Dino's 2006 Ford Mustang GT

On Saturday 26th October 2013, I handed over a mere $10,600 in a private sale and finally owned my dream car, a 2006 Ford Mustang GT coupe. The combination of retro fastback styling, torch red paintwork, black Le Mans Shelby racing stripes, chrome Shelby GT Bullitt-style 18" wheels, and racy black interior looked amazing and was too good to resist! It also had the manual transmission I'd always wanted in a Mustang. This well-maintained, strong-running US-spec muscle car had just 61,200 miles recorded on the odometer by two previous owners. I'd sold my Modified 1995 Ford Mustang GT and my Wheeler Dealer Project 1995 Ford Mustang GT (both had automatic transmissions) earlier in the same month for a combined total of $6,000 to help fund the purchase.

The previous owner had installed a pair of Fox axle-back exhausts that produced a terrible drone from 1500-2500rpm so to save my eardrums, I had them replaced by a pair of good used takeoff OEM axle-backs from an A/T 2007-2009 GT (F1-7991-L & F1-7991-R) which I'd found for $136. The 3" rolled tip chrome tailpipes don't add any horsepower but they do improve the appearance of this already fine-looking ass and play a great V8 muscle car soundtrack! By selling the Fox axle-backs on to another 2006 Mustang GT owner for $123, I recouped most of the cost of swapping them.

The 2006 GT comes with a 4.6L all-aluminum three-valve-per-cylinder SOHC engine that was the first production Ford V8 to receive a variable camshaft timing system. Rated outputs of the early 2005 model were 300hp @ 5750rpm & 320lbft @ 4500rpm at the crank. However, Ford removed the restrictive hydrocarbon trap from the air intake tract and tweaked the ECU tune to correct an overly rich condition above 5100rpm in models built from April 2005 onwards. Despite a 6.5rwhp & 4.4rwtq gain, Ford's rated HP/TQ outputs remained unchanged.
Chassis dyno tests of a 2006-2009 GT with a Tremec 3650 5-speed manual transmission show that it actually puts down an average of 271hp & 289lbft at the rear wheels. Factoring in drivetrain losses of 13% at maximum HP & 12% at maximum TQ, that's 311hp (67.5hp/liter) & 328lbft (71.4lbft/liter) at the crank. Despite these respectable outputs, the 2006 GT still leaves a lot of power under the table and it responds very well to aftermarket bolt-on performance upgrades.
The engine bay was covered with a layer of honest dust when I bought the car so I was happy that the previous owner hadn't steam cleaned it to hide any oil/coolant leaks. Naturally I wasn't going to leave it that way as you'll find out on the next page.

My 2006 GT came in Deluxe trim with an all-black dashboard, black door panels, black carpets, charcoal cloth seats, a 4-gauge instrument cluster, and a black plastic steering wheel. The interior was in excellent condition but was rather sombre-looking with only chrome gauge and vent bezels adding a little bling, leaving me with the perfect blank canvas to upgrade.