Humble Beginings 2000 - 2003
The story begins in March 2000, when I first got the car from my father in trade for a Volvo 245 and some work I was doing on the car for him. The car originally came from California and was a stock LX 5.0, 5-spd. with 2.73 gears. The motor was a speed density 5.0 with the air box baffle removed and a K&N filter. The only other mechanical change I found was the previous owner had up-graded the front brakes to the SVO/Lincoln 73 mm calipers.
On the outside it was bare stock except it may have had slight nose damage in the past because it had an after market front bumper cover on it that didn't have the MUSTANG embossed on it. Also it had been painted a dark forest green the car's original color was 1D Smoke Poly. The car still had the factory cast aluminum 10-hole wheels and 225/60-15R tires
The inside of the car was very basic, it was the LX Opal Gray cloth. It had A/C and no power options at all, The radio and speakers where also gone. One added feature I was happy to see was a Ford Motorsports 140 mph speedometer.
My original plans for the car was to pretty much leave it as is. The only changes I wanted to make where I still had the 1986 GT seats and steering wheel I had bought for my Capri project which where much nicer than LX parts. I eventually even went as far as to make the back seat a functional fold-down.
With the addition of the 86 GT stuff I must have gotten into a subconscious "make it like a GT" mode. Even though the LX wheels on my car where used on the 86GTs, my brother had a set of the 1987 - 89 GT turbine wheels that I preferred over the 10-holes, so we made a trade.
One of the other items I had purchased for my Capri project was some 1987 - 93 GT taillights. The LX taillights on my car had some stress fractures in the lenses.
The only problem was the lights where white. So I decided on a flat black treatment to go with the dark green of the car. I wasn't 100% happy with the look but that is the way I left them for the until 2004.
If I would have still had my original Capri taillights, I even considered putting them on for a different look.
Not having the power options is a nice weight saver if your out for optimum performance, so not having power windows was no problem for me, not having a power right hand mirror did!
Ever try using those annoying joy-stick adjusters while sitting in traffic or driving? It don't work very well and isn't very safe.
If I was worried about trimming off 1/100's of a second on my 1/4 mile times then I would have been very happy, but as a daily driver there where some features I would like to have. So I located the under-dash jumper harness I needed and added power mirrors and power door locks.
For a basic write up on this check this page out Power Lock / Window Conversion
While I was at it I noticed the wire harness in the trunk had the leads for power trunk release and remote fuel door release, so these where 2 more power options I decided to add. For the very little weight it added I didn't mind.
Like so many 5.0 Mustang owners I was happy for a while but after the few mods I did to the car, the mod bug bit me and I wanted to do other things to it.
These where just the convenience and comfort items I had done to see what I did performance wise, please continue to the next page.