Kooks & Team Z Partnership Makes Coyote Swaps Easier

Drag racers are always looking for ways to put their machines on a diet so they can move weight to the most advantageous spot for reduced elapsed times. They are also constantly looking to swap in bigger and more powerful engines to help get that job done. It’s a good thing that companies like Team Z Motorsports and Kooks Exhaust are always innovating to help racers get those results.

Team Z recently introduced its new Outlaw series of K-member systems for Fox Mustangs. These kits include a lightweight, 4130 chrome-moly K-member, adjustable A-arms, a Stilletto steering rack, a tie rod kit, coilovers and everything needed for installation. They will support huge engines and shave as much as 90 pounds off the front of your Mustang versus the stock K-member.

“We were seeing a lot of people start putting more big-blocks and 5-inch-plus bore-spaced engines into their Mustangs and having clearance issues,” Dave Zimmerman Jr. of Team Z said. “So we took the time to develop this K-member to allow for maximum clearance and give the racers the ability to drop their oil pans at the track without ever taking the K-member off or pulling the engine out. It’s made servicing the engine a much easier task!”

Team Z prides itself on making top-notch parts, and the Outlaw K-members follow in that tradition.

“We have used the proven design of our standard K-members to ensure an extremely easy installation process that pretty much anyone can do on their own without the assistance of another person. We also retain most of the stock geometry for the A-arm location that still allows you to utilize our adjustable A-arms and fine tune how they are set up.” Dave said. “On top of these things, our setup is significantly lighter and stronger than most of the competitors. Not to mention from start to finish, every thing is done in house. We cut and bend all of our tubes with a CNC bender, we cut all the tabs and brackets on our waterjet, we have highly skilled welders who are perfectionist, and we do all of our own powdercoating.”

While these new K-members will support even bigger engines, the good news is that they are also compatible with today’s high-revving Coyote 5.0-liters.

“The Outlaw K-members will fit a Coyote in it no problem, but the K-member was designed for track use only. So, if the person is planning on drag racing only it would be an awesome fit,” Dave said. “But if the customer is looking for a street setup, our TZM-KMK-SWAP1 kit will drop into any of the Mustang Fox-body cars and allow for people to put a Coyote swap in no problem. If they have a ’94-’04, our regular TZM-KMK-96-04 will be the winning ticket for that swap. We actually make quite a few different style swap K-members that allow you to put different engines into the different ’79-’04 Mustangs with ease!”

To help swapping the modern 5.0 into a Mustang even easier, Team Z partnered with the experts at Kooks to create swap headers that work seamlessly with its line of swap K-members.

“We decided to re-do our 5.0-liter swap headers, and a lot of racers and our friend Joe Charles was running the Team Z kits,” Chris Clark of Kooks Headers & Exhaust explained. “So we called them up, and they sent us out a K-member to design around. The guys at Team Z were super easy to deal with.

If you don’t need an all-out racing K-member, but you want to swap a Coyote or modular engine into your Fox, SN-95 or New Edge, Team Z also offers its standard K-members alone or as part of a complete front-end kit. (Photo Credit: Team Z Motorsports)

“We constantly are getting asked about whose headers work with our K-members, specifically if Kooks would,” Dave added. “So after a while of being asked that, I reached out to Kooks to see if they had any feedback from their customers as we had some from a few of ours. After a few conversations we both decided to work together and we would send them one of each of our K-members and they would see how they fit and possibly start making some of their new designs around our K-members, and that is exactly what happened. We have received much great feedback since we have teamed up with Kooks, and its a relationship that we hope to continue for a long time.”

As a result of those conversations, Kooks went to work creating headers that offered compatibility with the popular Team Z swap offerings. Those efforts resulted in a line of new headers for 1979-1993 Mustang with pushrod and Coyote engines.

“We really redesigned the whole header to work,” Chris explained. “The first design was based off a swap that was not popular and we revamped our offering based on what our customers were requesting.”

Not only did the revised headers offer a better fitment with the Team Z K-members, but they offered improved performance and better fitment—which is a true win-win situation.

“The design has helped our racers make some of the fastest times they have elapsed and also, enabled us to make larger diameter headers to help the big horsepower producing cars,” Chris added. “Also, these changes have greatly helped our street car guys get a nice system underneath their swaps.”

It’s always great to see two companies collaborating to help us make our cars faster. For more information on these parts, you can visit the Kooks site here and the Team Z site here.