It's come time to take the 2011 Mustang GT 5.0 to the drag strip.  First things first, though.  I'm not taking a knife to a gunfight.  I don't want to waste my precious track time trying to hook up on stock radials.  Most of you guys have seen what these cars run on stock tires.  I want to run on a sticky tire.  

It's hard to beat a good 'ole set of 15" Mickey Thompson ET Drag slicks when it comes hooking up at the track.  I'll be running a set of 26x10-15 ET Drags on the back of my 5.0 on a set of Race Star 15x10 wheels with a 7.5" backspace.

Before I can do that, clearance needs to be made.  The wider, smaller diameter, 15x10" wheel will not fit over the S197 Mustang's rear sway bar mount on the axle housing.  There's an easy solution for this, though.  STEEDA offers a rear sway bar relocation bracket kit that moves the mount up, allowing you to trim a small portion of the rear axle housing to clear the 15x10" wheel.  This is not necessary with Race Star's 15x8" wheels, but I want to run the 10's to spread the 10" tire out properly.

STEEDA's kit is simple, and the instructions are straightforward.  The relocation brackets allowed me to bolt on the 15x10" wheels with no clearance issues.  Follow along with me on the installation, and watch for a blog highlighting the results of our 2011 Mustang GT's first drag strip outing.

Here's a picture of the sway bar mount.  The tab at the lower bolt is what interferes with the 15x10" wheel.

The first step in the process is to remove both 15mm bolts that hold the sway bar mount to the rear axle.  The sway bar will then swing out of the way.  You need not remove the sway bar's frame mounts.

Once the sway bar is out of the way, mark your axle housing with a felt marker.  The black line just below the blue paint is what you will cut.

There are a few different tools you can use make the cut, but we chose an air-powered cut-off wheel.  We simply scored our line with the cut-off wheel, then broke the piece off with a crescent wrench.  This made for a clean cut, and took only seconds per side.

The STEEDA bracket will bolt on as shown.  No drilling is required.  The upper hole that use to hold the sway bar mount now affixes the STEEDA bracket to the housing.  The remaining holes in the bracket serve as new holes for mounting the sway bar.

The last step is to use the supplied hardware to re-attach your sway bar using your original sway bar mounts and insulators.

Now for the fun part.  Bolt your shiny new Race Stars on with your choice of rubber.  Make sure you've removed your car's factory brake rotor retaining clips before installing any aftermarket wheel!

The new Race Stars look great!  This thing's gonna hook!

To complete the drag package, we're anxiously awaiting Race Star's new 17" front runners specifically designed to clear our Brembo brake package. For now, we're running the stock front wheels since this combo will only be used for track duty.