Mustang upgrades

Following the clutch failure at the Rockingham sprint, Redline American Muscle carried out a lot of repair and upgrade work.

Clutch

Kev at Redline American Muscle fitting the RAM twin disc clutch

Following the failure of the Spec stage 3 clutch at Rockingham, which was meant to be good for 700BHP, but failed under the 573BHP generated by the Black Sun Racing Mustang. Steeda in the UK used their Mustang race experience with Steeda USA to recommend the RAM force 10.5 twin disc clutch, together with the RAM hydraulic bearing and braided hydraulic fluid line.

The clutch was expertly fitted by Kev and Mike at Redline American Muscle using micrometer gauges to ensure an absolutely perfect setup for race performance. Impressively, their setup was so good, the clutch was extremely driveable on the street with a medium to light action, very smooth engagement and no chatter noise. The operation was significantly more complex than on a standard mustang – due to the Steeda race engine mounts, the engine will not tilt and so the front cross member had to be removed and the whole assembly lowered, a great piece of work by Redline.

Ride height – KW suspension

Following the issue in 2014 with horrendous contact noise under braking which transpired to be the supercharger pulley, the suspension ride height had been raised at the front of the car, based on the incorrect assumption that the tyres were rubbing against the bodywork under braking. Following the excessive front end body roll experienced in the high speed corners at Rockingham, the opportunity has now been taken to lower the front ride height by 1.5 inches using the adjustable springs in the KW competition suspension.

Brake master cylinder and servo

The poor hydraulic performance of the brakes where the pedal was too soft and went even longer under high braking was traced to poor seals on a non-OEM master cylinder. Therefore Redline American Muscle fitted a genuine Ford master cylinder. Additionally they also fitted a Mustang GT500 brake servo. This provides 30% less assistance than the standard servo and gives a stiffer pedal feel. Overall Redline’s transformation of the car has been dramatic giving much greater braking confidence – I can’t wait to try it out on the track !

Mysterious power loss problem

At the Eelmoor sprint in October I noticed a problem where under wide open throttle there would be a sudden and complete loss of engine power. This problem happened only once on that day but has since dramatically reappeared. Redline used the SCT X3 programmer and SCT Livelink software to capture engine parameters under load when reproducing the problem. They discovered that the fuel pressure dropped to a very low value under fully open throttle. Initially they tried the obvious and simple fix of replacing the fuel filter in case it was clogged, but this was not the answer.
Kev of Redline replacing the fuel filter

Further investigation showed that one of the two fuel pump regulators fitted in the boot of the car was damaged. Using impressive engineering skills they jury rigged an electrical repair on the component which fixed the problem and restored the massive performance of the Mustang. Equally impressively they were able to source a brand new replacement part only two days later.

Redline find the problem – temporary repair on the fuel regulator, shortly afterwards replaced with a new component.