The last year competing with our Time Attack Mustang we call Trigger has been pretty amazing, but it wasn’t without some tough beginnings, from January to October of 2023. In our latest update to our S550 Forum Build thread we cover the challenges we had in the summer of 2023 – with low oil pressure plaguing the performance of our HPR 454″ LS7, to the lack of grip before we added some aero enhancements.
This thread update extensively covers every step of the front splitter construction and rear “floating C-pillar” wing installation on our S550 Mustang track car shown here. We delve a little into the theory, the rules, the tunnels added, the rear mounting bracket, and the exposed splitter struts. We also talk about our dual element Nine Lives Racing carbon rear wing, how we mounted that, and then our initial testing with aero – which was still with the factory GM “LS7” based internal 2 stage dry sump system.
Adding aero and more lateral grip made our low oil pressure issues even worse, so we immediately paused the race season so we could add an external 4 stage dry sump pump. That “bolt on” job snow balled into custom machining virtually every part we started with to fit correctly. This was a huge amount of work, and once it was finally mounted, it was still a lot of plumbing. We take the time to explain all of the steps of this external dry sump pump conversion, with pictures and warnings to others, in the forum thread. But all that work paid off, big time.
At our first competition event after this work in October of 2023 we had our biggest lap time drop and a huge win, which we discuss in the forum build thread with pictures and video. We have since changed the aero package in several ways, which we will cover in future updates, but this initial setup was a massive upgrade to this car and makes it much more enjoyable to drive on track. Thanks for reading!