Procharged 2007 Shelby Mustang GT500 - Shuck And Drive

Horse Sense:
Dan Schoneck owns Schoneck Composites [(507) 525-3333; www.schoneckcomposites.com] in Minnesota Lake, Minnesota. His business specializes in fiberglass and carbon-fiber body panels for late-model Mustangs. Available products range from Fox Mustang front clips to carbon-fiber wheeltubs to New Edge Mustang cowl hoods. Dan's products are on display at every Mustang race thanks to a large following among racers. Front bumper covers are probably his most popular product.

Disco Dan Schoneck, or Lieutenant Dan, as we sometimes call him, is one of those guys who never sleeps. We're not sure he could calm himself enough to even entertain the thought. He has a seemingly limitless amount of energy; he's always banging his internal tach against the rev limiter. We're sure the Energizer bunny gets his energy from Dan, not from batteries. Anytime we see him or talk to him on the phone, he's going, going, going. We've never met anyone more resembling Beavis' alter ego, Cornholio, than Dan. The man never stops.

When Dan maxed out his '841/2 GT350 convertible, he needed a new toy. He loved the new-for-'07 Shelby GT500, so he set out to find his own. He actually wanted to build one for his mom and put an automatic in it. Having the wherewithal to fix wrecked cars but not the funds to purchase a Shelby off the lot, Dan decided a slightly bent GT500 would be good enough to get him started in the right direction.

Fortunately for Dan, he looked online and found a wrecked '07 Vista Blue/Tungsten-striped GT500 (1 of 119 coupes built in this combo), owned by Brandon Yates out of Louisiana. Unfortunately for Brandon, his Shelby had only 2,200 miles on it when he was rear-ended by a drunk driver 29 days into ownership. Brandon's insurance company totaled the Shelby, but he bought it back to reclaim a few choice components, such as the aftermarket wheels he added. Brandon posted it on svtperformance.com, where Dan scooped it up.

"I would put a ProCharger on my lawnmower if I could," Dan says. With those words, it shouldn't surprise you to see a ProCharger F-1R underhood in Dan's Shelby. "The car sounds so angry on the dyno," he says. If we made 861 hp and 765 lb-ft of torque to the wheels (at Andy Wicks' Dynotunes), we'd sound mad, too. Dan says the engine will rev to 7,500 rpm, but it still makes peak power at the factory redline of 6,200. You can see how creative he had to get with packaging all this madness under one hood, but somehow he made it look presentable. It includes a Beck Mechanical intake, a ProCharger, a carbon inlet tube made by Dan's brother, and a Racecraft Incorporated intercooler reservoir. Dan runs the Shelby on E85, which explains the 150-lb/hr injectors and the firehose fuel-system capacity. A Fluidyne keeps all this madness cool.

With the car back in Minnesota, Dan's uncle, Tom Jenkins, added an '06 Mustang GT rear clip to the wrecked Shelby to make it straight once again. Uncle Tom clipped it through the quarter-windows and the seam that goes along the floor directly behind the front seats. Then Dan, using his autobody skills, finished off the bodywork and paint at Uncle Tom's shop. Since the car had so few miles on it, he only needed to paint the new rear clip and blend it with the existing paint.

Remember, Dan planned on building the car for his mom. Somewhere along the line, that idea was shelved in favor of a Hertz car that already featured an automatic. That cleared the way for Dan to go wild on the Shelby.

In case you didn't know, Dan also campaigns a Super Street Outlaw/Street Renegade 'Stang with a ProCharger. Through that, he's developed a great relationship with the supercharger manufacturer. "They're my boys," Dan says. Naturally, a ProCharger F-1R found its way under the Shelby's bonnet, as Dan wanted to do something different.

Before strapping on the ProCharger, Dan bolstered the engine's bottom end with a Lightning crankshaft, ProPower H-beam connecting rods, and Diamond pistons. To remove some weight from the car, an aluminum short-block is in the works. Up top, the stock GT500 heads remain untouched but are augmented by Ford GT cams. Besides the ProCharger F-1R, the most intriguing underhood component is the sheetmetal upper intake. Dan tells us it was made by Beck Mechanical, and that's a stock GT500 throttle body mounted to it.

A stock Shelby GT500 6060 six-speed transmission and clutch remain in the car until Dan picks a clutch to safely handle the power. Once he finds one that fits the bill, he has a built 6060 to also go in the car at that time. The 31/2-inch aluminum driveshaft is from The Driveshaft Shop, but it doesn't connect to the factory 8.8; Dan didn't think it would be able to handle the power and weight of the car. Instead, he added a Racecraft-prepped 9-inch housing filled with Mark Williams axles, a Strange Engineering third member, a Lenco locker differential, and 3.50 gears. To finish off the car, Dan tossed the factory Shelby wheels in favor of Weld Racing BC10s wearing Nitto treads. Dan's Shelby also wears one of the first pair of Nitto's 20-inch 555R Extreme Drag radials.