V8 Rover Vitesse and some 14 seconds slower than his Group C Falcon. In the weeks following the race the team put the 5.0L Ford V8 engines on the dyno and found them to be only producing approximately . Extensive rebuild and development of the engines at Johnson's Brisbane Engine Centre before the start of the 1985 ATCC saw power figures back to what was originally quoted. While the Mustang struggled to match the pace of the Richards BMW in the ATCC, the August homologation (which also increased power to around brought the car back into winning contention. Dick dominated the Valvoline 250 at Oran Park and was heading for an easy win until an axle broke causing a wheel to fall off the car, ironically handing the win to Richards. The Mustang had received larger axles as part of the homologation package and the team had the new parts available, but had simply run out of time to fit them before the Oran Park race. In mid-1985, Johnson signed triple and defending Bathurst 1000 winner Larry Perkins to be his co-driver for the Castrol 500 at Sandown and the James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst. Johnson led early at Sandown until a broken axle saw the team lose many laps in the pits repairing the car. At Bathurst, the team entered both Mustangs but only Johnson and Perkins as drivers. After the 1983 Hardies Heroes crash, the second No. 18 car (Johnson's ATCC car) was entered as an insurance policy in case something happened to the No. 17 Mustang. Ironically Johnson and Perkins qualified both cars for Hardies Heroes, though the No. 18 car was withdrawn before the race started. Against the might of Tom Walkinshaw Racing's three V12 Jaguar XJS', Johnson qualified fourth and ran strongly until the cars oil cooler broke a weld and had to be bypassed on lap 16, losing the team three laps. Johnson was unhappy as the oil cooler had actually split the day before when the car was going over the speed humps in the pit lane. Before he left the circuit that night he left instructions for his crew to replace the cooler, but returned on race morning to find it had only been repaired and not replaced (ironically the split occurred not at the repaired weld, but on the opposite side of the cooler). With no time left to change it