HOT ROD Garage is back for season 2
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MotorTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:14 Bam! See, we're back.
00:16 [Music]
00:27 It's season two of Hot Rod Garage, presented by Lincoln Tech,
00:30 and we have a bunch of new project vehicles this year.
00:32 We've got a '73 Chevy van. Stay tuned for that. It's going to be pretty cool.
00:36 We've got a '70 Chevelle that we're going to make over, and this 2005 Mustang.
00:41 Now, these cars are getting pretty cheap to build.
00:43 You can pick them up for like nine or ten grand with the V8 and the stick.
00:47 This is an '05 with a 4.6 and a five-speed.
00:50 On this show, we're going to show you how to just make low-buck upgrades to it
00:54 to make it a cool daily driver and autocrosser.
00:56 We're going to be lowering it with Ford Racing Springs,
00:59 and we're going to put on EBC brakes, pads, and rotors.
01:02 But first, a quick tip from Lincoln Tech.
01:05 [Music]
01:09 The two most common hydraulic lifts you'll find in a shop are a four-post lift and a two-post lift.
01:14 A four-post lift is really big, takes up a lot of room.
01:16 You drive on it, and it lifts the vehicle by the wheels.
01:19 A two-post is more economical, a lot smaller, and lifts the car by the chassis.
01:23 Today, we're going to talk about putting your car on a two-post lift
01:26 without killing yourself, killing someone else, or just destroying your shop.
01:30 First, you want to get your vehicle centered between the two posts.
01:34 Next, you want to center the vehicle's weight from front to back.
01:37 Now, because most engines and transmissions are in the front of the vehicle,
01:41 you want to center your car just a little bit behind the lifting frame.
01:45 A good rule of thumb is to make sure that the two side mirrors are right in front of the lifting frame.
01:50 Now, a good lifting point might be a strong part of the chassis next to the body mounts.
01:55 Look for a place that runs parallel to the lifting arm,
01:58 so when you lift the vehicle, it doesn't want to slide off.
02:01 Once you think you have your car secure, lift it up just enough to get the wheels off the ground.
02:05 Give it a shove just to make sure it's secure.
02:08 Once secure, continue lifting.
02:10 Now, the most important part of this is when you go to lower the vehicle,
02:13 make sure you check your workspace to make sure you don't crush something important.
02:17 Lincoln Tech can teach you how to have a career working with cars.
02:21 See LincolnEDU.com.
02:23 Here's what EBC Brakes is all about.
02:31 They're an English company that makes really just rotors and pads.
02:35 The thing about the rotors is that they have super high quality machine work in them.
02:39 They're covered in what they call this geomet coating,
02:42 and it'll wear off the pad surface, but it'll just keep the whole thing from rusting later on
02:46 so it'll look a little bit better.
02:48 They make a bunch of lines of rotors, stock replacement all the way up to full race stuff.
02:53 What they recommended for our sort of autocross and street car is this,
02:57 their GD series rotor, which as you can see is both grooved and dotted.
03:02 It is dimpled.
03:03 Note that it is not drilled all the way through because they found that that can lead to cracking.
03:08 So that's what that's all about, and these things are machined to a tolerance of 0.004 on runout.
03:13 Their big deal is these are perfectly square. You're not going to get any brake pedal wobble on them.
03:17 The other thing that EBC is known for is trick brake pads.
03:20 You've probably heard of their orange stuff, red stuff, green stuff, blue, yellow.
03:25 They've supplied two different pads for our Mustang.
03:28 They're looking at this yellow pad, which is for the street and also good for autocross use
03:33 because it's good at cold stops.
03:35 It's going to have a little bit less life than the blue pad,
03:38 which is really intended for more of a big track meet.
03:41 This can handle more heat and more endurance, whereas you're going to get more cold stop out of this.
03:46 Also, the yellow stuff is a street pad, whereas they consider the blue more of a race.
03:51 The way you can tell is all the EBC pads that are meant for the street have a break-in coating on them.
03:56 Now, I'd never heard of this before, but what they say is that that coating will clean off any residue
04:01 on your rotors that's left behind by your old pads that can actually inhibit stopping power
04:07 and can even put a little bit of a wobble in the rotor if there's a big, gooby, nasty deposit on them.
04:12 And it helps seat that pad perfectly flat with the rotor.
04:16 These things are really easy to install on the '05 to '14 Mustang, so I'm going to show you that.
04:21 And at the end of the show, we're going to do an A/B test of the EBC brakes versus the Stockers
04:25 to see how well they work.
04:27 Okay, this should be brain-dead easy.
04:29 He says now.
04:31 Okay.
04:33 Ooh, check that out.
04:36 You can actually see on here some of the gunk that EBC was telling me about that was transferred from the old pad.
04:43 By spinning it, I can actually feel that there's a high spot somewhere on the rotor
04:48 or maybe some gunk that's keeping it from being perfectly square.
04:52 This car has 75,000 miles on it, and this is telling me that probably the rotors have never been off
04:57 because the factory clips that hold them on are still behind these studs.
05:03 It's probably going to take me longer than the whole rest of the installation combined.
05:06 But this is so easy on these late model cars.
05:09 Check it out.
05:10 You don't even need to remove the nut and the wheel bearing and grease it
05:13 and get all sloppy like you do on old muscle cars.
05:15 I'm going to pull two bolts out of the caliper back here, and I can pop that up and get the pads out.
05:20 And I'm going to take two bolts out of the caliper mounting bracket,
05:23 at which point I'll be able to get the rotor off.
05:25 Check this out.
05:26 It says right on it, "S197 GT."
05:29 You may know the S197 is this series of Mustang from '05 and up.
05:34 And there goes the rotor.
05:36 Done.
05:38 There you go.
05:40 Slips right on.
05:41 Check it out.
05:42 It says "R" on it.
05:43 Right side, passenger side, thereby ending the controversy of which way the swoop goes.
05:47 Some aftermarket rotors, you see them go the other way.
05:50 EBC says this way.
05:52 Now I'm going to grab my S197 GT bracket and slam it back on like so.
06:01 Next, we just snap the pads in, which is super easy, like that.
06:06 Then I'm going to squeeze the pistons back in the caliper just to account for anything that's worn off.
06:13 The old pads will have moved these pistons out a little bit.
06:16 And what you want to do is squeeze them back together,
06:18 which if you're lucky will then puke brake fluid out of your master cylinder all over your engine compartment.
06:24 So you want to be careful of that.
06:25 They make an actual tool for this.
06:28 But why would you use the right tool when you have adjustable pliers?
06:32 They're not channel locks.
06:33 They're Eastwood.
06:34 Okay.
06:36 Bid farewell to my little zip tie buddy.
06:40 Adios.
06:42 And then slap this on there, which I didn't get that pad in there properly, did I?
06:49 Pinching those guys together.
06:51 And it's as easy as that.
06:53 These rotors for a pair run about $250, which probably seems really good to you.
06:58 You might have sticker shock on the pads themselves.
07:00 They're about $120 for a full set.
07:03 But really, that's where you're going to get a massive benefit over your typical, like, $19 to $30 parts store pads.
07:09 So that installation is exactly the same on the back of this car.
07:12 Just two bolts for the caliper, two bolts for the bracket, bang, done.
07:16 We're going to leave that sit for now.
07:18 We're going to go put some lowering springs on the car and some cool wheels and tires.
07:22 And I'm going to show you exactly how that all fits together so you can duplicate it on your Mustang.
07:26 The next thing we're going to do is just lower the car as cheaply and easily as we can.
07:33 We're just going to put springs on it.
07:34 I know it's not the right thing to do.
07:36 They say you should put on shocks and a full suspension package and all of that.
07:40 But I see on message boards everywhere newbies who've gotten their first Mustang,
07:44 and all they want to know is, "How can I slam it, and what's the biggest wheel and tire that I can fit on it?"
07:48 And so that's what we're going to show you how to do.
07:51 Now, any time that you're comparing your car to anybody else's, there's some things that you have to know.
07:56 First of all, you should look at your starting fender opening height.
08:01 Find the highest point.
08:03 This car, it's 28 1/2 inches.
08:05 That gives you a point of reference when we lower it to find out how low it really is.
08:09 The next thing you need to know is the overall tire height, because that's also going to affect how the car sits.
08:14 And importantly, if you're working on a truck or something with a lot of sidewall bulge on a heavy vehicle,
08:19 you should know your static loaded radius, which is the distance between the ground to the center line of the hub.
08:25 Now, the reason you need to know that is if your sidewall is pooched out, it's like a little bit flat,
08:31 that's going to shorten the distance from here to here and lower the car.
08:34 And then, of course, you need to know your overall section width, which is sidewall to sidewall.
08:39 And finally, you've got to know your rim size and your backspacing.
08:43 It's show and tell again. Check us out.
08:45 These wheels are from AmericanMuscle.com, and they're dirt cheap.
08:49 For 18s, you're spending $150 to $160.
08:53 That's the cheapest big inch wheel that I could find, and they ship them for free.
08:57 So that's very cool.
08:59 Then there's these tires.
09:01 If I loved these tires anymore, they'd be beer.
09:04 These things are good.
09:05 They're the Falcon Azenis RT615K.
09:09 They're a 200 treadwear deal.
09:11 They're a really good autocross and track tire for an entry-level guy like me.
09:15 If there's one thing that you could do to your car to make it handle better this afternoon, this is what I'd do.
09:21 Now, as far as sizing, on the rear, we've got a 295/40/18.
09:26 It's on an 18x10 with 6 inches of backspacing.
09:30 The rear is exactly 27 5/8 inches tall, and it is 11 1/8 wide in section width.
09:36 Up here in the front, we've got an 18x9, also with 6-inch backspacing.
09:41 The tire is a 255/40/18.
09:44 The overall height is 26 inches, and this sucker is 10 3/8 inches wide.
09:49 Here's how we're going to lower the car, with nothing but a simple spring swap.
09:57 These are from Ford Racing, and we picked them because they are ubiquitous in the Ford marketplace.
10:01 Everybody has these things. Everybody talks about them.
10:04 But there are two part numbers that you need to know about.
10:06 There's the M5300K and the M5300P.
10:11 Now, the internet chatter says that the P doesn't lower the car quite as much, but it rides softer.
10:16 And the K lowers the car more, but has more of a stiff ride.
10:20 We're going to find out, give you an exact review of how it drives,
10:23 and also exactly how much it lowers the car once we get these installed.
10:26 When you're changing the springs, you might also want to consider doing an upper spring seat.
10:30 It's got rubber on it that can deteriorate, and it can either make noise, or make the car sit funny,
10:35 or make it ride bad.
10:37 And so, consider getting a set of those when you grab your springs.
10:40 We're going to start off with the front springs, because the work is topside.
10:44 All I have to do is take off these four nuts on each side to loosen up the top of the strut mount.
10:49 Okay.
10:51 This is way easier than the muscle cars that I'm used to dealing with with coil springs,
10:55 because look, with those nuts gone, this is completely free.
10:59 All I'm going to have to do is remove the sway bar end link, a little bracket that holds the ABS line,
11:04 and two bolts, and the whole spring and strut is going to come out as one piece.
11:09 There we go.
11:12 Out.
11:13 Okay, this is the part where you want to hide your women and children, because we're going to deal with the coil spring.
11:17 You can buy the strut and spring assembly from Ford Racing and others,
11:22 but in this case, I'm going to be taking the spring off the strut.
11:25 Now, what you don't want to do is just loosen up this nut,
11:28 because when that happens, this thing's going to shoot, that's going to go,
11:31 it goes through walls, it shoots through schools, the whole deal.
11:34 We're going to have to clamp it like this with a MacPherson strut spring compressor.
11:41 You can't use the type you would use on, like, a Chevelle or something where it goes up inside the spring.
11:46 It's got to be this kind, and it's smarter to use an impact.
11:51 It's even smarter to turn it the right direction.
11:54 And you want another one on this side to balance it out.
11:59 By the way, I do not like the cheapy parts store version of these tools.
12:03 I have had them break. It's gnarly.
12:05 This is also a place where you don't want to expose the family jewels.
12:10 Okay, now that that is compressed, I can go ahead and take off this nut.
12:16 And either this will be the last time you ever see me on Hot Rod Garage, or this is going to work perfectly.
12:21 There we go. No one died.
12:26 That shows that even you can do it.
12:30 If I pulled that off, I'm sure you can.
12:33 You can see that the new spring is physically shorter than the old one.
12:37 Sometimes in this situation, you don't need to compress the new one to get it on.
12:42 Looks like I might get that lucky.
12:43 You do want to make sure that the pigtail is seated in that little notch in the base.
12:49 And if I grab my new doohickey here, which also has a notch for the pigtail,
12:55 shove that on, and...
12:58 I'm not going to get that lucky, am I?
13:01 Nope, I'm going to have to compress that thing a little bit.
13:05 See, I'm smart this time. I'm aiming at the camera, guys.
13:10 And if we're lucky, the strut won't spin.
13:15 And we were lucky.
13:19 Next, I'm going to put the strut in up from the bottom and re-hang it in these four holes in the shock tower.
13:25 Before I tighten that up, I'm going to attach the bolts that go through to the spindle.
13:31 Because the spring is shorter, this point on the strut has been moved up,
13:36 so you may need to put the car down on the ground to be able to get the sway bar end link to line up with the hole.
13:40 Now I'll just tighten up all of these bolts and nuts,
13:43 go through and reinstall the sway bar end link and the little bracket that holds on the brake line and the ABS line,
13:50 and then I'm good to move to the other side.
13:52 Now we're going to change the rear springs, which is really brain dead.
13:55 Very easy to do.
13:56 If you're working on the car at home, get it up on jack stands and support it by the frame or by the body,
14:01 and then get a floor jack underneath the rear end.
14:03 Because what we're going to do is pull down the sway bar end links and then disconnect the lower half of the shocks,
14:09 and then use your jack or these screw jacks that I've got to lower the rear end to the point that the springs fall out,
14:15 and then throw the new ones in and button 'er all back up.
14:18 You can see that's a dual rate spring.
14:20 It's got tighter coil pack up here than it does down here.
14:23 This part goes up.
14:24 That was the easiest rear spring swap ever.
14:30 But remember, any time you lower a car, there's some things that you need to consider.
14:33 One of which is the drive shaft can get too short.
14:36 You're changing the relationship of the rear end to the body.
14:38 You want to make sure you've got some slip yoke travel.
14:40 Also, make sure that you're not pinching any brake lines.
14:43 In some cases, you're going to need to deal with your bump stops.
14:46 I've looked at that here.
14:47 I think we're going to be okay, but we'll let you know more about that when we actually drive the car.
14:51 And the other thing that's huge is you've got to check your wheel and tire fitment.
14:55 You might have just lowered the body right onto a tire, or they might cut when you're turning 'em.
14:59 We're about to check that out.
15:01 I'm going to drop this thing on the ground, and we're going to measure up that fender lip
15:04 and find out exactly how much we lowered the car.
15:06 And then we're going to wheels and tires.
15:08 We've dropped this thing on the ground, rolled it around a little bit,
15:11 jumped up and down on it, trying to get it to settle.
15:13 And...
15:14 How low is it?
15:16 Survey says...
15:18 27 5/8.
15:20 So doing the math, we dropped it 7/8 of an inch.
15:24 And that's pretty much what it is all the way around.
15:26 However, once we actually drive the car, I know it's going to settle a little bit more.
15:30 We'll catch up with you once we've driven it and tell you what that is.
15:33 That is with this 26 1/4-inch tall 235/55/17 Good Ride tire.
15:40 Now we're going to go to the big stuff.
15:42 We're going to check out our new Falcon rubber.
15:46 [engine revving]
15:48 That's the end of our first step with the EBC Brakes Mustang GT.
16:04 Here's one thing we do know about the EBC Brakes.
16:06 We absolutely brutalized them out here trying to get our testing done.
16:10 And stop after stop after stop, they did not fade.
16:13 And I mean, I literally had them smoking.
16:15 And that wasn't true with the stock brakes that we were testing out on the drag strip.
16:18 Those got progressively more and more distance from 60 miles an hour as they got hotter.
16:23 We tested the braking from 60 to 0 miles an hour.
16:26 And our baseline with the stock brakes and stock tires was 120 feet,
16:30 but it immediately faded into the high 120s.
16:33 Then, after the EBC brakes with the stock tires, we didn't really gain stopping distance,
16:39 but we did get consistency.
16:41 Almost no matter how hard we brutalized them, we had 123 to 125 feet.
16:46 But the real news is when we threw the Falcon tires onto the EBC brakes,
16:50 and we dominated the 60 to 0 with 105 feet.
16:55 That's a 20 feet improvement, which is like a Honda and a half.
16:59 Those Ford Racing Springs didn't sag a whole lot over the 300 miles that we drove the car.
17:04 They lowered the car almost exactly one inch.
17:07 Now, the wheels and tires that we told you about at the beginning of the show, they fit perfectly.
17:12 They don't rub anywhere.
17:13 I'll say that the front tire is a little bit small for my preference on the overall stance,
17:18 but they don't rub.
17:19 And they perform really, really well.
17:22 When we ran the autocross earlier, we discovered that the Ford Racing Springs
17:25 really didn't make a difference in the performance.
17:27 But as soon as we put these tires on, I dropped a little bit more than two seconds on the autocross.
17:33 And that is huge.
17:34 Now, it does come at a cost.
17:36 These tires are significantly louder on the highway.
17:39 And of course, they cost something, and they're going to wear out pretty quickly.
17:42 But man, that is a bang for the buck.
17:44 Actually, the whole car is at this point.
17:46 This is a fun daily driver and autocross car, but we're going to make it better.
17:49 Now, I'm going to throw it to myself and Mike Finnegan to close up the show
17:52 with a question and answer session.
17:54 We've got a new thing for the Q&A on Hot Rod Garage.
17:59 We're going to be shooting them while we're out on the road for Roadkill.
18:02 Right now, we're cruising in our '69 Buick wagon somewhere in Texas, and it's freezing.
18:07 Yeah, it's a little cold.
18:09 I'm going to whip out Facebook right now and find out what your questions are.
18:13 We will attempt to answer them.
18:15 David Howe basically wants to know, "Are you really ever going to paint Jus' El Camino?"
18:20 [laughs]
18:21 David Howe wants to know, "Will I ever paint Jus' El Camino?"
18:25 That's my wife's car, which I've threatened to never paint.
18:29 I keep putting it off by doing more mechanical things to the car,
18:32 but I've pretty much run out of mechanical things.
18:35 Yeah, someday I will. There's actually a color I want to paint it.
18:38 I saw it on a BMW--don't freak out--but I saw a flat metallic blue BMW.
18:44 Oh, that's pretty good.
18:45 That looks amazing.
18:46 It looks a lot like the roof of this car.
18:48 Right.
18:49 It's nitrous bottle blue.
18:50 That's the color I would like to paint it.
18:52 I'm going to have to hit the lottery before then, though,
18:54 because that car actually has some rust in the roof and in the bed that needs to be fixed.
18:59 But I have a plan. I know this is going to go long, but I have a plan.
19:02 I'm going to find an awesome station wagon,
19:04 and I'm going to take the body of the wagon and put it on the chassis of the Elko,
19:09 cruise my family around in that while the body of the Elko sits on a rotisserie.
19:14 And I take three to five years to fix that.
19:17 Okay, so why are we selling this? Because this body will fit on your El Camino chassis.
19:21 It's really not a very nice body.
19:22 Okay. All right.
19:27 Mike, why have you just gone full Yukon Cornelius yet? Check that out.
19:32 I love that cartoon.
19:35 Check it.
19:37 I look that way, I think, because I probably belong in the land of Misfit Toys.
19:41 So, I don't know. There's two chins under here. My wife hates them.
19:45 So, the goatee thing I had for, I don't know, ten years, I'm burned out on it.
19:50 So, full facial.
19:53 Clarence Jones wants to know what happened to the supercharged big block that was in the Crusher Camaro,
19:58 and why didn't we put it in the Corvette go-kart.
20:00 That motor is still sitting in our shop, much to our shop manager's chagrin,
20:04 angry about it nearly every day.
20:07 It's in a giant box shipped from Steve Schmidt Racing.
20:10 Haven't even cracked it open.
20:11 As a matter of fact, they could have sent us a big pallet of rocks, and I would not know it.
20:15 That would be funny.
20:16 Yeah, that would have been funny on their part.
20:18 Steve Schmidt's just cruising around in an old Corvette go-kart with your motor in it.
20:23 Why didn't we put that motor in the Vette kart?
20:25 I guess we were trying to make it handle, and we didn't want to put that much weight in the nose.
20:30 It would be funny.
20:31 Plus, that would really go against the budget nature of that car.
20:36 That's not the most expensive supercharged big block you can build, but it's got some nice stuff.
20:41 You could build that engine for probably eight or nine grand, I think.
20:46 That's more than that whole car's worth.
20:49 Okay, Churchill-Forsberg, what is the toughest vehicle in your opinion?
20:53 Longest lasting, beat the thing to death, and it keeps on going.
20:57 Oh, God, any old Chevy or Ford.
21:00 How old?
21:02 Anything built mid-50s on up, you can't beat those frames.
21:07 Oh, yeah, if you're talking just frames, the mid-50s mechanical stuff gets fragile, though.
21:13 The engine trans rear end, especially the transmissions, early three-speed trans.
21:17 Muscle cars, that's the reason we go off-roading in it.
21:19 It's true.
21:20 Actually, I will maintain one of the best off-roading platforms is the, what would it be?
21:26 A-body, no, it's a B-body GM, basically like a Caprice cop car, like the Buick station wagon that we had that destroyed my back.
21:33 Those things are bulletproof.
21:37 Okay, we're going to wrap that up for this Hot Rod Garage session of Q&A.
21:42 Go to Facebook, which is Facebook.com/HotRodGarageShow, and you can see what we're doing all throughout the month.
21:48 Of course, you can also go to the Roadkill page, Hot Rod Magazine page, my own page.
21:52 Finnegan ignores his page now, don't you pretty much?
21:55 Yeah, he's maxed out, but he's on Instagram @Finnegan999.
21:59 I'm also on Instagram @DavidKreiberger, so you can stick with us there all throughout the month.
22:04 And of course, come back to the Motor Trend channel and watch Hot Rod Garage and Roadkill 24 hours a day.
22:10 And be nice to the new ho-s, whoever that is.
22:13 Me?
22:14 Yeah, be nice to David.
22:15 Yeah, see ya.
22:18 [Music]
22:22 [Music]