93RedBird

Hey guys, I'm new here.

I've had this car for a while now, and quite simply, I crave more.
It is pretty much all stock except for the wheels.

Daily driver. Automatic transmission, A4LD. 4spd with overdrive. I've hit ~110-120mph in this thing, but it's just...lacking. I guess I'm not so much concerned about horsepower as I am about torque. Some added torque would be great for some extra push in accelleration.

If anyone could point me in the direction of some mods I could do to juice this pony up, it'd be greatly appreciated. Low budget mods would be even better, as I'm only 17 and don't exactly have much money, nor do I want to spend everything I have on this car. Plan on eventually putting a v8 in it anyway, but that's at least a few years off.

I'm a wrencher/techie. When I bought the car, it needed new brakes, suspension, an exhaust patch, door pins, and various other things. The floor pan had been torn out by the stud for the seat on the drivers side, and I had to weld that back together and reinforce it. Did it all myself. Don't know too much about these 2.3L engines though, I'm used to my moms 1987 5.0L LX.

I think a turbo is a bit out of my range, unless someone would be willing to sell me everything I need for that for anywhere near ~$200? Yeah, didn't think so either. But mostly, my parents won't let me put in a v8 or a turbo yet. For speeding reasons. Even though I've already gotten a ticket for $530 and 5 points for doing 90mph in a 45mph zone (yeah, not doing that again...)

Car has a new water pump, new autolite platinum spark plugs, new air filter, new oil filter + oil, new battery (cuz that makes it go faster, eh?), but I think that's just about it under the hood, unless I'm forgetting something. Been looking at pulling the air intake back out and dissecting it to reduce restriction, but haven't yet decided on whether or not to do it.

Also considering gearing it to 3.73...I drive it like a racecar alot, my foot seems to find its way to the floor pretty often.

So I guess I'll bring this to a conclusion now.

Please list mods with projected performance gains, projected price to complete, etc.

Questions/comments?

Thanks!


http://s57.photobucket.com/albums/g2...hotos/Mustang/

dreamer1uk

Welcome!

Nice find btw!

As for mods, well, you answered all your own questions. There very limited on the 2.3 N/A. Alot of people will drop in the 302 or find a wrecked Turbo Coupe (as an example, theres others with the somewhat same motor) and drop in the 2.3T. Babybudistmomk, Evntho and 7_zero have all (as far as i know done) the swap. Theres others on here too (TRBOPWR) who run the 2.3T and know alot more than me on these 2.3T monsters.

93RedBird

A little while after I bought it, I was browsing craigslist for cheap parts for my rebuild. I stumbled across a 2.3T engine for $350. Wanted it pretty badly, parents wouldn't go for it. Transmission needs to be replaced/rebuilt. About 1-3sec delay between when I put it in drive and when it actually finally engages. Been doing this for at least 5 months I guess. Took it to a guy I know who is known as being a wizard of automatic transmissions around here, he said it had alot of gap/clearance, will eventually just stop going altogether, and ~$999 to rebuild it. That was about 3-4 months ago, and it sure as hell hasn't gotten any better.

Found a guy a state over with a pretty sweet warehouse-esque hoard of mustang parts about a month or 2 ago. Called him up, said he had a new trans for me for $300. Had just been raped by the cops with that speeding ticket, so I didn't exactly have any money for it. The real kick in the ***** is, I have at least 2-3 automatic transmissions and 1-2 T5's sitting around...but they're for the mighty 5.0L, which I'm not allowed to put in yet. And did I mention that we also have 3 spare engines sitting around for this? Sure, one of em turned its internals into pudding and needs to be rebuilt/stroked, but one is a rebuilt cobra engine and the other is the stock engine from my moms '87 that we had bored out to .030, making it essentially a 306. Just sitting on an engine stand in the garage. Not like we even need em all, my dad's '95 cobra already has an engine in it, thats on the road. The '87 is in a million pieces in the garage and has been waiting 3 years for paint, thats not going anywhere anytime soon...Bleh.

See my frustration here?

Anyway, what are the gains from gearing it to 3.73?

Rokgtar

I won't pretend to know how the 3.73 would affect the 2.3, but if I were you I'd just repair the transmission and drive it for a while, until you can do a swap in a few years to a 5.0. Sounds like your parents are into that when the time is right, and you have a great candidate for it - beautiful car! Just be patient...

TRBOPWR

I know there is a build somewhere on here where somebody was trying to get as much NA power as they could out of their car, I can't remember who it was though.

Gears will certainly make it "feel" faster if nothing else. Start looking at the circle track guys, they use NA 2.3s, and will probably know more about getting more power. Although how much for cheap is questionable, they tend to spin them into the stratosphere and run some high compression numbers.

Could swap to a manual transmission and put one of those T5s to good use. Definitely better than sticking another ticking timebomb A4LD in there, and more fun to drive. Basic mods like any light porting that you can do yourself on the intake/head or a cam swap certainly won't hurt the power.

The brutal truth of it is that you are stuck in one of the slowest vehicles known to man lol. Very clean looking car though, definitely in better shape than my SVO.

93RedBird

Dude, I would almost be willing to trade cars with you. Almost. I'm fairly partial towards the '87-'93 style. I'd gladly trade engines with you though, mine just rolled 100,000 the other day. :P

Honestly though, it's certainly worse off than it looks. It sat under a tree untouched for a few years before I got to it, and has quite alot of tree sap. All over the car. Took it to a nearby detailer, they quoted me for $300. I went home, spent about 12 hours in the back yard scraping off tree sap, and finished one side. I then rubbed all kinds of chemicals on it, etc. That finish you see in the good pics? That beautiful color, shine, and luster? Yeah...It's staged. The camera lies. I had rubbed it down with a nice thick coat of Goof-Off, so it had a nice slick oily film on it. Looked damn good at the time, but only lasted long enough for a few good pics. With a good professional detailing, it might look that good and stay that way.

It really does look like quite a mess. It has at least 3 different paint zones. And thats just on one side. The other side has about 2 different paint zones, but they're faded to a darkish pink. I go over to Revolution Automotive, a local mustang performance shop, and they make fun of my pink car. Until I told them that I'd hit ~115mph in it, at least.



Notice the passenger side has been repainted? It has a nice coat of deep red, with clear coat. Only the passenger side though. The drivers side is original paint, I believe, at least on the door. The clear coat fades off to a stop about 3/4 of the way across the rear bumper, fading into pink. Also pay attention to the front bumper, and how pink that is.



There you can see where it fades off on the bumper. Pic was taken after some lady swerved, crashed into a neighbors car, totaled their car, her tire came off, and she slid down the rest of the street, brushing by my car (you can see where the white line hits the back wheel, and the black rubber marks on the side of my wheel) and continued down the street, clipping the side mirror of my dads cobra. Not a good thing to wake up to.

I'd like to put in a t5, but the t5's we have are for the 5.0s, and they wont work with my 2.3. That, and I'd have to put in a whole bunch of other stuff, like clutch, pedal, etc...Kinda hard to get that in, it's just my daily driver.

PNYXPRESS

How did you get yours up over 100mph? mine cant overcome the wind resistance at ~80 and the speedo only goes to 85mph. Also the t5 tranny for the 2.3L is the same as the t5 for the 5.0L.

93RedBird

Yeah, speedo only goes to 85, but the needle goes past 85. I had my GPS readout with the speed. I didn't exactly do anything special...Just put my foot on the floor and let it go. Pretty sure the only thing not stock is the lightweight wheels. And are you sure the t5 bellhousing is the same?

PNYXPRESS

You must have had the needle buried pretty deep then and not sure about the bellhousing, but the tranny is the same. Mine must have a more serious problem than I though because it wont go any faster than 3K rpms in fifth gear downhill.

93RedBird

Needle was pretty much right at the milage reset button. So it was pretty much straight down. Wasn't really focusing too much on the needle at the time, was more interested in making sure I didn't crash and that there were no cops.

Is yours a stick or automatic? I was in overdrive at either 4000 or 8000rpms. Not sure which it was, I know at one point I glanced down and the tach was at 4, but the tach usually reads as half of what it actually is, so I don't know if it was still reading half or if it was doing actual. My guess would be that it was hitting 8000rpm in overdrive.

Sounds like you may need to replace or upgrade your ICM. I know there are aftermarket ICMs out there with which you can limit the maximum rpms of the engine to say, 3000rpm (or whatever you set it to) and that wont let it go over whatever that was set to, so maybe if you have an aftermarket ICM in it, that may be the culprit.

I'd go out now and get it up and get a pic of the needle on the speedo past 85, but unfortunately it's snowing.

Already had fun sliding and drifting around in it after I took my college finals today. Then I saw a VW Passat V6 4Motion stopped on the side of the road. My car handled the snow better than the goddamn 4wd cars lmao