Let's recap the last, idano, year of the Mustang's life:

• "...the tune is finally right on the car, but I haven't been driving for a couple reasons. One, I have a Lotus. Duh. Two, the fourth gear syncros are going and I want the car to still have a tranny when I sell it. So the 'Stang has been a lump in the garage for a long, long time. I killed the battery within a few months and put a new one in with a tender on it. See, I learn new things all the time... But then I discovered that the threads on one of the bolts on the battery box were ripped up and I couldn't get the nut back on. And so the car sat two months more because I was too lazy to properly secure the battery."
  

After hemming and hawing for 18 months or so trying to psych myself up to sell it, my 35th birthday present to myself is putting the car back on the road. In short, we're:

• Removing the blower and 42lb injectors.
  
• Reinstalling the underdrive pullies.
  
• Installing a K&N cold air kit.
  
• Rebuilding the transmission.
  
• Doing a custom 91 (frikkin' California!) octane tune.
  
• Performing a 60K mile service.
  
• Installing a new clutch.
  

I'm hoping for numbers in the 255rwhp/290tq range when done as that's about where it was N/A with a stock intake. Yes it's a big drop in power but it's worth it in terms of the longevity of the motor and the rest of the drive train. The other option would have been to sink, say, $7k into a built block and about $4k^[1] on a T56 in order to continue to run the blower reliably. That'd be fine - overkill really - for street use, but I want track and autocross time and the blower would certainly require additional upgrades (cooling, clutch, even bigger brakes, rear end, etc) to run reliably for an extended period in that application. I could easily be another $15k into trying to get a supercharged Mustang 'right' for the track, all in an effort to get the reliability that the Lotus already offers me, and for a car that will only see a small fraction of my track time. It just wouldn't be worth it and I refuse to be the guy who half-asses it at winds up dropping all of his oil all over turn 11 at Thunderhill or something.


^[1] These are parts+labors numbers from a couple of quotes I got as a research exercise.