Update: I'm looking to sell my baby here so that I can get something better suited to my needs; it hurts, but there's no other way that I can come up with the money that I need right now. I've upgraded the sound system (Pioneer 4-way 6.5" speakers running on a Jensen 220W amp) and dressed up the interior a little bit; it has an oil leak that I'll be fixing this week but other than that she's good to go. I'm not going to try and promote her until after the oil leak is fixed (though that won't be hard to do), but if you happen upon this and have interest, send me a message.

Thanks

I guess it's not so bad to have my car ranked in the top 200 out of almost 27,000 cars . . . having stated that, I really started creating this page to document my build and give people ideas for theirs (or at least let them learn from my mistakes), not so much to engage in a popularity contest. Soooo, I don't respond to every message as I'm not on here all the time, but I do when I can. Thanks for looking, and thanks for the high ratings!

I bought this LX 5.0 in the beginning of February for $1100 as a daily driver/project car. Someday she'll see the track (and she won't be going in a straight line). I'm a full-time student with very little money so this is going to be an extremely low-budget build.

I certainly got what I paid for:

An annoying paint job (WAY too high-profile for someone with my driving habits), a thrashed interior, elctrical problems galore, blown shocks, and worst of all, a transplanted non-HO 5.0 motor from a Crown Vic or something of that sort making a whopping 150 hp. 

It has potential, however; the T5 (5-speed manual) tranny had been recently rebuilt, and the motor had decent compression averaging 163 psi per cylinder, and the main difference between this motor and the HO motor that came stock in these cars was the heads, cam, and intake (also firing order and pistons, the firing order doesn't mean much but the lack of forged pistons will suck when I want to get really serious about stepping up the power).

As much as I wanted to upgrade the car's horrible suspension, it's severe lack of power was driving me crazy, so I managed to cobble together a cheap head/cam/intake swap:

It now has:

Ford Racing E-cam

Exploder intake manifold

Ford Racing Phenolic heat spacer

A "custom" 3.5" powerpipe that I found on eBay

Stock 19# HO-motor injectors (it only had 14#ers on it!)

Professional Products 70mm Throttle body and EGR spacer

Rebuilt E7 heads w/ oversized valves and the thermactor bumps ground out of the exhaust ports.

Those E7's were a real bargain at $40, considering that they had already been rebuilt with new valves and a (cheap) valve job, but I regret spending the $190 that I did having them lightly  ported on the exhaust side. Mustang owners often describe E7's as being quite good . . . for boat anchors; however these heads are light-years ahead of the E6's I pulled off the motor in terms of performance. I'm not too sure about the HP in this combo, probably in the 250-260 RWHP/315+RWTQ range, but it could be more or less I suppose; at any rate, this combo gained me at least 100 hp and this car definitely has to be in the 13's now and has at least 2000 rpms more usable power (she signed of at 3k before).

Not too shabby considering I only have about $2400 into the car (including purchase), only possible because I have done and will do all the work myself (well . . . if I get gt40p heads I might have a friend port them). Suffice it to say that all I need are injectors and better heads along the lines of Twisted wedges or AFR's (well and a tune too I guess) to see the high side of 350 hp; "P" heads with a valvetrain upgrade would probably get me close to 300rwhp for less money, so that's the route I'm more likely to take for now.

Having said all that, this car was originally intended to rail corners, and I've got a lot of work cut out for me to make that happen. When I bought the car, it was without a doubt the worst handling car I'd ever driven, mainly because of the blown shocks (and because Mustangs just can't handle worth a sh*t).

I've recently put KYB GR-2 shocks in the rear, and I have matching struts to put in the front; I'll follow these upwith (most likely Eibach) lowering springs (1.5" drop) and camber/caster plates or camber bolts in the next month or two. This will have to satiate me until I can afford a decent set of coilovers. I'm currently looking into getting a 99-03 Cobra IRS, but that'll likely have to wait too (they're not cheap). 

I still need rear disc brakes and bigger gears in the rear end, so barring a miraculous windfall of cash I'll likely forego the full IRS swap for a Thunderbird Turbo-coupe rear-end swap from a junkyard later this summer (3.73 gears w/ the rear disc brakes in one package for CHEAP). Beyond that, I suppose I'll get a tubular K-member and all the other suspension goodies, and maybe some day I'll get better (less rediculous anyways) paint and nicer rims.

The crappy cast pistons in this thing probably won't take to well to bumping up the comp/ratio or going with power adders, so maybe in a couple years (or whenever I can afford it . . . yeah I guess a couple years) I'll build myself a nice stroker that revs to 7500-8000 RPM (nothing like the sound of a high-revving V8), though I guess I'd have to go carb or something 'cause I hear EECIV doesn't like being revved past 7k much . . . all it takes is $$$$$

I took another pic today:

The paint is almost even starting to grow on me, a tiny bit . . . that'll last maybe another minute until I see those flashing red and blue lights behind me; unlike the "good old days" when my only transportation was a 10-second sportbike, pulling over is now unfortunatly mandatory. Not that I'm condoning anything illegal, of course . . .