Almost...

The wait is coming to an end. David and I have been invited to the unveiling of the 2010 Ford Mustang located at a small hanger in West Los Angeles next Tuesday. Vaughn will be on hand to give a drift demo in his Falken Tires Mustang, and Ford has a lot of cool things planned. I will be shooting High Definition video at the event, but for those that want to tune in on Speed Channel, the event will air at 8pm PST, 11pm EST on Tuesday the 18th.

Hard to imagine that my 1990 GT is not about to turn 20 model years old. Where did all the time go? I still remember when these Mustangs were new, in fact Dan Pina (Drift Patrol Dan) sent me a picture of himself standing in front of his Dad's Mustang GT at Laguna Seca. Dan wanted to call attention to his "LA Gear shoes, cut-off shorts, flip-up biker hat and matching Fanny pack." Dan was 8 years old in this shot with his dad's Mustang. He also send a shot with some other Ford car in it.

I think I would like to try my hands with the second Ford car, I have a feeling it might have a bit more "zoom zoom" then the Mustang. Of course, that's just one mans theory. Now that I have given Dan a hard enough time, I should tell you that we now have all of his Mustang Drifting videos here on the site. You can get to them by viewing his profile: www.drift50.com/user/drift-patrol-dan

Enjoy!

I found a cool website today that makes pictures out of words. I put together one that represents my build philosophy for the Mustang.

The simple one:

What my Blog looks like:

Exhaust going on at Morse Muffler.

This shot gives you a good view of the MM Subframe connectors I got put on the Mustang.

The Dr. Gas exhaust on the Mustang. I really like the sound, it's a bit crisper then the old Hooker tips.

Also, notice the flame sidewalls on the new EVO595 Federals. I must say, I am impressed with the grip on these things. It's nice to have some fresh high performance street tires on the 5.0 for the first time in a while.

On Sunday we had a chance to get the Mustang out on the track at Horse-Thief Mile for a bit of testing. The event was actually a competition, but a severe tire shortage had us sidelined after a good morning session. We managed to do well in the last competition, but this one was not in the cards. I think we are aiming to do the entire Top Drift Battle! next year.

I am happy to report that a low castor (3.25 degrees) alignment setup and additional steering angle seems to have worked quite well. I think that we may be on to something here. I think next I want to call up Eibach and try out a set of their wheel spacers on the front of the car. Call me greedy, but I think another couple of degrees of angle never hurts, and it may be a while before we can afford to step up to 18" wheels and tires. That being said, I don't have any more changes planed for the front of the car before ASB V at the end of November.

The back of the Mustang is a different story. First, the subframe connectors did wonders for the predictability and general driver feedback. The car has been doing its' best to destroy what remains of the chassis side of the rear trailing arms. I had the lower torque boxes welded up at the same time the subframes connectors went in, but the upper links are still pulling away from the chassis. When I take the car in to get the exhaust re-worked next week, I will have them run a few beads on the upper trailing arm mounts. I want to see how the car performs with the factory 4-link fully welded to the chassis, before I swap over to the TriLink to make sure we have a solid before and after comparison.

A wonderful companion,

Not soon forgotten,

You kept me warm at night,

Rest in piece sweet soldier,

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