Beefing up a 98 Cobra, ideas??
 

Hey guys I'm new to the site but I have been a mustang nut ever since I was a little kid. Earlier this week I bought a basically stock 98 cobra, and was looking to get a little more "oomph" out of her. As far as I know all that has been done to it is lowering, 10's on the back, X pipe with flowmasters, and I'm pretty sure it has 4.10 gears (I'm pushing 2200-2300rpm at 65mph in 5th gear). Don't get me wrong, it's not on the slow side but I'd still like to get a little more getty-up if I could. Any suggestions?

Thanks!!

the best bang for your buck is gears but since you aready have them, its the next step. a good suspension and tires is a great idea. you can have a ton of power but a crappy suspension and tires and the car wont put the power to the ground. on the power side, skip bolt ons and look at forced induction like supercharger, turbo, or nitrous. theres a great write up in the pipes, boost, juice section on putting together a vortech kit on a budget which i have done myself along with others.

I was guessing that would be the next step. I would absolutley love to set a vortech on the top of it along with a 6 speed out of a 04 cobra, but the funds won't allow that at the moment. That might be a future project. Thanks for the info!

what is you budget?

Currently I still have to play off the car, but once she's paid for probably $1000-1500.

check this out
https://mustangforums.com/forum/pipe...-its-done.html

a nice 100 shot of nitrous will wake it up and is totally safe. American muscle has kits for like $600.

I would say next step is to go f/i, either nitrous or pick up a used supercharger.

agree with the guys, dont waste your money on bolt ons. Save your money for a blower or nitrous

Thanks for all the help! I think a supercharger may be in the near future if all goes well.

well if you have that kind of budget by all means go for it lol

First thing I would do is delete the IMRC cause theyll be gunking up soon im sure. You can just buy the delete plates from MMR or just removed the butterflys from them and have the holes welded.

After much debate and research what to do with mine I decided on the following:

'04 head swap off of an Aviator (salvage yard - $465 shipped)
'01 Cobra intake (got from cobra_drifter here in the classifieds - $286 shipped)
Forged piston and rod combo

I'll be swapping my B-head intake cams to the '04's before they go on the motor. As for the piston and rod set I'll be giving the compression a slight bump to right around Mach1 levels. In the real long term I plan on throwing on an IC Kenne Bell blower (I'd prefer a Whipple but that would require a Termi pulley set-up swap too. . . Might still do that). But that'll come only after suspension stuff (phb, ta, sfc, etc)

I've contemplated c heads as well, but after some heavy research of large boost applications ported b heads > ported c heads.

Agreed uber. The C and '03/'04 heads will flow less than the B's. However my choosing the '04's was due to the fact that there is no intercooled positive displacement type blower for the B's. I know there are plenty of intercooled centri types out there but I'm partial to the sound of a twin-screw.

These are the types of things the OP needs to consider when planing his build.

Gotcha, if you want a PD blower B heads are a downfall :(

Crysalis 01, I noticed on your list of mods that you have the Steeda Tri Ax short throw shifter for your 98 Cobra. How do you like it? I was looking at some short throws (it would be between the Hurst and Steeda) but I don't really know which to choose from.

I like the Tri-ax. It performs very well, but if you're looking for other options MGW makes a fine short throw as well.

Alright, i will check them as well. Thanks for the info!

Totally agree. you can afford to buy nitrous + suspenshion mods with that budget. Do that and you will be walking all over the newer muscle cars.

I don't know if I would go that bold with the statment, with bolts ons a tune and some tires the new 5.0s go 11s.