Ford Racing's Super Pack Boosts Our Stock GT 500 By More Than 100 Hp Before It Leaves The Dealer
Horse Sense: Roush had a hand in engineering the TVS supercharger setup that carries the Ford Racing name, so it shouldn't be a surprise that a similarly configured 2.3-liter TVS sits atop the engine of Roush Performance's top-dog, the 510hp P-51A.
What else would you do with an 8-mile GT 500 besides putting it straight onto the dyno rollers to test a few modifications? While I plan to keep the car nice, I'm not going to mothball it in stock form and hope to get rich one day. I want to enjoy it by adding huge power while maintaining stock-like driveability. Retaining the stock warranty is a great way to enjoy a new Shelby GT 500.
By now you're either excited to hear that we've added yet another project car to the 5.0&SF stable, or you really hate me because it's my own GT 500. Either way, I understand.
Finally everything is buttoned up and ready for our first round of dyno testing before adding the SVT1 mufflers. You have to agree that the 2.3-liter TVS blower looks as though it belongs.
These cars aren't easy to come by, and there are good reasons for why they're so desirable. For some, it's because they bear the legendary Shelby name and may one day be collectible. For the vast majority of performance nuts like me, the reason is because these cars respond so well to modifications. Much like their SVT predecessors, the GT 500s need minimal coaxing to lay down big numbers at the rear wheels.
Even more exciting for me was the prospect of installing Ford Racing Performance Parts' SuperPack kit for big power, while retaining the factory warranty. We tested this kit, which is based on the 2.3-liter Eaton Twin Vortices Series supercharger, on a modified car with impressive results in our May '08 issue ("Factory-Backed Boost," p. 186). The results were impressive, but we really wanted to see what the kit would do out of the box on a stone-stock GT 500 that rolled out of the delivery truck with only 8 miles on the odometer.
Once the testing of the SuperPack kit is complete, Rick Anderson flat-backs the SVT1 muffler swap while the GT 500 is still strapped to the dyno. Again, this is a simple remove and replace job, and we were pleasantly surprised with the results.
Since I purchased my car from Anderson Ford Mercury, the parent dealer of Anderson Ford Motorsport, it was a great opportunity to have the kit installed at the dealer (which is key to retaining the factory warranty) and have it dyno-tested to see what it was worth. Since I had a complicated plan ahead for the car, I couldn't make the trip to Clinton, Illinois, to pick it up, so the kind folks at AFM helped us out with yet another tech story by turning the wrenches and snapping the shots.
In the end, we were blown away with the results-then we added a few other FRPP bits for good measure.
So that's how the stock engine on my car looked! I never saw it this way, as it was delivered, modified, and back out on a trailer on its way to its next round of modifications. In this form, the car laid down 437.92 hp and 434.81 lb-ft of torque at the rear wheels. It was a little low compared to other stock GT 500s that have run across the AFM Dynojet, but it was in the expected range. Rick usually sees 440-450 hp, but this example carried less timing and a richer mixture than those cars.
Now we're talking. Here are the choice items I selected from the Ford Racing Performance Parts catalog to take the GT 500 to a new level: FR SuperPack (PN M-6066-SGT includes supercharger, cold-air intake, and tuner); SVT Mustang Muffler Set (PN M-5230-SVT-1); SVT Mustang shifter (PN M-7210-B); SVT Mustang smoked-chrome cam covers (PN M-6582-CC); and FR coil covers (M-6067-A, not shown).