Thanks for all the help Whiskey. Not sure I'll stick with the stock tires very long. Not impressed with the Zero Nero grip. Is your car lowered? Looks like it doesn't have the typical Mustang rake.

 

Nope! Only modifications to the car are a K&N drop in air filter and Tokico D-Spec shocks/struts. No lowering of the sort. The picture in my signature is me accelerating out of a corner so the left rear is loaded heavily enough to give it a "neutral" rake.

Here is a halfway decent photo of it not in motion although the turned wheel makes it hard to tell where the top of the tire is in the front:


If those P-Zeros are the same that were on my 06 V6 with PP, they where pretty rubbish. Aftermarket tires are not a bad idea after you burn through the P-Zeros. If you are all stock with the car, there is the new Road Tire class which is basically "stock" on 140+ treadwear tires. That allows you:

-Shocks/Struts
-Front or Rear Sway Bar and supporting hardware
-Catback exhaust
-Any 140+ treadwear tire (RTR) or Hoosier A6's (F-Stock)
-Tires have to be mounted on OEM size/width rims with a little offset tolerance. For the 05-09 style the largest is an 18x8.5 IIRC.
-Drop in replacement air filter (Like the K&N's for the stock airbox)
-Ford OEM Camber Bolts

That's a pretty reasonable mod list for after your first year (yes after ) and Stock is a great place to play and I'm sure RTR will be too.

Careful, it's a super addicting hobby and don't expect to win your first time out and maybe not even your first season out. Go out, have fun, learn the car and HAVE FUN. Meet new folks and HAVE FUN.

Did I mention, HAVE FUN? :P

 

Cool. Hate that springs aren't included in the acceptable mod list. I'm really dying to put some Steeda Sports on my car with Konis. I've also chomping at the bit for some GT500 wheels, but they're 9.5" wide, so that's changes my class too. Aargh!

 

Well, my suggestion is to save some money every month that you would normally spend on your car so that after this first year of suffering you can buy the mods you would like to do. You don't HAVE to stay in any class. You could go to C-prepared if you wanted to. I've always been a fan of "build your car how you want it and figure out the class later." Unfortunately for a lot of Mustang owners that puts them in Street Mod which isn't a very happy place for a Mustang to win anything but you can have just as much fun there as in F-Stock, RTR, STX, ESP, etc.

The GT500 wheels are cool though, maybe a tad on the heavy side, but cool regardless. The 9.5" wheel will put you in E-Street Prepared though. Mustangs go from F-Stock, to Street Touring Xtreme (STX), to ESP, to SM, then to C-Prepared. STX limits the wheel width to 9" and tire width to 265mm (of course, all of the tire manufacturers produce their 26.7" tall tires at 275mm width and not 265mm). ESP and up are open on wheel sizes.

I'm almost certain that your local region has a "Street Tire" Index of sorts for cars not in one of the Street Touring or Road Tire (I'm assuming now that RT is out that Stock will no longer be in the Street Tire Index) categories where you can still run street tires at ESP or higher prep levels. That may certainly be an option for you. I really like the "practicality" of Street Tires but you may not.

Of course you don't have to listen to what any of us are telling you and you could drop the full Griggs Racing kit in if you would like. No skin off our backs but it certainly does help to do mods slowly so you know what the changes are doing to the car and as you get more experience you may not need to change as much stuff to get the car how you want it! That is the joy of Solo. You don't HAVE to max out your car to the rules to do well. I think Sam can confirm that!

 

I'll second the take it slow advice. Drive your car on the stock tires first - you'll "destroy" your first set of tires learning how to drive. After that move to a higher performance tire. Then move to a "cheater" like a Dunlop Starspec or similar or even a Toyo R888.

Don't move to R compounds too fast. R's need to be driven properly to get the best performance. I've seen lots of new drivers move from street tires to R's too quickly and they invariably end up over driving R's (i.e. wasting tires) and develop bad techniques or continued to do bad technique from not really driving well on normal tires.

My advice is spend three to four seasons on "normal" tires before moving up to R compounds.

 

All sounds like sound advice to me. I figure that I'm on the street way more than the track, so I want to build my car for the 90% use, not the 10%. Hadn't really considered race only tires. I'm jonesing for the GT500 wheels, just because I love the look. Figured I would put some summer performance tires on them and leave the OE wheels and tires as my winter set.

 

Yeah, that's my take on it as well. I don't want a race car, I want a "hot" Gran Tourismo car that I can have fun with autocross and lapping and still daily drive without have to put up with the foibles of a race car on public roads.

Build the car you want and just run any class it fits into within reason. From my limited exposure to SCCA classing the STX style classes may be worth looking into. Lots of the guys in our club run in those classes when "away".