SN95.0 Build Thread

trailbikerider · Mar 16, 2019

Hello everybody! I just bought this GT this past Sunday as a Happy Birthday gift to myself. This is my first Mustang, but I have owned many Fords over the years, including my first car, a 2002 Ford Focus that I have owned for 11 years that has (had) a ton of mods, but is unfortunately being parted out to fund this project.

It's a Deep Forest Green 1994 GT with a T5. I drove 2.5 hours to Chicago to buy it, however Carfax shows it spent all but about 4 years of it's life in Virginia Beach and down in Florida, so it's pretty clean underneath, however the car as a whole needs a little bit of TLC. It currently has 91,xxx miles.

At the time of purchase it had an MSD ignition box, cap, rotor and wires, an F-303 cam, a Pypes O/R X-Pipe, some variant of Flowmaster mufflers, and 03/04 Cobra wheels.

I've picked up a few goodies for it already that will be showing up in the coming days including:

Hurst 391-5033 Short Shifter
275/40R17 Federal Evoluzion ST-1 Tires
1" Hubcentric Spacers for the rear

As far as items that needed to be fixed, here's what I have so far:

A pair of new interior door pull trim panels
New driver's side window regulator/motor (the old one clicks and knocks if you hold the button after it's all the way up or down)
New hood pop lever (old one is broken)

It also has a really terrible rev hanging issue between shifts where the RPM stays the same or will even creep up by 100-200 RPM. From what I've read it's likely the tune or something to do with the IAC valve. I'm going to do some diagnosing this weekend.

It needs a little bit of PDR work along with the trunk needs to be repainted; at some point along the line a previous owner tried buffing the car and burned through the clear coat on the top of the trunk lid, so I will likely delete the spoiler at the same time. I want to turn it into a fun cruiser and twisty road car with the option to take it to a track day or two at a road course. I'm not going the typical Mustang route which seems to be staggered wheels, 315s, Flowmasters, a cowl hood and hood pins.

Unfortunately I only have one photo of the car on the trailer and a video of the car idling. I will post some new photos when I can!

Untitled by Blake Nichols, on Flickr

trailbikerider · Mar 16, 2019

With that out of the way, here's what I'm wanting to do to the car, listed in no particular order;

Replace all lights with LEDs
Paint correction
BC Racing Coilovers
New Catback (Debating between Pypes, Magnaflow or Borla)
Mach 1 Lip
HID Retrofit
3.73 Gear Set
Refinish the OEM Ford Cobra Wheels (They're corroded and have some curb rash)
Repaint front bumper and trunk/delete spoiler
Anderson Motorsport top end kit
Shorty headers
Tune
Panhard bar (or maybe Cobra IRS, haven't decided)
BOOST eventually
Big Brake Kit
T56 swap

I'm sure I'll come up with other odds and ends, but those are the big ticket items that come to mind right now.

ttocs · Mar 16, 2019

I would say to save your money on the leds until the regular lights burn out. Save the cash and get some Baer brakes.

trailbikerider · Mar 16, 2019

ttocs said:
I would say to save your money on the leds until the regular lights burn out. Save the cash and get some Baer brakes.

I'll probably have $50-$75 in LED bulbs, that's pretty cheap IMO and will really modernize the car. It's one of the first things I do anytime I buy a new vehicle.

ttocs · Mar 17, 2019

trailbikerider said:
I'll probably have $50-$75 in LED bulbs, that's pretty cheap IMO and will really modernize the car. It's one of the first things I do anytime I buy a new vehicle.

"modernize"? Thats a new one. Short of the head lights(blinding people if they are in a halogen mount) or the turn signals hyperflashing, you can't tell the difference other than the weight of your wallet being lighter. Now put some better brakes on the car and you have made a difference.

FivepointSlow · Mar 17, 2019

Welcome to the Mustang family!

Looks like you have yourself a clean base to start with!

I have to agree with the LEDs. Interior LEDs can make all the difference. They're brighter and make everything less dingy looking. I went down the exterior LED phase with my last 1994 Mustang and my old Crown Victoria and honestly it's not really worth the battle. Atleast for all the turn signals that required resistors to prevent hyper flashing, I went through entirely too many sets of resistors that would just die on me randomly. Maybe I had bad luck but imo if you're planning to get some retrofits that's the only lighting I'd upgrade.

That and obviously reverse lights because who's idea was it to put a halogen 3156 bulb in our reverse lights and think that helps anybody???

Good luck with your build glad to see you're doing your own thing and not hoping on the trend wagon

PS this forum loves photos so we will all be awaiting a photo dump

trailbikerider · Mar 17, 2019

ttocs said:
"modernize"? Thats a new one. Short of the head lights(blinding people if they are in a halogen mount) or the turn signals hyperflashing, you can't tell the difference other than the weight of your wallet being lighter. Now put some better brakes on the car and you have made a difference.

I'm not planning to put LEDs in the headlights, I'm planning to retrofit HIDs.

FivepointSlow said:
Welcome to the Mustang family!

Looks like you have yourself a clean base to start with!

I have to agree with the LEDs. Interior LEDs can make all the difference. They're brighter and make everything less dingy looking. I went down the exterior LED phase with my last 1994 Mustang and my old Crown Victoria and honestly it's not really worth the battle. Atleast for all the turn signals that required resistors to prevent hyper flashing, I went through entirely too many sets of resistors that would just die on me randomly. Maybe I had bad luck but imo if you're planning to get some retrofits that's the only lighting I'd upgrade.

That and obviously reverse lights because who's idea was it to put a halogen 3156 bulb in our reverse lights and think that helps anybody???

Good luck with your build glad to see you're doing your own thing and not hoping on the trend wagon

PS this forum loves photos so we will all be awaiting a photo dump

I should have clarified, but yeah most of the outside lights will remain unchanged other than reverse lights, license plate lights (which have already been changed) and headlights/foglights.

I had the new rubber mounted up and back on the car today with new 1" rear spacers, so I snapped a few photos. I have the shift boot and knob pulled off in anticipation of the Hurst that should be here tomorrow.

Untitled by Blake Nichols, on Flickr