2018 GT Daily Track Driver

[txgt]

Build Date: June 24th, 2022

The track day rotors were really starting to screech, so found out that my local O‘Reilly’s can turn rotors now (they just got the equipment). They turned the fronts, but said the rear’s were too far below spec…

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[Ewheels]

Build Date: June 24th, 2022

The track day rotors were really starting to screech, so found out that my local O‘Reilly’s can turn rotors now (they just got the equipment). They turned the fronts, but said the rear’s were too far below spec…

I know everyone has a different opinion on whether or not to turn rotors but how I see it, if a rotor warped and now you've cut them down and made them thinner, they now have even less thermal capacity and are even more susceptible to warping. I would recommend just getting new rotors with a higher carbon content to avoid warping in the first place.

Just food for thought; not trying to tell you what to do by any means.

 

[txgt]

I know everyone has a different opinion on whether or not to turn rotors but how I see it, if a rotor warped and now you've cut them down and made them thinner, they now have even less thermal capacity and are even more susceptible to warping. I would recommend just getting new rotors with a higher carbon content to avoid warping in the first place.

Just food for thought; not trying to tell you what to do by any means.

I’d agree if the rotor was warped, however, the rotor was fine, just a little grooved from the harsher track day brake pads. I just had them take minimal material off to get a smooth surface again to cut down on the noise.

 

[txgt]

Build Date: August 13, 2022

It’s time for an oil cooler!

As a dual purpose daily driver/track car, engine longevity is of utmost importance as well has having a great track day experience. After reading a lot of great information (I’m looking at you Track Time Limited due to High CHT thread ) I decided to install an oil cooler.

I decided on the Mishimoto (MMOC-MUS8-18T) designed for the 2018+ GT. The packaging was top notch and the quality of the parts were fantastic. The only issue I had was that one of the holes in the mounting bracket seemed to have been welded on incorrectly as the off-set hole did not line up properly. I could have contacted Mishimoto for a replacement, but I didn’t want to delay the install, so I used a Dremel with a grindstone to grind down the built-in nut and then drilled a new hole. I sourced a nylock nut from my local Ace Hardware to help prevent it backing off.

It was a little daunting of an install at first, as up to this point I had never removed the front bumper before. But, with a little patience and careful work I was able to complete the install.

A couple words of caution: (1) Make sure you have sufficient clearance between the new one-piece lower radiator hose and the alternator pulley. You may need to shorten the upper part of the hose to allow for some extra clearance. (2) On the routing of the braided stainless hoses… steel is harder than aluminum and the braid can act as a cheese grater, so don’t let the hose come in contact with your aluminum (or otherwise) radiator.

You’ll see why in future posts (foreshadowing ).

 

[txgt]

Track Date: August 20, 2022

Time for another go around Eagles Canyon Raceway in Decatur Texas, driving the 2.7 mile in the clockwise direction. This was the same direction I first ran ECR almost exactly a year ago (August 21, 2021). Unfortunately, I wasn’t recording my sessions in 2021, so I had to go find a video on YouTube to reacquaint myself with the clockwise direction of the track.

The new oil cooler held up well (no leaks) but without an actual temperature sensor to gauge it’s effectiveness, I just have to trust that it’s having a helpful impact on the oil and coolant temps. Will have to explore adding a manual oil temp gauge in the future.

It was a really great day and I met a new Mustang owner (the red one) and got to hang out with another familiar face (the white ’96 Cobra).

One of the things I love about ECR is the garages up the hill where you can get a peek at some serious track cars!

 

[txgt]

Build Date: September 2, 2022

Road Trip!!! We love to drive up to Colorado, and we usually do the 12 hour drive from Dallas to Breckenridge in my wife’s car. However, this time I wanted to take the Mustang to carve up those narrow mountain roads

Disaster! As I posted on the What did you do to your S550 Mustang today?! thread, I hit a 4”x4” piece of lumber at about 75MPH on the highway

With the other cars on the road, by the time I saw the hazard it was too late to do something about it. It was a pretty hard hit, and you can see what it did to the front driver’s side wheel. It also hurt the rear driver’s wheel, but not quite as bad.

Luckily, the tire held air the whole time but I did take the extra precaution to swap the front and back wheels so the least damaged one was on the front. I made sure to drive with a bit of extra caution and we made it back home to Dallas safe-and-sound.

 

[txgt]

Build Date: September 9, 2022

As shown in the previous post, I bent my two driver’s side rims after running over a 4”x4” piece of Lumber in the road on my roadtrip to Breckenridge, CO.

So, what to do? Fortunately, I’ve used Wheel Repair Solutions two other times in the past and was always pleased with their work. The other two times were two passenger side wheels on a ‘92 Ford Taurus SHO and two driver’s side wheels on my wife’s 2011 Infiniti G25x. Come to think of it, I was driving during all these incidents… I‘m definitely the common denominator here

As I posted on What did you do to your S550 Mustang today?!, when I first bought these SVE SP2 19x10s I thought the gloss graphite would look good on my shadow black GT, but I was always disappointed with how they looked on the car. I thought they would look more on the silver side of graphite, but they are actually more on the grey side.

So, when I had the wheel fixed I had them refinish all four wheels in gloss black and they turned out amazing. I’m super happy with how they look now!!

 

[txgt]

Track Date: September 24, 2022

Track Day! I’m back out at MSR Cresson with The Drivers Edge running the 1.7cw short version of the track. I absolutely love the quick pace of the 1.7 and the clockwise direction is always a fun change of pace from the traditional counter-clockwise direction when running the full 3.1 mile.

It was an absolutely beautiful day made even better by seeing so many amazing cars at the track. In fact there was this incredible 1952 Jaguar (XK120?) that was out on the track! I‘m not sure which run group it was in (it wasn’t with me in Intermediate) but I applaud anyone who runs a race car at a race track, no matter how old or valuable it may be!

 

[txgt]

Build Date: September 28, 2022

Back in post #64 I documented the install of the Mishimoto oil cooler. In a brilliant bit of foreshadowing (easy to do when you are writing these after-the-fact), I commented “Make sure you have sufficient clearance between the new one-piece lower radiator hose and the alternator pulley.”

Well, on September 22, 2022 I panic posted “Need a replacement one-piece lower radiator hose!” and, as stated in that post, I found a small notch in the one-piece radiator hose where it came in contact with the alternator pulley

With the September 24th track day in jeopardy, I was very concerned about potentially missing it if I couldn’t find a replacement hose. I searched locally, but a replacement hose was not going to happen before the track day. I took a look at the situation and decided that shortening the engine side of the hose might give the proper clearance to keep the hose from contacting the alternator pulley. I didn’t want to lose a bunch of coolant, so I took a razor blade and cut about an inch off the top without having to remove it. I also "clocked" the upper part of the hose clockwise a little to increase the clearance.

Taking a chance that the notched hose would hold, right or wrong, I went ahead with the track day. Luckily everything held up and I had a great track day.

While I was working with Mishimoto on getting a replacement hose, I went ahead and grabbed a Motorcraft KM5357 GT350 hose from RockAuto and installed that as a semi-permanent fix (more foreshadowing…!) When I took the Mishimoto hose off, I could see that despite my shortening of the hose and clocking the bend away from the alternator pulley a bit more, it still ended up creating another notch!

 

[txgt]

Build Date: October 16, 2022

After reading The Big Fat Track Car Cooling Thread I learned the importance of boxing and sealing your radiator to improve the airflow going through your radiator. Inspired by that thread, I tried my hand at some very simple sheet metal work to address the gaping hole on the passenger side of the car, where massive amounts of air can simply go around the AC condenser.

I started out with some poster board and a pair of scissors to create a template that I could transfer to a 1'x2' sheet of 22 Gauge weldable steel that I picked up at Home Depot. To cut the sheet metal, I used a combination of a Jigsaw, Dremel (with cut-off wheel), and some metal files.
To get some nice crisp bends, I jury-rigged a homemade brake using a bunch of my woodworking bar clamps.

Not sure how well this actually helps, but I'm super happy how it turned out!

 

[Ewheels]

Build Date: September 28, 2022

Back in post #64 I documented the install of the Mishimoto oil cooler. In a brilliant bit of foreshadowing (easy to do when you are writing these after-the-fact), I commented “Make sure you have sufficient clearance between the new one-piece lower radiator hose and the alternator pulley.”

Well, on September 22, 2022 I panic posted “Need a replacement one-piece lower radiator hose!” and, as stated in that post, I found a small notch in the one-piece radiator hose where it came in contact with the alternator pulley

With the September 24th track day in jeopardy, I was very concerned about potentially missing it if I couldn’t find a replacement hose. I searched locally, but a replacement hose was not going to happen before the track day. I took a look at the situation and decided that shortening the engine side of the hose might give the proper clearance to keep the hose from contacting the alternator pulley. I didn’t want to lose a bunch of coolant, so I took a razor blade and cut about an inch off the top without having to remove it. I also "clocked" the upper part of the hose clockwise a little to increase the clearance.

Taking a chance that the notched hose would hold, right or wrong, I went ahead with the track day. Luckily everything held up and I had a great track day.

While I was working with Mishimoto on getting a replacement hose, I went ahead and grabbed a Motorcraft KM5357 GT350 hose from RockAuto and installed that as a semi-permanent fix (more foreshadowing…!) When I took the Mishimoto hose off, I could see that despite my shortening of the hose and clocking the bend away from the alternator pulley a bit more, it still ended up creating another notch!

As someone who just bought the Mishi oil cooler kit, I'm definitely buying that GT350 radiator hose as well. Thanks for the info!

 

[txgt]

As someone who just bought the Mishi oil cooler kit, I'm definitely buying that GT350 radiator hose as well. Thanks for the info!

Actually, I recommend using the one from Improved Racing. In a future post I was going to document why I switched to that hose, but I'll go ahead and give you the tl;dr now: The straight GT350 hose actually comes into contact with the stock GT air box. I now understand why the Mishimoto and Improved Racing hoses have the bend in it to help clear the airbox.

 

[Ewheels]

Actually, I recommend using the one from Improved Racing. In a future post I was going to document why I switched to that hose, but I'll go ahead and give you the tl;dr now: The straight GT350 hose actually comes into contact with the stock GT air box. I now understand why the Mishimoto and Improved Racing hoses have the bend in it to help clear the airbox.

.......damnit.
Like the factory airbox won't fit at all with the GT350 hose in place?
How is the Improved Racing hose an improvement? Looks like exactly same dimensions.

 

[txgt]

It fits, but it does touch the bottom corner of the airbox. I ran it that way for several months without an issue, but it always bothered me that it was touching.

The Improved Racing hose looks just like the Mishimoto, but it just seems to have better clearance. Maybe you'll have a better experience with your Mishimoto hose... I haven't seen anyone other than me have this issue

 

[Ewheels]

It fits, but it does touch the bottom corner of the airbox. I ran it that way for several months without an issue, but it always bothered me that it was touching.

The Improved Racing hose looks just like the Mishimoto, but it just seems to have better clearance. Maybe you'll have a better experience with your Mishimoto hose... I haven't seen anyone other than me have this issue

Yeah your post was the first time I've heard of that issue. Must be rare.
I ordered the GT350 hose as well. I'll try fitment on both and see which I like better. I never liked that the Mishi replacement hose retains that whole loop. Always seemed unnecessary.

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