squishbang

I just got my hands on my car and I'm already contemplating tuning it. It will be a while until I actually do anything, half the fun is the research and planning.


The Mustang I bought already has the Ford Racing Cat Back Exhaust. I want to add hears and whatever else to make a full exhaust. I also plan to have it dyno tuned. Will a new intake help? Also is the fuel system sufficient? Should I plan to swap out the fuel pump, fuel lines, rails and injectors while we are in there?


I've not checked the brakes yet to see if they need braided lines. I do track days so making sure the brakes don't fade ever is very important. At a minimum I'll be swapping out the brake fluid for something resistant to brake fade.


The dealer already installed the Eibach springs. The handling of the car is great. I'm not really sure what it needs yet. Perhaps an alignment, but I need to play more to figure out what is really needed. The ride feels good on the street and on track it does what I want.

ExtremePowerHouse

Welcome !! i recommend you start with a tune and intake.
My personal favorite tuner is the BAMMA. Lots of good choices for the intake

squishbang

Sorry for the incoherent initial post. This forum doesn't seem to offer a way to go back and edit posts. Guess I'll have to be careful.


I doubt that I'll make any real changes before November or December (Christmasish). My first priority is paying off my daughter's car and paying enough of this one down so that I'm 'right side up' with it.


I've reviewed some material on this car and is seems consistent that just remapping the ECU will yield a nice gain in power. I'm not as sold on the replacing the intake. The consensus just is not there. However, it seems that finishing the exhaust the dealer started will pave the way for another big step forward in power. Not that the car lacks power but excess is a quality all its own.


The other tuning I'll do is the suspension and brakes. The brakes will receive braided lines and new fluid. I'm probably going to install the Ford Racing suspension kit. I need to get more details on it. Whatever I end up with needs to be a compromise between track performance and daily driver reality. That means I need to find out what my current spring rates are and what the FR kit has.


I'll probably also do the radiator and a short throw shifter just for the hell of it too. For appearance I'm replacing the trunk lid with one that doesnt have the GT emblem and replacing the front grill with one that doesnt have the chrome pony. My initially idea was to plasti dip them, however a flat black GT emblem on a shiny black field seems cheap. The pony could be plasti dipped. However, I'm not exactly a talent at that type of thing so time will tell which direction I go.


Regarding just doing the flash and an CAI: My plan is to do everything in one shot. Maybe two. I'll probably do the brake lines and suspension first and then everything else. The appearance changes don't really matter because in most cases it's just a matter of unscrewing stuff and screwing in new stuff: that I can do.

1 Alibi 2

Have an end goal for the car & a budget.....( easy to throw $$$$ @ these cars )
Research mods that support your end goal, it costs nothing to read.
Purchase once and done..............there is no money in used parts.
.

squishbang

@Alibi - that is more or less what I'm doing. Half of the fun is finding out what other people have done and seeing what the results were.


The budget I had for my STi was ~10K for parts and labor, but it turned in to this nice little Mustang GT before anything could get started. I was waiting for the car to turn over 10K miles before we started to help avoid warranty issues. Apparently manufacturers look much closer at cars that fail in the first year or under 10K miles in case there is something screwed up in the manufacturing process. Seems reasonable.


In the Subaru's case the cast pistons could suffer ringland failures if you didn't do things correctly (fuel fuel fuel). Plus a lot of people push the boost way up in to the stratosphere where they're just asking for things to go POP. In my case I was just aiming for ~350whp and 300+ torque. With what I had budgeted I probably could have gotten much further with a fair amount of safety.


For this car I'm just planning on shopping the Ford Racing catalog. As mentioned, I already have a catback exhaust. So I'll add the headers and get a dyno tune to make sure the fuel maps take full advantage of what the car has.