Testing the 87' Coyote powered Road Race Cougar at Summit Point

[03'Darin]

We built this car about 2 years ago to race in the AER road racing series. The AER series runs endurance type road racing. Their typical format is practice and qualify on Friday and then 10 hour races saturday and sunday.

The car is a 1987 Mercury Cougar with a 2015' Mustang Coyote 5.0 and MT82 transmission.


We ran a few races the first and had some issues with the car. So due to limited time to work o the car we spent last winter and this summer trying to sort everything out. We finally sorted everything out and headed to Summit Point main last weekend to do some testing.

The car is running Fox Body suspension except for a MM torque arm and pan hard bar.

One of the issues we were having with the car was multiple different brake problems. So one of our main focuses was to test the brakes. Both reliability and pad wear.

Testing went well Saturday. We worked on brake bias balance and loosening up the rear end to help reduce under steer. Everything went very well Saturday but first thing Sunday morning we ended up with a clutch/tranny problem. That problem progressed to a grind on the 4-3 downshift even when heal toe shifting and eventuallly started grinding and crunching to the point we had to park it. So one of our winter "to do items" will be getting rid of the MT82 and replacing it with a more durable transmission that is also serviceable at the track. We're researching options on that now.

Here is a short video from my session Sunday. I would normally run turn 1 in 3rd but we had been having the grind issue so i started the session using 4th. I few laps in I tried 3rd and it worked ok but later in the session the grind started again and eventually I couldn;t get the car in any gear.

 

[SID297]

Very nice. Have any more pics, especially of the build?

 

[DAVESVT2000]

You should bring that to carlisle next year.

 

[03'Darin]

Very nice. Have any more pics, especially of the build?

I have pics on my work computer. I’ll post some Monday.

 

[SID297]

I have pics on my work computer. I’ll post some Monday.

Awesome, thanks.

 

[CobraBob]

I haven't seen a Cougar in a long time. Nice project you've done, and more build info would be great.

 

[MG0h3]

Looks like a lot of fun! Nice work!

Think most that ditch the 82 and stay manual go with the magnum.

 

[03'Darin]

Some build pictures and a few more details.

Total budget build. Most parts were used or we made them

Car was pulled from a field, gutted, stiffened with box tubing and caged.

K-member from a modular motor Mustang modified to fit the Cougar

Still Fox Body front suspension with good bushings and a Crown Vic sway bar to fir the coyote swap.

2015' Mustang GT 5.0 Coyote motor and MT 82 trans (not for long though). Bone stock with 805 miles at installation. Used the Ford Performance stand alone PCM system for wiring and are running a Canton road race pan. Motor stock otherwise.

Front brake are 4 piston fixed caliper off of a late 60's Lincoln. One of our guys made a template and a friend CNC'd an adapter to allow 14" Shelby GT500 rotors. Brake package fits under 17" wheels.

Brake and clutch pedal setup are manual Wilwoods. Brakes are dual master cylinder .

Rear end and brakes are a stock Lincoln Mark VII 8.8 with welded spider gears. Probably going Trutrac or Torsen shortly to help turn in bite.

 

[lawdog302]

interesting build for sure! Good Job!

 

[03'Darin]

 

[03'Darin]

Looks like a lot of fun! Nice work!

Think most that ditch the 82 and stay manual go with the magnum.

Car is a ton of fun. We get multiple comments about the car at every event we run. Last event we had a couple other entrants plus a spectator and a corner worker all come by and tell us that it's their favorite car. We had another instructor in my group come over and tell us he thought we drove the shit out of the car and that he couldn't believe how fast it was. The car of course looks like a turd but is damn fast. So people love the retro old school look and then are just in shock of how fast the car is.

We ran an 85 Cougar for several years in the Chump Car series. That car looked like a total POS. People frequently asked if it had been in a fire. One of the best comments I remember from that car was a lady that came to our pits at a NJ race. Asked if she could come in the pits to look at the car. Said all of her friends there watching the race said that she needed to go look at "the fastest piece of shit she'd ever see". That car was a total junk yard build and we ran an Explorer GT40P 5.0 V8. We won races all over the place with that car. Same deal with commets on that car also.

We've got a line on a Tremec with all of the needed items to mate it up with the Coyote motor. It's also been worked over by Liberty already. So that's probably which route we're headed for now.

interesting build for sure! Good Job!

Interesting is a nice way to put it. lol Thanks!

 

[03'Darin]

 

[me32]

Very cool setup

 

[kevinatfms]

How do the Falken's hold up to the competitive racing?

 

[03'Darin]

How do the Falken's hold up to the competitive racing?

They actually hold up surprisingly well. Most tracks we can run the full 10 hour race and not have to change any tires. They aren't the fastest tire but they wear well and are very predictable when they start sliding. They do get slippery if you abuse them too much and take a little while to recover. But if you treat them well they do the same in return. Plus they're pretty reasonable in cost compared to the other options. We've run them for several years.

 

[03'Darin]

Thought I'd post an update on the Cougar:

After having transmission issues during the test weekend last November we decided to pull the MT82 out of the car and put a different trans in. The MT82 was a tight fit in the car anyway and wouldn't allow for a quick trans change at the track if we broke it. So we did a TKO600. MUCH smaller trans and separate bell housing which will make pulling the trans much easier. Our races range from 8-25 1/2 hours depending on the event. So we've even done a motor swap (in our old push rod motor 5.0 car) and got back in the race.

Besides addressing lots of small issue we discovered from the initial build we also did:

- swapped welded diff for a Torsen (huge improvement on tire wear and reduction in under steer)
- installed a rear big brake adapter kit that put the 2-Piston PBR (earlier Cobra style) calipers on the rear with 13" rotors
- built a custom fuel fill neck (I'll explain later). We can pour 5 gallons in less than 12 seconds.
- Put a decent but cheap shock and strut set up valved for our race springs.
- Built good break ducts to help cool the front brakes.
- Put a good catch can on the diff (got rid of the plastic pint iced tea jug)

Our car weighs 3,400#'s without the driver. Yes its big and heavy just like it looks. However since we've done the torque arm and pan hard bar the car is capable of using a lot of rear brake without wheel lock up. In fact we did pressure gauges in the front and rear brake lines for testing and found that we can run even pressure front to rear. If you watch the video you'll see that we out brake most of the cars in the race. This pretty much shocks everyone that sees the car.

So after not racing the car for over a year we finally had all of the bugs sorted out and went to Road America in Wisconsin for our 1st race this year. it's an 850 mile trip from my house. There was a test day Thursday and then an 8 hour race Friday and Saturday. We ran the test day which 1/2 of the day it rained. our car is treacherous in the rain. No of us had ever run RA so we did some laps in the rain and then got a few dry laps in the afternoon.

Friday we opted to just do 6 equal stints for all of us drivers. That wasn't the best strategy for a win because of the extra pit stops. However we did finish 3rd overall and 1st in our class. The Porsche crashed on Friday and was out.

Saturday we altered the driver lineup and targeted the overall win. It paid off. the Porsche ran out of gas on their first stint and were never able to make up the time they lost. They were catching us late in the race plus we had developed a clutch problem that eventually forced our last driver to finish the race in 3rd gear. So we took the overall win.

The series we race that weekend is Champcar. They used to be called Chumpcar. Our car runs in a class called EC (exception). That allows anything other than a tube chassis race car that meets Champs safety requirements. Which is one reason for the fuel filler we built. Champ requires a fuel hose on the fuel jug that goes inside of a filler neck with specific measurements for everything. No dry break systems allowed. Plus they require a specific fuel vent setup. In Champ car they require a 5 minute pit time (entry to exit from pit lane) when you take on fuel. However this fuel setup we built will be a huge help in the AER series we actually built the car for. They do 3 minute stops when taking fuel.

We get comments everywhere we go about the car. At the RA race was over one of the Porsche Cayman drivers came over to us and said that when he first saw the car he said what a land yacht, what are they going to do with that thing?. He said then he was like WOW that thing is FAST, and then he was like WOW that thing can even stop. He then told us how awesome he thought the car was. Pretty cool to have a guy running probably a $150k car come over and tell us that.

Our next event is at Indy in July

On to the cool stuff now. Here are some current pictures and a video link.

First hour of my 2 hour stint on saturday

 

[03'Darin]

How do the Falken's hold up to the competitive racing?

At RA we ran 8 hours Saturday, about 640 miles. We swapped the front tires left to right and swapped the right rear to the left. The left tire we felt wouldn't go the 8 hours even on the right rear 9which took a lot less abuse). After the same time and similar miles run during the Saturday race the 3 tires that we rotated were all worn out. So we got a total of about 1,300 miles out of them. Now keep in mind with driver our car is about 3,600 #'s and has 440 hp.

The tire we didn't reuse from Friday also had the seam separation that we've seen a few times. That's also why we didn't reuse it.

 

[DAVESVT2000]

Bring that to carlisle in a few weeks so I can see it !

 

[03'Darin]

Would love to be at Carlisle with it but have so much going on I won't make it over there.

 

[Khan]

Is it expensive for this kind of racing?

Btw thank you for posting and explanations