There’s always one guy in the crowd who decides to show everyone he’s the truly serious one of the bunch. Kevin Estes purchased his 2005 Ford Mustang and promptly announced that his new white GT was to be his wife’s car while he drove the company work truck. And that is truly accurate, except for the fact that every weekend Kevin can often be found hammering on the Mustang at the local track. Kevin’s most recent performance: 12.15 seconds in the quarter mile from a very stock appearing Mustang.
To take it to the next level, Estes offered up his Mustang for a torque converter swap. While the outside of the Mustang appears quite stock, under the skin is a highly modified Ford including the Saleen twin screw supercharger, headers, Steeda suspension parts, Strange shocks and host of subtle but potent changes. The test: to see if a torque converter swap with this kind of vehicle can improve its quarter mile performance.
To handle the high horsepower Ford, TCI® Engineer Kevin Winstead prepared a
TCI Automotive®
Super StreetFighter® torque converter. Expecting a flash stall speed of 3500rpm from the supercharged application, TCI® engineers installed the converter in the same manner as used on the stock Mustang shown here. The results: 11.746 @ 116.02 mph.
The
Super StreetFighter® constructed for Estes included a custom hand-built steel stator with performance-oriented blade angles and number of internal blades and a more aggressive pump fin angle. While the impeller blades were left stock angle, the turbine has been hand and furnace brazed to ensure that the converter achieved the highest performance and durability possible. Many of the lessons learned in the production of the PRO-X™ line of racing converters (capable of handling up to 2500+hp) has been used in the creation of the
Super StreetFighter® converter lineup.
Said Estes after his final run, “As far as the torque converter goes, I am thrilled with the performance and streetability. The car is actually easier to manage on wet streets and limited traction situations. It really shines when the throttle is wicked open at low rpm, such as at the starting line. The rpm's immediately jump to about 3500 as the torque converter flashes and you'd better have the car pointed in the right direction because the converter locks and she's gone. Right now! Shifts are still crisp and firm and the power band of the twin-screw blower is fully utilized with no wasted low-end torque. I couldn't be happier with the COMP cams/TCI
Super Street Fighter torque converter.”
Kevin Estes totally stock appearing 2005 Mustang arrives at the COMP Cams/TCI Research & Development Center. Except for the slicks used in racing, this is the way the car appears when ready to challenge the ¼ mile.
Estes’ Mustang is not stock piece. The twin-screw Saleen supercharger is a big performance adder and required the installation of the TCI Super Streetfighter torque converter.
A number of other performance enhancing modification have been completed on the Estes Mustang. Note that these headers have different O2 sensor positions form the factory installation (see basic installation shown here as well).
Pulling down the transmission was not a huge challenge, just a matter of logically removing the parts that needed movement to ensure nothing was damaged, especially wiring loom components.
The mater technicians at TCI removed the original torque converter and installed the new Super StreetFighter converter. The original torque plate was used as shown here.
The results 11.746 @ 116.02 mph – a full 0.41 second improvement in the quarter with no other additional modifications.
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