As you can imagine, Bryan was dumbfounded by the Saleen Speedlab extreme makeover upon returning home from overseas. His reaction was priceless, and our lone regret is not being able to do the same for every Mustang owning U.S. serviceman who returns from a tour of duty. Unfortunately, our deepest thanks will have to suffice.
Once recovered from the shock, it was time to finish the tuning work we had earlier cut short due to time. Being that Las Vegas is several hours from Saleen's Irvine facility, Jim D'Amore hooked Bryan up with one of the best Mustang tuners in the Vegas area, Dan Hourigan. By day, Dan leads a busy life as Vice President of Dynojet Research, Inc. (yes, that Dynojet), yet when additional hours present themselves, he's a tuner extraordinaire. You might guess his tool of choice-a Dynojet chassis dyno of course, but in all seriousness, Dan is a super-talented, sweat-the-details sort, and graciously took on the task of diagnosing our project car's maladies. We were even more comfortable when we found out Dan owned and tuned his own 450-horse S197, with you guessed it-a Saleen supercharger.
To nobody's surprise, Dan's initial testing revealed the same detonation problem we experienced in California. After reviewing the JDM timing tables, Dan concurred that Weeks' GT was more sensitive to timing advance than any S197 he's worked with to date. That said, after lengthy analysis during two different dyno sessions, there is nothing obviously "wrong" with the car. It throws no OBD codes, while air/fuel, fuel pressure, and a myriad of other variables are all where they should be throughout the rpm range. Dan pulled out several degrees of timing to kill the detonation, and had Bryan drive the car for several thousand miles before round two on the Dynojet occurred. In the interim, Bryan reported the GT to be everything he could have dreamed of-awesome performance, admirable fuel economy, and rock solid reliability-all additional indicators that the car is free of any major glitches.
So what about the detonation sensitivity? Frankly it remains a mystery to all involved; though suffice to say no two cars are the same-even in this modern automated world. Is it possible this is one car where factory tolerances stacked up to make it more detonation prone than the norm? It wouldn't seem likely, but for lack of a better explanation, we'll just say it's one of the possibilities. Two things we do know for sure, 1) thanks to Dan, detonation is no longer a problem, and 2) the owner couldn't be happier!
While Speedlab fitted our project '07 with a set of gorgeous Saleen PJ wheels to complement it's new twin-screw boost, you needn't have a supercharger to give consideration to the company's current wheel offerings for S197s. Simply put, Saleen has a sweet lineup of perfectly offset big-inch rolling stock. Just hitting market as we put this story together were the PJ and Heritage wheels, the former being used on the '07 Parnelli Jones special editions, the latter on the '08 Saleen Heritage and Gurney models. Both are of cast construction, and feature 19x9-inch front and 19x10-inch rear dimensions. Saleen's cast aluminum seven spoke wheels have been around since the debut of the '05 S281, while the forged five-spokes first appeared on the S281 Extreme models. Both are 20-inchers, again with 9- and 10-inch widths front and rear.
The new Heritage series five-spoke wheels share their construction and 19-inch size with the PJ wheels Saleen installed on Weeks' '07. Either retails for $1,000/set in the standard silver finish, with black or chrome adding an extra $100/wheel.
Both the seven-spoke casting and five-spoke forged wheel are 20-inchers, with the seven-spokes priced at $1,899/set, and the five-spokes running $2,400/set in the standard silver. Again, black or chrome adds an extra $100/wheel.