Leo Chiang DOT COM

This was a birthday present I bought for myself and finally got it installed today. I decided that my little baby needed some upgrades. I know, it’s bad timing with the winter in full swing but I felt like I needed spoil myself. With all the snow we’ve been getting here in Vancouver it’s not exactly the best idea to make my Mustang faster than it already is, but, oh well

The Shaker kit is made by Classic Design Concepts and is an aftermarket reproduction of the Ford Mach 1 Mustang. The Shaker basically takes the place of the fake hood scoop and replaces it with a true ram-air scoop that is installed on top of the upper intake plenum, becoming an addition to the top of the engine. As the engine revs the hood scoop shudders, thus the “shaker” concept. The faster you drive, the more cold air is forced into the intake, giving the car more power.

The basic install looks to be a piece of cake (except for the cutting of the hood), but I wanted a true custom application by accommodating the performance parts I already had. The trick was to have the Shaker fit with my already installed Dragon Performance 75mm throttle body (TB) and plenum, K&N Fuel Injection Performance Kit (FIPK) and my Kenny Brown strut tower bar (STB). My TB and plenum combo is significantly larger than the stock one and the STB also takes up a lot of space that would sandwich the Shaker in between the hood.

After some good Macgyver-style improvising, it seemed like the Shaker system was going to work without having to compromise on any of the other performance mods. The main issue was securing the Shaker while it rested on top of the STB. The supplied ball studs were far too short, but before removing the STB, my mechanic realized that the hex head of a 6mm bolt would pop into the connectors made for the ball studs. So off I was to the local parts store to find some really long 6mm fine thread bolts. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any long enough so we made our own by getting a three foot long 6mm threaded pole. The intake part was easy, the heat shield was simply cut and shaved to accommodate the Shaker snorkel.

While the hole was getting cut in the hood, I painted the hood applique. The hood applique already came in a nice flat black but had some production blemishes. I sanded out the sharp edges and imperfections from the plastic molding process and applied three light coats of black primer. After some more fine sanding, I sprayed on two coats of a satin black paint. The paint curing process was hindered by the below freezing temperatures outside, but the finished product looked great. I can always fix it up this summer if need be.

Voila! The Shaker was successfully installed, and with some minor tweaks to straighten it out, it works perfectly. Unfortunately, we’re in the middle of a snow storm right now so I won’t be able to really test the system until the weather gets better. I’ll take some better outdoor photos of the car when I get it washed. The dirty install bay and the drab lighting don’t do the colors justice. Also, the flash from the camera washes out the black of the hood applique, making it look faded.

The whole install and fabrication took about six hours (including lunch and coffee breaks) for three people, the master and the apprentice, and myself doing the painting and making coffee runs

Many thanks to Jeff and Skylar @ Bishop Sales for getting me a great price on the Shaker and Mike and Ben @ Chellis Performance for the install and custom fabrication. I will be getting my Stang custom dyno-tuned next month, so I’ll get an accurate reading of my Stang’s true power output. Below is a before and after photo comparison.

Posted on January 30th, 2008 by Leo
Filed under: Lucid Thoughts