The Cat finally has claws!!!

Toms_2003_Stang said:

Sounds like you have the ultimate sleeper, post some exterior pics when you get a chance.

Click to expand...

There are a couple half assed shots of the car in My Garage. I won't be taking any decent ones till the snow and salt is off the roads though.



The weather was nice here for a change today, so I thought it would be a good time to put the Cat through her initial paces.

Car had been sitting outside in -20C temperatures for over a week, got there today and started immediately with the first turn of the key and idled right down. I let her sit and warm up a while I called the insurance company and let them know there was a new member in the family.

Getting it out of the driveway was a bit of a chore, since the sub division my parents live in doesn’t get a lot of attention from the city come snow plow season. The 255/50/17’s all around didn’t help a lot either. Once I got it to the main roads though, they were clear and dry. Keeping an eye on the boost gauge, it’s giving me about 20lbs of vacuum at idle, which immediately dropped to 10lbs under light throttle. Even at the bottom of third gear at 2,000RPM, it was able to see 5psi of boost on the gauge under moderate throttle before downshifting.

I tooled around a little and brought her up gently at first to make sure the transmission shifted properly and no warning bells or whistles went off. After eveything checked out ok, I decided at one point to punch it from about a 55km/hr roll and it dropped hard back into second gear and immediately blew the tires off. It finally caught traction again at the top of second before breaking loose and cutting the back end to the right a few inches with the shift into third. I think the boost gauge was reading about 8-9psi at this point, but my attention was more focused on the fact that I was coming up fast on the traffic ahead and my speedometer was already toping 145km/hr (in a 70km/hr zone…oops ). Right away I could tell this car was a lot faster than my Mustang ever was…..at least on the highway.

I drove a little further down the highway where the speed limit changed to 90km/hr and pulled the car to the shoulder of the road. I waited until things were clear in both directions and U-turned to head back. I then decided.....what the hell and stopped in the middle of the road. I waited a few seconds to make sure the last of the cars that had passed me from the opposite direction earlier was way ahead and the I put my foot into it.

First gear was useless and went by in a flash, the shift into second fared no better as my tires continued to howl. Third came hard and the car just started to take off. It pulls HARD though third until I again realize I'm grossly breaking the speed limit. I looked down again at my boost gauge and again saw about 9psi. I guess even with my smaller blower pulley, the engine was breathing so much better with the free flow intake and exhaust mods I added, along with the ported components, that I wasn’t going to see the 11-12psi I’d originally though. At that point it didn’t really matter though, since judging by the way the car was pulling, I wasn’t short any horsepower. I did however notice some stuttering at the top end of the tach. I suspect it might have been spark blowing out under boost, since I did gap my plugs a little wide at about .052. When I’ve got a little more time to play with it, I’ll mess around with my Boost-a-spark a little to see if that helps…..otherwise I’ll just pull them out and close the gap to .038 or so.

I shut her down and drove the car around the area a bit, giving it a shot here and there just to hear the blower whine (I'm such a child ), but my main concern right now is just putting a few break in miles on the engine, not ruining my brand new Fuzion ZRi’s on the first day.

All in all, I’m pretty impressed on how the car is running. If I had to guess, I’d bet it would stop the clocks at mid-13’s on street tires the way it’s set up now. My tuner (Lonnie from Blue Oval Chips) did tell me that he’d set the A/F ratio up a little on the rich side, with very conservative timing levels until I had the chance to tune it properly via my LC-1 Wide Band, so I’m anxious to see what kind of power is really locked away in this thing after it’s set up properly and I’ve got a few miles on the engine.

…..should be a fun summer.

P.S.

The video is still coming guys, I’ve just haven’t had the opportunity to get out there with the camera yet.