{"id":140,"date":"2014-01-01T16:26:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T22:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/?p=140"},"modified":"2016-03-12T16:37:55","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T22:37:55","slug":"140","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"Modding the Shelby: A never ending tale!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modding the Shelby: A never ending tale!<\/span><\/h1>\n

If you are a newcomer to my Blog, the story behind my Shelby, “SoScary”, starts here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are reading this and are not big into cars, let me preface\u00a0this by stating that unmodified Mustangs are quite a rare breed. Sure there are soccer moms who are not into the Mustang scene and use them just for driving to work, the grocery store and schools, but then there is the rest of us – thousands of Mustang owners who\u00a0live and breath the breed every day! Making your Mustang your own is the name of the game. Some go strictly for performance mods, some focus more on looks, there are many\u00a0that mod their engines, suspension and tires just for the track or drag strip\u00a0but for most of us it’s a bit of all of that – usually tempered by budgets or time constraints– or\u00a0to avoid voiding the warranty!<\/span><\/p>\n

The first big mod I did in early 2013 was to replace the rear exhaust mufflers (called axle-backs) with sportier ones that sounded more like a muscle-car should. To be sure, the stock OEM ones sounded good, but that was Ford’s sound bite for the general public. I wanted something much racier – and worthy of the Supercharged 662HP monster up front. Choosing which ones to go with is a very personal taste and I read a lot, listened a lot and eventually decided on Borla ATAKs. These\u00a0are their most “aggressive” model and boy do they sound good!\u00a0It was important to me that they did not sound obnoxious and did not “drone” in the cabin – which they don’t.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"DSC04534-002\"<\/a>

My new Borla ATAK axle-backs – before they went on the car<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The Borlas let me sneak reasonably quietly out of your neighborhood in the early hours of the morning, but the minute I hit the gas, they get really aggressive and heads do turn! They are made 100% from stainless steel with rolled chrome tips and have a lifetime warranty.<\/span><\/p>\n

After I upgraded to the Borlas, I then focused on appearance mods (more\u00a0on those later)\u00a0but in the fall of 2014, I got word that MGW who make the best shifter in the world had just released a Generation II version of their famous shifter for the 2013\/14 Shelby GT500. The stock shifter on the Shelby is pretty\u00a0good but one of my fellow Shelby friends had one of the original first generation MGW shifters installed and it felt great. It had a nice short throw and was so precise, so it quickly went on my Wish List. As soon as a new Gen II version was released, it\u00a0was the only trigger I needed. I got the shifter installed in March of 2015 and it is a precision piece of engineering. I chose\u00a0to install\u00a0the race track specification rubber bushings – they are a bit tighter than the standard road one but they will tolerate the fastest possible shifting of the gears through the box without a single hiccup or false shift.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"IMG_5123\"<\/a>

The MGW Gen II Shifter and my new Shelby shift knob.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The precision engineering behind this shifter is awesome!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"MGW\"<\/a>

MGWs Gen II Shifter for the 2013\/14 Shelby GT500 – beautifully engineered!<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The next mod\u00a0I did was to add a\u00a0three Auto Meter Elite gauges in the driver-side A\u00a0pillar using a tri-gauge pod\u00a0from Lethal Performance. The Auto Meter Elite\u00a0gauges are impressive and look really slick! I chose them because they have programmable colored LED lighting. You can set the LED default color then have it change when a user-defined low or high value is reached. So for the Vac-Boost gauge for example, the gauge is displays dark blue in normal more but switches to red as soon as the car goes into boost at\u00a0or above\u00a0zero psi. You can also set high and low warning thresholds and the gauge will flash if the value reaches that number.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the three gauges I chose Vacuum\/Boost, Wideband Fuel (Air\/Fuel ratio) and Fuel Pressure – the latter two are essential when doing very high-performance tuning on the car as a lean engine or insufficient fuel pressure can cause pre-detonation which can cause serious damage and loss of performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Auto<\/a>

Auto Meter Elite Boost Gauge<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\"Auto<\/a>

Auto Meter Wideband Air\/Fuel Gauge<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\"Auto<\/a>

Auto Meter Fuel Pressure Gauge<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Next Post: Gold Striping, engine bay upgrades and more!<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modding the Shelby: A never ending tale! If you are a newcomer to my Blog, the story behind my Shelby, “SoScary”, starts here. If you are reading this and are not big into cars, let me preface this by stating that unmodified Mustangs are quite a rare breed. Sure there are soccer moms who are not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modding-the-shelby-a-never-ending-tale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylor-duncan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}