06Saleen3V

10000000% sure that is a F430

Ringo01

Yup, F430

hypersurf1

My car came with the FRPP suspension which is the bigger sway bars and lowered springs. It also has the 18 inch rims and front Strut brace. It pulls .90 on the skidpad and i haventlost tractionin a turn yet. Sometimes i do wish the seats had better bolsters though. I fly in into the door alot. I highly recommend it, its a great handling package...

StangFTW!

I forgot to tell everyone I'm not taking this car to theautoX, I just want a car that handles like a BMW/Vette or better for the street for a little fun(Don't worry, I won't push it's limits, my safety and health is very important to me).I'm thinking about chancing lowering springs anyway, I can drive around some big bumps and potholes. This is the set-up I'm thinking and I want some suggestions/approvals:
-BMR Lowering Package-$530 (lowers car 1.25"/1.75") includes springs, adjustable panhard bar, control arm relocation brackets, front camber bolts, and upper support mounts
-Steeda rear upper and lower control arms-$400
-Tokico D-Spec adjustable struts and shocks-$580
-Wider sticky all-season tires(not sure which ones)-$500-$650
-BMR HD Sway bars-$340
-Steeda Strut Tower brace-$150
And I'm not sure if I should get the bumpsteer kit($130) or not(is it really needed for lowered cars if I get the tokicos?). And any tips on how to make my weight distribution closer to 50/50or should I forget about it?Thanks for any advice ahead of time.

StangFTW!

Bump

Norm Peterson

First off, I'm only going to look at the performance aspects. Things like brand names/bling/show mean almost nothing to me as an engineer. Only the function. Try to bear with any bluntness on my part.

Whether you take your car to autocrosses/open-tracking or not - the advice to get some serious driver training is well stated, and what you should learn there will be worthmore than all of the parts in that list added together. At auto-X where handling has priority, it's seat time (which includes instruction), then tires, followed by everything else. Limiting yourself to harder-than-average street driving doesn't change that.

To reiterate what Rodeo has already said - you don't NEED to do anything to your car yet, other than whatever maintenancemight be required to put in proper condition for harder than average driving. If you aren't at an auto-X or on a road course, you shouldn't be looking at upgrading anything beyond tires, brake pads, and perhaps shocks/struts. Period. All that other stuff isn't going to make much difference until you're somewhere north of 0.5 lateral g. I'll tell you right now that very few people ever push that hard on the street, so that's already considerably harder than average. That's from measured observation, BTW.

If you're determined to go further, Ialso strongly urge you to learn a little of the technical stuff that's behind what you're trying to accomplish rather than just throw $ at the car *****-nilly. Handling isn't about having a "brag list" of parts to bulk up a sig with. It's a driver-car-road system that you're trying to "tune" for a different set of priorities than what Ford envisioned for the Mustang market at large. And until you have some legitimate experience in driving your car really hard, with instruction, or some technical knowledge concerning chassis and vehicle dynamics you're mostly guessing that those pieces will do for you what you hope they will. Who knows, you might discover that something as simple-sounding as ride height involves a number of compromises in the way the suspension itself behaves that may not all change favorably with lowering.

My personal opinion at this point is that for street-only usage you can well afford to wait onmost of those parts. Especially given that your tire choice is all-seasons. Had you told me something like "R-comps for competition time, and UHP all-seasons for the street" or mentioned some particular handlingissue that you were trying to correct, I'd havemost likely answered a bitdifferently.


Norm

StangFTW!

Thanks!I think Iunderstand what your saying. So for just street use I'm guessing this would be a good plan no?:
-Few AutoX training courses/lessons-$60-$300
-Wider Sticky all-season tires-$500-$600
-HD brake pads-$300-$500
-Tokico adjustableShocks and Struts-$580
Would the lowering kit be overkill or no? I really would like to see less gap between my wheels and frame so that I might just do for looks anyway.

Norm Peterson

Local/regional auto-X events typically run $30 - $40 per, and many clubs offer both instructor ride-along and critique and instructor drives without additional charge. At other times there may be dedicated novice schools, either at the Region level or put on professionally by Evolution. I'm not sure how much the school costs run, but the ones that we've run in Philly Region run the whole weekend. IIRC, Friday evening and Saturday for the classes, with a normally-scheduled public event that you can test your new-found skills at on Sunday.

Bridgestone RE960AS Pole Positions are about $200 each at Tire Rack (245/45-18), and they're arguably one of the top two or three A/S tires. I just installed a set on one of my own cars, and they're worlds better than the Falken ZE512's that came off. Immediately apparent.

Unless you're including shop labor in the brake pad cost, you can easily do better than that. Hawk HPS pads run $150-ish for all four at Tire Rack. HP+ will run you about $50 more, but in all honesty those really aren't street-use pads. Noise, cold grip,and pad/rotor life appear to be sacrificed for better bite and fade resistancewhen warm/hot.

I'm not a big fan of lowering just for appearance sake - the kits that only do that don't generally give you springs that are enough stiffer to make up for the lost bump travel, and even some of whatever extra spring rate may be providedis "sacrificed" just to keep theamount of roll at stock levels. It seems to me if you're going to live with springs that are, say, 15% stiffer than stock that you'd want most of that 15% also working to reduce roll to below-OE levels. IOW, if it takes a 7% rate increase at the lower ride height just to maintain the same roll in any given corner, that means you're only buying an 8% gain with a 15% payment in terms of stiffness (ride). At 0.4g that probably doesn't matter much, but it's still not a very efficient way to go about changing things. At 0.9g with significantly stiffer springs at the same lowered ride height, the picture changes - perhaps you'd get a 35%reduction in roll with 50% stiffer springs. Those are rough guesses for illustration purposes only, as I haven't run any actual numbers. But I don't think they're horribly off either.


Norm

UrS4

I don't think sticky and all season should go in the same sentence.
But since you are dead set on getting all season tires, as evidenced by your many posts stating them, you might as well take the money you think is needed for springs and struts and go to many HPDE instead. And then spend some money on better tires before you go changing suspension bits. The difference between 'sticky' all season tires and R compound tires on the same suspension set up is night and day. Stating you have to have all season tires means you are not listening to us completely. You can't use the arguement about saving money since you want to spend more on springs and struts and LCAs, etc. etc. Better brake pads are a step in the right direction but you need to beef them up more, get SS lines, better fluids, cooling ducts, possibly lighter stock sized rotors.

But here is the truth. . . . Being a better driver is the best way to drop your times, then comes "real" sticky tires and better brakes. Those three things (most is the driver) are the best things you can do. Period. Having another 100 whp, and all the suspension stuff won't mean sh*t if your driving skills are crap.

StangFTW!

Since all of you are suggesting to not do much to my car b/c the extra suspension stuff is near worthless on the street and I'm not hitting autocross, I will just do better all-season tires/2 good sets-summer and winter tires, bigger front and rear sway bars, and a panhard bar/rod. All the extra parts(lowering kit, shocks/struts, etc)sounds like it will be a waste ofmoneyfor me. Thankseverybody for yourhelp!