Manual transmissions ...

Manual transmissions used to be the norm.
These days they're almost impossible to find in most cars, and even trucks.
When my fiancee went shopping for a car back in 2002-2003 she wanted AWD, she wanted a small crossover/wagon-type vehicle, and she wanted one more thing which turned out to be the hardest part of the whole purchase: a manual transmission.
She decided on a 2003 Subaru Forester, a car the was checking off every box on her must-have list.
Her transmission choice ... well, that made it so the dealer had to locate a 5-speed car and have it transferred in, since all their inventory was automatic.
Thirteen years and over 180,000 miles later, she still owns the car, and still loves the fact it's a manual.
Meanwhile, manual transmissions have become even harder to find.
Myself, I blame all the manufacturers for the manual transmission's demise.
They have constantly been offering them only in models meant for fuel economy, taking out or not offering high-end options in the models with the third pedal.
Want navigation system? Sorry, you'll have to step up to the blah-blah-blah model which is auto-only.
Want a fancy stereo? Same thing.
Personally, I want all the toys, but I also want that all-important and fun-inducing third pedal.
Thoughts?
Comments?

- Gabe.

Miles or smiles?

Miles per gallon?
Yes, I care about that, somewhat.
After all, it can get expensive to run a car that is horribly inefficient.
But combining efficiency with excellent performance can be quite a balancing act.
My '13 Mustang, in its current state, gets 20 mpg when cruising on the highway, even more if I could keep myself from going faster than I should, and 20mpg is actually efficient when considering that the car's now producing approximately 700 horsepower.
Conversely, introducing the gas pedal to the floor under it produces rapid forward propulsion, leaving me with a huge smile on my face.
And that bring me to the "smiles per gallon" part.
A car's ability to produce lots of smiles per gallon ... now that's a rating that should be on every window sticker.

More Powah!

When is 650 horsepower not all that impressive?
When you can have 700+
And that's exactly what I did to my Mustang last week.
Wednesday morning I installed a new slightly smaller pulley on the supercharger.

I then went to a shop in Loudon NH to get the computer re-tuned:

 And re-tune they did!
I went from approximately 570 rear-wheel horsepower (about 655 crankshaft-horsepower) to over 600 at the wheels!
608 to be exact.
Which translates to 700-715 crank horsepower (the power the engine is producing at its crankshaft before driveline loss is taken into account)
And the car is now putting down over 500 ft-lbs of torque to the tires from 3800-5800 RPM.
That's quite a FLAT torque curve:

And that's some serious power increase, power that can be easily felt, especially in the off-the-line torque.
Torque increase over the previous set-up?
47 ft-lbs.
Yup, almost 50 ft-lbs more than the prior pulley/tune combo.
I'd say I'm happy with that!
Oh, and a video of the dyno run:

Brake fluid flushing

Most of us don't ever think about our car's brake fluid.
Even when we have a brake job done or if we happen to be handy enough to do it ourselves.
Replace pads and resurface or replace rotors, clean & lube caliper slides, slap it together and move on.
Meanwhile, the blood of the braking system gets ignored.
I just got done flushing 4-year old fluid in my '13 Mustang, and I was surprised how dark and cloudy it was.
The thought to flush it came after a recent autocross event where I overheated the fluid, and had smoke coming from the brakes.
During the course of those 4 years that the fluid has been working, it got hot, it got cold, it carried away dirt and other contaminants that might have entered the system, and it got water in it from the moisture in the air.
So over time it loses its efficiency, it gets dirt- and water-contaminated, and when pressed hard to perform, it fails.
So, out it went, a simple procedure.
New fluid going in, Motul RBF600:

Jacked up the car, removed the wheels, pumped out as much of the old fluid as I could out of the underhood reservoir, topped it off with the new fluid, and asked my lovely fiancee to be the pedal pusher inside the car while I was handling the bleeder screws at the calipers.
Roughly 1 hour including jacking up the car, and the brake fluid was fresh, nice and firm brake pedal, ready for a year of whatever I might throw at it.
This is some of the old fluid, cloudy and dark:

In the master cylinder, old then new fluids:

Also, a few months ago I installed a separate reservoir for the clutch fluid, and at the time I topped off that fluid using new Amsoil DOT4 fluid.
Yesterday I was shocked how dark that fluid looked, and since there's no easy way to flush that system, I sucked out the fluid out of the reservoir and topped it off with the same fresh Motul RBF600 fluid that I used for the brakes.
This is a picture of the clutch fluid reservoir showing the difference between the old dark fluid and the fresh stuff:

So next time you're having brake work done or scheduling some work for the car, remember your brake fluid, and if it's been more than 3 years since the last flush, or if you don't remember ever having it done, schedule it!

- Gabe.

Updates on my Mustang

I recently installed a BMR Watts Link in my '13 Mustang GT.
Well, a couple hundred miles and an autocross event later, I can honestly say that I love it.
It added traction when cornering/turning, even when accelerating from a stop and turning.
And it seems to have reduced body roll somewhat.
It also seems to have changed the rear-end feel of the car a bit over bumps, it's a bit cushier but firm.

Also, last Saturday my fiancee and I took part in an autocross event.

A couple of pictures of us in our cars during the event, me in my gray '13 GT and my fiancee in her '08 GT500:

During the last couple of runs, I managed to overheat the brake fluid, my blower belt decided to start melting onto the pulleys, the right rear brake started smoking, and with all that going on I decided to skip the last run of the day, let the car cool off and be able to drive it home instead of breaking something and having to tow it.
So, new belts were ordered and yesterday I started working on the car.
Got the blower belt replaced with the new belt I had already ordered a few weeks ago (a fun project since a large aluminum tensioner bracket has to be removed), and this was made much easier by the fact that I was replacing the coolant tanks with newly hydro-dipped ones.
Also got the thermostat replaced with a new 170-degree Reische unit that I've had for over a year.
Stopped about half-done since the shipment with the new main serpentine belt, its tensioner, and a new idler pulley, didn't show up yesterday like it was supposed to.
Finished yesterday's work by installing the new hydrodipped engine coolant tank, and today will hopefully button it up, top off the coolant systems, and re-start it.
Still need to flush the brake fluid, and I have Amsoil DOT4 brake fluid here for that service.

The new hydro-dipped coolant tanks I picked up yesterday from the dipper:

 Pictures from yesterday's work:

The alternator/front serpentine belt, original OEM part at the current 37k miles, being replaced mostly because it has to be removed anyway for the blower belt to be replaced:

The old and the new blower belts. The old blower belt was starting to show a really odd wear on half of it, and it was sticky, this was the half that was leaving gummy residue onto the pulleys:

The belts removed, the top silver idler pulley clearly shows the belt residue that the blower belt was leaving on it:

Pulleys cleaned and new blower belt routed, aluminum tensioner bracket reinstalled and torqued to 25 Nm (approx 222 in-lbs):

Thermostat-replacement. This caused a bunch of fluid to leak out, almost no way to have it not do that because of where the t-stat is located. I had a pan under the car that caught most of it.

The factory 180-degree thermostat:

And the factory t-stat next to the new 170-degree Reische t-stat:

The way it looked at the end of the day yesterday, with the engine coolant tank installed and connected, but not re-filled yet, just in case I have to take it apart again for some reason:

Shipment with the new main serpentine belt, the new tensioner for that belt, and a new OEM idler pulley should be here today, it's currently showing "out for delivery".
Can't wait to get it re-started!
Once I know she's running well again, I have a new smaller supercharger pulley waiting to be installed, in my quest to get closer to 600 rear-wheel horsepower.

Autocross

Autocross.
What is it? Well, it's a form of racing. It's usually set up on airport runways, usually at airports that are no longer actual airports, old military bases, whatever area with a large amount of pavement where a coned course can be laid out for cars to run on.
The one I've gone to several times now is an out-of-service military base in Ayer, MA, and it has autocross events almost every weekend, coordinated by several different car clubs.
My fiancee and I have done the last 3 events together, me running my '13 Mustang GT, and her running her '08 Mustang GT500.
This Saturday (2 days from now) we have our next event scheduled, and unlike most of our prior events, it's looking like it might actually not rain!
We're both looking forward to it, it's a great way to learn your car, what it can do, and what you can do with it before getting into trouble.
In the event of a spin-out, there are no walls or other obstacles to hit, you just spin, get off course immediately if you can or get back under way immediately if you can, whichever option prevents less risk to the course workers around or the next car coming up behind you.
Here's a video of me in my Mustang running the course. The video is from 2014, and the occasional whine you can hear is the supercharger screaming as I'm laying into the throttle.

Another video, this was taken by somebody on the course, my first autocross event, in the rain:

And last but certainly not least, my fiancee launching her Shelby at one of the events:

My first car

My first car.
It was a 1984 Ford LTD, one of the smaller midsize LTD's not the full-size cop-car LTD.
Eight years old when I got it, it had a 3.8L V6 and rear-wheel-drive, and on the test-drive it had 45,412 miles on it.
Yes, I still remember the exact mileage on it, even though that was about 25 years ago.
As a young new driver with a 400-lb right foot, I beat the living hell out of that car for the next 3 years, while at the same time improving things on it, doing some of my own repairs, putting bigger tires on the rear wheels, and changing out the radio and speakers.
At one point the car had a stereo in it that included a CD player (in 1992 CD players were high tech, lol), 3 amplifiers, 2 12" subwoofers, and other upgraded speakers, a system that could deliver peaks of almost 2,000 watts.
It was a sound system on wheels, it was a car with 3 different shades of gray on its body panels, it was the car that got me to love Ford cars and rear-wheel drive.
I owned it for 3 years and put almost 40,000 miles on it, trading it in with about 83,000 miles on it.
Some pictures of it:

There's a good chance I may have caused some of those marks in the sand:

 Hood up, this was checking the fluids on the way up to NH for a 2-day trip with a friend:

And yes, being a young kid I thought that bumper sticker would be funny:

 

The local Police didn't.

2017 Ford Super Duty trucks - 925 ft-lbs of torque!!

Ford recently announced that their 2017 line of Super Duty pick-up trucks will be available with a turbodiesel V8 engine that will deliver 440 horsepower and 925 ft-lbs of torque.
Nine Hundred and twenty five foot-pounds of torque.
Nine hundred.
And twenty five.
Just think about that for a second.
That's about THREE times what a heavy duty diesel pickup truck was offering about 15 years ago, including the highly-regarded 7.3L that International used to build for Ford up until about 2003 when it was replaced by the 6.0L
And with that huge new power comes upgraded frames, upgraded transmissions, and of course, upgraded tow ratings.
How much of a tow rating?
Well, how does 32,500 lbs sound?
Cuz it certainly sounds like a LOT to me.
And while that huge number will probably only be offered by the F-450 in one particular short-cab/whatever bed/axle configuration, it's gonna be THE number we'll hear a lot when Ford starts advertising the new truck.
The 2017 Super Duty also has a new aluminum body and improved passenger comfort and infotainment options.
Best heavy-duty truck ever?
Certainly looks like it.
Yes, I want one. With the diesel of course.

2015+ Mustang GT350 and GT350R

A factory-offered Mustang with 526 horsepower and a redline of 8,250 RPM?
Yes please, sign me up!
I've had the pleasure of seeing a few of these by now, and heard their sweet-sounding exhaust.
It's left me wanting one, something that unfortunately can't happen since I'm nowhere near able to afford the $60k+ price tag for one.
But that doesn't stop me from dreaming about one.
I mean, 526 horsepower with no turbos, superchargers, nitrous, or other power adder.
Just a healthy V8, the way God intended it!
And a V8 with a much talked about flat-plane crankshaft, something that certainly helps deliver that lofty engine redline, and something that also delivers that amazing engine sound.
The car has been tested over and over by every car magazine out there, they all love it.
It's a track machine, it eats up corners like no Mustang that's ever come before it, and especially so the "R" model, with it's light carbon-fiber wheels, tweaked suspension and aero.
So, I want one.
What are your thoughts on it?