Question on what is needed to harden the rearend

Could someone give me a breakdown of exactly what is needed (which parts, and what they do to help) to harden my '00 GTs rear end to handle a good 600 HP at the wheels?

I would appreciate it.

Kilgore Trout said:

The stock engine internals are only good for 400hp so it makes no sense to harden the rear to handle 600 before you upgrade the engine.

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Congratulations!!!

You have an excellent grasp of the obvious.

The thing is, I know what is needed to mod the engine to handle it. I do not know what is needed to get the rear end up to snuff.

Thanks for taking the time to make such a useful post.

bdcardinal said:

are you planning on drag racing or road racing? the setup of the diff is gonna be a little different depending on what you want.

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I would run the car with the full power I could get from it during drag strip outings, but I would want to be able to tone it down a good bit with a pulley swap, wheel/tire swap, and a switch of the active tune in an aftermarket chip. Certainly no locker diffs need apply. The car would hopefully not give away excessive clues as to the extent of the modifications to any one at 10-15 feet away while it is parked or operating, when they are not really looking for them, when it is in its "toned down" setup. It would not really matter if it took several hours to switch from one to the other, but I would not want to need a shop's facilities to accomplish it (just the tire/wheel swap, pulley swap, and alternate program selection - if I could get just that to work.)

I am not interested in road course racing, just all the straight line speed available, with out giving up the ability to swap the bolt ons I mentioned (and any others that would need to be changed that I am not aware of now), in order assume the apperance, and as much of the road manners as I could be allowed to get away with, of a GT with some appearence (17" wheels/315 tires, front bumper, hood, others) and exhaust mods. The point would be to avoid much of the attention of the uninitiated. Enthusiasts should realize roughly what is hanging out under the hood (and wonder whether other wise mods went in with it) if they get a good look at the outside, but "Joe Blow" should be completely clueless about my "rather loud, obnoxious looking Mustang", given a look or a listen from that 10-15 feet away I mentioned earlier.

That is the idea. The current mission is to asses the cost of making the idea into a project with the ensuing timeline dependant on the ultimate cost. If the ultimate cost gets to be too high to do it right, the idea will turn into a fantasy, instead of a project. The concept really appeals to me, however. My (completely) uninformed guess, is that I could pull this off for under $20,000 all told (sans the appearance mods, they will be done regardless).

So you are all a bit more informed as to my reason for asking the question. Does this help you in offering any other advice?