If I had 2 years and the cumulative knowledge of the Ford Engineers and numerous test mules, oh, and throw in a little PJ time, I might want to do it my self. But, I spent my working years salting away enough mulah, so I could buy what other experts assembled for me.

 

What improvements? cloud9 is putting down better times with his Boss than his GT500 that has a bazillion hp and a heavily modified Griggs suspension. Check his sig for details.

 

I beleive your post was refering to a square setup vs the stagered setup.

Going to a square setup with the Base Boss car will mean oversteer.

Adjusting the shock and/or air presures will not cure the metal imbalance.

Going to a smaller diameter / less stiff rear sway bar will help.

Use the MY12 Base GT or Track Pack 24mm rear swaybar.

The swaybar sizes listed in the article are not correct for MY12 on the Base GT or on the Brake Pack Mustang.

I will be running 275/40/18's.

Please review the attached .PDF for the swaybar sizes from MY10 through MY12.

 

Well that just confirms why the car is still extremely balanced and if anything still oversteers even with the massive rear tire (305) on my BASE Boss. All of my comments are relative to running r-comps on the track, not the street tires.

 

This.

 

I'd run square if I could do so without compromise - obviously this is easier on the wallet. But I'm not sure I could do it on the Boss without some serious suspension mods, which aren't free in terms of cost OR points. If it's just changing a sway, OK, that's 2 points, but if I had to go much deeper than that, now I'm spending points to save money, and I'd rather spend the money and put those points to other things. There's just not enough aftermarket suspension tech on the Boss yet to really know if gains could be had.

Part of why I made this thread is that when I sat down to really think through a Boss NASA build, I found much of the traditional Mustang tech might not be so applicable to this car. It used to be a given that you build around your tires - still is - but then suspension was first. Whatever it took to get you into the right springs, adjustable Konis, and a Griggs or MM panhard bar, diffs, etc.. Only then would you see what if any points you had left, and spend accordingly. And unless you were seriously upclassing, that wouldn't be much, if any.

But suspension doesn't seem to be an automatic anymore. If I were redoing the whole suspension anyway then there's no question I'd go square. It seems like I really don't even have to touch it :-)

 

Good info. Thanks for posting. Are you changing to the 24mm rear bar from the GT?

 

I'm just going to run the square setup and be wary of the oversteer...at any rate it should help the car rotate better for turn-in. Might take some getting used to, but that's better than the downsides buying/maintaining different sized track tires IMO.

 

I have found you can wear the fronts evenly with the right camber. You can't with the rears....the outside edges will wear faster due to the solid rear axle. I'm going to flip my rears on the rim after one more track day to even them out.

Having two sets of tires/rims allows you to completely wear out a set, especially when going for a two or three day event. If you only have one set and you have one day left on the tires, you have to ditch them for a new set lest you run out midway through the event. In the long run it's cheaper IMO.

 

Yeah there is nothing you can do about the rears camber-wise, aside from heating/cooling the axle tubes, which won't be good for a daily driver.

I always jack up the car and rotate tires after two sessions, that helps to get the rears better exposure, as they are moved to the front. Also, with non-directional tires like NT01s, you can re-mount the tires (in-between events, of course) "inside out" to maximize the life of the tires.

 

Interesting concept, and plays into the discussion of the NASA TT classing for the Boss. Several have said "why not class based off a Mustang GT, and all the added equipment?". Greg (TT director) basically said no, it's got a base class, live with it, no down-classing.

I think the biggest thing, as pointed out in the article mentioned above, that is not all that reproducible is the higher specific output on the engine. Quite a bit went into that, along with the higher rev limiter, intake, etc. Buying the standard 5.0 crate from Ford is $6k, I believe, but the Boss is $10k, showing what else they had to add. Building a GT up to Boss levels would then basically be impossible without an engine swap, or you'd have to do a lot of normally aspirated work on the 5.0 to compete (and if you did the same to the Boss, ie headers, intake, pullies?, etc, you'd have better output as well from the Boss 302).

So while alot of the suspension stuff can be duplicated by buying the parts (or the exterior stuff, etc), the engine is not so easy.

And as a package, I think the price increase is not bad for what you get, personally.

 

Most of our events have on-site tire trucks that can do that while you're there, even between track sessions. The racers are doing that all the time to even out the wear.

I went to Strano's adjustable rear bar the last two track weekends, and the difference is amazing compared to the standard FRPP FR1 rear bar (22mm). I also went to a fully square NT05 setup, so had much more front grip than before. Found that in the wet, the full-stiff setting on his bar was too much, constantly wanting to come around on me with early power application. But the turn in and benefit in trail braking was huge, dry or wet. Power on oversteer is not much of a problem in the dry with my wimpy 4.6, though

 

Definitely an option. My friend's car in Post #120 and he has about $37k into it he figures. https://themustangsource.com/f813/so...495813/index6/ We gave me a point by coming out of 10 into the mile long straight and we drag raced most of the mile before I finally overtook him so just with the Steeda CAI and tune he's close to the same power. I'm guessing with the Boss intake he'd be there or beyond me from a power standpoint..

 

I'll probably put the Strano bar on my CIP list for 2012, but I want to get the car out on some known tracks and acclimate myself first before I start changing things.

 

I appreciate this answer. This was merely a question for the crowd who won't be getting a boss but do want to road race what they can afford. Not particularly a question for me but just for anyone out there looking to get into road courses. Thanks.

 

This weekend I upgraded my radiator (bit of a pain in the butt), installed a coolant temp sender (hopefully will get the gauge it goes to in soon, too, as well), and an oil-filter spacer with NPTs for oil pressure and temp senders. Have the Aeroforce to go in soon as well. And fronting it with the Agent47 grille.

Anybody else done this here? I was having overheating/hot running issues at several tracks, especially with the long straights, here at altitude, though a lap or two of easy going would generally remedy it quickly. We don't have humidity here, but at 5400 ft, the cooling's not the most efficient when it's 90 degrees plus.

I've also been doing research on the seat install, maybe get to that this weekend, and the issues with the airbags are a bit daunting. Sounds like disabling the side airbags and not having the instrument cluster light turn on isn't hard (2 ohm resistor into the air-bag delete plug from Ford), but getting the passenger occupant classification sensor (OCS) into the new seats is a pain. From what I can see, the add-on for it is about $550 from Fod, includes the seating foam, the tubing, the sensors, and the sender module. I can pull out the tubing and sender from the OEMs, but might reduce the value when going to sell them. I believe that without it in place, the passenger airbag is still active, but will deploy at full-force without regard to someone sitting there (I hope it's still active, at least). The physical replacement of the seats isn't hard, but this electronics stuff is crazy.

Any thoughts?

 

I will get there but...........

My son is in Scouting and we'll be gone camping until after the fourth.

Then there’s baseball camp, then traveling for work so I'm not going to get to play around with the car until mid-August.

So that puts me at the end of August just in time for Kids Racing for Life at Sebring first weekend in September.

The plan is to run the car, Saturday morning, with brake ducts/trans cooling scoop/track pads/MM Camber plates twith 1.8 degrees negative camber on the stock tires. The Track Key will be out by then so I'll use it in the second session/fourth session. I'll be using a Smartycam to collect data.

Saturday afternoon swap tires, (square setup) and get a baseline, use the Smartycam to collect data, etc.......

Swap rear stabilizer bar for Sunday morning.

Run Sunday analyze what I’ve got……….and go from there……………….to Daytona in September, with the square setup or a staggered setup depending on what happens at Sebring.

It’s just going to be a long summer waiting for fall, just the opposite of you Northerns who wait for summer to go to the track!

Too hot in June through August down here in Central Florida for me to hang out at the track anyway.

 

When I had my '06 Mustang I followed Ford Racing's lead, they "boxed" the FR500S radiator.

This forces the air to be channeled/forced through the radiator rather than following the path of least resistance and going around it.

Look here for the part FR500S RADIATOR AIR DEFLECTOR KIT M-8310-A.

Much easier that fabing up your own……

If you still have overheating issues you might look at an oil cooler………..

I've attached the FR500S parts list and interchange parts info.

What type of brakes are you running? There's a couple of things you can do to really wake up the stock system by mixing and matching some of the FR500S parts and the GT500's.


I went down this road also, what type of aftermarket seats are you planning to use?

 

I got OMP Style, only ones outside Corbeau (Drew, I believe, said they had weak welds) and Recaro Speed that recline and have a anti-sub belt hole. Have Planted brackets from 425motorsports and Sparco sliders, all ready to go in except the electronics stuff. I think I'll put them in, then work on the airbag stuff, and forego the OCS stuff.

http://iihs.net/fsm/?dir=1073&viewfi...w,%20Front.pdf

http://www.fordpartsgiant.com/Page_P...31,40901,28761

http://mustangforums.com/forum/2005-...bag-codes.html

http://www.teamshelby.com/forums/ind...rmarket-seats/

 

So where do these things mount? On the sides? Hope it wouldn't involve removing the radiator, as it was a pain (gouged up the AC radiator with the stupid lower screws).