Ditching 2024 Mustang Performance Pack Brakes for Drag Racing

When Ford Motor Company announced the seventh-generation Mustang at the Stampede, excitement in our office escalated — from our usual banter with the bow-tie fans to an eager anticipation to get one in the shop and showcase the power of the Coyote and Mustang combination. With a strong Ford fan base here (some even holding accolades as NMRA members since its inception), it was only a matter of time before a 2024 Mustang GT Performance Pack would be sitting in our shop, ready to hit the drag strip and a plot was hatched with our long-time friends at ProCharger.

Thirty years ago ProCharger launched its first product for the 1993 Fox body, and after three decades of countless championships and product awards we couldn’t think of a better partner to work with to go after the brass ring. That’s right, we’ve got our sights set on single digits – looking to play where only a few others in the market have gone because of the lack of open tuning support. Thankfully ProCharger has been hard at work getting “development-level access” to the ECU software. It’s been a long process of reading code line by line (no copy and pasting using your favorite tuning software of choice), but the time is almost here. And we’ve got the first privately-owned ProCharger system for the 2024 Mustang GT – debuted at the 2024 SEMA Show. But before we can turn tires in anger, we’ve got to get the right tires and other supporting components underneath our S650. Enter Project SC650.

The Initial Gateway

After our initial drive in the seventh-generation ‘Stang, it quickly became clear that before we even thought about hitting the 1320, we needed a tire upgrade. While the Performance Pack came with 275-series tires and an extra half-inch of wheel width, it still couldn’t fully harness the power of the Gen-4 Coyote. But what started as a simple tire swap soon turned into a case of analysis paralysis. 

We quickly ran into a few issues, starting with the fact that our Performance Pack came equipped with 19-inch wheels and the factory ABS sensors were highly sensitive to tire height. While we planned to eventually upgrade to a drag-strip-friendly wheel set, the idea of fitting a set of used 18-inch wheels under the rear wasn’t part of the plan — though getting the tire height just right was.