Sleeper_08

I have just ordered an 08 GT with a dealer installed 445 HP Roush supercharger. The car will be a daily driver, except when it snows, but will also be used for track days about 3 or 4 times a year. The tracks will include Mosport.

Once the basic car is received I plan on upgrading it based on availabilty of funds. Money is a consideration but not a major concern. The objectives are safety, stability, predicabilty and bang for the buck.

My first upgrade will be brakes, wheels and tires and for these I was planning on;
1) GT500 brake kit - M-2300-S
2) GT500 wheels - 18 x 9.5 - M-1007-1895B1
3) BFGoodrich g-Force T/A KDW-2 255/45ZR18285/40ZR18
4) GT500 wheels - 18 x 9.5 - M-1007-1895B1 + winter tires

The next step would be the suspension and for this one I am looking for some help after reading numerous posts in this forum. From whatI have read lowering the car is a given so here is the list of what I am considering;
1) FRPP lowering spring kit M-5300-K
2) FRPP anti-roll bar kit M-5490-A
3) Tokico D-Specs
5)Steeda Adjustable Panhard Bar
6) Steeda Panhard Bar Support Brace
7)Steeda Bumpsteer Kit
8) Steeda Heavy DutyStrut Bearing Mounts
9) Steeda non adjustable lower control arms
10) Steeda lower control arm brackets
11) Upper Control Arm?
12) Upper Control Arm Mount ?
13) anything I missed

Any suggestions/additions/substitutions to the above will be greatly appreciated. The objective are safety, stability, predicabilty and bang for the buck.

Thank you all in advance for your help.

sweetlou69

ive got the roush kit on my gt and if you do the FRPP lowering springs that will make it kinda tough as a daily driver due to the front end as far as clearance wise. Ford is 1.5"ish i believe. Maybe you live in a better area than i do, but if i drop the FRPP springs on my gt it wouldnt even make it over a speedbump.

It is a good suspension and you cannot go wrong with the DSPECS. Everyone on here will agree the dspecs are some quality sh*t. Steeda make quality stuff too.

reeflover

Congrats on the new GT! I don't have much input on the suspenstion I have not touched mine yet. It is next on the list. If you want to know how toget some serious RWHP out of that Roushcharger let me know. I have one and I putting down 440 to the ground

dseid2

Looks like a good plan:

Here are my thoughts.It looks like you are setting up your car for road race, notdrag race. My suggestions assume you want a road race setup.

I went with the Eibach Pro Kit, which lowers the front about 1.3 in and the rear about 1.4 in. No clearance problems and from the hundreds suspensionposts I have read the Eibachseems to be the most popular. Also with only a 1.4 in drop in front I did not need the bump steer kit or the front control arm relocation kit.

Ihad a bad squeaks with Steeda's adjustable lower control arm bushings. The problem with Steeda's bushings is that they are solid and only one end 9f each LCA can accept a grease fitting.However even with a grease fitting installed you can never get any greasein cause the bushings are solid. After months of trying to make the Steeda LCA'snot squeak, I finally wentwith BMR'slower control arms. BMR's bushings are fluted, so grease can flow around them and they come with grease fittings on both ends. No more squeaks.

I also went withBMR'sLower Control Arm Relocation Brackets. They are bolt in,which is fine for 60 foot times above 1.5 seconds.Cars running 60 foot time under 1.5 seconds should weld them in. The reason I wentwith BMR's LCA relocation brackets is becausethis car was built for a street applicationand will neverhave 60 foot time less than 1.5 seconds. Also I did not want to weld anything to the chassis.

You should definitely go witha UCA. I put in Steeda's non adjustable UCA, which is shorter than stock for lowered cars to get the right pinion angle andto help control wheel hop along with the LCA's. If you are going to drag race the car you would probably want an adjustable UCA with the heavy duty bracket.

One item that you missed was a K-member brace. My first K-member brace was Steeda's G-Track brace, which was fine for chassis stiffening, however after about 10K miles the soft hydra motor mounts Mustangs come with got a little to soft in and were causing me to miss power shifts under heavy loads. I could have gone with solid motor mounts but would have sacrificed ride. I decided on CHE's k-member brace (see picture below)with torque limiters. The torque limiters basically bolt the bell housing to the frame, making it impossible for the shifter arms to deflect under heavy loads. The CHE product does double duty, stiffening the chassis and stopping toque deflection. Works great for me and now I do not need an after market shifter.

You might want to consider a strut tower brace. I know a lot of people on this forum say that the S197 chassis does not need strut tower brace. But take it from someone who bent a strut tower on a BMW (E39), all strut towers will deflect under extreme loads.

I also noted that you did not mention a rear sway bar, you should make sure that your choice of front sway bar and rear tires will result in a neutral handling car with over steer induced by application of heavythrottle. I don't like under steer.

Finally, on brakes, I was going to upgrade my brakes, but before I did I changed my pads to Hawk HP Plus pads. They made a huge difference and are the perfect compromise for a street application with only occasional racing.

Hope this helps, good luck!



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Sleeper_08

sweetlou69

You are correct, the FRPP lowering springs drop the car about 1.5" at both ends per the specs and this had me worried about ground clearance on a daily driver.After checking these forums it looks like other people have installed them and are driving them daily on the street so i was hoping it would be OK.

Thanks for the response.

Sleeper_08

reeflover

Thanks for the info on being able to get more out of the Roush S/C. I may be interested later and if so will contact you but for now 445 flywheel HP and 418 Lb Ft will take a little getting used to after driving my 2001 Focus.

Sleeper_08

deseid2

Sorry I was not clear - I am planning on using the car on road course track days. We are lucky because there are several in this area, Toronto, Canada, ranging from pretty tame ones to the 2.5 mile Mosport circuit http://www.mosport.com/roadhome.htm.

Your comments about the Eibach kit are appreciated, especially as it supports the viabillity of daily drivng a car lowered this much.

The FRPP anti-roll bar kit does include both the front and rear bars so your comments support this choice.

The suggestion for the K member brace was one I have not seen before for combined daily driver/road course track use. I'll do some more research.

In my original post I forgot to mention that step one includes the Roush front strut tower brace so this is consistent with your recommendations. In some of the posts I have noticed that there are two schools of thought on the need for this on the S197 platform. In my case I thought that the extraHP and torque combined with the fact that it looks good made it worthwhile. The roush one is also designed to clear thier supercharger.

I appreciate the time and effort you put into your comments.





For the lower control arms I was going to use fixed length and get the rewquired adjustment using an adjustable upper control arm. Your comments about geasing and noise are ones I have not seen before so are valuable input.

The BMR'sLower Control Arm Relocation Brackets look interesting as the can be bolted in first and then welded. This would make the install easier as it would allow me to get everything done using my brother's garage and then get the weldingand final alignment done afterwards.

Agleon

Around how much does it come out to for lowering your car to keep it as a Daily Driver and the occasional street racing?

Sleeper_08

Agleon

My concern as a DD is damaging the car if it is too low. Even though I live in Toronto snow is not a concern as I can either work from home or take public transit if it snows.

I have looked at more previous posts and think that the Steeda Competition Sperings, 555-8241, which have a spec drop of 1" F/ 1.25" R might be a better choice than the FRPP M-5300-K with a spec drop of 1.5" F/R.

Just to clarify - I plan on using the car on road courses not for street racing.

Norm Peterson

In terms of geometry, the 1.0"/1.25" drop maintains the relationship between the front and rear roll centers better than 1.5" drop all around does. Very roughly, an inch of front ride height drop lowers the front roll center by about 2", while an inch of lowering at the rear only moves the roll center back there down by 1/2". Roll center heights have to do with corner entry behavior and 'feel' and are the quickest-responding paths of lateral load transfer, being almost instantaneous. Springs, sta-bars, and shocks all require the chassis to have rotated in roll, which takes a finite amount of time.

On a road course, I don't think you want to adjust the rear suspension for more anti-squat, which is what lowering the chassis side of the UCA does for you. The evil twin of anti-squat and its favorable launch consequences is anti-lift and the brake hop that becomes more likely. Short of decoupling the traction and braking functions of the rear suspension linkage via major suspension re-design, increasing one increases the other.

As far as the strut tower brace is concerned, in street duty you'll get some reduction in NVH, but no performance advantage. On the road course, you might. But I'll suggest fabbing up some means of measuring it to see if there's enough to relative motion to be worth messing with (and restricting engine compartment access with). These braces do stiffen the lateral plane through the strut towers, but don't do anything for overall torsional stiffness until they are 4-point (at least 3-point).

I'd also give a critical eye toward what the brace that fits looks like - the further it deviates from a straight shot from tower attachment to tower attachment the more flexible it will be, meaning that it will be of less help than you might be led to expect. Every bend or other change in the direction of the load path gives away stiffness that isn't fully recovered without adding extra weight. Engineering and structural analysis is about how well things actually do the job that they're intended to do, not just about whether they're there or not.


Norm