Hey Cree, welcome to the boards. I believe I was the guy that you emailed about my car on my homepage (kbc8090).
Lets see if I can get the most general parts out here
Exhaust: The 2 main exhaust companies that make dual exhausts are Borla and YoDude. I am sure you have heard of borla so I wont go there, Yodude is a custom made 2.5" mandrel bent aluminumized steel piping and the choice of a magnaflow, dynomax, or flowmaster muffler, he offers SS systems and a single system also. The yodude website is
YoDudePerformance.com.
Intake: Weapon-R, Injen, KKM, CTA Motorsports, BAT all make intakes for our cars. The most popular seem to be Injen and KKM. The Inejn and the Weapon-R both replace the stock "accordian" tube with their own smooth tube. The CTA, KKM, and BAT intakes just replace the stock airbox and maf adapter.
Headers: The main producer of headers for our cars is MSDS, they are pretty well known and these are pretty much give the most power on our cars, they cost around $600 though. Another effective header mod is PuckPuck's "mystery mod" which is just basically gutting the pre-cats, which costs around $10 and it is like a poor mans headers. Effectiveness of this mod is not determined but there is definitly a gain. I think a company named SHM makes headers also, I am not sure though
SVT stuff: Our car is sister with the Contour, same engine and platform. As you know they made a high output 2.5L Duratec engine for the contour that put out 198hp. A few people have swapped out the Upper Intake Manifold and Throttle Body with the one from the SVT Contour and have seen gains and better throttle response. Car's built before some point in 1999 require the SVT lower intake manifold to match the upper, but the newer cougars only need the upper and the TB and some essentials like gaskets and cables and such.
Chips: Lets see.. Superchips, Diablo, JET, and PAC all make chips for our cars. One of the guys on here did a conclusive test on chips and found the PAC chip to be the best, it is not listed on their website you need to call them and send your ECU to them to get your car to recognize their chip and they turn around and send it back to you. Chips arent reccomended as a first mod because chips for our cars are made to optimize all of our mods
Forced Induction: Vortech makes a supercharger, there have only been a handfull of people with one on thier car and they all have had problems and experinced unreliablility so many people steer clear of the $3500 price tag for 50hp i believe. Just recently we have had a VERY kind person named ChrisHighTower team up with Street Flights to make a turbo kit for our car, this is all playing out right now, people are putting down deposits and such to go twords the development. Check out the forced induction section for more info on that. Nitrous is a touchy subject, here is the breakdown. On May 3, 1999 Ford decided to change the fuel system on the cougars from Return-style to Returnless-style. This messes up saying nitrous can be used on all cougars in the same way. The cougars built before 5/3/99 can run the normal nitrous dry setups such as your basic ZEX or NOS kit. Cougs built after 5/3/99 must run either a wet system, like those provided by Venom or a direct port kit. I dont believe anyone is running a Venom or a direct port as of right now but I may be wrong.
Cosmetic: James(CustomCougars) has really helped the cougar get off the ground and really into the cosmetic aftermarket, there are quite a few body kits to choose from at hit web site,
CustomCougars.com. He is not able to take orders at the moment though, he is in California with his project cougar and will be comming home March 22nd.
Tips: Altezza lights will NEVER EVER be made for the cougar its been tried many times and failed on each attempt. Also when you see the terms MTX and ATX that means the type of transmission
ATX = Automatic
MTX = Manual 5-Speed
I hope this helps you out some and get going here fast, have fun here!
-Kyle
