Here’s the result of hours of carnage.

 

Here’s a comparison of the stock blower vs the ported blower internals.

Here’s stock.

Here’s ported.

 

Here’s the stock throttle body vs the Kong. The Kong is HUGE.

 

@HVCalTech - Thanks much for the photos. Now I want to Kong my GT500!! LOL

 

Bad Ass Chad!!!

 

Wow .... at least you get to work on a very clean engine !! Hope you get the results you're looking for !!

 

Any surprises getting it to this point. Please pass on any tips or "gotcha's" along the way.

 

Not really any smoking guns. It’s pretty straightforward. The hardest part was getting those 3 wiring harness connector push on retainers off from the firewall side of the blower. They are a BITCH. The two outers you can see from either side of the blower and get them off while the blower is still installed with a long pry bar. The middle one you have to pull the blower out towards you a few inches and remove it once you have some clearance. I used a 2x4 to slide the blower on so I wouldn’t break off the small silver water fitting sticking out of the block. The service manual removal procedure is pretty comprehensive.

That big plastic harness retainer that hooks over the passenger side rear stud on the lid almost has to be notched to get it off like Tim posted in his video. There is a 10mm nut on the bottom of the plastic piece to free it up so you can lift it up and over the stud, but it’s impossible to get to. If you did manage to get the nut off, you’d probably never get it back on without losing the nut.

The MAP sensor harness retainer on the passenger side rear of the lid is going to shear off. The plastic stud pushes all the way through the lid and blower and fits super tightly. There’s no way to get to the bottom side to drive it out. I think Tim’s broke too. I’m just going to drill a hole though it and zip tie it back.

If you don’t want a god awful mess, a vacuum fluid extractor is a necessity. There are water lines everywhere. I used this one and only lost maybe a tablespoon of coolant. I LOVE this thing. Mityvac MV7110 Fluid Extractor Dispenser for Evacuating, Topping-Off, Refilling Reservoirs or Bleeding Hydraulic Brake/Clutch Systems, 2.5 Gallon, 120 PSI, Compressed Air, Vacuum or Positive Pressure Amazon.com: Mityvac MV7110 Fluid Extractor Dispenser for Evacuating, Topping-Off, Refilling Reservoirs or Bleeding Hydraulic Brake/Clutch Systems, 2.5 Gallon, 120 PSI, Compressed Air, Vacuum or Positive Pressure : Automotive

 

Fan-frigg’n-tastic! Thanks for sharing Chad! 🍻

 

Wow, looks great Chad.

 

@HVCalTech, if it were possible to pop these two push pins (circled) out of that plastic piece, would you have enough play to clear that stud on the back of the supercharger lid?

 

No, there’s a nut on the bottom holding the plastic piece. It’s not nearly as wide open as the service manual drawing would lead you to believe. It’s right against the firewall.

 

The package from VMP just arrived. Now I’m trying to decide if my back can take another consecutive night under the hood. Hard to believe there’s $5400 sitting there. Doesn’t seem like much after you unpack it.

 

Doesn’t seem like much after you unpack it.

Welcome to hot rodding in the 21st century. Do I see a belt?

 

You’re a braver man than I Chad lol. Then again I I don’t mind paying money to people who know more about my car than I do lol.

 

I would have paid somebody too—I wanted to, but I couldn’t find anybody I felt good about. The only place I’d trust that’s not 10 hours away from me is booked up for a year, though. The good places always are. I trust myself more than the mom and pop performance shops that are near me. One relatively local place that came highly recommended scoffed at doing a gear swap and dyno tuning my 2018 GT in late 2020, saying it was too new for him, so I didn’t even bother asking about my 21. I may not be an expert, but I can read a damn service manual. Lol. I work on equipment that costs 3 times what this car costs, so I got over the pucker factor a long time ago.

 

It's just like changing a 70 lb carburetor.

 

In California they barely lead us drive ice cars anymore at all! Even if I wanted to attempt these mods, it would be far out of my comfort zone. As a side note, our gas now easily exceeds $6 per gallon.

In any event, nice-looking parks and work!

 

Paging @Catmonkey . What do you think of how the belt looks here? You have a lot more experience with blowers than I do. This Claw thing has absolutely zero instructions with it, so I had to figure this out for myself. This screenshot from a video clip was the closest thing I could find to a belt routing diagram with this thing in circuit.

I measured with a wire like the Holley guide says and came up with 69 7/8”. That’s so close to the factory belt, I decided to give it a try. I adjusted the Claw idlers where I thought the VMP video shows, and the factory belt looks pretty damn good to me. I have excellent belt wrap on the blower pulley and the balancer, and the tensioner is almost exactly where it rests with everything stock. What do you think?

 

Paging @Catmonkey . What do you think of how the belt looks here? You have a lot more experience with blowers than I do. This Claw thing has absolutely zero instructions with it, so I had to figure this out for myself. This screenshot from a video clip was the closest thing I could find to a belt routing diagram with this thing in circuit.

I measured with a wire like the Holley guide says and came up with 69 7/8”. That’s so close to the factory belt, I decided to give it a try. I adjusted the Claw idlers where I thought the VMP video shows, and the factory belt looks pretty damn good to me. I have excellent belt wrap on the blower pulley and the balancer, and the tensioner is almost exactly where it rests with everything stock. What do you think?

Did you check their website? I know that they typically post instructions there, when they have them. The critical piece I'd focus on is the position of the tensioner with everything in place. You want it clocked pretty much like it came with the factory belt. A little variance either way won't make much difference. Tighter is probably better than looser, but that looks like pretty good belt wrap. What I can't see is the idler for the balancer belt. You want that idler on the lower hole of the claw, but it seems you know that. There are two holes for that lower idler and the higher bolt hole would be for an oversized balancer (10-20%). I'm sort of amazed the factory belt works as well as it seems to. Great write up.

 

Got the blower, lid, intercooler brick, fuel injectors, and the Claw idler bracket thing installed.

Here are a few progress pics.

Here’s the factory brick vs the VMP 95mm for comparison.

 

Here’s my VMP Predator Claw System install.

Since VMP doesn’t feel the need to include instructions with this thing, here’s what I did.

Important!!

Don’t do what I did and put the claw pulleys on backwards. Go to the bottom of this post and look at the 2 pictures I just added. The pulleys aren’t symmetrical. Their offset is different depending on whether you face the snap ring side in or out. The correct orientation is snap ring side out. If you install them the other way, the water pump pulley will hit the lower claw pulley. Doh!

You need to remove the water pump pulley first, then the factory idler pulley that sits by the blower pulley, and the 3 factory bolts and one stud indicated by the arrows.

Use the factory stud at the top and the 4 hex head bolts included with the kit to mount the bracket. Torque the bolts to 18 ft pounds plus 60 degrees, per the service manual for the front cover. I used blue loctite on all bolts.

Install the lower idler pulley included with the claw in the lowest hole at the bottom of the bracket and torque to 18 ft pounds. I’m just using the torque spec for other factory pulleys with 15mm head bolts. I also used blue loctite.

Reinstall the water pump pulley and torque to 18 ft pounds. Install the top pulley and adjust it where you like it. See my pics a couple posts up for where I put it. I’m using the factory 70.27” belt on mine, and it looks perfect to me, part # 8PK1790.

This is the correct way to install the pulleys, snap ring side out.

 

What you don't want is no or very little play if you put a bar on the tensioner and push it clockwise. The tensioner is going to bounce around when the engine is running and if it can't move, something is going to break. It seems to be that Ford positions it's tensioners so they're parallel to the ground when properly adjusted.

 

It’s really hard to get a good picture since it’s so close to the radiator, but it’s as close to parallel with the ground as it can get. When you put a digital protractor on a breaker bar inserted into the tensioner 3/8 drive hole, it’s basically 90 degrees. You can’t really directly measure it since the arm on the tensioner tapers down. It’s definitely closer to the belt coming up from the balancer than in the VMP video, but they were using a 20% overdrive balancer and the upper claw hole in the video. I’m using the bottom hole and stock balancer. I don’t think there’s any danger of belt rubbing. I’ve never seen a serpentine belt stretch appreciably.

 

Knowing how belt sizes run, I don't know that you're going to get it any closer than that.

 

Yeah, I was thinking of trying a half inch shorter belt to get a little more clearance by the tensioner, but I’m not 100% sure the belt I think is 1/2” shorter really is. The specs are all over the place and sometimes contradictory unless you’re buying the same brand and line. I think I’m going to just run it for a bit and make sure I don’t have any issues after it runs for a while and everything settles in.

 

Got the car just about completely back together. Just waiting on an AN wrench to tighten the intercooler block fittings, and then I need to add coolant and replace the strut tower brace once I ensure I don’t have any coolant leaks, vacuum leaks etc. I sent the tune request form in to VMP. It said 3-5 business days when I submitted the form. Really hope they’re faster than that. I’d really like to be able to start the car.

 

Looks Fantastic Chad.

 

It may be more work than you want to do at this point just to run it temporarily, but you could put the stock injectors back in. You can run and drive the car while you wait on the tune. I'd just stay out of boost if you do take it on the road. When you're confident all the coolant levels are topped off and there are no leaks or other issues, swap the big injectors back in and wait on the tune to arrive.

 

Yeah, I’m too lazy to rip everything apart again. I think I’ll just wait for VMP to get the tune ready. It’s pouring rain for the next couple days, so it’s not like I’m going to drive the car, anyway.

I’m about to pull my hair out getting the stock ECM and TCM read on this HPT software. First time I did it I had it set to read them both in one session. VMP’s help page tells you in the NEXT step the GT500 is different—you read the ECM first and the TCM in a separate session. So I start the 20+ minute session over, and the car reboots from my low lithium battery. I rip out the lithium and temporarily stick the stock batt back in, and my wife calls me, causing me to move the computer so I could see it from the passenger side when I went to grab my phone. Now the USB cable beeps and disconnects. Lol. Now I’m at attempt, what, 52? Lol. 1:31 left on the ECM read…

 

I had a real adventure getting the stock files to read due to battery issues, a flakey USB port, and some incorrect instructions on the VMP site, but I finally got it done with some help from Mike at VMP. He got my tune finished for me today, which I definitely didn’t expect. I haven’t gotten to drive it yet since the roads are wet, but it’s supposed to be sunny for the next week. No leaks, no odd behavior, no bad noises. It idles exactly like it did stock.

Here’s a clip from the first start with a couple quick revs. My wife didn’t want me to post this. She says I sound like a retard. I said stupid is as stupid does. Lol. The sound is just WICKED. It shrieks now. It’s actually a lot louder than it sounds in the clip.

 

After reading all the posts in this thread the last term I would use regarding you and your work is retard. That word is for timing stuff anyway. IMO you did an outstanding job plus providing the rest of the forum with some truly helpful photos and comments. Enjoy driving your upgraded Shelby! 👍🏁

 

Here’s the car all put back together. Only thing left do is attach the snake emblem and transfer the build plate from my stock lid.

 

Final pics for tonight. Used a heat gun and some dental floss to get the signature plate off my stock lid. Just heated it up till it was uncomfortable to touch and pried one edge up with a couple toothpicks. Sawed the glue with dental floss and scrubbed the adhesive residue off with isopropanol and a microfiber. Used some high temp 3m double side tape to reattach. The cobra is new. I bought it originally to use on my subwoofer box and decided to use laser etched acrylic instead. Had it lying around.

I really like how stock the car looks with this VMP lid. Unless you had a stock car sitting next to you, I doubt anybody could spot the difference.

 

Good work Chad!

 

Thanks Brian. I can’t get too cocky, though. I just noticed I forgot to tighten the bolts on the degas bottle. Doh! I left them loose so I could lift it up to get to the vent hole on the bottom to tape it closed when I vacuum filled it. Rookie move. Lol. Let’s hope I don’t discover any more lapses tomorrow when I drive it.

 

Chad this is an amazing thread, well done! Loved the laughter in the video, it truly showed your excitement. Congratulations!!

 

Thanks Chris. I think I had my wife rev the car about 42 more times after that video. Lol.

This really wasn’t that difficult. It’s well within the capabilities of the average shadetree mechanic. As long as you have a service manual and take your time—plus have super experienced resources like John to bug and double check your work, there’s no reason to be afraid of working on these cars. Shoutout to @Catmonkey for all your advice and for offering to help by text when you were on vacation. That’s truly above and beyond. Thanks to @Goose17 for his super detailed lid/intercooler video, and thanks to all the other members who helped as I was researching this, too. By the way, hope you’re having fun at the Roadeo John.