What are the first steps in tuning my stang
 

Im a noob to cars and need some help.
What are the first steps to tuning my car?
Its a automatic and will stay that way.
I want my car not to be too loud or stinky, i want a good balance of performance and and economy.
I want the same or better gas mileage, and want it to have a good deep, powerful sound.
Anyway thanks for helping this noob

cold air intake and a better mid pipe, leave the rest

pardon my noobness but whats a mid pipe
and what will these increase on my stang.
i want to have quite a bit of low end torque, id rather have it get up and go then go 150mph does this do that

exhaust--before the mufflers, after the exhaust manifold, it has your catalytic converters in it. will give a slighly deeper sound and a little more power, little more economy

what are some good brands and prices

Do your midpipe modification and possibly the Cold Air Intake.

Then chip it or get a Xcalibrator tuner. Getting it tuned is the only way you are really going to pull out gas mileage and power with any modification that you would do.

whats all those chip things and what do they do
remember i m really a noob

hey man i gotta throw this in there. there is scale that pretty much describes ALMOST any performance upgrade. performance goes up economy goes down. hate to say it, but thats about how it goes.

the performance items mentioned do increase performance and increase economy if you drive it responsibly. A chip won't do anything unless you use premium fuel so it is kinda counterproductive for economy. Chips/tuners basically only advance the timing for more power with premium fuel, there is a few other things you can do with them, but not much. You probably won't be able to feel much of a difference in the power with intake and exhaust.

with an auto you might get a little more mileage with a chip/tuner by making the tranny stiffer, thats something i don't know much about

i still rather use regular
i wont race at all or speed to much
i just want to make my stang get to the speed linit faster

the above three items are about the only thing you can do to get better mileage and more power. You won't notice a whole lot except with crisper shifts ect

CAI-will hear air coming into the engine as well as the exhaust <10 hp
Exhaust
-x or h pipe-small gains, slightly different sound
-cat back-small gains, most of sound
i wouldn't change headers as you need low end torque
tuner-no change in hp, only change tranny

ok if u do ALOT of city drivin gears will do both. get u goin quicker and give u better milage. if u do highway forget bout gears.

Not true at all with the Tuner/Chip.

http://www.sctflash.com/car_chart.php

19RWHP from a stock V6 with 20 FT/LB of Torque. Chips and tuners dont just change the tranny, they adjust for the things that have been added to the car. If your adding CAI's and X-Pipes/Catbacks, especially UNCATTED ones, there is no reason why you wouldnt be gaining more HP from just adjusting what is on the car.

Think of it this way. The comupter on the car is set for stock settings, and it is very conservative in its settings. Now if you add things for the car, you have increased in some horsepower just from the additions, but you are only getting part of the power that can be derived from them. If you tune your car to accomidate for these additions, then you can pull all of the HP possible from them and tweak the cars performance/handling.

Now to get any of these performance increases its best that you use premium fuel, chip or not. But chips are not just there to adjust your transmission timing.

there are only two reasons that premium fuel should ever be used

a.) the main reason-to prevent knocking by raising ignition temperature
b.) premium fuel is cleaner

i actually did a project with this in ME 683 a class about internal combustion engines. The premium fuel in this country only gives a boost in power to untuned engines because it is cleaner. octane booster can actually reduce power. The higher the octane rating the higher the ignition temp of the fuel, thus resulting in slower burning and less power along with being harder to ignite. Premium fuel is generally better but with any performance part that doesn't raise compression or advance timing it isn't worth the cost.

for him to use regular fuel he will not get any hp increase which is why the transmission is the only way he will have any performance enhancement. turning off the rear o2 sensors on an off road mid pipe is another reason for a tuner

the 19 rwhp is a number of the biggest that they could pull from any of the vehicles they tried using at least 92 octane fuel probably. Not sure on 6's but I know for a fact that gts rarely get all of the numbers that tuners claim b/c different engines/fuels can only take so much timing. All of the hp from a tuner is from the advanced timing curve which usually cannot be changed with standard fuel

tuners are needed if you do more than CAI and exhaust but nothing changes in the tune whether or not you have CAI and exhaust compared to stock. If the MAF, throttle body, injector size, ect are changed tuners are needed/very nice

Based on your original post, I would do the following:

1 - Add a dual exhaust kit. Like one of these:

http://www.mustangtuning.com/exforv6mu.html

I am not that familiar with the V-6 exhaust and what is needed, but I am sure someone around here can be more specific. The car can actually sound pretty great with the right setup.

2 - Basic cold air kit. This will help bring in more air with the new exhaust.

3 - A hand-held tuner. Nice mod and will help the car shift a lot better too. The car will shift more agressively and you will pick up a few hp.

4 - Gears! No one has mentioned this yet, but going to a different gear ratio will really wake-up the car. Expect to pay aroud $600 for parts and installation.

The above mentioned mods will cost you almost $2,000 if new and the car will be night and day different. In total, you should see about 20 more hp at least, but the gears will feel like another 30 - 40.

I don't want to get into the whole GT vs V-6 argument, but at some point you need to wonder if the extra money is worth it, or do you trade up to a GT.

You do realize that when we tune with a flash tuner/chip we take into accomidation of what type of gasoline is used, and adjust accordingly. You arnt just stuck with 93 Octane fuel. We do tunes all the time for low octane vehicles.

If you want a quick v6 you should do what they have been saying. a set of headers, a off road mid pipe like an h-pipe from mac. and a GT catback. this along with some gears and a cai and tune should make for a fairly quick v6 thats fun to drive. or save and buy a used blower kit for your car. or a nitrous kit is another cheap way to go fast.

how many horsepower will a blower add, and what are the bad things about them
do they require other performance parts on my stock engine

back to exhaust, why is it called an off road pipe?


an no nitrous for me except for video games

i dont need to go faster or be as powerful as a gt plus i couldnt find a good enough deal on a gt
i just want to be able to accel a bit faster than stock
if i could afford a gt trust me i would have got it but this is my first car

Blowers? The sky is the limit. Certainly 100 hp+ is a no brainer. They do require other parts such as larger MAF, fuel pump and injectors. Expect to pay $4k - $6k installed. You also need a tune.

An off-road pipe is anything w/o cats.

Nitrous is a great option for cheap speed.

whats a maf?
also could u tell me which injectors and pump i would need from mustang tuning?

Try getting Gears, if you really are worried about gas go with 3.73's

get Gears+posi, CAI/UDP, Full exhaust, and a tune.

i dont want gears.
whats a posi and CAI/UDP
and does getting a tune mean getting a dyno and a chip

CAI is a cold air intake

POSi is whats in read end of the car it gives power to both wheels so you wont have that one wheel wonder anymore.

UDP is a Underdrive pulley and it frees up hp by slowing down the engines acessorys.

and you odnt have to get a dyno tune but you will get more power from it. if you just buy a cheap from a place like here its just a mail order tune it will still add power but not as much as a good dyno tune will.

do i need a chip for a dyno?

i found these headers online are they good quality and how much will hp and torque will thease add clik here will this fit my stock 04 convertible 3.9 L automatic