Project Budget 400WHP S197 Mustang Track Car: Part 2 – Finding out what it takes to make 400WHP

Stock Manifold and K&N Intake, No Tune VS 2018+ Intake Manifold and K&N Intake, No Tune

We were a bit surprised at the results of the untuned 2018 intake manifold.  While we anticipated the torque peak to shift up the powerband, and it did from 4,300 to 4,700 RPM, this combo (BLUE) lost 12 WHP peak power and a massive 23 LB-FT of peak torque over the stock manifold and K&N race air intake (RED).

It makes sense that this 2018+ intake manifold has the Charge Motion Control Valves (CMCV) in the first place, to improve the lack of low-end torque inherently caused by the shorter and larger runners.  This setup just did not work without a tune on our Gen-1 Coyote.  At this point, we let the Palm Beach Dyno’s internet-famous tuner Rob Shoemaker work his magic on this new setup.

2018+ Intake Manifold and K&N Intake, No Tune VS Tune

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!  After a little tweaking, Rob got us over the 400 WHP target with 404.72 WHP at 6,800 RPM and 358.64 LB-FT of torque at 4,900 RPM on 93 pump gas.

The new tuning improved the top-end significantly, with a 25 LB-FT of torque increase from 5,300 RPM to the new 7,600 RPM redline.  Peak power increased by 33.34 WHP and peak torque by 5 LB-FT.

Baseline VS 2018+ Intake Manifold and K&N Intake VS 2018+ Intake Manifold and K&N and Tune

Compared to the baseline pull (RED) and the untuned 2018+ intake manifold (BLUE) our tuned 2018+ Intake Manifold and K&N Intake (GREEN) has significantly more top end, with a 20 LB-FT average increase from 5,700-7,500 RPM

The torque curve is now flatter up to 3,750rpm thanks to a massive 40 LB-FT increase at 2,900 RPM.  However, we lost 11 LB-FT of peak torque and it shifted 500 RPM higher in the powerband.  There’s a noteworthy 25 LB-FT of torque loss in the mid-range between 3,500-4,500 RPM, but we got this back from a little more tuning that we will cover in the next article.

To recap:

Our Gen-1 Coyote eclipsed our target of 400 WHP with just a K&N air intake, a 2018+ Gen-3 Mustang intake manifold, and a tune from Palm Beach Dyno.  That’s less than $900 in hardware, plus a tune to make over 400 WHP.  Keep in mind that this is on the factory exhaust with the catalytic converters still intact.

But we are not done yet.  There is still a little more tuning left to get the mid-range torque back, and we are going to test the K&N airbox with the top on and off.  We are also going to replace the boat anchor of a muffler with a lightweight Borla cat-back exhaust to reduce weight in the car, pick up a little power, and give our GT some much needed sound and character.

Stay tuned to find out how much more power we can squeeze out of our “Budget 400 WHP S197 Mustang Track Car”!

Quick Reference:

Page 1 – Baseline Dyno
Page 2 – K&N Performance Air Intake System
Page 3 – K&N Intake Install
Page 4 – K&N Intake Dyno & 2018+ Intake Manifold
Page 5 – 2018+ Intake Manifold CMCV Delete and Stock Manifold Removal
Page 6 – Stock Gen 1 vs Gen 3 (2018+) Manifold Comparison
Page 7 – 2018+ Manifold Install
Page 8 – 2018+ Manifold Dyno & Tune

SOURCES:

BILLY JOHNSON RACING

K&N FILTERS

PALM BEACH DYNO

RAREFAB