I bought a barely used 20ft car trailer. I lucked out and saved the wait time and got a good deal, since supply is low and prices are high at the trailer dealers. Immediately after getting it home, I chopped the left fender off. Welded up a removable attachment system, so I can now haul low vehicles and still open their doors while parked on the trailer. More trailer mods planned, such as longer ramps, tail jacks, rock guard/tire rack/toolbox combo, extra lighting, etc.



Fabricated custom exhaust. I was basically forced to do something different than the FFR twin-sidepipes that come with the Coupe for two reasons: they're too loud for sound restrictions at certain tracks/events, and they are restrictive on high RPM flow (sucks because I love the look of the twin pipes). My solution was to fabricate a custom elbow with a 4-bolt flange to match the square-ish FFR/GP Headers on one leg, and a 4" V-band on the other leg, in as tight of radius as possible. Then, using multiple interchangeable sidepipes each with their own V-band flange welded on at the inlet, I could quickly swap mufflers of varying loudness onto the elbow which remain bolted to the car. Let me be clear...this is not a simple fabrication job. The amount of angles required to get the alignment just right on the elbow are pretty intense. Also each elbow is custom, they are not mirror images of one another. The elbows are 4" OD 1D bend radius in 304 stainless. The flanges were CNC plasma cut from 3/8" thick 304 stainless, and SS 4” interlocking V-bands. I drew the flange in SolidWorks, and radially slotted the holes a few mm to have some adjustment in the height of the sidepipes, which does work but beware that due to the negative angle at the header outlet this causes the sidepipe to also move in-out relative to the body as it moves up-down. Ultimately I think they're going to work fine, but I may be tweaking them or building a second set once the body is finished and painted. Also, I use stainless wire in a MIG welder, but I REALLY wish I had a TIG for things like this.



My 4” OD side pipes each have 36" stainless augers inside, and sound decent. Quieter than FFR twin-pipes, but still too loud for autocross. I will either make a second set with reverse-flow baffles, or fill the last 12” of my current ones with fiberglass or coarse stainless steel wire to meet the <96dB requirement.
As soon as the new exhaust was finished, we loaded the car on the trailer for the first time for a test haul. Drove it up the 5ft ramps no problem (for now…once the splitter is on I'm going to need reeeeally long ramps), and then figured out straps. For the rear, I put the hooks directly into the holes just above the rear differential. This will be too high and hard to reach once the body is on, so I think I'll put some tie down mounts in my lower airjack brace. For the front I used axle straps around the lowest 1.5" frame tube just behind the swaybar. Again, this will be nearly impossible to reach once the body is on. Maybe I’ll start strapping the tires instead of the chassis. Towed the car about 20 miles to an empty parking lot. Unloaded the car there and drove it around to put some more mileage on the Tilton clutch before dyno day. They wanted 100 street miles on it for optimal break-in, but since I’m not registered yet I did about 35 miles of stop and go over the past few months, which I figure was close enough to 100 miles of city commuting. Loaded up and went home. The trailering process is very easy with the tube chassis.



Three days later I loaded up again and hit the road for Nashville to get it dyno tuned, with two friends and my fiancé. I couldn’t get my ideal choice of shops, but our local autocross site recently opened from being on CV19 lockdown, and I wanted to be ready for the Test-n-Tune on 6/12/21, so a time crunch forced the decision. Local options for tuners who are familiar with the Coyote (especially Gen3), plus tuning on an actual dyno with HP Tuners and not the week-long email back and forth with Lund and their locked devices/files, are few and far between. That’s me on the far right repping the FFR shirt. Everyone loved the car too.



Dyno experience was pretty good. Spent all day there, did idle tuning, part throttle tuning, and of course WOT. I filled the tank with ¾ tank of fresh 93 octane on the way up, and after completing the tune for premium, they poured in about 6 gallons of E85. For best results we should have drained the 93 out before putting ethanol in, but the mixture was enough for them to tune the flex fuel tables anyway. Per the tuner, it was reading about 40% ethanol content (instead of 85). Since I had installed billet steel oil pump gears and crank sprocket, we were able to raise the redline to a stratospheric 8,400rpm. The lack of big power on the top end is due to my MAF tube. I made a big mistake buying a 3.5” ID MAF adapter tube because that’s what fit the FFR provided silicone elbow and pod filter. I should have used the 4.75” ID one which would be a huge improvement in flow. Enlarging the intake and getting a full tank of pure E85 would have resulted in 480+ rwhp. As it stands, 457hp and 421 tq is the result. Dyno sheet got cut off in the printer, but this shows the graph up to about 8k. I think I can make this work for now.



My Ram 1500 4x4 Crew Cab gets about 18mpg empty, and got about 12mpg when towing through the rolling hills of Tennessee at 80mph. On the return trip, it looked like we had about an hour of daylight left so stopped by Erik Treves’ place and let me tell you…he has his hands full! Projects abound. The F9 is coming along nicely, and that V12 is a thundering beast. Shared my progress on the Coupe-R, and finally made it back home just after dark. Weighed the car as it sat and it was 2,496lbs with a full tank of fuel. Rear half of body weighs 75lbs, front half 79lbs. Glass, carpet, Dynamat, lights, wiring harness, aluminum, etc. all still have to go in. Looks like I’m not going to make my goal of sub 2,800lbs… hopefully under 3k at least. A bit disappointed, but attribute a good chunk to the –R frame being ~80lbs heavier than the –S frame, and my airjacks probably added more than I think since the mounts are all 3/16” steel and beefy. Guess I’ll just have to drive faster to make up for it all! Lol