Take your stock motor. Buy a ptk set up like JR did. Get the essential fuel items and have fun. I don't see you spending anymore than 5K to get the thing back on the road making 500hp. You could turn up the wick and make 500rwhp if you wanted but then your playing with fire on the stock block. The stock cam is great for a turbo set up, the heads and intake are a bottleneck but you can still make that kinda power on a stock set up. Just go to Turbomustangs.com and see the results. But if you have the money to do heads or atleast an intake. I would do it. Good luck and don't let these guys tell you its gonna take atleast 10K to do it, cause it won't.
Take your stock motor. Buy a ptk set up like JR did. Get the essential fuel items and have fun. I don't see you spending anymore than 5K to get the thing back on the road making 500hp. You could turn up the wick and make 500rwhp if you wanted but then your playing with fire on the stock block. The stock cam is great for a turbo set up, the heads and intake are a bottleneck but you can still make that kinda power on a stock set up. Just go to Turbomustangs.com and see the results. But if you have the money to do heads or atleast an intake. I would do it. Good luck and don't let these guys tell you its gonna take atleast 10K to do it, cause it won't.
I think you missed the point. Dump $10K into a '95 GT, and the car will be worth very little more than when it was stock -- maybe even less, unless you can find someone who wants those mods. Sell the parts when you're done, you'll get less than half what you paid for sure, probably much less than that, and you have to do all the de-mod labor.
Where the Cobra becomes economical is that all of the mods you would do to a '95 to make it a nice car -- powerful motor, strong transmission, nice comfy interior, good suspension -- this is all included from the factory on the Cobra, and thus it is automatically figured into the value of the car.
Fact is, the only reason to dump this kind of money into the 5.0 is if you want the 5.0 because of the motor. If you have nothing against the newer body style and the modular motor, it's a better overall choice to get 500+ horsepower.
Plus, after that much money spent on newer/updated motor and drivetrain you'll be able to blow away most cobras out there
Raced many Cobras have ya? The track I go to is completely unprepped, and one of the slowest tracks around (check out my GT times if you want to see just how bad ). And yet, even on street tires I ran 12.28@117.9 in my Cobra. There are all of sixteen cars on the 94/95 quarter mile list that trap higher than that ... and my only mod is the pulley and a K&N filter.
My point is not to start a pissing match, it's just to point out that there are a lot of options out there, and for the original poster who stated that he was very interested in a reliable 500 horsepower, he should really consider whether the '95 is the best platform for that. If all you want is a quick N/A car, it's hard to beat a 5.0. At higher power numbers it starts getting real expensive though.
And my point is not everybody can afford to go out and pay $25-$30k on a cobra, but they can afford $5-$10k.
And yes, I have raced cobra's at the track. I've owned my '95 since Oct '94, it has 54k on the odometer, and put out mid 400hp to the rear wheels with stock heads and cam and S-trim and stock tranny for a couple years (and still have a/c, 2 12" subs/amp, etc). I've since upgraded to a TKO-600 for good measure and some aluminum heads and a cam. Spent about $2k for all the tranny swap components, $900 for the heads, $150 for the cam and the Vortech originally ran me $2k.
So for about a $5k outlay I don't fear Cobras at the track or on the street.
Now I'm not saying that the cobras suck. I'd love to own one, but I can't afford that kinda payment right now (I also have an '02 GT and a '93 Crown Vic) and there are a lot of people out there with older GTs that can't afford a new cobra either, but could managed $5k