While the rest of the country is shoveling snow, racers in Florida take advantage of the Florida sunshine to keep tweaking their combos. The crew at UPR Products is no stranger to running quick e.t.’s and they recently improved upon their own EcoBoost Mustang quarter-mile record by running deeper into the 9-second zone.

As we told you back in November, Bill Putnam of UPR piloted his yellow bullet to a new EcoBoost e.t. record of 9.94 at 137 mph. After pushing the envelope of the stock engine and turbo, Bill and Team UPR got serious. They set the new record thanks to the additions of a built short-block from MPR Racing Engines along with Stage 2 cams from Esslinger Racing and an Atmosphere Turbo Kit from Custom Performance Engineering, which features a Borg Warner EFR7670 Turbo.

Last Friday they headed back to the track with this new combo and a fresh set of boots. Fitted with new Weld Racing 15-inch beadlock wheels and matching Mickey Thompson ET Street rubber, the UPR EcoBoost was ready to put down the power.

The only real change to the car since the 9.94 pass was the 15-inch wheels and tires.—Bill Putnam, UPR

“The only real change to the car since the 9.94 pass was the 15-inch wheels and tires,” Bill said. “That was more of a consistency issue than anything. On a normal test and tune night the prep is marginal and traction can be an issue.”

With traction a certainty and slightly better weather conditions, the UPR machine was able to shave off nearly a tenth from its existing record.

“We only got to make the one pass on Friday due to how busy the track got on their first test and tune night of the year…” Bill said. “I believe the real difference between the 9.94 and 9.87 pass was less heat soak and the DA which was about 400- to 500-foot difference. The two passes felt pretty much identical.”

“The tune hasn’t been touched since getting into the 9s,” he added. “I wanted to see a good comparison before and after with just the 15s.”

There were actually no tuning changes since the last outing, which proves repeatability of the combination even further.—Jon Lund II, Lund Racing

That’s right, aside from the adjustments needed for the new hook, the car didn’t even get a revised calibration from the tuning masters over at Lund Racing

“There were actually no tuning changes since the last outing, which proves repeatability of the combination even further,” Jon Lund II told us. “The only change done was the 15-inch wheel combo and a re-stall on the converter.”

As the first NMRA race of the season approaches, Team UPR doesn’t have major changes in store for this combo, but there will be a few tweaks.

We have some new suspension components we want to test before Bradenton.—Bill Putnam, UPR

“We have some new suspension components we want to test before Bradenton,” Bill said of the car’s pre-race prep, “But, aside from that, it’s just regular maintenance on the car.”

If they want to keep pushing, however, Jon is confident that they can dial in some pretty impressive performance from this EcoBoost setup.

“I think there’s probably a couple tenths left with taking advantage of the new tire combo once the launch rpm can be increased to knock the 60-foot down into the 1.3 range,” he added. “After that I think we will need more boost with a bigger turbo to approach the 8-second e.t. range!”

Now that would be something. We can’t wait to see what kind of EcoBoost records that 2017 has in store for us.