tradosaurus

I told my 21 y.o. son that I would go in halves with him on a used car since he will be going to grad school next year and my other kids need a car to drive.

We looked at a Honda Civic and a Ford Mustang and the Mustang won out. (imagine that)

It is a 5 spd with the 3.8L engine. It was one owner and the exterior and interior was almost perfect. It has 126,000 miles on it. We paid $3,200.00 for it.

After we got the Mustang home my son and I did the following:

1) Change oil to 5W/20 Valvoline High Mileage with a Purolator Oil Filter
2) Change fuel filter
3) Change spark plugs with Motorcraft fine wire Platinum. I will test the resistance of the wires later to determine if new ones are needed but the existing wires are not OEM so it must have been changed.
4) Changed Manual Transmission Fluid to Mobil 1 ATF Synthetic
5) Change Coolant Hoses, Thermostat and Coolant. Used Green Coolant as recommended by owners manual and used distilled water. I flushed the system out with distilled water using 7 gallons.
6) Changed Power steering fluid to Mobil 1 ATF Synthetic
7) Took out headlights and cleaned with fine sandpaper and headlight restorer system
8) Repainted windshield wiper arms.
9) Changed out the crappy K&N filter with an OEM paper filter. There was oily gunk from the K&N filter all in the filter housing. I cleaned the housing out.
10) Use throttle body cleaner to clean the MAF sensor
11) Changed the vacuum hoses out.
12) Washed the car with Dawn liquid to strip any old wax off the car. Clay bar the entire car, Washed again with a good car soap. Dried completely and then polished and waxed the car using an orbital polisher.

My son will be installing a new stereo system in this week since the OEM stereo does not work. It has the Mach 4 (?) speaker system.

tradosaurus

NYstang

Car looks really clean! Is he planning on doing anything to it?


And the K&N is reusable- just gotta wash it good. I picked up a couple mpg in mine doing the swap (same drive, similar weather +/- 10% humidity)

JeffBall

Wow...I remember those days...this was the day i brought home my 2001 v6
Was a great car. I paid 2500 for mine (it however had 180k miles, now has 244k) These v6's are great...great car. It ALMOST makes me sad to sell it, but the new one puts the icing on the cake

tradosaurus

I've used K&N on multiple cars over the last 10 years and noticed no perceivable gain.

In fact studies have shown that K&N filters allow more crap through your intake.
http://forums.nicoclub.com/debunking....html#p1863139

OEM paper filter is fine. 99.9% of stock engines on the road don't consume anywhere near enough air that the factory paper filter is a restriction. You need to be making some serious ponies (pun intended) and running a ton of boost before the filter becomes an obstruction (or have a poorly designed factory air box such that it doesn't use all the surface area of the filter).

BabyGT

Do a lot of research in the stereo swap, there are extra adapters involved for the harness to make the factory amps come on with an aftermarket headunit.

tradosaurus

Stereo already bought and installed .

Yes, you are correct. There are special adapters for aftermarket.

Bestbuy did a free install during a special they had on certain aftermarket units.

BabyGT

Oh well there ya go! Always easier to have a professional do the work lol.