66. The Worlds First AWD S550 Mustang, The Journey In Depth w/ No Production Value Garage

Let's roll, so hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, and I'm here with my fantastic Mustang loving co-host.

Yeah, hello, this is Dan with Gunna Garage.

I think we're almost nailing down this intro. I think we're almost there. And today we have, it was Tim Roman, correct?

Correct, yep.

So we have Tim Roman, the madman behind the all-wheel drive Mustang, the first S550, for my understanding.

That's what I'm saying, that nobody's proving me wrong.

So actually, Dan introduced me to your build. I want to say a few, actually no, I saw it on my YouTube feed, and then literally, I think a few days later, you brought it up to me, like the current video that's going viral. Yeah. And then we started chatting about it. He's like, oh, well actually, I know that guy.

Yeah.

So then I started going down the rabbit hole what the build actually was, and it's no easy feat. That's for sure.

No, it was harder than I thought, actually.

So I'm curious, before we get into the actual build itself, because again, a lot went into it. A lot of different things were taken apart to make that work. I'm just curious. So I believe your background is a mechanical engineer, correct?

Yeah, correct. So I've been a mechanical engineer for almost 30 years, 25 years, we'll say. And I just love designing things. I was an engineer because it's my passion. But I've also just been in the cars and motorcycles and minibikes since I could hardly walk. And as I've gotten older, the projects have gotten more and more complex. And this is the most complex one yet for sure. So I enjoy, like a lot of people I think, I enjoy almost making and building the car as much, if not even slightly more than driving it, to be honest, right? I just love figuring stuff out. And so I don't like just bolting stuff on. I really get satisfaction out of designing it and figuring it out. And I'm jumping way ahead. But in this project, I was really trying to stretch my legs. I joke, I'm an engineer at work, but in the garage, I was always kind of more of a blacksmith, right? You get the cutting wheel out, you get the welder and the hammer, and next thing you know, you got like an engine mount, right? And with this car, I was trying to be a little more, to be honest, watching some YouTube videos and use CAD, use 3D print, machine things, get stuff laser cut. You know what I mean? Actually have a plan versus, I'm pretty good actually at the whole blacksmith thing, to be quite frank, but I wanted to say, be a little more of an engineer on the project, and that's worked out great actually, and it's been really fun.

I think you actually, when I was scrolling through some of your YouTube videos, there was something, what did you 3D print? Was it an oil pan or something, or what was it?

A bunch of stuff. So using it for mock up before I make the real thing. So I'd made a couple of driveshaft adapters. The big one was the spindles, right? So I went through like, I don't know, three or four iterations of the front spindles, and we'll get into, that was one of the big challenges, was the front spindles actually. But, and so I designed that in CAD and went through it, said a whole bunch of iterations and how to make that happen, which bearing to use was a major question.

Let's pull this closer a little bit more.

There we go. Sorry. And yeah, so the spindles, the differential cover went through three or four generations on that. And even cheated and got some stuff 3D printed at work. Like the transfer case adapter was too big, and I wanted to be more precise, so I printed that at work. And don't say any, don't tell anybody, but the scanning too. People have asked me, oh, what kind of scanner do you have? And that's one of the next major purchases. I don't have a 3D scanner. I had the differential scanned at work, and after hours, we'll say. But yeah.

It blew my mind. I can't remember which article I was reading. And I was reading through it, and like all the different things that you kind of compiled together to make it work. So I think you took some parts from a Hilux, some from a Dodge Charger. Am I right on those as well?

Correct, yeah. So if we start at the beginning, right? So why did, yeah, there we go, sorry. Basically, I wanted a manual transmission, V8, all-wheel drive car, and then a variable torque split. That was the new revelation is I wanted a variable torque split. So if people don't know, I built an all-wheel drive turbo small block Merkur XR4TI, which you've seen that at a car show. And to be honest, now it looks a little rough because I did it like, I don't know, 15, 16 years ago, but it still runs fantastic. And it's a turbo small block, and it's starting to get less impressive. People are so fast now, but on street tires, on 91 octane gas, at Rock Falls, it did a 1073 at 134, right? And it's a stick, right? And so I'm hoping to get it back out this year, and I want to get into the low tens. It's now actually ready for E85, even though I've never put it in there. So I built that quite a long time ago, and I wanted to basically build off of that and be a little more advanced. And that one has a fixed transfer case. It currently has one off of a Trailblazer SS, which is like a Torsen transfer case. Very similar to what's in the newer Audis actually, where it's not a 50-50 split, it's like a 30-70. And but before that, I had a Viscous coupling one. And the problem with that is you're basically, first, you can't do cool rear wheel drive burnouts, right? Like a GTR. And then second, especially with the Viscous coupling transfer case, you can actually get in weird situations where you can actually spin the front wheels, right? Because you can, especially the drag strip, you can actually lift up, and it'll transfer power to the front wheels. And if you don't have a limited slip, you'll spin one wheel. And so all the modern all-wheel drive cars, I don't know, everything since like 2005, basically BMWs, Jaguars, all your Audi type four-motion, not the Torsen style, Haldex, I don't know, literally the Dodge, obviously. Every modern all-wheel drive car doesn't have a center differential, right? It's basically either the front wheels are always powered, or the rear wheels are always powered. And then there's a clutch that starts clutching in the other, the opposite wheels. In the case of like a BMW, which is a good system, you basically, they're always, the rear wheels are directly coupled to the transmission, and then there's a clutch that goes to the transfer case. And so that's what I wanted to do in this car, to prevent variable torque splits, so you can dial it in, and to prevent this whole front wheel problem, if that makes sense. And so that's kind of what I started with, is what transfer case am I gonna use, and how are you gonna control it, right? And so, for example, we'll just use a BMW transfer case then. Well, they're strong and all that kind of good stuff, but they're really hard to control, right? They have their own little controller in them, the CAN bus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I actually thought about actually using like an old school R32, 33, 34 transfer case. And to be honest, when I started the project, you could get them cheap. That's not true anymore. Now, you're looking at a couple of grand, but at one point you could get a whole transmission for a thousand bucks, but I should have bought one.

So remind me, when did the project actually begin? Or like, so when did it start? Like, I guess, when did you actually start buying parts for this?

For this exact, I've been planning it literally for decades. And so before the AmeriCorps, to be honest, my original plan in the late 90s, right? This is really crazy, was to make an all wheel drive car, or all wheel drive Mustang. And I was in the Fox bodies. I had a, you know, I had of course a 5.0, everybody did. I had an SVO and I even had a Mustang too. But before that...

Yeah, well, we'll edit that part out.

But I had a turbo, I had a 79 Mustang turbo. That actually was a reasonable car. And so I've always been a Mustang guy. And kind of like Dan, for no good reason, I'm a Ford guy, right? And so I was going to make an AWD Mustang. Side note, I've owned the domain name AWD Mustang for like 20 years. It doesn't go anywhere, but I pay every year to have awdrymustang.com. I own that. And so like I said, this has been decades. And so I wanted to make an AWD Mustang. And in the meantime, I started buying Mercours because they were worth nothing, right? In the late 90s, you literally could buy a Mercours for a couple hundred dollars.

And there's not very many 10 second Mercours out there, by the way.

No, no. And so I started buying them as just daily driver beaters, right? And I really got into it, to be quite frank. And they were just really fun little cars and they were worth nothing. And there's a whole Turbo 2.3 community at the time that was really, maybe you know about that?

Yep, I'm in a couple of them. I'm into Turbo Coupes and SBOs and all that.

So I had people with Turbo Coupes. I made a Turbo Ranger. I put a 2.3 in a Ranger. Anyway, so I was still down this whole AWD. I was going to do a Fox body. And I stumbled upon the fact, oh crap, they make an AWD Ford Sierra. So the Mercour, the US market, it was called the Mercour XR4TI, the world's worst product name. Nobody can pronounce it, right? But in Europe, it was based on the Ford Sierra. So it was a Ford Sierra made in Germany with a 2.3 turbo in it. And I stumbled upon the fact that they made an AWD version in Europe, right? They made the Qazi version, but they also just made the more mundane XR4X4. And I thought, well crap, maybe my first step, I can get all those parts from Europe and all these front suspensions done, right? I can get all the factory four wheel drive stuff for a Mercure or a Ford Sierra. And so I did. I found a place in the UK that was a wrecking yard for Ford Sierras, or at least the four wheel drive versions. And I was going to Europe for work. And so I actually went there and they were really shocked when I showed up. I told them I was coming, but they didn't believe me. And so I show up and they were beyond, once they, oh my God, this guy's serious. And so they actually ended up sending pallets of parts over and selling a bunch of extra stuff, unique European things. And so I converted one of my AmeriCorps to all wheel drive using all the European parts. Remember, this is like 2000, right? This is before you can get a WRX. This is before EVOs came to the US, right? This is basically, if it wasn't an Eagle Talon, I don't know what you got that was fast in all wheel drive. Maybe some Audis, I guess. But it wasn't like there was as many all wheel drive cars as now. And so I imported all the parts and I basically converted my completely stock AmeriCorps to all wheel drive with the stock 2.3, had to make the oil pan. Otherwise it all pretty much bolted together, to be honest. And well, that was super fantastic. And so then I decided to like up the Ani and make that really fast, right? And so I built a whole 2.3 motor. And if you were in the 2.3s, I bought an Arca head from Essingler. I probably way back in the day. And put a big turbo on it and yada, yada, yada, 410 to the wheels, all wheel drive. And-

It doesn't weigh a lot either, I bet.

No, at that point, I'm sure it was under 3000 pounds.

That's a lot of horsepower for such a light car.

Yeah, and it was super fun on the street. And, but in full trans, you know, I'm sorry, I bought this aluminum racing head for it, and from Esslinger, which was this aluminum head, and with this racing cam, and it was just the most unreliable thing on the planet. It just constantly threw belts, and it was eating. It was just not good. And so after a couple of years of fighting it, and then I went to, I went to the dyno, I put 410 of the wheels, went to the dyno and it spun a rod bearing, and I cracked the block, and it was just unreliable to no extent.

But all of your, the driveline stuff was okay for that stuff?

Oh yeah, it totally worked. And the all wheel drive part was totally fine. But the engine, it just couldn't keep it together. Some of it was just bad luck that the engine block, after the fact we did a sonic check and it was just super thin, right? It was bad luck. And so I was gonna give it one more shot, before I just gave up on that and got back to the V8 all wheel drive Mustang saga. And this guy, at that point, it had been kind of famous in the Mercure world. And this guy from North Carolina or something gave me a call and he wanted to duplicate the setup because it did make good power. And I said, don't duplicate it. You can just have it, right? And so he offered me more than I ever would have imagined for the whole thing. And it was like, woof, get that out of here, right? Because it was just driving me crazy. And so then I decided, I still didn't do the Mustang. The all-wheel drive was all in the car. So I decided to do a V8, the V8 Mercure. And so that is, it's a small block Ford with a T56, with then originally had like a GMC cyclone transfer case. It really came from a Bravada, but it sounds better when you say GMC cyclone. And with an adapter in between, and so it was kind of a Frankenstein T56. This all makes sense why the Mustang is a Frankenstein. This is getting to that point. You know, built by D&D Performance in Michigan. And so basically it had the 27-spline output shaft that made it to the transfer case. I made the piece in between, put the shifter in it. And then it had a S10, or it still has, I guess, an S10 front diff on the driver's side. Cause at that point, you asked about was the all-wheel drive working. With the four-banger, it was, but I didn't remotely trust it when I was hoping to get 6, 700 horsepower to V8.

Right, you're upping your torque a little more.

Yeah, yeah, so I didn't trust that at all. So I took all the European all-wheel drive stuff, except for the suspension. I kept the front crossmember, the spindles, the rack and pinion, steering linkage, all that jazz. And so it took me two years, I was single back then, working on it all the time, going from a four-banger, put the V8 in there, made the headers, put the turbo on, intercooler. Actually, that happened later, but and then so I had this whole crazy transmission in there, put the 8.8 in the back. So I had a Thunderbird Super Coupe 8.8, made the axles or had them made and away you go. And the car, it just turned out great, to be honest, right? Besides a little bit, for a little while there, I was trying to use an AEM stupid computer. That was a big pile of junk. But once I went back to a Ford computer with a chip, and it just ran great. And it was completely reliable, flawless, drove it all over the place. And it was basically done, right? And so once again, then I'm coming back, I was gonna, now it's time to move on to the Awd S550 Mustang. And, but I said, well, before I do that, I better get a bigger shop, right? And well, that was like in 2008, 2009 or something like that. And well, moved, and the shop thing never worked out. Then I got married, got kids, and next thing you know, 10 years go by. And so now, okay, now I'm time. Now I'm finally getting to the, I'm going to make the Awd Mustang. And I had learned so much in the previous project. And I've been upgrading that, change transfer cases, different turbo, different exhaust, and all kinds of craziness. And now it's got a Holley EFI computer in it, for example, and all that kind of good stuff. We did the rear suspension at Anti-Squat, and get rid of the camber gain, and all this kind of stuff. And so now it was a matter of, okay, I'm a Ford guy. I own aweldrivemustang.com. Do I actually do a Mustang? Because now it's like, well, now it's literally, I don't know, 15 years from when I was going to start this thing or whatever, maybe longer than that. And it's like, well, I want an AWD. I want it to be a stick. I want it to be a V8. I want a variable torque split. Should it be a Mustang, right? And I have to say, I almost was sacrilegious, and I almost did an E46 BMW.

That would have been cool, too, though.

It would have been cool. It wouldn't have got probably as much attention, but it would have been cool. The advantage there is the front suspension would have existed, right? Because they make all-wheel drive E46s, right? And so you get like, once again, now they're worth tons of money, but you go back five or six years, you can get an E40. I shoot myself. There was one in Hopkins where I passed on it because it was black and not gray for $7,000. That car would be worth 25 grand now. Yeah, you know, it's just insane. But anyways, and so I really, really, really thought about going against my Mustang plan and getting an E46 M3, selling the motor and making like a V8 all-wheel drive turbo M3. But I said, no, no, no, no, no. I gotta stick to my Mustang plan, right? And so then it was a matter of what kind of Mustang, and that's where Dan comes in, actually, is, you know, I thought, well, maybe do like a 60s Mustang, you know? Like several, many people have posted on my videos, they actually made all-wheel drive Mustangs in the 60s. They made like, I don't know, three or four, don't quote me that on that. But a company called Ferguson in Europe, who was a company that developed all-wheel drive systems, and they were trying to sell it to OEMs, they made like, I don't know, three or four, don't quote me.

I think I've heard that before.

Yeah, and a few of them exist still. There's one in Florida, and we need to go to that museum and look at it. But anyways, they made three or four to try to convince Ford to make this an OEM solution. It never happened, of course. So I thought about doing a 60s Mustang, and then of course, what's it called, the Hoonigan, or what's it called?

Oh yeah, Hoonigan.

Hoonigan.

Yeah, that was the Hoonistang. The Hoonicorn.

Hoonicorn came out and I thought, oh my God, no matter what I do, people are going to think I copied that, right?

Yep.

And of course, I have a really soft spot for Fox body. So I really thought about doing a Fox body. And I thought, well, I like the idea of a modern car with like AC and cruise, heated seats, you know, and infotainment system, Apple CarPlay, and all that. And I don't want to do body work. I want it to be a nice car, right? And I don't want to, it's gonna take me years to make it all wheel drive. I don't want it to then take years to make it look nice. Does that make sense?

Yep.

So I finally settled, okay, I'm gonna do either an S197 or an S550. And I have to say, from a pure looks standpoint, I think the 11 and 12, well, the 10 is the same, but it's the bad motor.

Different taillights, yeah.

But the 11 and 12, I just think those are the best. I just love them. I just think that it's the best looking year. And so I thought, well, do I get an 11 and 12, but I really wanted the IRS. And so I reached out on the internet and it's like, well, does anybody have an S550 and an S197 that I can get on jack stands or get on a lift? I wanna see how different they are underneath. Is there one that's just an obviously better application for AWD? And so Dan helped me out. He had both.

This is where Dan comes into play. I think on a Minnesota Mustang page or something like that. And I said, well, what if I have a lift and S197 and an S550 and you were like, sold?

Yeah. So I went over to Hudson and he was more than gracious and hadn't put both cars up on the lift. And I quickly decided it would be easier to deal with the S550 front suspension than it would be to try to put the S550 rear suspension in a 197. I hope that made sense. So I wanted the IRS. Maybe I should have said that. I wanted IRS is a cool thing too. And so, but I wasn't out of the question to put the IRS in the older car. It's been done too, but I decided it was easier to go the other way around and the S550s do have a better interior and stuff like that. So boom, I made the decision, right? So I was gonna do that. So then I started searching for a car, and I've said this in my videos, I purposely didn't buy the nicest one I could find. I bought one the hell all the features I wanted, but I didn't wanna go spend, you know, 30, $40,000 or why didn't you start with the GT350 or something, right? Well, to be quite honest, you know, what if it all went wrong?

Right.

Right. What if I cut the whole front of the car up and then I ruined it, right? And now I have, rather than wasting $20,000, I've wasted 40 or $50,000. And so I got one that had a lot of miles on it. So I got it from Michigan, and I make jokes in all my videos about it. The car's in great shape, but you know, certain things like the exhaust is just rusty as s*** from like two winners in Michigan, just destroyed the exhaust. But in general, it was in pretty good shape and it was just an unbelievable deal. So I don't know if I should even say this, but I bought it in the September of 19 with the sole purpose of making it all go drive and it had 65,000 miles on it. So it was like a year and a half old and I got it for $22,000.

Yeah.

I mean, that was just as, it was 10 grand less than everything else.

Yeah, and to be honest with you, 65,000 miles on a Coyote isn't nothing.

So it was super cheap and relatively speaking.

Your car's never seen that kind of mileage as it.

No, not yet, but you know.

Just making sure.

There's plenty of high mileage. I mean, a good Coyote motor should be a good 100 and almost 200,000 mile motor. No problem.

Just keeping you humble today.

Yeah, so that was a great purchase. No regrets there. I loved the color. I loved the car. I loved the interior. It has everything I wanted.

What year is it?

It's a 17. And if I knew what I knew now, I probably would have got a Gen 3. But when I bought it in 19, there were still like some, is a Gen 3 any good? Nobody knew. Well, now we know that they're awesome, right? We didn't know at the time. And so, and I maybe would have been cool to play around with the MagneRide too. The 17s don't have MagneRide, but that might have been a challenge on the struts. But anyway, so now I got it and I started right away. I bought it in September and it was up on my lift by, I don't know, November and all taken apart by the end of November.

So did you drive it around and enjoy it at all?

For a couple of weeks.

Yeah? I was gonna ask when that cutoff point was, okay, now it's cut apart, it's a project.

Yeah, it was a project. I mean, I bought it for that exact reason, right? And so, like I said, I wanted V8, I wanted stick, I wanted the AWD, and I wanted fast. And so, I hit it right away. And to be honest, I started filming right away to make videos. I didn't actually start publishing videos until two years later because I, I don't know, was scared, to be honest. It's like, that's a big step, right? And so, the first year or so was mostly me just like making a plan. Like you asked, you know, it's like, I'm coming full circle back to your question. You said, it's all these crazy parts. And so, I had learned so much on the, on the Mercure, and I had, of course, endlessly researched in the ten years in between, you know, what transmission, what transfer case, what this, what that. And, and so, this time, of course, I'm going to use a TR6060. That's a done deal. It's going to be a stick. There was no way I was going to keep the MT82. But then, what transfer case? Okay, so, coming back to that. So, I knew I didn't want like a full-time, all-mechanical transfer case, you know, like a Silverado SS, or like a Trailblazer SS, or an old Cyclone, or anything like that. I wanted the variable torque split, but I wanted one that was easy to control, right? I didn't want to have to have some complex computer or something.

So, what is variable torque split, if you don't mind me asking for us, non-all-wheel drive dummies?

Yeah, so, okay, I'll explain it again here. So, like I said, most older all-wheel drive systems, like most Subarus to this day, matter of fact, have three differentials, right? So, they have a front diff, rear diff, right? That allows the wheels to spin at different speeds. But then, if like, if you have a four-wheel drive truck, for example, and you just put it in four high, and there's no center differential, when you go to take a turn, it's gonna hop and crab, because the front axle wants to turn at a different speed than the rear axle, right? And so, all of the older all-wheel drive cars have a center differential, either a 50-50 torque split, if it's just a regular diff, or if it's, a lot of them have planetary differentials, and so they have like a 30-70, 70 in the back, 30 in the front. And like, all the old Astro vans and the Cyclones, which are the same basic thing, and Typhoons, and I don't know, a lot of, all the old, Subarus, right? And so, they're basically then, by definition, a fixed torque split nominally, right? They're whatever the gear ratios are, right? And then if there's slip, right? If for some reason you blow the back tires off or the front wheels, then whatever limited slip device you have takes over and starts to try to adjust for that, right? So in the case of like a viscous coupling, it's a viscous coupling. So the viscous coupling will, basically if you have two different speeds, it heats up and starts to lock up to try to prevent like your rear wheels or front wheels from running away, right? In the case of a torsion, it's just like a mechanical lockup, and which the Audis use a torsion. And so it just, as you detect slip, it starts to lock up, right? And so the variable torque split cars, like I said, almost all modern all-wheel drive systems, except maybe the manual Subarus, I think that's true, are variable torque split. Meaning like, let's say, all your rear wheel drive based systems, like your GTRs, like the R35 GTR, the BMWs, I guess Jaguars, Dodge, your Chargers, basically the rear wheels are always connected. If you look at the transfer case, the shaft right through the middle of it is just one piece. So your back wheels are always hooked up. And then there's a chain to power the front wheels. And in that chain, there's a clutch. It's basically almost like in an automatic transmission, there's like steels and frictions. Just like, say, I don't know, 10 clutches. And so basically, you clamp that clutch to provide torque to the front wheels, right? And then the clutches can slip, and that provides your differential action that prevent it from hopping and skipping when you take tight turns, right? Does that make sense?

I used to have a V6 Charger, it was all wheel drive. So I'm somewhat familiar.

Yeah, so yeah, exactly. So basically, but you need a computer or something to control that, right? Because it's inherently just a clutch, right? And so I wanted a transfer case that was easy to control, right? And so coming back to the whole, well, why don't you just use an old GTR transfer case, like from a, you know, R32 or something. I should have bought one just to have one, because like I said, now they're worth a lot of money. But oh, there's our dyno.

Yep, so this is the part of the episode where there's a dyno run.

Yeah.

The featured production valley of Ratified Motorsport.

That's a loud one. That's shaking the floor right now.

That's shaking the floor. That's a first. I think that's officially.

Yeah.

By the way, so anybody listening, this is by the way, like it has to be one of the coolest cars that's come through the shop ever. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to reveal it, but by far one of the coolest cars has come through here. And yeah, probably one of the faster ones I've seen on the dyno here, but. Anyways, so back to the important aspect.

Yeah. So you have this clutch, you have to be able to control it, right? So the old, the R32, 33, 34 GTRs, they work just like this too. And as far as I know, they're the first car to do it this way where there's a clutch like that. And that's why I kind of used an American GTR, right? And, but they're hydraulic, right? So there's a whole, the actual, how the clutch is applied is like a hydraulic, there's a piston in there, and in the trunk of a GTR, there's a hydraulic pump with an accumulator that runs and keeps pressure. And then there's a computer that basically controls a valve to get pressure to the clutch, to control that clutch to get power to the front wheels. And, you know, it's like, well, that's, you know, late 80s technology, and I didn't want the hydraulic pump in the trunk. And plus you have to buy all those parts from Japan or get somebody to import it. And so I didn't get one of those. And like the BMW transfer cases, they have kind of a built-in control, and they're all CAN based, and they use like this DC motor. And anyways, it's really complex. We won't go into the details. And so, but the BorgWarner and some of the Nissan transfer cases are really easy to control. Like so, they're basically just like a solenoid. There's a big coil inside the transfer case that pulls a steel plate that basically, it's not going into too much detail, clamps the clutch, right? And it's just a coil, and you just give it power, right? And so, the, like all of the Infiniti, you know, like your G35, G37s, and the R35 GTR all work this way. It's just two wires, right? So, I actually, of course, got some Infiniti transfer cases, and then the Dodge transfer case from the Dodge Chargers and the Challengers works that way, too.

I was looking at buying one of those a few years ago.

The newer ones, it's gotta be an 11 or newer.

Yeah, that's the police spec ones, I believe, right?

Yeah, so they made V8s for the general public up to 13. Correct. And you can still, well, I guess they quit making them, what, two weeks ago now, but literally two weeks ago? But you could get the V8s and the cop cars up until they quit making them recently.

Yeah, I really wanted one of those. The dream was, because I saw how cheap they were at first, relatively speaking, I think at a certain point you can get them for like 15 or 20 grand. And I was like, man, it'd be awesome to just throw a pro charger in there or something.

Yeah, I drove a couple of them too, and I was really tempted. I was, well, getting back to, should I do a Mustang? I was tempted to do a Challenger, of course, because then you could get the all-wheel drive suspension. But anyway, let's stay on task here.

That makes it easy to stay on task.

So I got a good friend who has one, and it's a nice car. It's a real nice car. So I wanted an easy-to-control transfer case, and so I settled on the one, the BorgWarner, from the Charger or Challenger, right? And so now I have my transmission, I have that. And so now, how do I get the front diff in there? And so you asked about the Hilux, or the Toyota Pickup, as it was called in the US. How would you, why would you pick that? That seems like so odd.

Well, it was when I was reading through it.

Yeah, that's the one that throws me, for sure.

Yeah, that wasn't my first choice. My first choice was to use the GM diff, just like the Mercuro, from the seven and a quarter IFS, like from an S10. They actually used them up until 2009 in the Trailblazer. And good diff, you can get limited slips for them. And so, during this whole, when I said, I took it apart like a month after I bought it, and the first thing I wanted to do was kind of get the front diff in there. And I took the front suspension off, and I made that whole hanger system to hold the engine up, and I'm laying all this out. And I wanted to put the diff on the passenger side. And so, one of the big lessons learned from the Mercuro is where the diff is on the driver's side, is that any bump in the floor and the drive shaft and the diff, you know, it all interferes with the steering and the pedals and your driver's seat and all that stuff. And it ended up, my bump in the floor ended up being nothing, but I didn't know that. And so, I wanted the diff to be on the passenger side, so that if there was a big bump in the floor, or it wouldn't affect the clutch pedal or the gas pedal, excuse me, it wouldn't affect the steering, it wouldn't affect any of that. And so, which is also why the Infiniti and the Dodge transfer cases are right-hand drop, as they call it, right? It's on the right-hand side. Most of the other cars, the Beamers, are on the left, right? Anyways, back to the point. And so, I needed a diff that fit on the right side of the car, and the GM diff is meant to be on the left side, but I'm a creative guy. I was gonna make it work, right? So, I got the GM diff, and I was gonna make it work on the right hand side, but most front differentials is what's called a high pinion diff, right? So, if you have your ring gear, right? You look at a ring gear, the rear differential, the pinion is below the center line, right? It's a high point gear, right? So, the pinion is below the center line, and that loads the gears correctly, right? And in most front diffs, because you're flipped around, the pinion is above the center line, right? And that's the better way to go. So, but after months, that's not an exaggeration of, I don't know, I must have cut up three or four of these GM diffs. You know, they're like worth nothing, and give them for free. And so, I cut them up and tried to slice and dice, and it was like, even like, oh, should I machine my own housing? I finally accepted the fact that it wasn't, there's just no way, right? I was even thinking like crazy ideas, like do I take the diff and actually angle it down to get, cause basically with the high pinion, the pinion wanted to be where the bellhousing was, cause the flywheel was, right? And I had to get the drive shaft underneath it, right? And so, I'm like, well, what do I do? Well, obviously I need a different differential, right? And so it's like, okay, so what are my requirements? Well, it's gotta be readily available. It's gotta be strong enough. It's gotta be, I realize now, it really should be a low pinion. And the hardest part is it has to have gear ratios that match the back, right? So you look at all of these modern front wheel drive, excuse me, all wheel drive cars, like heck, a lot of GM cars that are all wheel drive have the diff on that side. The Chrysler's have the diff on that side. But they're all just oddball gear ratios, right? Like the Mercedes has to have the diff. You get like, I don't know, I'm making this up, but the gear ratios are like 379 or something, or 386, they're just completely crazy gear ratios. And whereas most US cars, like all of your trucks and the Mustang diffs, they're all kind of your standards. You get your 331s, your 355s, your 373s, your 410s, your 456s. And so you had to have a diff that had those gear ratios available.

Was your car a performance-packed car?

So it came with 373s. Okay, yep. And so I had to have a diff, that front diff that you could get 373s for, right? And so most of your meant to be just a front diff or an all-wheel drive car, and these modern cars don't have that gear ratio available. And they have to at least be close if not matching. And so, okay, so what do you do? Well, you go down, well, what about a Dana 30? So I got a couple Dana 30s and proceeded to cut them up. And coincidentally, FYI, the IRS Volvo was using a Dana 30 in the back. So I got one of those, and the thing was just too big. It just wasn't the right shape. So I thought, well, should I machine my own, use the Dana 30 gears and machine my own housing? My buddy Harold talked me out of that, which was a good thing. That was a good thing. And so now I'm like, okay, so then I stumbled upon the fact that the old school Toyota pickups, like your, I don't know, 85 through 95, right? When they were just called a truck, Hilux and the rest of the world. They have a right hand drive, a right hand drop transfer case. The diff's in the front. It's a low pinion. The Toyota diffs are known to be really strong. You can get all of the gear ratios you want for them because the off-road world, and they used to put them in the back of Celicas and Supras, so you can get 373s, 390s, 410s, whatever you want. You can get gear ratios for them. And you can get limited slips for them. Like, okay, that checks all the boxes. So I got that. The only downfall is its iron case, right? So it was like 16 pounds heavier than the GM diff I wanted to use. But once I got it and put it in the car, it was just like this almost like a light coming from God. It fit. It was like it was meant to be. It was just crazy how it fit. And it was really narrow, too. It was just it really just came together. It was amazing how it made the whole project work out. And so, yeah, that's how I ended up with this, like, you know, 2017 Mustang. It's got a, you know, like 92 Toyota front differential in it. But, you know, it's just these crazy things.

And so I'm curious, how much Googling did you have to do for this? Is this something that could have been done 20 years ago with the amount of things that you had to go through?

You would have had to have gone a lot more junkyards, right?

Yeah.

So the beauty of both Google and the most valuable resource on the planet is, you know, car dash parts.

Yes, I love that. I use that all the time.

Yeah, it used to be you had to go, you know, go dive in through the mud to get parts. Well, now I can call a place in South Dakota and use Speedy Delivery, and a Tota diff disappears on my steps. And, you know, I know I must have got, I mean, I have, I got axles from Jeeps and Dodges. You know, you just got to get this stuff and try it and see what's going to fit.

Do you have this all on hand still? Or did you get rid of a lot of it?

You know, I, you know, once you make it runs of the scrap yard and stuff.

Yeah. So a lot of GM diffs.

Let's say this is stuff you can't just throw in your trash can either when you're done with it.

A lot of transfer cases. I got a lot of transfer cases. Some to take apart. The guy had to hollow one from mocking up. Anyways, so no, you just, you know, a lot of this stuff isn't that expensive. You know, like how valuable is a diff from a Toyota Hilux? Excuse me. Not, right?

Those are going up in value though now.

Yeah, but you can get them for 50 bucks. No problem.

Still.

Yeah, and the transfer cases are so bulletproof that they just never break or wear out in the original application that you can get them for $100 all day long, right? And so, yeah, so then, so I literally spent like the first year and a half figuring all that out. And then I had the plan. I had all my parts, right? At least not counting the spindles, I guess, but I had the front diff, the transmission, the transfer case, et cetera, et cetera. And it was time to try to make some actual progress, right? But I took, I don't know, we'll say a few months off. It was now like summer, a year and a half later, and the car, you joked earlier, I bought the car and a month later put it up on the rack, and I owned the car like almost a year and a half, two years, and I've never driven the thing. And I knew I'd be busy in the summer, so I put it all back together just to drive it for the summer. And, but part of that, I wanted to test out some springs and stuff. So I bought a used set of Steeda Performance Springs and shocks and struts and everything, and were used from, is it Midway, Mustang and Ottawa?

Yep, yep, yeah, Eric Donovan Midway.

Yeah, yeah, Midway, yeah.

Good guy, I deal with him all the time.

Yeah, all my spindles came from him. And I put it all back together with the Steeda Springs just to drive it for summer. And then I wanted to, and I got the wheels, wheels that are still on it. Like they were, once again, they were like closed out from late model restoration because I just wanted to get the size right and get the tires on it to mock everything up. And proved out my whole, get the offset right. Because I didn't want the wheels to stick out. I guess I sidetrack here. But if you, getting back to Google, if you just Google, right, and I mean to make a video about this. Oh, here's Tim's theory on life on, anyways. So if you just Google how to put a square setup on an S550 Mustang, say you want to run 19 by 11s and run like 295s or 305s square setup on a S550. The standard recipe is to basically get 25 millimeter spacers in the front and bolt on your wheels, which I did. And the things, of course, they stick out, even unless you put this ridiculous camber in them, you know, they stick out. And then I went to drive it around and the thing just tram line like crazy. I'm like, what the thing is like, what's going on? And I mean, this is insane. And so I'm an engineer, like, well, what should the offset be? So basically you take a 50 millimeter offset wheel, which is the common, the 19 by 1150 is common for the back of an S550. You know, you put a 25 millimeter spacer in there, you effectively have a 25 millimeter offset. And yet all of the OEM front rims are like 30 or 35, right? So you're moving the center line of the wheel way out. And that's just so your scrub radius goes all to hell. And so I'm like, well, this is horrible. This thing is all over the place. And so I did the math case. So I got some 15 millimeter spacers, which you can't do without putting new longer studs in. So I did that. And then I put in a camber bolt on the spindle, so you could basically move the strut away, because that's why you need 25 millimeter spacers, is the tire hits the strut on a stuck setup. And so you basically put a camber bolt in there and move the strut away, which would actually put the camber in the wrong direction. But then you take your camber castor plate on top and put it all back the way it's supposed to be, and voila, the car drives like stock. And so all these suggestions on the internet of just putting a 25 millimeter spacer on there is, in my opinion, not the way to go.

Well, that might be for your average. When you say camber bolt, you're talking one of those with the little lobe on it? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, what's the company that makes those things? I forget now, don't, I forget.

I love how it's easier to send it done, is it should be the title of this podcast, because everything that you're saying now, it's like, it took a minute to explain, but probably took hours and hours of tedious work.

Yeah, yeah, there was obviously some math behind it. But anyways, and so this may be a boring part, but I put it all back to stock with these springs and figured out this suspension and got it to that tram line and drove it for like, I don't know, three months over the summer. And I couldn't believe with the Steeda springs and shocks in it, how it just transformed the car and how soft the stock suspension was. And it really, why this is important to the story is not that I had lost hope in the project, but it had been almost two years by this point and it was right back to where I started. But it made the car drive so much, hats off to Steeda and their springs and shocks and getting the camber right and everything. But it's amazing how much better the car drove. I mean, it was just so much more fun. There's less brake dive in year shifting and the front end didn't lift up like crazy, like the stock springs. And so now I was completely re-motivated.

Do you have the TR66 in at this point? Or no, you just have it collected? This is all back to, other than the suspension?

Yeah, I just put it all back to stock just to drive it for a summer because I knew I'd be busy, couldn't work on it. And I actually even drove it to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin for work, you know, got like 30 miles a gallon. It was amazing. And so yeah, drove it all summer and it really re-motivated me. And so that fall is when I, is basically what I say now, it took me two years from that point. And it's when I hit it really hard and that's where I started making the videos. And I've been working on it as much as I can constantly ever since, and have now been successful, right? And so, yeah, anyways, I could, I was getting kind of long, but so now I had all my parts, I knew what diff I wanted, I knew the transfer case, I knew the transmission, and I had my master plan. And so I proceeded to get the transmission working. So I worked with a company in Texas, Texas drivetrain performance. And because they, it's basically a TR6060, actually from a Dodge Challenger, not that that's important. I should have bought a GT500 one, it would have been money ahead in the long term, but I got this Challenger one for like super cheap. It was, the tail housing was cracked, so it was just unbelievably cheap.

You had to change out the input shaft and all that stuff too then?

Yeah, but Texas drivetrain performance was super cool, and they allowed me to swap all those parts for free, because he wanted those parts.

Oh, okay.

And so it now has a, actually a Magnum, a T56 Magnum, not Magnum XL, because they're different.

Yep.

Magnum input shaft and front cover, because I want it to be as short as possible. So I'm using the old school T56 bell housing, right? So it's about almost an inch shorter than the Magnum XL bell housing. To get the transfer cases forward.

My God, I just keep waiting for an explosion or something.

Yeah, it sounds freaking crazy.

It does sound great. It does sound great. Yeah, so, so Texas drivetrain was fantastic. Jason, yeah, that's his name. Super cool to work with. And so I basically bought the transmission, took it all apart, and we went back and forth on main shafts and input shafts. And I bought the front cover from him and all the parts from him, all the upgraded synchros and everything, and figured everything out. And, but then I actually cut the main shaft. Well, first I resplined it, right, to resplined it and then made an adapter to go to the transfer case. And then it's got a Corvette. So it's a, sorry, back up here, right? So it's a GT500 main shaft, like an older GT500 main shaft, that's been resplined to a 31 spline, like Ford spline, and then cut off way shorter, right? Excuse me. And it's a C5 Corvette tail housing, not a C6. And the C5s don't normally fit on a TR6060, but Texas Drive Chain Performance modifies them to fit, right? So I bought that from him. And so that fits on there. And that now gives you something, the bolt to transfer case, too. And it did the same exact thing in the Mercure. That one has a C5 tail housing, too. And so then I proceeded to machine, you know, design and CAD. I brought all these parts to work, to be quite frank, and put them in what's called a coordinate measuring machine, where you can put them in and, you know, measure all the holes and get accurate measurements. And put it all in CAD and proceeded to go through a couple of iterations and machined an adapter, then the bolt to transfer case to the back of this Corvette tail housing. And then I had a company, I can't do internal splines yet, so I had a company make the little spud that goes between the GT500, modified GT500 mid-shaft and the transfer case. Boom, that all works. And then proceeded to put that in the car, cut the hole in the floor, put weld in the bump and everything. And just better than I ever would have expected, the bump is so tiny, and it's completely in front of the passenger seat, so it doesn't even affect the travel. You can put the seat all the way forward.

Oh, so it'd be like right under, it's like close to the seat, then you're saying?

Yeah, you wouldn't, if I didn't point it out to you, you would never know it's there. It's completely tiny. And that's the beauty of using a more modern car-based transfer case, whereas like the Merakure, it's a truck-based transfer case. And so I got the transmission in there, and then that would have been basically a year ago. Got the transmission in, the clutch in, had the drive shaft made. That started out as an aftermarket GT500 drive shaft and had a local place shorten it. What's it called? A&A drive train up in Anoka shortened it for me. And then I made the little adapter to go to the back of the transfer case. So bolted right to the diff. And I made the adapter to bolt it to the transfer case.

Is it aluminum then?

It's aluminum. Not to digress, but what I really wanted to do was make a drive shaft that had dual CV joints, like the factory, like the newer GT500. You have a GT500, don't you? Yep. The new one? And if you look at one of those, is they actually have CV joints on both sides of the drive shaft, right? And it's just a one piece.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yep.

I wanted to do that. It turns out like nobody does that. And nobody can balance them anyways. Nobody has the equipment to balance such a thing. And so maybe somebody, if anybody can make that, let me know. Anyways, I gave up. So it's just an aluminum regular 1350 U-joint drive shaft in the back. So that was November of last, well, I guess it'd be the year before last, because we're in 24. And I got it back on the wheels. Once again, two wheel drive, but the new transmission in it, the transfer case was in it, the drive shaft, and I drove it around for like a month to make sure all that worked. And I had to make the shifter too. We won't go into that detail, but basically it's an external shifter, modified Camaro MGW shifter. That was a whole little exercise in itself. And we got the reverse lights working, got all the stuff working, and then used a tuner to get the gear ratios right in the computer, and got all that working. So now I was confident that the transmission worked, and the transfer case fit in the car, right? And so then it was up to the front spindles. And so this was probably the hardest part of doing an S550 Mustang. I have always joked that with a big enough hole in the floor, you can make any transfer case fit, right? But it's the front suspension, right?

They have a lot of stuff crammed in up there. This is the part where I'm curious how you did all this stuff.

Yeah, so the next thing, so once I got the transmission figured out, my next task was to finalize the spindles, right? And I wanted to keep, I wasn't sure it was gonna work, spoiler alert, it does work, but I wanted to try to keep the S550 geometry, right? I didn't want to use a Subaru spindle, for example, which would have been an obvious thing to do, or any other car that already has a setup for a front axle, right? I didn't want to convert to just a single ball joint. So the S550 Mustangs, if you don't know, are a dual pivot front suspension, right? So you have a tension rod going forward, and then a, I guess it's called a radial rod? I don't know. Anyways, there's two ball joints in the bottom of the spindle, which is very common now. All the E90 and newer BMWs are that way. Maybe even E39 and newer BMWs are that way. The Camaros are that way, your Cadillac ATS, CTS, they're all, this is just a modern way of doing it. And so rather than having just a single lower ball joint, there's two. And so, and they're at just funky, I'm sure, computer designed CAD angles, right? Where these U-joints, or excuse me, ball joints, one comes in from the bottom, one comes in from the top, and they're at all of these crazy angles. And then where the strut bolt's on is not centered, it's offset, and it's just obviously all kinds of computer designed geometry going on there. And so I thought, oh man, how am I gonna do this, right? And so I wasn't confident that I could duplicate all that crazy geometry that the U-joints, or excuse me, ball joints go into. And then I had an epiphany, like, well, maybe I shouldn't try to duplicate that. Maybe I should just take that part of the spindle and just cut it off in a well-done new stuff, right? And which is what I did. And then I stumbled upon, I don't know why I didn't know this at the time, after spending too much money at Midway Mustang buying all these spindles, I didn't realize that the GT350s and the MagnaRide cars use a bolt-on bearing, right? So FYI, your non-performance pack S550s use the same bearing as an S197, so it's like the spindle just has a male spud sticking out of it, and the bearing just slides over it. And the MagnaRide cars and the performance pack 2 cars and the Mach 1s and stuff, they have a whole different spindle, and they have a unit bearing that bolts on, like almost every modern car, right? So it's just four bolts, and there's a completely encased bearing that bolts on. And so...

Do they even have splines in the inside of them too?

Well, yeah.

Some of them do, even though you don't use it, they're just there.

They do, and so of course, when I announced that I was gonna make an all-wheel drive Mustang, I posted like a Mustang 6G and a corner carvers and a few other places. Everybody just instantly said, well, you do know that the GT350 front hubs have splines. You can just take a GT350 spindle, and it's just, it's done, it's done. Somebody even sent me a picture of a GT350 front spindle, which I have one, by the way, with the back of it hogged out and a CV joint from the back of a Explorer jammed into it. And basically he said, see, you're done. Well, that doesn't remotely work, right? If you look at, so, because even if you search Awd Mustang online, just in Google, you'll see all kinds of references like from 2000, like 17 and 16 with like spy shots. Ford's making an Awd Mustang, because they use as proof of that is the splines are inside the bearings.

Yeah, when they probably just come from the manufacturer that way wherever they're buying them from.

Exactly. And I am beyond convinced that those splines are just a vestige of the manufacturing process, because they're super short. They're only about that long. So they're not meant to take torque. And they're a really oddball spline. Don't get me wrong, I investigated all this, but they're the same spline as like a Taurus or like a 2011 Explorer, like the front wheel drive based Explorer. But even the Explorers and the Tauruses and the like the Flexes, they all use that spline. Oops, sorry.

No, I got you.

Even those, even though they use the same spline, if you get an actual bearing from a Explorer, it has splines to whole length. Of course it does, right? It doesn't have just a little bit of spline. And so I couldn't, you can't use the GT350 hubs. They're just, there's not enough spline there. So, okay. So now what do you do? And as I have a whole video about this, I went through endless gyrations about what front hub to use. Cause it directly impacts your CV joint. You're gonna, cause you gotta have a CV joint that plugs in and all that kind of stuff. And I was this close to using a front bearing from like an R35 GTR. Cause at least it's the right bolt pattern. Right? It's a right. And, but then I just like, well, what about just using the back one? Right? So that's what I did. Right? So I made my own spindle, by cutting off, I basically took the lower part of a MagneRide spindle, cut it off and used, I didn't just cut it off flat. I kind of carefully carved it out and bolted on two plates that use the old bearing mount and bolted it on. And then I used the back, the hub from the back of an S550 Mustang.

These are the ones that I keep having problems with.

So I used the, yeah, the back bearings in the front and the back outer CV joint, actually. I'm using that in the front too, because even though they're meant to be in the back, they still articulate like a normal, they're just a normal CV joint, right? And that worked out great. Now, I totally found out after this is all done that the 20 and 20 and newer GT500s use a different bearing again that is far superior and is a regular 33 spline, right? So, which is kind of an industry standard, so there's just tons of CV joints that would have fit that. So if I would have known that the 20 and 20 newer GT500 rear hub was so awesome, I would have used that, but I didn't know. And so I used the rear, just regular S550 bearing, made the spindle by, they said, cutting off the bottom of a MagneRide spindle and welding all the rest of it on. And then I used the rear outer joint from the Mustang, right? And so then it came down to the inner joint. And so kind of coming back to I didn't want, I wanted to use the stock Mustang geometry, right? I didn't want to reinvent that. And so the stock geometry is not meant for an all wheel drive vehicle, right? And so even though I built in, you know, my little dissertation earlier about the 15 millimeter spacers and moving your strut and all that kind of good stuff to make your, to make the wheel in the right spot so it doesn't stick out and you're not tramlining, I built all that into my new strut or my new spindle so you don't need a spacer. But the fact of the matter is the CV joint ends up kind of sticking way inside, and it isn't lined up with what's called the kingpin axis, right? Which is the axis the wheel is turning on, right? And if you look at an actual spindle designed to be driven, you know, like a front-wheel drive car, you'll see that they take that into account. They put the CV joint so it's on that axis, right? So when you turn the wheel, the CV joint just rotates. Does that make sense?

Yep.

Well, with my homemade Frankenstein contraption, the CV joint is behind it. And so now when it rotates, it goes through a big arc. You picture that?

Yep.

And so now...

I'm already trying to figure out, is there a clear shot? All this stuff you're explaining, I know all this stuff you're talking about is in the way.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in your way. Yeah, okay.

I had to cut the crossmember all apart. Okay. And so after I made the spindles, knocked it up in the car, and using just literally like a piece of wood as like a CV joint, you know, or a CV axle, excuse me, I put the spindle through its travel, and I thought, oh s***, this isn't going to work. I mean, you need so much travel in the axle, right? I mean, you need plunge, as they call it in that world. And I'm like, how am I going to get that much plunge? And like all your like kind of generic, universal, like motorsport CV joints, like your 930 joint, which is used everywhere, Porsche 930 joint, is you all your like all like your G force axles that you can get for an S550 Mustang, your drive shaft shop axles. They all use this kind of aftermarket universal, like the small block Chevy of CV joints. It's called a Porsche 930 joint. It's 108 millimeters in diameter. But they only have like, you know, 20 millimeters of plunge. I need like 50, you know, because of my crazy spindle, like, oh man. And so I thought, do I have to just scrap this whole stock suspension and go back to the Subaru idea or something? You know, like, oh my God.

Especially when you're so far along in the process, it's like, all right, do I have to redo all this?

There's a hump in the floor now, we gotta keep moving.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, holy s*** balls, you know?

It's never ending.

It's never ending, right? It's never ending. And so I needed an inner CV joint that had a lot of travel. And so most CV joints in the front, like whether it's a GTR, BMW, every front-wheel drive vehicle on the planet, with a couple of exceptions, they use these tripod joints and they don't like angles. They don't have a lot of travel most of the time. And so it's a long story, but I just, endless, endless research, and stumbled upon the fact that the, I don't know what, 07 through, no, it'll be like 05 through 09, whatever, Jeep Grand Cherokees, and the Jeep Commander for that matter, use this completely killer inner CV joint. It's like an eight-ball CV joint that has just lots of travel, because it's a Jeep, right? So they don't need travel because of the crazy arc. They need travel because they have lots of suspension travel. Does that make sense?

Yep.

And so, it's like one of the, kind of like the Toyota diff. It was like one of these eureka moments. Like, holy crap.

It seems like the trucks are doing well for you so far.

Yeah, when you say you stumble across, like you're talking about hours of research, as I'm assuming Googling, reading.

Yeah, Googling, and then going to the junkyard, and then ordering some. Another, what's it called? It's in Long Lake, Elite Auto Racking. I'll just call them up and just leave it outside because they close at five o'clock. Because I bought tons of CV axles from that place. And so I stumbled upon the fact that they have a lot of travel. And what's, not that this is actually that important, but what I thought was super funny and such a coincidence is they're made by NTN, the same company who makes the Mustang axles, right, who also makes the bearing. And they're actually like the same thing. Like you look at the rear CV joint, the rear inner CV joint from a S550 Mustang, it doesn't have the travel, but it's the same exact CV joint and all the parts are changed. You can take the balls and the cage and everything from the front of a Jeep Commander, and it would fit in the back of a Mustang, in a Mustang CV joint. It's exactly the same joint. And the same thing is true on the outside. The spline that actually fits into the bearing is different, but the outer Jeep CV joint is exactly the same as the outer rear Mustang joint. So it was all these parts. It was just like Eureka moment, right? So let's solve that problem. So how did I stumble upon the Jeep joint? That's a good question coming back to me. So the differential is on the passenger side, excuse me. And obviously that inner CV joint plugs right into it. Well, I took the CV joint, I just machined it and resplined it to directly fit into the differential.

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Yeah. So how I stumbled upon the Jeep CV joints being like this perfect joint was the CV joint that plugs into the diff itself on the passenger side is a male spline, right? I knew by this point in time, I had proven to myself, I can respline things myself. I have the mill, I have the equipment to do that. And so basically, as long as you have enough meat on the CV joint, almost any CV joint could be machined to fit into the Toyota differential, right? But I don't have the ability to do female splines, right? And the lot, and so I had, you know, there's a shaft, you know, going through the oil pan, right? That then feeds the CV joint on the driver's side. And logically speaking, you'd have the shaft be the male spline, and the CV joint would be the female spline. Once again, I have no way to make a female spline. And so back in the Mercure days, I had a company in Illinois do that for me, but I didn't want to do that. They were expensive, blah. And so I said, well, okay, what factory application has a nice, elegant CV joint that has a female spline in it? And getting back to the Google comment, yeah, I've just started like, you know, female spline, CV joint, blah, blah, blah. And next thing you know, I'm on these jeep commander forums with people rebuilding their CV joints. And I'm like, not only is it like a female spline, not only does it look twice as long as everything else, so it's got lots of travel, but it's an eight ball, it's not a tripod joint, right? It's a eight ball joint, which is better for torque and better for angles. And so I, you know, call up, I do whatever, either Elite or Forget, or if I went car dash parts, and next thing you know, I have some jeep axle sitting on my steps. And yeah, like I said, it was like an epiphany. It was perfect. And so now I have a female spline CV joint. The other side was easy to re-machine, to plug in to the differential, and away you go. Right, so now I have my spindles done. I have the basic plan for the axles. And now it's the oil pan. And that, to be honest, besides my whole welding fiasco was, by this point in time, I had it all planned out. It had been a couple of years, and I had it all figured out. And so that just basically was just executing. I drilled a hole through it. I go into pretty good detail in the video. But if I'm gonna let out secrets, what I didn't do right is I didn't weld it together in the right sequence. Like the design was solid, but I welded what actually goes onto the diff, onto the cross tube first. There's a tube going through the oil pan, right? And that kind of barely clears the crank and to get the thing as high as possible. And there's a shaft going through it. And I welded, basically I welded the plate that goes to the diff onto the tube first, and then shoved the tube into the oil pan, which had already drilled the holes, and then proceeded to weld it. Well, you couldn't get, I basically covered up a spot that I needed to weld. Does that make sense? Because I didn't do it in the right sequence and didn't want to start over again. So I proceeded to spend like a month trying to get that thing to seal up and trying to cut it out, weld it, try to tig weld it, eventually weld it on the inside. Eventually got it to where it wasn't a comical leak. At first, it was like a Exxon Valdez. And got it to where it was like moist to a drip, right? And then I did, which I did the same thing on the Miracour, did the same thing on my friend's Porsche. We basically, you put some Pore 15 on it. Pore 15 is impervious to oil, right? Whereas you pour 15 the inside and the outside and the way you go. And now it's been, I don't know, four or five months, four months, and there's no drips zone. And I've driven, I put, I don't know, probably 8,000 miles on it or something, but it doesn't leak. So the oil pan was pretty straightforward and got the diff in there. There's a little bit of a side track getting, because now with the tube going through there, you can't, the stock oil pickup tube wouldn't fit, but not super exciting. And you bend it, make it work, and get the oil pickup tube going and make it work. And one of the things, I lost the factory windage tray. I got to maybe do something about that in the future. So the coyotes from the factory, at least the Mustang ones, the oil pan gasket is also a windage tray, and the F-150 is just a gasket. It just goes around the perimeter, but in the Mustangs, it's a whole thing. And well, it didn't work. I have a tube going through the middle and all kinds of crap. So I'm using the F-150 gasket. So do I have more windage? I guess I do. I don't know. Does that really matter? I don't know. So we'll worry about that later. And so now the oil pan's done, and now it's all coming together. And so then the last thing was the diff cover, making the axles, the diff cover. But the last rule, like, you know, is it gonna work or not, is basically I had to move the rack and pinion forward, right? And to get it to clear all this stuff. And after I made the spindles, I didn't quite realize how far I had to move the rack forward until it was all kind of mocked up. And it was more than I thought, because I was trying to keep it at the stock height so that it wouldn't affect the bump steer. And it was looking at that, well, it's going to completely hose up the Ackerman steering, right? Which is your two tires turn at different rates to take into account the radius, right? And if I move it too far forward, it's going to totally screw that up. And so I realized, well, if I lower it down, then I can get it way closer because it clears the ring gear of the differential. And that's how tight I'm trying to make it. I'm like, I'm literally clearing gears. And I got it to where it's actually less than an inch farther forward, but it's like an inch plus lower. And so then I had to use a bump steer kit on the spindles to make the bump steer, which it worked out totally.

Before we get too far away from the oil pan, do you know how much it changes your oil capacity?

Oh, probably not enough to matter. Yeah, no. The tube, I want to say the tube might even be above the nominal level.

Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah, if it is, it's really close. So no, not really, nothing. Not enough to matter, like I said. I did ponder, if I want to get on a sidetrack on that, I even have all the parts. You know, of course, the Gen 3 Mustangs, the 2018 and newer, and the GT350s before that, used this plastic oil pan.

It's like a composite one. It scared the hell out of me. I had one on my car for a while.

And they've gone back to steel now, by the way, in the S650s, so there must have been a reason for that. Anyways, but back to the point, the plastic pan is kind of cool in that the whole oil pickup tube is built into the pan. And it uses a different oil pump with like this big boss on the bottom of it, the big gasket. And so when you shove the oil pan on, it basically does like a big, big fitting that slides into the oil pan, or excuse me, the oil pump, and away you go. And that would have been one way of addressing the fact that my tube was in the way. I could have basically put a Gen 3 oil pump in it, and then had the oil pickup tube be part of the pan. But once I figured out, I could just put the, I could tear the whole front of the engine apart to do that, which I gotta do eventually anyways to put in some different, you know, the better gear.

Oil pump gears, yep.

But it's not important now, so I didn't wanna do that. Anyways, so back on track. So the oil pan's done, and now I got the rack, and for a little while, there's a little bit of a panic there. Excuse me, that I was gonna somehow, getting back to, I wanna keep the stock geometry, right? If I would have started over again and just used like a Subaru spindle, I could have put the rack and did all the calculations and got everything I wanted, but I wanted to use the stock dual pivot spindles, right? The same, the stock Mustang geometry. And so now, the question is, if I moved the rack, am I gonna completely hose up the Ackerman steering? And for a little while there, I was really panicked about it, like, oh my God, this thing is just gonna crab in a parking lot, you know? And completely not work, you know? And so, weeks of dive down and getting all my suspension books out, and I actually ultimately found this really awesome article on, is it on autotopian? Is that how you say that? Autotopian? Anyways, but as a guy, he has a YouTube channel now, I should have remembered this and plugged him, but as a guy who writes articles on that website about suspension, now he's got his YouTube channel, and he's an ex-Tesla engineer or something like that. And he's got an excellent video on dual pivot front suspension, and he explains how the Ackerman, and once he explains it, it becomes really obvious that the Ackerman is really created by the dual pivot, and your rack position really isn't that important. And so I decided just to go for it, put the rack where it needs to be to fit in the car and just see what happens. And so then I plugged away, and it was relatively fast, got the whole front suspension together. So your comment about there's a lot of stuff in the way. And so, yeah, obviously, I basically like, where the stock motor mount is on the crossmember, I cut all that, that's all gone. I basically cut it down to where all you see is where the control arm bolts to on the crossmember. And everything else above that is gone to allow the CV joint to go through. And then I have added two extra supports going on each side of the CV joint. And then I blatantly copied the Maximum Motorsports concept. So if you get like a, Maximum Motorsports makes a crossmember for the S197s, where they have these two blocks that bolt to the frame, to the body, that had the motor mounts on them. That way you can take the front crossmember off and the engine stays behind. This is a genius, right? And so I copied that idea. And so I made these parts. I didn't take their parts, but I used the concept. And so I have these parts that bolt to the body that incorporate the motor mounts because I had to use much shorter motor mounts to clear the CV axles. And so the motor mounts bolt to the body directly. So now I could take the whole front suspension out of the car and the engine can stay behind. As long as I'm not touching the motor mounts, I can take the whole front of the car apart and the engine is supported, right? And which is really awesome. And so I did that. That all worked out. And then it was a matter of I, you know, welding some axles. And so this fall I was running out of time. I never imagined that it would be like almost Christmas and I could still be driving the car, right? So now it's, you know, this year and I'm getting super close, you know, it must have been like September. And I once again, I have the ability to spline axles. Like I was going to make my own axles, but I knew that would take months, you know? And it's like, well, I want to just get this thing on the road. Is this thing going to work? You know, is all these crazy suspension, is this all wheel drive going to work and blah, blah, blah. And so I decided to just hack it. And so the axles that are in the car now are basically welded. It's a Jeep axle that's been cut, shortened and welded together, to be honest. And so is the jack shaft. So the shaft that goes through the oil pan, which I'm really proud. I'm not going to use it long term, but it turned out so awesome. It looks great. I took literally half of a Toyota axle from like a Toyota pickup and a Jeep axle, cut it and welded it, you know, and cut it at a 45 degree angle, welded it together and machined it. You would never know it's not one shaft. It looks completely like one piece. Do I trust that for 800 horsepower? Well, no. So it's going to come out, but to just putt around and make sure the all wheel drive works, it was good enough. So yeah. So then got the axles in and to say after, you know, now years, that moment when I fired the car up and you know, the wheels started turning was just, the front wheels was just glorious. And this is where I guess I'm not a good YouTuber, I guess, I obviously, because you'd think I'd have like just tons of footage of all this and all this excitement and the eureka moment of the axles. And nah, I have one little shot where the wheel spins. So I guess I'm not a good YouTuber. I should have done better than that.

It's too many things to worry about. If we talk about this all the time with Dan's channel, it's like, I gotta worry about doing the actual work and filming it now.

Yes.

Makes sense.

It gets hard.

Yeah, this isn't about YouTube, but it's a lot of work. Even my no production value, and there's a reason why it's called no production value. It's a lot of work, right? Anyways, so now it's all wheel drive. Yeah, so the whole next month, I didn't really film is the problem because I was just so excited. And once again, I never dreamed that I'd be driving it December 20th or whatever it was. And so I thought any day now, it's going to snow and I'm going to lose my window, right? So I am just in like go mode. I want this thing. I want to prove this fall. So just this last fall that this thing works. It's been, you know, I've been just going 24 seven minus family time for two years. You know, I started basically January of 21 after my, you know, and when I started filming and I'm just, I'm going. So I welded the axles up, got them in there. The thing spins fantastic. So didn't have an all wheel drive controller yet. So we just wired in this button and me and a friend just went out in parking lots and he's sitting there hitting the button while I'm turning the wheel and making sure the Ackerman is working and everything. That's actually a good point. I did drive it around with no axles just to make sure the Ackerman was okay. And it's totally fine. So all my month of worry there and researching was for nothing. As far as I can tell, nothing is wrong. The thing just drives fantastic. There's no torque steer, there's a tram line, the Ackerman, you go in a parking lot, you can actually, the wheels are the limiting factor. I was all concerned about the CV joints getting out of, you know, too much travel or something, but it all worked out. You can actually, the tires hit the inner wheel, the fender wells.

The turning radius on an S550 is outrageous. It's crazy how much it can turn on itself.

And so nothing doesn't work. Once again, at the end of the story here, it totally worked. All my, using the stock geometry, I couldn't be more delighted about it. It all just worked. And so once again, I'm in thrash mode now, I'm not really filming much, so I drove it for a week or two and just to make sure that the drive shaft gonna fall off from, I'm going in parking lots, which seems really boring, even if I would have filmed it, but had my son with me and we're just literally doing as tight a turn forward, backwards in parking lots and security guard didn't like that. But anyways, trying to see, I'm hearing clunks.

This guy's doing really boring donuts.

Yeah, yeah, it was really, you can't go any slower. And I'm raising and lowering the car on the coilovers to, is it gonna be touchy and everything like that. And well, it all worked. And so now, okay, now is the moment of truth. Let's get the elbow drive actually working. And so, like I mentioned earlier, the transfer case I'm using, the Borg Warner from the Dodge Charger, it needs some kind of controller. And so it needs a computer that basically monitors stuff, you know, like throttle position, G forces, all kinds of stuff, to decide how much to lock up the transfer case. And excuse me, to be honest, I've been researching this for years. Up until recently, I was gonna use a controller that's meant for an R32 GTR. There's an F marker controller that's meant for that. And it's reasonably priced, and by all accounts, people will give it good reviews. And I was gonna go for it, to be honest. But then just, I don't know, not that long before I was gonna buy all this, I stumbled upon the fact that this company called Cyvex, which I think is big in the Lambo Porsche world, they're expensive, they're based in the UK, but they're claimed the fame as all of their stuff is canned, right? So they can take one of their Cyvex EFI computers and put them in a Lambo or an R35, and it talks to all the canned devices and keeps the car happy, right? I'm not an expert. And more important though, is they make all-wheel drive controllers for like Porsche's 991s, 992s, and for even GR Yaris's, and for GTRs, and they make these all-wheel drive controllers. And they came up with a generic one that's meant for like me, right?

Things that don't exist.

Yeah, yeah, universal applications. And the key, which makes it so awesome, is once again, it's CAN based, right? And of course, the Mustang's CAN based. And so I'm like, oh my God, this is gonna be so much easier. So we basically tied into the CAN bus underneath, you know, by the OBD2 port. And now instantly we have access to the whole car. Like, so now, you know, I can get throttle position. I can get, well, the position and commanded. I can get the steering angle. I can get ABS. I can get all four wheels and speeds. Brake, other brakes on or off. You can even see, like, is the emergency light on? You know, anything you want to see, right? And use that to tune and control the all-wheel drive controller versus the older school controller I wanted to use. I would have had to have wires going, all this stuff. I would have had to tap into the pedal and basically put my own sensors on the driveshaft to get speeds and all this kind of stuff. So it just made it so elegant, to be quite honest. And so proceeded to get that working. And once again, I have to say, my friend Derek helped me out. I'm not a canned person. I would have eventually figured it out, but it would have taken me probably months. He had it all figured out in a couple days because he has some experience. But we got it tied into the Ford Can system and it read everything and away you go. So now it's got variable torque split. You can flip a switch and it's two wheel drive. You can do burnout still, flip a switch, your all wheel drive. If you want more all wheel drive, you can turn a knob. I can even have four different maps. I can have like a drag mode. I can go to like a drag strip and basically have it all but locked up. Or I can have like a all wheel drive but more drifty mode where it'll let you get sideways. Whatever you want to do. That's why I wanted to get back to the variable torque split. I wanted all these things, right? And like if I go to the, like for example, when I bring the MeriCore to the drag strip, I have to drive around the water box because I can't do a four wheel burnout on the water. And so now I'll be able to, with the Mustang, I'll be able to drive through the water box and at least heat up the rear tires. It means I can put it in two wheel drive mode, right? And so, yeah, so that totally worked too. And after all this, it just came together and it seems to totally work. And so I was, like I said, I drove it to work. I drove it all over the place for about a month, month and a half there. And eventually waited for some snow to get some snow shots. But like I said, I fully intended to try to just, just for YouTube, just to get some video, I fully intended to drive it to a parking lot with the tires, the big wide tires and try to get a four wheel drift thing going on. But like I said, I don't have any all seasons for it. And those, the continental extreme contact sports, even with the half inch of snow, it was death defying getting out of my driveway. Even with all wheel drive. I mean, you watch the video, I put the brakes on and the car just keeps on moving. And so there was no way. I tried getting out of my neighborhood and I had to use somebody else's driveway as like one of those semi runoffs, you know what I mean? You see in the mountains? Yeah, and because I couldn't stop and I was gonna go into, I was gonna hit 394. So I turned off and I got it back to my, in front of my house. And also, that's why all that, all the footage is right in front of my house. Because I didn't feel safe making it out of the neighborhood. And I would have needed to get some all season tires to do that. So that's next year.

Upgrade number one.

Yeah, yeah, upgrade number one. Cause the plan is to, it won't be a garage queen. And the plan is to, I'm calling it like a three season car, right? Am I gonna drive it when it's 20 below in January and there's just two feet of snow and no, no, I'm not gonna do that. But.

Jury's still out, but.

Yeah, well. But would I be driving it maybe like today? Maybe.

Like two inches on the ground.

Like, you know, for sure I'd be driving it like up until like most years in here in Minnesota, I'd be driving it probably till late November, right? And then maybe start driving it again. Maybe as soon as you get the first rain, like in early May, late April, I want to be driving it. So I need some all seasons for it. Some new rims we'll say. And that'll be the plan. But yeah, so that was a really long story.

That's the introduction part. Now to actually get into the podcast.

So yeah, so now the car is basically done and for this phase. And so I'm taking a little bit of a break, to be honest, because I...

It's needed.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And the goal is to hit it hard here probably in February and make the real axles and make the real jackshaft. And then boost it somehow by spraying, get it boosted, and actually use the over-wheel drive for its purpose, which is to put traction down, right? Get power down.

Yeah.

So are you ultimately thinking... Again, this might have been one of the articles about you, but are you thinking Whipple just to get that instant torque or something?

Well...

Or are you just thinking boost, also yeah, like twin turbo, doesn't really matter or... I'm gonna take a second to support the home team. Many of you know the podcast is based out of Ratified Motorsports, who makes some of the sickest builds out here. That dyno you all here downstairs has seen some serious cars. Whether you're looking for a standard tune for your cute little Volkswagen to a full-on Supra or RS3 build, you should give Ratified a call to get the sauce. Check out ratifiedmotorsport.com/performance to see what they can do for you. Let's get back to the show.

Yeah, so what do I want to do? I want to boost it by spring, right? And so the plan is to supercharge it, and because I know I can get that done in time. I, like I said in the last video, I'm going to do everything I can to get the axles done, and get this thing on the wheels in May. So I can enjoy it all summer, go to car shows. I've never been, but I want to go to that, what's the big one down in Iowa?

Iowa Mustang's Unstabled, Staying Invasion.

Staying Invasion.

Yeah, I've tried to go there twice, and had a car blow up both times.

I want to do that. Of course, go to the Summer Nationals at the State Fair, and go to the Shelby Club meets. I just want to drive the heck out of it. I want to go to Rock Falls, and so, I think the only way to make that happen is to buy, get a kit and put it on before Spring. And I think it's got so much traction now that I think I'd be foolish not to use some kind of positive displacement blower versus a centripetal.

You still got plenty of room to get a intercooler, a heat exchanger and all that kind of stuff up front.

Oh yeah, I did. There's nothing new in front of the engine at all. I did raise the engine 3.8 of an inch, so I'm sure I'll lose the brace. I'll lose the strut brace. Maybe make my own, do you call it. But that's the plan. But yeah, not to... How do I phrase all this? But the whole point of the car, if it isn't obvious, is not to be a winner machine, even though I will drive it the three seasons, like I said. The whole point of the car is that once you get past, I don't know, like 400 or 500 horsepower, the reality is it's really tough to get it to the ground.

Well, you don't see any GTRs out there driving around in the wintertime either. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, the one that I actually have a GTR that was driven in the winter in the thumbnail of the Michael Peterson episode. I actually drove it in the winter a little bit. But it's very few and far between. You have to be crazy.

So yeah, so the goal is to put the power down. And you guys are next spring, you guys are invited to get a ride in the car, but you can get a ride in my Mercure too, which I've been driving for 15 years. The thing is, it's so insane and it's so forgiving. And I've had literally people tell me to my face that the whole, the Mercure, that's stupid. Why would you make, why would you add all that, why would you add all that weight to the all wheel drive for all wheel drive, that's just dumb, you know? And it doesn't help you at the drag strip. And which I'll get into that, it probably doesn't. But I'll explain what I mean by that. And then I give them a ride. And it's literally been, I don't know, over the course of a long time now, dozen people that had told me to my face that it was dumb to add all that weight, because they did add weight. And then I give them a ride and they were totally converted. As a matter of fact, people who like, can you do this to mine, right? Can you do this? Or one person now wants to make a truck. You know what I mean? And he's like, oh my God, I can't believe how forgiving this thing is. And because the Mercurier is, not only is it like just crazy fast out of the hole, it's just super forgiving. I mean, you can just give it to gas anywhere, anytime on a ramp. And it could be raining and sandy, and you punch it and it just goes. It just goes. And that was the mission. And yet it's got the 700 horsepower, right? And so that's the point, right? If it isn't obvious at the beginning, is to add power and be able to put 700 horsepower, 800 whatever, 700 for the first version here, to the ground with street tires, not drag slicks or something, in real world conditions, right? And like I said, I'm just an all wheel drive fanatic. And because in real world conditions, not at the drag strip, it is hard to put down more than about 400 or 500 horsepower.

Yeah.

It really is, right?

Yeah, so who cares if you didn't add that way? Go ahead and stick 800 right to the ground.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So getting back to my comment about the drag strip, right? So I'm an all wheel drive fanatic. Obviously I spent way too much of my life making an all wheel drive Mustang. I will fully admit that if your goal is just to be at a drag strip, that the car will, if you just put Bi-Sply drag tires on the back and get it set up properly, that will be faster than an all wheel drive car at the drag strip. That is absolutely true. And so whenever I bring this up, people will say that. There's always some snarky person in the comments, you know?

Every single time.

Yeah.

On a fully prepped track, what tires you can drive on the street.

And also, if you just plain do the math, right? Somewhere depending on where your center of gravity is, right? Basically somewhere in the low 10 second range, there's so little weight on the front wheels anyways, right? Because you're lifting the front wheels up, right? It depends on your suspension in your center of gravity.

Yeah, the whole weight transfer thing, which is a call back to the last episode of Michael Peterson. He literally brought in physical cars to demonstrate weight transfer.

So there's no point in having an all wheel drive, eight second car, right? Because the front wheels are off the ground, right? And so, will I bring it to the drag strip? Will I have fun at the drag strip? Yes. But my goal is to go to the drag strip and do hopefully a low 10 on continentals, not on drag slicks, and then drive it home and be able to punch it on freeway when it's raining and the thing doesn't lose control. Does that make sense?

Yes.

It's the perfect road rally car.

Yes.

So, yeah, so that's the mission. And, and so, yeah, hopefully, you know, the car should be legal, you know, you should be able to go down to a 10-0, right? If it's a 14 and newer, and you're not supposed to modify the floor, but we won't say anything.

You didn't hear it here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the goal long term, not next summer, but the goal long term after a couple of iterations is to be able to like run a low 10, you know, 10 second, 10-0, you know, in complete street trim, right? Where you could, you know, not changing tires on, you know, tires that you would drive in the rain. Does that make sense? That's the mission.

I think it'd be really funny to just go up there and some street tires, nothing super fancy, and then just watch them watch you just whop, not saying anything. It just takes off like a bat out of hell and I'm go, what in the hell just happened?

So, yeah, not to have all these Mercure examples, but so after the Mercure was done, right, and it was a completely quiet, smooth, good looking car. I got it painted for like five or six years and and then I, you know, a lot of life happened, you know, like I said, got married, great thing, wonderful kids. But, you know, I knew I couldn't start the Mustang project, and so I started using the Mustang or the Mercure as just a science experiment. I didn't care if it was, you know, not readable anymore. And so just for just my own intellectual curiosity, I started doing things to it to make it faster. And so I started out, like my first time at the track, I did like a 12-something, then I got like pretty quickly got like 11.8, and then with almost no effort got like, you know, 11.1 or something like that. But to get it to break into the tens was actually pretty tough. And for various reasons, the whole, you know, burning one front tire, you know, thing and getting the right viscous coupling, and that was a whole fun thing, I got custom viscous couplings, blah, blah, blah, blah. But one of the things is, I didn't want to, out of principle, just like there's no ED5, I wanted to prove you could do it on pump gas, not just because, just because, right. And so I wanted to prove you could, you know, get into a 10 seconds on tires at least meant for handling, not soft sidewall tires. And so I didn't put drag tires on the back, I put all four tires, I put RE71Rs, which were the hot tire at the time, you know, for autocross and stuff. And getting back to your comment about street tires, that was a long story to get to the point, is it made no difference. Matter of fact, it might have made it worse. Actually, a lot of the things I did to make the Mercure faster made it worse. Because it made it harder and harder to launch, right? And so, like, like the better tires with the more street tires, when it's a stick car, right? So when you're launching, I realize now that with an all wheel drive car, a little bit of rear wheel slip is OK. It actually is almost like rather than slipping the clutch, you just let the rear wheel slip a little bit. It kind of softens the goal, if you will, right? You have to launch. Well, you put sticky tires on it. Well, you know, now you have sticky tires and you have a dual disc clutch and you. I added all kinds of anti squat to get the thing to hook. And I put in the Torsen transfer case. Well, now it's got even more ludicrous amounts of traction. And so now you can't. There's no slip. There's no. You can't put the tires on. And so now all the slip is in the clutch. So now it's way more driver dependent. Now it's way more you have to get just the right gas clutch interaction. Right.

What clutch did you put in it?

So it's a custom McLeod dual disc, but it's a sprung hub dual disc, which they don't make for a small block Ford. But I had to make it for me. But OK, so it's the same as like you'd get for a Viper, but on a small block Ford flywheel.

Yep.

Yeah, I'm another soapbox thing, but I'm a big fan of sprung hub clutches, and not everybody puts these solid hub clutches in. I'll be quiet. I'm going to...

What about in the new car, in the S550? What do you got in that one?

So currently, just to get it on the wheels, I didn't want to go down some clutch crazy path. It would already take too much time. And so it's just got an Exedy, as I said, Exedy Mach 500, whatever, 11-inch clutch. Nothing super special. But if you do the math on it, they claim it's a 3,200-pound clamp load pressure plate. With an 11-inch clutch, it should be able to handle 600-and-some 50-foot pounds of torque. The pedal is awesome. And so long-term, because obviously I'll need something better eventually. I won't need it for this summer, but eventually I'll need something better. And you're going to roll your eyes, but I almost want to make my own clutch, because nobody makes... I want a dual-disc sprung hub, like a 10-and-a-half inch or even an 11-inch clutch. I want it to be streetable, and I don't want it to be ceramic. So one of the Mercure is now a ceramic clutch, and it grabs like crazy, but it chatters and all the stuff that goes along with a ceramic-metallic clutch. And so I want to... For example, the C7 Vets have a really killer factory clutch. It's a dual-disc from the factory, self-adjusting, but they're non-sprung hub. And I've actually talked to Monster Clutch about it, they don't make Coyote clutches now.

Not yet.

Not yet. But they would, if I gave them enough money, but they're not sprung hub. And so I'm not talking about this, but I might even try to maybe buy their clutch with just the stands, get the pressure plate in the stands, and I would get my own discs made or something. I don't know, but I'm contemplating, in a sense, making my own clutch. I want a dual disc sprung hub clutch, which doesn't, that's big diameter, not nine inches. And the newer, the Hellcat clutch is like a 10.5 inch clutch, but it's a pretty soft pressure plate. But the new, the C7 Vet and the newer Camaros have a pretty killer factory clutch, but they use, of course, a dual mass flywheel, and that's where the give is. And so I want to take that clutch maybe, but put a sprung hub disc in it. Does that make sense? That is a year, at least a year away.

Later, probably. Kick it down the road, yeah.

Later, we'll see. If anybody knows of a clutch that's a big diameter, like the one that really looks cool is the Tilton. Tilton makes the 240 something clutch. It's a dual-disc sprung hub. But I talked to them, and I would have bought that. I would have spent the money. But they were not convinced it would have been good enough for what I wanted. In the organic version, right? So in their defense, they were super cool. They said, no, for your power goals, and it's all-wheel drive, and all the traction, you would need the ceramic version, and I don't want that. I want it to be organic. But anyways, that's the story on the clutch.

So if somebody, the research you've done, everything that you know now, I'm assuming you got notes, you documented all of this. If somebody came to you and said, hey, I want you to build me one, how long do you think it'd take you now?

That's a good question. And obviously, if you read the comments on my last video, that's 30% of them are that. How much? When can you do it? When's the kit coming? I'm not against such things. I've got to be careful how I phrase that. But that's exciting, you know? And there'd have to be enough people lined up. I'm not going to do one. Right. You have to be enough to get stuff tooled up and get somebody else to machine everything, for example. And I have to go back, which is quite doable, by the way. I have to go back and make everything more mass-produceable, kind of like my blacksmith versus machinist comment, right?

Right.

Even though I tried really hard to be an engineer in this thing, there's still some blacksmithy stuff in there. You know, some cut it out.

You have some actual CAD files you can send to somebody.

Like the oil pan, for example. It's way too labor-intensive.

It can't be held together with POR15?

No, no, yeah. It's just way too labor-intensive, right? It would have to be either a billet piece, which would be expensive, or a casting that's machined, you know what I mean? And the spindles, I'm not going to sell anybody, I'm not going to give anybody on the planet, besides myself, spindles that are welded together like that.

Right.

And so they have to be probably CNC-machined out of a one piece. But, you know, I didn't want to do that. What if I would have spent six months in design, remember how I said I wasn't confident I could machine all that crazy geometry of the dual pivot? Well, somebody can, right? I can't, but somebody can, right? But what if I would have spent three or four months scanning and designing my hubs and paying thousands of dollars to have somebody machine those? And then in my first drive, I realized that the thing has torque steer like crazy or just something. Right, so making my front spindles was a lot of labor the way I did it. But I don't know, maybe have a couple hundred bucks into them? I mean, it's nothing.

Way cheaper prototyping.

And so if I was going to do kits or have something like that, I have to go back and make all the things producible, right? And order like 10 sets of spindles and order 10 oil pans. And maybe the front crossmember would have to be tubular. You can't go cutting the factory crossmember up and modifying it. It's just too labor intensive, right? And that might be something I do even just to get weight out of the car. People have brought up, well, why didn't you buy a Steeda tubular crossmember and cut that up and make it fit? Well, I would have to cut like half of it off. So I could have spent $1,000 on a crossmember to cut half of it away. But maybe I would, now that I know it works, once again, what if I would have done all that and it didn't work?

Exactly.

When you're doing, I mean, I've done plenty of builds, too, where you're like, I've even seen old school guys where they're like squirt bottle into the carburetor to get something running. I mean, whenever I do wiring, you don't crimp everything and put it all away and tuck it away right out there because you know you can mess something up. Yeah.

So what if it wouldn't have worked? What if I would have done all that? And so now, so I think I'm still like maybe next fall because I still, you know, I still want to prove that it was worth doing. So now I know for a fact that the car drives and it drives great, right? And it, you know, the street manners are perfect. And at least at the stock power levels, there's no torque steer. But you know, now I want to double the horsepower, which is the whole point, right? And so I want to make sure it works then too, right? Before I would start, you know, making parts for other people, right? And so if there's a kit available, it'll be a while, right? Because I have to, I want to fully vet what I've already done and prove it out and get it to the track and, you know, beat the heck out of it, to be honest.

Well, there's a reason why R&D is so expensive for these OEMs. Yeah, because now, like you said, you have to take it to the track. Oh, what if this little part breaks and you have to retool it? You know, all this extra stuff. I almost wonder if there's someone at Ford that's just been watching your whole journey, like, letting you do the research for them.

So they probably already have. Yeah.

You know, there was all kinds of rumors that the next gen, what is now the S650, you know, was going to be all-wheel drive. And I have no insider information. I think that might have been true, and I think they just scaled it back and made more modifications to the S650. Obviously, the S650 is really an evolved S550.

Right, yeah.

Look underneath, it's almost the same car. You have one, though, so I need to look at your aluminum control arms and see if they interchange.

I don't have an S650.

You did? I thought you had one.

No, so that was a buddy of mine. But that's my friend Tim. He was actually on the podcast, too. That is not an issue. You want to look under an S650, he is more than happy to oblige.

I want to get weight out of the car. The weight I added was lower than I ever expected, but I want to get even more out.

I think it was like 150 pounds or something, right?

That's less than 200, which is really impressive. Yeah, and so the S650s have aluminum front control arms, and that's probably all combined at 5 to 10 pounds, right? The spindles look the same, so I want to see if they're interchangeable. They may not be, but before I go spend a couple hundred bucks and buy a new one.

He's a good friend of mine, so that won't be a problem, but I also videoed us putting lowering springs in his car. I will look through and see if I've got some good shots of any of that stuff, too, and I can send some things over to you.

So, yeah, because I already bought two-piece front rotors for it. They're not on the car yet. That's like 22 pounds. I don't have two-piece for the back. They'd be probably another 10 pounds. I think when I redo the motor mounts, I can put some aluminum in there, get rid of some steel, and maybe get another 5, 10 pounds out of it. Excuse me, but it's not going to be a light car. I was listening to, was it Dave Rasmussen's? Yeah. And how somehow his Mustang is under, it's some ludicrous under 3,500 pounds with him in it, and it's turbocharged? No, my car will never be that. So, which is okay. That's not the point. But if I can get it close to maybe stock, that would be really nice. But the supercharger will add 100 pounds. True. You got the supercharger itself, you got the water tanks, all that stuff. So, but that's the way it is. When the newer GT500s came out, I watched some video with some Ford engineer, and people were saying it weighs like what, 4,100 pounds or something like that. And they were interviewing this Ford engineer, and they were like, you know, why is this thing so heavy? And it's like, well, you add power, you got to add heavy stuff to handle the power. You got bigger axles, you got bigger transmission, you got bigger everything, and all that adds weight.

Yep, they learned that with the demons when they were blowing out axles.

Well, then you start taking some creature comforts out too, then people are going to complain about that too. So mine's a track pack car, but it has a technology package, so it has like an amplified radio, it has all that stuff. So there's probably, there's definitely a few hundred pounds of fluff in that thing that...

It's such a cushy car though.

Yeah.

But just the supercharger alone is a hundred pounds.

Yep.

So...

Oh, I have lifted plenty of them off the top as they get there. I'm not a tall guy, so it's hard for me to reach and get it back over to me.

Yeah. So I figure if I can get another 30, 40 pounds out of it, and then I'll add a hundred pounds back in with the supercharger. And so it'll probably end up weighing, you know, 39 something, right, without me in it, which, you know, it's a heavy car, but, you know, it'll be able to go anywhere at any time.

And you want it to look relatively stock as well. Yeah, you don't want it to go crazy, like, you know, carbon hood or anything like that.

No, maybe a spoiler.

You could put a carbon hood and paint it, I suppose.

I'll tell you, between the carbon hood and the aluminum hood, they're not that much different. Yeah, I lifted, when I went to take my hood off, I expected it to be way heavier than it was. It's all aluminum.

Yeah, the front fenders and the hood are already aluminum.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, and I already have... So, I mean, in full... I mean, as if this isn't obvious, in full transparency, obviously, I actually added way more than 200 pounds to the car, but I took heavy things off already. Like, my aftermarket 9x11 wheels are actually... Each one is like 11 pounds lighter than the stock, you know, 19x9.

Okay, so you're getting the standard weight reduction stuff, yeah.

And then the rear drive shaft, it went from being a two-piece steel with joints and hangers and all this crap to like a... It's only this long now. It's only 42 inches long. Aluminum drive shaft, right? So the net, if you want to phrase it this way, the net gain, if you want to call it that, was less than 200 pounds, right? And so... But, you know, it includes a steel bell housing. You know, it's a QuickTime bell housing. That's 25 pounds. I had a... I've since sold it, but during my mock-up phase, I bought an actual, like, 0304 Cobra bolt-on bell housing, you know, aluminum bell housing, which would have worked.

Dang it, you sold that? I wish... I need one.

Oh, I got good money for it. They're hard to find now. But that's nine pounds, right? And so just going to the steel bell housing is like 20 pounds, we'll say. And then the TR6060, you know, is like 30 pounds more than maybe 20 pounds more than the MT82. The transfer case is 60 pounds. The front diff was 60 pounds. The spindles ended up being... It didn't add any weight to the spindles. So my homemade spindles were the same weight. And probably a wash on the front crossmember. So if I can get some weight out of the front crossmember, make a tube with the crossmember, maybe get 20 pounds out of it, something like that, long term. That wouldn't be this year either, for sure. We'll see. I want to drive it as the key next summer.

Yeah.

Man, people really underestimate weight, and I found this one out the hard way today because my direct drive came for the SIM.

Yeah, they're not light, are they?

Oh my God. It's 30 pounds, right? Which at the gym is whatever. But when I was, you know, when it's like a box or something in a car, it's like, man, this 30 pounds is a lot heavier than you expect it to be. So that adds up a lot. So do you have any intentions of road coursing and autocrossing the car or just drink?

To be honest, I haven't done much of that, and now I want to. And I want to do some open track days. I've tried autocrossing, and I have a good friend, shout out to my friend Harold, who's super into it, and he's always trying to get me into it. And, you know, I need to get into it. I just need to break through. I've done it a couple times, and got totally lost on track, and I get all flustered, and it just takes practice. It's just like anything else. And so I absolutely want to do it. Matter of fact, the current plan is, my buddy Harold is going to campaign my AmeriCorps all next year as his autocross car. He's going to put tires on it and go through it, and he's going to campaign it.

Locally here?

Yep. So I have some footage of that. I keep on intending to make a video just dedicated to the AmeriCorps, but I've been so focused on the Mustang and limited free time, you know? But yeah, and so I want to do that. I've been the brainer to the drag strip, but I've never been on the track, like to any of the tracks up there. So I want to do that if possible. Just drive the heck out of it.

Yeah. Yeah, that'd be awesome to see that thing at Power Cruise.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be a great... Great. I mean, there's so many track events coming up this year, so it'd be the year to test it. And that's what it'd be for.

We're gonna see you at the May All Ford Car Show too?

Oh yeah. Yeah, there's the one in Apple Valley in Maine, and the one in Chocopee in the fall. I was trying to make it, I really wanted to get the car to the Summer Nationals this year at the fairgrounds. I missed it by a week, basically. The whole debacle with I wasn't confident in moving the right companion, it took me an extra week and it didn't make it there. It wouldn't have been all well dry, but I was gonna get it there without the axles just to get some exposure. But next year, it'll be there for sure. And yeah, it's kind of funny though, this is more of a humorous side note, but the Mercure, it isn't the greatest. I'm not trying to claim it's the greatest car ever. And for sure now, it's been a long time since it got painted. It looks pretty rough, to be quite honest. And I turned it into a science experiment. So the back seats, I cut to put the roll bar in, and it's just not looking great. And every time I lose interest in the car though, I bring it to a car show, and I'm not even trying, this is just fact. And I have it parked, it's parked next to a beautiful Hellcat, which is parked next to a beautiful Grand National, which is parked next to a beautiful whatever. And there's a crowd around the piece of crap Mercure as they all pass the Hellcat.

Well, the Hellcats are a dime a dozen.

I know, but yeah.

The Mercures, you don't see. I dropped somebody off when I had my turbo coupe up and running. I dropped somebody off at the airport, and I had several people just say, hey man, nice car. I'm like, this is an 88 Thunderbird turbo coupe. They're really nothing special, but you don't see them everywhere.

Yeah, you don't see them anymore. So it's really rare. So the plan many years from now is to get back into that and at least make it look good again. Get the body repainted and keep it. It runs great. I wouldn't hesitate to drive it to the track. It just looks like garbage, to be honest. But just because of abuse.

You have room for these cars? Are you in the white park outside? Or?

No, well, I don't have my dream shop yet, but that's the goal for this year, actually. But no, the Mustang gets a spot, Miracur gets kind of sidetracked, and then we got two spots for the daily drivers. My truck sits outside, but I don't care about that. So, no, the Mustang's got its own spot with the lift, so to work on it. But yeah, no, everything fits.

Cool.

I got a 26 by 40 garage currently.

Oh yeah, that's pretty decent.

So, and so I have, the only bummer, which is not a big bummer, it's like, you know, cry me a river.

Yeah, right?

Yeah, you know, it's pretty nice, right? You gotta be grateful for what we have. But you know, I have my milling machine, I just got a CNC lathe, and all my equipment in there, and you don't realize just driving cars in and out of a garage, even in nice weather, how much dirt that brings into a shop, right?

Yeah.

And so like, just dirt, you just get dirt from driving cars in there. But you know, once again, cry me a river, blah, blah, blah, nice job.

And the world's smallest violin.

Yeah, you know, it's a pretty good setup, you know? And, but yeah, so.

I'm curious, because I see you have your notebook here. What's the notebook about?

I always, I always have a notebook with me pretty much in case I had to write somebody's name down or something. Yeah, just side note, I'm horrible with names. And so I'll write names down because I forget. Yeah.

I thought that was the complete guide.

No, no, no, no. It's actually from work.

Yeah.

I just have a notebook in case I need to remember a phone number or somebody's name or something. Yeah, so no big deal.

I'm very excited to see what happens next. I mean, it's just, it's a world of opportunity. I really do wonder what it would cost to make it like a kit or something. Because again, like you said, you need at least 10 people that are committed financially to something like that.

Yeah, so obviously I pondered this and...

Is this something you didn't consider to actually do if there's 10 people involved?

Yes. I'll confidently say that. It's just a timeline. So like the article on, the guy who wrote the article on Motor One, super cool. I literally talked to him on the phone for hours on several occasions. The original version of that article, I did have him change it, to be honest. I had some off the cuff comment about how much it would cost, and it wasn't meant to be a serious number.

Right.

Right.

And it was literally just two guys BSing on the phone. And I'm not blaming him because he's super cool. He has his own really cool electric projects. I don't know if I got public knowledge, but electric vehicle project. But anyways, that got a lot of flak, actually. I got a really couple people reached out and really got a lot of flak. So I had him edit the story and take the comment out about how much it would cost, because I had made some really big number. But let's be honest, I'm not going to give a number right now. Of course.

Yeah.

It's, you know, just think about it this way. Like just a T56 Magnum kit, just to get the transmission and the drive shaft and the cross member and the bell housing and a clutch and a little converter to make the reverse lights work and all that jazz. What is that? Six grand?

Yeah. Right.

Right?

On the low end, probably.

Six or seven grand, not counting installation. Right. So, you know, basically I did a T56 Magnum conversion as part of this. Right. I mean, that's right, really. And I can't use, you can't, I can't be getting junkyard transmissions to sell the people. Right? So, I'll have to work with a company, you know, there's a couple of companies I could work with to basically make the transmission and get the, you know, and put it together. It's going to be a brand new transmission, right?

Yeah. Four or five grand, I think, is what that probably costs.

Yeah.

I think an XL is like 4,500 bucks or something.

So the transmission is, you know, like six or seven grand by itself.

Right?

So just, even if I were to break even on it, the transmission is six grand, right? So it's going to be a reasonable amount of money.

It's going to be like a CVS receipt, just keeps going.

Yeah.

Take it expensive real quick.

So, you know, but like, not to quote people, but like I've watched one of your other podcasts and you're commenting how it takes 20 grand to, you can spend 20 grand on a Coyote, you know, is a similar number okay to make your car have tons of traction. I don't know.

Right.

Well, that seems like a light number to me, to be honest with you.

I should have sent you a number.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Erring on the side of caution, but again, it's like all that extra traction. And then now you could throw, you know, a jubilee, a billion more horsepower at it.

Assuming it handles it. And that's what I'm trying to prove.

So that's kind of like the next thing is to see how it handles overall then.

Yeah. Everybody, you know, should everybody, but there's been some comments, people questioning, oh, that Dodge transfer case can't handle the power, blah, blah, blah. Based on what? Like I had somebody literally write a really kind of aggressive comment on my, one of my videos saying, you know, it's well known in the Dodge world that the transfer cases can't handle any power. And I'm like, I replied very politely, really, give me one link, give me one example. Give me an example. And then I said, that was true of the earlier generation, the Mercedes-Benz transfer case and the 09 and newers. Those did blow up. And there's a company in, doesn't matter, Denver that beefs them up somehow. But anyways, but I can't find a single example of the 11 and newer, a picture of a transfer case destroyed. And like I said, they're like $100. They almost fall out of trucks for free because in the original application, they just don't wear out, they don't break, they don't do nothing, but you can get them all day long. So I've taken it apart, of course, and the only maybe weak link is where the output shaft, where the rear drive shaft would hook to. That's a metric 30 spline, so it's equivalent to about a 29 spline in the normal English way of saying it. And that would be the weak link, but that's still actually still bigger in diameter than the spline that would have come in a GT500.

Yeah, a 28 spline.

In a GT500 transmission, right? So, which people do break those, but that might be the weak link, and if that were to break at some thousand horsepower or something, well, then maybe it would be worth making a shaft out of some 300M or something.

Exactly.

There still would be a solution, right?

Right.

Well, the way I see it, right, is you've done all this research, and you have all these various parts. If one or two break along the way, at least you know that the whole thing works. You just have to beef up a couple things.

Correct.

That's a lot easier than...

Well, then you offer a kit at a range, right? This works up to this horsepower number, and after that, you're on your own. Yeah.

Yeah, you want a kit made of balsa wood? We'll get you in for three grand. Good luck.

Well, and also, in the R35 GTR world, people who beef them up, horsepower-wise, they blow front axles off, and then they're replacing those in the front diffs. So...

Oh, a lot of brakes on those cars.

Yeah, so this, whatever I would make... My CV joints are comically big relative to a GTR CV joint, for example. The diff is just massively overkill, the front diff. And so, if I was trying to... If I was an OEM, right, and I was trying to minimize weight, and I had infinite resources, you'd make the diff just big enough to handle the load. Well, I don't want to do everything twice, so I want a diff that is massively overkill, so that when it works, it works.

Well, exactly, because especially when you see stuff in racing applications, I might use drag racing as an example, these guys are super competitive. Every single year, this is lighter, this is stronger. You're not necessarily gonna... You're not taking this to compete. You know, maybe somebody carries the torch years down the line or something, but I just don't see that being the case here. It's just more of like, for lack of a better word, fun, maybe.

Yeah, absolutely. I said it once already, I easily get as much satisfaction making the stuff than using it.

Well, yeah, exactly.

Do you have to worry about, or will you worry about the rear axles in the car? Because if you can give some of the load to the front, do you have to be as concerned about them snapping?

Yes and no. Will I eventually probably beef them up? Yes, but your logic is sound. And let me explain, here's my theory. Like, my intention is not to put, like if I was gonna, like if you took a two-wheel drive car, and you went to the dragster, for example, and you put like, you know, some little 555Rs on it, right, to get traction or some whatever, you know, some bi-supply tires, now that isn't gonna spin. So all the, if you dump the clutch, all that torque is getting to the axles, right? Yep. If I keep street tires on it, right, if I keep Continentals or some whatever, the Michelin equivalent or whoever, Yokohama, you inherently are traction limited, right? The rear wheels can only handle X amount of torque. And as long as that is less than the axles, you're fine. And the reason I would still be able to accelerate is I'm putting 35 to 40% of the torque to the front, right? So each tire is still at its traction limit. So the answer is I shouldn't need as strong of axles in the back. But this makes no sense, to be honest. But just to prove a point, I kind of want to take the stock axles and take the CV joints apart because I know how to do that now, and just make my own centerpiece, because that's what breaks. It doesn't like to see them.

Yeah, I've seen them, they twist right off. Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't like to see the joints break off at the diff or something, right? The joints look really strong. And so if you just replace the bar with some 300M material, my guess is it would be indestructible, or it's really much too hard to start.

I put GT350 ones in mine, and they were super cheap. I picked them up from the Midway. And, but I don't do drag race. I have road race, so I even made quite a bit of life out of my MT82 before it finally sheared off every tooth on the third gear. TR6060. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, of a GT500, or you think?

Yeah, a GT500. Yeah, yeah. It supposedly was tick performance built, and all that stuff. But I have some issues with what the guy said was done to the inside of it, and I had to have all that stuff redone after like 2,000 miles, so I don't think that was the case. But you live and you learn. I tried to buy something used off of that was already built, and that's where I got. But I had a rally coming up, so I needed the car back together.

So all these, you said I'm being a little all over the place now, but a lot of the reasons why I put the project out there and did the YouTube filming was to meet people, to be quite honest. Meet like-minded people that want to share ideas and other projects. And it's been fantastic. It's been great. People have been emailing me from all over the country, all over the world for that matter. Not doing Mustangs, but doing all-wheel drive conversions and really cool stuff. Long-term, yes, I will beef up the rear axle so it's not a weak link. If I can get a good, you know, the obvious thing to do would just be buy some GeForce units and not spend the time to make my own things.

Those things are spendy though.

They are spendy.

Yeah, I feel like you could build axles for way cheaper than what to get those for.

Yeah, if I replace just the bar, I probably could do that for a couple hundred dollars. So, and I'm gonna make the axles in the front myself. Not to save money necessarily, because I want to do it. I want to do it myself, just to do it. I probably will save money, but that isn't the main point. If I was in a big hurry, I could take my welded axles and send them to somebody and they could duplicate them, you know.

Well, in the 350 ones that I got in mine, only the one side is a little bit bigger. The one side, I believe, is the same.

One side is not.

Because I'm assuming that's the launch side, right before the locker locks in and gets the other side.

So, one creative idea I had was to get two GT350 axles, the bigger side. Because both the inner and the outer...

I believe it was the driver side that was bigger.

Get two of those, and at least get the outer bigger joint, and if I make my own axle in between, I can mix and match whatever I want. And I could at least get both outer CV joints would be the bigger one. I'm not sure that matters. But like I said, I've never seen a picture of somebody actually breaking the joint. Have you?

They usually twist them right in the shaft.

Yeah, the axle breaks. And you can quite easily, using some 4340 or 300M would be the next level up, you probably can double the strength of the stock axle. So, I know how long this has got. How much time is it?

You want to give it a guess?

It's been at least an hour and a half, two hours.

That was about an hour and a half. No, I'm kidding. Probably a 225 minus a couple of cuts.

We're gonna cut at least 20 minutes out.

Little bit less than that, but yeah.

So, remember how I told you how I turned AmeriCorps into a science experiment, right? And so, I was trying to figure out how to get even more traction, right? So, the car was all wheel drive. On the street, it was just awesome. It was a terror. But the fact of the matter is, when you went to this drag strip, everybody jokes about how an all wheel drive car, you must get just killer 60 foot times. And well, I didn't, to be honest. I was getting like one sevens, one eights. Yeah, and everybody says, everybody thinks you should get like one fives. Well, with a stick car, that's as hard to do, period, at least in my opinion. But I was having this issue. First, I was having the issue where I was blowing the front tires off, right? So I would drop the clutch and the front tires would roast. And that's the whole problem with the, when you have a center differential, it's giving, as soon as one tire breaks loose, it equalizes the torque and it all goes forward until the viscous coupling could catch up. And so at first I fixed that by getting, I had a company in California make me a special cocktail viscous coupling that was stiffer than one from a Bravada. Fantastic, actually worked really well, still have it. And sit in some place for future use. And that made a lot better, but I could still smoke one tire. So then I put a limited slip in the front. Well, now you gotta do both tires. Well, now I wasn't smoking the front tires anymore. Now if I dropped the clutch, I was smoking the rear tires until basically the transfer case would catch up and lock up. And I'm like, well, why is this, you know? Why am I smoking? So then, of course, I have some video of the car at the track, and it's a 80s car designed in the 70s. And the thing just squats, or it did anyways, just squats like crazy. So you watch the videos of me at Rock Falls, and the back end just goes down, and the wheels go like this, you know? And you just lose all your traction, right? So I thought, you know, the engineer in me, and I was just like, you know, I could have just put sticky tires on it, but I want to make it just inherently work, right? And so I, endless research, and how can I get rid of all that camber gain? How can I, it turns out the stock rear suspension in the Ford Sierras is really not great, right? Shock, it's making sense. It has way too much camber gain, and it actually is, rather than be an anti-squat, in stocked level, it's pro-squat, meaning that as you add torque, it wants to suck itself down. The opposite of like a drag car that has anti-squat, it lifts the back end up, you know what I mean? And it's an IRS car in a way where the pivot points where it actually is pro-squat, so it actually would suck itself down. And so this made no sense to do besides just my own scientific curiosity. I said, okay, can I change that, right? So there's a common mod in Europe where they basically change the angles to get rid of the camber gain. So I did that. That was pretty straightforward. But I also did what nobody else does, and I basically cut the floor out in the car, and I raised the whole thing up like three inches, the pickup points, right, of the front of the control arms to actually, so now it went from being pro-squat to actually having quite a bit of anti-squat. So now when you punch it, it doesn't squat at all. I wouldn't do it again because it ruined my back seats, but from a pure scientific, intellectual curiosity standpoint, it totally worked. It was amazing. The whole, it got even more traction. So then I go to, so I'm all happy. I went from after, the car, at this point, I've been a V8 for, I don't know, a long time, 10 years, maybe we'll say, and it crazy fastened the street, but it was breaking the tires loose at the track. So I redo the suspension, now it doesn't squat, now it's got just killer traction. I go to Grove Creek, first pass, I dropped the clutch, snap, and the wheel is sitting there crooked, like son of a, you know, son of a b****. So basically now it has so much traction, I snap the little, you know, the spline part that goes through your wheel hub, the wheel bearing.

Oh, yep.

And the only reason the wheel didn't fly off is because of the brakes, right? And so I limp it back and like, oh crap. So I proceed, you know, to upgrade that. I ended up going with G-Force, and I had, I used G-Force, the little stub axles meant for a Mark IV Supra. And I actually, I say it has Mark IV Supra, we're hubs now, but it really, they came from like a Lexus, LS4. Yeah. They're the same thing. And so I machined the bearings to accept the Lexus hub, and then I used the G-Force thing to go in there. So, okay, so I fix all that. And then I go back to the track, like, I don't know, a couple of weeks later, go back to Grove Creek again, drop the clutch and the CV axle snaps. And the actual axle between the CV joints snaps. And I'm like, oh, I mean, crap. So now the guy at Grove Creek, the tech guy was just giving me all kinds of s***. And so I get out, and so I actually had the axles analyzed. They brought in the work and x-rayed them and what the material was. And it was just like their factory Ford, 80s axles and crap, crap-o-steel as I call it. So I replaced it with 300M axles. The car actually used, the Miracore uses the 930 joints I'm talking about. Same thing as the G-Force axles.

Yep.

In almost all the aftermarket axles, whether they're for a Mustang or a Supra, they all used the 930 joint, right? So the Miracore uses 930 joints. And so if you use those joints, then there's a bunch of companies that make axles in a couple inch increments of all kinds of lengths, and then they have tons of spline on them, so you can just cut them to the exact length you need. You don't need to make them, you just buy them, and they're cheap. Relatively speaking, they're cheap. And so I put them in there, and of course, that's been a long time now, and they've been bulletproof. But yeah, the point of that story is you can't just beef up the rod in the middle, right? And the joints usually aren't a weak link, right?

Yeah. So what's the plan now for the channel? I mean, do you have future builds in the tank, or is it now just content with all-wheel drive, adding boost, doing stuff like that, track, show, things like that?

So the next video, up until the video, I don't know if viral is the right word, but 230,000 views, up until that point, sorry, the next video, I was actually gonna finally, I had my, taking my little break from actually working on the car. Yep. The next video was actually gonna be finally a video about the Mercurier. I filmed some stuff a couple years ago. I was gonna bring it back in the garage and on the lift and get some more footage. It looks rough, the reason I haven't done it yet is that it looks rough because it's a science experiment. It's on, it's like, I don't know, 14th exhaust system, all clues together. It just doesn't, it's not show quality. And, but it is pretty, it's mechanically cool. It's just not show quality. So I was gonna finally do that because I've had literally hundreds of people request. But now the current plan, the next video is gonna basically be a compilation of all 25 because there's obviously people are not going, people are asking endless questions that are answered, but you'd have to watch 24 videos to get all the answers, right? So maybe it'll be redundant if people watch this thing, but I'm gonna take and make a synopsis, right? And, you know, of all the parts, I'm not gonna show making any of the parts. I'm just gonna explain the steps and what parts are used and why, and one like 20 minute thing, you know, which is a pretty common YouTuber thing. When they get done, you know, how to make like the, what's the Ferrari guy in Australia, like his channel who put the...

Oh, Matt.

Put the Ferrari motor in the old Alfa.

Oh, maybe I'm thinking of the other guy. This is the guy I think buys wrecked supercars and fixes them up.

Not that guy, but there's a guy in Australia who, Alfa, I don't know what else, don't quote me. Anyways, he did that too. He has like, it took him a couple of years to do it. Then he made a video like how to do this in 30 minutes. And it's a summary. So I'm gonna do that. Then probably the Miracleer video. And then by then, next video will be making the axles, right? And then hopefully supercharging it, and then going to the track, you know, and driving it, going to car shows. That's the plan. So, yeah, I don't have another, I have at least a couple more years of project on this car.

Yeah. Well, I just didn't know. This one's obviously been a long thought process for you, so I didn't know if you had other sidebars in there cooking up, too, that you were like, oh shoot, right after this, it's this.

No, no. Super long term. It literally could be 10 years from now. I've always wanted to do. Uh-oh. Yeah, here we go. A kit car, like a GT40, to be honest. Either an RS200 or a GT40. But I have years left of Mustang work, and then I want to fix up the Mercur, and you know, I really want to do an E30 at some point. I used to have an E30, and there's just like the small lower cars. And so I wouldn't mind doing some kind of E30 project at some point, but right now the focus is, you know, keep on going on the staying, I guess.

I feel like you could do dozens and dozens of more hours. I mean, we could even do like a whole three hour segment of what you would do differently, you know, for the night and what you've learned from this. I mean, there's just so much, so much that was done with this project.

Yeah, there obviously is a lot of things I would do, you know, everything twice, but.

How long is the list of parts you had to throw away? Pretty long?

Pretty long axles, a lot of discs.

As big as your China dumpster.

Yeah.

I have a couple, you know, I said infinity transfer cases. Yeah, a lot of stuff.

Yeah.

But, most of it not that expensive, to be honest. You know, yeah, it all adds up. Maybe it's a thousand dollars altogether, maybe 1,500 bucks over the course of a couple years or something.

Well, that's not too bad.

No, nothing too insane. No. It, you know, it's a lot of labor, though, right? So.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Do your kids hang out in the garage with you, too? And is your wife mad about your mistress?

No, no, no. My wife is very supportive and super excited about it. The kids like driving in the car. They're supportive. And, but they're not in the fabricating yet. I'm trying to get my son into filming, like helping me film.

That's what I'm trying to do with my channel, right? So like, I'm doing this cool stuff. I need you guys. You're supposed to be good at this, right? Like.

He likes to edit. And so I haven't let him edit one of my videos yet. And so, but I could see he's only 11, so I could see that happening. And that would be pretty cool, actually. But he likes filming. He likes music. He's helped me pick a couple songs. And he actually did help me edit the intro to one and how the music goes with it in a little bit. So that's pretty cool. That's kind of stuff. But no, they don't like to wrench as of yet, but they're pretty young.

Yeah.

Yeah, so not yet. But my wife is beyond supportive. You know, I usually spend at least one weekend day in there, and then usually one or two nights a week. And I can't emphasize enough my buddy Harold, who's in a couple of videos. He's not in a lot of videos in front of the camera, but he's behind the camera, not filming. He's just not in the shot. And he has been critical to the project for sure, both in fabrication, he's a machinist, and just bouncing ideas off and just helping in general. So he's been critical for sure. But we actually, you know, it's taking too long now, but he's got a Porsche 944 that we put a 302 in, fuel injected 302 in. So he out-of-crosses that now. So we made the motor mounts, even made the intake manifolds. We didn't want to, it's all fuel injected, but we didn't want to put a bump in the hood or lower the suspension. So we used a GT40 lower intake and made a completely fabricated upper intake manifold for it, all of the sheet metal.

Oh, wow, stuff, if it doesn't bolt on for me, man, it's not, I'd like to think that I could make my own parts if I had all the right machining stuff, but it's just, it makes my brain hurt.

Yeah, that's a whole nother level. I think you might be our record longest episode now, by the way. Once I edit it, we'll find out, but last episode with Michael Peterson hit 237 or whatever.

He was asking about that. I was like, no, this technical stuff goes long, but we just over yourself and it up.

I love it, though. The thing is, there is an audience for it. I mean, for example, the guy next door who kind of does a lot of similar stuff you do, but for Ratified here, I mean, the conversation's at a minimum or half hour, because it's just so much awesome technical stuff goes down. So there's absolutely an audience for it. And the nice thing about having me and Dan here is we're actually able to ask questions that can kind of relay it to those that don't do it. So it's just super fun. So with technical ones do tend to go longer, but it's super cool. Do you want to ask the usual three?

Yeah.

And then we can figure out tacos or something?

Sure.

I didn't know. I've only watched like three episodes and I didn't get to the end.

So you didn't get to the end?

Oh, no, there's three questions.

Yeah, I have a feeling that these questions, you've already gonna have some answered anyway. They're gonna be pretty easy for you.

And don't stress them either. It's supposed to be a fun thing.

So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guest to pick three cars. Three cars, a show car, a daily driver, and a track car. You have an unlimited budget. And for a guy like you, swaps are fine too. Whatever you can ponder up, we would like you to pick three.

We got track.

Show and daily driver.

Well, my show, my current super fascination is a, which gets back to the kit cars, maybe a GT40 is the, I'm probably going to butcher how you say this, but it's the Lancia 037 Stradale, which is the key, which is the street version. I just think that is the coolest looking car, but a close second would be a GT40 for, and maybe that's a track car too. Maybe they overlap, but I really think the GT40s are cool.

Which generation?

The Mark IIs.

Okay, the 0506, the...

No, no, no, the Mark, there was...

Oh, the 60s ones, okay, yeah, I get it, yep.

There was the Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, Mark IV. The Mark IIs are the ones that most kits are, I think, don't quote me on that.

But the Lancia would be your first pick?

Yeah, right now.

Is that the rear wheel drive one?

It's rear wheel drive. There's a movie coming out, like just this month about that rivalry. It was the last rear wheel drive rally car to get a...

So it would be that one, okay.

Yeah. Okay. It's all just based on looks. I just think it's the coolest looking car ever.

It has the four rally lights on the front too, right? Yeah, that is such a cool car.

Yeah, and I have just a thing for cars that have the flat front, like E30 Beamers and the old school 70s Escorts from England and even old 60s Mustangs, like the flat front. In the Lancia 037, it just has that classic, even first gen Rabbits, Volkswagen Rabbits have that front.

So I'm a Fox body guy. My favorite one, I have an ASE McClearen Capri. I like the Capris are a little bit more flattened out. They look like a DeLorean in the front and then Fox body from their back. So yeah, I get it.

So, okay. So let me be covers to track in. So what's the street car? You know, like right now it's gonna be my dream car, but I'm really wanna get a Golf R, I don't know why, but not a Mark 7. So my current street car drive, daily driver is an 11 Audi S4, because that's one of the last years they made a stick, and maybe like 13 is or something, don't quote me. And I want it, of course, I want a stick. But I'm gonna think about that. If they made a some, you know, it'd have to be all wheel drive is the key, you know.

The daily drivers that have ranged all over from just a $200 beater to like what, Buganis and stuff like this.

We've had people say a lot of Koenigseggs.

Yeah.

It's tough because, yeah.

See, I wouldn't be going that high. No, I think maybe like a, maybe like a, I don't, I'm not an expert in my Porsches, but like a 992 AWD, you know, turbo Porsche would be up there. You know, which is still a $300,000 car or 250.

Right, right.

Unlimited budget, it works. Yeah, 250 or something.

But something like that.

So 992 Turbo S for the daily.

Yeah.

And then the other one was the track car. Correct, Alonso?

Yeah. That would be, that might be the show car and the track car together. I don't know. I don't know if I have a dedicated track car. I didn't combine those two.

You'd have to pick another one. I won't make it tough on you.

Put your GT40 in there.

You were there. So the GT40 is the track car.

Perfect. Well, on that note, first of all, thank you for coming on. But secondly, where can people find you? No production value garage on all channels?

I don't know. I read on the Instagram, I think that one is actually all wheel drive Mustang, but I should really change it to match. But basically, yeah, my YouTube channel, which is no production value garage, if there is an email address on that, if you want to get to it, that's really it.

Okay.

So.

Perfect. On that note, Dan, where can people find you?

You can find us at Gunnett Garage. You know, we're over there just praying for snow. That's on all platforms, everything. So two ends.

Perfect. And you can find me at the taco shop in 20 minutes. Okay. Yeah. If you're this far into the episode, I hope you know where you're at on that note. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter, all that fun stuff. But other than that, thank you very much, Tim. It was a pleasure to meet you. This is an awesome, awesome project to talk about. I'm gonna have a blast listening back to this because like, when I listen back and do the highlights, that's when I really start learning stuff, you know, repetition. That's how you learn stuff. So it's gonna be a blast to listen to this. Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see you all next time.