Ownership Verified: American Muscle - My 2013 Ford Mustang GT Premium

And that's eventhough gas is $3.75 right now, which is rather expensive for Ohio :D
 
blackman said:
Especially for my german friends:

I've put the Mustang on spritmonitor.de. It's amazing how operating a 5 liter V8 is cheaper than a 2 liter diesel :D

Details over here: http://www.spritmonitor.de/de/detailansicht/619547.html
Click to expand...

Just saw this link... That's just amazing :D On European gas prices you'd have to drive something that averages 5 l/100 km to get the same ?/100 km rating :D

I've got 19,05 ?/100 km with pretty much same fuel consumption.
 
Your Mustang runs on gas?!

It's interesting, because usually we put petrol in them where I come from.









leaving-now-grandpa-simpsons.gif
 
McRae said:
Your Mustang runs on gas?!
It's interesting, because usually we put petrol in them where I come from.
Click to expand...
You didn't know? That's why cars are so cheap here in the states, we can just eat a lot of beans and then fart into the tank and be good to go.
 
Really? If I had a choice between a Mustang or an aussie Falcon, I'd take the Falcon.
 
Let the weightsaving begin!

Since the rear seats are pretty much useless anyways, I decided to take them out. It only takes 2 clips and 3 bolts. Literally a 5 minute job to take them out. I'll see how noisy it gets in the cabin to decide if I put a seat delete kit (basically a cloth cover) in it or not.



While I was at it, I also took the spare wheel out. I have Fords roadside assistance, so I'm not planning on changing the wheels myself anyways :p



So nice to have that extra closet space in the apartment :p

 
When I rented a v6 2014 mustang, the rear seats were completely useless versus mine being bearable.
 
I had some interesting test rides with the sales person squeezed in
the back :)
 
I just finished up step 2 of my rear seat delete! It was noticably louder in the cabin with no rear seats. In case of the Mustang you get diff whine (which was kinda cool at first but is pretty bland on the highway :D ) a louder exhaust note (nothing to argue with that) and LOTS of tire noise.
Something needed to be done. The cheapest seat delete kit if found was $139, and would add significant weight back into the car.
So I ordered some inexpensive automotive carpet and got to work.

The result of my 15min effort can be seen here:









I jused the seat braket bolts to get everything in place. There is no supportstructure underneath the fabric, but why would you need it anyways? I still have to get some double sided sticky tape to tidy it up a little bit, but I'm already pretty pleased how it turned out.

With that finished I was interested how much weight I shed off the car.

Spare wheel and jack: 17.3kg



Rear seat assembly: 14.3kg

Total weight loss: 31.6kg ~ 70lbs



Next up: New wheels and tires!
 
Next update: wheels & tires

Next update: wheels & tires

Since I want to take this car to autocross & trackday events, the mods continue. I'm hoping we're done with snow now here in Ohio and went ahead and purchased new rims & tires for the stang.
This will be my summer / performance driving combo. I will not buy separate track wheels, so my focus was to get a lot of performance without sacrificing too much drivability when not on the track.
All Ford rims (even the 19" ones that come with the track pack) are incredibly heavy. I wanted to go down to 18" to lower the weight and get more and cheaper selection of tires.
I ended up browsing tirerack and sorting the 18s by weight. Your regular choise would be Enkei PF01 with 18.15lbs. They are $306 though, a little more than I would like to spend. Also everybody has them...
I countinued to browse and found the Andros Spec D. It's a 18x8 at 19.65lbs BUT got them at $139 a piece. Talk about value for money. Ordered them with Sumitomo HTR ZIIIs in 255/45R18, which gives me a little more rubber. They arrived barely 48h after I ordered!

First thing I did was put them on a scale:



21.9kg! For reference the wheels I took off were 26.5kg, so were talking 4.6kg or about 10lbs per corner less! And that with a bigger tire footprint.

Stacked them up on my wife's Escape :D



Very pleasant to work with OEM car jack. Way better than the VAG crap...



Simple solid rear axle is simple...



RESULT:




Next up: brakes

or a tune


we'll see ;-)
 
The rear axle layout looks like on my car.
 
I autocrossed it!

First of all getting into gear. Bought a ZAMP RZ 55 (http://www.zamp-racing.com/rz55.html) for the ocasion and karting. On a budget it's a really nice piece of equipment


Preparing the car in the parking lot. Since this was my first event, I ran with the novice group.


Moving on to the grid!


Sadly no video of the runs themselves. I'll make videos the next time! We got 6 runs each on a roughly 1:10min long course. It was awesome!

And the results:
http://cincyscca.com/wp-content/uploads/SoloResults/2014/PE2/pe2_fin.htm#N

I'm pretty pleased being 6th out of 17 in the novice group!
 
Nice! How'd she handle out there?

Also a recommendation for you and Jake, take out the sound tube foam plugs for extra noise in the cabin. I did when I bought mine and its such a good time. Takes 5 minutes to do, and if you don't like it, 5 minutes to undo.

Just undo the bolt under the blue arrow, and take off the tube at the green line and the firewall - theres a plug on both ends you can remove and boom, instant awesome.
Maa0TR2.png
 
Nice! How'd she handle out there?
Click to expand...

I did an SCCA driving school on saturday and the event on sunday. I learned a LOT about the car in those 2 days. And really recommend the SCCA Starting Line driving school!
The most import thing was how little grip the car has, compared to its power. Its very easy to overdrive the car. I thought putting more performance rubber on all four corners would fix that, but there still is a long way to go. I got a ride in a 2010 mustang with 315 slicks all around, and even he was struggling to put the power down on an autocross track.
So throttle inputs have to be very delicate, if you want to be quick.
On the acutal event I ended up 6th out of 17 in the novice group, not bad for my first event I think! I'll definetly try to do more autocrossing in the summer.

Also a recommendation for you and Jake, take out the sound tube foam plugs for extra noise in the cabin. I did when I bought mine and its such a good time. Takes 5 minutes to do, and if you don't like it, 5 minutes to undo.
Click to expand...

I already did that, well worth it :)
 
Last edited:
So an exhaust happend!

I got a giftcard for americanmuscle.com and spent it on a set of axlebacks. I didn't want to spend to much money so after checking hundreds of youtube videos, I settled for the Heartthrob Axle Back. It was light, loud and should not drone to much.
Thats what it looks like:

http://www.americanmuscle.com/heartthrob-flowpack-axleback-1112gt.html

Installed them on the company parking lot and this is how they look on the car:







Drove off and instantly thought it was too loud :D They sound really nice though. A very deep growl, mean idle. Crackles and pops on the overrun, everything you can ask for. Small vid I made on a roadtrip to the smokey mountains:

[video=youtube;fbAN0-QBySk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbAN0-QBySk[/video]

At the end people are honking because its so freaking loud :D

The bad part is they drone too much. Now this is a fairly common issue with the 5.0, any straight through muffler(delete) will drone because the lenght of the exhaust system is in resonance. I was surprised how bad it actually is. It drones right around 2000rpm which with my gearing is anything between 65 and 73mph. So it sucks on the highway and interstate....

So I snatched a set of used GT500 mufflers that will go on the car as soon as I have time. More on that soon!
 
Nice set of mods!

I'm actually surprised the seat is as light as it is. Presumably just the foam and no structure then? You've also got the option of adding in a rear brace from the Laguna Secca if you so desire.
 
Found some photos of the autocross online!








I'm actually surprised the seat is as light as it is. Presumably just the foam and no structure then? You've also got the option of adding in a rear brace from the Laguna Secca if you so desire.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's just foam. The rear brace from the laguna seca is plenty expensive and actually adds weight. I don't really feel the need for it anyways.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top