My 03 GT aka Zicke

[N/Angel]

I tried to update my old incomplete project thread here from 2009 but unfortunately everything I updated got deleted and the thread closed.

So I'm starting this as a fresh project thread to let you be part of my 20 year relationship with my 03 GT, lovingly called "Zicke" because it cost a lot of sweat, blood, tears, fighting and money to get it to the point it is now. Thanks to this car I met the love of my life back in 2009 and we are now happily married.
It is the one car I will never sell no matter what happens.

Still until today, it is the first and only car I bought brand new, 4.6 260hp V8, manual trans, grey leather interior and even included the Mach1000 option. In beautiful Sonic blue. For a 23 year old the biggest dream come true after wanting a Mustang since I was a little girl (always preferred cars over dolls!).

Here are the first couple of pics taken after picking it up in April 2003.

 

[N/Angel]

2003-2004:

In the first two years all I cared about was making it look better. The stock power felt like more than enough for me at the time.
So I shopped through the Steeda website for lowering springs, front bumper, splitter, rear wing and decals. Added a set of genuine Ford Racing FR500 wheels.
Went to car shows and brought home trophies, the slightly modded American V8 stood out in the middle of the many European and Japanese cars.

Quickly noticed that the splitter was too low to drive on a daily basis so swapped it out for a 03-04 Cobra bumper.

And because of or thanks to a couple of car buddies, I took my first trip to the track in France.
I guess this was the moment that triggered the extreme modding I went through over all these years, lol!

 

[N/Angel]

2005-2006:

The two years that brought most trouble.
After loving the one track day, I bought the KW Variant 3 coilovers, threw more Steeda suspension parts at the car and upgraded the brakes to Bullitts with Hawk HP Plus pads. Changed the front once again for a Roush Stage 3 bumper and replaced the FR500 wheels with the Steeda Ultralite 2s. For a slightly better sound I installed a Ford Racing catback.
Added Corbeau seats and an Autopower rollbar. So far so good, car still looked decent and drove great.

Then I reached the point where I wanted more power, looking back, a very bad idea.
Ordered cams for the 2V and had them installed at a local shop here along with a Bullitt intake, car didn't run well, after re-checking, the valves had kissed the pistons. Failure 1 caused by a incompetent shop.

Contacted an engine builder in the US and ordered a 5.3 2V N/A longblock with ported heads, cams, high compression. Had it installed locally and then tuned by a US tuner visiting Germany, engine lasted about 950 miles before it blew up due to detonation. Failure 2 caused by an incompetent tuner.

Sometime in 2006, friends on a US military base helped me take the blown engine out and so she sat there, no longer looking great, no engine and lots of question marks in my head. But hey, at least I scored a nice set of wheels.

 

[LS WUT]

Pretty cool write up, and story behind it. Good read so far.

 

[N/Angel]

Rest of 2006 and 2007 was spent wasting money, ordered a MMR shortblock, arrived with a piece broken off. In the meantime I had the car towed back to my house in Switzerland, still no engine.

Because I didn't trust any engine builders at this point I figured what the heck, can't be that hard to assemble an engine, I'll just follow the various books about modular engine builds.
At the same time I decided on a 4V swap, spent months collecting wiring harnesses, pcm, stock 99 Cobra shortblock, FR500 heads, FR500 cams and FR500 intake. Longtube headers with matching midpipe.
Removed the dash to change the dash wiring harness, replaced the gauge cluster with a 99 Cobra cluster.
Installed a boat load of AEM gauges.
Next I removed the rear seats, all rear interior panels and the carpet and scratched off all of the tar mats in the interior. Got the next set of wheels, Wedsport SA-70.

At this point it was clear that his was going to be more of a wanna be racecar and no longer a normal streetcar.

Not many pictures taken during the time.

 

[N/Angel]

2008 - the year I tried to build an engine and install it myself in my driveway.
The assembly of the engine went surprisingly well, or at least so I thought.
Followed the various manuals step by step, everything made sense, the engine turned by hand.
Attached a Cobra T-56 6-speed transmission to the engine and went through a totally unsafe way of lifting the front end of the car up high enough to slide in engine and trans from below.

Unfortunately I lost all pics of my garage engine build and driveway install.

All connected with fluids filled the car would not start. It would crank but not fire, wiring harness getting hot.
Failure 3 - I had to admit I'm not a mechanic and messed this one up myself.

Trying to figure out what I did wrong, I dropped off the car at a shop close by, asking them to take the engine apart and diagnose the problem. They did take the engine apart but could not find anything wrong with it. Nothing locked up, no valve hit the pistons, nothing, motor turned freely once dissassembled.
I was again at the point of many question marks in my head, not knowing what to do next.

Car looked really bad at this point, completely taken apart, engine in pieces, just waiting for something to happen.

 

[N/Angel]

At this point in 2008 I was hopeless for my car until a friend in the German Mustang community recommended a shop in Germany that had worked on Mustangs before.
I called them and asked if they could get my car back together and the answer was sure, just drop it off when you can. And so I did.
It was a life changing moment, for the car and for me. 2009 was finally going to be a good year.

 

[01yellercobra]

If that 5.3 is the one I think it is the crank and rods are sitting in a shortblock in a garage waiting to get used again.

I give you major props for sticking with it.

 

[N/Angel]

Yes, those should be the parts if I remember correctly. Pistons were destroyed but crank and rods were fine.

 

[N/Angel]

2009 - 2010

The car was finally in a place where first, they had modded many Mustangs before and second, they understood what I wanted to build. They understood the craving for more power. They understood my craziness for this car and modding it.
With they I mean the shop owner. It just clicked between us. We were both married at this time and decided to change our lifes around to start a new one together. Now 14 years later, we have been married for 5 years and still enjoy the passion about modding cars together, having grown our collection of cars to a total of 10 of which 7 are Mustangs.
But enough of the romance and back to the car.

Because the car was in pieces it was the best time to extend the rollbar into a rollcage. It was never going to be a competition racecar so it was not built to fit in any rules. With the rollcage finished the whole interior was painted sonic blue.

This was about the moment my original project thread was started.
I admit, I had trouble deciding on what engine setup to go with and changed my mind multiple times driving everyone crazy. Also had collected so many parts over the time giving me too many options, lol!

Because I loved the 03-04 Cobras but could only afford a GT I decided to go with a Terminator setup.
We built a stroker shortblock for boost and added a bunch of goodies to the Eaton.

The interior was completed with a set of Corbeau Microsuede seats and Sparco harnesses. AEM gauges replaced with Speedhut.

 

[SsnakeSVT03]

Nice build

 

[N/Angel]

2011

took a while to get it built that far but early 2011 she was finally ready to start up. And guess what, this stupid car cranked but didn't fire up. Wiring getting hot. I was shocked but I was the only one.
The guys took 5 minutes to check the starter and declared it dead.
New starter ordered and installed and she fired right up! Ever since I wonder if my self built engine would have run if I had changed the starter.

With the car now running she got a decent wrap and looked wonderful to me.

The rest of the year was spent finally enjoying the car again, just driving it wherever I would go.

 

[Lambeau]

Oh jeez, now I remember you and this car. Such a cool story!
Way to go. Sooo glad you restarted/recreated this thread.

 

[N/Angel]

2012 - 2013

Of course I couldn't just leave the car alone and constantly searched for new parts.
Scored an IRS setup that we installed everything Full Tilt Boogie Racing offers on it along with a Torsen T2R and 3.73 gears.
Also added the Agent47 rear quarter window ducts, no functionality yet but they looked cool.

Took my first two laps on the Nordschleife and killed the Torsen, replaced it with a TrueTrac.
Other than that, the IRS swap was worth every penny, made the car so much better to drive.

Couple of pics with a real Eleanor that was at the shop and Nürburgring and car shows:

 

[N/Angel]

2014

The year I changed my mind again.
I did love the supercharger setup but somehow a cool N/A setup was always somewhere in the back of my mind, just waiting to come out. It was what made me choose my nickname back a couple of years when I joined the forum world.
So I ordered "another" big bore stroker shortblock with stage 2 N/A cams. Sold all of the Eaton stuff.

Can't find any pics anymore of the engine setup, wish there was a way to read old hard disks that were removed from computers. I had so many pics of all the different stages of the car that are all gone.

2014 was also the year I derailled with my taste in decals, still sharing some pics of the now N/A car with a wonderful hotrod sound and with the weight of the supercharger removed on the nose, it didn't feel any slower.

 

[N/Angel]

2015 - 2016

these two years were spent just enjoying the car whenever I could.
Only mods was a Cobra R wing with huge sideflaps, Cobra R front calipers, new Schroth Racing harnesses, Carbon Driven interior parts and a whole lot of Stack gauges.
It was also the last time I managed to pass Swiss inspection (without the rear wing).

 

[03cobra#694]

Neat thread. Looking forward to updates.

 

[Blkkbgt]

Took my first two laps on the Nordschleife and killed the Torsen, replaced it with a TrueTrac.
Other than that, the IRS swap was worth every penny, made the car so much better to drive.

Nice thread. Gives me some motivation to keep going with my build that's gone on way to long.

I am curious as to how you killed the Torsen?

I've only heard of something like that launching hard at the strip.

How has the TrueTrack held up in comparison?

 

[Roots-type]

Cool thread, cool car. Looking forward to the rest of the story.

 

[N/Angel]

Nice thread. Gives me some motivation to keep going with my build that's gone on way to long.

I am curious as to how you killed the Torsen?

I've only heard of something like that launching hard at the strip.

How has the TrueTrack held up in comparison?

the Torsen overheated, I had no cooling at the time.
The TrueTrack has held up for a long time, but I also added cooling ducts to keep it cooler a while back.