03-04 as a daily driver?

[Gears & Crosses]

My best friend needs a new daily driver. He is driving a Nissan Sentra right now and he wants to step up to an 03-04 GT. He doesnt have to drive too far to go to work, about 20 miles, all highway, so I figure this isnt a bad choice. What do you think? What are some problem areas for these cars? What should we look at for?
We are only interested in 5 speed cars.

Help me get a friend off of rice,
Gears

 

[evil281]

i drive mine daily about 35-40miles a day, only suggestion would be to keep the stock rear end gears, other than that i have had almost no trouble with this car "knock on wood" other than having to service the a/c

 

[Omars96GT]

my brother has a 630wrhp cobra on a stock block, he drives it everyday 30 miles. so no cobra is an amazin car. nothing to worrie about it

 

[LaserSVT]

I was driving my 03 Cobra as a DD for a bit and was getting 19mpg mixed driving but half my trip to work is nice twisty back farm roads so its kinda hard not to make that wonderful whine happen exiting every corner

 

[Mustang5L5]

I daily drove an '03 GT for 5 years. I did 50 miles/day highway each day. WIth 3.27's i got 24-26MPG easily on 87 octane.

I traded it in for a infiniti with a V6 and now get 21 MPG running 93 octane. It sucks i spend more money to drive than I did with a V8 engine

 

[02LaserRed2V]

Should be no problem. Both my cars can be daily driven and the GT has been for a while, until last year.

 

[Zinc2000GT]

I used to drive my GT every day. No problems.

I could still daily drive my car if i had to and we're hoping to make almost 800rwhp when we go back for another tune.

I'm driving a Nissan Altima, though, to get back and forth to work and for trips when i don't want to put miles on the mustang.

 

[BurningRubber]

DD (except for a few down times, and other times I wanted to drive my Jeep) GT from 93k to 134k now... no problems at all with DD duty. 4.10's have been in since about 113k.

 

['13_ImpactBlue_GT]

I drive my 03 GT 60 miles roundtrip to work 5 days a week, no problems here.

 

[Gears & Crosses]

Thanks for all the replies guys. We drove an 04 last night and he liked it a lot. We are actually having trouble finding 03-04 non convertable GT 5speeds in our area. Auto Trader is showing 4 in a 75 mile search.

I have been looking hard at this site and I am not finding a whole lot of issues with these cars! This car seems to be great. What I am seeing is:

IAC
Throw out bearing
COP
some Trac loc, rear bearing issues
Alternator?

Talk to me about the T-45 or 3650 issues? The 04 he drove seemed a little notchy.

As always this is a great site, :SNSign:
Gears

 

[myponyrocks]

the only thing that you listed that is a common concern is the TR3650. Many of the cars were fixed, so most likely it won't be an issue. Test drive a car cold and you'll notice if it does the lock out or grind. If it feels notchy it could be an aftermarket shifter. It'll grind or not let you speed shift through all the gears... that's easiest way to see if it has the Tranny issue.

 

[Notchbck93]

I run about 42 round trip miles to the office and sometimes 140 if I have to travel to a job site. Car is great, bought it last year with 34K and one year later have happily turned 45K.

About the only thing that the car could use is a tighter limited slip, but that will be an easy rebuild.

She is coming up on the 5 year tune up, coolant flush, new motorcraft plugs, change tranny fluid -- throw a cooler at it.

I have seen a best of 26.66 all highway at 70mph in this old girl, no complaints here. I average realistic 22-25 in the summer. Winter varies, last week I checked it at 21.47 mpg but the week before was plenty of below zero degrees for a whopping 17 mpg.

 

[02nightmaregt]

I have DD'd mine since December 2004. I have done plenty of 700+ mile trips and i have no complaints. These are great cars.

 

[BurningRubber]

The T-45's are pretty issue free, the 3650's are hit and miss but myponyrocks described what you need to check for.

The only other thing on that list that is common is the IAC valve, and you can get away with just cleaning that out 75% of the time if it acts up.

 

[04DarkShadowGT]

Once upon a time I traded an 02 Sentra SpecV for my old 04 Mustang. It was a nice upgrade.


I approve this message.

 

[kramer03gt]

I have an 03 GT with 95K on it as my daily driver, Its been an awesome car, have not had any problems besides normal maintenance as it COP, fluid changes, plugs, etc. Has been a great car gets about 22-24 on the highway depending on weather and how fast im driving, actually drove it for a couple of winters as well, handles alright as long as you have a decent set of snow tires.

 

[Martini86]

I haven't read all the replies.....but here is my .02 cents. If your anywhere near a flake of snow, DONT DO IT. besides that, i drive mine as a dd 8 months out of the year, other 4 turn my car into a sled of destruction. thats when i pull out the a - b saturn. <----- we all know this. haha and if he is really into the car, look within 200mi, a good car is always worth traveling for.