What' do y'all think? I do think it was silly of Ford to not offer both the tech pack and track pack on the '16's, but come on..if you're gonna buy a car like a GT350 specifically to run hard on the track, get it with the cooling mods over navigation and homelink..
Ford is bound to have some growing pains..
with that engine being what it is, they are getting into a new arena with that flat crank. Personally, I'm not surprised or disappointed.
I think they now all come with what used to be the track pack, correct? I agree, if you're gonna pound on it, why not get the track pack with cooling addons. That's just silly lol.
I think the typical person that buys the GT350, doesn't know what they are getting into.. That engine is a freak.. I am sure that years from now, people will look back and realize a different perspective. They will realize that the GT350 is a break thru in engineering and design..and with that being said, Ford will build around it and ,make it a better car... but, for now, GT350 owners will need to deal with it.. IMHO..
In America, we build a lot of cars that have enormous engines, engines with a lot of potential, but the rest of the car (driveshaft, rear end, shocks, struts,etc, etc..) really isn't up to the same par as the engine in it.. IMHO
I don't believe so, but many were offered to buy a cooler.
This still doesn't help everyone that's having issues driving it on the streets. NO reason it should be having issues on the streets. Apparently a few are having issues over in Germany as well. Car's failing at 150-170 KMH cruising.
So, here is my experience after having put several hundred track miles on a student's GT350R. You know, the one that is supposedly a bulletproof track slayer?
1. They are a lot of fun while they work. Not fast by track car standards, but really, really fun.
2. They overheat. Badly. If it does not overheat for you, then you aren't driving it very hard.
The engine oil temperature while sitting in grid while waiting for the grid boss to let us all out on track at VIR last month on a 45 degree day was about 140 degrees (just started the engine). By the end of the warm up lap, the oil temp was 260 degrees, which is moderately concerning (especially considering that I never revved past 5500 or 50% throttle). By the end of lap #2 (first hot lap), the oil temp hit 320 degrees, and stayed there for the rest of the session. That is a really scary number, because motor oil experiences a major drop in both load capacity and viscosity past 275 degrees. The transmission and differential temps were not far off. I have noted similar temps on other tracks, and experienced temperature related braking system failure at NCCAR. These also have the same PCM issue which causes the throttle plate to close slowly on lift, which can cause zero brake booster for a short time (this happened at 160 mph while braking in a pack for a 40 mph corner, very scary).
Next, the less said about the "alternatively" balanced engine causing harmonics which will unscrew the oil filter if it is even slightly below or ABOVE the 2 ft-lb window, the better (had that go bad at over 160 also, it turns out that a 4,200 lb car does not stop all that well when there is five quarts of 5w50 being poured on the tires). These vibrations have also been linked to crankshaft bearing failures which have resulted on several that have been tracked.
These tend to kick into limp mode if you spend too much time jumping at full throttle across the FIA curbs (that is the fast line in a lot of places at VIR). One other thing to watch out for, is that they love to throw serpentine belts on track. This one also causes the car to instantly go to limp mode.
It's interesting that you mentioned all those issues under track conditions with the GT350R. I know someone who works for a large professional racing shop in Indianapolis that has several racing teams that run in Indycar, Nascar, IMSA and WEC along with a few others and he mentioned from first hand experience that the GT350 was plagued with reliability and overheating issues when tracked but wouldn't go into details because of some contract between his company and Ford... this was at least 6-9 months before the GT350 hit showrooms. He mentioned similar issues when they were testing and setting up the new Ford GT race car, that the street car GT (at that time) was just plagued with issues when it was even mildly beat on. It appears that they were able to resolve the issues with the GT race car as it has done very well, but I would question what Ford could change in the last few months when the car was said to be 99% production ready.
Seriously though, anybody that would believe a mass produced automobile could be a bullet proof track slayer is someone who doesn't understand a thing about the automobile industry lol.
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