2010-2012 GT500 Mustang: Bolt-On Build-Ups

Hey, guys. Justin with americanmuscle.com here with the Stage 1 Power Pack Bolt-On Build-Up for the 2010 through 2012 Shelby GT500. Now when Ford and Shelby decided to reintroduce the GT500 back in 2007, obviously, everybody went crazy. The 2007 to 2009 GT500s were absolute brutes just like the originals that debuted nearly 40 years earlier. However, like the great Carroll Shelby would often say, his favorite car was the next one, and in this case, the next one was the 2011 and '12 GT500s which were now powered by an all-aluminum supercharged 5.4-liter topped off with a big old Eaton blower making 550 horsepower and 510 pound-feet of torque respectively.

But Shelby himself was never really truly satisfied with horsepower. I mean he was always asking how to make things faster, just like a lot of us. So that's why we're making these power packs. Speaking of more, if you guys want to click on the link below to subscribe to our YouTube channel, you can check out more project car builds, more bolt-on build-ups and, of course, some great product overviews.

We already grabbed our baseline amount with our 2012 GT500 here where we laid down 503 horsepower and 475-pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels. So now that we know where we stand, what do you say we get into the first mods of our power pack? All right, guys, this power pack consists of two pretty basic parts that a majority of our Mustang owners turn to when they first get their rides, GT500 owners included. And there's a reason for that. For one, they're both extremely easy to install, even for the most novice mechanic out there, and best of all, they get results.

The first of these mods is the JLT Big Air Carbon Fiber Cold Air Intake which is available for all 2010 through 2014 GT500s. Again, a pretty simple intake here, but it does go a long way when it comes to modifying cars with these Roots style blowers like we have on our Shelby. By installing an intake like the JLT here, you're not only allowing the engine to breathe much easier but you're also increasing the supercharger's efficiency and increasing the flow capacity. So basically when it does come time to swap pullies down the road, your blower is not gonna get choked out by a less efficient factory intake.

And performance aside, guys, the JLT just looks awesome under the hood here. The carbon fiber construction will definitely add some style points, while this massive power stack filter does give the option of washing and reusing and reoiling the filter as opposed to the paper element filter that does come with the stock intake.

And again, best of all very simple installation about an hour tops with basic hand tools. Now if you want to actually click on the link below, you can learn a little bit more about the JLT and actually hear what some GT500 owners are saying about having this intake installed on their own ride. One more thing about the JLT, now it does boast one of the largest mass air flow housings available on the market today at 127 millimeters basically allowing your motor to devour just massive amounts of air.

Because of this though, however, we are gonna need a custom tune. So for that, we're going to call in Mike J from the Bama Performance team so we can get a tuned for all of our new mods. Our baseline run with our 2012 GT500 gave us 503 horsepower and 475 pound-feet of torque. With all of our stage one power pack modifications installed, our car now put down 523 horsepower and 497 pound-feet of torque giving us a peak gain of 20 horsepower over our baseline numbers and gains of 31 horsepower and 28 pound-feet of torque throughout the curve.

Well, guys, with only two basic mods and about an hour's worth of our time, we were able to give our already nasty Shelby GT500 a pretty considerable bump in power, best of all, didn't even have to get my hands dirty. We hope you guys have enjoyed the Stage 1 Power Pack Bolt-on Build-Up for the 2010 through 2012 GT500s. And be sure to check out the Stage 2 and 3 power packs where we start getting into more serious mods and really increase the horsepower. And remember, guys, don't forget for all things Mustang, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.

Justin: Hey, everyone. Justin with americanmuscle.com, here with the Stage 2 Powerpack Bolt-On Build-Up for the 2010 through 2012 GT500s. Now, a lot of times, gearheads will say boost is an addiction. You get some and you just want more and more, and that's certainly the case here with these GT500s. Given a few extra pounds of boost along with a quality tune can really transform these cars into a completely different animal, and that's what we're after here today with our powerpack. Now, if you guys are looking for more power out of your Mustang, whether it's a GT500, GT or V6, you need to click on the link below to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more great Mustang videos, including more Bolt-On Build-Ups.

The Stage 2 Powerpack is no doubt a favorite with many GT500 owners, and it's for those of you who have already taken care a few of the basic bolt-ons, your cold air intakes and tune, for example. But, just like a lot of other things in the forced induction world, you can't just crank up the boost and go without addressing other key areas of your ride to ensure you're getting the most out of your mods for one, but for more important reasons, to ensure the safety of your motor. So with that said, let's check out some of the parts for this powerpack.

Under the hood now, you're gonna find a couple new parts, both from Metco Motorsports that we just finished up installing on our 2012 GT500. The first one is the 2.6-inch pulley from Metco Motorsports. Now, a supercharger pulley like this unit is always a very popular choice with GT500 owners out there, because it's gonna spin that stock Eaton blower much faster, creating more boost. In this case, we should be looking at 3 to 4 more pounds of additional boost when compared to the factory pulley. Now, besides spinning that blower faster, creating more boost, we should also look for an increase in that beautiful supercharger whine that we all know and love, especially with that JLT intake in place. The Metco pulley is actually a very nice piece, and it's highly recommended with other GT500 owners here on the site. In fact, if you just wanna click on the link below, you can catch up on some of the customer reviews. The design of the pulley is actually a two-piece design, meaning you have a hub that presses to the supercharger shaft first, and then the actual pulley part bolts to that hub using the included fasteners here. This is just gonna make any future pulley swaps a complete snap, if you ever wanna lower or increase your boost in a hurry. Now, you wanna make sure you have a quality pulley removal tool first before getting started removing the factory pulley and installing the new Metco unit here. It's just gonna make life a whole lot easier, trust me.

Again, you can't just pull up a smaller pulley and go. For one, doing so will create slack in the factory serpentine belt, which is never a good thing. What happens is the factory tensioner system can't make up the difference caused by running the smaller pulley, which is gonna lead to dreaded belt slip, robbing your GT500 of not only boost, but also power. That leads me to the second part of our powerpack here, the Metco Motorsports Auxillary Idler Pulley Kit. Now, the job of a kit like this is to take up all that extra slack created by the Metco Motorsports 2.6-inch pulley, creating much more belt rap and preventing belt slippage. This way, the boost level should stay rock solid even through the upper RPM range. On top of that, the double bearing construction with the idler is gonna be a little bit more durable, maybe a little quieter than the single bearing unit, and for only a few bucks more, it really is worth it in my opinion.

All right. With the Metco idler in place to do its thing, and of course, with the smaller pulley in place to spin that blower up much faster, we will be seeing more boost, meaning we had to address our spark plugs. So, we installed the NGK TR6 Plugs, which really are the go-to spark plug for any Shelby owner who is upping their boost. They're a one heat range cold air plug compared to our stock plugs, which will help avoid any possible detonation. An important note, just make sure they're gapped correctly before install to avoid any spark blowout. Definitely recommend doing something like this whenever you start increasing the boost levels in your GT500, like we are here with our 2012.

All right. With our Stage 2 Powerpack in place, I got my good buddy, Mike J. in here from the Bama Performance team to write us a new tune for our 2012 with the increased boost levels. Now Mike, explain to these guys at home how the few extra pounds of boost is gonna affect things on your end.

Mike: Well, with the higher boost levels in place, we've already gone in and made some adjustments to our condition table, so we won't see any detonation. And then, basically our quarter plugs are also gonna help with that as well. And then, it's going in and looking at our fuel and spark tables to make sure our air-fuel ratio is right so we won't have any problems there.

Justin: Well, it looks like you're out of the car, so I assume you're all wrapped up?

Mike: Absolutely. She's all yours.

Justin: Cool, man. Imma hop in, let it rip. At the end of the Stage 1 Powerpack, our 2012 GT500 was putting down 523 horsepower and 497 pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels. With the Stage 2 Powerpack installed, the car is now making 532 horsepower and 523 pound-feet of torque, giving us a peak gain of 9 horsepower over our Stage 1 numbers, and gains of 32 horsepower and 36 pound-feet of torque throughout the curve. The Stage 2 Powerpack consisting of the upper pulley supporting mods is always a big hit with GT500 owners out there, and I think it's pretty easy to see why. Bang for the buck, there's really nothing like swapping out that upper pulley and cranking up the boost on your Shelby. That's gonna wrap up the Stage 2 Powerpack Bolt-On Build-Up for the 2010 through 2012 GT500s. Don't forget to check out the Stage 1 and 3 Powerpack and remember, for all your Mustang needs, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.

Hey, guys. Justin with americanmuscle.com here with a stage three Power Pack Bolt-On Build-Up for all 2010 through 2012 Shelby GT500s. So, the stage three power pack focuses on taking our lightly modded Grabber Blue Shelby behind me to the next level, and even further. To do so, we're going to make sure the car is ready to move some serious air by eliminating bottlenecks both on the intake and the exhaust side of things. We're also going to add a few more pounds of boost to the car and see what kind of numbers are possible with that factory Eaton supercharger in place. Finally, we're going to take care of some preventative maintenance just to be on the safe side.

Now, before we get started, a friendly reminder to go ahead and click on the link below to subscribe to our YouTube channel, especially if you're a big fan of boost. Blower cars, turbo cars, we've built them all, and you can check those out by going through our YouTube channel. Since we already have a 2.6" pulley installed on the car now, our options for adding more boost with the factory Eaton blower still in place are pretty limited. In fact, the only way to really do so, besides going down to a 2.5" pulley, which we really didn't want to do, is to add a lower overdrive balancer.

So, we installed the Innovators West 10% Overdrive Balancer. This balancer along with a 2.6" pulley is actually a very popular combination with other GT500 owners out there for a couple of different reasons. For starters, Innovators West claims that their balancer actually weighs less than the factory balancer, so you're going to reduce some of that rotational mass, which is always a good thing.

In addition, by enlarging the diameter 10%, our car should now be seeing an additional three or so pounds of boost more, bringing our grand total up to around the 15 or so pound mark, which should be enough to peg that factory boost gauge. This is pretty much the tried and true safe limit of efficiency with a stock blower here, without porting it or adding additional forms of cooling like meth injection or running E85 fuel.

If you start spinning these M122 blowers up any faster, heat becomes a serious problem, and at that point, the efficiency goes down, and those power numbers really start to drop. Once you start getting around 550 wheel horsepower in these cars, that factory twin 60mm throttle body just becomes a huge restriction, so it had to go. In its place now, I installed the Ford Racing Twin 65mm Cobra Jet Throttle Body.

Of course, the larger twin 65mm opening will let more air into the engine, which is what we're after, and since it is built by Ford Racing, the quality, the drive by wire electronics, all that stuff are completely dead on, as you might expect. Finally, the cherry on top, I guess you could say, that nice polished billet construction looks great under the hood, especially alongside that JLT carbon fiber intake.

Now that we've opened things up with the intake, let's check out the exhaust. One of the biggest performance killers with any exhaust system are the factory cats. So, in their place now, we installed the stainless steel off road X-Pipe. This should really help improve the exhaust flow here on our Shelby and should give our tone a little more bite. Since we are getting rid of the factory cats, we wanted to pick an axle-back that would still give us a good sound without being overly raspy, but at the same time give us some performance benefits. After all, this is a power pack here.

So, we selected a customer favorite, the MagnaFlow Street Series Axle-Back. Now, this axle-back paired with that off-road X-pipe could still give us a very angry tone, worthy of a GT 500, but at the same time, it's not going to be obnoxiously loud. In fact, listen up for a quick sound clip.

With this many mods, and with us really pushing the limits of that factory roots blower, heat is inevitably going to be an issue. So, even though these '11 and '12 Shelbys came with larger intercoolers from the factory, we wanted to make sure this thing was going to stay cool even on the hottest days. So, we installed the AFCO Pro-Series Heat Exchanger, which did include dual 10-inch electric fans to help keep things even cooler. In fact, if you guys want to click on the link below, you can read up more about the AFCO back on our site, but regardless, just a solid upgrade when trying to deal with heat on these Shelbys.

With all of our stage three modifications in place, time to get Mike J. and the Bama Performance team in here so we can get a tune for all our new mods. At the end of the stage two power pack, our 2012 GT500 was making 532 horsepower and 523-pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels. With all the stage three modifications installed, the power pack was now making 589 horsepower, and 600-pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels, giving us a peak gain of 57 horsepower over our stage two numbers, and gains of 65 horsepower, and 83-pound-feet of torque throughout the curve.

So, to recap, our baseline run with our 2012 GT500 gave us 503 horsepower, and 475-pound feet of torque. With all three power packs installed, the car is now making 589 horsepower, and 600-pound-feet of torque, resulting in a peak gain of 86 horsepower over those baseline numbers, and gains of 117 horsepower, and 135-pound-feet of torque throughout the curve.

That's going to do it for the third and final power pack here featuring the 2010 through 2012 Shelby GT500. Let's be honest, bone stock, these Shelbys are no joke, but over the course of three different power packs, which featured more boost, some basic bolt-ons, and of course, a quality tune from the Bama team, this thing is now more ridiculous than ever. Guys, don't forget to check out our other power packs and remember, for all things Mustang, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.