1999-2004 V6 Mustang Bolt-On Build-Ups

Justin: Hey, I'm Justin with AmericanMuscle.com, and this is our Power Pack Bolt-On Build-Up for all '99 to '04 V6 Mustangs. Now before we get started let's address the elephant in the room. From the factory, these 3.8 liter V6s weren't the baddest Mustangs on the block just in terms of all out performance, but thanks to the large aftermarket support and bolt-ons that can really squeeze every ounce of power out of any car well, these V6s can be turned into quite the competent little street car. So that's exactly what we're gonna show you here today but before we get into it we're gonna grab a quick baseline number first just to see what we're starting with and we're gonna hand the car over to the crew to get everything installed.

Hey, Mike. What's up, man?

Mike: Oh, nothing much, man. What's going on?

Justin: It looks like we tackled some of the basics under here. I see the SR Performance Cold Air Intake. Now obviously that's gonna give us a little power of course but explain to us maybe what else we can expect from using stuff like that.

Mike: Well, first is price. It's a very budget friendly piece. It's easy to install, looks great, it's no tune required and we should see some increase in mile per gallon too.

Justin: All right. Cool, man. Now I notice a little yellow under the hood here as well. That's usually the calling card of an Accel product. Tell us a bit more about their Super Coil Pack here.

Mike: You're gonna get some horsepower and torque as well on this but the main thing it's gonna smooth out our idle, give us better drivability and give us a cleaner, hotter spark.

Justin: That's probably pretty important with an older car such as this.

Mike: Absolutely.

Justin: Right on, man. Now I know we also have the Pypes True Dual System on the car. That's been on for a little while. We're not gonna lie. Being car guys, this car didn't really have much of a chance coming in here with a single exhaust.

Mike: Oh, yeah.

Justin: So talk about the benefits of a true dual system on our V6.

Mike: It's gonna increase horsepower and torque. More importantly for most of the guys is it's gonna increase the sound, give us an aggressive sound. It's high quality and it's also easy to install.

Justin: Now what's a Mustang without dual exhaust coming out the back too, right?

Mike: Exactly.

Justin: Now finally I guess we can be safe to assume you're gonna toss one of your custom BAMA tunes in the mix?

Mike: Oh, yeah.

Justin: Awesome, man. Now what's that gonna do for us?

Mike: Gonna wrap all of our mods together and make it a complete package. Fuel, the spark, the cooling fans and being that's an automatic we're gonna adjust the shift firmness and the shift points.

Justin: All right, man. Well, I guess there's only one more thing to do. You ready to see how much power this little 3.8's gonna make?

Mike: Let's do it.

Justin: All right.

So our baseline run with our 2000 V6 gave us 149 horsepower and 185 foot-pounds of torque. With our power pack installed we put down 163 horsepower and 192 foot-pounds of torque giving us a peak horsepower gain of 14 over our baseline numbers and gains of 15 horsepower and 15 foot-pounds of torque throughout the curve.

It's obvious Mike was able to work his magic with the bolt-ons and the tune but we wanna give our V6 a little bit more giddy-up so we installed a set of Ford Racing 373 Gears along with Auburn's Limited Slip Differential. Now of course the gears are gonna give us that increasing acceleration we're looking for, but the diff's gonna be equally as important. The limited slip differential's gonna distribute power to both wheels evenly, help us get off the line and pull us out of the turns but most importantly, no more embarrassing one wheel peels. All right, with everything wrapped up let's get our V6 off the dyno and onto the street so we can see how it does with all that new power along with those acceleration goodies.

So we're back out in our 2000 V6 after the power pack's been installed and we'll just get one thing out of the way right away. Is our V6 faster than a GT500? Absolutely not. But that's not a big surprise. What I will tell you though is our V6 is significantly quicker all around. The acceleration pulls from pretty much idle all the way to redline now as opposed to before when it kinda fell on its face around 4,000 RPMs because it was just kinda being choked out by the single exhaust and the puny intake. Now the intake is letting it breathe, the dual exhaust is really flowing well. Sounds great by the way for a V6. And the BAMA tune's just really pulling it all together. Our acceleration, by the way, is killer. That Auburn LSD along with our 3.73s have really made for one peppy daily driver.

In the end the V6, much more improved driving experience. That's what we were going for with this power pack and we really did a good job with our little 3.8 liter here. So that wraps up our power pack for our V6 Mustang. Be sure to check out some of our other '99 to '04 V6 Bolt-On Build-Ups where we dress up our V6 a little bit and work on our handling.

Hey, I'm Justin with AmericanMuscle.com, and this is our Appearance Bolt-on Build-up for all '99 to '04 V6 Mustangs. In this pack, we're going to show you how we totally transformed our stock New Edge V6 using some top-rated customer items here on the site, along with some parts that we really dig, in the end resulting in what you see here, which is no ordinary-looking V6.

Now, granted, some of the parts used today were pretty small. Take the quarter light tint, for instance. And others, well, not so small. My point is, sometimes it's a combination of a few key appearance parts, both big and small, to really drive that look home. With that said, what do you say we start with one of those big mods first?

That's right. Visually speaking, we went with one of the biggest mods you can do with any appearance build, a new set of wheels and tires, and not just any new set of wheels and tires. We went with these staggered 18-inch gloss black Saleen-style wheels, along with some new rubber from Nitto on all four corners. Now, for me personally, I have to say this is my favorite Mustang wheel of all time. That's because there's just something to be said for a simple five-spoke wheel design that really does a lot for the car in terms of its overall appearance.

All right. Moving away from the one big mod approach, let's check out the back of the car, where we have a few different mods from Raxiom, working together for us. First up, we have Raxiom's smoked taillights, which are always a solid choice, simple OEM design, but with a dark smoked lens for a very aggressive appearance. Now, these lights are actually loaded up with Raxiom's plug-and-play sequential taillight kit, which is going to give our V6 a look similar to the classic Mustangs, and also the newer Coyote Mustangs as well.

Finally, we installed Raxiom's turn signal modifier for a more dramatic look, and it really slows down that pattern because it's going to show off those sequentials a lot better. Now, the best thing is, this thing's a piece of cake to install. You crawl under the dash, pop the yellow relay out, and plug the new one in. It's that easy.

Speaking of pairing parts together, we installed the Mach 1 grille delete kit, along with the Mach 1 chin spoiler here in our V6. Now, these are two of the parts that some of you on the site just can't seem to get enough of, and when paired together, I think they really change up the look of our V6.

Staying up front here, you'll see another part totally responsible for changing up the look of our V6, thanks to these Raxiom dual halo smoked headlights. Now, the look of these headlights are very bold and pretty unique, so they're not going to be everyone's cup of tea. However, there's no denying that modern projector lighting and those dual halo accents are a total game-changer here in our V6, and they're really going to balance out some of the more retro-themed items in our car.

The objective of this pack was to drastically alter the appearance of our stock 2000 V6 Mustang, and I think it's safe to say, mission accomplished. Now, we assembled a bunch of parts, but not just any parts, ones that really worked well together, ultimately giving our V6 a much-needed facelift.

So, that wraps up our Appearance Bolt-on Build-up for the '99 to '04 V6 Mustang. Be sure to check out some of our other Bolt-on Build-ups where we improve our handling and work on our overall performance.

Hey, I'm Justin with AmericanMuscle.com and this is our Handling Bolt-On Build-up for all '99 to '04 V6 Mustangs. Now it's no secret from the factory these New Edge V6s weren't exactly set up to succeed as far as handling is concerned. Case in point, Ford didn't even equip these cars with a rear sway bar, but just like we can throw a pack of parts together to make these V6s a little quicker, we can also make them handle a little bit better as well by addressing a few key areas. That's exactly what we did in our 2000 V6 behind me. I'm gonna walk you through a few of the parts we installed today, then get our car out of the shop and onto the streets so we can see how they perform.

One of the big things that come to mind when you think suspension is a set of aftermarket lowering springs, and it should be because as far as bang for your buck is concerned nothing will help your car handle and look better than a set of aftermarket springs. Now we went with a set of these Eibach Pro-Kit lowering springs which is gonna reduce our body roll, help the car feel more planted, and aesthetically helped out our stance by getting rid of that ugly wheel gap. Now these springs lowered our V6 an inch and a half or so on all four corners. It is worth pointing out that that's the lowest you should go on stock shocks and struts without risking blowing them out. Now since our shocks and struts are in great shape here on our 2000 we decided to forego the aftermarket option.

Moving on to another area of the car that we already mentioned needed some help. I'm referring to our sway bar situation or in this case, lack thereof. We installed Eibach's Anti-Roll Sway Bar Kit. Now Eibach's a company that knows how to make a car handle. Now I'm not gonna lie. In stock form our V6 is a pig in turns and is an understeer nightmare, but by adding a 24 millimeter rear sway bar and by upgrading our stock 25 millimeter front sway bar to a 35 millimeter option we're gonna get rid of a lot of that understeer and actually help the car handle a lot flatter in turns ultimately giving the driver much more confidence behind the wheel.

Up front, we're looking at a couple of products, the first of which are these QA1 Caster Camber Plates. Now these are gonna give us the added adjustability to help get our V6's alignment back in the spec after we've lowered it. Now in the right hands with the right knowledge, a properly set up alignment can be beneficial to your handling, but just keep in mind it's a fine line between great handling and rapidly destroying your tires. So just check with your local alignment shop to find out what works best for you and your driving style.

The final piece is equal parts bling and function. I'm talking about this SR Performance Strut Tower Brace that we have laid into place before it gets installed just to finish up our handling pack. Now that bling comes from the bright chrome finish of course which I have to admit looks great under the hood. And that's just the start. Now since this bar utilizes bracing at both the strut towers and at the firewall it's gonna really help in firming up our front end and reducing our chassis flex and it should fit nicely into anyone's budget.

Now that you know what we're working with on our 2000 V6, we're gonna finish up getting that strut tower brace installed, then get our car out of the shop and look for some nice turns just so we can see if our handling's been improved.

So we just got our handling pack installed with our 2000 V6 and what better way to test it than a sharp right-hander. Hold on. Oh, yeah. The car is so smooth through the turns now. A night and day difference and I mean that than before when we used to drive this car in its stock form. Now obviously those sway bars make a world of difference considering there was no sway bar on the car to begin with in the rear which is mindboggling me in the first place. This is supposed to be a sports car. How can Ford send you out without a sway bar? But that's neither here nor there. The important thing is we have the sway bars on, the car is firm, the car is planted, the springs have really brought our center of gravity down which has really tightened up the overall feel of the car. Doesn't wanna wander all over the road, it doesn't feel floaty like you're out on the ocean anymore. You're planted now. You feel like you're in a Mustang. You feel like you're in a sports car.

Finally, those QA1 Caster Camber Plates brought our Mustang's alignment back into spec after lowering it a little bit so we're not gonna chew through tires every three months. Got another sharp left-hander coming up. Let's see how the car does. Okay. Little bit of brake dive. Nothing too crazy. But again I'm staying pretty much in the throttle and we felt great the whole time, man. So overall I'd say the handling pack on our V6 was a success. That does it for our handling pack here. Be sure to check out some of our other Bolt-On Build-Ups for the '99 to '04 V6 where we improve our performance and our appearance.