Chevy Powered Mustang Rips a Wheel Clean Off
It’s pretty widely known that Mustang’s make great go-fast platforms for Chevy engines, combining the best of both worlds into a fun little combo that can be built to run some impressive times on a reasonable budget. Since the days of the fox body, Mustang chassis have just been known to work better on the track than pretty much anything GM has built. Sure, you can make a Camaro or Firebird work well, and there are some solid-running G-Bodies out there, but its easier to do more with less if you start with a Mustang and not too many gearheads will argue that.
On the flip side of that coin, you can certainly build some respectable horsepower with a Ford power plant, but when it comes to building big power on a budget, there is no better starting point than GM’s LS engine for a combination of huge power potential and massive, affordable afteprmakrt support. Plus, you can almost always walk into your local salvage yard and pull out a 5.3 or 6.0 for less than $1,000, slap on a cheap turbo kit and make 750 horsepower with almost no effort.
However, as part of the build process, dropping 750 horsepower into a stock chassis quickly finds the weak links in the driveline. Any component between the torque converter and the tires can fail, and as you will see in the video below shot by BigKleib34 at Cecil County Dragway in Rising Sun, Maryland, sometimes those failures happen in pretty unexpected fashion. This Mustang leaves pretty soft, but as soon as you hear the turbo start to spool, the passenger side rear wheel reveals itself as the weak link as the studs give way and the wheel and tire take an unplanned right turn. To add insult to injury, as the car skids to a halt, the wheel bounces off the opposite wall and punts the car in the passenger side door likely leaving some ugly scratches to remind the driver of the time his wheel made it farther down the track than he did.
At least he found out on the bottom end of the track, as this could have been disastrous had the wheel separated on the big end!
