1996 Mustang GT build or whatever

Txsilverbalt wrote: Sounds like it will be a fun car! Now to manically search craigslist for a sn-95 of my own.

They're super cheap. The problem is that most of the cheap ones are automatic V6's... you don't want those.

petey wrote: a set of 4 valve heads (B or C) and a blower will make 500+ hp easily on the stock block, OR get the trickl one with the Teksid aluminum block.its a bolt in,can use the stock wiring and computer,brakes,etc etc.easier than the coyote swap.modding the 2v is kind of a waste overall especially the old 96-98 non PI engines.like the one I have in my 96 GT.

If I were going the blower route I could just throw a blower on this motor and get decent power. I don't want to do that though, it's a lot of money. I'm trying to keep the engine build as cheap as possible, so I'll likely get a set of PI heads and the PI intake along with some (used) performance cams. Just the PI bits alone are enough to bump the 215hp to 260hp, so with some better cams, a decent intake, and maybe some ghetto porting/polishing I could get somewhat close to 300hp. I'm not trying to build something crazy powerful, just trying to have some fun on a budget.

My daily driver wagon will be the one that becomes fast— right now it has around 300hp from a 4.4L V8, and I plan to eventually swap in a 5.0L V8 from an M5 (the S62) engine, so that'll bump me right up to 400hp. That combined with a 6-speed will make for a decently quick car— a bone stock E39 M5 runs 0-60 in 4.6s and the quarter mile in the low 13's.

I wouldn't learn to weld on a roll bar/cage.... buy a pre-built one or pay someone to do it right or wait until you know your welding is up to the task.

And I'd be curious to see what these wheel spacers are that might have failed. If it's just a flat piece of metal that is sandwiched between the wheels and rotors, I'd suspect that the lugs weren't tightened properly and/or you didn't/don't have enough thread engagement of the lug nuts.

jfryjfry wrote: I wouldn't learn to weld on a roll bar/cage.... buy a pre-built one or pay someone to do it right or wait until you know your welding is up to the task. And I'd be curious to see what these wheel spacers are that might have failed. If it's just a flat piece of metal that is sandwiched between the wheels and rotors, I'd suspect that the lugs weren't tightened properly and/or you didn't/don't have enough thread engagement of the lug nuts.

Yeah, I kinda thought about that too. I'll probably buy a prebuilt roll bar when the time comes. I still want to learn how to weld but I'll just practice on scrap parts before tackling something structural.

The wheel spacers looked fairly proper, like they appeared to be hub-centric and they attached to the stock studs, and then the wheel was mounted to the studs on the spacer itself. One of the wheel spacer studs broke and then one of the car's wheel studs broke. Everything was torqued to 95 ft/lbs with a pretty solid 1/2" torque wrench, so I can't imagine it being user error. I think maybe the spacer wasn't a perfect fit and vibrated itself apart, or maybe it was just really poor quality metal— it was like a $15 spacer set from eBay.

Progress is a little slow but I'm fixing the Mustang little by little. My recent victory, tiny as it may have been, was fixing the odometer. These old Mustangs are known for having odometer gears that break, so I ordered a new set on Amazon for like $8. Here are some pictures of the gear replacement so it looks like I did a whole lot of work (in reality it was like 30 mins total).

Broken gears:

New gears:

Pro tip: Once you've replaced the gears, don't reassemble the entire cluster. Just put the gauges back in and take the cluster to the car to test everything. I put everything together initially without testing it, so when I had everything back together I noticed that neither my speedometer nor tachometer were working. I took everything apart and made sure to double check all the connections, and that seemed to have fixed the issue, but then the speedometer was pretty off and kept getting jammed at like 15mph. The fix for that was to pull the speedometer needle off, turn on the engine, and then install the speedometer needle right at 0. I double checked it all with a GPS speedometer and it was accurate within 1mph, which is good enough for me. These clusters are finicky but at least they're easy to fix.

I drove the Mustang over the weekend and I drove it to work today, and I can officially say it's a real car now. All of the gauges work, the odometer works, the trip meter works, hooray. The AC works quite well too, I was pretty comfortable even though it was like 102º outside. The car doesn't seem to overheat either, even when I'm beating on it.

The last two creature comforts I have to fix are the stereo and the convertible roof alignment. Some jackwagon stole my stereo faceplate so I need to replace the whole stereo now. I guess I'll just find a well-rated Pioneer unit on Amazon or something. As for the roof, I just need to take apart the trim panels in the rear so I can loosen a bunch of the convertible roof mounting bolts and move the roof round a bit.

I've also been getting some cat inefficiency codes lately, so I'm wondering if it's time to weld in a catless X-pipe... there are cat simulators that plug into the rear O2 sensors that stop them from triggering a CEL. I'd never delete the cats on a daily driver, but on a beater like this I think it would be hilarious.

Nice, I really like the sn95 platform. I recently bought a 98 gt with a bad motor that that my bro n law talked me out of. We went to pick in pull the other day and grabbed a 99 gt (pi) motor we are going to swap into the 98.

As far as the v6 sn95s, there's actually some potential there. You can grab a 4.2 f150 motor (stroked 3.8), and they have the better split port heads. Do a little porting in the heads, get a custom grind cam, and a Windstar intake and maybe a hundred shot and you're beating up gt's.

And of course let's not forget about the 3.8 SC swap.