Mods (This car is now totaled)

Click any thumbnail for larger view. I tried to get the best pictures.

Part 1

I bought this 2000 Taurus about 5 months ago when my aging 1992 Sable chose to cost me more than the car even with all the components I had installed were worth. After the header became warped I decided a new car was a worthy alternative. The 2000 Taurus wasn't my first choice; actually is was my father's choice. Since he was buying the car for me and I would have to pay him back later, I suppose I really didn't have a choice anyhow. Seeing the car was already in very good shape and actually looked nice, I decided I might as well "pimp" it. The main objective is to be very stock about the whole thing; other than a few things that can't be avoided (head unit, subwoofer) you won't be able to tell there's anything special about this car.

The first thing I did right away was Dynomat the trunk. I don't have any pictures of the trunk without the dynomat and I don't have any pictures of it with the Dynomat. This process took litterally months due to the fact I was working two jobs and came down with Mono just two weeks after I got the car. In the end there is a lot of Dynomat in that trunk. I bought 2 bulk packs of xtreme ($150.00 a piece) and one bulk pack of original ($125). I still have several sheets left; they will be used on the doors and anything else I find rattling when I finally get that Pheonix Gold Xenon 12" sub in there. On the trunk lid I spraypainted the Dynomat to match the car. It was a dark blue glittery paint. The Dynomat is on every panel in that trunk there is no place I didn't cover.

Part 2

The plans for the subwoofer enclosure were thought over for a very long period of time. I had been planning this ever since I started with the Dynomat. When it finally came down to it, Chris had been playing with fiberglass recently and got me sort of interested. So fiberglass it was. The enclosure is designed to fit snuggly in the back driver's side corner of the car. While I did accomplish this, I screwed up. Apparently when I had the side panel outside the car, it had flexed. This would be fine if all I was trying to do was create a new side panel, but as I added one more layer of fiberglass to it, it became too stiff to fit anymore. This forced me to rethink this box on the fly. After cutting a lot off with my Dremel Advantage, it now fitted again. This didn't happen without its side effects. Now the box has a large gap between it and the floor of the car when it is seated flush on its back. I figure this will be remedied when I get to carpeting, but in the mean time it looks really bad.

While all this was going on I was also in the process of running the power cabling to the trunk for the amps. Airbox was causing me to have too little room to play with near the battery, I replaced it with a washable aftermarket cone filter. Surprisingly it really didn't make the car any louder. I chose to run the wire down the middle of the car seeing as this would create the shortest possible distance. I have a 0-guage (Brown) coming into the car fused at 200 AMPs running into a distribution block that breaks into two 4-guage (Red and Blue) wires fused at 100 AMPs. While all that was going on I took the opportunity to set up and underbody neon kit (Purple) and LED strips on the interior. They are hooked up to two blue lighted switches and a black master switch, conviently located where the ashtray once was. I have no use for an ashtray seeing as I don't smoke.

Part 3

My most recent and invasive mod has been the creation of a mount on the front dash for my graphic equalizer. Though I still need to clean things up a small bit, some people would leave it the way it is right now. I basically chopped up the little cove that ford made with my Dremel via a fiberglass cutting disc. Now the unit sits nearly flush. I need to touch up on that later, but for now it works. I also took the opportunity of having the entire center console assembly removed to completely get rid of the ash tray and the light bulb. I have no intentions of fiberglassing anything for the console. Earlier the same day I installed a 2.4 Farad capacitor in the engine compartment. It seems to be sitting rather happily where it is so other than improving the security of it's mounts it is staying there. I do have one concern that I failed to fuse it, so that will be one of my future objectives. I would have just made it inline with the fused 0-guage wire aready running into the car, but I don't want to have to drain the cap every time I work on the stereo system. If this position proves to be ineffective I will probably move it to the trunk.