Cars & Transportation Ford Mustang
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Stan_Darsh72
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Agreed its kinda defeating the purpose of the mustang if you have a 4 cylinder.
2.3L EcoBoost Turbo
But yeah, not my speed either
During the 1970's OPEC Oil Crisis, Ford only made Mustangs with either a 6 or 4 cylinder engine. (In fact, you couldn't get a V8 full stop and even Cadillacs only had 6cyl engines)
My '77 Mustang II only had a 4cyl.
To compensate I had shorter\stiffer springs fitted so I could corner faster and not have to lift off the gas pedal. Customer rims and T\A radials all round in the one size for extra grip.
I was looking at dropping in a small block 302 with Turbo when I moved out here but that would require a full engine and gearbox change including new motor mounts and some cut n shunt of the firewall to fit it in.
I miss her
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Have you looked up the S550 Mustang Owners Australia page on facebook yet?
They should have a Victoria Group as weel.
I've joined NSW and we had a group drive to the Hunter Valley (Wine Country) this past Sunday and had 62 beasts in a 3 hour drive, 71 at the Harrington's Irish Pub for lunch (a lazy 4.5Mil in Mustangs in the car park)
Got some great pics and videos if you are interested.
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I've got the Aus page, but haven't seen the Vic one. I'll have a search for it.
My mustang turned 1 yesterday. I'm getting her detailed on the weekend as a birthday present
Out of curiosity, how are you finding the car now (if you still have it)?
I'm starting to think about getting a new car sometime in the next 12 months or so. I'm currently driving a Nissan 370Z which I love dearly, but I am aware it's starting to get a bit long in the tooth. While the Mustang isn't a perfect replacement for the Z (the size and weight are a bit more than I'd like, for a start), it's probably the closest thing these days to what the 370Z was back then in terms of bang-for-buck. Since Nissan don't seem to be any kind of hurry to make a new Z, the Mustang seems about the best performance car around unless I stretch the budget up to $100k+ and start looking at an Audi RS3 or BMW M2. Both of which I'd love, but are probably a bit beyond my budget unless I win the lotto or something
Have you had any issues with the Mustang? I've seen a lot of stuff around online about the 2018- versions having "piston slap" problems, which is a bit off-putting. But it's hard to tell just how widespread it is - reading about it you'd think that they were all pieces of sh*t that need the engine replaced after less than 10,000kms, but the fact is that people tend to only speak up when things break. You don't see a lot of YouTube videos or forum posts from people saying everything's fine and they haven't had a single problem with their car because those people tend to just be happily going about their business instead of posting complaints online. I know they're selling a hell of a lot of Mustangs, so even an acceptably low percentage having problems could still translate into a significant number of complaints. But that would still be of limited comfort to me if I ended up being one of the people that got a dodgy one
I think part of my trepidation is that I've never had an American car before. I've driven Japanese cars for most of my adult life (the past 20-odd years, at least, I had a couple of Fords prior to that) and I've had so little trouble with them that I implicitly trust Japanese engineering and manufacturing at this point. The Americans haven't earned that trust with me.
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I love how my car looks, and drives, but it's in for repairs so often that I'm starting to feel like a Ford Focus driver (their loan car). Mine's had a heap of panel and other parts fit issues, and it currently has an engine issue that Ford's struggling to diagnose.Out of curiosity, how are you finding the car now (if you still have it)?
I'm starting to think about getting a new car sometime in the next 12 months or so. I'm currently driving a Nissan 370Z which I love dearly, but I am aware it's starting to get a bit long in the tooth. While the Mustang isn't a perfect replacement for the Z (the size and weight are a bit more than I'd like, for a start), it's probably the closest thing these days to what the 370Z was back then in terms of bang-for-buck. Since Nissan don't seem to be any kind of hurry to make a new Z, the Mustang seems about the best performance car around unless I stretch the budget up to $100k+ and start looking at an Audi RS3 or BMW M2. Both of which I'd love, but are probably a bit beyond my budget unless I win the lotto or something
Have you had any issues with the Mustang? I've seen a lot of stuff around online about the 2018- versions having "piston slap" problems, which is a bit off-putting. But it's hard to tell just how widespread it is - reading about it you'd think that they were all pieces of sh*t that need the engine replaced after less than 10,000kms, but the fact is that people tend to only speak up when things break. You don't see a lot of YouTube videos or forum posts from people saying everything's fine and they haven't had a single problem with their car because those people tend to just be happily going about their business instead of posting complaints online. I know they're selling a hell of a lot of Mustangs, so even an acceptably low percentage having problems could still translate into a significant number of complaints. But that would still be of limited comfort to me if I ended up being one of the people that got a dodgy one
I think part of my trepidation is that I've never had an American car before. I've driven Japanese cars for most of my adult life (the past 20-odd years, at least, I had a couple of Fords prior to that) and I've had so little trouble with them that I implicitly trust Japanese engineering and manufacturing at this point. The Americans haven't earned that trust with me.
As much as a Mustang's always been my dream car, if I had my time again I wouldn't buy it. The car was at the top of my price limit, and now I'm concerned it's going to die on me and I'm not going to be able to afford to fix it.
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Fix Or Repair Daily, eh?
3+ years and nearing 60000 kms on mine now
Originally had several issues with a/c (compressor was a known fault) but mechanically hasn’t missed a beat
Still love mine and starting to look at adding a vintage mustang next to her in the garage as well
Originally had several issues with a/c (compressor was a known fault) but mechanically hasn’t missed a beat
Still love mine and starting to look at adding a vintage mustang next to her in the garage as well
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Wow, that doesn't sound good
I guess when you got yours it was still on the old 3 year warranty, ie before they upped it to 5? I'll keep doing my research and try to get a feel for how many people are having problems. It certainly sounds disappointing, especially these days. The quality of new cars these days is generally pretty good - if you're building sh*t cars you're not going to survive in the market too long. You'd think a company like Ford would have been around long enough to have got beyond the point where panel fit should be a problem for them. But especially in that kind of price bracket, it's not really good enough. I'm not sure what you paid for yours but the newer ones have got pretty expensive - according to the website, a new Mustang GT sportback with the Magneride suspension (it what I'd be looking at getting) is about $73k. That's not a cheap car. If you buy a car in that price bracket and have had continual issues with it and have been unable to drive it due to it being off the road for repairs, I'd be investigating your options for a refund / replacement / compensation under the Australian Consumer Law. Although you'd probably need to get some legal advice / help, because from what I've read, car companies are generally ****s when you try to hold them to account in this way.I guess maybe I've been lucky with my 370Z - it hasn't been off the road a single day for anything other than scheduled servicing. Which is in keeping with my previous experience with Japanese cars - I had a Mazda 3 for 8 years prior to this, and that never gave me a single day of trouble (except one time when I got a warning light come up - had it towed to the dealer and it turns out they'd neglected to put the cap back on after changing the brake fluid during servicing the week before, so human error rather than a defect with the car). The worst issue I've had with the Z is that the carpet mats I got with it were kind of crappy so my right heel wore a hole right through and I had to buy new mats
I also don't do a lot of km's in it, though - I use public transport for my commute, which gets rid of a whole lot of just sh*t kms, and leaves me with mostly just the enjoyable kms The car will be 7 years old in December and I'm just about to hit 40,000km, so I don't NEED to rush into a new car. Problem is, Japan doesn't really make much in the way of sports / performance cars these days. Mazda MX5 and Toyobaru BR86 are nice enough but lacking a bit of grunt, WRX is ugly, GTR is way out of my price range, and the new Supra is just a rebadged BMW (not to mention lacking a manual transmission option), and if I'm paying that kind of money, I'd spend a little more get get the BMW M2 (which I can't afford). I'll probably bide my time for another year or so and see what happens - maybe Ford will iron out the issues with the Mustangs (although they seem to be selling in the kind of quantities where they probably don't care enough to fix its shortcomings because they're raking in the cash anyway), or maybe Nissan will pull a new Z out of somewhere.
Thanks for your reply, and Syd , too. Good to get different perspectives, even if 1 "it's bloody awesome!" and 1 "it's a goddamn disaster!" kind of cancel each other out and don't leave me much wiser overall
Wow, that doesn't sound good
I guess maybe I've been lucky with my 370Z - it hasn't been off the road a single day for anything other than scheduled servicing. Which is in keeping with my previous experience with Japanese cars - I had a Mazda 3 for 8 years prior to this, and that never gave me a single day of trouble (except one time when I got a warning light come up - had it towed to the dealer and it turns out they'd neglected to put the cap back on after changing the brake fluid during servicing the week before, so human error rather than a defect with the car). The worst issue I've had with the Z is that the carpet mats I got with it were kind of crappy so my right heel wore a hole right through and I had to buy new mats
Problem is, Japan doesn't really make much in the way of sports / performance cars these days. Mazda MX5 and Toyobaru BR86 are nice enough but lacking a bit of grunt, WRX is ugly, GTR is way out of my price range, and the new Supra is just a rebadged BMW (not to mention lacking a manual transmission option), and if I'm paying that kind of money, I'd spend a little more get get the BMW M2 (which I can't afford). I'll probably bide my time for another year or so and see what happens - maybe Ford will iron out the issues with the Mustangs (although they seem to be selling in the kind of quantities where they probably don't care enough to fix its shortcomings because they're raking in the cash anyway), or maybe Nissan will pull a new Z out of somewhere.
Thanks for your reply, and Syd , too. Good to get different perspectives, even if 1 "it's bloody awesome!" and 1 "it's a goddamn disaster!" kind of cancel each other out and don't leave me much wiser overall
2 original issue were a/c compressor and some batches of oil coolers failing resulting in cooked motors
I only know of 2 failed oil coolers Fromm 100+ Mustyowners
Maybe a dozen with the a/c fault
All repaired under warranty at no charge
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2.3L EcoBoost Turbo
But yeah, not my speed either
During the 1970's OPEC Oil Crisis, Ford only made Mustangs with either a 6 or 4 cylinder engine. (In fact, you couldn't get a V8 full stop and even Cadillacs only had 6cyl engines)
My '77 Mustang II only had a 4cyl.
To compensate I had shorter\stiffer springs fitted so I could corner faster and not have to lift off the gas pedal. Customer rims and T\A radials all round in the one size for extra grip.
I was looking at dropping in a small block 302 with Turbo when I moved out here but that would require a full engine and gearbox change including new motor mounts and some cut n shunt of the firewall to fit it in.
I miss her
wtf is that? Looks like a P76?
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Not to be that guy but I would strongly advise against anyone who wanted to purchase one of these second hand. These will drop in price substantially in several years.
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I've read / watched a lot of reports regarding the 2018 and later models (with the engine upgrade over the previous years) having issues with "piston slap" ie pistons knocking against the cylinder walls, producing the "bbq tick" or "typewriter" sound (ie a repetitive, non-rhythmic ticking sound). In some cases this has caused scoring to the inside of the cylinder wall where the piston scraped against it, and resulted in the engine needing to be replaced. That's the major issue I'm concerned about. Warranty coverage is great, but I'd rather not need to call upon it! Especially if it means the car being off the road for an extended period of time. If I don't trust a car, it kind of spoils my enjoyment of driving it even when it's running ok - I'm constantly on edge waiting for the next thing to fail
Like I said, I'll probably bide my time and keep gathering as much info as I can for another year or so. If nothing else comes along and I don't talk myself out of it in the meantime then I may well go ahead with it - there aren't really a lot of other options for a fun performance car in this kind of price bracket.
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Wouldn't the advice be to not buy a brand new one, then? The 2nd hand ones tend to have done the worst of their depreciation within a couple of years. In any case, I wouldn't buy one of these second hand just because I've seen how people like to thrash them
And I would want to have the full 5 year warranty from new to be comfortable with it, I think.Most cars will drop substantially in value over a few year, especially one as popular as this as there will be plenty of supply in the used car pipeline, especially as leases expire etc.
For me, though, resale value is the least of my worries when I buy a car. My main concerns are is it fun to drive and is it reliable? I tend to keep my cars for about 6-8 years, so I'm usually working on the assumption that the value at the end of that period is going to be pretty much zero anyway
I just make sure I treat them as well as I can, partly in order to maximise whatever value there might be when I get rid of it, but mostly just so that I continue to feel confident that it isn't going to sh*t itself on me and spoil my enjoyment of it. I don't regard it as an investment, so I'm not too concerned about losing money on it. It's more like going out for a meal. I can spend a lot of money on going out to a really nice restaurant and having an amazing meal that I'll remember and talk about for years, or we can go to Cafe Primo or some such joint and have something that's perfectly fine but kind of bland and generic and I'll forget about it by the following day, but at least it was cheap. The end result of both is the same - I don't starve to death, and a pile of sh*t comes out the other end. But I get a lot more enjoyment out of one than the other, and I value that more than the money I might have saved.
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Yeah, I muddled myself up there. I wouldn't buy without a warranty was what I was getting at. In terms of depreciation, I'd rather put that money I'm going to end up losing towards a better car that isn't going to have the steep cliff. Also, no new car should have reliability issues but it seems that this isn't the case with all vehicles at present. For whatever reason a recall is pretty normal at some point for a lot of cars on the market which is insane.Wouldn't the advice be to not buy a brand new one, then? The 2nd hand ones tend to have done the worst of their depreciation within a couple of years. In any case, I wouldn't buy one of these second hand just because I've seen how people like to thrash them
Most cars will drop substantially in value over a few year, especially one as popular as this as there will be plenty of supply in the used car pipeline, especially as leases expire etc.
For me, though, resale value is the least of my worries when I buy a car. My main concerns are is it fun to drive and is it reliable? I tend to keep my cars for about 6-8 years, so I'm usually working on the assumption that the value at the end of that period is going to be pretty much zero anyway
I don't regard it as an investment, so I'm not too concerned about losing money on it. It's more like going out for a meal. I can spend a lot of money on going out to a really nice restaurant and having an amazing meal that I'll remember and talk about for years, or we can go to Cafe Primo or some such joint and have something that's perfectly fine but kind of bland and generic and I'll forget about it by the following day, but at least it was cheap. The end result of both is the same - I don't starve to death, and a pile of sh*t comes out the other end. But I get a lot more enjoyment out of one than the other, and I value that more than the money I might have saved.
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I think part of it is just cars getting more complicated. More features, more technology, more complexity means more stuff that can go wrong. I wonder if the longer warranties offered these days also contribute to more recalls - if there's a known issue then manufacturers might prefer to get them in and fix them before they turn into more expensive problems down the line when they might still be liable for the repairs under the warranty.
Also some of the higher end "premium" European cars are no longer quite so premium. In chasing increased volume of sales, they've sacrificed quality in order to get prices down. Look at VW - used to be absolutely rock solid for reliability. These days... not so much. The fact that all the Japanese / Korean brands (and Ford, for that matter) now offer 5 or even 7 year warranties as standard across their entire range while your expensive BMWs, Audis etc are only offering 3 years on a much more expensive car suggests to me as a consumer that the Euro brands don't have as much confidence in the quality of their own product as the others. That's a pretty damning indictment when you consider the base price of those cars, let alone what they cost after you add "options" that are standard on most other brands. As I mentioned in my post above, if I had the money, I'd love something like a BMW M2. But getting one of those would probably cost something like $115-120k by the time you option it and get it on the road. An M4 (a closer match in terms of size, performance, etc) would be something like $170k+. You could buy 2 Mustangs for that price, with plenty of money leftover, and you'd get 5 year warranty compared to 3 on the BMW.
I've read / watched a lot of reports regarding the 2018 and later models (with the engine upgrade over the previous years) having issues with "piston slap" ie pistons knocking against the cylinder walls, producing the "bbq tick" or "typewriter" sound (ie a repetitive, non-rhythmic ticking sound). In some cases this has caused scoring to the inside of the cylinder wall where the piston scraped against it, and resulted in the engine needing to be replaced. That's the major issue I'm concerned about. Warranty coverage is great, but I'd rather not need to call upon it! Especially if it means the car being off the road for an extended period of time. If I don't trust a car, it kind of spoils my enjoyment of driving it even when it's running ok - I'm constantly on edge waiting for the next thing to fail
Like I said, I'll probably bide my time and keep gathering as much info as I can for another year or so. If nothing else comes along and I don't talk myself out of it in the meantime then I may well go ahead with it - there aren't really a lot of other options for a fun performance car in this kind of price bracket.
Lots of options for upgrades/enhancements to personalise your Stang
I’m looking at the reverse cowl bonnet, cold air intake (painted the match car colour, also engine covers) and strut
Then the exhaust upgrade
Last pic in yellow would be race red instead
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Interim body style, no V8s due to opec oil crisis
Only ran 74-78
Looks better in the Cobra pack
