carnage

This is funny......I hope you are wrong.

Let me tell you how modding worked, or better yet, didn't work for me.

You start out putting a shift **** on. It's only 50 bucks. How can that hurt? You get the shiney new shift ball and you are on your way. Next thing....a shorty antenna. Again, complete success.

But then you start getting a little more aggressive. Even though your exhaust sounds good, you want it to sound better. So you throw an exhaust system on it. It wasn't that much money. It's louder.....nice....real nice.

Ever heard that old saying that goes something like this, "Whenever you meet someone and fall in love with them, the thing you think you love most about that person is ultimately what you grow to hate."

That's the way modding was for me. Yeah, I did like the sound of the exhaust. I loved it when I floor boarded it. But then, after some time, the thing that I loved would start driving me crazy. I would hate it on the freeway....I would hate it when trying to talk to someone I was riding with. It become as much of a pain as it did a pleasure.

And then you see cars that have great looking wheels, and so you want a set of those. You get the new wheels, but then the new wheels and tires make the height of the car look too high, so then you have to find a way to lower it. If you lower it, then it will be just perfect. And so you lower it, and without even realizing it, you start hurting the geometry of the car. You start messing with the ride. After some time, the car starts to rattle and squeak. And again, it becomes a pain more so than a pleasure.

Same thing with the motor. I'll upgrade a turbo. I'll raise the boost a little. It all is perfect for a while. But then your car starts pulling timing, or you start having more leaks, or you start getting fuel cut (insert any number of things here).

And then slowly, you start wondering what your car was like when it was stock. You can't remember. And then you start looking back at the things you bought.......the little cheap visual mods all start to add up. The wheels, the new tires, the suspension components, the motor modifications........before you know it, you have several thousand dollars invested.

I just woke up one morning and said that enough is enough. My modded car had become a pain to drive, unreliable and just an experiment in misery. I look back at the money I spent and realized that if I had taken the money I had used for mods, I could have used that money and bought a much nicer car to start with.

I hope I don't break this time.

sterling_gray

This is a very interesting story carnage. I am waiting for my 10GT (Factory ordered) and read the forums. Modifying my new car sounds tempting, but I worry about the same thing, after some time and several mods, the car is not a daily driver any more but a "race car" that needs to be pampert. At then end, I need a car I can drive each day. Car's are a compromise (as much as I do not like this word), and the Ford Engineers worked long to design and test their compromise and all different situations. Perhaps I am just getting old, but I also will not mod my mustang (beside a different shifter ball, painting the break calipers, ... oh no, there we go)

Blair

That is the beauty of forums like this though... You get to learn from everyone's experiences. Everyone raves about new mods because of the novelty, but after a while the newness wears off and people post about problems they are having or mods that become annoying. The best posts in my opinion are the ones where people post mods they regret or mods they don't regret.

VistaBlue GT

congrats.. what part of ky you from?

carnage

Western Kentucky. Where education is valued almost as much as chewing tobacco and lottery ticket buying.

pascal

OP, it's obvious that you had a bad experience with mods...
But good aftermarket companies and professional installation is key.

There are a lot of options for our cars, only half of them are worth the effort and money.
When it comes to exhaust pipes, nothing fits like the factory stuff.
I don't care what you get... stainless, zinc coated etc... if you don't have a good installer to correct the flaws, your system will never be right.
Especially if you get stuff from Pypes, lol. Those guys are not even close and their clamps are simply schit.

dominant1

I have been modding cars for 25 years and I've learned that making good decisions about quality parts and professional installers are the ticket to performance bliss. I also own a 2006 Toyota Tacoma 4x4 double cab that sports a 4 inch skyjacker lift kit skyjacker shocks and struts 33" Bf Goodrich all terrains full bar kit with skid pads. This truck has been rock solid off road and on road for 3 years...My next mod for my Mustang after i get my Qa1 12 way adjustable rear shocks will be a cat back exhaust...then i plan to add a few body dress ups like the Roush spoiler and louvered 1/4 panel windows...Let me add that it is easier to mod 1 vehicle when you have 2 vehicles to use..when your only car is your mustang, you have to be more selective about what you mod...since its always your daily driver...

wilkinda

I could not agree more. luckily for me, I also have (2) other vehicles at the house so the mustang is really my week-end warrior car or used when I am not jet-setting for work. So far..none of the mods I have done have been anything that I regret, I love all the mods I have done.....

carnage

Don't anyone take what I said wrong. I admire the people who are able to mod their cars and who are able to do it well. I wish I had that skill set.

I just know it doesn't, or hasn't, at least, worked well for ME.

Half the crap that was wrong with my car I'm sure was due to the work that I did on it. Whether it be cheap parts OR lack of talent. I, no lie here, spent hours, days, hell, probably even years trying to get the coilovers I had set right.

I would love to mod this car. If I could, and if I knew that it could be exactly right, then I'd do it in a heartbeat, but like the boy scout that caught syphillis, I ain't going there again.

Again, I envy all of you all who can pull it off, but this time, I had to find a car that I liked in the stock version, because my INTENTION is to keep it that way....LOL.