped to fit against the frame rail and drilled it to fit the bolt spacing on the solenoid.



This was then mounted remotely and will be triggered by the Holley EFI system or manually from a switch on the center stack dash panel. The Holley EFI was programmed to release the pressure when the engine is running above 2000 rpm and oil system pressure is under 20 psi. Simple, safe, let's go.

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The final Lexan install looks great, but again, all of this work only dropped 9 pounds. We still like these removable Lexan windows for the rear, as they can be unbolted without breaking the glass or needing special cutting tools, which we needed to attack the rear deck lightening and the trunk bulkhead install. Also, when a Lexan window breaks it doesn't shatter, so that's a plus for a race car.

FULL FIRE SYSTEM ADDED

I was going to add a full fire suppression system on this car later, to keep the "initial race weight" down (trying to win a bet with a buddy!), but I just don't like taking chances with fire - so a Lifeline Zero 2000 4.0 liter AFFF Fire Suppression System was added before the car ever turned a tire in anger. With as many plumbing and wiring changes made here, this is just smart insurance. The further from stock your race car gets the more likely you will need to use a fire system. We also added one of these to our old red 2018 GT for the next owner in early 2021 - and some of those images are shown below.



This is the exact same "aqueous foam" system going into our black 2015 GT, and on the red 2018 we mounted the bottle in the trunk, the nozzles in the cabin the same as our '15, and even the engine bay nozzles we well. But we are making some small changes from this point forward. After talking to a fellow racer at PRI in December of 2021 - who had suffered a horrific race car fire fire - we used some improvements based on what he saw. For one, we are changing how we will install the two fire pulls in all cars from here on out. I will pull this section out and make that its own forum post in our "Safety" section, too.



On the red 2018 GT above, which is still very much a street driven car and track car, we put the two fire system "pulls" in the same places we always used to - one below the headlight switch on the driver's left, and a secondary pull in the center console within reach of the driver. Let's call this "driver-centric placement".



That was a common way to place fire pulls for a fire system for a decade of more. But in Mark Patronis' Corvette crash and subsequent fire (his helmet above should tell you a lot), the right side of his car was buried in a tree - which was where his only externally accessible fire pull was located. The other pull was in the middle of the car - which was on fire - but he was knocked unconscious. So nobody could get to either fire system pulls, and precious seconds were lost before the fire truck could arrive.

As you will see below on our 2015 GT, we have started placing both pulls with an emphasis on "corner worker access", with a strapped in driver's easy access as a secondary concern. Hey, you can always grab the fire pull on your way out of the car. Hopefully we can all learn and progress over time to avoid these situations.



After Jason and I went all over the 2015 GT, and the very crowded trunk area, we found a place to mount the Lifeline 4 liter fire bottle, it came down to the back seat area. Instead of mounting this above the factory fuel tank covers, it looked like this could fit right behind the driver's seat and still allow access to the fuel tank cover. Doug made the domed aluminum sheet metal cover for this side of the saddle tank at the same time as he made this fire bottle bracket, which itself bolted to the rear "cross beam" normally under the back seat.



The next step in any fire system install is to locate the best places to mount the nozzles that discharge the fire suppressant. Aluminum sheet metal brackets are mounted and the nozzles are aimed at the common fire source locations - a pair of nozzles are aimed at the two fuel rails, where the fuel injectors live. These are also near the exhaust headers, a high source of heat. In the trunk we mounted a nozzle above the remote fuel surge tank, which houses the two fuel pumps and many fittings for the fuel system.



Inside the passenger cabin we have two nozzles. One points to the passenger's lap and the second points at the driver's lap. These areas are eventually covered in plastic trim, but with holes to allow the nozzles free aim.



With the nozzles all placed it was time to plumb them from the main tank. The system comes with plenty of aluminum tubing, T fittings, and is relatively easy to connect. These are cut with a tubing cutter then pressed into the quick connect fittings. To remove them, a tool is used to release the locking clamps internally.



From the bottle one line goes into the trunk to feed the nozzle there, then another goes forward to feed the cabin nozzles and engine bay nozzles. These were routed to fit underneath the center console, with notches in the plastics to fit these without crimping the lines.



With all of the nozzles plumbed, the final step is mounting the fire system PULL handles. We used to put one in the center console by the driver and another at the driver's side front window front corner - but after hearing about a crash where one side was buried in a tree, we have opted to put one on each side, reachable from the outside but also within reach of the driver (on the left side). You can see the first pull on the above right image, where one of the aluminum panels Doug built fits in place of the outermost air vents. A custom machined bung is attached to this flat panel to point the pull handle at an angle for easy access by a corner worker from the outside.



This type of placement of the two fire pulls allows a corner worker from either side of the car to reach and pull the fire suppression, even if the cabin is engulfed in flames or one side is buried into a barrier or another car. Now there are other safety measures you can take - like an automated (170F) release, which could help a driver who is unconscious to be safe before a corner worker can get there. I will cover this and more in that separate fire system install forum post.

QUICK FRONT END PAINT JOB!

I talked to our painter Shiloh about our multi-colored Mustang. Making this car with salvage yard parts and marketplace finds, it was 4 colors.



The driver's side of the Mustang had black, white, blue and carbon fiber panels. But the passenger side was all black, with the black primer RF fender. It looks a lot better and once we got rid of the steel doors and had carbon doors / hood / trunk, I decided to have Shiloh paint the front nose and front fenders a matching factory black. I took him these panels plus the stock trunk to match the paint to that.



I dropped these panels off in April and picked them up a few weeks later in May, and it was time to install them for a black and carbon car. I will admit that my original plans were to paint this entire car red but my painter and everyone here at Vorshlag talked me into an all black car, and we can just add graphics for some color.



Brad began reassembly of the front end by installing both front fenders, which had both been on the car so they fit up nicely. Next it was time to install the newly painted black nose.



The bumper cover plastics are flimsy but when the grills and lower lip are installed it all "firms up" and takes shape. This is a bit of a fiddly process and it takes 4 hands to get everything popped into place, but once assembled the nose went onto the car - held on at the top by the radiator support and on the sides by the fenders. The headlight assemblies went in last.



The ride heights on the MCS remote double struts were setup for the 3650 lb weight of the 2018 GT, but with 600 fewer pounds on this car the front ride height needed a big adjustment. Brad lowered the lower collars on the struts and got the front end to drop another inch, now with "normal" fender gaps up front.



I am not a huge fan of black paint jobs, but changing colors was going to be a LOT of work and a LOT of expense. I'm glad I let everyone convince me to go ahead and paint the fenders and nose - it was affordable and really looks a LOT better than the multi-colored mess from before.

NARROW BODY C6 - WINNING IN TT?!

The temporary 2006 Corvette light build we did "just to get some track time" has fallen right into a great class for SCCA Time Trial called Tuning 2, or T2. After adding some 2 year old 315mm Yokohama A052 "200TW" tires and then some headers + a cold air, its actually won 3 TT events in a row in T2 class. At two of those, it was the 2nd quickest car of the entire event. Nobody is more surprised about this than me! Getting in a lot of test events in this car helped me blow the cob webs out of my driving, but there is more to it than that.



Why does this matter for this LS550 build? Well the C6 weighs 3117 lbs (virtually the same as this LS550 should weigh in Phase 1) and makes 382 whp, and runs on very similar suspension (MCS RR2), tires (315mm 200TW), but much worse brakes (Z51 2 piston PBR + Mk60 ABS) - yet it has turned a 1:19.702 lap at MSR Cresson 1.7 CCW course, on street tires. That's quicker than we ever ran on 200TW tires on the red 2018 GT - and it did that with 100 whp less than the red car.

The S197 ABS and 380mm 6 piston Powerbrake setup we have for #Trigger are both much better, race weight should be similar or less, and the stroker LS6 should have +150 whp more than the C6's LS2. This all bodes well for my guesstimated performance of this 2015 GT from day one with fresh 305mm RE-71Rs I have on hand. We shall see soon enough!

WHAT'S NEXT?

We are closing in on the last items on the punch list before we attempt "first fire" for the 385" LS6 - when we fire up the engine for the first time. There is a big check list to go through for that milestone, and we will cover that next time.



Most of what lies ahead is wiring - both chassis wiring and Holley EFI wiring, as well as the main battery cable work (which is nearly done at the moment). We have to nail down a digital dash to use as well - but we have something on hand that might work. Tune in next time to see that and hopefully some video of this engine running.

Until next time!

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Even the two "flex" feed lines from the master cylinder to the ABS brick (which we purchased new for an S550) had to be cut for new S197 tube nuts (both were the larger M12 sizes) and re-flared. This wrapped up the plumbing for the brake system and the ABS brick mounting. Next time we will show the wiring for the speed sensors as well as the additional yaw sensor needed to (hopefully) make this work with the OEM ABS computer.



We want to test the OEM S197 ABS system on this car (to verify that it can work on ABS swapped cars), then we will have found a good, low cost ABS system we can swap onto any car without needing the rare and expensive Ford Racing ABS computer. After we get this tested we can then swap in the Ford Racing ABS computer and retest the brakes with that setup - to see how much better it stops, if any.

CARBON DOORS ADDED + WEIGHT CHECK

Back in 2020 we had "The Carboning" - which was when a huge shipment of carbon fiber arrived from Anderson Composites & Seibon (sister companies) for several of our cars - including this 2015 Mustang. We have already showed the carbon Anderson trunk going on, as well as their carbon "GT500" hood that was transferred over from my 2015 GT.



I had honestly planned on adding the carbon doors AFTER we had a full roll cage, but the weight was already creeping up and I threw caution to the wind and since the lightened steel doors had to come off for the dash removal during the heater core install, it was a good time to drop some pounds.



The door handles and hinges were removed from the steel doors, as well as the stock mirrors and inner release handles. Now we did not add the crash bars from the stock doors, as that involves a lot of surgery and ultimately we want the future roll cage to provide that side intrusion protection. We will likely add some down bars from the main 4-point roll bar as a stop gap solution to this.



There was a lot of grinding, fitting, sanding and fiddly work getting the mirror pockets in the doors to fit the stock side mirrors. These are hand made doors, so this is to be expected. Doug spent a couple of hours creeping up on the right sized pockets, then both mirrors bolted in and fit snug.



The doors went on without any fuss - amazingly they fit the stock hinges and opening without any sanding or grinding, unlike other brands of composite doors we have worked with in the past. These fit like OEM parts, which is likely why Ford has Anderson build some of their factory race car carbon parts.



We have added lots of parts since the last weight check (3060 lbs on 4/1/22) but the carbon doors helped offset some of that and more, with this 3045 lb check (4/21/22). This 3045 weight was with all of the safety gear, both seats, and all of the plumbing. We still lack some wiring work and of course fluids, so a 3100 pound initial race weight is likely.

NRG QUICK RELEASE + STEERING WHEEL

Up until this point we still had the original steering wheel installed, but that was never going to see any track use. To get from the stock wheel to the Momo model 88 wheel with a steering wheel Quick Release AND a working horn, took a bit of work.



I wanted a smaller steering wheel on at this point in the build so we could size and place the digital dash unit. Of course if we are adding an aftermarket steering wheel, and not hoping to keep any airbag or wheel mounted buttons working, we want to add a Quick Release steering wheel hub (aka: "QR").



Normally we would reach into the Sparco/Lifeline catalog and pick one of their beautiful units - but I did want a working horn, and a thinner QR unit. Having driven recently with an NRG branded QR, I rolled the dice and bought the hub adapter and "thin" style QR from them. Unlike other import QR hubs, this brand has an SFI rated unit - so its better than most.



To make the horn button work we needed a clock spring, which was missing along with virtually all wiring on this salvage car. So we went to eBay and bought one for $34, $100 cheaper than the Ford supplied unit. Hey, its just for a horn.



The NRG branded QR hub had a 2 wire pass-thru, which Sparco/Lifeline charge a large up-charge to get. The listing they had for the adapter hub showed "2005-up", but I worried that the 2015-2023 Mustang S550 unit would be different. And it was. I will show below what it took to make their hub adapter fit the S550 with a working clock spring, so we could have a working horn.



Once we bought the clock spring we had to chase down the steering wheel sub-harness, to connect to the wiring of the clock spring once it was mounted. We found that on eBay and only needed one connector - to connect two wires into the clock spring.



This is where the "2005-up" adapter hub from NRG needed major modifications. First up, Doug had to mark and drill the two holes in the hub to align with the clock spring pins, otherwise the tunable clock sprung unit would never rotate. Next up a pocket had to be machined into the back side of the hub to clear the clock spring wiring connector...



You can see the connector on the clock spring, above left. This has to fit within the pocket on the back of the hub adapter. Doug also added a hole for the wiring connector that stays within the hub and sends the wires to the horn button on the Momo wheel.



Details of the steering wheel harness that normally connects to the stock steering wheel, which has a lot of pins for a lot of circuits. We only need two pins for the horn, and those are being connected, above right.



The automotive horn circuit is very simple... it is just a momentary button that closes the circuit, that then triggers a relay that runs the horn. And yes, we use horns on race cars - this has saved me from being backed into in grid TWICE. Thousands of dollars of bodywork damage avoided by a quick "HONK!". The two pass-through contacts for the horn circuit are seen on the open QR hub, above right. again, most QR hubs do NOT have wiring pass-thrus.



We were a bit short on stainless M5 countersunk bolts, so we had a mix of black oxide and SS bolts when mounting the Momo model 88 wheel. I chose the 330 mm version over the larger 350 mm, as it fits my legs and still allows plenty of visibility to a digital dash when looking through it.



All of that work just to have a horn? Yep - hopefully NRG will see this and make a proper S550 hub adapter, so you don't have to drill and machine pockets into your hub if you go with this brand. But this NRG unit is very low cost for the quality of the actual "release" and connection of this unit, and it is also very thin. Moving the wheel away from your body is much more difficult than when using a spacer to move it closer to you. A thin QR setup is tough to find.

SHIFTER MODS, CENTER CONSOLE, & FIRE PROOF SHIFT BOOT

When we were attacking the steering wheel I noticed that the direct mounted shifter on our Tremec T56 Magnum XL was a little too close to the round opening on the S550 transmission tunnel (the "LS" version of this transmission just dropped $400 in price, BTW!) I asked Doug to open that up and prep it for a proper fire-proof shift boot. You can see below how much he cut away, and it now fits perfectly. No, the normal T56 F wouldn't fit this chassis - it places the shifter 5.5" further forward, which would be buried under the dash. And taking a direct shifted trans and adding a remote shifter to it is so backwards that it hurts my brain.



Now there is a bigger hole in the tunnel that needs to be covered up, and the rubber OEM shifter "gasket" wouldn't fit - but it isn't exactly a great fire-proof covering for a hole in the tunnel. We want something better in every race car - to prevent fluids, gasses, heat and fire from breaching the cabin from underneath the car.



I love this Joe's Racing fire-proof and heat repelling shift boot assembly. These are about $125 for the aluminum mounting base + the multi-layer shift boot shown above. This is easy to mount to a flat transmission tunnel like the S550 has, and Doug used 4 riv nuts and bolts to mount the base. The fire-proof shift boot snaps onto the base with 8 snaps.



Now was the time to clean up the center console plastics, which came with this car fortunately. This stuff was pretty gross but Doug cleaned all of this up with some Armor All and rags. This 8.3 pound unit was then placed into the chassis and we looked at the shifter location with the console in place.



Well that added some new restrictions to the shifter path up from the tunnel to the console opening. This led to THREE different shifter extensions which were cut on the CNC plasma table, then threaded and bolted to the shifter base in the transmission and the included shift handle from Tremec. These were each made and tested with the console and stock shift boot in place, then tweaked to fit my driving position.



I will admit that I like a taller shifter, with the knob as close to the steering wheel as possible. But the "S" shaped handle is necessary to allow the shifter to clear the console opening. If you have a gutted interior this won't be necessary, and possibly a T56 Magnum F transmission might fit this swap on a race car. Given enough time I would like to test fit that trans and possibly offer that + the matching driveshaft as an option. Once I drive the car on track we will see how all of this works.

DIGITAL DASH MOCK-UPS

With the Momo steering wheel in place we could finally mock-up some digital dash cut-outs we made to scale off of 4 of the main AiM dash options. And yes, it is no secret that we would rather choose one of this brands digital dash systems if at all possible, simply from how well their on-board PREDICTIVE TIMING systems work. That one feature makes this brand coveted above all others - the ubiquitous AiM lap timer feature.



Of their many sizes we have a handful we tend to use on most race cars - the MXG, the MXP and the MXS. There is also a new wide 10" display that comes with their PDM system shown below that we have been dying to try out on one of our builds. This wide screen is full color and has all sorts of LEDs and icons (or not, you can order it either way) and strangely this would fit well within the S550's dash.



Jason drew these four AiM dash outlines up in CAD and Austin cut them on the CNC plasma table, and these have now been used in a number of cars to size the right unit to fit the dash / driver / steering wheel.



As you can see below, the tall and narrow units did not fit as well as the low and wide - but we have tried to buy the 10" AiM "PDM" dash many times over the last 2.5 years, with zero luck. We keep trying to get one of these from AiM but we keep getting the "well these should be back in stock in 6-8 weeks", which is code for "we have no idea when these will be back in stock". Real lead times have been in the 3-6 month range for this unit every time we try to order. Since AiM is based out of Italy they got really hammered by Covid restrictions, then this new PDM system had some software development delays, this might not be a viable option for a while yet.



We're holding off as long as possible to try to get this 10" digital dash unit - but who knows if we ever will? We might have to punt and try another AiM dash or worse - try another digital dash. The Holley Dominator EFI only works with a handful of brands, and if we do a non-AiM display we would have to utilize an AiM SOLO lap timer separately, which is how we've been doing predictive lap timing in my own cars for 15+ years.

LEXAN BACK WINDOW INSTALL

Thinking we would lose some weight by ditching the rear glass, I decided to go with a Lexan rear window a while ago. We got these from a UK company called Plastics4Performance, and they always produce great fitting Lexan that is pre-cut, curved to shape and pre-painted borders. Even with overseas shipping from the UK their parts cost less than domestic suppliers. We love using P4P whenever we can!



We had Titan Glass (a windshield company) back in the shop in June 2021 and had them pull the rear window, which they got out cleanly and in one piece. Modern glued in windshield and rear glass can be tricky to remove, and tempered side and rear glass literally explodes if you break it - so we let the pros handle removal and reinstallation most times.



Fast forward to Spring 2022 and it was time to get the Lexan installed. Doug mocked these up in the empty back window channel and they fit perfectly. They looked pretty close on the quarter windows as well, but I decided to hold off on installing these for now - seeing how little weight these actually remove.



As you can see the rear Lexan window is only 9 pounds lighter than the stock glass window. Hmm, not much weight loss, which is why I held off on the quarter windows. Remember: glass windows are VERY hard and scratch resistant, but Lexan is the opposite of that.



Doug cleaned out the stock weather strip material and (after the steps below) installed the 1" wide x 1/8" thick, adhesive backed weather strip material we purchased for this install.



Dozens of M4 rivnuts were installed along the perimeter to mount this window in place. We like to use these Tinnerman countersunk stainless steel washers to make the M4 countersunk bolts fit flush to the surface of this window. Drilling the Lexan is easy with a sharp drill bit, and we leave the outer (blue) film on until after all holes are drilled and counter sunk.

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Project Update for September 20th, 2022: The last update here was April '22 and I'm updating it again in September - only a five month gap - so we're getting caught up on many build threads. I used one of the boring "sea days" on board a cruise (Sept 17th) to write much of this update, and my internet connection was crap, but its better than staring at the ocean for 8 straight hours.

We haven't really attacked the LS550 build as much as I wold have hoped, but between customer builds we are getting more and more done - and all four remaining customer builds are wrapping up and leaving quickly! That means we will be able to pour more man hours into this car and get it fired up VERY soon. We're are down to wiring then First Fire followed by alignment and dyno tune.



The shop is still full of cars, and my former red 2018 GT even arrived for a T56 Magnum XL swap (among other work) earlier in 2022, and you can see that + our black LS550 + our narrow body C6 in the image above.



Looking back over the last 5 months now, we actually did knock out a decent chunk of work, with Brad and Doug tag teaming the punch list on this Mustang. And I'm not helping things, as I keep adding more features and details along the way (just like our customers do!) - but this car is going to be our main "shop race car" for a few years, so it has to perform well AND look good.



In this installment we cover the last steps of the cooling system, the oil vent catch can plumbing, the Lexan back window install, carbon doors and even the new paint applied to the front fenders and nose - so now the car is all black or raw carbon! We also cover the steering wheel quick disconnect with a horn, digital dash mock-ups, shifter modifications, and a detailed guide to installing a fire suppression system. Its a big 3-part installment so get to a real computer (ie: a larger monitor - every image is linked to a higher rez version!), grab a snack and/or drink, and lets get caught up on this build!

COOLING SYSTEM WRAP UP



We covered the radiator mounts and main radiator hoses last time, but in this round we will show the last bits of the cooling system being installed - namely, the heater core, defroster plenum, coolant reservoir, then heater and steam vent hoses .

MOTORSPORTS HEATER BOX

We race 12 months out of 12 here in Texas, and our winters can and do get below freezing. I have been to a number of January events where there was frost or fog on the windshield so we always like to add a defroster to all of our race cars. Having a working heater will also help in Optima events - which this car will do.



The first step to getting the heater core mounted was removing the dash, which needs the doors off to access the mounting bolts - shown above left. And this step led to the carbon doors going on, shown below!



The dash in this 2015 GT was only loosely installed, as it was a parts car quickly thrown together from leftovers before I bought it. Brad worked on fitting the dash better for the reinstall by adjusting these screw-in width adjusters, so it won't be flopping around. With the 22.5 pound OEM "HVAC" box out of the way, the new 7.4 pound motorsports heater core looks tiny sitting on the trans tunnel.



We have used this 7.4 pound heater core from Summit Racing on many race cars for the past decade. It has a heater core inside, two outlets which fit up to 3" hoses, and a variable speed fan on the back side. All self contained and easy to mount - but we never use the included "universal" mounting brackets.



Doug made up a simple aluminum sheet metal bracket which bolts to the tunnel (into rivnuts), placing the core far enough behind the dash's center stack portion, but still with enough room to access the heater hose nipples. I am a fanatic about firewall integrity and insist on bulkhead connectors for all plumbing and virtually all wiring pass-thrus for any firewall.



The heater hoses going to and from the heater core here were another place for these stainless bulkheads. These have nipples made for simple hose clamps and hoses, which are fine for low pressure cooling systems (16 psi) we tend to run. For a higher pressure fluid system we would be using AN fittings. The placement for these two were planned out along with the reservoir mounting spot and several other items in that area. I will show the final plumbing in the heater hose section below.

DEFROSTER PLENUM

In this step I will show how we will turn our heater box into a defroster - without trying to hobble together something with the OEM defrost plenum, which would be pretty ugly. I had found a potential "plenum" on Amazon, which you will see below.



First up was measuring the defroster inlet on the factory dash, shown above. Then Doug made a block off plate for part of that, which will make sense in a later step. This is made from aluminum sheet stock and bolts to the underside of the plastic dash.



Above you can see the "plenum" that i found online - its a shop vac attachment that was $12. Much cheaper than making a complicated aluminum structure. This bolts to the opening that we left from the block off plate above and has a 3" OD hose inlet that will attach to one of the two 3" outlets from the heater core. Above right you can see the silicone heater hoses that go from the core to the bulkheads at the firewall.



The dash went back in and I missed the connection of the hoses to the defroster plenum and eyeball vent, but they are there. The second outlet from the heater box feeds a single heater vent - one of the three "eyeball" vents in the center of the dash. I can open that vent up if I need to warm my hands in grid, but mostly it will remain closed. When the heater fan is on that will blow the warm air to the base of the windshield, to keep it from fogging up on cold / wet days. The other 2 round vents on the dash will house some gauges, later on.

COOLANT RESERVOIR, HEATER & STEAM VENT HOSES

We use a remote coolant reservoir in these LS builds. This allows us to mount the reservoir and radiator cap high in the engine bay, which allows for a better "purge" of air pockets. The larger the tank the more coolant we can have on board also. We tie this into the cooling system in two ways - via the steam vent system as well as through one of the heater hoses. And we try to use an aluminum version whenever possible, as these don't age and crack like the OEM plastic style.



We have used this big Canton remote reservoir before, as well as the Canton 16 psi cap. We test fit a 1/2" NPT fitting for the bottom bung and it was a bit too shallow so Doug ran a 1/2"-14 NPT tap a little further into that bung to allow the elbow to sit a little deeper.



The Fragola lower 90 deg elbow went from the threaded 1/2" NPT to a 5/8" diameter hose barb. This is Teed into one of the 5/8" dia heater hoses going to the firewall bulkhead. Above right you can see the steam vent hose which went into the upper 1/8" NPT bung. That ties into our 4 port steam vent system AND the same port at the top of the upper radiator hose.



The two images above show the routing of the heater hoses from the LS7 water pump to the bulkheads at the firewall as well as the "T" that diverts some of that flow to fill the reservoir (and also to fill the cooling system from above, when the cap is off).



The upper radiator hose is the highest part of the cooling system and radiator below the reservoir, and we added a small port to that with a nipple that Tees into the 4 port steam vent outlet. This hose then runs from that junction at the radiator hose to the reservoir at the back right corner of the engine bay.



This should tie the highest part of the cooling system inside the engine (steam vent system) to the highest part of the radiator (the upper radiator hose port) to the highest part of the entire system (the remote reservoir), removing any steam pockets in the system.

PETERSON OIL CATCH CAN & PLUMBING

Any car driven on a road course with an internal combustion engine should have an oil/air separator and catch can system. This prevents excessive crank case pressure from spewing oil out of the engine - either into a sealed EGR system or an open vented system, like on this car. I explain the difference between these two types of oil catch can systems in this recent post on our narrow body C6 - and it applies here.



Since this going to be more "Race car" than "Daily driver", we went with a vented oil catch can from Peterson oil systems. This has an internal filter to catch the liquid oil droplets and keep them from spewing out of the vent at the top of the can (again, see the post on the C6 section showing this). This Peterson can is our "go to" option for race cars that have a wet sump oiling system.



To feed the crankcase pressure to this air/oil separator we needed to run big vent lines from both valve covers. The cast aluminum, tall, red "CHEVROLET" valve covers both got holes drilled to have 1/2" NPT fittings threaded. the Fragola fittings were then shortened on the bottom side so that they do not come close to the rocker arms - that would be bad!



That leaves two big -12 AN fittings on the back of both valve covers, which Doug then plumbed to the two inlet ports on the Peterson can with AN12 Fragola hoses.



This works our for a clean, dual fed, crank case vent system with an oil / air separator inside the can. There is a drain port at the bottom of the can which has a petcock, that Doug then plumbed with a hose down inside the RF fender area. After every track event we can open this petcock and drain the captured oil to keep the can from filling up. Again - every road raced car should have some sort of oil / air separators with a catch can and drain.

S197 ABS INSTALL

Wait, what?! We already had an S550 ABS system installed on this car earlier! Alas, since we installed a salvage yard sourced S550 ABS unit, as well as a master cylinder and lines from Ford, we have learned of CAN challenges with S550 ABS swaps. Namely - that is has never been done, and involves a LOT more CAN signals from OEM computers we don't have in this car. That is more work than we are ready to tackle at the moment.



The S550 ABS unit has been removed, boxed up, and shelved - for now. Instead of tilting that windmill, we instead decided to go with an ABS unit we know well and have successfully swapped into other chassis - the S197 ABS unit from a 2011-14 Mustang GT. These exist in the tens of thousands in salvage yards, after countless Mustangs have unsuccessful avoided ditches, trees, curbs and crowds.



Now I personally have driven 100s of laps in S197 Mustangs with this late 2011-14 ABS, both on track as well as autocross. And we know that we can make this work without ANY of the stock CAN inputs, if we use the right Ford Racing ABS computer, which we do have on hand for this car. But using a factory manual & wiring diagrams, plus a donor car we have on site (2011 Mustang chassis), we want to test some theories on an S197 ABS swap without using the expensive and rare Ford Racing computer (it is out of production and getting very hard to source!)



Again, if I thought there was a way to make the S550 ABS unit work with this completely CAN-free car, we would. This will save us months of frustration - and help prove out some alternatives for other chassis we want to ABS swap. We've done a number of Mk60 ABS swaps and one S197 swap, so this is just another option. We reached out to our friend Paul at Tri-State Auto to source a 2011-14 ABS brick + mount + harness connector, and he delivered once again. The image above right shows the S197 ABS next to the S550 - similar in many ways but still very different.



Now to be on the safe side we went ahead and mounted the S197 ABS unit at the same angle as Ford did (see above left). This will be oriented the same way and tilted at the same 18 deg angle. The S550 ABS unit (above right) sits "straight up", without this tilt. We planned to place the S197 unit in the same basic spot as the S550 unit, but with the 18 deg tilt.



I labeled the two units with the outputs of both units on the "top, but the input ports are on different planes. Doug then mocked up the S197 ABS brick in the engine bay with the 18 deg tilt, and it looks accessible. Now it was time to make the bracket and then the lines.



Doug took the S197 ABS brick's mounting bracket (which was bent / damaged) and flattened it out, then made a template of that. This was then modified to fit the S550 chassis. It took two versions to get everything aligned correctly but the CNC plasma table made this go quickly.



The second version was bent up to fit the ABS brick and the S550 chassis mounting points, then the S197 isolators were added to the big holes cut to accept those. This allows the hydraulic unit to not vibrate as it cycles, which can throw off the actuation. We do this isolation mounting on every ABS swap.



We received the S197 unit from salvage with the correct hard line fittings (tube nuts) and the harness with a "tail" of wires we can re-use. That proved to be critical, as the S197 and S550 used different end fitting flare angles on the M10 and M12 ends. Why? Nobody knows! You can see our S197 adapter bracket bolted into the S550, above right.



Doug caught this tube nut fitting difference - it was all lining up perfectly, but now we had to cut each hard line in the car, swap in the S197 tube nut, then re-flare each end. A bit cumbersome with the hard lines still in the car, but Doug used this pneumatic flaring tool to get them all swapped.

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The radiator hoses we make have proven to be reliable over the years. We're just trying to connect the radiator to the engine with hoses that have some flexibility, the right sizes, and never leak. The hoses often need to compensate for size changes between the water pump and the radiator; 1-1/2", 1-5/8" and 1-3/4" are all common sizes.



We start at the ends, sourcing these from Pegasus, HPS, and others. Parts took weeks to all arrive, test fit (above left), then it was time to connect the ends with aluminum tubing - all while trying to leave as much access room and radiator exhaust airflow room as possible. Sure, we could have modified the radiator and water pump to use -20 AN ends and built AN braided hoses for all of this, but it adds 5x the fab time and cost - plus makes sourcing a replacement water pump at a remote race weekend impossible.



We tend to make the hose bends and the adaptation between diameters on these silicone hose end sections. We connect the hose ends & bends on this install with straight 1.5" OD aluminum tubing, as shown above. We add these raised beads on the tubing at the ends, to help secure the hoses, using our little bead roller. Sure, you can often hack together some OEM rubber hoses from a car parts store, but these silicone + aluminum assemblies look good, work well, and do not leak - when built correctly.



These also have just enough flexibility to allow the engine a little movement (from torque). We use these turbo style T-bolt clamps to secure each junction, which have smooth inner clamp surface - unlike worm gear hose clamps. I will talk about the "steam vent" port and plumbing we added in the highest hose (see above right) in a future post.

REAR FIREWALL BUILT

The trunk of this car has two GIANT mufflers, a differential cooler, battery, remote surge tank and more. The rear seat is never going back into this car, so we have a giant hole between the trunk and the cabin. So let's make that hole even bigger!



To make the trunk firewall the rear speaker deck became pointless - it had two massive holes in it, plus lots of little holes and raised bits. Brad and I discussed this in February and he marked the main upper "structural beam" at the upper leading edge. This ties the two shock towers together and we want to keep that structure for now. The perimeter was marked and he used lots of tools to cut out this piece.



This speaker deck amounted to only 2.5 pounds (above left), but there were some raised sections in the remaining portion (above right) that had to be cut & ground away so a flat sheet could go over this panel with tight gaps. The point here is to seal air, fumes, and potential fuel / fire from reaching the cabin, so tight gaps to the remaining structures the firewall bolts to are key.



Brad got all of the metal trimmed and flat, taped off the raw ends and primed them - no more rusty metal - then got to work on the two pieces that would be made from aluminum sheet for the firewall.



Hot bits in the trunk with big openings that need to be sealed off from the cabin, as seen above.



The main "vertical" matches the back seat angle and mounts to a flat section of vertical structure on both sides of the main opening. This sheet was relatively easy to shear and fit to the car. The upper deck replacement was trickier and Brad made a full sized cardboard template for that.



There are two other portions that will remain in place on the sides of the back seat opening (see above left). These are riveted in place. The main vertical panel is bolted in place with button head bolts into rivnuts. The upper panel has a bend along the top leading edge and that bolts to the cross structure and overlaps the vertical panel (see above right). There are bolts along the back edge of the upper panel as well. Don't worry, the Lexan rear window will be removed with bolts as well - so if we need to remove this firewall we can, just takes a bit of time.

CARBON TRUNK & REMOTE RELEASE

Things were really speeding up on the project here - with a bulk of the work in this post done in February '22, when we had a gap in customer work while we waited on a bunch of parts. Instead of making the trunk mounting complicated I decided to go ahead and ask Brad to install the stock trunk release latch and striker. It has never been closed up until now...



As I mentioned in previous posts before, this is an Anderson Composites carbon trunk, and it is very light - but has all the features and mounting points of the OEM trunk. This allows all of the factory hinges, brackets, and latches to bolt right up. As you can see above it also fits very well - we just bolted it on, and it fit like this.



Then it was time to really look at the trunk release. There won't be "keys" or remote solenoids on the doors or trunks on this race car, so we kept it simple and used an extra Lifeline remote fire bottle pull handle cable as the trunk release (above right). This would attach to the "emergency release" handle on the latch, mandated to be inside all trunks - in case someone is trapped inside. Brad made a bracket to mount the cable pull to the inner sheet metal behind the passenger door and the handle is reachable from the passenger side window opening.



Simple, effective, easy to see - and we'll add a proper label to the "pull" and a decal outside that window pointing to "trunk release", too. First time we have closed the trunk on this car, which was a nice thing to check off the ever shrinking To Do List.

RADIUM SURGE TANK, FUEL TANK VENT, & REAR FUEL PLUMBING

As I have stated before, we're re-using an OEM fuel tank in this build along with a remote surge tank. This mega-stripped salvage car came with nothing back here - no tank, zero fuel system plumbing, nothing. So we had to track down some OEM bits (tank + stock pump / float assembly + in-tank crossover hoses) and then build the rest.



We got a stock fuel pump and sump assembly from my buddy Paul at Tri State Autoparts, and then got to work modifying that. The stock pump will be used just as a lift pump, which should be more than adequate at pushing fuel from the stock tank to the Radium remote surge tank.



Paul left us the stock "pig tail" so we can wire up the stock pump easily. We've drilled into the top of this plastic housing for the "overflow" return from the surge tank at the top. Then the quick connect for the stock feed line from the stock pump has an adapter to a -8 AN end, as shown above right. That's how we get fuel out of the stock pump and excess goes back in.



The feed and "overflow" lines are both -8 AN braided Fragola hoses, which Doug built and attached to this side. These feed up through the back seat and unto the trunk. The top of this side of the fuel tank will get another cover to act as a "firewall" to the cabin - I'll show that next time.



The stock filler neck nipple (not shown) connects to the filler neck hose, which is the only stock plumbing hose left on the fuel system. Above left is the big 5/8" quick connect for the "vent" on the stock tank. This allows air to escape when the tank is being filled as well as to allow air back in when the fuel level goes down. We found this AN adapter from Motion Raceworks and it connects to a big -10 AN hose that goes to the vent stack, shown below.



Next up comes the fuel tank vent system, and all this was done so we can do away with the factory charcoal filter (which is long gone). We are trying to vent the tank for filling and use, as well as make a "rollover valve". We started with a valve cover breather with a 5/8" opening, then a 5/8" barbed fitting to -10 AN, and finally this Vibrant -10 AN/ORB one-way check valve. The check valve was opened up and the spring modified to have a lower spring pressure. This way if the car ever rolls over on its lid, it acts as the rollover valve. It still should have enough spring pressure to keep the fuel separated from atmosphere as a check valve. If there are excess fuel fumes in use we will address this then, but with the sealed trunk firewall, it may be a non-issue.



Doug made a bracket to hold for the lower check valve portion, then machined that fitting to work like a bulkhead fitting at the bracket. The check valve is mounted at the trunk floor level (as shown below), then a ~18" long hose goes up to another bracket at the top of the trunk, which mounts the breather. This is mounted higher than the external fuel filler neck on the fender, to keep fuel from ever coming up and out this vent.



Next up was the Radium Remote Surge Tank, which we spec'd out with two Walbro 450 LPH pumps. This is tad overkill for the Phase 1 engine, but the single pump setup was a bit short. This has room for up to 3 pumps, and we will add a third when we go to Phase 2. We ordered this one "bare" so we needed to add the pumps, fuel hose, and wiring.



These setups are modular and easy to work with. We ordered it made for the Walbro 450s and Doug made quick work of the assembly. The included screen at the bottom is made to hold these Walbros and he used submersible hose for the connections at the top. The included wiring was connected to the machined Radium top plate, which has wiring bulkhead connectors for all 3 pumps (6 posts) and another spot for a fuel level sensor.



We added this optional fuel level float sensor, which basically tells you that the surge tank is NOT full - which is usually a "OMFG GET TO THE PITS NOW" warning. We'll mount a big LED in the center stack to warn the driver when this ever happens.



The Radium sensor has the two pink wires that come out of the hole, which is sealed by the float assembly from the underside. As you can see the float only moves about 1/2" and it is near the top of the surge tank, letting you know you have drained the main fuel tank and are on the emergency reserve that is within the surge tank only.



With the pumps and sensor installed and wired inside the Radium surge tank it was re-mounted in the trunk and the fuel lines plumed to and from that to the main tank. Two of these line run under the back seat floor and into the trunk, as shown in the two pictures above. The other two lines go to the rear bulkhead under the car for the main -10 / -8 lines to and from the engine bay. Fuel system plumbing is now complete - wiring and relays will happen in the next installment.

BATTERY & BOX ADDED

I have a lot of experience with car batteries, which can be made very light - but it always comes at a cost. After 3 decades of this stuff I have settled on larger batteries of AGM / gel cell types. Of the Optima series I like their 75/25 group options, and on a race car we use the heavier Yellow Tops (thicker plates/can be discharged to zero) vs the lighter Red Tops (thinner plates/higher CCA).



Nobody makes a good battery mount for these, but we do - shown below. Our mount is a steel lower tray we CNC cut and bend, then an aluminum upper. We've used these in numerous race car builds. First step is to find a good place to mount it.



I looked all over the LS550 for a spot and had my eye on this this lateral cross beam in the forward section of the trunk floor. There was a thick layer of sound deadening material here but otherwise it was flat, so I asked Doug to use a heat gun and scrape that area clean.



The bottom of our battery tray has 6 holes pre-cut for hold-down bolts, which can sit above the top of the tray and fit inside the voids on the bottom of these spiral wound Optima designs (see above left). I asked Doug to add 4 more tabs for even more bolt holes - because the section where we can bolt down the steel tray is "blind". This area is a thick hollow section and we would need to add Rivnuts here to mount the battery.



Yes I know this is less than ideal, but it was the "least bad" spot to put the battery for easy access, weight bias, and where much of the rear wiring would be anyway. These are LARGE for rivnuts, they were installed with a pneumatic gun, and there are eight of them. This battery is not coming loose in any crash, and we have a bomb-proof rear bulkhead right in front of it. I have zero worries here. I will show the battery wiring in the next forum update.

C6: DISTRACTION OR MOTIVATION?

Some of you saw in my last post where I talked about buying this narrow body 2006 C6 we bought last year. We bought this to hold me and my wife over until this LS550 and her LS 86 are both on track, to keep our track skills fresh and to not wither away behind a keyboard for the ~3 years it took us to get this LS550 almost ready. Some wondered if this C6 would be a distraction or replacement that kept us from working on our two race cars.



We had upgraded to these cheap flow formed 19x10" wheels (2 sets) and 275/35R19 Hankook RS-4s - which I bought for long term testing consistency, but as an "endurance" 200TW tire is gives up some speed. We chased a particularly nasty ABS issue on this car for a long time, but eventually just punted and swapped in BMW Mk60 ABS and that solved that. This ABS fix & 275mm tire upgrade helped this stock LS2 powered (360 whp) car go from 1:30.0 to 1:26.2 lap times at MSR on the 1.7. Then this 3100 pound C6 got MCS RR2s coilovers and it dropped nearly 4 more seconds into the 1:22 range on these same tires just a week ago.



Honestly, this big lap time drop on the C6 motivated me to get our LS550 finished - because this C6 is roughly the final weight we will be at in this S550 (see recent weight check, above left), but we should start phase 1 at nearly +180 whp and be on better 305mm RE-71Rs (I have a fresh set to test with) and then the 315mm Hoosiers.

WHAT'S NEXT?

I think this is a good place to stop, before this post gets too long. This round of updates caught us up with work done into March 2022, which is close to when I'm writing this. We have some more work completed during the period while I was writing this - the heater core is mounted, the coolant reservoir as well, and the Peterson vented oil catch can. Some small plumbing to wrap up on this round, too.



The carbon doors are already being fitted to be installed soon, to keep the total weight down for Phase 1. Just some final wiring to knock out, digital dash, and tuning. Then we'll be on track "sooner rather than later".

Thanks for reading!

[Fair!]

continued from above

Our LS550 is going to make a little more power than that in Phase 1, so we're installing one of the largest Derale 10000 series "stacked plate" coolers - with room for one more right next to it for the future Phase 2 engine.



We actually bought this Derale cooler for my wife's LS swapped 86, but that has been stuck in our lobby for a while awaiting its turn in the shop for completion, so we "acquired" it from her parts shelf and got to work mounting it on the LS550. We also ordered up a Derale part number 50022 mounting rail kit for Derale stacked plate coolers (above right), which we have used on a few in-house track car builds.



Brad made some simple brackets to attach these Derale rails to the car's main frame horns at the top and to the lower subframe / radiator support at the bottom (see above right). Our goal was to keep the cooler mounted low to get the airflow from the lower grill, and place it close to but not touching the aluminum radiator - so air cannot bypass around the Derale oil cooler (it sits 3/4" away from the radiator).



The same day this cooler was mounted, Brad began plumbing the rest of the engine oil system - from the pan to the remote Improved Racing oil cooler with thermostatic bypass and on to the Derale oil cooler. Again, when the oil is below 185F it will bypass the oil cooler. When it warms above that, then oil will go from the filter to the cooler then return to the engine.



We ran all of the oil lines in -12 AN sized Fragola braided lines. We have seen shops use smaller lines on engines like this but then they also tend to chase low oil pressure problems. On the 2018 GT we used -10 lines because that is what the Mishi oil cooler kit utilized, but on a higher RPM race engine you pretty much always use -12 AN lines or larger (-16 AN is also common).



The lower brackets looked a little "springy" to me so in February of '22 I asked Doug go back and reinforce these parts. Now the cooler is less likely to bounce on the lower mounts.



This sized cooler has worked on similar power levels for us in the past, and as you can see above that adding another identical cooler right next to this one will be pretty easy and take little effort. That would effectively double the oil cooling, which would be perfect if we double the power.

DIFF COOLER, PUMP, & PLUMBING

My love of Derale cooling products is no secret - we keep using their heat exchangers on virtually every project in the shop over the last 2-3 years. We utilized this massive differential oil cooler with integral shroud and twin fans on a customer's 680 whp track car and it worked well, so we ordered another for my Mustang track project here.



We purchased this cooler / fan setup in late November of '21 but the installation task didn't happen until December of '21, when Doug jumped in and started cutting out the floor for the hot "exhaust" side for this, then tackled mounting it in February '22.



Jason and I debated ducting cool air to this from several spots on the fender, then building a ducted exhaust out the bottom. We moved it this way and that, but the frame rail, mufflers, shock towers or something else was always in the way. In the end we decided to keep it simple, then use the giant "muffler hole" in the trunk and to give us some "cooling" air for the diff cooler. The hot air coming out of the back of this cooler will then exhaust out the rectangular hole in the floor outboard of the frame rail, shown above right.



The mounting brackets were fairly simple - a bent piece of aluminum at the bottom and another aluminum bracket at the top. The unit was "clocked and cocked" in a way to make for the easiest exhaust flow path, and we might still make a duct on the exhaust side if we don't see the temperature drop across this cooler that we want.



In late February of this year the same noisy but effective gerotor oil pump we used on the 2018 Mustang GT was added to the trunk floor of this 2015 with the same isolator mounts. Then in March '22 Doug plumbed the diff cooler system going from the rear cover, to the cooler, then to the pump and back to the diff housing. There is also an elevated "filler neck" on the rear most corner of this cooler, which has a AN "Tee" and cap to fill at. A long funnel will be used to fill this system with a measured amount of fluid. The pump will act as sort of a check valve so that when the system is turned off it won't drain all the oil from the cooler back into the diff housing, which could over-fill that. This car will only be driven with the diff pump going.

ELECTRIC FAN & UPPER RADIATOR MOUNT

In the last installment we had the large Howe dual pass radiator mounted on a steep rolled mount. We still need an electric fan to pull air through this unit between autocross or track runs, and at speeds below ~40 mph. Yes, you still need a fan on a race car - don't let someone tell you otherwise. I've seen the folks who preach the "race cars don't need fans" theory, but they have also melted down engines numerous times, just sitting still.



After mocking up the 16" dia Mishimoto slim line fan in the last update (above left) it was time in February of '22 to get the protective cardboard off the radiator for the first time and build some fan mounting brackets.



Brad started with some cardboard templates and transferred them to some .100" thick aluminum sheet, which he cut and bent to shape for the two main vertical brackets. This thickness is plenty strong and yet still easy to bend on our box brake. A somewhat simple bracket but it works and does what we need - attaches to the four mounting tabs of the fan assembly.



These vertical brackets mount at the bottom to a simple aluminum angle cross brace, which bolts to the lower radiator mounts on the subframe. At the top are two simple bent brackets that bolt into two factory installed rivnuts on the upper radiator support. The fan sits 1/2" behind the radiator - close enough to be effective in this suction side mounting while far enough away not to touch the fins or damage the radiator in any way.



I'm so glad we bought this OEM replacement upper radiator support, as it has made mounting things on the front end SO much easier - the radiator, the fan, the front strut reservoirs (we've since moved them), and the Aerocatch hood pins (see above) all mount to this, as well as the bumper cover! We would have added many many hours of work trying to save 3 pounds and building this structural part "bespoke".

REMOTE COIL MOUNTING



So I never liked the look of the 8 individual coils mounted to the factory LS valve covers. While it is an elegant and simple solution, and makes for easy spark plug wire runs, it is ugly. I'm vain and for this build needed something flashier. Moving the coils away from the heat of the headers was another secondary reason for "remote mounting" the coils. I also had a pair of these showy "CHEVROLET" valve covers, which I had custom powder coated in red with exposed lettering, that I really didn't want to cover up.



I spent way too much time mulling over the ignition coil locations, looking at show car and race car remote coil solutions. In the end these simple ICT billet mounts were "the most right" answer. And the big strut tower cross brace we had on the car was quite a bit further away from header heat, and looked like a nice mounting structure. I honestly wanted the coils further back and/or hidden completely, but the engine bay was starting to get tighter as we added more bits and pieces.



Doug tackled this installation and it went quickly - we mocked up the locations with measurements and symmetry, then he removed the hollow aluminum Ford Racing cross brace from the car. Doug marked and drilled the holes for M6 rivnuts, which made for a clean mounting arrangement.



This coil location exposes the valve covers and somewhat hides the coils, while keeping them a bit further from the heat of the exhaust headers. The Holley Dominator wiring has since been plugged in for the coils and tucked out of the way, with custom spark plug wires being built later this week.

TOW HOOK ADDED AND BUMPER BEAM PAINTED

The front tube bumper for this Mustang was built some time back, and it had a single tow hook on the left front. We use these tow hooks to pull cars into and out of a trailer, and for track side extraction. When we make them welded to a rigid bumper like this, we can also anchor tie down straps for us in towing in a trailer. When you have a massive splitter or diffuser this is a REAL bonus.



The guys who built the tube bumper for this S550 have since left Vorshlag, and with them also went the knowledge of how to run our CNC plasma. In December, while I was learning how to use our plasma table (lots of YouTube videos and text messages with our two former engineers), the PC that runs the servos on the CNC took a complete dump. Long story, but this ended up being a major hassle to replace and reprogram this PC. I spent weeks getting this plasma table back up and running.



The LS550 project also spent 8 months in purgatory in late '20 and early '21 - sitting in my barn, awaiting room in the shop to open up. While stored out there the raw steel bumper beam had gotten a light coating of surface rust. The lone tow hook also needed a matching unit. Once I had the PC replaced and the plasma table cutting again, the matching 1/4" thick steel tow hook was one of the first parts I successfully cut with the new setup.



Doug took some measurements for placement and angle and tack welded the second tow hook on to match the original, but mirrored on the other side.



With that verified (the front bumper cover went on and off to check fit) the tow hook was seam welded onto the bumper, then it was removed, cleaned, scuffed and painted silver. Yes, we have some other things that will mount to this bumper later (front splitter mounts), but I was tired of seeing a rusty tube bumper in so many pics - at least now its not an eyesore.



It will be so much nicer when we haul this car in the trailer - hooking up the front tie-down straps takes SECONDS with this type of setup, and if we do need a tow from a wrecker on track they have multiple places to hook up to.

FRONT SHOCK RESERVOIRS

This is pretty basic - finding a good place to mount the front shock reservoirs - but again, was a bit more challenging trying to satisfy my OCD inside this ever crowded engine bay.



It is no secret that we took all of the last versions of the suspension from my 2018 Mustang (above left) off that car before it was sold - even the shock reservoir brackets. We tried and failed to re-use those when we swapped the MCS RR2 coilovers over to the LS550 (above right) and for the longest time the canisters were wrapped in foam sheet and zip tied to the upper "dog bone" fender structures (above right).


How and where you mount the canisters for remote reservoir dampers is important. You want them in an easily accessible spot - so you actually use the knobs (in this case, low speed compression). Dampers turn motion into heat, and remotes can get hot - so keeping them away from the heat of a radiator or a turbo is important. And WHERE you clamp on them matters - they are made to be clamped on the ends, at grooves machined into the outside of in the canisters, far away from the travel of the working and floating pistons inside (see above).



Our guys made up a pair of these reservoirs - just some flat aluminum sheet, passed through our set of rollers to match the same radius of these cans, with a "spacer" block of flat aluminum welded to the back side. This spacer allows for a pair of counter sunk bolts to be hidden flush under the reservoirs when mounted, and the offset from the back with the spacer allows hose clamps to pass between brackets and whatever they are bolted to.



Brad knows my OCD and visual symmetry needs well - and shares it - so when we discussed the mounting of the reservoirs he found a common body panel angle and matching locations on both sides of the engine bay to mount to. The angle of the front panel was marked in blue tape and the reservoirs mount right to the strut towers. Holes were drilled, rivnuts added, and the brackets mounted symmetrically.



The reservoirs are mounted at the same angle and hose clamps attach in the designated "safe zones" on each canister. To class it up the stainless hose clamps, the exposed portions are wrapped in heat shrink tubing and heated to fit - this keeps the "teeth" on the clamps from scratching the finish on the MCS canisters.

RADIATOR CAPPED, NEW UPPER MOUNT, & HOSES BUILT

The upper radiator bracket was originally built a while back, and was done rather hastily. We had the radiator out in late February '22 to "cap" the original filler neck that was cut off, since we will be using a remote mounted coolant reservoir and cap, which will be mounted higher than the radiator. Doug got that hole welded up, and while the radiator was out, Brad got to work making a better upper mounting bracket.



Brad's bracket work once again classed it up a lot. I missed the cardboard template steps but caught a few pictures as he made this new, full width, dimple-died, aluminum upper bracket.



More .100" thick aluminum was cut to fit and holes drilled, then it was dimpled with the press and our set of dies. These "lightening holes" help remove weight as well as adding stiffness. And it looks cool, too. There's a rubber isolator added to keep the aluminum radiator from touching the bracket (see the black bit in the above right pic.)



Once it was all fitted and tested, it was removed and brush finished, like Brad does to most aluminum brackets. This finish allows the part to look good in raw aluminum or it can take a nice anodize plating or powder coated finish later. Really happy with the upper mount worked out.

continued below

[Fair!]

Project Update for April 18th, 2022: Another long break between forum thread posts (Sept '21 to April '22) comes from more of the same reasons - overwhelming parts sales and a very busy shop. Some customer cars have wrapped up and left and a few more are about to go, so we're working on our LS550 project more often of late. If we didn't have 6 paying customer builds going on and a record shattering volume of orders, then this Mustang could have been built in about 4-6 months. But "everyone good is busy", and we have been so very busy.



Since my last post (September '21) we have completed the exhaust system (and ceramic coated that), built the cold air inlet and filter box, added a massive oil cooler, added the Radium surge tank, plumbed the oil system underhood, plumbed the fuel system underhood and to the back, plumbed the fuel system and vent in the trunk, added a massive differential oil cooler & plumbed that, added an electric fan to the radiator, remote mounted the coils and wired those, plumbed the radiator, mounted the strut reservoirs, added the pressure sensor and solenoid for the Accusump, modified the front grills, improved the upper radiator mount, added a second front tow hook, cut out the rear speaker deck, built a firewall for the trunk, installed a remoter latch release for the carbon trunk, installed an Optima battery and box into the trunk, then added a remote coolant reservoir, added a heater core under the dash and plumbed the heater hoses to all of that.



As usual there is a good bit of detail on each task below - but I am still going to cover the last 7 months of work below. We are very close to starting the engine and driving this car as I write this - by the next update we should have fired it up and hopefully be on track. Lots to cover so we better get started!

EXHAUST SYSTEM COMPLETED

From August to September of '21 our engineer / fabricator Zach (below right) built this crazy exhaust system, and it is a thing of beauty. Stuffing two GIANT mufflers in the trunk and routing two 3.5" diameter tubes around all manner of things, having good ground clearance, and getting it to look good took a lot of math, patience, and talent.



I made the requirements for this very custom exhaust even more complicated by insisting that Zach route these massive mandrel bends to an improbably challenging exhaust outlet location - the rear bumper cover.



I also wanted the mufflers to be symmetrical and "look pretty" when you open the trunk. And I wanted V-band clamps at various points along the way to make maintenance easy while removing any exhaust leaks. Oh, and mount everything with high temp silicone bushings with 100% stainless steel brackets.



Many have wondered at my sanity for this system - why spend 50+ hours to hang a pair of mufflers and exhaust through the rear bumper cover? Well maybe the pictures below will explain what I have in mind for the future...



The future plans for this car include a large rear diffuser - maybe now you can see why I had Zach go to so much trouble? The LARGE mufflers are also done to cancel out NOISE while allowing enough exhaust flow for a 1200 hp engine. Tucking them up at an angle allows these massive things to fit while making room for the diffuser down the road.



Some pretty terrible atrocities had to be done to the rear trunk to pass the giant 3.5" diameter tubing through here, and there's a curved bend there as well. Lots of fiddling to get the tips angled the same, making mounts, etc.



Zach left us in September of '21 for a fabulous job at Rivian, so our engineer / CNC operator Myles (above left) did the final TIG welding on this. Again, lots of patience and skill was needed, as well as a temporary structure to keep the two pipes from twisting. This went in and out of the car several times to check fit while Myles fully seam welded the exhaust tubes - which is made up of a lot of mandrel stainless bends.



By November of '21 the exhaust system was fully ceramic coated and polished, but Myles had left us for a fantastic DoD job (he still stops by for consulting help from time to time). So Doug (our new fabricator / tech) and Brad installed the finished exhaust on the Mustang.



I have dozens more pictures of this exhaust, and it is by far the nicest, largest, and wildest one we have built in 17 years of building cars here. I really cannot wait to hear what it sounds like when we fire it up! I have the same muffler on my built LS powered '00 Silverado and it sounds really good, but with 500+ whp and screaming around track at 7000 rpm, it should sound pretty amazing. With 1200 hp at 8500 would be something unworldly...

LOWER BELLHOUSING COVER PLATE INSTALLED

This is a minor task but one we recommend - covering the lower front opening of the bellhousing with this Canton plate.



Of course the Canton part didn't fit and needed some cutting, but that could be due to our non-OEM oil pan we're using. Regardless, we wanted to keep this area covered up so dirt, water, and debris cannot get into the bellhousing.



Just a minor thing but it is often overlooked, and getting this aluminum cover plate is very low cost. I have included the part number (21-870) so that others can buy this.

FUEL HARD LINES

We started on the fuel system already with the fuel rails, and we will tackle the trunk / fuel tank / surge tank lines in another task. For now we needed to run the big lines from the front to back.



For various reasons I prefer to do the long runs of fuel lines with aluminum hard lines. I like running them UNDER the car but ABOVE the bottom of the lowest parts of the car (frame rails) so they cannot get snagged and ripped away in an off track incident. It isn't the ONLY way to run fuel lines, it is just the safest way that we have adopted on many cars. The OEMs also tend to run hard lines for long fuel runs - either metal or plastic. Of course plastic has so many downsides...



This aluminum tubing is bought in a roll, then straightened, then bent to fit the long runs, and finally flared at the ends for the fittings. We always build these to terminate and transition to flexible lines at bulkhead panels at both ends. Above are the two bulkhead panels built for the rear (top left) and at the front engine bay (top right).



The rear bulkhead on our LS550 is placed at a convenient spot near the fuel tank/trunk area, above left. For this build we chose larger than normal hard line sizes: the feed line is a -10 or 5/8" diameter, and the return is a -8 or 1/2" line. Normally on a ~500 whp engine like we have in Phase 1 we'd use a -8 and -6 lines, so we're up TWO sizes. This is to build for a Phase 2 engine, and this fuel system could support about 1200 hp.



In the engine bay we have a bulkhead connect panel in the back left corner of the engine bay (above left), right under the brake booster. I missed getting that picture after Doug installed it from the inside, and it is really hard to see now (above right) because there's a lot going on back here. We have three fuel lines (the main feed, the return, and a regulated line to the fuel rail), the Aeromotive fuel pressure regulator, and giant -12 oil lines snake around all of this as well. As big as this engine bay is, I really had trouble laying out a "clean" placement of everything on this side. But for now, this will do.

COLD AIR & FILTER BOX

At this point we had all of the major components mounted under the hood. The engine was in place, the Accusump, the remote oil filter, radiator and fuel filter. Now it was time to lay out the air inlet tubing and air filter to feed this little 6.3L LS engine.



With the help of Erik at HPR and some tuner friends we had determined early on to use a 102mm Drive By Wire throttle body (DBW). A smaller TB only chokes down the engine, and the 102mm unit I bought cost $95. This unit is easily tuned with the Holley Dominator EFI we have. 102mm = 4.015". The problem is the Outer Diameter of a 102mm throttle body is 4.25"...



4.25" ID intake hoses are VERY rare, and what we ended up doing was up-sizing the entire cold air intake tract to 4.5" dia hoses, aluminum tubing and air filter, which is much more common size. As you can see (above right) we have a "transition" hose that goes from 4.25" to 4.5" right at the throttle body, then a 90 deg silicone bend that is 4.5" dia, and an air filter that is 4.5" ID as well.



Brad spent a little time getting this cold air built, and worked with me to get it laid out just so. Where the filter ended up is exactly where I wanted it. Jason and I spent a good bit of time chasing down the right parts - the bend, transition, tubing and air filter. This filter is an oil-less K&N that barely fits the area we have for it. The parts to build this came from 5 different places, and took many weeks to arrive - like everything during this supply chain mess. Now it was time to build the filter box.



Brad builds some beautiful brackets and sheet metal assemblies and he always starts with cardboard templates. This airbox was going to be tricky...



The template came together in a few stages, and had to be built around a number of items - like the remote oil cooler, and a protrusion in the engine bay. The inboard side wall (with the "U" in it) is built to keep hot air from the radiator exhaust. Then a layer of cardboard was fitted to the top to mate up to the inner surface of the carbon hood we are using on this car, which will be sealed with some weatherstrip rubber along the top edge.



Brad transferred the final templates to aluminum sheet, which he cut on the shear and band saw, making 3 main pieces. As he was cleaning the edges of the aluminum, some contaminated sandpaper (which had been used on steel) was used. This all was being done in January of '22.



This made the aluminum nearly impossible to weld, due to the steel contamination. Both Doug and Austin both tried to weld the seams here and it wasn't pretty, but they cleaned up the worst of it and the two aluminum pieces were saved.



Brad then made a series of small "L" brackets and was able to rivet the third and final piece to this airbox assembly, which fit perfectly to the corner of the engine bay, allowed the 4.5" tube to slip through, and lined up to the underside of the hood. There is a "U" shaped opening that will allow some warm engine bay air into the airbox, so we will monitor Intake Air Temp sensor in our first track test - and likely we'll make a block off panel for this upper opening, to completely seal off the filter from warm air.

GOLD FOIL, IAT BUNG, AND GRILL OPENINGS MODIFIED

By February of this year we had ordered some more bits and pieces to wrap up the Cold Air Inlet system. Brad started off by covering the airbox with DEI gold foil. And yes, this should normally only be on the "outside" of the air box, but some of this was done to cover up the contaminated welds on the box.



With the airbox completely wrapped in GOLD it was time for Doug to located, drill, and TIG weld the threaded bung for the IAT sensor.



After that was welded up the aluminum tube was also wrapped in DEI gold foil. Then Brad added the upper welting to the "U" and the thicker weatherstrip seal along the top edge, which seals the box to the underside of the hood.



Last up was the grill openings that "feed" the airbox cold air from outside, as well as the radiator and oil cooler. The factory 2018 GT upper and lower grills have a lot of areas blocked off. The OEMs do this to reduce drag and eek out a fraction of one more MPG, after wind tunnel time spent with engineers, thermal testing, etc. Since we're adding more power than the regular 5.0L would have, so we need to open up things...



We have used this trick in the past to "uncover" grill openings when it is a cast plastic part with these decorative hexagon shapes on the front. A 36 grit sandpaper disc is used to remove the inner layer of plastic and the hexagons remain - so it still looks factory, but allows much more airflow.




This was done on the front left corner that feeds the air filter box, as shown above. This mod added 5x as much surface area for air to get to our uniquely positioned filter inlet & airbox, and will have a small "ram air" effect at speed once we seal off the inner wall of the airbox.



Since we have a rolled radiator and a low mounted oil cooler, the upper grill isn't feeding much (and we might block it off on the back side. To feed the lower opening Brad also opened up the lower grill area as well, which was about half closed off as well. This should help with cooling airflow to these two low mounted heat exchangers.

OIL COOLER ADDED AND PLUMBED

Almost every track car we have ever built needed a supplemental oil cooler or oil cooler upgrade. Our 2018 Mustang GT (below left) made 485 whp with the Gen 3 Coyote and headers, and the Mishimoto oil cooler we modified and added made the oil temps cooler. This car recently came back to us from the new owner, who complained of high oil temps (possibly a differing driving style, shift points, geographic location, etc) and we just installed a larger, thicker, and more efficient Derale stacked plate oil cooler (below right) on that car.



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We have used these Improved Racing remote filter mounts on numerous builds, and even done one recently (endurance Cadillac) without the internal thermostatic bypass, which is considerably cheaper. It is rare that the included bracket fits the confines of the engine bay where we need to mount one, so we often make custom brackets to mount these.



Since there will be four beefy braided lines hanging off of this, in addition to the oil unit itself plus the massive Wix filter full of oil, Brad went a little overboard when making this bracket. And I love it.



Brad added these window cut-outs so we could see the brand, part number, and flow arrows - to keep from hooking up the lines incorrectly. He mounted it using two existing threaded bosses in the engine bay (from the stock airbox) plus a couple of holes he drilled for the lower portion of the bracket. Very rigid and lightweight, all aluminum - with some dimple dies for good measure!



This is now in the car, along with the Accusump, so we can finally plumb the oil system. Well, we need to add an oil cooler, but we're working on that next.

WHAT'S NEXT?

That's a lot for this time, so we will end it there. Zach is working furiously on the last of the 3.5" diameter exhaust system now (the tricky bit near the swaybar and diff), then Brad can get the fuel system plumbed. We have to finish the exhaust and heat shield above the mufflers so we can pick a good spot to mount the Radium Engineering remote surge tank as well as our custom bracket for the Odyssey battery. The remote coils need to be mounted, plug wires built, the coolant reservoir fabricated, and a ventilated oil catch can installed.



A bit of wiring needs to be knocked out, like the high amp circuit breakers for the battery, remote kill, and alternator. The diff fluid cooler needs to be mounted in the trunk, or underneath the mufflers (with a mind towards the diffuser we will add after our first track test.) A large Derale oil cooler needs to be mounted, then the oil system can be fully plumbed. I have to choose a digital dash, and I'm struggling with which brand and model number to pick. That will need to be added and wired into the Holley. Then it is time for fluids, a start-up tune, and we can fire off the engine.

Thanks for reading!

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I laid out a scaled drawing of the mufflers onto a picture of the S550 trunk very early in this build, sent this to Magnaflow in an email, and asked them to sponsor a pair of these for our LS550 build in late 2019 - and they agreed. Later in 2020 when I checked up on the sponsored mufflers, they had to stop their sponsor program due to Covid, which was totally understandable. That's when I just bought two of the 12909 mufflers in the 3.5" inlet/outlet sizes I wanted to use (the 14900 versions shown are just polished vs raw stainless).



In a strange twist of fate the pair of sponsored mufflers eventually showed up in 2021, so Amy's LS swapped FRS and our LS swapped E46 BMW will get the extra mufflers (one each) that I had hurriedly paid for. Thanks, Magnaflow!

TRUNK CUT OUT

To make room for these two absolutely massive mufflers we cut the trunk floor out of the Mustang, which we do on a lot of race cars that will be getting a diffuser anyway (this one will get a diffuser, eventually). In December of 2020 we mapped out and marked out the "line of death" and Brad got to cutting...



We planned to take the cuts up to the edge of the main structural frame members and main lateral structure member in the back of the car, with a 1/2" flange left to attach to later. We would lose the ability to carry a full sized spare, which was a non-issue.



After some careful cutting the spare tire section was cut out, which totaled 8.9 pounds. More importantly it gave us room for these big mufflers.



"So much room for activities!"

RETURN TO THE SHOP - AUGUST 2021!

After many months of barn storage the Mustang came back into the shop. I had to wash the filth off of it first, as it was stuck under a tree for a few days back when the barn got foam insulation sprayed.



This car was NASTY but cleaned up quite well, since Brad had waxed it before it went out to storage. Washing this car was very cathartic.



Seeing it cleaned up and getting it back into the shop was a huge boost for me, mentally. I've been away from Time Trial competition for TWO YEARS now and it has made me grumpy AF. This car is what I will drive next on track in that format, so getting this going again is a way to shorten that gap in my track addiction.

FINAL HEADER COLLECTOR MODS + CERAMIC COATING

The production LS550 swap headers had been in the car for some time, but to fit the 3.5" exhaust we'd have to steer the collectors around some items, for a better aim at some open spaces in the floor pan, aft of the headers.



Our newest fabricator Zach stepped up and mapped out the curves with 3" mandrel bends, cut them to fit, tack welded them together, then added 3" V-band flange to the ends.



These collector bends were finish TIG welded, the welds inside were sanded smooth, and these were then welded to the ends of the collectors.



With the headers reinstalled one last time to check fit they were removed, and I took them to be ceramic coated along with the re-used headers from the CTS-V.



The difference was amazing! The old Caddy headers look brand new, and even the new "raw stainless" LS550 prototypes look like a million bucks. The entire exhaust is getting coated when it is complete. We might still DEI heat wrap some areas of the exhaust that are close to things we don't want to get hot, but for the most part this coating will drop lower underhood temps all on their own - while looking very sharp. This coating is very durable (we've used this place / this coating on exhausts before) and if it gets covered in oil it can be shined up again with a Scotch-Brite pad or steel wool.

FITTING THE MUFFLERS

This step shows how Zach fitted these mufflers to the rear of the car, starting in August 2021. Sadly the two types of muffler mount bushings were SUPER delayed in getting here and this pair of mufflers isn't 100% mounted yet - just held in place by straps. Which is holding up the rest of the exhaust, but within days of me writing this these delayed parts will arrive...



Zach understood where and how I wanted these mufflers mounted and he pushed through the obstructions to make it happen. The initial opening in the rear trunk wall (above left) was done with a 4" hole saw, leaving an air gap around the 3.5" tubing diameter. The second hole (above right) was on a weird slope and angle, but was cut the same way - just with a lot more effort.



These two cuts allowed the back of the muffler to tuck up close to the back wall of the trunk, and then the tips can make it all the way through...

EXHAUST TIP SURROUND

Now I will admit this part is seems a little "showy", but it was necessary to make the exhaust tips exit high in the chassis, next to the license plate frame. There is also a practical reason for this.



We have done unusual muffler tip placements before, in order to squeeze the biggest mufflers under a car - like on this C5 above. We ditched the normal double 90 deg bends the C5 uses and added Magnaflow mufflers 2x as large as the OEM units by taking this unusual path (and removed two 90 deg bends and added one 45 deg on each side). This routing necessitated side exit tips, and these stainless steel heat shields (which are brushed finished, and easily cleaned when they get a coating of exhaust soot). One of the best sounding C5s I have ever heard, and quiet. Picked up 25 whp with this exhaust change, too!



On the LS550, to get the even larger 5 x 11 x 22" case Magnaflows to fit between the rear axle the bumper cover AND be above the future rear diffuser top plane, they need to start low and angle upwards (we will cut the back of the bumper cover at the trim line below the license plate frame).



Again, the fitting of these mufflers was something I dictated over 18 months ago, and it has taken a good bit of work to make them fit. The trunk floor cut out, the back of the trunk wall cut, and now these exhaust tip heat shields. Myles designed these and cut them out of aluminum on the CNC plasma table but when the design is finalized we will replace them with CNC laser cut stainless steel versions. I will show more of this work when it is completed, hopefully very soon.

REMAINING EXHAUST SYSTEM BEING BUILT

This was more August 2021 work that moved the project forward rapidly. Zach attacked this and started by making an adapter to go from the 3" header collectors to the larger 3.5" exhaust system (again, being built for more power use down the road). Once the transitions were made they were tack welded to the V-band flange and bolted up to the headers...



We had laid out the design months earlier and bought Vibrant stainless 3.5" diameter mandrel bends for the whole system (everything in the lower left pic plus a few more), with a mix of 45, 30 and 90 degree bends. The first step was to get around the transmission crossmember with some 45s and head towards the driveshaft tunnel.



Then it was time to lay out the X-merge, which we had to make from scratch. We always start with two 90s and cut out an oval shaped sliver in between, then TIG weld them together. This gets you the bank-to-bank cross flow you want without adding much if any restriction to overall flow.



With the X-merge built it was joined to the front section that heads to the header collectors. Lots of cutting, measuring, tape-up happens before the first tack weld is placed.



This goes on for hours of careful fabrication until you are past the X-merge and on your way to the rear section.



ACCUSUMP INSTALL

As I have mentioned before, this Phase 1 HPR built 383" LS6 engine is using a WET SUMP oiling system. Some like to think that only DRY SUMP oiling systems should ever be used on a road course, but of course that is not true. It is usually based on some legit engine failures heard about second hand without all of the facts. We've built too many wet sump LS engines to believe this. The key to keeping a wet sump LS engine alive at very high lateral and braking loads (road course use with R-comps or better) is good oil pan baffling and some sort of oil pressure accumulator. I also like to run LS engines +1 quart over "full", which burns oil at a faster rate and adds some windage, but I've never lost a wet sump LS engine when run this way.



I have also experienced one LS engine failure on track - the LS E36 above at ECR in 2008 on 315mm Hoosiers, BEFORE we added a 3 quart Accusump and baffled/trap door oil pan. It had a junkyard LS6 with unknown number of miles and I somehow let the engine get THREE quarts low on oil (long story - I was driving 3 cars that day and helping out 2 other drivers, so I was a bit distracted). This super low oil level caused a loss of oil pressure while cornering and the rod bearings began making racket, so I pulled in and it was the end of that day (but it wasn't catastrophe failure - that engine was rebuilt later for use on another build).



We replaced that with a more powerful LS2 based 7.0L and added the Accusump and Improved Racing pan baffle kit (plus an oil coolers) and never had an issue with it again. and we beat on that thing, making 500 whp. We have already covered the trap door oil pan on this build (and the work we needed to do to make it fit correctly) so the only missing link now is an accumulator.



So we found the right Accusump, and this monster is 24" long, which limits the number of places you can mount it - severely! I am all about the electronic triggering, so it doesn't need to be sitting next to me like in the E36 LS build, above. Having a hot volume of engine oil in the cabin is always a bit sketchy, in any case. Jason, Brad and I looked and there was SO much room in front of the engine that we snuck it in at the base of the radiator, ahead of the meaty Whiteline swaybar. Brad start making bracket templates...



The left side (driver's side) bracket was relatively straightforward to make. Brad was able to find an existing threaded hole in the frame rail and then tied into both mounting holes for the swaybar, with a place to mount the included Canton clamp bracket.



The right side was a bit trickier, and required one Rivnut be added to the lower subframe, as shown.



That bracket had a different orientation than the other side, but the cylindrical Accusump doesn't care. That bracket bolted to the swaybar and the subframe, as shown above.



This setup is much more rigid than I thought it could be, just showing how mounting on two planes for each bracket could stiffen up the assembly. Nice low mounting moves the CG lower, but its more forward than we had hoped - but again, not many places to mount something 24" wide like this.



We have a new pressure accumulator we are using on a couple of other builds in the shop (Masterlube) that is more compact and easier to mount (back corner of the BMW E46 engine bay above), but we didn't find that option for many months after this Accusump was purchased and mounted.

REMOTE OIL FILTER MOUNT + BYPASS + ADAPTER

There are a couple of pieces of the puzzle needed before we can begin plumbing the oil system for this car. The "Summit Racing" oil pan comes with an oil filter mount, but this Canton adapter allows for remote oil filter mount - which we want to do for two reasons.



We later realized we could order this oil pan without the oil filter adapter for a chunk less money, since we weren't using it anyway.



Once that was swapped on we started mocking up oil lines so we could order plumbing - these AN adapters screw right in and will make lines to the remote oil filter easy to run. The remote oil filter allows us to ditch the TINY oil filter made for an LS engine and replacing them with a much larger filter, that has more media and surface area.



We like to use these remote oil filters from Improved Racing and we have installed these on at least a half dozen cars over the years. We try to always use this version that has a thermostatic bypass, with ports that can go to an oil cooler -or- route right back to the engine after passing through the oil filter if the oil is too cold (you can pick from a number of thermostatic opening temps). These are modular and you can choose between a variety of metric or SAE thread sizes to match up to the filter of your choice. We build around this MASSIVELY large 51087 Wix filter, so we can keep the same one in stock for a bunch of different cars.

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Before the intake went on "for good" Brad found this vacuum hose with a built in 90 deg bend, with the Dorman part number shown in the image above. The second picture above shows how much room we have with the standard deck height LS engine installed into the S550 with our mounts, up to the flat Anderson Composites carbon hood. For reasons we might utilize later.



When all of that was buttoned up, the FAST intake had the injectors and fuel rails installed, then the throttle body, then it went onto the engine for the last time - no more mockup! We will make the fuel rail crossover hose when we plumb the fuel system.

MORE SALVAGE YARD HELP!

Many things on this salvaged S550 chassis were missing, and when we bought the used fuel tank all of the internal bits were long gone. So I reached out to my buddy Paul @ Tri-State Auto Parts, just outside of Memphis. He has helped us track down a lot of long lost items for this build and others!



Paul likes my memes so he sent the box marked as such! He helped us source some fuel pump parts/sump, used ABS units, various wiring pigtails, and more.



Having nothing of the stock harness makes for a lot of extra work, but I was in a rush when I picked the car up in a made 38 hour straight road trip, and missed this very obvious issue (missing harness). Again, starting with an utterly stripped car likely cost us 6 months of time and many thousands of dollars in extra parts / chasing. Live and learn.

IGNITION COIL BRANDS (DON'T MATTER!)

One thing I did not have laying around was a set of ignition coils, and an LS engine needs eight of them. GM coils come in 3 basic shapes and types, but they all function virtually the same way. You just have to make sure the coil harness has the right style plugs to drive the coils.



Since all LS engines have one coil per cylinder, these are not heavily taxed - even up to around 1500 hp. One thing I've learned in 2 decades of LS swaps - the ignition coil brand and cost does not matter. Not one bit. They want you to buy the $80-125/each units, and will flash them up with different colors or features, but the simple fact is, it is just a dumb transformer. It converts 12 volts to tens of thousands of volts, to drive the spark. That's it.



To prove that coils don't matter on an engine with 8 of them I bought 8 of the cheapest coils I could find on Rock Auto for a C6 Corvette LS7. If there is a tuning issue of course we will change them out, to rule them out. But I suspect they will work fine (hint: I've used cheap coils in the past and NEVER had a failure!)

IN PROCESS WEIGHT CHECK - 9/29/20

We do these periodic weight checks during all of our builds, just to see where we are and to hopefully get an idea of where the project will end up on weight, with a little extrapolation. We did this one in late September 2020....



This weight worries me a bit, as I have bet a steak dinner with a buddy that this will be "under 3000 pounds" in our first track outing, sans driver. With a weight of 2920 lbs here - and no fluids, exhaust, or oil coolers - I might come up short. If I have to cheat I will toss the carbon doors on, which are another 80 pounds lighter than these gutted steel doors. I want that free steak dinner, and I REALLY want this pig to be 600 pounds lighter than my 2018 GT!

HOLLEY EFI & CHASSIS WIRING WORK

When we stopped working on this project in December 2020, we were buried with customer car work. I had forgotten how far we had gotten on the wiring and EFI upgrade on this build until I started researching the photo gallery for this build to write this update. We're pretty close!



We are using the Holley Dominator for this build, unlike the 3 Holley Terminator X-Max swaps we are doing elsewhere in the shop. The Dominator is very similar to the Terminator, except it has a lot more inputs, outputs, and potentially a better traction control functionality. We might not use all of this I/O on the Phase 1 build, but we are trying to future proof this work for additional power (and needs) down the road.



The Dominator doesn't come with a complete engine harness like the Terminator does, and it costs about 3x as much. So Brad had to piece together wiring harness modules and sub-harnesses. A bit more work, and we bought a 2015 Mustang wiring diagram book from Ford to help with some of the limited integration we will be doing with chassis-side items (some light circuits, some switches, etc).


We sourced a 21 circuit "hot rod" wiring harness from Painless Wiring (10102) - which is made across town, right here in the USA. We have used this harness on a dozen cars and it is more than enough for a race car, with plenty of circuits. "But why not a PDM!" Well why not a $25K re-wire of a car? Because the time clocks don't care how much you spent on wiring. This doesn't make your car faster, and we haven't seen failures, so why waste the time/money?



We weighed this harness at 7.6 pounds, which matches the manufacturer's 7.54 pound claim. Again, we have used this exact same harness and part number on numerous cars with success, and it didn't cost twenty grand. If we were building an F1 car of course we would do something much more elaborate, but for a ratty salvage titled and wrecked 2015 Mustang, this fits the build.



Brad started looking at the routing and layout of this chassis harness, and we tested a number of places to mount the main fuse / relay block. We narrowed it down to two places - surface mounted in a panel under the radio or hidden inside the glove box.



Ultimately I decided to mount the fuse box inside the glove box area, along with the Holley Dominator ECU. Brad made this cardboard template then built this 2 piece bracket assembly, above.



This bracket holds the Holley engine computer and the fuse box portion of the Painless Wiring chassis harness. This can always be accessed quickly when needed, but out of sight when it is working fine. If we ever do an Optima OUSCI event in this car, it would at least be worth some D&E points, ha!



I am happy with this install, and gives this build a bit of "is this OEM?" look while hiding the real bits out of sight. This is not made to be a show car, and not made to show off flashy bits, with some of these hidden things.



Brad worked on both the Painless chassis harness as well as building the Holley EFI harness. The ECM harness has to be built, pinned, etc. A lot more work than the Holley Terminator work we have done, that's for sure.



Brad was working on this until the first week of December, when we ran out of time and put the project on hold. But we are a lot closer than I remember, with most of the harness built, the firewall grommets added, lighting bits wired in, and even the timing pointer added to the engine. More on this soon!



FRONT TOW HOOK ADDED

I have fallen in love with our weld-on tow hooks on a couple of customer builds. We are adding 4 of these to all of our shop cars that get tube bumpers, as it makes loading and strapping down a race car a BREEZE inside an enclosed trailer. No more fishing straps under splitters or diffuser, or snaking them through wheels.



We have had to winch this car into the shop already, so before we did I asked Myles to plasma cut a tow hook - which he then TIG welded in place.



I cannot emphasize how handy these are to have for hauling, strapping down to dynos, and for straps inside a trailer! We will add 3 more to this car very soon.



PP1 UNDERTRAY INSTALL

When we got this car it had no front bumper cover and a smooshed hood... so it was a good time to update the front end to the 2018-21 GT front cover, which we've already covered.



I found the 2018 bumper cover at a local salvage yard, but it was a floppy noodle. With some wheelin and dealin I got the correct 2018 GT upper and lower grills, which really firmed up the nose. Then we bought the correct radiator support to mount it along the top. The 2018 fenders tied into the nose and we had the base 2018 GT lower lip leftover from my 2018 to firm up the bottom. But there was still some wobbliness in the bumper cover due to the lack of a lower undertray...



For a variety of reasons I did not want to do the first track test with a custom front splitter - I want this to be as close to the final spec of my red 2018 Mustang as possible. We'll have the same wheels, tires, brakes, suspension, seats, and approx the same power as the red car on the LS550 - just less weight (which will be a good data point - how much does weight effect lap times?). So instead of jumping ahead to aero, we needed a factory PP1 undertray...



This car came without any of these plastics, and so I bought the full PP1 kit above. Which we talk about in detail here (it is the basis of the "PP2 conversion kit", just without the $400 extended PP2 lip). Why not run without any of these lower plastics? Well two reasons. 1) the brake cooling deflectors we have installed won't work for crap without the ducted tunnels built into the PP1 undertray. 2) Running with no undertray at all is akin to driving with the hood off - it will absolutely WRECK the airflow under the car, through the coolers, and add tremendous drag. The PP1 bits are fairly inexpensive, and I'm sure we can sell these when we go to make a REAL splitter for this car later....



The images above are a tease - that's a custom dual-layer, bonded aluminum splitter with tunnels we built for another customer's race car (S197), but what is shown there is similar to what we will likely do in Phase 2 of this LS550 build. But like I said, we're trying not to get too far ahead on prep of where my red 2018 GT was on the LS550's first track test, so we will be going with stock aero and the basic PP1 undertray.



Technically my red 2018 GT (above) had the PP1 undertray and the PP2 "splitter" (see above), which was just a $400 lower lip extension + the PP1 bits. We have done an extensive write-up of the part numbers and costs associated with the PP1 + PP2 bits, located here. Since this will be a temporary setup on the LS550, we left the PP2 splitter extension off and just ran the PP1.



This PP1 undertray + bracket + center cover will give the LS550 the same thing as any 2018-up PP1 came without without the pricey $400 extended PP2 lip. This is needed to feed the front brake deflectors properly for the first few (??) track tests we will perform before we start to throw some aero bits at the car.



The install was a bit tricky, but we're getting better at this now that we have have done a few of these. Brad did the hardware the same way as he did this on my 2018 GT upgrade over the base model undertray it came with.

UNUSUALLY LARGE EXHAUST PLANS

So I am a bit of a nut when it comes to exhaust systems. Having built a lot of lighter, higher flow exhaust systems on a lot of cars over the past 35 years I have outgrown the LOUD AF systems. When I was in high school and college I had the Flowmaster stuff with dumps on a variety of 1st gen Mustangs to Fox Mustangs, but I can't deal with that noise anymore.



Honestly, a lot of event sites are tired of that nonsense as well, and more and more have put into place noise restrictions. Many have a 103 db limit, which we have been able to hit with some of our customized exhausts. The off-the-shelf Magnaflow install on my 2018 GT was SUPER loud (above left), but the upgraded version (above right) would regularly measure between 90-97 dB - which is a LOT quieter than needed to squeak under 103 dB tracks like NCM.



The thing that we have found that reduces NOISE while keeping the same or increasing FLOW is to go with a larger diameter tubing on the exhaust and a MASSIVE increase in the muffler case VOLUME. We have done this on a lot of cars and it usually INCREASES horsepower while DECREASING noise levels (measured with proper sound metering devices and SAE procedures).



Big mufflers are always harder to package... so the exhaust companies don't even make "kits" like this. Which is a shame, because this really WORKS. Unlike the S197 above (which has a custom 4 muffler 3" mandrel bent system) the routing on the S550 does not leave as much room out back for a large muffler case - and with the power level we are going for in Phase 2 we need the biggest mufflers money can buy.

PICKING TWO MASSIVE MAGNAFLOW MUFFLERS

The solution we have used many times to counter noisy exhaust notes on rowdy engines is to use a larger case muffler. The biggest muffler we have ever used on a car is this Magnaflow stainless 5 x 11 x 22" case beast, shown below.



We have installed one of these onto #TruckNorriSS, my 2000 Silverado with long tube headers and an HPR built engine. This truck used to have two smaller volume, chambered Magnaflow mufflers and it was pretty damned loud. The change in sound levels after we installed this SINGLE muffler was immense. This was a dual 3" into single 3" merge into this Magnaflow 12589 muffler. It did not lose any power, just got a LOT quieter.



Right after this truck exhaust change I new what the LS550 needed - two of these! Sure, they are eighteen whopping pounds apiece, but the peace and quiet of having a quiet Mustang would be worth it.

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Project Update for September 3rd, 2021: Yikes, 13 months passed without an update on this build thread! There were a million reasons why we haven't updated this thread, and why we had an 8 month hiatus from work on it. Mostly we got SUPER busy with parts sales during the pandemic, and then 6 customer owned car builds that had priority over my personal car. We completed a decent chunk of work after my July 2020 post before this car got "put on ice" for 8 months, which we will cover now.



In the Spring of 2021 we had a 800 sf metal barn built (below right), and this S550 Mustang, my all carbon C6 Z06 chassis, my tractor, and my 1/2 ton truck all got moved into there - which opened up a lot more working room in the main shop (below left). Since then several customer cars in the shop have gotten to finish points (and one went to "paint jail"), so the LS550 Mustang is back in here again and work has resumed (August 2021).



We are once gain working to finish the "Phase 1" aspect of this Mustang LS swapped build. Let's start out this update with July to December 2020 work, then we can jump ahead to August 2021 tasks.

PLASTIC DISTRACTION + FIRST HOLLEY EFI COMPLETION

In this 8 month hiatus of LS550 work we did buy this 2006 Corvette (below) for my wife Amy in May 2021, and worked on that a bit. That car was purchased to use for C6 product development and testing, plus as an excuse to get to the track more often in a "pretty good car" in stock form. I have performed 4 track tests in this plastic turd to try to get a good "baseline lap" to build upon, but it has not gone smoothly. Long story, which you can read about in that C6 development thread (Project New Balance).



Also during the past couple of months we got our 1st Holley EFI converted LS customer car started up and it works great. This Cadillac CTS-V endurance race car (build thread here) has a virtual clone of the engine in my LS550 - its also a stroker 383" LS1 cathedral port engine built by HorsePower Research, also has a Fast 102 intake, similar cam, and a Holley Terminator X-Max (vs the Holley Dominator EFI on my Mustang). It sounds rowdy and we should have dyno numbers on that car soon. Seeing that car get to this final stage really fired me up to finish mine!



After working with it first hand now I can say that the Holley software is very pretty to work with, and we learned a lot on this first Holley EFI install. We have 3 other Holley EFI equipped builds in process (our E46 LS swapped endurance race car, a customer's 1967 LS7 swapped Mustang track car, and my 2015 LS swapped Mustang), so seeing this first one fire up was a huge boost.



This CTS-V also got a PowerTune 7" LCD digital dash, which is their first one with a Holley CAN interface (and we might use this dash on our LS550 build). Also of note is the stand-alone Mk60 ABS we swapped onto this car (not our first), which replaced a "Cadillac Racing" ABS unit that didn't work (funny enough - it was a factory C6 Corvette unit!)

PRODUCTION DRIVESHAFT INSTALLED

We've seen a couple of "one off" LS swaps on the S550 but not any comprehensive "kit" that has engine mounts, trans crossmember, long tube headers, driveshaft, and transmission solutions. We made a decision early on to attack the Road Race customer first, and they don't want a Powerglide or other automatic, they want a manual transmission. The T56 Magnum XL is THE best option for road course use under $20K, and the bellhousing-to-shifter length is perfect for the S197 and S550 chassis Mustangs, so that is what we built our "Stage 0" kit around.



This makes for a much shorter driveshaft than the long 2-piece OEM unit that came on any S550 - because the direct shift T56 Magnum transmission is much longer than the remote shifted Getrag MT-82 6 speed in the 5.0L Mustangs or the Tremec TR-3160 6 speed from the Shelby GT350. Since this Tremec T56 is so different from any OEM transmission in this chassis, there is no way of adapting the stock prop shaft - we needed an all new design.



The T56 front slip yoke is unique to that transmission and has a standard U-joint. Out back also uses a U-joint, but as we have learned the hard way (see our 2018 Mustang build thread) there are TWO different sized rear differential flanges in the S550. Our driveshaft supplier makes a universal rear flange that works on both diameters, using a second set of holes and a spacer shim that goes inside the flange.



Once all of the OEM bolts and binary washers arrived we were ready to install our production driveshaft in late July 2020. The stock binary washers (which we sourced from Ford) needed to be shaved down a hair when we used the radial shim to adapt for the smaller S550 flange inside the rear axle flange cup. You won't need to do this slight modification if you have a rear axle flange cup that has the smaller diameter - as you won't need the adapter ring.



Other than that slight tweak (we will have these modified binary washers laser cut and offer those + the OEM bolts for our driveshaft kit) the driveshaft install was a breeze, and the large diameter unit looks plenty beefy. Shouldn't be an issue with our 550 hp engine, but the more powerful "Phase 2 engine" might get a carbon shaft. We will run the numbers and see.

4 PORT STEAM VENT KIT

Most LS engines that come in cars have a 2-port steam vent, like the LS7 crate engine shown below at left. This merges one steam port on each cylinder head across the front, then this tube is plumbed to the coolant reservoir. We would rather use a 4 port steam vent system on LS engines, for more even cooling & steam venting.



The 4 port is used on the trucks and on our E46 LS endurance car we modified a truck unit to fit with the LS2 Dorman intake, or that we re-used on my truck's built 5.7L LS (above right). When we want a 4-port and the steel OEM truck LS unit won't fit, we look at the aftermarket. Normally we will spend around $200 to buy the TFS branded 2- or 4-port steam vent kit for an LS. These come with billet fittings that bolt to the heads at both ends, plus the braided lines to attach them to a single port. This is then tied into the top of the radiator or into the remote coolant reservoir.



We bought the TFS 4-port kit for use with this FAST LSXR 102 intake, but the FAST intake is pretty bulky and the TFS steam port adapters were hitting the body of the manifold. Instead of grinding on the $1000 intake manifold, we went with the only 4-port kit that was known to fit the FAST LSXR 102 - a unit from Nitrous Outlet. It is 4 billet adapters for the ports with one that has a "tree". The tree has inlets from 3 other ports and one outlet to go to the radiator or reservoir.



This kit is built specifically for this FAST LSXR 102 on a cathedral headed LS engine manifold and installation went pretty smoothly. The head gaskets utilized by HPR were setup for 2 port front vents only, but the rear ports in the heads are there - you just have to drill out a rivet that covers that hole up - which we did. Evan used his 90 deg / right angle drill to take the head off the rivets, with the intake ports on the heads taped up to avoid any debris (if we had told this to HPR they would have pre-drilled the head gaskets before they were installed). Once the rivet head was drilled off, Evan used a pick to dig out the lower portion of the rivet, opening up the head gaskets' rear ports. On the CTS-V (above right) we used the exact same kit and tied the line into the remote reservoir - which we will do on the LS550 as well.

CUSTOM RADIATOR, ROLL MOUNT, & MODS

We have plans for much more power than this 385" stroker will make, as well as significant aero mods down the road. To "future proof" this build, and give us more cooling than we need with the Phase 1 engine, I wanted a much larger radiator than the stock S550 mounting position would allow for.



Rolling the radiator is something we do on virtually every road course build that goes through our shop. This forward tilt allows for a larger radiator core frontal area to fit within the same space, so the radiator is larger than the grill opening. It can also allow for room ABOVE the radiator to cleanly route a cold air tube, to feed the radiator from the lower grill only, or for hood venting.



Rolling the radiator forward a radical amount (normally involving a custom tube front bumper pushed forward to the bumper cover skin, like we have done on the LS550) also opens up a LOT of room in front of the engine. The two cars above (86 LS swap above left, E46 LS swap above right) have gained this room, which makes working on them easier



A steep radiator roll also lines up the "exhaust" from the radiator to more easily point upwards to some waiting hood vents. If you get really creative (69 Camaro tube frame car, above) you can duct the heat exchangers to a sweeping set of hood vents, and this makes for a lot of good airflow, which aids both downforce and cooling with a splitter. That's what they call a win-win.



Now we're not getting as crazy on the LS550 as we did on the 69 Camaro - which again, was a tube frame build with the engine (and driver) shoved back two feet - but we're rolling this radiator more than we typically do. Yes, we pushed the bumper beam way forward to gain some additional fore-aft room for this heat exchanger.



We ordered this custom built Howe (circle track) radiator in March of 2020 and started mocking it up in the Mustang as we installed the plastic and steel upper radiator support - which is now really just a front bumper cover bracket. The roll we were able to get was 34 degrees down from vertical and the top of this massive 28.75" x 20" x 3" radiator almost touches the front factory grill plastics.



I ordered this one as a dual pass design, with the radiator inlet and outlet on the same (right) side, which lines up nicely with our engine's LS7 water pump - which I talked about in a previous forum update.



With the massive radiator in place you can stand in front of the LS engine and work on it, and have plenty of room to move around. This is because we maximized engine setback (without cutting the firewall) and moved the radiator out of the way. Think of the radiator duct box we could squeeze in there! Well.... maybe down the road in Phase 2.



To make modified "pin" mounts Brad machined some aluminum bar on the lathe, made lower corner brackets, and Myles TIG welded the tubes onto those and then welded those onto the bottom end tanks. The radiator cap "neck" was cut off, to later be patched with a welded plate (the cap will be in the high mounted remote coolant reservoir).



With the pins in place at the matching 34 degree angle the lower radiator was mounted into the stock bushings set into the lower subframe.



The upper radiator mount is a simple, temporary bracket that was slipped in on top and bolted to the factory hood latch holes (we have added Aerocatch latch pins and latches already). I will show more of the radiator ducting and hoses in the next update.

BRAKE LINES

This salvage car was pretty stripped when I bought it in Georgia so we had to hit the salvage yards to buy an ABS hydraulic unit, but for a new master cylinder and booster from Motorcraft (which I showed previously).



For the main engine bay hard brake lines it is fairly inexpensive to buy brand new ones from Ford. We got Motorcraft rear flex lines as well, until we make some braided lines for the back of an S550 (the front lines are braided lines we had built for the Powerbrake 6 piston kit).



Double checking the metric thread pitch on the master and lines, all good. The mangled stock lines were removed and the all new engine bay hard lines went in, no sweat.



The rear flex lines are well made and have multiple brackets to hold them out of the way of the wheel and tire. Again, these worked great on our 2018 GT for 2 seasons of track abuse, and we will look towards making a stainless braided version of these in the future. But for now - we have a complete brake hydraulic system!

EFI SENSORS, INJECTORS, TB, & INTAKE INSTALLED

When installing an aftermarket Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI) system you will want to follow their directions when it comes to sensor use. Holley likes to use higher end 0-100 psi sensors for pressure (fuel and oil), and they want to sell them to you at a pretty high price. Luckily the DIY crowd has tested a much more cost effective version that is $20 vs $149, and we bought these for our LS550 build (and have verified they work properly on another Holley EFI install with secondary gauges). The other one will go on the fuel pressure regulator, which has a spare 1/8" NPT port.



These pressure sensors are all 1/8" NPT male, so we had to get an adapter for the back of the block, where an OEM oil pressure sensor for an LS resides. What you need as a 16mm Male to 1/8-27 NPT Female Thread Adapter, with an O-Ring (ORB). We got a brass adapter on this car but found a proper Fragola aluminum adapter on the Cadillac build.



With that sensor & adapter in place, and the 4-port NOS Outlet steam vent kit installed, we could finally install the FAST intake, FAST fuel rail, and injectors.



We went with a set of Fuel Injector Clinic 50lb/hr (@ 3 Bar) / 525cc/min Injectors, with an EV6 Connector, LS2 Height (53mm), part number IS302-0525H - which I bought from my tuner Jon Simpson. My advice is TRUST your tuner on injectors and just use what he likes, so that the flow characteristics are correct for his tuning methods. For the throttle body, since we were limited to a 102 mm opening on the intake we went with eBay's finest 102 DBW throttle body. They make all of the high end electronic TBs in China, too, except they charge like $1000-1500. We'll see how that gamble worked (it has worked on the Caddy).

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Well the LS shouldn't be that much lighter, in theory. That is a built LS vs a crate Gen II Coyote. The lighter pistons HPR used is part of that, but it has forged rods and a forged 4.0" stroke crank which are heavier.



The cast bellhousing for the LS is lighter than the SFI steel unit (above) on the Coyote - but we have not found a cast aluminum bellhousing for a T56 Magnum XL on the Ford engine, and we're using an aluminum unit on our car with the LS. The McLeod clutch/flywheel was 5 pounds lighter on the Coyote. So this is as "apples to apples" as it gets for these two road race builds, which will have similar power outputs.



That same day as we took the 494 pound weight (July 7th, 2020) the guys got the drivetrain into the car. This time we used a set of our mounts made on the production jigs, slightly tweaked from our prototype units.



These mounts had a bit more adjustability in them, and we were able to slide the engine back a little further for the best front-to-rear bias. The headers were installed and the mock-up LS3 intake / TB / fuel rail were placed on top.



Brad installed the upper tire bar and started hanging the headlights, then put on the tubular bumper beam and front cover.



On July 8th we took another "work in progress" chassis weight - the most complete to date. At 2870 pounds with "almost everything" installed, it was nearly 750 pounds lighter than a stock 3650 pound S550 GT. We have not cut anything on this car yet, just replaced some metal with carbon and left a few things off. At this point we still had a full 84 pound weight passenger door, and we haven't started replacing glass with Lexan...

LEXAN: LIGHTER THAN GLASS

We are chasing pounds on this build as well as repairing crash damage and missing parts from a salvage car that we feel are necessary on the final race car. Double pane safety glass windshields have many advantages - they are harder to scratch, easier to source, often cheaper than Lexan front glass, and the plastic film between the 2 layers provides some level of safety when some rock or part comes shooting at the front of the passenger cabin.



We had our Windshield glass supplier (Titan Autoglass) in the shop to work on a number of cars in March 2020 and they removed the badly cracked OEM glass and replaced it with their cheapest, thinnest version. I was busy and not only didn't weigh the old front glass I neglected to weigh the replacement, and they took the old cracked glass with them. Doh!



We had Titan back in the shop again in June and I felt that the rear glass was too much to ignore. Jason had found a new source for Lexan (they are supplying side or rear plexiglass for 5 cars in the shop) and we plan to use this lighter material on the rear side quarter glass and the back glass on this car. I asked Titan to remove the stock rear glass, which weighed 19 pounds. We will weigh the Lexan replacement when it arrives.

2018+ HEADLIGHT REPAIR + MOUNTING BRACKET

This is another tech tip I shared on social media...



New from Ford the 2018+ headlights are $800+ each. There was only one "knock off" I could find and they were $700 a pair, and "sketchy" looking. Used headlights were selling for $450-600/each without any damage, but damaged ones were all over eBay for $150-250. I paid $378 for two that had similar damage - broken upper tabs that left a hole in the plastic housing (hole shown below left).



Being a road race build the headlights might become "consumables" so I figured I'd go cheap. For a street car I'd buy nicer used units or the $699 knock offs, which someone has since told me fit and work great. Brad made some aluminum plates to cover the busted upper tabs then riveted those in place.



Before these were riveted down he slathered the perimeter with clear RTV sealant. He made matching patch panels for both headlight assemblies, then bolted them in place to the new upper tie bar at the intact mounting brackets.



He then used a template (above left) and made some aluminum brackets that attached to the tie bar, then riveted those to the patch panels and bolted it all down. This secured the headlights for good and saved us many hundreds of dollars.

FAST LSXR INTAKE AND 102MM THROTTLE BODY

The cathedral port LS engines have a number of intake manifold options, and the best "OEM style" is the FAST LSXR 102, shown here. We're not a dealer for this brand or part, but I took a few studio pictures anyway. This is SO much nicer than the OEM style Dorman intakes we've used on a few other builds lately.



The upper can be removed to "port" this intake but the casting is so well made we don't need to. The 102mm throttle body opening allows us to use an aftermarket 102mm unit that flows more than the 90mm, the smaller of which becomes a choke point around 450 whp. Erik at HPR recommended we go to this FAST if we want the dyno to get closer to 500 whp with this "baby stroker" LS.



For the throttle body I am taking a gamble that might not work - but I want to see. We've used $1000+ Nick Williams 102mm DBW throttle bodies before and they work great. I have a feeling that these are made overseas, and the knockoffs that are out there might be the same factory. Just a theory, and I'm going to test this first hand. The $100 eBay special might be a piece of junk, and if so it will become a paperweight and I'll buy the 10X more costly brand.




I had some cast aluminum LS valve covers that I took to have blasted and powder coated red, just to remind people what was underhood, hehe. Bunch of gaskets, thermostat, and bolts were ordered to do the final install on water pump, alternator, intake, and the rest.



This picture is not deceptive - the engine REALLY DOES sit that far back, approaching a "front mid-engine" placement. We work on this engine by standing in front of it with the radiator support in place. The Ford Performance 3-point strut tower brace is installed here, which we removed form my 2018 GT. I've got the weights for those bits and pieces in the "S550 Development" build thread.

SOURCE OEM FUEL TANK

Being a salvage car this one came with no gas tank. We went back and forth on fuel cell vs stock tank, and for what we want to do the stock tank + a Radium Engineering surge tank will be what we use for road course use.



A fuel cell would be great if it didn't need to be the funky saddle tank shape. As it is, the OEM plastic saddle tank fits in the perfect spot, under the back seat nested low and near the center of the car. We recently had a steel S197 saddle tank converted to a FIA bladder / internal surge / foamed fuel cell, but it took 6 months and cost quite a bit. The Radium 5 / 10 / 15 gal modular fuel cells are super slick, but they are a "box" and mounting that in the trunk takes a good bit of work + moves the mass of the tank and fuel further back.



Club Racing W2W groups and classes required FIA fuel cells "back in the day" but with modern saddle tanks showing to be as good or better in crashes - due to improved designs and their central mounting locations, many OEM tanks are deemed legal for use in Road Racing now.



Ideally if the S550 had a steel saddle tank that could be "converted" to a cell, like the 2010 Mustang above made for us by Pyrotect it would be an option. Just a better placement. The "box" style tanks never fit in the same space and end up being a "cut out the trunk" deal, and that makes exhaust routing harder and center of mass less than ideal. So we chose to go with an OEM S550 tank, which is rated at 15.5 or 16 gallons. The Ecoboost, V6, and V8 tanks all show to have the same part number.




I was trying to find a stock tank and new they are pricey - and that's with the fake Tasca price. Someone on social media said to check junk yards - yep, that was the ticket. Found one for $150 less than 3 miles up the road the next day.



The unit weighed 23.3 pounds without the level sender and internal pump assembly, which I have coming from a friend at another salvage yard. We will pair the tank and stock pump assembly (with a bigger pump acting as a lift pump) with this Radium external surge tank which has an internal 450 lph Walbro pump. The stock 15.5/16 gal capacity + the added bit from the surge should work fine for Time Trial, Optima, autocross, W2W sprint races, whatever.

NEW FRONT FENDER

As I have documented here, we bought a car that was hit in the front, sold off the left front fender and left side door, then I decided to do the 2018 front conversion. The LF fender we found was in excellent shape and blue, the mangled left side door came from the crashed customer car that we banged out. The carbon hood came from my 2018 GT, as did the "base GT" black plastic lower lip, the grills were second hand, and the 2018 nose was junkyard.



The RF 2018+ fender we found came as a package deal for almost free - because it was pelted with hail damage. These factory aluminum fenders get beat up pretty bad by hail and I wanted a smoother / newer version before we went to the track for our first test, then off to paint.



Last time I head the dealer price these they were over $350 each, but their prices change weekly. We've noted some HUGE price increases from Ford, so much so that we dropped a lot of our Ford based Brembo brake upgrade packages. But I lucked out of a new fender, which was $205 this time when we checked in July, so I ordered it. The fender is very light at 4.5 pounds - a carbon fender wouldn't be much if any lighter.



The beat up (almost looks shot up!) fender was removed and the new one was put in it's place.



Still debating when we paint this car, after our first track test. There is a widebody kit we have in mind that will cover up much of the front and rear fenders, and I kind of want to wait to paint it when all of that is in place, well into the next phase of the build. So it might just stay this ugly multi-color while we test with the little 305mm streets and baby 315mm Hoosiers.

LIGHTEN SECOND DOOR

While the RF fender was being replaced I asked Brad to also lighten the right side door and finish up the dash bar install.



The door has to come off to install these two LONG bolts that hold the dash bar in place - which we had out last time to lighten the dash. Also, with the door off he gutted the side glass, window regulator and motor, inner door panel, and mounted the latch.



Pro tip: the glass is easiest to get out with the window in the full "up" position. With that out, Brad took the door off to work on a body stand.



He removed the glass, tracks, motor, speaker, wiring, and inner door panel. The weights for the components removed are shown above.



The trick we used before was done again - cut out the door latch from the inner door panel and use the mounting hole on the backside (see above left) to attach to an existing threaded hole in the door. This way the inner latch still works to open the door from the inside.



The two main side impact crash beams and and all of the rest of the door structure at intact, so they still aren't super lighter - just about 20.6 pounds lighter than before. Hey that offsets most of the weight of the missing fuel tank. Every little bit helps. When we have a real cage in the car (Phase 2) we will go to the 14 pound carbon doors and lose a lot more weight. Until then, with just a 4-point roll bar, we need the protection.

WHAT'S NEXT?

There is a bit more progress I could add this time but I'm almost caught up to real time, and at a giant 3 parter it is time to wrap it up.



Little things like the 4-port steam vent system, fuel rails, Holley Dominator EFI is here. Lifeline fire system is ordered, as is the Lexan. We still didn't get to the rolled radiator, but will next time. Lots of plumbing and wiring to tackle but we are getting closer to the first track test every day.

Thanks for reading!

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To wrap up the 2018 front end swap we needed to get the upper tire bar, shown below. I was worried about overall weight on this complex part, which ties into the bumper cover, upper shotgun horns, headlights, and holds the hood prop. It only weighed in at 10.1 pounds.



We would have been hard pressed to replicate this complex bracket in 5-6 hours at the same weight. This was a good part to "buy new" and utilize, and is broken on almost every wrecked Mustang.



That upper tie bar structure, the grill inserts I bought from a used 2018 GT, and the base GT lower lip left over from my red 2018 make the floppy plastic front bumper cover line up and support itself. Glad I finally spent the money on the right part here and it also allows us to verify our tubular bumper cover for a production 2018+ car.

PREPPING THE LS LONGBLOCK

HPR got this 385" stroker assembled in record time - it was a weird lull during the lockdown where many engines were "stuck" awaiting some part that was on national backorder, and the custom parts for this one (pistons) were ordered ahead of that.



We didn't waste any time and I loaded up the longblock in the GMT800 shop truck (also HPR LS powered), hauled it the ~4 miles to the Vorshlag shop, unloaded, and Evan got to work installing things like the balancer, pilot bearing, and flywheel. The ICT top cover was ordered and installed.



There are a LOT of choices for balancers, but Erik at HPR likes the ATI and he recommends getting the largest one you can live with. Too light and it doesn't have enough mass to damp vibrations from the crank. I chose the ATI 917289 balancer, which has the C5/C6 Corvette "pulley depth" and the optional cog drive on the hub. This will allow us to convert this engine to an external dry sump if things get out of hand. We will be monitoring oil pressure on the Holley Dominator EFI system, of course, and using an Accusump.



Evan used a "long snout" LS7 bolt and our ATI bearing equipped balancer installer to get the balancer installed. The final "short snout" crank bolt was then used to pull it snugly into place, using an ARP 12 point "re-usable" LS crank bolt. ARP fasteners were also ordered for the flywheel and pressure plate. I will cover more of the engine "completion" in sections below.

TUBULAR FRONT BUMPER BEAM

The fab work on this tubular bumper beam took place mostly in May but the final welding happened around the same time as this final engine assembly went down, in June 2020. Now you may be wondering WHY we added a tubular bumper beam. Surprisingly it isn't for weight reasons. The OEM bumper beam is relatively light at a hair under 12 pounds, as shown below.



The problem is width, and a lack of protection laterally. The stock crash beam stops at the frame rails, whereas our tubular bumper beam spans the full width of the front end. We also wanted more room and freedom to mount the radiator at a crazy roll. But I also had a crazy idea about running the beam through the turn signal openings in the front bumper cover... those could be bent to mimic the look of the stock turns, but the exposed DOM tubing would instead be used to mount the splitter struts we're going to hang off the front of this car.



Myles got to work and cut a piece of 1.75" x .095" wall DOM steel roll cage tubing a bit longer than normal. This was rolled in our powered tubing roller to match the curve of the S550 front bumper cover. I wanted the tubing pushed as far forward as possible and to also pass through the openings in the cover for the turn signal lights... looks like a crazy catfish in the early stages.



Myles worked with me and showed that if we trimmed the bumper cover slightly he could push the bar further forward, which was exactly what I wanted. A little work with a die grinder and that turn signal opening was enlarged slightly.



Lastly he took a lot of measurements and added the "bends" at the end of the tubing to mimic the turn signal shape. Then the tubing was fitted and trimmed to not run into the tires.



The tubing is pushed forward and almost touching the bumper cover from behind, wraps around the full width of the front end, and it matches the turn signal look. Myles made several templates then CNC cut plates to mount to the frame horns and then from there to the tubing.



I was extremely pleased with how well this turned out - you wouldn't know that we have a semi-exposed bumper beam unless I pointed it out, especially after these are painted orange to look like the turn signals.



With the assembly tack welded and removed Brandon did the final TIG welding and "boxed" the mounts at the frame horns. We will leave this raw steel until we add the front splitter, then the threaded stand-offs can be added and then the whole thing powder coated.

INSTALLING TWIN DISC CLUTCH, PP, & TOB,

Dropping weight is a big goal on this build - as is lowering rotational inertia is as well. Lighter wheels, lighter brakes, and a lighter flywheel and clutch assembly all fall into that category.



This is a clutch we supplied to a customer years ago with a T56 - and he hated it. After driving it for 3 days he demanded his money back. Another clutch sale a month later turned into the same thing. So yea, I don't provide or sell clutches anymore, too many unhappy customers. But I had this sitting on the shelf for a little while and figured, well, I already paid for this...



DO NOT take this as an endorsement to use this brand or model of clutch on your car! I've driven some really sketchy clutches and am used to that, and my 2015 GT won't be a "daily driver" kind of car. Race cars can use race car clutches, like this. There are probably better brands and options, but I drove this car and it will work fine, at least initially. This kit came with a hydraulic TOB for the slave, which we made lines for.



The flywheel was used, so Brad scuffed the steel surface and cleaned it with brake cleaner. Evan used his new LS specific "flywheel holder" tool to help install the ARP M11 flywheel bolts and torque to spec with Loctite.



The pilot bearing can get a little confusing - there are two sizes. I like the needle bearing version vs a bronze bushing, which is old school. We picked the appropriate "Camaro" style small diameter unit that presses into the crank rather than the larger diameter "Corvette" style which presses into the flywheel. That was driven in place and greased.



The multi-disc, small diameter clutch and friction plates were cleaned and assembled, then installed onto the flywheel with ARP bolts.



Again, this clutch uses a bespoke clutch slave cylinder / TOB. It is not the same depth or throw or even mounting style to the normal "T56" slave we use in most builds. Multi-plate clutches often come with a slave like this, and it has to be measured and shimmed to work.



With the T56 bellhousing installed it was time to spec out the hoses. We built a set of these using braided BrakeQuip parts, with a dry break quick connect for the pressure hose and a remote bleeder hose to help with bleeding the system. The end that connects to the clutch master uses the same Ford specific end to make install a breeze.



With the T56 bellhousing installed the hoses were installed and routed out the side as shown. One to the clutch master, the other as a remote bleeder.

WATER PUMP & ALTERNATOR OPTIONS

The front drive accessories on Gen III and IV LS engines comes in a variety of layouts. Many of our early swaps used the most compact (laterally) setup from the 1998-02 Camaro, shown below left. These were always easier to fit than the C5/C6 Corvettes, which had an alternator WAAAAY off to the left and high.



The 4th gen Camaro brackets are getting hard to find (GM quit making the power steering bracket), plus these have a more forward offset than the CTS-V/Corvette balancer pulley.



The truck stuff is also a mess, but the CTS-V/G8 drives are pretty good and use the more "tight to the block" Corvette crank pulley. That's why I ordered a C6 Corvette style ATI balancer. We're using some of these G8/CTS-V parts as well, like the alternator, tensioner, and if we use AC on an LS550 we will used those parts as well.



The 86 chassis LS swap we made in 2013-15 utilized a modified version of this G8/CTS-V, without the power steering pump. Like the S550, it also has EPAS electric assist steering. We have to modify the pulley arrangement to delete the power steering pump, but it has been operational for 5+ years and we have this well documented. But not the picture above right - the looooong upper radiator hose. That was for using the 86 (Mishi) radiator. We have a better solution now.



The C6 Corvette Z07 LS7 engine had two distinct water pumps which we currently use on these CTSV/G8 accessories. The "late" (2008-13) version has the upper hose pipe on the left side of the engine (see above left) and the "early" (2006-07) LS7 pump is on the right side. We juggle these two depending on where the radiator necks are, to make the upper hose run shorter.



For this LS550 swap we chose a custom radiator with a "dual pass" design - this means the inlet and outlet are both on the same (right) side of the engine bay. The "early" LS7 pump works best for this hose routing, and I showed the "hot and cold" routing we have planned for the radiator hoses, above right. I will show more of the rolled radiator and explain why we're doing that in a future installment. We have the CTS-V alternator and bracket installed in this final picture, and I will show more details of the idler and tensioner pulleys + belt routing next time as well.

TRANS OPTIONS + LS & T56 WEIGHTS VS COYOTE

When it comes to transmissions used on LS V8 swaps, we often see two extremes - people who use the cheapest, weakest, junkyard dawg options and then people who go all the way to motorsport sequentials. The cheap stuff ALWAYS has huge compromises, they often require some kludge adapters, require specific flywheels and clutches, and usually break if you look at them funny. The motorsport sequentials that are becoming popular on the Optima circuit and GTA are uber expensive, also a bit kludgey, and have VIOLENT shifts - and some are very weak. Big torquey V8s also don't need a super tight gear spacing to maximize road course potential, so it is a big expense with very little performance payoff. Many do it "for the 'gram."



In between these two extremes is the "Goldilocks" solution (not too expensive, not too weak, but just right), and what we feel is the best option for almost any LS swap - Tremec Magnum 6 speed manual transmissions. These come in 3 lengths and both Ford and Chevy style input shafts. Each Magnum also has 3 ratio options. These 3 lengths, regular Magnum, F, and XL are listed in the various LS swap sections of our web catalog. For the 86 chassis, S197 and S550 Mustangs, the T56 Magnum XL is the longest and correct length. The DIRECT MOUNT shifter lines up with the stock shifter opening on these 3 chassis. No remote shifter can EVER feel this connected - because they aren't.



The Magnum XL currently only comes from Tremec with the Ford input shaft, but our supplier modifies these to use a GM style input shaft so that they mate to the LS sized pilot bearing and GM style spline on the clutch. This extra step involves more labor and parts, so the "GM" converted Magnum XL costs hundreds more than the normal Ford version. Tremec says they will eventually make these GM versions in production, just haven't seen the demand yet. We ordered one of these for our LS550 swap and have another in house for my wife's 86 LS swap.



Once my "GM converted" T56 Magnum XL was mated to the LS6.3 engine, we took a weight. It is a bit of work, since we have to get our car scales out and do a bunch of monkeying around with the engine hoist. And while we share more weights of car parts than ANY shop in the existence of the world, we don't "make money" doing this, so we get what we can and capture it on camera. We didn't have all of the accessories on hand for this engine yet, and the FAST LSXR 102 intake manifold was not here either.




This drivetrain weight caused a bit of a controversy when I posted it on social media and then compared it to a Gen II Coyote + T56 Magnum XL we had in the shop for another project - 494 pounds vs 653 for the Coyote. They both had the same T56 Magnum XL (128 pounds), but the Coyote had a few more bits on it like headers, intake, coils and alternator. The Coyote actually had a lighter flywheel and clutch (22 pounds) than our twin disc.



On that same thread on social media we went ahead and weighed the "missing parts" on our LS drivetrain. The 494 pound weight above includes the complete LS longblock, 7 qt oil pan, LS7 water pump, ATI balancer, starter (sitting on top), complete T56 Magnum XL, and the lighter twin disc clutch and flywheel. To make more of an "apples to apples" weight comparison with the Coyote we then weighed a number of items we didn't have on the drivetrain weight above.



Even with all of these "extras" added up (14.9 intake, 8.1 coils/brackets, 22.3 headers, 14.8 alternator) the 494 pound drivetrain weight only went up by 60.1 pounds to to 554 pounds - still nearly 100 pounds lighter than the same Coyote setup. Why is it this much lighter?

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Project Update for July 29th, 2020: The last post in this thread didn't "catch up to real time". I'm getting excited about the #LS550 project as this car is one that I will drive primarily over any of our other shop cars, and it might see use in: Time Trial, autocross, and some W2W racing (after we cage it).



The whole shop is pushing to finish the "Phase 1" aspect of this build. Let's start out this update with the biggest news of all - the first production batch of Vorshlag #LS550 swap parts that enable are ready to ship!

PRODUCTION #LS550 SWAP PARTS

We've seen a couple of "one off" LS swaps on the S550 but not any comprehensive "kit" that has engine mounts, trans crossmember, long tube headers, driveshaft, and transmission solutions. We have all of that and more, and we are adding new content to this section of our catalog as we progress through this build.



Getting the prototype parts into production took more time than I'd have liked, with manpower in short supply. I have also been buying more fabrication equipment to speed up our production times, to improve quality, and to add new capabilities.



These engine mounts are made from flat plate, CNC plasma cut, bent to shape, and TIG welded on our production fixtures. (for business reasons I don't show these) The final welding is done on this new fixture table, which makes for a more stable platform and removes the chances of warping.



We began a production run of these mounts in early July 2020 and are now shipping these to customers wishing to put an LS into their 2015 and up Mustangs.



We also have many other LS550 parts. This is our transmission crossmember for the T56 Magnum XL - we will add some other transmission options at a later date, just know that this is THE best manual option for a road course car. We sell that transmission, too, of course.



We have a clutch hydraulics kit that connects to the Mustang clutch master cylinder and to a hydraulic slave Throw Out Bearing for a T56. This has a remote bleeder hose as well. And we have a 1-piece 3.5" diameter aluminum driveshaft to connect the T56 Magnum XL to the Super 8.8" - including both flange diameters and bolt patterns.



We have had the long tube LS550 swap headers available for some time, and made them "live" on our website in July. So maybe 2020 isn't ALL bad??

BUILDING THE 6.3L LS V8 AT HPR

Earlier in this build thread the LS engine underhood was a mock up block and heads we have. That was mated with a real T56 Magnum XL and we built the mounts off of that. We always joked that this mock up block had a "blue tooth crank" - missing the crank, rods, and pistons. It was time to get the real engine built and in the car for proper weights and real progress.



The budget aluminum 6.3L LS engine that we are using for Phase 1 of our #LS550 build was completed at HorsePower Research back in June 2020. I will cover some highlights of that here. The goal for this Phase 1 engine is to make about the same "485 whp" dyno number that the Gen III Coyote made with headers, CAI, and a tune, but using the less costly Gen III LS6 GM cylinder heads and LS6 block from 2003.



The Gen III and Gen IV series of LS engines comes in many bore sizes and strokes, but the blocks are all the same deck height. For road course use we only want to look at the aluminum blocks, which are 85-100 pounds lighter than the iron blocks. Even the smaller 4.8L and 5.3L truck LS engines come in aluminum block versions, however. My "385" stroker was to be the first engine of a series of "small bore", wet sump, lower cost, cathedral port, aluminum LS engines that HPR plans to build for road racers. The 3.78" bore aluminum LS truck blocks can work with the same 3.90" pistons - they have a thick enough of an iron liner to be bored out to that size. They are more abundant than even the LS1 and LS6 engines that were 5.7L. I happened to have a good, used LS6 block.



Why build something "this small", when all I preach is "bigger is better"?? Well not everyone is looking for a 650-700+ whp 468" LS7 stroker LS engine, and this 3.900" bore x 4.000" stroke setup can be built in any 4.8, 5.3, or 5.7L LS block. These smaller bore blocks are more abundant (used) and less costly, too. Erik Koenig over at HPR spec'd out a pretty crazy piston, with extra lightening CNC operations (370 grams each). This made for a much lighter but somewhat costly piston that will not be a part of this "series" of road race engines. Still, it will let us show the power of this "small bore stroker" series of engines with my 2015 GT - using a T56 Magnum XL, S550 Super 8.8" diff, and road race appropriate wires & wheels.



This 4.0" stroke crank (above right, being balanced at HPR) was also used in this build. Why not a 4.125" or 4.25" stroke crank, like HPR uses on the 454 and 468" "big bore" engines? Well the stock cylinder length of the LS1/6 block becomes an issue, and the 4.0" stroke is the safest length we can get by with. HPR can use a longer stroke in aftermarket blocks or Darton sleeved blocks, but that adds a serious chunk to the costs over what this "small bore stroker" costs. What does it cost? Call Anthony at HPR to find out more. While I am one of the partners there, I don't get involved with pricing of engines.




For the heads I rounded up some used "243" casting OEM heads from an LS6, which is considered to be the "best OEM head" for cathedral ports. The valve spacing on these fits inside the small 3.900" bore, unlike the LS3 and LS7 spacing. HPR sent these to TEA (TFS) for CNC porting and while it was there larger valves were installed. The head assembly and setup was done back at HPR, as shown above.



Erik spec'd a cam, valve springs, and retainers/locks with the help of Billy Godbolt at Comp Cams. The hydraulic roller cam is a bit spicy with .634" lift, 246?/254? duration on a 110? lobe separation. Not what he'd spec for an endurance engine, but should work fine for Time Trial or sprint racing. Johnson roller lifters and new LS6 rockers round out the valvetrain.



Again, this is NOT meant to be some world beater engine, but instead a reliable ~500 whp long block with the right components and clearances for wet sump road course use. The pros at HPR did the final install on the long block as well as the oil pan install, which I will show below.

"SUMMIT" ROAD RACE LS OIL PAN - REVISIONS

We tested numerous oil pans before we locked down the final engine location for our #LS550 swap, and a popular Holley pan fits as well. We also found an enlarged sump, trap door fitted, steel oil pan for LS engines from Summit Racing in 2019. I bought one, we used it for test fitting on our LS550 build.



On paper this 7 quart pan solved a lot of problems - added a quart of extra oil capacity, trap doors around the pickup will help keep that submerged in oil, easily adapts for a remote oil filter mount, and it fit the S550 crossmember by a wide margin. Buying a new stock or Holley oil pan + a drop-in oil pan baffle kit would cost double and NOT have the added capacity of this unit.



When fitting this pan to two of our engines at HPR, the engine builders there noted a few issues with the oil pump pickup and elsewhere. We took both Summit pans back to Vorshlag to "adjust" them. We documented these changes in this forum thread. We are using this wet sump Summit pan on our Phase 1 stroker 365" LS6 engine in the #LS550 project.



Once we had the pickup height and clearance issues modified, HPR was able to set the final pickup depth of .250-.300" off the bottom of the pan. Summit Racing has seen our post and has said they will be looking at this closely, possibly altering the design. Ignoring these warnings could lead to catastrophic outcomes - like oil starvation in corners. But with these few tweaks this unit still makes for a more cost effective wet sump road race LS oil pan than some costing 3-4 times as much.

TURBO HEADERS + INTAKE MOCK UPS

We have an employee that loves turbos and he happened to buy a number of LS intake manifolds, so we test fit a few of those items to our #LS550 project to share with the rest of you animals.



This Holley low ram intake is actually a well made high quality unit - but a pretty bad design with regards to runner length and associated RPM tuning. This is an intake that will "peak" above 11,000 rpm, but it packages short so people will buy it. So we slapped it on the car - it fit by a mile, of course.



The modularity of this Holley design is unique, and flexible, allowing for an opening into the plenum as well as a bell-mouth front section that is removable. Again, the runner length works poorly for both Naturally Aspirated as well as boosted designs that will operate below 10,000 rpm.



Next up are some forward facing turbo headers for the boost boys. Of course I would NEVER recommend a boosted road course build, but for the budget drag racer these Chinese built Flowtech 11537FLT headers at $200 might be a way to get a turbo setup going. 409 stainless with V-band flanges for direct mounting the turbo, but the build quality matches the very low price.



And as we have shown, this LS swap leaves a LOT of room for activities underhood. These cheap headers have their drawbacks - the routing will absolutely COOK the ignition coils if you mount them to the valve covers. I'm not going to get into all of the downsides of cheap headers, just showing some parts we mocked up.



Last up for mock-ups is this Holley Hi-Ram intake. We had this in the shop for some modifications and future testing so we slapped it on. This is technically an LS7 version sitting on our cathedral port LS6 headed engine, and the back of the intake was contacting the firewall - but it's still worth looking at if you are looking to build an engine that peaks in the 7000-7400 rpm range. This is where the Holley High-Ram's runner lengths work best. Sadly these only fit a 105mm throttle body, which is a choke point on the bigger 468" engines that places like HPR build.



You can see the slight interference at the firewall above left, and with a little bump of the hammer this intake would slide back another 1/2". The side shot above right shows how much of the upper plenum would stick above the hood. Not great, not terrible. #Chernobyl

2018 FRONT END CONVERSION - HEADLIGHTS & UPPER TIE BAR

If you are familiar with the S550 Mustang at all you will know that there are a few visible differences between models and years. The 2015-17 Mustang GT/V6/Ecoboost has a unique set of front fenders, headlights, hood, front bumper cover, and lower lip. The 2018-20+ models are pretty different after a "mid model update" from the front fenders forward. The 2016-19 GT350 has it's own front fenders and nose, too.



Above is the 2015-17 GT front end at left (the 2015 GT PP1 I custom ordered, but ultimately "let go") and the 2018+ GT is above right (our base model 2018 GT with the PP1 lip and PP2 splitter extension). The later 18+ version has a lower hoodline and "less drag", and I got used to the new nose, plus I had the carbon fiber 2018+ hood from Anderson Composites. So when I bought a 2015 GT with a front hit it was a good time to convert. I could have changed to GT350 style but meh, that's almost a poseur move and I didn't want to go there.



The list of parts is shown above with the fake Tasca prices (their shipping costs are outrageous). But even when you are buying from Ford you have to pay a "core charge" or bring in an old front nose - this keeps the counterfeit parts down, somehow.



I could have just plopped down several thousand bucks for new fenders, bumper cover, headlights, but Jason and I went junk yarding and came up with what we needed. Those were shown in an earlier installment.



Since that earlier post we have ordered some more 2018-up brackets parts and "adjusted" the 2018+ fenders to properly fit the 2018+ hood (installed below), then added the factory "upper tie bar" structure - which greatly sped up mounting the 2018 headlights and nose.



We needed the 2018+ hood on to realize that the fenders weren't right. There was then a bit of a lateral "mis-match" on the fender mounting flanges that are part of the "upper shotgun" mounts on the chassis. Brad made some small adapter extensions using a big fat washer to get these to line up after the hood was in place.



Next up the used 2018 bumper cover I got (cheap!) was missing one of these molded-in 90 deg "brackets". These break off if you look at the car funny, so he made a template out of cardboard then an aluminum version that he bent into shape.



This allowed the bumper cover to mount to the 2018 front fender, and it should be much stronger than the "Break-away" plastic bit normally holding the cover in place there. It is a "race car" and not a show car, and the wide-body kit we have on deck covers all of that up - stay tuned for that in Phase 2.



After trying to mount the headlights without this part, I finally bit the bullet and bought this 2018+ "upper tie bar" or upper radiator support. I held back initially because it was a somewhat expensive part. I looked at Tasca (which has low prices that they make up for in shipping) but it ended up being less costly through RockAuto, of all places. Search for "Upper Tie Bar" or "Radiator Support". The GT/V6/Ecoboost version is plastic cast over metal (the GT350 is "carbon fiber" but made for that unique front end).

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