Project Automatic Weapon Part III Suspension

Horse Sense: Replacing the stock suspension components with lighter-weight aftermarket pieces is a common modification to any Mustang. Be sure to pay attention to the design of the product and its application. A super-lightweight drag-racing piece might sound cool, but will it hold up to daily street pounding as well as high-speed corner carving?

Welcome to the third installment of our resident S197 project Mustang, dubbed Automatic Weapon because of its factory-installed five-speed automatic gear changer. In part one, we got used to the newest Mustang by experimenting with some simple bolt-on parts from Nitto, C&L, DiabloSport, and Sutton High Performance. In part two, we dropped a 3,000-stall TCI converter in front of our 5R55S transmission with favorable results. Throughout this, our base of operations has been the Mustang super shop of Paul's Automotive Engineering in Cincinnati. And, for our next round of modifications, we're going to put our guys at PAE to work.

From the start, we asked our readers for help in guiding us with this project car. Everyone loves seeing us push the stock automatic to the limit, and, surprisingly, most folks want to see how much power a Three-Valve 4.6 Ford will make without a power adder. So we yanked the stock engine and shipped it to Dan Millen's Livernois Motorsports for a big-bore, big-inch Three-Valve that will certainly push the '05 Mustang to impressive performance. We're not sure what to do about camshafts on this car because aftermarket companies are still sorting out the tune with the variable-cam-timing option on the Three-Valve engine. We'll keep you posted on what we come up with.

While the engine is getting the once-over, we decided that a complete suspension redo was in order regardless of what kind of power the car was going to make. We were looking to combine some solid street-oriented pieces with a good, solid drag-race suspension. AJE offered up a complete front-end suspension that was promised to not only get the weight off the nose of the car, but to also allow the suspension to hook much harder with quicker rear-weight transfer. BMR provided us with a slick, lightweight radiator support. And, while there are more "racy" pieces out there, such as ladder bars or four-link setups, nothing beats Steeda's track-proven suspension pieces on the S197 chassis. Steeda is also at the forefront of working with modified versions of the new Ford three-link suspension. And, as you'll see, we wanted to use suspension parts with urethane bushings to keep some sort of street ride in this thing.

Follow the pictures for a better idea of what the parts look like as they went on. As for why you would want to do these modifications, that will become clear when your Mustang enjoys decreased short-times at the track and a more surefooted feel on the street. Hopefully, we'll have the engine back in soon so we can enjoy the same.