New-to-me SHO can't spin the tires???

[stripSHO]

Hi all,

First post so let me take a second to introduce myself. My name is Shane and I am absolutely obsessed with these cars. Currently have two '16 SHOs in the driveway! (one white/non-PP and one black/PP). The white one is a lease that is due to go back next month, and the black one I picked up to replace the white one because: It'll no longer be a daily driver so I'm going to be getting agressive with tuning & mods, and I wanted all the PP perks that I initally passed on because they weren't sensible for my wife's daily commute. I can't wait to learn from everyone's experience here and hopefully be able to contribute knowledge myself eventually.

So anyway, picked up the PP SHO a couple weeks ago and have had little time to play with it besides a couple quick trips to the party store. Super excited to be able to turn off the nannies, I turn off advancetrac (hold brake and hold TCS button until I get the message on the screen) before heading out.

Now, my only real opportunity to get squirrely in my trips has been the lone stopsign at the end of my street where I turn onto the main road. So, from a standstill I mash the pedal and cut the wheel hard left, anticipating that I'm going to breakfree and have to get out of it immediately due to understeer or some sort of powerslide.

Well, no, nothing of the sort happened. The car happily maintained perfect control and went right where I pointed it without even the slightest chirp. Acceleration felt subjectively good, I didn't sense any power being cut, but the experience was quite underwhelming compared to what I had in my mind for my first time having to really "drive" this car if that makes sense.

I know these cars don't make much torque off-idle and I might have had a different outcome if I had brake boosted before takeoff, but I wasn't trying to drive it straight into a ditch either lol. Still, I feel like I should have at least gotten some spin out of it in such a sharp turn! I've done this a few times now and the car remains consistently planted with the advancetrac off.

I guess my big concern is that there might be underlying performance issues even though the car otherwise sounds and feels great. I'm just paranoid of keeping the wrong car since I have choices. I really just need to make my wife race me to see if one car pulls away from the other, or at least try the same maneuver with the non-PP car and see what happens. Maybe some parking lot testing will help me learn what it takes to lose control of this boat. But free time is in short supply lately and you fine folks can probably tell right away if I'm overthinking things and wrong in comparing my SHO to the fwd & rwd cars I used to get reckless with in the past.

I'm not giving much to go on, but what do you guys say? Would you consider zero spin in a hard accelerating turn to be normal behavior for a stock SHO? Might there be something wrong? Did I just forget how to drive?Any and all thoughts and opinions welcome!

Thanks,
Shane

 

[SM105K]

Lol...trying to make a heavy AWD car drift from a stand still.

Wrong platform for that.

I have a 400 hp/500 tq full bolt on PP SHO and I cant get it break free like that with all the nannies off. Now at speed it is different.

Want to drift something, get an ST.

 

[krewat]

If you look around for it, there's a video of a SHO being driven by a race car driver, forget his name. The only time you see it smoking the tires is sliding sideways at a high rate of speed.

Which is exactly what I did in a huge deserted parking lot with my 2013 when I first got it. Sliding sideways at 60+ MPH.

 

[BayAreaSHO]

On a launch my 2011 SHO will chirp tires now if I launch at 2500 RPMS, but from stock I was not getting any of that even with traction off...

 

[SM105K]

If you look around for it, there's a video of a SHO being driven by a race car driver, forget his name. The only time you see it smoking the tires is sliding sideways at a high rate of speed.

Which is exactly what I did in a huge deserted parking lot with my 2013 when I first got it. Sliding sideways at 60+ MPH.

It was Carl Edwards driving the designers.

 

[BayAreaSHO]

If you look around for it, there's a video of a SHO being driven by a race car driver, forget his name. The only time you see it smoking the tires is sliding sideways at a high rate of speed.

Which is exactly what I did in a huge deserted parking lot with my 2013 when I first got it. Sliding sideways at 60+ MPH.

 

[stripSHO]

Thanks guys that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. Just making sure I'm not missing something. I overanalyze a LOT.

And no, I'm not trying to "drift" my Taurus. I'm more worried about testing the handling limits of the car with the safeties off so I know how it reacts and where it's limits are. This is something I have done with every car, truck and SUV I have ever owned. I have plenty experience throttle-steering my non-PP sho at high speeds, but trying to learn how the car responds without the electronics is an exercise that's best started at 0 mph rather than while your tires are holding on for dear life through a 270° freeway interchange.

 

[krewat]

The key advantage of a SHO over many of the current muscle cars is they can't even begin to get the traction at low speeds. Great for peeling out, but not so good for 1/4 mile times unless you put a lot into throttle control, and tire pressures (and type TYPE) and such... AWD makes it fun to pull away from almost anyone

 

[jman1200]

I can only get my non-PP to chirp tires on a 2000 rpm launch... the 275 rubber might have to do with me not getting much more. At 2500 rpms torque management shuts me down.

 

[High on Ethanol]

I had just an AJPTurbo E30 tune with 3bar and could spin the factory tires ******* launch and chirp in 2nd with non PP. I never really tried on stock tune.

 

[jman1200]

Now that you mention it, I have also been able to get a small chirp in 2nd. All that with the 93 tune running on 94 octane fuel. I've seen some drag racing videos on YouTube in which SHO's spin tires for about 1-1.5 sec.

 

[krewat]

And then the PTU falls out the back...

 

[SM105K]

And then the PTU falls out the back...

Small price to pay....lol. My PTU is going to love Nitrous.

 

[High on Ethanol]

And then the PTU falls out the back...

This platform is an extremely flawed design that I wouldn't recommend anyone spend more than a tune,3bar, and plugs. Anything beyond that is just showing off a waste of money and lack of sense. I'm going for a Whipple F150 this spring and retire the SHO and the stoplight fun it brought. I don't regret the SHO purchase but I feel that Ford disappointed me with the engineering.
What could have been the best at what it does, turns out to be average for the class. The aftermarket support is almost non-existent for the Achilles heels of this platform

//Rant

 

[stripSHO]

At 2500 rpms torque management shuts me down.

I wonder if this is a piece of the puzzle I'm not understanding. Is there something outside of advancetrac that shifts torque to other wheels to maintain traction? Because in my mind, a car of this power level with open differentials shouldn't have too much trouble making some smoke from one or two tires when the traction and stability controls are off.

To contrast, I have a Jeep CJ-7 with the fulltime 4wd quadratrac transfer case. It is capable of lighting up the tires despite much lower power, MUCH taller gearing (2.73:1 differentials and 2.84:1 1st gear, roughly 1/2 the torque multiplication of the SHO's drivetrain), and obviously much bigger tires. Of course it's also >1600 lbs lighter than the SHO, so it's apples to kumquats comparison in many regards.

Thanks to last night's storms I had to make a 6am run for dry ice to put in the fridge this morning. In a WET parking lot I managed to get just a little bit spinny, but nothing impressive or uncontrollable. But if everyone agrees it's all perfectly normal then I guess I should stop complaining about good traction. God knows I'm going to need every bit of it once I start unleashing the power potential of the car!

 

[High on Ethanol]

Torque limiting can feel like shifting into neutral. With a non PP tuned I can spin in a straight line but not when turning. If I try to drift, it shuts the power off and free revs. With a PP you can turn that active stability off as well.

 

[jman1200]

I wrote about this on a separate thread and the consensus was that torque management was what was causing me to lose power on hard acceleration. Again, I have 275's so that is a lot of added grip.

 

[stripSHO]

I wrote about this on a separate thread and the consensus was that torque management was what was causing me to lose power on hard acceleration. Again, I have 275's so that is a lot of added grip.

My understanding is tread design and rubber compound means a whole lot more than width (for straight line acceleration at least). The car came with brand new all-season Kenda's; something else that factors in I suppose.

Since we're on the subject, do your 275/40's rub at all? Stock height or lowered? What size wheels and offset? Come spring-time I'll be looking for a good set of summer tires for the road, as well as some flavor of R2 tire for the strip.

 

[jman1200]

Got Goodyear Eagle's, this thing is glued to the ground.
Lowered, H&R springs, 275/40 R20 as shown in my signature on 9.5 ET 40 rims. No rubbing on wheel wells at all but fronts do touch a bit the plastic inner fender when you turn the steering wheel ALL the way.

 

[SM105K]

I wrote about this on a separate thread and the consensus was that torque management was what was causing me to lose power on hard acceleration. Again, I have 275's so that is a lot of added grip.

Still working on that. Trying to get my car to launch at 3k and 6 psi of boost off the line, but TQ management is still lingering.