First off, this is not an advertisement for my shop. I have no intentions of building another 2011 Mustang GT for American Iron for anyone on this site. Not one bit. So save the stupid PM’s to moderators about me not being a sponsor, no one likes a whiney little bitch. Actually this thread will be long and detailed. Much like our build-thread-champion, Brian Bowers, this thread will be updated as even more progress happens.

But first…it’s going to cover what I’ve been busy doing for the past 4 months of my life at work. Start to finish…err…present day.


Ok. The story all begins back in November of 2010. Chris Cobetto, the NASA Mid-Atlantic Regional Director, came to my shop, Performance Autosport (not an advertisement!) to present an idea he had to campaign a car in the 2011 NASA Mid-Atlantic American Iron Series.

Here is the idea:
1. Buy a factory 2011 Mustang GT off the showroom floor. NOT a body-in-white bare chassis.
2. Keep the engine 100% stock to ensure reliability and prove Ford did the 5.0 4v correctly. NOT a BOSS engine.
3. Keep the overall stock designed suspension. All parts will be AI-legal and off the shelf. Nothing exotic. No major modifications
4. Insert badass driver, 3-time National Spec E30 Champion, Chris Cobetto
5. Kick ass, take names, break lap records, win races, go to nationals, come home with trophies.

It’s a simple plan really. We were out to prove that Ford finally build the 2011 Mustang in a manner that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to go racing AND be competitive. In short: Buy a car, cage it, simple coilovers, race pads, win races.

Got it?

Ok.

So, back to November. Cobetto and owner of PAS, Mark LaMaskin head to SEMA in search for support in the form of sponsorship for this undertaking. After a week of schmoozing over the higher-ups from several different companies our initial sponsorship list consisted of: HRE Wheels, BullyDog Performance, Saleen Speedlab, Rockland Gear, OG Racing, Exedy Clutches, Hawk brake pads, Baer Racing, American Racing Headers, Grassroots Motorsports, Ford Racing, Tiger Racing, and a few others. Everyone loved the idea. This was starting to take shape. Guess we need a car now…


So, now enters our lucky contestant. A brand new 2011 Mustang GT bought off the ice cold dealer’s lot at Bill Talley Ford. Oh boy does it have no clue what it’s in store for. Here it sat, stock as stock can be. Under 1,000 miles on the clock, awaiting its fate:











That is a bone stock 2011 Mustang GT. 5.0L, 6spd, Track pack, 19" wheels, Brembo brakes, 3.73’s, base interior, no frills. And here is it’s bone stock, no frills underside:




Zomg stick axle!

 

Then, we weighed it to see how depressed/surprised we could be. And we were actually somewhat surprised. Not bad all things considered.




Now…onto the build. The first thing we had to do was instantly pull the transmission. The stock Getrag MT82 transmission is a great, close-ratio box for the street, but those that have raced with this box have run into overheating issues. As you can see Ford/Getrag attempted to make the entire case a gigantic heat-sink, but it still gets overheated and locks up. So, Rockland Gears, home of the “Tranzilla” line of transmissions hooked us up with their version of a Magnum T56. In order for them to build it for us, they needed our stock unit for measurements. So, we yanked it out, crated it up, and shipped it to New York.





Factory Brembo 14” brakes. To be replaced with 14” Baer 6R calipers and 2-piece rotors eventually:


Factory Front(rear-located) LCA bushing


Factory front suspension


Factory Rear suspension




Stock 2-piece driveshaft. 49lbs. Yowza.

 

By now we’ve been in talks with the cage builder, Carlos Cardounel of AutoDynamix, and are trying to schedule drop off. This got a little tricky as we were right in the middle of the holidays and Carlos stays very, very busy. I believe we attempted 3 times to get the car to the cage builder before it actually happened. In the meantime, time was ticking away. The cage is step one. We were in a holding pattern.

Allow me to start my time line. You see, a time line is important on this build because we didn’t exactly have the normal amount of time necessary to build a racecar out of a street car. Oh no. We built this car…in about 17 days. Sounds interesting right? Well, allow me to explain. Please…follow along.

My shop received the car on December 13, 2010 as a 100% stock car, an idea, and a deadline. NASA @ VIR – Feb 18th.
By December 20th the transmission was removed and intitial planning took place. A schedule was made. I’m a list maker. Lots of lists were made at this time. Trying to organize when parts would arrive. Calling and bitching at sponsors to make good on promises, send parts, stop delaying, etc. Keeping regular customers happy while we worked on their cars all day, then worked on this car after hours.

December 21st– Stripping of interior and cage-prep starts.

 

Next, remove the glass…

 

Removing the carpet reviled this nasty zigzagging sound deadening from hell. This stuff was never meant to be removed. I’m sure of it. It was a really tedious and shitty process. And naturally, it was everywhere.


Fast forward several….several horrible hours later…




Pretty sure the line “So…remind me again why we didn’t start with a body-in-white again?” came up more than a few times.


December 23rd – first attempt to deliver to cage builder. No dice. Scheduling conflict.
December 28th – second attempt to deliver to cage builder. No dice. Scheduling conflict.

So as you can see, the rest of the dash and doors were removed as well to accommodate Carlos in building the cage. Now, it was finally time to load it on the rollback and head on over for our last chat with Carlos about what we want, what Cobetto wanted, and the input Carlos had for us as well. He doesn’t just throw bars in a car and weld them up. He makes sure its exactly what you want, designed safely and accurately, and does an amazing job. Cobra4b is using him for his cage, many others on here have used him in the past, he’s doing work for my personal track car, he’s a great guy to deal with. Not an advertisement…jus sayin. Carlos. AutoDynamix. Got it? Good.

Date: January 3rd, 2011.

Race is 45 days away. I currently have a bone stock car…that’s stripped…and has no transmission. Alright.





We threw the factory dash bar back in the car for two reasons. That’s what the steering wheel hangs from and also so Carlos could use it as a mock up location for a replacement dash bar tied into the rollcage so we can ditch this flimsy, yet randomly heavy bar and mount our dash straight off the rollcage.



At Carlos’ shop talking things over before leaving it in his hands


Left: PAS’ Lead Fabricator Chris. Right: Carlos Cardounel of AutoDynamix.

 

Date: January 8th

Race is now 40days away.

Carlos got delayed in his shipment of piping so he got a slow start on our cage. Kind of behind by few days and when I checked in on him on the 8th he was just mocking up the main hoop and forward bars.



Carlos TIGs everything. And is very good at it.
















Date: January 10th, 2010.

I get a call Carlos. The deadline has been pushed back because Cobetto came by to trial fit the cage and didn’t like a few things. Made a few changes and as to be expected…changes add time. Driver MUST be comfortable. Doesn’t matter what. If he wanted a change, it had to be done. No problem.


Date: January 15th.

Race is 33 days away.

Carlos is done. For now. Not completely done, but enough for us to pick it up and bring it back to the shop and start assembling the car.

Or so we thought.

 

Here is the car with it’s brand new jungle gym.





















That banner has our old phone number….(not advertising!!!)

 

Date: January 17th Race in 31 days.

We throw the dash in the car to weld up all our brackets so that it fits into the rollcage.





Date: January 18th.

Our FIRST group of parts arrive. Less than a month until the car is supposed to be making laps at VIR, the first box of parts lands at our door. And it’s all the safety goodies provided by OG Racing as well as the Saleen Speedlab coilovers that we’ll be initially running. These are the exact same coilovers that ALL S302 Saleens come equipped. Nothing changed for racing, no special valving, no trick parts. These are what come from Saleen. We did choose stiffer spring rates though. I feel that’s kind of common sense, we aren’t going for a Cadillac ride like the boys up in Detroit look for when producing brand new cars. Even still, they are hardly stiffer. About 100#f and 50#r additional spring rate. Hardly a drastic change from a completely OEM Saleen suspension.









Now came another “hurry up and wait” section of the build. We had previously scheduled taking the car to get the cage/interior painted, but since the cage was delayed we missed that appointment. We then had to do little things here and there on the car to stay occupied while we dropped the car off for paint.

In the meantime Carlos made another visit to our shop to weld in more additional bars to make Cobetto feel even safer. You’ll notice them in the following finished/painted photos. Two bars that connect the door bars to the halo and a-pillar bars for side impact. Carlos also added another seat mount for the passenger side. Cobetto, being the Regional Director, has been known to give people rides, so we went ahead and made sure the car was equipped properly for a passenger.

 

Date: January 31st.

18 days until VIR. 18. Eighteen.

The car returns from paint, looking gorgeous and almost too pretty to race.


Almost.

 

Date: February 2nd – 16 days until VIR.

Now parts are slowly starting to trickle in. My phone calls to vendors have become full of worry and begging instead of me understanding and being appreciative of them sending parts. No, I don’t care anymore. I have a car to build. Send me the fucking parts. Now.

And they did.

Kinda.

Exedy Clutch and flywheel…more on this later.


C&R Aluminum radiator


Fire system from OG Racing:


Tiger Racing/G-Stream AI-legal rear wing:


Chris Cobetto, admiring his wing. Soooo pretty.




A transmission! Finally.




Now we will revist this transmission. This isn’t the last you’ve heard of it. This transmission was a total pain in my ass. But, we took it out of the box and instantly threw it in the car because we were two weeks away from being on track and needed to make a custom driveshaft for the car still.

But just remember this trans…we’ll be coming back to it.

Ok, more parts…

HRE Wheels – 3 sets. 18x9.5 – 19lbs/ea. As well as 2 sets of shaved 275/35/18 Toyo RA-1’s and a set of full depth (rains) 245/40/18 RA-1s