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We always cross the straps up front, to keep the car from shifting laterally on the bed of the trailer. I've seen the results of a poorly strapped down car inside an enclosed trailer... it can turn into a costly mistake to your bodywork or aero, especially on a long tow. I always like to check the straps, and tighten them if needed, during our first stop heading out of town to get ice and fuel for the outbound leg of any road trip. In 27 years of racing I've never had a car come loose in an enclosed or open trailer, or worse - had one
fall off of an open trailer. I've known 2 friends that had that happen to them, though!
Strapping the S197 down at the back is a
bit trickier than at the front. There are several ways to do the rear straps, but for the past 4 years whenever we towed this stick axle Mustang we have been using 3 foot long "axle straps" wrapped around the axle tubes then using 3" ratchet straps hooked to these and securing them back to D-rings in the trailer floor straight behind. This was a compromise set-up, and we had to be careful
not to wrap the axle straps over or near the rear axle vent or it could get knocked off - that happened once - made a huge mess.
Left: With a Watts Link you need to keep the tow straps from bending any tubes. Right: This is the section to wrap the axle straps around
When we made our remote axle vent catch can and hose, that hose and fitting had to be avoided with these straps also - which happened once and made a huge mess. The ratchet straps themselves have to route around, over and through the next of Watts Link tubes and rear exhaust pipes or you risk bending or at least scratching something under the car. And since axle straps just wrap around the axle tubes you can't "cross the straps" at the back, or risk having the straps slide inboard towards the "pumpkin" on the axle, which then makes the straps loose during your tow (not good). Some folks like strapping cars down by looping an axle strap through a wheel or around a wheel spoke, but that is a TURRIBLE idea and can both stress crack a wheel spoke, scratch the crap out of your $$$ wheels, or allow the wheel to rotate during the tow and loosen the car against the straps.
So there are lots of "gotchas" on strapping the rear of a Mustang down. We have been fighting it for 4 years, but now we have a better way. We designed and built the tie-down brackets above for the S197 chassis and then tested them on our way to and from the Hallett, which was 10+ hours of towing. These new rear tow strap tie down brackets are made from beefy alloy steel and bolt to the rear lower control arm location. Olof hand cut this prototype pair based off of CAD drawings Jason drew up, but the production versions will be laser cut and powder coated red. The kit will come with a pair of new, 5mm longer, grade 12.9 bolts and nuts as well.
These should be available from us later this summer and the 22° bend shown here will be the right way to tie down a Mustang with crossed rear straps. We will make them in flat (un-bent) form for those that want to orient the tie down straps straight back, too. Strapping the rear down went from a frustrating 5-6 minutes with my upper body wedged under the back of the car to a simple 30 second reach around behind the tie and clicking the strap ends into the new brackets. The 10 hour bumpy round trip tow was flawless, and the car didn't move a millimeter on either trip.
Our popular
GT500 rear brake upgrade kit has gone
DOWN in price by $140. You heard that right.... out price on this kit just dropped over 27%. Why? We were previously sourcing the GT500 rear rotors from the only source we could find - Ford (read: expensive) - but have since found them made by Centric in their Premium line, which is the line we use on all of our race and street cars. This dropped our costs enough to be able to pass along this big savings. We have the replacement rotors available in this same
S197 brake category location.
We have our first batch of Vorshlag adjustable rear spring ride height platforms (aka: "rear ride height adjusters") that finally arrived. These were drawn up a while ago after the supplier for a similar style that we had been using dried up. Now we make this Vorshlag version and they work on several chassis including the S197 Mustang rear.
We make these work on the S197 (at left) with a Nylon adapter and various BMWs (at right), also in the stock rear spring location
These adjustable platforms and adapters allow us to remove the fixed length, stock "Beehive" style spring (or lowering springs of the same shape) and replace them with shorter 60mm ID coilover springs, which come in infinitely more lengths and spring rates. Then we can adjust the ride height at the rear corners independently, for corner balancing. We can use these in conjunction with coilover style front strut/springs or by themselves, to work with a budget racer who still has OEM style springs and struts up front but wants to play with new rear spring rates and adjust ride heights out back.
Look for these coupled with MCS, Moton and other shock kits we sell as well as by themselves with the "Rear coilover spring kit" for the S197 Mustang.
The last upgrade before Hallett was a simple set of rear lower tire spats. These are small little air deflectors that Ryan fabricated out of aluminum to smooth the transition from the flare to the side skirt, both visually and aerodynamically. He bent and welded this pair and made them attach to the back of the factory black plastic side skirt. These were painted black but the racing at Hallett took their toll on the finish (I shot the pics above
after Hallett), so these will come off and get a stronger semi-flat black powder coating before we go to SEMA. Like everything else, the finish of much the exterior of this car will need some touch-ups before its ready for the week long SEMA show or the televised Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational event held immediately after in November.
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