Scarlet #JustA4Banger Ecoboost A6 Premium - Wife's Car turned GT Killer!

Scarlet started out her life as being assigned to daily driving duties with my beautiful wife behind the wheel.

For the previous 6 years my wife had been relegated to driving "mom-mobiles" because of our two little guys. Now that they were 5 & 6 years old, she said to me, "I'm getting a sports car! The kids can climb in and out fine by themselves now, and I'm tired of driving SUV's, and I want something fun and cool again!"

So you know what they say, "Happy Wife, Happy Life!"

And as a good husband, I obliged. I coached her to the S550 Mustang, as it had just come out maybe 2-3 months earlier. I found a GT that was sitting on the local lot, that was Guard Green, 6MT, PP, Brembos, almost exactly the car I would have ordered if I was going to do so for myself. I negotiated a smoking deal on the car. Took the wife to go and drive it, buy it.

She hated it. She found the V8 to be unnecessarily powerful for her needs. She hated the manual transmission. And, to top it all off, she hated the color of the car and especially the black wheels. Shit.

Then there was this gorgeous, shiny, bright Ruby Red sitting over there.... "What about that Red one? I want that one!" So I walked over to it to investigate. 4 cylinder? Automatic? Every freaking stupid bell & whistle for the interior? Factory heated & cooled leather seats? Factory subwoofer? Really?

"Are you sure, hon?"

"Yes, this is the one, let's go drive it!"

I honestly didn't even go on the test drive, because I was so :eyebulge: And we left there having paid $800 more for this Ecoboost than I had already negotiated on the PP GT that I was madly in love with.

NOTE: Notice one of the "mom-mobiles" in the background of the photo (Hyundai Sonata). Also notice the "Happy Wife" photo.

...stay tuned to see how drastically this project changes

So like any good husband who wants to protect his investment, I went ahead and started with a few small mods to make the wife happy and protect the car w/the kids and daily driving duties she'd be facing.

First up was WeatherTech floor mats, WeatherTech trunk mat, 3M door cups, 3M door guards, 3M Crystalline window tint (full w/front windshield) and a nice Gloss Coat from my friends at Precision Window Films in Palm Harbor, FL.

And I thought, "that should do it!" If only I could have seen what the future would hold, lol.

Well, as luck would have it, those "two little guys" would quickly become "three!" LOL. After just having owned this little Ecoboost for 4 months, my wife tells me she's late. Well, she's a female and a Realtor, so she's late all the time :lol: So I'm all like, just go, hurry, rush, get out the door. Thinking she's late to an appointment. Nope... She was "late" and we were going to have a bonus baby!

Thankfully this little bonus baby girl has been amazing! Yet it meant that my wife had to surrender her "sports car" and go back to another mom-mobile, something she was truly upset about!

So about 6 months into owning the little red car, that my wife had affectionately named Scarlet, we were in a predicament.

We just rolled (2) shit box Hyundai's into the car. I wrote an 11k check on one of those to get rid of the negative balance. And I slammed another 9k negative on top of the purchase price (which was already $800 more than the GT that I wanted).

I owned a 100th Anniversary 2003 Harley Davidson Supercharged F150 (which I named Black Jax) that I had been restoring, modding, and bringing back to life. This was a truck that I have pined for since it was released in 2003. My dream (still will achieve this one day) was to have an 03 HD pulling my 03 Cobra to and from the track, and be able to race both of them!

So "BlkJx" had to be sold. And I gave the cash to the wife, and that meant I was to inherit Scarlet from her, because there was just no getting out of a 6mo old car that we'd buried $9k on top of.

So the wife wound up taking the cash and we got her a 2016 Explorer Sport, which we absolutely love! That's another thread topic though. But here'st he XSP we bought her to replace Scarlet in her life.

So with our bonus baby on the way, the 03HD F150 sold, the 16 XSP purchased, and the EBM passing hands over to Dad - it was with great reluctance that I started to toy with the car.

Honestly, even still to this day, I've not taken all my wife's sh*t out of the glove box. I just couldn't bring myself to "liking" the 4-cylinder.

Well all of that changed when I met Adam at Tune+, lol. Granted, I still left all her sh*t in the glovebox, but I started to tweak the car to my liking and it's been an absolute blast ever since!

Oh yeah, I mustn't forget to mention that while the wife was driving it (until she was several months pregnant and uncomfortable getting in/out of it) that I went ahead and ordered her a JLT Cold Air Intake through the awesome folks over at BG Racing LLC (*more on that later, though).

So then I was fortunate enough to find M6G... Found another member here who was in the process of trading his EBM in on a GT, and he was de-modding the car. So I was able to score a Cobb Accessport, UPR Catch Can, MAP Intercooler & Tune+ Turbosmart Internal Wastegate. I went ahead and picked up a set of Denso Plugs from Tune+, too.

With my work being so busy (I'm a real estate investor & the market has gotten ridiculously hot again), I decided it would be best to connect with a local performance shop and have them install my goodies that I'd just bought.

Enter Pro Fab Performance in Port Richey. Don & Mark were freaking awesome to work with, and didn't even poke too many jokes at the fact that the car was a little 4 banger I got linked up to these guys through their Facebook after seeing some of their installs on other local Mustangs.

In my down time I had managed to pick up a couple extra goodies since the last purchases. Someone else local here on the board had blown up their motor, and was selling some stuff, so I snagged a WMS Catless Downpipe and a little red Boomba Racing Oil Cap from him. I also grabbed a pair of the little Billet Dome Light Covers for the interior, along with a GT350 Push Button Start, Visor Blackout Overlays, a Carbon Fiber Pony for the Steering Wheel and a little Carbon Fiber Pony for the dash placard. Oh, and I grabbed a pair of GT Grille Deletes off the forum here, too. While all this was going on, I went ahead and purchased the Lifetime e-Tunes from Adam at Tune+, as well as the Transmission Tune package from him.

Onward to Pro Fab Performance we went. The guys there were easy to deal with, affordably priced, and did a damn good job for me! They had the car back to me in just a few short hours, even. They hung the MAPerformance Intercooler, installed the GT Grille Deletes, threw on my WMS Catless Downpipe, and installed the Tune+ Turbosmart Internal Wastegate, too. At this particular juncture, I wasn't aware we could remove the AGS (Active Grille Shutters), so they stayed (we remove them later).

Tune+ sent me over a base file for the upgrades and then we went to datalogging and revisions afterwards!

Nothing crazy here, just threw the chrome dome light covers on - they came with small pieces of 3M tape inside them, and they literally just push on over the factory buttons. I'm probably going to try and have these made in carbon fiber at some point in the future.

I also took advantage of a sale that Steeda Autosports was running. Picked up a red anodized hood release lever and the "DO NOT FLASH" OBD port cover. I always enjoy supporting locally owned (FL) businesses, as well as small businesses. You'll see more of that theme play out throughout the entire build, too.

So I'd made a handful of go-fast upgrades, and I'd decided to make a couple of minor changes to start making the car feel more like "mine" finally.

It was right around this time that I decided I'd try to get the ole girl out to the race track and see what she could do. There's a local Mustang group here called Pony Up, and they've got a great group of folks that enjoy all facets of Mustang ownership. They have a local drag race list setup for fast cars and for daily driven cars. Certainly we weren't up to the task to be on a 'fast' list, but I was intrigued by the daily driven list for sure. (The DD cars can't have slicks, and can't run faster than an 8.0 in the 1/8th mile or you break out and have to move up to the big list.)

So I headed down to Showtime Dragstrip (formerly Sunshine Speedway) in Largo. Pony Up has lanes 1 & 2 setup for their list racers, and it runs throughout the entire test & tune session on the 3rd Wednesday of the month. And I asked a few questions, met a few folks, and knew that when I came back to race on the list, I would be gunning for that #1 spot on the DD list.

So I came home and did a few more mods in preparation for the next list race...

Enter GarageLine 1" (25mm) Spacers for the S550 Mustang:

These went on with ease with just the use of a floor jack, jackstand, and hand tools in my driveway!

The wheel spacers really gave the car a much more aggressive stance and look to it without compromising ride quality or drivability at all!

I was super happy with this mod, and immediately realized I needed to both lower the car and change the wheels to really get to something that would make me personally happy w/the way the ole girl looked.

But damn, she was lookin' pretty fly for a damn near basic b*tch, and was already starting to hurt some feelings of "faster cars" on the local streets a few times w/this first setup

As my birthday approached, and we were coming up on the next list race from the guys over at Pony Up, I had found a great deal on a wheel & tire setup from a local legend in the Mustang scene: [MENTION=9985]BMR Tech[/MENTION].

The deal was for a set of American Muscle PP Rep wheels, 20"s up front and 19"s out back with a set of Mickey Thompson ET Streets in 305/35/19. These had gone something like a 1.5 60' for him on his badass GT dubbed "BluBallz".

I was super lucky to scoop the wheels and tires up from Kelly for a good deal, and he even included a set of lug nuts and a set of factory GT front brakes (we'll get to these later) in the deal for me!

So as the event was approaching, it was time to take the plunge and get into some Ethanol goodness. So I hit up my tuner for an E30 tune, and got a new set of plugs, and threw on the new wheels & tires - and I was ready to go racing... Finally... After not having been on a drag strip in about 7 years, lol.

Needless to say, the first time out was UNIMPRESSIVE. :headbonk: Slow R/T's, terrible 60' times, and slow 1/8th mile times. And on top of it all, I was trying to learn how to get the car to do a burnout, stage properly, etc. since it has all these dadgum traction assist features.

^^^ Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, that w/the addition of the 19"s and MT 305's out back, I opted *not* to run the GarageLine spacers on the rear wheels w/the new setup. I still ran them up front, though.

The car was really starting to feel like something I could finally call "mine" - our bonus baby was born, my birthday had just passed, and the car was looking mean w/the black wheels on it finally.

I was really quite happy w/everything up to this point, except for the performance at the drag strip. So I consulted with my tuner, and sent him some logs to review. It was clear that not only was I rookie behind the wheel, but that the car was just getting killed by the FL heat (dead of summer in June), and it was pulling timing and losing power.

So after a few consultations, we agreed that I should go back to the factory air intake and intake box (remember, I'd been running the JLT CAI up until this point), as my tuner had proven on back-to-back dyno sessions that the OEM box/tube actually was outperforming aftermarket units on these cars. Figured, "ah, what the hell!" :lol:

By the time we got back out to the drag strip I had made the commitment to running the factory intake setup, and I had also made an upgrade to the Levels Performance Race Core Intercooler (more on that soon), and made some *awesome* improvements just by those 2 changes

This is a really cool write up! Loving the color combination, and it should look great once you lower it.

DoubleX said:

This is a really cool write up! Loving the color combination, and it should look great once you lower it.

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Thanks [MENTION=27703]DoubleX[/MENTION] - I greatly appreciate it man. I'm time-blocking to write several posts a week about the ole girl so I can get this thread caught up to the current build status. It's been something I've been working on (building the car) and hadn't been memorializing it anywhere really. So I launched a FB page for the car recently, and have started putting some stuff on YouTube lately, and am currently working on getting the car prepared to go deep into the 10s this year, and *maybe* be able to squeak off a very high 9 eventually!

Turn your traction control completely off and no need to do a burnout with those tires. Do a quick spin to clean them off and avoid the water box. They will hook just fine. Good luck to you and your build.

V8Venom said:

Turn your traction control completely off and no need to do a burnout with those tires. Do a quick spin to clean them off and avoid the water box. They will hook just fine. Good luck to you and your build.

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Thanks for the tip [MENTION=13665]V8Venom[/MENTION] That's 100% accurate for the traction control issue - it was the reason I was having so much trouble :eyebulge:

I'm currently spending time trying to get the build thread caught up to current progress of the build. That post about the issues I had was from back in June of last year when I was just getting to the drag strip in the car for the first time. And since then I've probably had a good 100-or-so trips down the track.

Not to give away all the juicy details, but, the car has gone 1.600 / 7.3X / 11.3X as bests. I'll get this thread caught up w/the current progress hopefully here in the next couple of days or so :cheers: