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?
We're going to work over the dirty side or our project Automatic Weapon. It gets a complete racing suspension from AJE and Steeda, with a trip to the scales to see how much weight we can shave.
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.
AJE K-member: For the last decade, Anthony Jones Engineering has offered the Mustang world the absolute top shelf in front-end components. Anthony is a lifelong drag racer who offers you maximum strength with the least amount of weight in his A-arms, K-members, and coilover front strut suspensions. Here, one of the AJE K-members is ready for installation. | 
AJE strut and A-arm: Here's a look at the AJE A-arm and front strut. Anthony also makes A-arms that are adjustable for length-something we had to go to once we trial fit our Bogart rims just to tuck the tire completely under the fenders. | 
Joe Martina, the PAE technician assigned to this project, is shown here stripping the front rotor/hub from the stock strut. Remember to remove the stock ABS sensor before this point. The stock dust shield will fit the AJE strut, but we chose to leave it off. |
The AJE strut gets the stock hub installed. | 
This is a comparison of stock strut (top) to the completed AJE strut. Both are of a coilover configuration, but the AJE is designed for competition use and adjustable for ride height. We should also point out that there is no sway-bar mount on the AJE piece, although he'll make one if you want to retain your stock or aftermarket front sway bar. | 
Here's a sweet little piece we got from BMR. It's a lightweight replacement for the stock radiator support. As you can see, it drops a bunch of weight off the front of the car. It was worth a quick 25-pound reduction in frontal weight. |