Project Blackout: 2012 GT Mustang

Dave: Hey, everybody. I'm Dave from americanmuscle.com, and this is our 2012 GT Project Car. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another adventure in the americanmuscle.com Project Car series. If you've been following us, you're familiar with the car behind me, it was our last Project Car, our 2011 Automatic Mustang V6. By the time we got done with it, it went an 11.73.

Now, we're talking to our next project car, our Manual 2012 Mustang GT Premium. But, before we modify it and move onto Stage 1, we wanna get some baseline numbers out of our bone stock GT. From over my shoulders, Mike Wilson, the Bama lead calibrator, he's getting the car in the dyno situated to get us those numbers. Hey, Mike. The car is brand new, the car is bone stock. What do you really expect to get out of this today on the dyno?

Mike: I'd like to see about 360 to 370 horsepower to the tires, but the only way to find out is to make a run, so let's do it.

Dave: Sounds good. All right, Mike. That was the very first stock run for this car, bone stock actually. And I see the chart. Tell me what we're looking at here, if you would.

Mike: So, the car putting down 368 horsepower and 370 foot-pounds of torque.

Dave: So, we got our baseline numbers. Next logical step I'm thinking, street driving?

Mike: Let's go.

Dave: Let's do it. Let's unhook it. We're out driving the 2012 GT Project Car, out on some back roads getting a feel for real-life conditions. It's really nice, it's really comfortable.

Mike: The car handles great. The brakes are decent. There's definitely room for improvement. So, we'll get a Bama Tune in it and some performance parts, and see how much acceleration and horsepower and torque we can pick up.

Dave: Well, Mike, I'm thinking there's only one thing left to do.

Mike: Let's go to the track.

Dave: Absolutely.

Mike: Let's go.

Dave: All right, Mike Wilson's behind us in our bone stock 2012 GT. He's gonna take off the traction control and run it down the quarter mile, give us our baseline time. Let me get out of the way. We'll see what he does.

We're back at the shop after our stock run with the Project Car. We went down to Cecil County Dragway and ran a 13.2 in the quarter mile. Now, the track was super slick and we know these cars are capable of a 13.0 in stock trim. So, we're gonna use that as our baseline number going forward. So, with that said, let's go ahead and get started with Stage 1 of our Project Car.

All right, Mike. We are about to begin Stage 1 of this build here. Why don't you give me an idea of what's going on today.

Mike: We're gonna start off with your basic first modifications. First, gonna be a JLT Carbon Fiber Intake kit, which is gonna allow the engine to breath more, make more horsepower. Then, we're gonna install this JLT Oil Separator. It's gonna catch any kind of oil vapors so they get recirculated back of the intake track, and help prevent it from detonating, especially in the high horsepower cars.

Dave: Makes sense.

Mike: And finally, we're gonna top it off with a Bama Performance 93 Octane tune. This is gonna help optimize the air-fuel ratio, the spark advance and enhance the throttle response to the car.

Dave: With that, I assume obviously the cold air intake being on there already, what kind of numbers do you expect to get today?

Mike: We should see right under 400 horsepower with all this.

Dave: That's not bad at the wheel.

Mike: Yeah.

Dave: Okay. All right, Mike. That was your pull of your performance parts on here.

Mike: Cool. What'd it do?

Dave: So, looks like we got a horsepower of 398 and 389 foot-pounds of torque, and that's giving us a peak gain of 31 horsepower and curve gains of 55 horsepower and 40 foot-pounds of torque.

Mike: Just about what we expected then.

Dave: Definitely. Why don't we get it back to the track, see what that did for our times.

Mike: Cool. Let's get it off the dyno.

Dave: And before we head out, I want to dress it up a little bit.

Mike: Cool. Let's do it.

Dave: All right. The idea of our Project Car is to create a killer street machine, but we didn't wanna do it with just performance parts. We want to make the car look the look as well. So today, we've done a couple things. We've taken your votes off of Facebook and named it Project Blackout, just as you picked. Today's plan? Put on the CDC Chin Spoiler and replace our factory one. Then, move onto the upper and lower grilles and replace those with the Black Retro Billet-Style Grille. It's gonna give us that blacked out and aggressive look that we're really after.

Well, the first round of appearance parts are complete, and if I do say so myself, it doesn't look too bad. Now, before we head back to the track to see what our new quarter mile time is, there is one thing left to do.

Announcer: at 12.45 at 115 miles an hour. Oh yeah.

Dave: Now, off our baseline number of 13.0, we just picked up over half a second, running a 12.45 at 115 miles an hour. Not too bad for an oil separator, a cold air intake, a tune, and our stock tires. Now, we're gonna head back to AmericanMuscle for Stage 2 of Project Blackout.

Dave: Hey, everybody. Dave with americanmuscle.com and I'm back with stage two of Project Blackout. Before we get into stage two why don't we check out where we left off in stage one?

In stage one we added a JLT Cold Air Intake and an Oil Separator with a BAMA tune. We made a dyno pull and put down 398 horsepower and 389 foot-pounds of torque. That gave us peak horsepower gains of 31 and curve gains of 55 horsepower and 40 foot-pounds of torque. We then went to work on the exterior. We added the CDC Chin Spoiler and the Black Billet Retro Upper and Lower Grille combo. We finished up with Project Blackout stage one at [inaudible 00:00:51] County. We ran a 12.45 at 115 miles an hour. That's a decrease of over a half second versus our baseline of 13.0.

Well, that brings us up to speed on stage one. Let's go ahead and step things up a little bit and get started with stage two of Project Blackout.

Yo, Mike. What you got going on today?

Mike: Just finished up the new exhaust. I did a Pypes X-Pipe and the Pypes Catback, the Super System. It should really improve the exhaust flow and give it a lot more aggressive sound.

Dave: What else you got in store for us?

Mike: Well, if you let me drop the lift I can show you some modifications we did under the hood.

Dave: I'm gonna get out of the way.

All right, Mike. What did you wanna show me under the hood? What's got you so excited?

Mike: Well, Dave take a look over here.

Dave: At the valve cover?

Mike: No, it's what's under the cover. Accel Coil On Plugs.

Dave: Very nice. This is gonna help us out with miles per gallon and with a bunch more spark. This is really cool. I'm glad we did that. What else you got in store for us?

Mike: Well, if you hop inside I can show you one more thing.

Dave: Sure.

All right, Mike. What's going on in here?

Mike: Well Dave, we replaced the stock shifter with the Hurst MT-82 Plus 2 Billet Shifter.

Dave: Cool.

Mike: Shorter throws, hopefully faster shifts at the track.

Dave: I would say definitely. I think this is the one...yeah, it is. This is the one that doesn't use the push down and move over reverse lockdown like Ford does. It has an LED light that comes with it. All right, is there anything else in the car you wanna show me?

Mike: That pretty much wraps me up.

Dave: Can I bug you to help me with one more thing before we get finished today?

Mike: Sounds good.

Dave: All right. Hop out. Give me a hand.

I got Mike off grabbing some tools to give me a hand with the next step in Project Blackout and that's this wheel and tire combo. What I have is the NITTO NT555 Street Tire that I can tell you from personal experience is gonna hook up great both at the track and on the street. Combined with the NITTO we're gonna go with the Charcoal AMR Wheel, the wheel that you voted on on Facebook and chose to be the one for Project Blackout.

Now it's time to move on with some exterior modifications. What I have with me is a set of Raxiom's Smoked Headlights with the CCFL Halos and the accent lights. Going along with these we're gonna install the side marker lights. Now they're a great accent piece and they're quick and easy to install once we have the bumper off with the headlights already. We're looking at about two hours to install.

Well, now that the front of Project Blackout matches the name let's go to work on the rear.

Steve, I'm here in your vinyl room at americanmuscle.com. Today you're gonna be giving us a hand with Project Blackout, right?

Steve: That's right.

Dave: All right, what are you gonna be doing today for us?

Steve: We're gonna put on the taillight tint, quarter marker right tint and the third brake light tint.

Dave: Now that'll definitely look good.

All right, before we wrap up the rear end of Project Blackout there's one piece that I think any car named Project Blackout needs, that'd be the rear blackout panel.

Now I think it's time we get the car off the lift. We hand it off to Mike Wilson for a dyno pull so we can see what kind of gains we got.

Hey, Mike. What did it make today?

Mike: It just put down 407 horsepower and 399 foot-pounds of torque. That's 10 horsepower and 10 foot-pounds of torque peak and as much as 16 horsepower and 27 foot-pounds of torque throughout the curve.

Dave: Now that's really good. Yeah. And the stage two mods, right?

Mike: Yep. Just the stage two modifications.

Dave: Are you finished with it?

Mike: I'm done.

Dave: All right. I'd like to get it off the dyno, head out to the street and see how it sounds and performs if you're okay with that.

Mike: I'm good. Let's go.

Dave: All right, man.

First thing I noticed when I got in the car was a short throw shifter. It looks better, it sits lower and the shifts are short and crisp. I really, really like this Hurst shifter. Something else I couldn't help but notice as soon as I pulled out was the rumble, the tone of the exhaust has changed dramatically. Real, true, deep muscle car rumble. Very happy with it. I gotta tell you that with these NITTO tires, the Pypes exhaust, the Hurst short throw shifter, the Accel coil on plugs just for some fun power it's really an aggressive and fantastic daily driving street car. Now I think we should get down to the track though and see what we can do with our quarter mile time, see how much we dropped.

Project Blackout just clicked off a 12.37. That's down nearly a tenth from our stage one time of 12.45.

Our exterior modifications look great, the car sounds and performs great. We're now heading back to AmericanMuscle for stage three of Project Blackout.

Man: We're back at AmericanMuscle to begin Stage 3 of Project Blackout. Now remember, our goal for this car is to create an amazing street machine, both in performance and in looks.

Before we get onto Stage 3, let's take a look back at our Stage 2 and see where we left off. In Stage 2, we overhauled the exhaust, added some Accel Coil On Plugs, replaced the stock shifter, and put a new set of NITTOs on with our AMR wheels. On the exterior, we replaced the headlights, the side marker lights and added tint to all of the rear lights. On a dyno, we put down 407 horsepower and 399 foot-pounds of torque. Now, that gave us peak gains of 10 horsepower and curve gains of 16 horsepower and 27 foot-pounds of torque over our Stage 1 pull. We ended at the track where we ran a 12.37 at 116 miles an hour.

We got a lot planned for this car today. I wanna start with the rear of the car. We're gonna go ahead and put on the RTR Rear Diffuser with a three-piece splitter. This is an exact replica of the splitters seen on the RTR Special Edition Mustang that Vaughn Gittin, Jr. drives. We're then gonna move up the back of the Mustang, little bit of X, put the diffuser on, I'm gonna go ahead and move the factory spoiler and put on the aluminum RTR spoiler. Again, the same exact one seen on the Special Edition Mustang that Vaughn Gittin, Jr. drives. We're gonna keep the aggressive look coming to the side. Roush makes a Side Rocker Splitter that's a quick and easy installation and it'll definitely look good on this car. What I'll do then is move up to our side scoops. AmericanMuscle pre-paints these inhouse. We're gonna put on a set of black matching side scoops for our 2012 Project car. We're gonna keep the theme going to our quarter windows. I'm gonna install our Pre-painted Quarter Window side scoops for the 2012 Mustang. Quick and easy 3M install, you're gonna love putting this on the car. And last but not least, we're gonna really transform Project Blackout by installing a 3-inch Trufiber Cowl Hood.

Hey there, Mike. Whoa, what'd you all get on here?

Mike: Well, we started with a full suspension kit, lowering springs, struts, shocks, and these sway bars. We also did a J&M Panhard Rod, J&M Lower Control Arms, and JPC Adjustable Upper Control Arm.

Man: This is going to absolutely change how it handles on the street. Straight line launches, this is going to be great [crosstalk 00:02:40] within the wheel hop.

Mike: Yeah, it should help the wheel hop.

Man: Mike, what are we doing on the rear gears?

Mike: Our Facebook fans have decided to go with a 4.10 gear.

Man: That is gonna help with burnouts, that's gonna help with our launches combined with suspension stuff. Totally different animal.

Mike: And we also did a limited slip while we were in there.

Man: Did we do the rear bearing and the whole install kit as well?

Mike: Yep, complete overhaul. Put a lighter driveshaft on. We also have a new safety loop up there.

Man: Yeah, you did. That's gonna save us some weight and definitely help us with burnouts. The control arms are gonna help with launches. This is looking really great. I do wanna get some track results out of this before I go beat it on the street. I can't wait to take it out to see what this thing does.

So, for our Stage 3 quarter mile run, Project Blackout ran a 12.1 at 113 miles per hour. That's down 2/10 from our Stage 2 time of 12.3.

So, I've got Project Blackout back with all of our Stage 3 modifications on the car. We're gonna put this car through its paces here coming up, test out the suspension mods from Stage 3. I see some real twisty, windy roads coming up. In fact, that road sign right there looks like a snake with a broken back. Oh, that's great. Look at this, tight turn, right out of there, no question. Wow, that was smooth. Really can feel the 410s pulling the six beat out of the hole there. That was great. You can feel the control arms really plant the cars. I step on it coming out of the turns, you can completely feel the sway bars working to keep the body roll to an absolute minimum. This doesn't feel anything like stock. I mean, the ride quality is better, the handling is no question, better. Here's a real good turn here. 410 gears are exactly what this six beat needs for some aggressive street driving. If I hit it out of this corner, I mean, not even wheel hop, not spin, just a whole lot of stick and go. This car is a completely, completely different animal.

Let me go ahead and test the brakes in a sec, see how we did with eliminating nose dive under hard braking. It doesn't get any better than this. Stage 3 of Project Blackout absolutely transformed this car into an amazing street machine. We've got some big stuff planned for Stage 4, so we're gonna head back to AmericanMuscle shop with Project Blackout.

Justin: Hey, we're here at AmericanMuscle to wrap up the final stage of Project Blackout. Now our goal with this build was to take our bone stock 2012 Mustang GT and turn it into an absolute monster both on the street and at the track all while giving it a very sinister look to back it up. Now we've definitely saved the best for last here with stage four but before we hit it, let's recap what we knocked out in stage three.

Looks wise we gave the rear end the RTR treatment, added some exterior muscle to the sides with the addition of our pre-painted side scoops, added lower splitters and topped it all off with a true fiber three inch Cowl Hood. We really went to town on the suspension with Eibach's Pro-System Plus Kit and also threw in some vital components from J&M which will really help get the car out of the hole along with the assistance of our new 4.10 Gears from Ford Racing. Finally we made our drivetrain bulletproof with the addition of Eaton's 31 Spline Limited Slip Differential, One Piece Aluminum Driveshaft and a BMR Safety Loop. With all of our stage three modifications we took Project Blackout back to the track and ran a 12.1 at a 113 miles per hour.

When this build started we knew two things. We wanted the car to be black and we wanted it to be very, very fast. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, we wanted to take the road less traveled with this build. Our 2011 GT was able to break deep into the 10s with a big shot of nitrous and our 2011 V6 was able to break into the 11s using ProCharger's Intercooled Blower setup. So that leaves only one more power adder we've yet to use. So let's check out the newest addition of Project Blackout. Mike, you wanna give me a hand?

So here it is. Our Hellion 67 millimeter Single Turbo Kit. Now this off the shelf kit bolted right up to our 2012 Mustang while still retaining our AC. Now the whole kit centers around the 67 millimeter precision turbo. It's gonna offer a very quick spool and is able to produce upwards of 850 horsepower at the rear wheels. Not only did we add our snail but in order to help our Coyote motor move all of that extra air we installed the Boss 302 Intake Manifold along with a 90 millimeter Throttle Body from Ford Racing. Finally to support all of that boost we needed to address both our fuel and our spark. So we installed larger injectors and cooler plugs both from Ford Racing and finally Kenne Bell's Boost A Pump which should take care of our additional fuel needs. Now I'm dying to hear this thing spool up and see what kind of power we're putting down so let's get Mike Wilson in here and fire this beast up.

All right, so we ran the car with a 67 mil turbo and honestly it made great power for a street car. We made 6.01 on low boost but us being us, bigger is always better and we're really gonna crank up that boost down the road. So we decided to swap out the 67 mil turbo in favor of the 76 millimeter Precision Turbo from Hellion. Now I'm excited to see what kinda numbers this thing's gonna put down so let's get Mike Wilson in here one more time and turn the rollers.

Mike, that thing sounded ridiculous, man. How did we do power wise?

Mike: Oh, we did awesome, man. Last time I had the car on the dyno in stage 2 it put down 407 horsepower and 400 foot-pounds of torque. Now in stage 4 with the 76 millimeter turbo and seven pounds of boost put down 654 horsepower and 568 foot-pounds of torque. That's 247 horsepower peak and as much as 249 horsepower and 213 foot-pounds of torque throughout the curve.

Justin: Unbelievable and that torque curve is as flat as a board. Well, I cannot wait to get this thing out on the street, try to contain some of that power and then I guess we're gonna get it to the track and do some shakedown runs.

Mike: Absolutely.

Justin: Let's do it.

All right, so we're out in Project Blackout. We just got the car off the dyno where the car made over 650 horsepower which is unbelievable. And you wanna know how this thing feels, man. Well... Holy shit. It feels pretty cool if you like 50 mile an hour rolling second gear burnouts. I'll tell you that. Now you can't just slap a big turbo or a blower on a car and expect it to run great. Now that's where Mike came in, man. He did a great job of turning this back into a well-rounded street car. I mean, this car idles like a stock GT, it drives part throttle like a stock GT but when you get on that pedal look out, man. This thing is packing a lot of power under the hood. There's only one more thing to do, man. Let's get this thing to the track.

So our stage 4 time with Project Blackout was 11.0 at 125. Now that's just over a full second improvement over our stage three time of 12.1. For the first couple runs we were starting to dial the car in but the third run of the night we were really starting to fly when we went 11.0. Unfortunately due to our track's rules we have to come back with a roll cage installed before we go any faster. Now do I think the car has a 10 in it as it stands right now? Absolutely. But this wasn't solely a balls to the wall straight line only build here. We were looking to create a very well rounded street car that would be just as good on the back roads or an autocross track as it would be at the drag strip. And believe me, as someone who spent a lot of seat time in the car I can tell you with 100% certainty that the car handles great, looks evil, accelerates like a bat out of hell and will simply put a smile on your face every time you bury the throttle. We really enjoyed building this car and we hope you enjoyed the build as well but stay tuned. Something tells me this isn't the last you've seen of AmericanMuscle's Project Blackout.