hey guys it's chris from steeda and we have rob here and his beautiful 21 rapid red gt500
rob is no stranger to the road course and specifically the firm florida international rally
and motorsport park he had prior to this a 2020 gt performance package one with a ton of seated
components on it some sticky tires some brake pads and he managed to whip out a 118. 118.7 0.7 yep
at the firm and frankly he traded that sucker in got this gt500 and
i'm just curious what it's going to do man yeah don't know and what was your biggest complaint
of it so far why are you here today yeah so the car's been great but i'm just cruising around on
the street you know having a little fun with it it definitely has noticeable wheel hop in first
and second gear especially when you first get on it when the tires are cold or if the road's not
the best it's you know some of them have felt pretty bad and i noticed from the other car
which did have wheel hop but not as much traction issues it fixed that immediately with the steeda
parts so that's what i was you know hoping to get on this car right away awesome so we have some irs
components that we plan on putting on this gt500 and ultimately throwing him in the driver's seat
to see what he thinks and maybe some testing as well so stay tuned to find out
so
so rob pretty darn excited here this gt500 is awesome when did you pick this thing up i just got
it a few days before christmas actually uh last year so it's a nice nice christmas gift to myself
are you liking it so far yeah i have absolutely zero complaints i guess maybe the gas mileage is
so you had a 2020 gt prior to this yep ruby red so i understand why you went with rapid
red that one was rapid red as well oh because that's right that's right yes so
pretty cool um and what all did you have done to the 20 before we jump into the 500 so i had the
stop the hop kit um the pro action shocks dual rate springs front river sway bars
um camber plate cut cut the strut towers um had a intake an e85 tune and uh dtc 70s and
brake fluid that was it rt 660s last time okay so last time out i was talking about last time
at the firm okay cool so you road race which is awesome um what did you run with that combo
in the in the 20 gt so the best with the last last setup i went uh 118.7 1187. holy crap so
to compare a little bit the the mach 1 we ran with all the steeda suspension and
the 4s tires was a 119. um and then with the goodyears which are a bit stickier than the
than the rt660s i think those are 100 truckware yeah um it was a 117. so what rated that's awesome
man yeah i was happy with it you should be so the question is what do you expect to run in the 500
i don't know so this this this is the base it was a base car with the handling pack so it
has the front uh you know splitter wickers and the rear gurney flap but it's on ps4s tires so
300 treadwear tire but faster car you know i don't know it's going to be interesting if it goes
faster than 18-7 that would be a good start yeah i know what sticky tires it could go 15 16 oh no
doubt no doubt um and even with it being a heavier car you got the brakes to get it down you got the
uh some additional arrow you get with the with the body on this thing and the power obviously yep yep
so the last car was a 10 speed so the transmission was quick on the track at
added squares and stuff like that so i think this one will be a little bit more manageable but
yeah i'm excited to probably just be in second and third gear most of the way on
the front where the other car was fifth gear stuff like that which is 10 speeds
so what all did you get done um why are you here today actually what did you get done with the car
so we did the stop the hop the subframe aligners and the subframe bushings and then stop the hop um
support braces i i for when i did my last car stock i could feel the subframe
moving in the hairpin at the firm on exit and stuff like that and i didn't know any better i
figured it was normal as my first mustang first you know time there stuff like that and then
when i did all that stuff it was a noticeable difference so i just i wanted to do that stuff to
this car and then i had jamie do a track alignment on the car so it's basically stock but i feel like
this is how it you know should be you know to get a good baseline at the firm and you know learn the
car and something like that for sure and um so you do have it it's a handling pack car which means
you have the adjustable strut top strut mounts right yep so we're only able to get one side to
negative 2.2 and then one side to negative 2.4 so we wouldn't need the steeda camber plates to
you know probably be better to go a little bit further not so you want more camber yeah yeah
if you want more more negative camber yeah the next step after i learn the car is probably to
do a wheel and tire package in some sort of spring so you know more negative camber would probably
help at that point and having these huge breaks is definitely going to limit you and your wheel
selection too yeah you're pretty much going to only watch and tire selection too yeah so it's
these tires and then the cup twos are the same size and then i've seen i'm not sure if i know
people have ran hoosiers and some sort of goodyear size i believe yeah there's not a ton of options
so what got you into cars i know you haven't always been a mustang person only the gt was
your first mustang yeah so i do front wheel drive and all-wheel drive honda drag racing
um also i have a low eight second from drive 96 on the civic as a k-series engine and um i've
always been a mustang fan my dad's a mustang guy but when the coyote engine came out originally
i thought you know that's that's a really cool engine that's kind of something like honda would
build if they did a v8 you know variable cam dual red cam yeah and i like the engine a lot and then
the interior and the you know solid racks and stuff like that on the s197 i said okay then
the s550 came out man i really like that car you know it's it's kind of a whole package and some
people kind of complained about it but for all the reasons that they didn't like it i liked it
and then when the gen 3 came out um you know it just seemed like even bigger upgrade and i really
liked those cars i like the way the front end looked you know not everybody does and then i
got i was in a position where i could afford it because when i got to 2020 last year um stuff's
been going good with business stuff like that and the 10 speed is a little quirky and kind of
this car is kind of everything i hope the 10 speed would be trans-wise so i really like this trans um
it's a lot of power for the track um i know so if they made a gt350 with the tremec 7 speed i
would probably um maybe be good with that but i'll just have to figure it out with this one but um
yeah every pretty much every car i've ever had is manual so if anyone's watching
they'll be like well why is it like auto so much just trying something new you know
my drag cars manual every car i've ever owned is manual so it's fun to the dct is you can drive it
like a manual you know obviously there's no clutch about the 10 speed i mean you've been using the
battle shifters the whole time the 10-speed using the paddle shifters was kind of a waste of time um
but when you don't use them like at the firm sometimes if you're not driving all out and you're
half throttle you know going through a corner or something sometimes it would um it would up
shift when you do you know you don't want it to so this this car has a longer gears and you know
more of a proper trends and i remember reading that the paddle shifters are actually wired
directly to the transmission um versus going through the rest of the car and the rest of the
pcm which obviously makes the yeah i'm not sure on the logistics on that but the paddle shifters are
instant i mean no it's paints there for sure and the ships are awesome they're so snappy yeah yeah
that's crazy because in normal mode and i don't drive it a lot in like normal auto mode the
transmission is so smooth and you know it shifts really low so if somebody's into like having it
super tame like that they can but then in manual mode in sport like right now the transmission is
just you know it's super direct and you know it's the shifts are so it's no lag and it's
definitely happy with the trans i think that's probably one of the best parts of the car
i know some people are mad that it doesn't have a manual trans but
i think it would be hard to drive this car at the limit especially on a road course if it was manual
um you know maybe it's just lack of skill or something but it's a lot to handle yeah
it's definitely a lot to handle the transmission definitely makes it a little faster the shifts are
super very fast feel free to get on a little bit you'll see once you go up over the hill here
that's a good sign because usually it takes a pull to um
to get it to look like that in second gear so you can go straight there and try it again if you want
i didn't there was no drama there was awesome at all
i could try first
it's a little bumpy here so you might want to pull up a little bit
wow that's awesome there's no way it would look like that in first gear before
so that's that's an immediate improvement for sure
that i didn't even feel the traction control come in at all in first gear right there when before
on the street it would live on that one a little bit no i didn't pedal it the trash control is
pretty impressive on this car it feels way smoother than the last one even though the
last car wouldn't be on track control a lot but it felt like it caught a lot of power once it spun
so i just turn it off immediately but this car is it's it modulates the power i think because
they obviously anticipated needing a lot more trash control but that didn't feel any sort of
yes that's freaking awesome you want to try from a dead style yeah
here i apologize the same point yeah because it's a little bit of a bump there
no prep yeah
a little bit yeah a little not wheel hop that was more like track traction yeah fighting for
traction but that's uh that's what the launch control turned all the way up um
i'm sure we could uh play with it and get it to hook but it's crazy how smooth this thing is too
yeah the the shifts the power delivery everything uh i think i might have touched the rev limiter
around now they're coming down or back but it's in full manual mode right now it won't mess up
i can't believe i was like second gear is just that's instant
holy crap that's awesome
i'm super happy now go ahead and comment below let us know your thoughts uh ultimately we are
pretty close to where rob lives and he goes and tests the firm and so do we so
having some racing and some fun together on track is not out of the questions so
let us know if that's something you want to see hit that like and subscribe button
that notification bell and don't forget the most important thing speed matters
you