2018 GT Daily Track Driver

[txgt]

Build Date: April 8, 2023

At 34K miles and 12 track days, I felt it was time to do a trans fluid change. I went with the BG Products Syncro Shift II Synthetic Gear Oil - MT82 Kit from OPMustang.

Ford states that the correct manual transmission fill level is 1/2 in below the edge of the filler hole. The tough part is “how do you measure that?” Well, conveniently the end of some zip-ties are an inch long. So, using a sharpie, I marked a half-inch mark on the zip-tie end, bent it and used that to measure before doing a drain to see where the factory fill measured. It actually measured exactly at the half-inch mark.

Armed with that data, I did the fill as per instructions from the OPMustang kit and confirmed the fill level with the zip-tie just to make sure.

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[txgt]

Track Date: April 22, 2023

Back out at Motor Sport Ranch in Cresson, TX with The Drivers Edge running the 3.1 mile “Big Track”. Was a great day and bought some really great photos afterwards! Thank you Hart Photography for making me look good!!

 

[txgt]

Incident Date: May 24, 2023

So, I’m on my way home from work and I’m in the left lane. On this stretch of road it starts to widen, opening up a new left lane. As per usual, I patiently wait for the new lane, drop a gear and head on over. However, today something u expected happened… the throttle seemed to be stuck open!! The engine kept picking up RPMs even though I didn’t have my foot anywhere near the accelerator pedal.

I remained calm (but concerned), pulled over to the shoulder, and tried to shut the car off with no luck. I tried pressing the start/stop button as well as hold down on it, nothing seemed to work. In the heat of the moment I was obviously doing something wrong

I ended up putting the car in neutral which really shot the RPMs up almost to 7K. I looked down and saw that the accelerator pedal was caught up on my floor mat. I quickly yanked the floor mat out of the way and the incident was over just as quickly as it began.

I’d never had a problem with these 3D Elegant Perfect Fit Carpet Floor Liner I bought from Rock Auto right after I first got this car back in January 2023. They even have the driver’s side grommets to affix them to carpet like the stock floor mats.

I’m not sure what caused the accelerator pedal to get jammed up on part of the mat, but I now no longer have this mat in the driver’s side and have reverted back to the original OEM floor mat.

 

[txgt]

Build Date: May 29, 2023

Texas is a great state! I’ve lived here all my life and know from experience how hard the summers are on batteries. You really hope to get 7 years out of a battery, but you should be happy with 5.

And so after 5 years, the original FoMoCo battery finally gave up the ghost and needed a replacement. I picked up a Duralast Platinum at my local Autozone as a replacement. I treated the terminals with some CRC Batter Terminal Protector (I use this on all my batteries) and was back on the road.

 

[sachmo133]

I’ve had my 2018 GT Premium for about two years now and I’ve greatly benefitted from the wealth of information in this forum. I’ve enjoyed the friendly nature of the members here and everyone’s willingness to help each other out.

Although I’m two years late starting my build thread, better late than never, right?

My story actually begins (like most of us) from childhood. I’ve always loved muscle cars and always dreamed of one day owning a ‘70 Boss 429 Mustang after seeing one on the cover of a car magazine. What an absolutely beautiful car! Too bad my young self had no clue how rare and unobtainable that car would turn out to be!

Life goes on, children grow up and dreams get set aside to focus on education, work, marriage, divorce, more work, another marriage (this one is for keeps!), raising a child, and so on. While I have enjoyed some fun cars (’86 IROC Z-28, ‘92 Taurus SHO, ‘72 C20), I never really got to do what I really wanted: drive really fast on a closed road course with a high powered muscle car.

Well, in January of 2021 I finally decided I was in a place in my life to make it happen. Some call it a midlife-crisis, but most of you know the truth: your hard work has finally gotten you to a place in life where you can spend some of that hard earned money on something you can really enjoy!

And so here we are, after driving a gently used Honda Accord 4-cylinder for 11 years… I finally got my Mustang . She may not be the Boss 429 I dreamed of as a child, but she is an amazing platform that I can make into my adult dream of a daily driver that I can take to the track!

I’ve done a lot of mods to her over the past two years, and I’ll slowly get caught up over the coming months on all the progress I’ve made as well as share my track experiences

2018 Mustang GT Premium, 6 speed manual, leather interior

Just seeing this thread and your title caught my eye. You get to drive your car on the track every day! I’m jealous. :-) WIth read through the thread. I love black cars, just not cleaning them.

 

[txgt]

Just seeing this thread and your title caught my eye. You get to drive your car on the track every day! I’m jealous. :-) WIth read through the thread. I love black cars, just not cleaning them.

Haha, you got me there My wife gently reminds me to “save it for the track”

Yeah, when she is clean she is beautiful! But even a little dust from sitting in the garage for a couple of days immediately shows, let alone if she gets a little rain on her!

 

[dupp403]

Track Date: March 25, 2023

A beautiful Saturday out at Motor Sport Ranch in Cresson, TX running the 1.7 counter-clockwise configuration with APEX HPDE. The Nitto 555 G2 tires that came with my SVE PP2 replica wheels from LMR (post #27) could have probably gotten through another track day or two, but I played it safe and put on a set of Firestone Firehawk Indy 500s in 285/35-19

How did the Indy 500’s do on the track day? Ordered a set of SVE PP2 that came with 500’s. I melted the factory 20” Goodyears on my first and only track day

 

[txgt]

How did the Indy 500’s do on the track day? Ordered a set of SVE PP2 that came with 500’s. I melted the factory 20” Goodyears on my first and only track day

For a 340 tw tire, the Indy 500’s really performed well! I think that the Ford Performance Track Handling Pack does a great job of helping any tire perform better than if I had just the stock suspension.

They’ve seen 5 track days and plenty of daily driving in between and are holding up great. The only real issue is with the outer edges wearing out faster due to the track days, but that’s not the tire‘s fault and can only really be solved by putting in more negative camber (which I’ll need camber plates to accomplish).

Here is a video of 2 laps I cherry picked from that April 22nd track day.

 

[txgt]

Build Date: June 29-July 13, 2023

Disaster!

On Thursday, June 29th I went to leave work and had some engine troubles. The car would immediately fire up, but would then rough idle then die.

I posted all about this in a thread I started called, Car won’t idle, dies, P025B code!

Since you can read about what happened there, I’ll just give the tl;dr here:

• Car would intermittently die
• Replaced the Fuel Pump Controller/Driver Module (didn’t help)
• Took it to Ford dealership
• Missed my track day
• Got it back with a new PCM
• Has been great ever since

As my grandfather used to say, “If you can’t fix it with duct tape and baling wire, it’s an electrical problem” and those are usually the most frustrating to fix.

I’m thankful that this repair was covered under the powertrain warranty

 

[txgt]

Track Date: August 19, 2023

After missing the previous track day due to the PCM failure, I was really itching to get her back out again. So, I signed up for Eagles Canyon Raceway doing the 2.7 mile clockwise with APEX HPDE.

In preparation for this event, I added in a second Schroth QuickFit Harness (normal, not the Pro) for the passenger side so that my HPDE instructor would have the same level of protection as myself. That’s actually a requirement of the HPDE organizations that I’ve driven with, although they’ve sometimes mentioned it but never enforced it. As it happens, I was 100% solo this event so it didn’t even matter!

I also removed the Ford Performance hood struts as the driver’s side fender bracket was skewed to the point that the strut started popping off. I put the hood prop rod back on so I could vent the engine bay between sessions.

As most of you either know (either from experience or hearsay), Texas summers are HOT And this day was no different! If memory serves me, we reached temps upwards of 110 Fahrenheit which made for some very hot temps under the hood! At one point during an afternoon session, I looked at the Cylinder Head Temp gauge and saw 250!!! I backed off, left some cars pass, did a hot pit and turned my heater on full blast and angled the dash vents away from the driver seat. I got back out on track and got back on it. The heater blast was good for a 10 degree drop as I only saw CHT temps of 240 max after that.

Another thing to note about the heat… I use the TrackAddict app to record lap times, OBDII data, and video of the sessions. It was so damn hot, that my windshield mounted iPhone kept displaying the message “iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it”. I tried using it without charging and I also tried using it without the case on. Nothing helped and so unfortunately I wasn’t able to capture any video or data from that day

Any day on the track is a good day, but I doubt that I’ll ever subject either one of us to a day like that again!

 

[txgt]

Build Date: August 22, 2023

It’s summer in Texas and it is hot! This was a Tuesday and the temp was 105 Fahrenheit on my drive home from work. After starting my car I always set my middle cluster gauge to display Cylinder Head Temp / Inlet Air Temp and I routinely glance down to see what the numbers show.

Today I noticed that on this 105 degree day that the IAT showed 44 Fahrenheit! As I continued to drive home, I saw that number randomly fluctuate all over the place. I got home and took a video of this craziness.

I popped the hood, took a look around and started “jiggling stuff”. I noticed that the red locking tab on the MAF sensor was not “clicked in”. I’m guessing that when I inspected the K&N air filter before the track day that I didn’t lock the sensor connector all the way.

After locking in the connector, everything went back to normal

 

[ConspicuousConsumption]

How does the transmission feel after that fluid swap?

 

[txgt]

How does the transmission feel after that fluid swap?

It feels a little better, but there is still that ”notchiness” that seems to plague these MT82 transmissions. It’s most noticeable from 1st to 2nd for me.

 

[Ballistica]

It feels a little better, but there is still that ”notchiness” that seems to plague these MT82 transmissions. It’s most noticeable from 1st to 2nd for me.

I had the same notchiness. I change the fluid with the same BG fluid that you used and installed a weighted shift knob. The knob definitely helped eliminate most of the notchiness to the point that it feels pretty smooth for me.

 

[ConspicuousConsumption]

I know the notchiness well!

And that's a beautiful knob you've got there

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