Justin@VMP
August 3rd, 2008, 09:50 PM
Alex brought his car to me over 2 years ago, but I never posted the results. I did quite a bit of testing and tuning on it. The car was mostly stock with only a CAI, dual exhaust, and 3.73 gears. He also had nitrous on the car.
For all intents and purposes the 3.8L and 3.9L are the same engines. Ford only switched to the 3.9L in late 04 due to a marketing snafu. The 01-04 V6 Mustangs all have IMRCs, intake manifold runner controls, these help low end torque and emissions. You can see the slight dip in the graph around 3000RPM when they open. On highly modified cars I recommend removing them to increase airflow and reduce the potential for problems. High mileage can result in junk buildup in the runners that hinder the opening and closeing of them, and boost from a supercharger or turbocharger can also cause problems with them opening or closing.
The 01-04 V6 Mustangs seem to dyno a little better than the older cars. Though they are only rated 3HP higher (193HP vs 190Hp for the 99-00s) they seem to put out some nice RWHP numbers with only a few mods. All 99-04 V6 Mustang use the split port heads and intakes, which flow much better than the old single port heads found on 94-98 V6 Mustangs, this change in the heads gave the V6 a ton of performance potential.
Stock this car pulled 178RWHP, but was very lean below 2000RPM. With an 87 Octane custom tune it picked up greatly, with a gain of 7RWHP and 5RWTQ from just some air/fuel and slight spark adjustments, this is really good for only 87 octane. With a 93 octane calibration it was up 11RWHP and 9RWTQ, very respectable gains for a mostly stock V6 engine. The big difference that you will feel on the street are the gains under the curve, you can see it pretty much picked up power throughout the RPM range, and you will find similar gains at part throttle too.
http://www.vmptuning.com/dynographs/alex04v6.jpg
With a 75 shot of nitrous:
http://www.vmptuning.com/dynographs/alex04v6nitrous.jpg
For all intents and purposes the 3.8L and 3.9L are the same engines. Ford only switched to the 3.9L in late 04 due to a marketing snafu. The 01-04 V6 Mustangs all have IMRCs, intake manifold runner controls, these help low end torque and emissions. You can see the slight dip in the graph around 3000RPM when they open. On highly modified cars I recommend removing them to increase airflow and reduce the potential for problems. High mileage can result in junk buildup in the runners that hinder the opening and closeing of them, and boost from a supercharger or turbocharger can also cause problems with them opening or closing.
The 01-04 V6 Mustangs seem to dyno a little better than the older cars. Though they are only rated 3HP higher (193HP vs 190Hp for the 99-00s) they seem to put out some nice RWHP numbers with only a few mods. All 99-04 V6 Mustang use the split port heads and intakes, which flow much better than the old single port heads found on 94-98 V6 Mustangs, this change in the heads gave the V6 a ton of performance potential.
Stock this car pulled 178RWHP, but was very lean below 2000RPM. With an 87 Octane custom tune it picked up greatly, with a gain of 7RWHP and 5RWTQ from just some air/fuel and slight spark adjustments, this is really good for only 87 octane. With a 93 octane calibration it was up 11RWHP and 9RWTQ, very respectable gains for a mostly stock V6 engine. The big difference that you will feel on the street are the gains under the curve, you can see it pretty much picked up power throughout the RPM range, and you will find similar gains at part throttle too.
http://www.vmptuning.com/dynographs/alex04v6.jpg
With a 75 shot of nitrous:
http://www.vmptuning.com/dynographs/alex04v6nitrous.jpg