With the trans in place, we...
With the trans in place, we hooked up the trans harness and linkage.
The factory crankshaft, as well as the flywheel/ flexplate, is a six-bolt piece, and the stroker crank and current flywheel/flexplate in this car was an aftermarket eight-bolt unit, thus the converter did not mount directly. Had the vehicle had the stock setup, there wouldn't have been an issue. The converter plate needed to be modified to give sufficient room for the two extra bolts, as well as to allow the plate to sit flush on the flywheel. This took a little massaging.
Once the converter was on, we took a cruise on the streets around the Freehold, New Jersey- based shop to see what kind of driveability issues there might be. To put it bluntly, there were none. "The car drives awesome and is totally streetable," D'Amore reports. "There's a slightly looser [throttle] pedal feel when the car is going uphill, and when we put in the converter, it took some of the hit out of the shifts because it is looser."
We then hooked the transmission...
We then hooked the transmission lines back up, tightening them carefully so we wouldn't round off the bolts.
On the track, the results speak for them-selves. The 60-foot time was reduced to a 1.582, and the elapsed time was lowered to an 11.649. Speed fell off to 113 mph, but D'Amore con-tributes this to there not being a change made to the tune within the transmission. "We did no tuning whatsoever for the converter," he says. "The car could have probably run quicker if we had played with the tune of the transmission."
The better e.t. and 60-foot times came from the fact that D'Amore could launch the car at a much higher rpm, and the engine went right into its peak power range. "With the stock converter, I was struggling to get the car to stall at 2,000 rpm on the starting line," he says. "With the TCI converter, I was able to bring the starting line rpm up to anywhere from 2,600 to 2,800 rpm, and it would flash to well over 3,000 once I got going-there was no bogging; it just took off."
It even lifted the front tires just a bit on launch.
Like they said in the movie Days of Thunder, "Loose is fast." In this case, it certainly was.
Reinstalling the driveshaft...
Reinstalling the driveshaft was a two-person job for both removal and reinstallation.
It's All In The Timing
The TCI Super Streetfighter converter for the 5R55S transmission (PN 456002) is billed to produce lower elapsed times by as much as a half a second while losing nothing in terms of street driveability. While we didn't see a half-second improvement in e.t., we'd like to think that a difference of 0.230 second is pretty sizeable. Check out the 60-foot and quarter-mile numbers below.
| | Stock Converter | TCI Converter | Difference |
| 60-Foot | 1.710 | 1.582 | -0.128 |
| E.T. | 11.879 | 11.649 | -0.230 |
| MPH | 115.30 | 113.15 | -02.15 |
We also reinstalled the driveshaft...
We also reinstalled the driveshaft loop. The driveshaft bolts were tightened first, followed by bolting the loop back to the tail portion of the transmission.
Last but not least, we reinstalled...
Last but not least, we reinstalled the four O2 sensors, the O2 sensor harness, and the exhaust system. Once the exhaust was in place and tight, we plugged the O2 sensors into the O2 sensor harness and reconnected the battery.
The TCI converter lowered...
The TCI converter lowered the Mustang's best elapsed time from an 11.87 with the stock converter to a stout 11.64. Driveability was almost identical to stock, and the 60-foot times improved from a 1.71 to a 1.58.