Coyote Powered 88' Cougar Road Race car

So after doing a bunch of changes to the car over the winter we were finally able to go racing a week and a half ago. The race was at Nelson Ledges in Ohio.

Improvements over the winter were Maximum Motorsports tubular k-member, tubular control arms, front coil overs and long tube headers. The MM k-member gains 3/4" of wheel base plus we went with forward controls arm that gain another 3/4" for a total of 1 1/2". We also took a shot in the dark and went 250#'s heavier on the front spring rates.

We were already running MM torque arm and pan hard bar.

Motor is a stock 2015' GT motor with stock tune. Currently running a Tremec TKO 3550 trans.

Brakes are our own fabrication on the front that are calipers from a 68' Lincoln (4-piston) with custom adapters that allow us to run 14" GT500 rotors under 17" wheels.

Rear brakes are 13" PBR 2 piston caliper setup that used to come stock on the Cobra Mustangs.

Brakes are manual with no ABS.

As you'll see by the pictures this car is a total sleeper.

Race Format for Nelson was a 4 hour qualifying race on Saturday and a 9 hour race on Sunday

We chose to cycle all 4 of our drivers in the 4 hour race which caused an extra pit stop. We also had fuel pressure issues late that were slowing us down but still managed a 3rd place finish in our class.

Sunday we were leading our class when we developed fuel pressure issues again. This resulted in 2 unscheduled stops and then a 23 minute stop to replace the pump We still managed a 4th in class finish and were a lap away from 3rd. The 3rd place car had developed brake problems very late in the race and was limping around very slowly.

Here are some pictures and video:




Series is AER. Cars are classes by speed after qualifying. 5 is the fastest and so on down to class 1. We qualify mid pack in class 3. The black Porsche you see in the above with the green wing is an LS1 swap car. It's light and fast! They're probably at least 800#'s lighter than we are. Our car is currently 3,400 #'s

To put in perspective how the Cougar runs we were .2 tenths off of the fastest lap by this yellow Cayman and ahead of them due to consistency.



Forgot the video:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="AER Nelson Ledges Hour #3 Sunday 2020 - YouTube" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Cool Car. Looks fun. My first car was an 83 ford thunderbird. Wish I had that car back and could stuff a new 5.0 in it. That would be too much fun.

Man that car has come along way. Pretty awesome

That was definitely a fun to watch video. You have a very competitive Cougar and you must have a blast on the track. Nice driving, too!!

speeddemon2000 said:

Cool Car. Looks fun. My first car was an 83 ford thunderbird. Wish I had that car back and could stuff a new 5.0 in it. That would be too much fun.

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One of our drivers wives just bought an 83' t-bird last fall that is all original and has around 60k miles on it. Cool car

me32 said:

Man that car has come along way. Pretty awesome

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It has. This is our 3rd year of limited use with the car. When we built it we ended up dealing with some gremlins with the brakes and what we thought was transmission or clutch issues. Once we finally got those sorted out we started working on handling. The car was pretty fast to begin with but as we got the brakes and the handling dialed in the car has really come around.

The guy that took the picture of us behind the yellow Cayman had a great comment with the picture. Here's what he said.... "as I'm working through photos from this past weekend, every time I come across to this one I smirk because I guess I didn't realize the Fox platform Cougar was the predecessor to the BMW M8"

The Cougar gets tons of attention everywhere as soon as people see how it runs.

CobraBob said:

That was definitely a fun to watch video. You have a very competitive Cougar and you must have a blast on the track. Nice driving, too!!

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Thanks Bob!

Car is a blast. VERY well balanced, great power from the Coyote motor, predictable handling and stops pretty much as good as any of the cars out there.

We're running New Jersey Motorsports Park next weekend. That event has 2 - 8 hour races. Looks like there will be around 50 total cars for that one.

After NJ we'll be adding a MM adjustable rear sway bar. Our only change to the car at the last race was adding 3 #'s of air to the rear tires so we could loosen the rear a little. Balance is close to as good as it will get and the bar should allow us to make that even better.

I like it.

Believe it or not I found this sign on Amazon

I'm curious why you chose those Lincoln/Kelsey-Hayes brakes up front?

MFE said:

I'm curious why you chose those Lincoln/Kelsey-Hayes brakes up front?

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All about functionality and cost... Those calipers can be bought new for $170 a pair with no core charge. We made a template and had an adapter machined to fit those calipers to our spindles with a 14" GT500 rotor. All of this fits under 17" wheels (cheaper tires than 18's).

We run NAPA brand rotors that are $40 a piece. You're never going to believe me when I tell you this but the current rotors probably have 40 hours on them, and they're still good. Heat cracked like normal but still good. The pads which have the 4 hour qualifying race and probably 8 hours of sundays race are still in good shape and will get us through practice and qualifying at the next race. At that point they won't be shot but won't be good enough for an 8 hour race. So they'll get put away for another practice/qualifying day.

We run a Wilwood manual brake setup in the car. Dual master cylinders for the brakes with an adjustable balance bar. Now that we have the master cylinder bore sizes sorted out and the proper compound pads front and rear this car stops as good as and car in our class and even as good as most of the cars in the next fastest group. That's with us weighing 3,400 #'s

I just put this same front brake setup on my 97' Cobra while we were closed for the quarantine.

Holy shit. 14-inch rotors under 17-inch wheels. Feel like selling a set of those brackets?

Yeah it's a hell of a setup! The caliper requires a little grinding for rotor clearance. The caliper "arch" is designed for a much smaller diameter rotor so you need to open that arch up some. There is plenty of meat there to work with. The top of the caliper also requires a little grinding. We've done this to multiple pairs of calipers over the few years and have never had a problem.

I got 2 spare sets of brackets last time they were made but I don't want to part with those. Let me find out about getting more from the place that made them for us. I'll let you know. It'll probably be a few days.

I'm pretty sure these are for an SN95 spindle. Is that what you're running?

I was wondering what the hell that thing had under the hood. Went down to watch the race with the fam. Had a friend driving a spec E30.

Crazycarl said:

I was wondering what the hell that thing had under the hood. Went down to watch the race with the fam. Had a friend driving a spec E30.

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Great weekend to be at the track! Weather was great.

How'd your friend do?

We're you there both days?

Bone stock 2015' 5.0 Coyote motor. We dyno'd the car when we first built it and it calculated to about 440 at the crank. We added long tubes over the winter but didn't dyno it again.

03'Darin said:

I'm pretty sure these are for an SN95 spindle. Is that what you're running?

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Yes

03'Darin said:

Great weekend to be at the track! Weather was great.

How'd your friend do?

We're you there both days?

Bone stock 2015' 5.0 Coyote motor. We dyno'd the car when we first built it and it calculated to about 440 at the crank. We added long tubes over the winter but didn't dyno it again.

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it was a perfect weekend. We were only there Sunday. They finished 3rd in class. They actually lost a driver before the race even started so they were down to 2 drivers. My buddy ran the fastest lap in class though.

Man that's a long race for 2 drivers.

What class were they in? Nice job with fastest lap in class!

We had worked our way up to the lead of our class before I fuel pump started going out.