nothing over 2,000 on one part

First, remove your air intake silencer. It's a plastic piece of tubing under your airbox. To get to it, just remove the front passenger side wheel and the splash guard and you should see a bent plastic tube that is bolted to the hole under the air box. Pull that thing off, it's free.<br><br>Get a chip and a new maf sensor. Get the chip from www.customchips.com . These are hands down the best chips you can get for a thunderbird. As for the maf sensor, get at least a 75mm. The ford lightning came with an 80mm or 90mm maf sensor (depending on the year) and both of these work really well. You will need to have the chip custom burned with the new maf sensor's transfer function. If you plan to get both of these, get them at the same time so you don't have to pay to get your chip re-burned.<br><br>You will also want to get your exhaust done because the stock exhaust is VERY restrictive. Anything from a cat-back kit to a true dual setup would be a good improvement. <br><br>Underdrive pullies are good for a few horsepower and are relatively inexpensive.<br><br>Transmission work is also important. A good torque converter can make a big difference. You should go with a stall speed anywhere from 2200 to 2800. The lincoln mark 8 torque converter stalls at about 2200 and is fairly inexpensive. You will need a new flex plate for it to swap in. A higher stall would be be considerably more expensive than the mark 8 converter. You should also flush your transmission and torque converter and refill it with mercon V atf. Install a transmission fluid cooler as well. This should be done whether you replace the torque converter or not. Also, check out the articles on www.tccoa.com for information on how to beef up your transmission because they have a tendency to have problems. <br><br>New rear gears are another good upgrade. If you have a trac-loc differential, you will probably want to upgrade the gears only. I would go with a 3.73 or 4.10 ratio, but 4.10 is kinda steep if you do much highway driving. If you don't have trac-loc, a good option is the '99 cobra aluminum pumpkin from FRPP (Ford Racing Perfomance Parts). It is a direct swap for your current pumpkin and comes with trac-loc and 3.73 gear ratio. <br><br>A new drive shaft is a good idea if you ever plan on driving over 110mph. The stock drive shaft is made of two pieces and will bow and warp at speeds higher than 110mph and if it does that too much, it can break. The '93 mark 8 had a solid drive shaft that can handle much higher speeds and it is a direct replacement for your stock drive shaft. <br><br>Headers will give a decent performance gain, but are expensive and only two companies that I know of makes them for a thunderbird, JBA and Sean Hyland Motorsports. The JBA's are shorties and give a decent gain, but they tend to crack if you don't get them coated. A coated pair run about $800. The headers from sean hyland motorsports are long tube headers and will give a more significant gain, but last time I checked they were about $1300. Headers won't get you the best "bang for your buck."<br><br>If you really want to go all out, you could upgrade to the 2001 mustang gt heads and intake. These should be good for about 45hp, but parts alone will probably run about $2000 and you should have headers or extrude honed exhaust manifolds and a decent exhaust setup. You will probably want to wait on this upgrade until later.<br><br>Beyond that there's forced induction, but a kit would cost well over the $2000 per part you want to stick to. That's just something you might want to think about for the future.<br><br>There are lots of other things that can be done, but these are some of the easiest and most common. For the most part you can do them in any order, but I listed them in the order that I would do them in. None of these should cost anywhere near $2000 unless otherwise noted. <br><br>Goo