1st Mustang looking for tips

If you drive mainly highway or above 50mph and are still concerned with gas mileage, I would not do gears. They are good for round town, stop and go driving on the street. They will hurt your gas mileage, especially a 90 mile commute. You can get a GT rear fascia, or cut the bumper, and get some take offs from OEM Parts & OEM Wheels - Original Equipment Parts from NewTakeOff or another brand, flowmaster, magnaflow, whoever. Do a search too. There's lots of stuff on this. Don't know if you'll ever need bigger brakes. Wheels are personal choice, lots of stuff found with search button. For CAI and tunes check out steeda and vmptuning.com.

welcome! get a CAI that requires a tune. yes, buying a tuner also increases the price, but it is the #1 BEST MOD you can do to your S197. like said above, wheels are a personal choice. for the brakes, the cheap solution (and most cost effective, IMO for a near stock vehicle would be to upgrade he brake pads and gfet some stainless steel lines. you can get the lines from HotPart Suspension Products, i did

as far as fuel economy, i would skip the gears as well. you would want to keep to a numerically lower gear ratio and the installation cost and performance gain would not make it beneficial IMO. i have 4.30s and do not have a problem with losing top end. you cant go that fast on the road anyway, so why worry about it. i do not do much hwy driving, so i cannot comment on hwy mileage numbers

ford racing makes a dual exhaust kit for the V6, and newtakeoff.com has a conversion kit as well. i am not familiar with exhaust for the V6, so i dont know if you are required to cut the rear bumper for installation of these kits or not. you can always get a GT bumper if you dont want to cut the bumper.

Check out VMP Tuning. Justin sells packages for V6s that include a GT muffler (which will gain power), a "cheap" alternative for a cold air intake, and a custom tuned Xcal3. Of course you can buy the package with a C&L but it's more expensive. Here's a link for you to both packages. I think this is the best way you can go with your new Mustang.

VMP Tuning - Buy Ford SCT & GM Custom Handheld Flash Tuners Performance Economy Towing: 05-08 Mustang V6 Custom X-Cal2 or X3, VMP Intake, GT Muffler +25 RWHP

VMP Tuning - Buy Ford SCT & GM Custom Handheld Flash Tuners Performance Economy Towing: 05-08 Mustang V6 Custom SCT X-Cal2 or X3 Flasher and C&L Intake

Any cai that doesn't require a tune isn't worth it. A cai and tune is the biggest bang for your buck mod you can do. It's going to be like a whole new car. Throttle body spacers are paper weights. Do not spend your hard earned money on one.

Get a GT muffler, it adds 10 rwhp. VMP Tuning sells them, too. I put them on my girlfriend's car and they sound awesome. $100 for two. Just put the passenger side muffler on until you want to dual it out and than you can buy the factory piping and hangers. Without a supercharger or turbo, adding dual exhaust won't add anymore power than doing just a GT muffler.

If it was my car I'd get a C&L cai with a Xcal3 tuned by VMP Tuning and than a GT muffler. It'd add a good amount of power. Definitely the best bang for your buck.

OK, I have a six and personally The magnaflow exhaust will give you 17 hp gain(Thats the rating) and is still a single to dual exit exhaust. The cai is only rated at 5-7 hp gain which imo is not worth 5 bills. I do have a sct2 tune and that did make a diff in the lag in the throttle.