2020 Shelby GT500 | Modding and Testing VMP's Project Snowbird
I know you guys have been waiting for this. The 2020 GT500 has already proven to be a supremely impressive addition to Ford Performance family of vehicles. But this is SVTP, you know we never leave anything stock for long. So we teamed up with the supercharger experts at VMP Performance to cover some up the preliminary build up of their project Predator. When we arrived, the car was already equipped with a ported supercharger courtesy of Jokerz Performance. Other than the blower, the car was stock.
The 2020 Shelby GT500 is Ford Performance's ultimate expression of S550 Mustang prowess, and it looks like they left the aftermarket plenty of room to play.
So the first order of business was to strap the Twister Orange Mustang to rollers and set a baseline. He above setup netted us 680 RWHP, but the interesting thing we noticed was the power starting to drop off once the engine reached 7,700 RPM. VMP’s Justin Starkey believed it was due to restriction in the suction side of the intake tract. We would soon find out just how true that theory was. We decided to ditch the factory airbox lid to see if that freed things up a bit. There’s been a rumor that opening things up could make things interesting. Check out this video:
Just removing the air box lid gave the GT500 a 65RWHP increase over our baseline, and power was continuing to climb past 7,700 RPMs.
From there we bolted the intake lid back on and VMP played with some played around with some mild tuning. Justin’s software of choice was HP-Tuners due to their support and speedy load times. With some minor adjustments (though still running a lot of safeties) the car picked up 46HP/21TQ to the tires. Looking around VMP’s shop, we found one of their 105mm Throttle Bodies that just happened to fit the inlet of the Jokerz Performance ported supercharger perfectly. It’s a very nicely made piece. However, at factory boost levels we saw negligible gains. I suspect the 105mm TB will pay dividends once the supercharger is pulleied down and flowing more air. Check out the video of these tests:
The major take away here is that the car picked up power everywhere across the RPM range.
Finally, it was time to test the air box lid delete mod in the real world. I had my doubts that the massive gains we saw on the dyno would translate into the real world, and there’s no better real world test than knocking off a few ¼ mile passes. So we loaded up and head over to Orlando Speed World for a little test-and-tune time. One thing that is instantly apparent when looking at the time sheets is that the car is insanely consistent. However, it appears that my theory on ripping off the lid was correct. There’s not much value in it on the street or track. This video details the runs:
Hard to argue with these back to back passes. Perhaps the results will be different once we add a few more PSI to the mix.
Overall, we had a great couple days playing with Ford’s latest and greatest Pony Car. We performed a lot more tests than what’s posted in this thread. However, the videos go into much greater detail on all the changes we made; so I suggest watching them. If you have any questions of what to see more dyno sheets just let me know. We’ll keep posting them up in this thread. One note though, we did happen to receive prototype JLT Performance Cold Air Intake the last day we were on the dyno. I’ll be posting up those results tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that.
Not since the 'snorkel' silencer on the Terminator have we seen a factory intake tract piece rob so much power.
Pulling the lid leaves you with an air intake that looks remarkably like the one found on the Shelby GT350 Mustang.
There's just a little bit of difference here. Stock 92mm vs VMP 105mm. I'm betting we see significant gains once we add about 4#s of boost.
This photo isn't exactly straight on, but it gives you an idea of just how close Jokerz Performance ported inlet is size matched to the VMP 105mm throttle body.
This is not a bad way to spend a Tuesday.
-SID297