We all know the Mustang is a race car from the factory.  Ford has been giving us amazing cars like the Mustang 2 and the Probe for decades, and all that engineering has finally culminated in the 2005 Mustang GT.  What is amazing is that Aaren dared to defy perfection, and chose to modify what Ford deemed good enough to sell.  All kidding aside though, while the stock Mustang felt like a big mash mellow that weighed 3600 lbs and had 220 whp, with just a few simple modifications the car is awesome.  I should also state that I have driven this car in various states of it’s buildup so I feel I can comment on it from experience more than some of the other cars, and so I shall.

    I would like to be clear that this car is a mostly stock Mustang GT with an exhaust, intake, coilovers, tune, and cut knuckles.  The interior is stripped and a cage was added.  No motor swap, no cam, no clutch package, no header, no control arms.  At the time of this dyno test the only engine mod was an exhaust, after the dyno test the rest of the mods were added to the engine.  Each modification was made to address an issue which was keeping the Mustang from becoming a good drift car.  Stock the suspension was just too soft, so the simple fix was coilovers.  The car had OK steering angle, but for more fun cut knuckles were added.  The car weighed too much so the interior was stripped and racing seats were added.  One of the biggest issues was the lack of throttle response.  Todays cars are built with throttle wires which do not connect directly to the throttle body, and the factory programs them to be very laggy so they are easy to drive in all conditions.  This throttle lag is as bad as a turbo car, and really sucks for drifting.  By simply removing the throttle lag with a programmer, the car went from having trouble spinning 235s in third gear to being able to drift on 275s.  Pretty crazy considering very little HP was added, however we probably doubled the actual amount of time power is being delivered to the rear tires during throttle work.  If that is confusing, just imagine each time you press down the throttle and then let off during drifting the first full second nothing happens with the laggy setup.  Typically you are at full throttle for 2-4 seconds and no more, meaning the first second of every pedal push nothing happens, giving you power to the ground of 1-3 seconds or something like that instead of the 2-4 in the same given situation.  Same kind of thing happens when you see dudes using V8s in S13s that have the same power as an SR20.  The V8s typically put out way more smoke and work differently.  Tyler Cox’s SR20 makes significantly more torque than my V8, however in each corner it is almost guaranteed that my V8 puts more power to the ground over a given time than his car, so instead of thinking in terms of HP or TQ, think in terms of time the force is applied.  Keep that engine at full power to the wheels longer and work those tires! 

    Moving on to the suspension, it is just an off the shelf BC Racing coilover setup, nothing too fancy.  The steering angle modifications came from Derrick who can be found in the forums here.  The car has 51.1 angles.  The modified angles land it in the middle of the pack in terms of overall steering with our Texas drivers, but combined with the longer than everyone else wheel base, the car has plenty of effective angle.  So that makes our car the longest wheel base, and also the heaviest coming in at 3246 lbs.  It doesn’t seem to matter much to this car though, it handles well, has good steering angle, is very simple to build, and is reliable.  And if it was built to the same level of preparedness as the other cars in this test, it would probably weight in well under 3k pounds.  It is after all one of the few cars in this test that still has airbags, AC, and fog lights.  As for weight distribution, the car has a front weight balance of 55 percent, putting it right in the middle of the pack, which surprised me.  I actually thought some of the other cars would beat it  by more, but even without the front of the car having any weight saving, the Mustang did quite well. 

Have a dyno sheet.  Click here

    Moving on to power, there isn’t much to say.  The car only had an exhaust for this test, no tuning.  At this point in the day I realized how optimistic the Power Fab dyno is, no doubt their clients love it!  The car made 279 whp, which is very high for one of these cars in such stockish shape.  Torque came in at 300 wheel.  The graph looks very V8, and is what you expect it to be.  Very useable, very nice.

    All in all I am very impressed by the car, and how workable and simple it is to use a Mustang for drifting.  The stock ebrake is fine, the power after a tune is fine, everything is fine.  Except the fender wells, they SWALLOW wheels!  You are going to need 18s on this thing!  One more thing to think about is the looks of the car have really grown on me lately, and having stock metal body panels is my new love affair.  Keep these babies stock body and just keep on mowing over cones without regret! 

The rad pics are courtesy of Jake from WFSU.net.  : )