I thought I would start of with some cheap mods on the Fusion. I'm not going to do anything serious until next summer, as I've mentioned before.

Today I installed my Steeda Short Throw Shifter bracket. Holy smokes ... this is a must have for any person who owns a 5-speed manual Fusion. Steeda claims a 30% shorter throw and I believe them. The difference truly is night and day. $50 well spent.

For another $25 or so, I also could have replaced the rubber bushings with metal bushings. My dad and I talked it over and he frowned upon that idea. He said the reason for using rubber bushings is to reduce vibration. Replacing them with metal bushings could cause annoying vibration, especially since it's a 4 cylinder, which are not near as smooth as a V8 in general. So I sacrificed a crisper shift for the possibility of having unwanted vibration.

The install was a piece of cake! 10 minutes, and that includes getting the proper wrench and finding the thread-lock tube. What this bracket does is it essentially shortens the lever by moving the cable further up on the shifter. You can see in the following picture that the cable was actually moved about 2 - 3 inches. Absolutely brilliant if you ask me. Being the nature of my father's business and trade, right of the bat he was fairly quick in criticising the overall craftsmanship. The first thing he said, "that counter-bore on the outside of that thread is off-center." lol .. that's my dad.

Here is a picture of the bracket installed:

I also took of a video attempting to demonstrate the shorter throw. Now, I realize I probably should have taken a before video as well. But just for kicks, take a peek. You can see that it's not a long throw in the video, so just go off of that :) The overall quality of the video didn't turn out too good. It looked fine on my camera, but for some reason the lighting didn't transfer to the computer or something .. o well.

I also order new headlight bulbs that I installed today as well. And let me just say this first .. changing out bulbs on the Fusion is a pain in the ass. The assembly as a whole cannot be removed without taking the whole front of the car apart. So what Ford did was "allow enough room" behind the assembly to do the switch. On the driver's side, this is barely true!

Let's start with the driver's side. First of all, a two bulb system definitely creates more work. The low beam was pretty easy, relatively speaking. After pulling back the following cover, it was as simple as removing another cover and changing the bulb.

As for the high beam? strangely enough, this one isn't even in the owner's manual! Thank God for the FordFusionClub, otherwise, I would have been royally screwed. In the wheel well, there is a cover that can be removed for the purpose of changing the high beam and turn indicator.

The passenger's side was slightly more complicated. For the low beam, I first has to move aside the washer fluid spout in order to be able to squeeze my arm through a very small space. So small that I actually I had to pull out the wiring far enough so I could change the bulb from the back entering through the wheel well.

The high beam on the passenger's side was the same story.

After about an hour with screwing around trying to figure out how to change the damn headlight bulbs, I was finally successful, and happy with the results. They are supposed to be 5000K. They are not HID, that was going to be too much money. However, I thought that once you got above the stock 3500K - 4000K range, it had to be HID .. maybe not. Also, I'm not sure that they are actually 5000K output bulbs. I think what the deal is the glass was simply tinted in order to replicate the color from a 5000K HID. Maybe not .. but it seems that way. Anybody know for sure?

Anyway .. here are some pics of the new bulbs. Still waiting on my fogs to come in.

Low beams:

High beams:

They look nice. Very white, and the shine is good.

That is all I have for now. Expect an updated exhaust tip in about 2 weeks or so!

Looks good. Shifter looks pretty snappy, less slop, how do you like it?

It's awesome, it really is. Like I said before, this is a must have for the manny Fusion.

Nice man, congrads on doing the mods! I know what you mean on changing headlight bulbs. A lot of new cars are a real pain, gotta' work around and move a lot pf the plastic out of the way to get behind the lights. Hopefully one day car manufactures will start making headlight bulbs a lot more easily accessible to get at.

I would hope they make a lot more things on the car more accessible. I hate how on some cars you have to REMOVE the intake manifold to get to some of the spark plugs.

My brother used to own an 03 Passat 1.8T. First of all, the timing belt on that motor/car is guaranteed to fail by 120,000 miles .. lol, true story. My brother's failed at 97,000. Not only did they haev to take off the entire front of the car to change fix the issue, but it cost 3500 dollars... german cars are notorious for stuff like this.

You have to pull the Intake Manifold on my car to get to the alternator... other than that, everything is pretty straight forward. And yeah, the timing belts on the old 1.8T are notorious for failing between 90-120K.

well glad for the most part my project car has everything accessible =P can't really say the same for the Accord yet >_>

Fogs finally came in .. and is it just me, or do they look a little off? Any way to aim these lights?

how do they attach?

Not sure exactly ... my guess is probably just bolt on.

I'm sure you can adjust some screw, if not then I guess you can't.