DIY Whipple install discussion, advice, tips, and lessons learned

[JediMindTrix]

Yeah I’m going to put a GT350 axle in the driver side, good reminder though!

@Q6543, did you swap out your driver side half shaft yet? How have the stock ones been holding up? I am going to do the Whipple install soon but wanted to get the half shafts settled first since it's the last mod I need before the SC install. Looking at doing the GT350 half shafts again since that's I what I did with my S550 build.

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[Q6543]

I have them just sitting in the box in the corner of the garage and haven’t gotten to it yet….


But I just ordered a fresh set of et street Rs for my race setup. So rubber should be here Tuesday and I’ll be focusing on putting it all together this weekend perhaps

I’ve had no issues with the stock set but between traction control and the stock rubber with steeda bushings and locators it’s been flawless

Zero wheel hop so it’s only gonna be inclined to snap a half shaft under the circumstances of severe wheel hop coupled with dead hooking amounts of traction.

 

[GhastlyTT]

After an autocross at Langley Speedway, a test and tune night at Virginia Motorsports Park, and some beat'emup street driving to pass 1000 miles on the Stage 1 Whipple, my catch cans look like this:
Passenger:

Driver:

Do your Whipple'd Coyote a service and at least have a dirty side catch can in place.

 

[RonBurgundy]

Anyone deal with any coolant leaks following the installation? I finished up the install yesterday, took it for a drive, and topped off all the fluids. Everything looked good. I took a look underneath the car this morning and noticed a decent coolant spot on the driveway beneath the transmission. Look like it may have been running down the bell housing. I won’t be able to look at it until tonight. Any ideas where it could be coming from? Hoping it’s just a loose hose clamp.

 

[GhastlyTT]

Anyone deal with any coolant leaks following the installation? I finished up the install yesterday, took it for a drive, and topped off all the fluids. Everything looked good. I took a look underneath the car this morning and noticed a decent coolant spot on the driveway beneath the transmission. Look like it may have been running down the bell housing. I won’t be able to look at it until tonight. Any ideas where it could be coming from? Hoping it’s just a loose hose clamp.

No leaks here. I'd clean it up, top it off, start it up and monitor for a few minutes to see if it repeats. Lots of new plumbing so it could have come from anywhere not clamped tight but it should be obvious while pump is pressurized.

 

[RonBurgundy]

Well unfortunately it wasn't coolant....it was supercharger oil. I traced it back to the sight glass on the back of the head unit. They must've not installed an o-ring or something. Anyways, I've contacted Whipple. We'll see what they say.

 

[GhastlyTT]

Well unfortunately it wasn't coolant....it was supercharger oil. I traced it back to the sight glass on the back of the head unit. They must've not installed an o-ring or something. Anyways, I've contacted Whipple. We'll see what they say.

That's not cool. Hopefully you're able to get it resolved quickly.

 

[RonBurgundy]

That's not cool. Hopefully you're able to get it resolved quickly.

Thank you. I appreciate it. It was fun for the 30 minutes I got to drive it. lol

 

[Paul's stable]

No, it doesn't cost $10K to have an ASE certified technician install it. If you pay that much for labor for an install, you're an idiot.

I'm Canadian but I payed $2,900 to have my whipple installed by my dealer. I'm to old to put it on I could barley lift the box with the supercharger alone. Twenty years ago I would have installed it. A man needs to know his limitations.

 

[Paul's stable]

Is there any benefit by paying that 2k to have a dealer install it? I'm assuming the engine blows up, there's no warranty. I've seen them listed for sale with warranty, but guessing it's just the supercharger that's covered?

Sorry, total newb on superchargers.

The warranty covers the drive train but there is a fixed number per components for example $1000 towards rear-end/ axles. I believe it's $7000 towards engine damage. I went with the stage 1 for now. If I want I can upgrade to a stage 2 later down the road.

 

[RonBurgundy]

Sorry for the long post. Just want to put this out there as a heads up for anyone planning on performing the install themselves.

TLDR; If you plan on doing the installation yourself, on step 93 of the procedure perform an inspection on the oil level sight glass. Verify no o-ring protrusion around the edges of the sight glass and verify torque to 17 ft-lbs. with a 23mm socket. I would do this prior to filling the supercharger with oil. This step is not in the procedure but may save yourself some trouble in the event your sight glass has a pinched o-ring or isn't torqued to spec.

I finished my install this past Wednesday evening. I drove it around the neighborhood just trying to get air pockets out of the coolant system and top off the fluids. Overall, I drove approximately 15 miles and kept it less than 5000 RPM and never even got close to WOT.

I decided to take a look at the fluid levels before work the next morning. I toped off the fluids again and took a look under the car and noticed a decent sized spot where something had leaked. It was dark and I couldn't tell what it was. It didn't appear to be actively leaking when I looked, but it appeared to have been coming from a strange location, around the bell housing of the transmission. My initial assumption was that I tugged on the heater hose too hard during the install and it was leaking cooling from that fitting. That's to only location I know of that would cause coolant to leak in that area. I decided to take the my commuter to work until I could figure out what was going on with the mustang. Thank God I did.

When I got home I pull the car into the garage and let it idle for a few minutes so I could see if the leak would return. After about 3-5 minutes I noticed the fluid leaking down, when I touched it I knew it wasn't coolant, I immediately turned the car off and traced the leak back to the oil sight glass on the head unit.

Whipple customer service was very responsive and recommended that I tighten the sight glass. It did feel pretty loose. I asked what the torque spec should be and they said 17 ft-lbs. Not sure what it was but it definitely wasn't 17 ft-lbs. I sent them the picture you see below and they said they would send me a new sight glass and oil. You can see the brown o-ring protruding around the edges of the sight glass at the top. I'm guess the sight glass was loose and the oil pressure from the gears spinning pushed the o-ring out and caused the leak.

The replacement oil and sight glass should be here Saturday, so I'm grateful for the quick turn around. My plan moving forward is to replace the sight glass, top off the oil, make sure I can still spin the screws by hand, and make sure there aren't any strange noises when I start it back up. Hopefully, we'll get her back on the road in a couple days.

 

[RonBurgundy]

I got the replacement gage glass this morning, swapped it out with the old one and topped off the oil. The old gage glass gasket was chewed up pretty bad. Overall, I lost just over 2oz. of oil. An inspection mirror with lights and a syringe style extraction pump is a must to change the oil on the head unit. After I buttoned everything back up I took the car out for a test drive and everything ran great with no leaks. I can’t say enough about how awesome Whipple’s customer service is. They were very responsive and quick to help remedy the issue.

 

[GhastlyTT]

I got the replacement gage glass this morning, swapped it out with the old one and topped off the oil. The old gage glass gasket was chewed up pretty bad. Overall, I lost just over 2oz. of oil. An inspection mirror with lights and a syringe style extraction pump is a must to change the oil on the head unit. After I buttoned everything back up I took the car out for a test drive and everything ran great with no leaks. I can’t say enough about how awesome Whipple’s customer service is. They were very responsive and quick to help remedy the issue.

Time to enjoy it!

 

[Q6543]

Did you do that without pulling the head unit?

 

[RonBurgundy]

Did you do that without pulling the head unit?

Yes. I had to pull the battery, remove the battery compartment partition and k brace. It’s a little tight but I was able to do everything from the passenger side. There’s no room on the driver side. You have to use an inspection mirror with lights built in to watch the sight glass and an extraction pump with a flexible tube. I used the one linked below. It wasn’t difficult only took about 20 minutes.
https://a.co/d/iNtsbo6

ETA: if you have the inspection mirror you can check the oil level without removing anything.

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