OLD CROW Mustang update time...
I'll start off with the purchase of some winter wheels. I've been hunting on Facebook Marketplace locally here in Salt Lake for some 18" winter wheels for months. Due to installing the 14" 4 piston brake upgrade, my 17x8 stock wheels no longer fit up front. I sold those for $200 for the set.
I ended up buying a set of Ford OEM GT500 wheels from the 2007-2009 Shelby GT500 which measure 18x9.5 +45mm. I definitely wanted to have a winter wheel that looks cool and wasn't narrow, like an 18x8, which would have looked just silly on the car. So, I'm happy I found a Mustang wheel that will look great but due to being used, wasn't going to break the bank. I bought these for $380 from a guy in Salt Lake who used them on his Foxbody Mustang. He bought them with a used set of 245/40/18 BFG G-Force R1 slicks and attempted to use them for an autox event and they ended up rubbing like crazy on the front fenders.
The car looks really good with the GT500 polished wheels. They look pretty dang good in the photo here, but they're kinda rough up close. I did scrub them down good and tried to handle polish them. They definitely need a good polishing wheel. They're perfect for a winter wheel. I plan to put a 275/40/18 or a 285/35/18 on them. The 2009 GT500 ran a 285/40/18 rear tire on it from the factory and a 255/45/18 front tire on the same size wheel.
I ran this wheel and tire setup for 1 week a couple weeks ago just for fun to see what the wheels looked like on the car and maybe more importantly, how the car handled with slicks. I did the ol' "slalom" back and forth swerving motions to warm up the tires on a back road and man, once the tires got nice and warm, were SUPER responsive on turn in and front grip. The 245/40/18 tires are too narrow and short for the car and looked a little funny. While they are marked as 245 wide, from the picture sitting next to a 295mm wide 200 treadwear tire, they probably measure more like a 265 or 275 wide street tire.
Next up, I've had a set of Mezier brand "safety washers" that Corey picked up for me from Summit Racing. It took me a bit to understand how these actually worked. Here's a pic of the washer installed. So, the thought process is, if this Cortex bump steer tie rod joint fails, the hoop of the tie rod end could slide right off and the nut on the end would slip right through the hoop and you would not have any steering mechanism any longer. So, with this safety washer, it will keep the tie rod end at least attached so that you will have control of the car to get it off the road and to a safe spot.
My friend who has autox'd a bunch of Mustangs actually had a bump steer tie rod end fail like this in his driveway. He installed the parts, went to back out of his driveway to go for a test drive and heard a noise and then no longer had steering. So, he highly recommended it.
Here's a quick view from under the car showing the clearance between the wheel and the tie rod end bolt and washer.
I took advantage while I was under the front of the car to do a nut and bolt check and a general clean up of the hard parts. While there I noticed the passenger side inner fender liner plastic had some rubbing marks from the wide wheel and tire package. Honestly I'll take it. This isn't bad at all for running a 19x11 +50 with a 295/30/19 tire up front. These S197 Mustangs can soak up a lot of tire. Heck, Brent runs a 315/30/19 on his 2005 Mustang track car. He probably has a little bit more rubbing than I do, but still, its minimal and really doesn't need a lot to be able to run that much width up front.
I took the Mustang to the Utah State Layton Autocenter Annual Car Show last weekend. It was a small show, but was fun to get the car detailed the night before and go show it off.
One of my favorite cars at the show was this 1930 Ford 5 Window Coupe in a 1959 Pontiac color. The car goes with the Pontiac 389 V8 with 3 deuce card set up. I talked to the owner, Joe, for a few minutes, talking cars and asking about the car. He said he built it with his dad who ha since passed away. He finished it about 5 years ago and said he's probably only into it about $6-7k. He had been collecting parts for years. It's an original Ford steel frame from 1930. I love the "traditional hot rod" style this was built in. Traditional means loosely that the car looks like it could have been built in the 40's - 50's using OEM parts from various manufacturers. This is my favorite style of hot rod and it would be so fun to build something like this in the future.
On the other end of the spectrum from that sweet 1930 Ford Coupe is this 2001 Honda S2000 owned by my friend Daniel. I met Daniel a few years ago when I had the 1999 red Honda Hatchback. Daniel had the silver EK Hatchback with Enkei RPF1 wheels. Anyway, that car got wrecked and luckily Daniel and his wife were not too seriously injured. Daniel decided to get something he really wanted instead of starting with another base trim economy car like the Civic. He found this 2001 AP1 Honda S2000 locally in Utah and then started to add his touches to it. The Front lip, side spats and trunk spoiler are Honda OEM parts, along with a cool Spoon inspired hardtop. The wheels are 17x8 front and 17x9 rear Regamaster EVO wheels with 225 and 255 wide sticky tires. It looks great!
Rear view of the S2000. I took this pic because just look at that really nice wheel and tire fitment.
Check out who else came! Yep, Max, my neighbor who bought my 2002 WRX, brought it out to the Car Show too. I texted probably 8 of my neighbors who are into cars to come show off their cars. It's interesting to me to see the difference in the silver colors of the WRX and the Mustang.
Here's a great photo of OLD CROW going for a canyon/mountain/touge run 2 weekends ago. I got up early and took the Mustang up to East Canyon Park Reservoir (the lake you see in the background here) and then up to the top of the mountain and back down into Salt Lake passing Little Dell Reservoir. It was a great drive up, the car handled great and the news were beautiful. I probably should have turned around at the top and gone back down the back side, because going down the mountain from the Salt Lake side meant waiting behind bicyclists for miles. Those guys and gals are crazy!!! It's very impressive that they are cycling up that mountain. I didn't see another cool car on the drive, so I think the cyclists have claimed this hill for now.
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