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My 2013 gt500 build


svt13

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So here is the build I been promising people since I got this car that I would do. Finally I know the route to take with this car. The idea behind this build is different from many others. The goal is to turn this already amazing car and go one step further to make it the best daily driven street driven car I can make it be. I am going to be doing something different than most people in that this car will be driven all year round so with that in mind that mods must be carefully choosen accordingly. That is to make sure the benefit outweighs the cost of the mod itself and that no other negatives are introduced. That means the car can not be bouncing all over the place on the road. Additionally it can not be scraping, squeaking, rattling, and vibrating. Now I know not many care about NVH (yes I said it NVH!!!!!) or any of that other stuff but lets be honest, who wants to hear all those stupid noises if we can avoid it?

 

This build will be broken up into different stages and will be completed over the course of 2 to possibly 4 months. The stages will be as follows:

 

Engine

Suspension

Weight reduction/change

Exterior/Sound

Interior

 

Now already the one thing this build does not have is power upgrades. I really don't think the shelby needs more than 662 hp on the street anything over will really just cause the tires to spin, get worse gas milage, and most importantly void the warranty.

 

Throughout this build I will give an unbiased review on everything I change on the car and explain why I chose certain parts over others. I will try to do as individual changes as I can so that people can see the differences of just that one mod on the car relative to the stock piece if time permits. I have a very indemand mechanic so I'm on his schedule unfortunately.

 

Stay tuned..... As soon as the forum is fixed so I can upload pictures I'll start the initial stages.

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The photo gallery has been down for a couple days, you can't post any pictures too or modify any that are already there.

Here is the error message.

Fatal error: Call to undefined method IPSLib::safeUnserialize() in /home/staff/public_html/forums/vienna/applications_addon/ips/gallery/modules_public/images/viewimage.php on line 208

I notified Robert, but it doesn't look like he has had any luck repairing the problem.

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Alright lets get this started.

 

First I want to go over the very first mods any new shelby owner should have. Those are:

 

 

 

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Redline hood struts

 

 

 

 

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Bob's oil separator (ignore the standard ugly hoses and fittings, they will be changed out later on for a more OEM look)

 

 

 

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And JLTs carbon fiber resonator delete and blue airaid filter

 

Additionally something that I found super helpful was my nav-tv lockpick and night vision rear view camera. It helps with backing up the shelby since it has a big ass :)

 

Now after we pass the initial must haves we get into the nitty gritty. Which is the suspension. As it stands now the 13 gt500 has a very good suspension. There is not much body roll and it has good traction. Granted the tires still spin a bit in first but that will soon be fixed. The adjustable bilsteins are great for when you want to get a little crazy with the simple plush a button you get in sport mode and the shocks instantly firm up. I would advise against driving in sport mode on bumpy roads for those with sensitive backs. Now with these new shocks in mind I had to choose suspension products that work with the existing OEM parts and will not interfere with their function. And again nothing is replaced unless it is OEM or better quality.

 

Oh and the shelby wings and transmission cooler scoope wouldn't hurt either as they are both easy installs.

 

 

 

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So here is the pile of suspension products to go the car

 

 

 

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Weight increases and reduction were also kept in mind when adding or changing suspension parts because another goal of this build is weight reduction to get as close as possible to a boss 302 weight. The goal is handling/weight of a boss 302 with shelby power. The suspension parts choosen then to go on the car with the help of Alex Mckenzie and Van from Revan Racing are as follows:

 

Bobs LCA

whiteline UCA

whiteline Watts link

steeda control arm relocation brackets

FRPP springs

 

The reason the bobs unit was choosen was because the bushing made by prothane is one of the highest quality on the market right now. And it only weighs 3 pounds.

 

 

 

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This quality poly bushing will allow an improvement over the heavy stock one (which when it comes off I'll take pictures of it on the scale and by itself) and reduce 10 pounds of weight each. Additionally and most importantly it won't squeak!!

 

Next comes whiteline's upper control arm and their magical poly synthetica elastamore bushing. Now since whiteline is new not much is known about them besides them dominating the import market and being the OEM replacement bushing in Australia. So I took a gamble and decided to try them out. Their UCA is very heavy duty so I don't see it as a problem of breaking like some have feared.

 

Here are some pictures

 

 

 

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And as you can see it weighs around 6 pounds. I don't know how much the stock UCA piece weighs yet but I'm sure this whiteline unit will be a couple pounds heavier

 

 

 

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Then we have the whiteline watts link. Now again this watts link uses whiteline's special bushing and mounts to the differential. But unlike other products this one spreads the load over 6 points rather than 1. This will provide less stress and hopefully my cover doesn't rip off. It is also 100% bolt on and no welding required. I won't really do much of a build on this because both madlock and patrickshelby have already done so check out their threads. I will take pictures later though of the watts link and of it installed on the car. Again this watts link was also choosen because it does not make any squeaks, rattles, or clunks which is common of other designs.

 

Then we have the steeda relocation bracket. The main reason this was choosen was because I may or may not take this car to a road course. depends if I have time but I want the best of the best regardless. The steeda unit matches in color all the other suspension parts, has 4 holes instead of the 3 BMR has, and is welded in rather than bolted in for more strenght. Now if I ever have to remove it thats ok to unweld it and paint the area is not really difficult.

 

The FRPP springs were choosen because of the ride quality. These are the best ride quality springs because they were made to ford racing specifications. And they drop the car only an inch. This is good enough to reduce the rake look and help in handling, while still keeping ride quality good and maintain the use of the bilsteins. Steeda are a good choice as well but I did not want to drop the car 1.2 inches front and 1.5 rear because of fear for scraping. Again this is a street car first so ride height is an important thing. Therefor ford racing was choosen. I find also its always better to go with ford or ford racing products over other aftermarket alternatives if possible.

 

Later after the intial suspension build steeda front and rear sway bars, with their front endlinks, and their billet front and rear mount swill be used. I choose steeda because honestly its the only brand out there that has a sway bar that is actually better than stock, is adjustable, and doesn't add weight. H&R adds weight so I didn't choose them. I was thinking the boss LS bars but as Alex's LS build shows these are an improvement over those as well. And the FR3 sway bars much to people's disappointment are not an improvement over the new 13s sway bars either.

 

Stay tuned for next week since Friday all of these parts will go on the car and I will have pictures and my impressions of the car afterwards.......

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Next step is learning how to rotate pictures before posting them. :poke:

 

 

Idk how to do it in the gallery. If you even can. Also Idk why they came out that way when I took them facing up.

 

Edit: I figured it out. give me a second I'll switch them

 

Ok I have no clue why they are still coming out sideways. And now they came out blurry. Ughhh just click on them and if you click on them they show you a blown up picture right side up

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I tried to send this in a PM, but your box is full.

 

Right click on the picture in your gallery you want to post and choose "Direct Link To This File". When the picture appears, copy the link in the address line and then got to your post and click on the image icon and past the address in the pop up box.

gallery_36768_1949_144002.jpeg

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Ok so update. My mechanic is installing all the suspension parts now. Over the weekend I will take pictures of the weights of all stock parts coming off and post them along with my review of all the suspension pieces. I couldnt' do one at a time unfortunately because I was being charged a million dollars if I did it that way.

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Alright so I drove the car over the weekend with the whiteline watts link, UCA, bobs LCA, and FRPP springs.

 

First the pictures.

 

Here is the watts link installed

 

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And next the bobs LCA with steeda relocation brackets

 

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I rotated that last one but for some reason its coming out side ways.

 

Overall the installation seemed to be pretty straight foward for my mechanic. We encountered a couple problems we are working on. Mainly we could only get the pinion angle with the whiteline UCA to 0 instead of -1-2 though according to driveshaft shop 0 degrees pinion angle is perfect for CF driveshafts. That is ok since I am not a drag racer or doing hard launches then the pinion angle doesn't have to be negative.

 

Next the left arm of the watts link was a little tough to get parallel but he eventually got it there. The LCA are straight foward as well as springs.

 

Now the car will go in wednesday for alignment so I haven't checked the drop yet so I'll report then as far as impressions. The springs made the ride a teeennyyy tiny bit stiffer. It is not really noticeable unless you go over a huge ass bump.When ford racing says 10% stiffer it really is only 10% so hadly noticeable.Even in sport mode it feels the same. I know with eibach it is not bad in normal mode but then in sport mode its horribly bumpy. Not with FRPP. Also the nose dive under hard breaking is completely gone which made me happy and the rake is gone. Idk what people are saying about amazingly better ride quality because to me it feels the same to be quite honest. Except now there is no nose dive and tiny bit more bumpy.

 

Now for the watts link and control arms. Again don't feel much difference in traction though I am getting to 80 from 60 faster so I have to again start paying attention to how fast I go on the highway also I am getting past 3k RPM a lot faster so I'm assuming thats from increased traction. The watts link is definitely working. Now I can turn and go fast over bumpy parts of the road and my back end doesn't move a single bit. I can throw the car around a turn floor it and my rear end stays planted. I can also go about 10mph faster on ramps on and off the highway than I use to be. Now this could be that the car was always capable of it but now these mods have given me more confidence in the car to do more crazy stuff in so thats good.

 

Again I probably can't do a proper review on the control arms since I'm using winter tires. I'm sure it will be better with the michelins.

 

Now for the NVH. The watts link as Madlock said made the squeaky sneakers sound for about a day and half. The first 40 minutes I drove no squeaks. Then all the sudden it squeaked every 2 seconds. The next day and today the squeaks are gone. The bobs LCA also made squeaks that sounded like someone ripping paper. But those are gone too. The UCA makes aboslutely zero noise. The only thing is maybe the exhaust on the inside of the car is louder but that could be my imagination. My mechanic and girlfriend say it sounds the same to them. My only problem is now I hear whirrling sound which slows down and goes away below 10 mph. Granted this is an extremely quiet sound. It's almost as if someone has the radio on at the very first volume so its like a background white noise kinda thing. If you have the radio or even heater/AC on you can't hear it. After some research I think its the differential fluid so I have to see what my mechanic did there. I'm also happy that my UCA did not make my gear whine at 58-62 mph louder. It's just as loud as it was before so thats good. I do hear the gears whine a little bit more randomly through the lower gears but it souds like a plane taking off on the runway so thats kinda cool.

 

Anyways more to come wednesday. By then most of these little noise problems should be figured out as well.

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Nice posts, very interesting. Are you changing the rear gearing as well? Im thinking on going to 3.55, but want to hear from someone with experience.

 

 

No I will not be changing the gearing. This is not a drag racer and changing the gearing will create 2 problems. One the car will register more miles than actually traveled and two my wheels will just spin more and traction will really suck. Also I'll lose my good gas milage but not many care about that.

 

Now if I were to calibrate the car for the new gearing well that requires a tune then and there goes the warranty.

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The whirling sound you are hearing is more than likely the ring and pinion gear meshing together as you are moving the car. As speed increases so will the noise this is why it disappears below 10MPH. The other thing that you could also be hearing is the contact of the brake pads to the rotors on brake application, again this will get quieter as speed decreases. To see it is the brakes.........take your foot off the brake pedal to see if it disappears at the speeds you are hearing it at.

 

With any suspension mod that eliminates the factory bushings, you will have an increase in NVH. I don't care what the manufacturers tells you, you will have an increase of some sort.

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The whirling sound you are hearing is more than likely the ring and pinion gear meshing together as you are moving the car. As speed increases so will the noise this is why it disappears below 10MPH. The other thing that you could also be hearing is the contact of the brake pads to the rotors on brake application, again this will get quieter as speed decreases. To see it is the brakes.........take your foot off the brake pedal to see if it disappears at the speeds you are hearing it at.

 

With any suspension mod that eliminates the factory bushings, you will have an increase in NVH. I don't care what the manufacturers tells you, you will have an increase of some sort.

 

 

It's not the brakes. I can go say 40mph throw the car in neutral and not touch anything and I will hear the sound in the background. It's very weird. Everyone I have talked to says they have never heard what I am describing. My mechanic has to listen to it tomorrow to see. The noise is at every speed above say 8mph. It doesn't get louder with higher speeds. Whatever is making that sound is something that is a moving part and starts really moving above 10 mph and stays constant

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It's not the brakes. I can go say 40mph throw the car in neutral and not touch anything and I will hear the sound in the background. It's very weird. Everyone I have talked to says they have never heard what I am describing. My mechanic has to listen to it tomorrow to see. The noise is at every speed above say 8mph. It doesn't get louder with higher speeds. Whatever is making that sound is something that is a moving part and starts really moving above 10 mph and stays constant

 

Get used to it..........it is the sound of gear mesh between the ring and pinion gears in the rear axle housing. It is perfectly normal. You can look at Madlock's thread for a good explanation of the noises
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Get used to it..........it is the sound of gear mesh between the ring and pinion gears in the rear axle housing. It is perfectly normal. You can look at Madlock's thread for a good explanation of the noises

 

 

I never heard him talk about these noises. So was it the rubber bushing of the UCA that kept me from hearing this?

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