Silver talon

Hello ladies and gents! Just stopping in here to show off my silver stang! Bought it this fall and have done some small exterior mods so far, with many more in store overall! Pics are from my HTC one x so they are mediocre at best, but it will get the idea across!


Here she is the day I picked her up! Base 14 coupe V6 with a 6 spd stick. Only option was the appearance package, which I like on the silver quite a bit. Plus the black 18in wheels are a lot better looking than the stock 17's in my opinion.



Giving her a bath a few days later on the lawn. Love the car so far! The transmission on the other hand is still being finicky at best, but its still a stang and its mine!



But after talks with friends at work and what not (I'm a manager at the local AutoZone) the first mods aren't for more HP and TQ like I had expected they would be, but rather the outside that gets the once over first. Which surprised me cause I thought the car was close to spot on, but of course there is always room for improvement! First thing to change you ask? Basically the only serious amount of chrome that is on the car has to go. The pony in the grille and the chrome ring around it is getting blacked out.



First coat of black is on. I used a temporary painting product from armor all advertised as something you can paint fronts of cars or wheels to protect them from road chips and damage while traveling or towing cars. Its black and once dry, can be peeled off if your done with it or whatever.



Takes several coats (4 or so depending on the corners and weird angles) to get a good thick coat on with even look and finish, but dries quickly between them.



And here are a few shots of the finished grille!











And outside a few days later. Again, crappy cell pics, but you get the idea.

Silver talon

So what's next you beg to know??? Well since I live in Maine, and winter at the time was at our door step, something for winter sneakers was in order. And yes, that means I'm driving it all year round, rain or shine, snow or sleet, sand and salt. I live less than a mile from work and hey, its mine, I can do with it what I want right?

So wheels and tires. The factory 18in Pirelli tires are fairly grippy, but do leave a little to be desired in snow and ice. So my project turbo ranger had to give up its rims and tires so I could keep the 18's nice and the stang out of the ditch. Here's the ranger. Its a 91 2wd short box reg cab that has a 2.3l turbo and mated to the ranger 5-spd. The engine came out of an 86 Merkur XR4TI that I had to very sadly part out. This project is nearly completed, but that's another story!







Can anyone guess what the rims are from??? Anyone???? Here's a pic of them all loaded to go in the stang. Two in the back seat and two in the front seat! Oh and if you guessed old school cobra's, you're right! Ding Ding!



Here's the first one on, but not clean yet. The tires on these 17in cobra rims come out to be about .8 inch shorter overall and half inch wider than the factory 18's are, but the tires aren't much to speak of, they will be getting swapped over to some snow tires soon.



And one side swapped over. The tires lowered the car a noticeable amount in person, but the gap in the well got slightly bigger, so overall, not a bad size difference.







I'm fairly sold on them at this point. The more I clean them and look at them, I'm missing the black 18's less and less. I love the throw back, and how they look on the car, and my buddy that is helping me, is loving it too, and basically told me to throw away my 18's as I wont be putting them back on the car at any point. What do you guys think???

Silver talon

The same night, I'm working on one more project, that was also my friends idea, thrown in with some tweeks of my own. I know that 95% of the population does not like pin strips down the sides of vehicles anymore. I hear it all the time, that it died in the 80's/90's blah blah blah. But after playing around with sizes, colors, and positions, we found something that I think works pretty well on the car. I don't have many pictures of it, which I thought I did have more of, but it was late and we spent probably close to 4 hours putting them on to get them straight, matched to each side, and the ends correct. Needless to say, we were both pretty picky about them.

Again, crappy cell pics, but here goes.



You can see the front half of the stripe (which is the first one we did) starts at the body line in front of the handle and goes forward into the fender. Its gloss black .5 inch striping.

Here is the finished opposite side, with the striping flaired to match the bodyline arch over the rear wheel well. that was by far the hardest part of the stripe, but gives it the most pop also.





Sadly, that's all I have of the stripe at the moment. If its decent out, ill try and grab another one or two tomorrow, to show how and where it ends in the back. Most all the people that said to not pinstripe it, have changed their mind after seeing it, so I think it came out well.

Silver talon

Here are some pics from the other day after a quick bath. You can see the pinstripes a little bit better in these.

Tron84

Just my opinion but I'm not digging the wheels. I thought the black stockers looked decent.
Congrats on the purchase and enjoy modding!

Silver talon

So my next area of attention was some extra lights on the interior for the simple fact that in a non-My color car, you need to have night vision to find anything inside the **** thing at night, especially the back seat. So in went some blue lights in the foot wells and a nice led strip on the back window to provide some nice light for my girls to see.


I Searched around for a wire/switch setup that would be clean and not make me use extra switches glued to the dash or something that would end up permanent. So I pulled the dome light out and spliced into the bulb wire. I ran it down to the drivers foot well and put a power and ground distribution block down there to run all my lights too. This means when I open the door, unlock the car, or switch the interior lights on, all of my extra lights turn on also. No more dead batteries because I forgot to turn a light off!


The grayish white wire that runs to the left side of the pic (the short wire) is what I spliced into. Anything run off that light lead will turn on whenever that bulb is turned on, even when you press the map light button.









Then the next was a last second decision. To throw some lights into the grille. I took two white LED strips and put them on the inside of the radiator support facing the radiator. Then run my leads to the corner marker lights. This means if the exterior lights are on, or I unlock the car, these turn on. They are hard to take a pic of, but here are a few.

Silver talon

Next was some go fast goodies! I bought some spectre intake parts to make myself my own CAI. Then I bought some exhaust and other parts from someone who had traded his V6 for a Focus ST. Here's the spectre intake after it got put on. Pretty basic with only a few mods to the pipe to give it a better angle. Boy does this make noise over 5500rpm!



















A few days later, I put the exhaust on. In all my youtube and forum searching for what I wanted for an exhaust system, MRT had never come up in the searches. I really had my heart set on a Borla ATAK system, but this axle back system kind of fell in my lap for a very reasonable price. Took about 30-35 mins to install and I'm very happy with it! Not too droney and very close to the ATAK setups that I have heard.

Silver talon

The same night I bought the exhaust goodies, I stopped in and picked up my new summer rims. 19x9.5 chrome AMR's with +48 offset. Now I just have to hunt for some rubber for them. Would love some 285's all around, but Im not sure if they will rub up front or not. I may just run a staggered setup like the Boss LS with 255's and 285's. But id love to be able to rotate my tires. Here are some pics of them.

kylerohde

Nice job so far!

RubyRedMCA_Beast

Very nice bud! I like the pin stripes!! I've been kicking around the idea of getting some done also, it's a nice old school touch.

You should put tinted windows on your list!

I can't wait to see it with the new wheels on.

Silver talon

Thanks! I've had a lot of fun with the car up to this point, and it seems to only get better, and keep me up later at night dreaming about it!



Tinted windows for sure! I'm trying to keep the silver and black balanced. With the cobra rims, it seemed to need more black on it, but with the black rims, its just about right. But tint I think always works. I keep getting told to paint the side louvers black, but I'm torn on that. I like doing one thing at a time, then stand back and look at it for a while. Even if that means keeping it that way for a bit until the next piece comes along.

Silver talon

I also have some long tube headers and a half cut up cat-less x-pipe. The previous owner of the exhaust pieces though the car was too loud with the MRT and the LT's with cat-less x-pipe. And from my reading, a lot of people report that the car gets pretty raspy with LT's, and I have to say, I'm not a fan of the noise. But every car and camera can be different, so listening to it on youtube, may not be very accurate. I don't want to lose the popping and tone of the exhaust I have. Its a nice and tight sound, without that big block throatiness that some vids of LT's seem to give. Its no big block, or even a V8 for that fact, but it makes a good noise. Half tempted to trade for some shorties and call it a day, but i'm not sure. Decisions decisions....

TheDivaDanielle

you can run 285's up front.

You also gotta be a kid, cuz I did the LEDs in the grille and "spectre" aka $30 @ autozone intake when I was about 17.

kcoTiger

I run 285's on the front, and they rub only at steering lock, and only enough to hear it--it doesn't affect the motion of the vehicle. I've put about 2k miles on the tires I have and they have no wear whatsoever on the inside of the tire or the wheel well. Of course, I don't think I ever turn the wheel to the lock, either.

EastTNMustang

What rims are you using? I'm running 285/40r19 on my stock wheels and I haven't noticed any rubbing.

B's 5.0

Congrats. Love what you have done to the front grille, but what does not make sense to me is, you said " Basically the only serious amount of chrome that is on the car has to go " and then turn around and buy chrome wheels. Also not digging the pin stripes, but it is your Stang do what you like. I may be a little bias when it comes to black but I liked the black wheels much better, made the Stang look Bad A** IMO.

cdiaz1069

Personally, I would paint the spoiler to match the body color. Especially since you got rid of the black wheels.

Silver talon

Gotta be a kid huh? Because I work on a budget and don't by over priced retail stuff makes me young or stupid? I know retail well enough to know when Im getting had for $400 for just a bunch of straight plastic tubing. I can do the same thing they are, for much less. What does that have to do with my age? I enjoy making my own mods. Period.


What are the offset of your wheels though? Mine are 48, so I may have a different case than yours. I may actually have too much offset and have an issue rubbing the fender wells, and not the insides during lock. But I have to do some math there.



Scroll up. 19x9.5in AMR with +48 offset. Same pattern as the Shelby GT 500 runs, but im not sure what their off set is on the wheels, and they only run a 265 tire.



Im definitely a blacked out fan too, but I picked up the wheels from someone who couldn't use them for $500 with a new set of locking lug nuts. So I couldn't really argue about what color I got. I'm really tempted to pastidip, but I want to see how they look with the chrome first. Maybe Ill only have chrome on the wheels, lol, who knows. I know a good powdercoat guy too, so I have other color options too.


Nothing so far is permanent, and all can be changed. I love the pin stripe one day, the next I could do without it. Its probably not permanent, but I'm not sold on another over the hood stripe mustang. But there is a lot of silver on the car, and it looks better with some contrast on it.





Thought of that also, but Im still up in the air with the black to silver balance. If I went silver, I might go and swap it out for the Shelby one, as that's a very nice looking spoiler!

Thomas S

The car was better stock.

EastTNMustang

Sorry, my comment was meant for kcoTiger...he mentioned his 285s are rubbing and I have 285s and haven't noticed any rubbing...yet.

But what do you mean "they only run a 265 tire"? Are you saying your wheel will only handle a 265?