MuchToLearn

Okay. You completely lost me here. What are you talking about?

06Saleen3V

DD is Daily Driver...FI is Forced Induction (blower, turbo, nitrous). Yes, the tuner thing is correct. If you have 4:10's, you will be able to climb through the RPM's more quickly but if you do highway driving, your RPM's will be higher at any given speed than if you had 3:73, 3:55's etc. causing worse gas mileage...plus if you are getting a blower anytime soon with 4:10s, you can waive goodbye to your first gear

MuchToLearn

I have an Automatic, would 4.10s still make me miss my first gear and have bad acceleration? Or are you saying especially for an automatic?

06Saleen3V

I dont have an automatic or 4:10's so I will let someone with this combo chime in...I think you will find the 4:10s nice while you are N/A but as soon as you go forced induction, you can forget about first gear with 4:10s...I only have 3:73's and when I punch it in first (after the clutch is dissengaged), I can't even get traction...so imagine having a blower with 4:10s...[&:]

pegasusphototx

I have a buddy with an automatic and he has a tune from B A M A chips, and he loves it. He has been working with them to fine tune it to his driving style. He says that the current tune is a nice hard shift that feels like driving a standard. He loves it... From what I've heard Bren speed may have better tunes for standard transmissions, but B A M A has the corner on mail ordered tunes for automatics.

-danny

zkiller

Are you not reading what people are saying? 4.10 is too much gear in an automatic.
If you ask your friends about it, make sure they are experienced with the S197 Mustangs and not some other cars. You say you want to race it. Obviously you are either really young or really inexperienced with cars or both.
FI = forced induction
DD = daily driver
20" wheels = slow car (those will slow you down .2 at least) and look ghetto.
Understand this. Speed requires traction. If you sit and spin - you lose.
If you buy 4.10 gear you will rev so fast it will shift to 2nd in about 1 second. The gear ratio of the automatic transmission (5R55S) in these cars is very low. It basically makes 1st gear so short it is useless. So if you combine that short gearwith a blower it will be impossible to get traction.. When you launch you will be unable to get traction.
Just because some teenager down the street from you has a 4.10 gear in his car does not mean it will be a good choice for a S197 Mustang. You need to plan your mods to work together.

Texotic

1) Most will say that vinyls look like crap, but i will tell you that the hood block-out, sidestripes, and rear black-out panel on my car are all vinyl and they still look flawless and have been on for a solid year or more. no peeling. a few scratches here and there, but not as many as if i had them painted. they must have done a crappy job putting the vinyls on, if you can get new ones for free, definitely do that and use the $2K+ that painted on would have costed elsewhere.

2) i don't know how much you know about gears so... basically the larger the number, the shorter the gears. a shorter gear makes your rpm's rise faster and thus accelerate faster. however, with the S197 automatics, a 4:10 gear will be almost TOO short. it will upshift too quickly. i had a friend with an '06 auto that put n 4:10's and had them taken out a week later because they made 1st gear too short and made his rpm too high at highway speeds. i think he said he was averaging somewhere i nthe neighborhood of 13mpg highway, which is abysmal considering our cars are capable of 25 or 26 mpg highway stock. if you have an auto, you have 3:31's, not 3:55's. that same frined got 3:73's in a little later and loves them to this day. also if you go FI (Forced Induction; ie. supercharger, turbo, etc.) a 4:10 gear will basically delete 1st gear... your car will smoke through first in less than a second and then shift to second and probably continue to smoke if you're not an experienced driver. lets put it this way, most guys say that a 4:10 and supercharger aren't even practical to race with, much less drive on the streets on a daily basis. it's general consensus among the auto guys that FRPP 3:73 gears are the way to go and that's backed by countless applications and happy owners.

3) like someone already said, exhaust is all personal taste. personally, i don't anything sounds near as good as Corsa, but they are also a little more expensive. however, i will say that, on our cars, a cat-back is pretty much useless. our cars are designed with the mufflers behind the axles so when you buy an axle-back system, you're replacing everything that affects the sound anyway. all the cat-back has different is some extra pipig that connects to the mid-pipe. this extra piping is the same diameter as the stock piping so it does absolutley nothing and just makes you pay more money for the same thing. don't waste your money on cat-backs. also, don't buy an exhaust and expect any power gains unless you get a mid-pipe and long-tube headers, axle- and cat- backs will give you 3hp if you're lucky. this thread has a soundclip for every exhaust setup you could want to hear, take some time and listen to a lot of them and see if MagnaFlow is truly your favorite: https://mustangforums.com/m_3563477/tm.htm by AmericanMuscle4.6GT, the resident exhaust guru.

4) again, personal taste. 20's are easier to scratch up since they ride closer to the road, make you slower, and cost more. if you think they look good enough to outway all of those, then feel free to put some on. they make you slower because they add rotating mass and unsprung weight. unsprung weight is the weight that isn't carried by your springs e.g. your control arms, wheels, tires, brakes, etc. unsprung weight hurts your handling and i really don't feel like getting into a discussion about physics theories and their applications to the S197's handling so you'll just have to trust me on that one. also since they are larger in diameter, it is harder to get them spinning, making your acceleration slower. i'd stick with 18's, but like i said, it's your choice.

if you wanna do suspension start by reading the post by Crazy Al start to finish that's the 5th post down: https://mustangforums.com/m_1696246/tm.htm

if you want to go lower, the best way (and only way i know of) is new springs. i wouldn't do anything more than a 1.5" drop because it will hurt daily driveability a lot and since you said you have lots of rough roads and such where you live, your front bumber and underside would be scratched to hell after a few weeks. if you buy new springs, you'll probably want new shocks (they control the bound and rebound of your springs by dampening the body oscillations; basically they control how soft or stiff your ride is); Tokico D-Specs are the best because they are easily adjustable and are very high quality pieces. after you lower your car, your back axle will be offset from center enough to need correcting if you do anything more than a 1" drop. since we have solid live axles out back, they are held in center by a panhard bar. when you lower, that panhard bar's angle relative to the road decreases, thus pushng your rear axle to the side. so after the springs and shocks, you'll need an adjustable panhard bar and mounts. i believe you also need to buy either adjustable Lower Control Arms or Upper Control Arms if i remember right. it doesn't matter which, just as long as one of them is adjustable; i think most guys get adjustable lca's. also new lca's will help keep your wheel hop in check which is always a welcome improvement.

5) a tuner/cai (Cold Air Intake) package from BamaChips or Brenspeed is known around here as the official Best First Mod. it'll get you anywhere between 20-30hp at the wheels and liven up your car like you can't imagine. if and when you get a supercharger, you probably won't be able to use your new intake, but if you're not geting your s/c for a couple of years, i'd go ahead and get the intake to hold you over. when you buy a tuner from bama or brenspeed, they have you send them info about your vehicle including current mods and they'll send you 3 custom tunes with the tuner. now, obviously these won't be near as good as getting your car dyno'ed, but it allows you to just plug it in and go. when you plug in the tuner, it automatically saves your stock tune on the tuner and lets you upload one of the custom tunes. with an auto, you'll probably want to go bamachips, they supposedly have the best tunes for autos. they'll also send you a free new tune each time you get a new mod via email so you can just download it to your tuner and then to your car. i'd go SCT XCal2 tuner and either JLT2 or C&L Racer for the intake. the SCT is the most common tuner so you won't have any compatibility issues and those two intakes are both outstanding. the JLT2 is a little cheaper and is said to return a few extra ponies, but the C&L is a little higher quality.

i've never heard anyone say Procharger is the best supercharger... i've heard lots of guys say Kenne Bell is, a lot say Whipple is, and some say Saleen is. you'll definitely want to go twin screw just because they're so much more efficient. the reason lots of guys like the Saleen is because if you get a Ford/Saleen dealer to install it, you can get a 3 year/36K mile warranty on it so that you have a reliable, driveable, 400rwhp (475 crank) car that's still under factory warranty. i'm not going to pretend to be an expert on superchargers because i'm not and that's pretty muchthe extent of my knowledge on the subject so i'll let someone that actually has one take over from here. if things go my way, i'm hoping for an STS Twin Turbo setup in a couple of years...



hopefully that was helpful. if you have any more questions or need clarification, feel free to ask. i'll be checking back periodically when i'm bored while my baby is in the shop being fixed after a wreck...

SCCAGT

My .02 I have an auto w/ProCharger. I'd say, dont go higher than 3.73 gears. Its pointless unless you want to actually take the car to the strip with drag radials and try to win alot. I still have the 3.31's and the acceleration is still pretty damn awesome. Wheelspin isnt much of an issue if you stomp it from a dig on good pavement. With centrifugal blowers (Vortech, ProCharger,Paxton) you dont have full boost right off the line anyway. So initially, it takes off like a stock GT. No matter what gears you have the revs will build up quick enough to get boost, and it will pull hard. With higher gears, mileage will suffer, and as everyone here has said, first gear will be useless anytime you punch it. Secondcould be somewhat problematic as far as traction goes.
As far as tuners go, COMPLETE s/c kits will have one. ProCharger ships a Diablo Predator tuner with their kits. The downside to this is, the tuning shops in my area dont have the tuning software for the Diablo. They use SCT. If they were to tune my car, I would have to buy another SCT tuner. They are able to use the parameters built in to the Diablo to adjust a few things, but its not the same as "building" a tune for your specific car and set-up.

From the sound of your posts, I would not be listening to your buddies. Just get on this forum everyday and read the posts that interest you. Your knowledge of your particular car will become much greater then your friends could ever be. Remember, that whatever you read or hear isnothing more thanan opinion unless backed up with with real, verifiableproof. Myselfincluded.

I bought a ProCharger because they are local to me, and I know a few people that work there. If I have a problem, help is very close. Are they the best? Dont know. There are an awful lot of ProChargers in use on the track when reading in MM&FF or 5.0. I dont see the same type of coverage of twin screws. They do have a 3 year warranty available. That says something to me.

MuchToLearn

First off, I am reading what people are saying. "4.10 is too much gear in an automatic." No one said those words at all. They said in their opinion it was best at the strip, or might have bad traction, especially with a blower...but I didn't see that 4.10 = bad for auto. I am very inexperienced with cars and I am very young. I'm 19 and I have almost no experience when it comes to cars. I have not worked on, helped work on, read about, or watched car shows on tv except "recently". I just love my car. I was stressing while I was typing that I wasn't sure at all about the wheels. I like my wheels now, but I have seen cars with different wheels, some 18, 19 and some 20. The bigger ones usually catch my eye and I wanted to know the cons or pros that bigger rims and tires have compared to smaller ones. By the way, no one I know has a mustang and I would never listen to hearsay or "experience" from a "teenage down the street". Planning my mods is exactly why I'm here. I want to try to get as much information and points of view as possible before I make any performance modifications to my car.

UrS4

Wow there are some long posts in this thread . . . didn't read them all but to the OP (OP=original poster=you muchtolearn),

You sound very green, which is fine, everyone has to start somewhere. Since you were not into cars until recently, I will assume this new 07 GT auto is the fastest car you have ever had. With that assumption, my advice is this . . . learn your limitations and the cars limitations in stock form before you go get into trouble and do something really stupid. Join a local mustang club and get involved in a local SVTOA and do some auto cross events or road course events. Take your car to the 1/4 mile track and get a baseline.

LEARN your car in stock form first before you start adding power to it. You unfortunately came off as having more money than smarts at this point, but we are here to help.
Your car in stock form handles, goes, and stops pretty well, so become familiar with it so you can appreciate every mod you do in the FUTURE. Thus, with a solid base you can reap the rewards of each mod without getting overwhelmed with the new power. You are in the perfect age group to spend all your money weighing your car down with stick on vinyl, body kits, HUGE rims, and slapping a blowerwith 4.10s on an automatic. If you do that, in very short order you will come up on your first street/strip scenario and with all that adrenaline and hormones and ego, you will spin out and crash, hopefully not hurting anyone else.

So, again, we are here to help teach you what your car can do and what appropriate mods will work well with your setup.

I think you would enjoy your car best if you learn it and your own 19 year old limitations in stock form first. Then start with a CAI and tuner, then brakes, tiresand suspension, then maybe gears or more go fast goodies. Last do FI.

Hope all this helps without soundingtoo tuff on you.