2500.00 to spend. WWYD?

[Green 94 5.0]

Thanx for your time fellas. I personally know the stock motor was used for ALOT of hwy. miles to from Mass. to Fl. The second owner babied it without stomping on it. I have maintained it with synthetics throughout (cuz' of mileage) and drive it as a second car.
So I was kinda thinkin h/c/i/ myself. I , honestly have never had that done before on my prev. stangs. For those of you who have, is it worth it? Are you happy with the acceleration?
Im thinking I could get a used intake (how do those go bad?) to save some flow, and spend it on better heads.
How does a used performer intake, cnc t.w. heads, trick flow cam and edge converter sound? Is that a good combo?
Thanx again for putting up with my questions. I just want to do this right.

with your mileage, a power adder whether it be a blower or nitrous is definitely something i would not recommend. even if the motor has been maintained well, the compression has to be down a decent amount across all the cylinders. a power adder would just accelerate the wear on parts that are already worn. as far as the h/c/i goes, my setup was very mild. i had a gt40 tubular intake with a ported lower, a tfs stage 1 cam, and a set of gt40x aluminum heads with valve and spring upgrades, and 1.6 rockers. with a 70mm throttle body, 77mm MAF, full exhaust mods, 24lb injectors, and a tweecer tune, my car made just shy of 300hp and 300lb/ft to the wheels. it was a huge improvement in performance, and the car made power up to 6000 rpm's instead of coming on strong down low and running out of steam at 4k on the tach. that is definitely the way i would go if i was in your shoes. if you are going to do the work yourself, it can easily be done for $2500 with all the supporting mods. good luck with it.

 

[95snoozer]

thats why before i edited my post i suggested a 97-01 explorer shortblock.

you can find them pulled out or get a reman one.

upgrade springs and run a well matched cam.

I woudl do that and the stall and see where you are when the dust clears. too many poeple try to get things and put a setup together without finishing a combo.

a well matched budget combo will far out perform an unfinished poorly tuned combo with the most expensive parts.

look on www.socalhorsepower.com in the pushrod section and look through the pages of the gt40P thread (about 16-20+)

most of the well thoughtout combos made 290-310 rwhp