2003 Mustang GT Questions: Shocks, cold air intake, radio

So I'm looking at shocks. It's been suggested to get the yellow koni's but that's just out of budget. The orange look to be a bit better in price but honestly, I kind of had three goals with what money I had. I wanted to do a cold air intake and I read a lot and although really cheap in price, it seemed to give better performance than the $200 one. http://www.americanmuscle.com/mugtv8pocoai.html

My other thing is... I have a stock radio. It's the Mach one and it stinks. The wrecked Mustang had a Kenwood in it and I loved it. I don't know what else was done to it like speakers ect. But I just don't what issues I might run into with tearing that apart.

My budget is about $750 at the moment. That might increase by about $250 more. So something might have to wait. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

If you can wait 2 weeks, you can buy my used Eibach Pro Street coilover kit for less than either shocks, thus solving your dilemma.

Also, the only CAI worth buying has a heat shield.

Radio - easy, call Crutchfield.

What kind of price will you have on those, Javelin and where from?

Thinking like $500 shipped? You will have to replace the front struts, as the LF is bent, but the rears and the coil over parts are all fine. It's a $1500 kit new. Eibach Pro Street system.

I had a 2001 GT. My advice: Forget the CAI, get an X pipe/cats, Steeda pullies and timing adjuster, if the 2003's still can use a TA.

I went from 14.3 1/4 mile to 13.89 with those changes.

Sounds like the intent is to keep this Street class legal in auto x?

I love the Koni yellows on my Cramit, but they are definitely pricey (especially now that I think their 25% off sale is done for the year.) At the same time, it's almost always cheaper to just buy the good part the first time than it is to go cheap only to upgrade later, even if that comes at the expense of doing more mods in the short term. Perhaps keep your eyes open for a used set, if you're not going the route of Javelin's coilovers?

Crutchfield is truly the easy button for the stereo. Tear down/install is easy, and with the install kits they include with most head units you get any necessary trim as well as a plug to solder on the headunit to match the chassis side plug. Makes it easily reversible back to stock. The Kenwood in my Jeep (and my E36 prior to that) sounds quite good to my ears and I think ran me around $100 from Crutchfield.

If the car is an automatic, and you want the CAI for performance and not just the noise, you would be better off installing a set of gears with a tune...I had a '99 GT auto and I swapped in 4.10s (should have gone with 4.30s) and did a canned 87 octane SCT tune and the performance improvement off the line was VERY noticeable.

I've bought the radio and all the things I need to install it (I hope) from Crutchfield. I bought the cowling from Rockauto. I'm still looking at shock stuff and CAI's and welcome any more feedback on those. Hubby brought up that I'm going to lose comfort with switching the shocks out which is one of those things I guess I didn't consider. I was able to go middle of the road with the tires and was really happy with that decision.

I had the Roush suspension kit on my 2003 GT, that setup rode nicely and handled well. It used Bilstein shocks (revalved to Roush specs), so I would consider them as an option. On the CAI, I would skip it. I just took the rubber snorkel off the air box, gets plenty of air that way. Stock filter is plenty big.

Turns out my coilovers won't be for sale anyways, sorry!

If you want comfort with a little bit more sporting pretensions, I really like the Koni STR.T shocks (on special at GRM advertiser Tire Rack right now!). They ride really nice with just a touch more firmness and really control the body better than OE shocks. Also, I would look at doing F&R sway bars (the Eibach's on mine are like all of $300 for the pair) as another way to help handling without killing the ride.

On CAI, I still say BBK or bust.