full interior removal

So, I'm building my track car out of an S550 mustang and am beginning the interior removal process. Seats, carpet, etc easy. What I'm worried about is the airbags in the pillars. I'm just concerned with ripping stuff out of the car that might be an issue. Any advice or thoughts as I move forward?

There are no issues with removing any of the interior. Take your time and carefully remove the airbags. They are easily sold on eBay along with many of the other pieces you remove. There are a bunch of sensors around the interior that can all safely be removed but the airbag module located under the center console needs to remain and stay connected. It is the connection point for a harness that runs to the rear of the car. There is a fuel pump control module under the rear drivers seat that needs to stay as well. If you decide to remove the main wire harness while you do your work make note of the ground wire locations throughout the car if you miss one when you put it back together some items will not likely function.

Are you putting in a cage?

Dave

Thanks, good to hear that it doesn't sound like their are any "gotcha's" I have plenty of assistance and friends as well as help from a local shop that does track cars but nobody has done an S550 so far. Defiantly doing a full cage. I'm starting with the back section for my harness and waiting until I am ready for competition before welding in the rest.

Do it all at once or don't do it at all. It is a lot of work to o it in stages. The Watson cage is well worth the money in labor savings vs building your own.

Are you building for HPDE events or door to door racing?

So, yea I was looking at Watson but there is another one that seems to be a better value. from auto power in two stages. As I complete my HPDE time before I start Racing NASA ST# class I can have the rear cage then weld in the front piece. I'm not 100% on either and still am considering Watson. A lot depends on some of the sponsorship's I'm currently working on.

davidnpoole said:

So, yea I was looking at Watson but there is another one that seems to be a better value. from auto power in two stages.

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I would not advise doing the cage in steps, either do a full cage from the get go, or do all your HPDE stuff without a cage and then install the cage when you are ready to go door to door racing.

It will be difficult, very difficult to fully weld in the forward arms of the cage to the main hoop with the main hoop already in place, it might even require the roof skin to be removed for that to happen, whereas if you do the entire cage at once there are no issue with getting the top of the cage fully welded. It is difficult to imagine that doing the two step process would be easier or cheaper to do. The worst part of the entire project of building a car is painting the interior after the cage is in place, there is no way I would ever want to do that twice. To do it right the glass needs to be removed from the car and doing that twice is a waste of time and money.

As for the cage, you can not compare the price of the Watson cage to the Autopower cage without taking into consideration that the Autopower cage is not a ready to weld in cage, the ends of the bars are not notched and fitted so all that has to be done for each bar as it is installed in the car. On the other hand the Watson cage is notched, chamfered, and fitted for every bar that needs to be welded into place, some sections come pre-tacked together so it just needs finish welding. the entire cage is built on a jig and fits like a glove, you really can not find a better cage that is truly ready to weld in. When you figure the time invested to get the Autopower cage actually in the car compared to the Watson it is a lot less expensive to do the Watson cage unless you are the guy investing the time, but if you are paying for the time a cage installer/builder is going to run up a lot of time on the Autopower cage to prep it for install. We install the Watson cage in about 3 days start to finish and it can be done quicker but there is only so much time you can spend climbing around in a jungle gym of tubing welding in a day before your back needs a rest.

If you decide to do the cage your next decision is about the cage itself and if you are wanting to run windows or not, most HPDE guys want to retain their driver and passenger windows. Since there are no rules in the HPDE world about the windows you may decide to leave them in place so the car can be transported on an open trailer and remain water tight. If you decide to go racing they have to be removed.

The reason this is an issue is with the Watson cage the drivers side door bars are the Nascar Style and they go out into the drivers door cavity to provide extra protection to the drivers area. You can however order the cage with the straight door bars like the passenger side is setup with and keep your windows should you want to.

Since you said NASA as a series you want to run, check the rule books about cages, in some series Nascar style door bars are not allowed so that is another thing to consider. Another thing to check in the rule book is some classes do not allow the cage to have extra pieces to help stiffen the chassis beyond the 6 or 8 points the main tubes connect to the chassis. Some rules read the cage is strictly a safety device and therefore can not be used to add rigidity to the chassis so additional bracing to the A and B pillar, windshield header, or carrying the cage beyond the firewall is not allowed. The point here being know what your class allows before you put the cage in.

This is not something you want to do twice believe me, there are a lot of things to think about and the last thing you want to do is build the car only to find that you have to make major changes to a main structural component to comply to a rule in that series. The other thing is most of the series love to change the rules, if you build a car to 2017 rules and do not get the car certified till 2018 or 2019 something that would have been grandfathered in by the 2017 rules must now be reworked to meet the later rule book.

I am not trying to scare you but this is not as simple as put a cage in it and go racing. Way to many rules to read and factor in when doing your build. It sucks but that is the way it is.

Here are some pics of the Watson cage parts:

Dave

interior removal in process

Thanks for the pics, I'm thinking about going with the Watson. I will talk to my shop about a full custom and see where that takes me.

here is a problem in my removal, how do I get rid of that stupid glovebox? I know it has a built in airbag and can't seem to figure out how to remove it.

any advice on any other items I might run into please let me know. Also, I am trying to figure out the wiring of that little sensor in the back that is wired in with the speakers that recognizes the key. Don't know if there is a work around on that feature?

Thanks,
Dave

davidnpoole said:

Thanks for the pics, I'm thinking about going with the Watson. I will talk to my shop about a full custom and see where that takes me.

here is a problem in my removal, how do I get rid of that stupid glovebox? I know it has a built in airbag and can't seem to figure out how to remove it.

any advice on any other items I might run into please let me know. Also, I am trying to figure out the wiring of that little sensor in the back that is wired in with the speakers that recognizes the key. Don't know if there is a work around on that feature?

Thanks,
Dave

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Watson will be cheaper for sure than any kind of custom cage when you factor in all the labor costs.

There are three airbags in the dash and the one in the steering wheel. The passenger side has an upper bag that can only be removed once the dash is out of the car, the lower passenger side is built into the glove-box door, you can disconnect it but if you want to remove it to get rid of a little weight then you damn near have to trigger the bag to get the glove box to separate into two pieces, then remove the bag, then glue the box back together if you want to use it again. With the Watson cage you can have the glove box in but you will not be able to open it without doing some major cutting on the glove-box door as it will hit the cage. The driver side bag in built into the panel below the steering column and acts as protection for the drivers knees, you can split the plastic and get that one apart much easier then the glove box.

The little RF receiver in the back on the package shelf by the speakers is only used for the keyfob remote when you are pushing the buttons on the remote for lock/unlock/trunk, there is another sensor in the center console that is used to read the key ID and allow the car to start. I was able to move the wires around on the trunk receiver and wire tie it out of the way and leave it connected. It might weigh a few ounces if you want to keep it.

Dave

davidnpoole said:

Thanks, good to hear that it doesn't sound like their are any "gotcha's" I have plenty of assistance and friends as well as help from a local shop that does track cars but nobody has done an S550 so far. Defiantly doing a full cage. I'm starting with the back section for my harness and waiting until I am ready for competition before welding in the rest.

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As Dave mentions the Watson Products are engineered and developed with Ford Motor Company. The labor cost savings with the Watson Product being pre-bent and notched makes them much less than someone bending and fitting a cage.

If you are not ready to do a FULL CAGE I would strongly recommend the Watson 4 Point Bolt-In bar. When you want to take the step to a cage you simply unbolt it, and sell it. We can not say enough about the fitment and quality of construction.

These bars can be MIG welded or Tig welded depending on your budget. Watson builds these as a production part, they have already figured out where all the bends and at what angle the notches need to be.

We can help you do it in stages or all at once, seat mounts, seats and harness systems. We have a great relationship with the ATLS550 Group. Let us know if we can help you plan out your build.

ddozier said:

the airbag module located under the center console needs to remain and stay connected.

Dave

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Why can't this be removed?

fatbillybob said:

Why can't this be removed?

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It all depends on what all you are removing, if you plan to run the OEM body control module then it will have to stay as it is a splice point for the main harness running front to rear. If you plan to rewire the car and not use the OEM ECU or BCM then you can remove everything as you will be starting from scratch.

Dave

Dave,

I'm thinking of building S550 racecar as soon as the 10spd auto is available so I'm trying to learn about these cars. My class requires the oem ECU. I'm from modern vettes C5 and C6. So the ECU is the main brain. other stuff like BCM is also like ECU "light". then there is other stuff like HVAC, maybe suspension control, window motor control etc that are on a CAN line to the ECU. That's a general modern car layout.

So in my pea brain the airbag ECU should be CAN lined to the ECU. So it should be able to be removed unless a wire like a ground runs into it and then something else needed down the road needs to see that ground. If we knew it was a ground wire then we could bypass the airbag ECU and rewire the Airbag ECU out. So I guess you are saying that we don't know what those wires are that go through the Airbag ECU so we have to keep it. Is that correct?

I have also never seen an airbag ECU that could not be taken out. What other stuff in the S550 will prevent a proper racecar build?

For example is there a tire pressure monitor that needs to see a minimum pressure? If a minimum is not seen the the car goes in limp mode?

Can traction control be turned all off? If there is no button to turn it all off can you fake it out by disconnecting a wheel speed sensor or will that put the car in limp mode?

The Airbag module is a CAN bus device, but it also has more than just airbag items linked through it. Removing it means the car wont start, or at least my car would not start without it in place.

TC can be disabled by pulling a fuse, removal of the wheel speed sensor would cause other system to be disabled. ABS is the main one that you would likely want to keep. As far as I know the lack of TPMS sensors does not cause any limp modes but I do not know that for sure, I still run sensors in my car as I like the idea of being able to check tire pressures on the fly.

If you are planning to run the stock ECU, you are likely running in a class that has a min weight requirement or a power to weight restriction. You need to know what that is because I would be surprised if removing all the OEM electronics would make the car much lighter or any more reliable. The OEM electronics are very light and about as robust as any electrical device you can by in the aftermarket.

There really is nothing that has to be removed and there are a few things that can't be removed very easily. The airbag module weighs less than a pound I think so that one would not be worth the time and effort to remove. I got my car down to 3548# with the cage and a near perfect 50% cross weight with not a lot of effort, so once you know your min weight or power to weight for the class you want to run then you can decide how aggressive you need to be about weight loss.

Dave

Yes dave you are correct. In fact I race a vette now still with ac intact plus ballast. However all those small weights add up. If you can put the ballast low in the car it is worth it. Today hamilton's car was 1/2 seond a lap slower than his teammate. Hamilton finishes 30 seconds behind his winning teammate. That's how little things add up. My next build will be more competitive.

So I left the Airbag Module in (for now) however I did remove the curtain airbags and most other items from the car. I was able to start the car except when I removed the Stereo. Not sure why now it says "no key detected". I don't know how to rewire a car and wondering if I need to pull fuses or disable other systems? fatbillybob I'm happy to update you on everything once I finish. Right now I'm definitely running into issues along the way, the car has a Ton of electronics. and ddozier, yes I have a power to weight requirement and I'm trying to find a couple hundred lbs of weight savings to get my 4cyl mustang to have the required 10lbs per hp.