kenny4783

hi guys and gals. i am a newbe here and a new mustang owner. i have wanted a mustang since i was in high school and one smoked my modded transam. so i just last week bought my first one. a 2003 mustang gt. only 80000 miles and beautiful!!! i love my new car and i hate i havent gotten one sooner. now for my question. this car is bone stock. all the way to the exhaust. i have about a grand to sink into this car right now and am wondering what things i should do first. exhaust is number 1 on my list, i should get that done monday. what are my next steps that you guys would do? i want the most bang for my buck. thanks in advance for all your advice. looking foward to have a long relationship in the mustang family!

MU71L4710N

boltons are pretty much worthless for 2valves (gt's). nitrous or blowers are the only way to get any sort of respectable power on the cheap. gears are a great first mod, but you kinda need to decide your overall goals for the car in the near future before you do the gears. if you get a turbo or a KB 4:10's might not be a great idea for instance.

as for the exhaust just get a used midpipe and a catback of some sort then use the rest for gears, and get a K+N drop in filter.

check out the how-to stickies theres one called how to get a mustang in the 12's, has a lot of good first mods in there.

kenny4783

ok well i guess i should have said what my goals are with this car. i want to keep it a daily driver. keep pretty decent fuel milage. i am not wanting to drag race or anything. the most i would do, other than just play around, is maybe try to smoke some jerk off of a stop light. im not going to do anything drastic like a super charger or anything like that.

kenny4783

and also where are the how to stickies??? ive looked all over and cant find them

0949er

https://mustangforums.com/forum/4-6l...ted-often.html

you gotta go back one forum level to find them (4.6L General Discussion)

0949er

you need exhaust and gears+hand held tuner (w/ 93 tune) and that will give you the most bang for your buck (with ur budget)

Rockwell28

true^ also with your goals the only other thing i would say get is a good set of lowering springs. Since its you DD if you do any kind of highway driving every now and then go with 3:73 but if you are in the city like %90+ of the time then go 4:10 gears.

Crazycarnut

I would say gears and a Short throw shifter. But that is just my .02 cents

kenny4783

my drive is mostly high way and i have an automatic trans. so every one think since my drive is about 20 miles highway and 5 through town i need 3.73 gears??? and how bad will that affect my speedo?

0949er

get either 3.73s or 4.10s, and get the hand held with it. You will need it to calibrate your speedo. That way you can also throw on a 93 tune and squeeze some more ponies out of your motor. Im telling you for your budget this is the best way to get anything "noticeable"