[rcweingart]

Does your engine have a carburetor or DFI? The carburetored motor isn't as tractable at low RPM as the DFI engine. The DFI has a slightly better HP and torque curves but both are fun. There are a lot of little problems that you will be addressing once you've got the car so get on Peter Brock's Coupe Group list as there is a lot of information about the SPF Coupe available from the other owners. The March issue of Road & Track has an article about Peter's car. The performance figures are 0-60 in 3.5 sec, 1/4 mile in 11.8 seconds at 122.4 mph, 1.07 G. lateral and it set the R & T slalom record for a production car at 76.6 mph. Peter had sticky Kumho tires for the test and his engine is a 427 RDI with a 850 cfm carburetor producing 566 HP and 563 ft-lbs of torque and a Tremec T56 6 speed. My Roush 427 DFI engine has 580 HP and 542 ft-lbs of torque with a TKO600 5 speed. It drives just fine. Candidy, I think better than Peter's in regular traffic, especially stop and go freeway driving where I can let my RPM's drop to 1500 RPM or less and not have to down shift when traffic starts up whereas it would be bucking if it were carburetored. Back to trannys, Dennis Olthoff recomends the 5 speed over the 6 speed as it shifts faster, smoother and is stronger (and lighter), especially for track events but owners with blue printed 6 speeds (like Peter) like their trannys too. I feel you really don't have need for 6th gear unless you are doing long distance driving and want to drop the R's but I'm only pulling around 2750 RPM at 80 mph. Roush set the rev limiter on the DFI at 6200 RPM but, once my warranty has lapsed, I'll reset it to 6500 Or 6600 RPM which is about all you want safely before valve float in my opinion. You can do the numbers what my top speed could be (180 - 190 mph) which is more than adequate for track or street.

Hope this helps,

Ron Weingart