jerseyguy

I don't claim to know a hell of a lot about cars at all. I've been reading around the forum just to try to learn a bit more than I (don't) already know. From what I know my stock 2004 Mach 1 has 305hp. If I wanted this beast to really fly off the line, speed up acceleration, corner better and just all-around, what would YOU do if it were your Mach 1, and why?

TorchRed04GT

supercharge, suspension, and gears in no particular order.

03machyellow

exhaust !!! i have an 03 replaced the mid pipe with an off-road slp and slp lm1 cat back makes a difference and isnt that much $$ then go for gears

straitwangin

UDP'S






Seariously dont do this.

JJ03MustangGT

exhaust first....gears....and if your serious about performance then save your money and get a blower. trust me, you will hate yourself if you spend thousands of dollars for a few useless ponies, when you could just skip all that, spend a few thousand, and get hundreds of ponies in one shot.

but for exhuast suggestions, i say SLP LM11s and o/r X.

NeoTokyo

For Bolt ons.

*C&L Maf Kit
*Accufab Throttle
*Intake Cap Spacer (Also raises shaker up for a meaner look)
*Under drive pulleys
*SFI lightweight flywheel
*EGR restricter
*LT headers (Ceramic coated) for states without smog
*Bassani LT X-pipe
*LM1's exhaust
*SCT Xcal2 tuner or livewire SCT tuner
*Gears

That will make your car rip and roar, a Mach1 with that setup would be very respectable. In case you dont know yet the stock cams are .392"/.392"

In depth Modifications
*Remove intake, port excess casting flash away, smooth out the top runner section, cut the lower part off(Have a shop do this) and port the bells out, weld it back up.
*Send the heads off to be ported, you could also have a 1mm oversize in intake and exhaust valves bring them from 30mm to 31mm on the exhaust and 37mm to 38mm on the intake.
*FR500 cams .472"/.472" lift
*.032" head gaskets to raise compression to 11.5:1 CR (About) stock is 10.68:1 CR

Thats about as in depth as you want to go for now, that makes for a great setup.

With this combination and 4.56 gears you will be in the high 10 second and low 11 second brackets. There is a MM&FF article for the baddest NA shootout and the Mach1's there with this setup were into the high 10's and low 11's. They all had manual transmissions too for that ET class.

Enjoy the hell out of your car! Congrats!


-Eric-

NeoTokyo

Oh ya, I should probably mention, the low 11 second cars didnt have port work done, and I think a couple had stock cams. There were a lot of cars entered.

Also I didnt hear of anyone except Al at Boss330 using a thinner than stock head gasket (I think stock is .042")

NeoTokyo

What would I do with my mach1?

Well I bought a front clip to a 2003 Mach1 that was a Ford Test car, you can buy never driven Ford crash test cars from a company called GreenLeaf (Thats where I got mine.)
I took the engine apart and I just recently sold the stock auto shortblock.
The heads are still waiting to be ported because I want Al at Boss330 to do them but I cant ever get ahold of him. They will use the FR500 high lift kit with fererra 1mm oversize valves. I will use FR500 cams as well. Be careful as ford sells a "High Lift" cam set that is no where near .472" lift but has the same valvetrain parts as the FR500.

My new block is a 98 Cobra block that was sent to SHM for sleving to 3.70" The crank is a 3.75" crank. The stroker kit was a sale item SHM had, its all forged and has H-Beam rods.

This is going into my 1995 Mustang.

The project is on hold right now because my wife destroyed her mustangs engine and we are having to do a swap right now.

The suspension I will be running with be a Maximum Motorsports grip in a box with their complete coil over conversion and K-member.

Untill I can start working on my car more often you guys are cursed to see me here more often

You can see my car at http://www.cardomain.com/id/Neo232Mustang

I havnt updated it for a while, but I am not going with livernoise anymore because they raised their prices too high, SHM matched their old price for me and it was a ballanced unit.

jerseyguy

Hey Eric,

Rock on! Thanks man. I LOVE her more than anything on this planet. lol. Like I said, I'm not really smart when it comes to mechanics compared to most of the folks on this forum. So stupid question #1 would be: what's the big deal about exhaust that everyone swaps theirs out almost the second the baby slides out of the womb? I saw a lot of people doing it just to make it louder, but from my perspective this exhaust is pretty damned loud even at 4k RPM. How much would all of those mods you mentioned above (bolt-on's, I don't really want to cut/re-weld anything until I've put some good mileage on this car. It only has 4500 miles on it now. Also how much of an increase in horsepower and torque would that all provide? What I'm practicing now is jumping off the line in 1st without losing control or getting all jumpy. It's awesome, feels amazing like the front of the car's going to lift off the ground.

JT76

my neighbor has a full exhaust, intake and gears on his '03 Mach right now and it moves.....he might go with cams next...i asked him why he doesnt just slap a blower on and his response was that, had he wanted a supercharger, he would have bought a Cobra....to each his own i guess