The Ford Mustang is probably as popular now as it's ever been in its history. The classics are more expensive than ever, new models are selling like hotcakes off the showroom floor, and even the Fox bodies from the '90s have developed their own cult-like following.

Of course, that list leaves out a couple of models that don't receive nearly as much love from the masses. Namely, we're talking about the much-maligned, Pinto-based Mustang II (How many of you even consider those real Mustangs?) and the more recent SN-95 Mustangs that Ford produced from 1994 through 2004.

It's not that the SN-95 doesn't have any fans, but it doesn't receive nearly the adoration as the Fox body that preceded it or the new-retro S-197 that came directly after. In fact, Roadkill's own Mike Finnegan called it a "college girl car" in episode 49 of the show. Heck, in the title they even labeled it a "Mullet Car."

That's OK, because somewhere in the hazy intersection between performance and low price is where Car Craft thrives. That lack of coolness puts the SN-95 right in our low-price sweet spot. According to a very unscientific study—a few weeks spent shopping Craigslist for used Mustangs—you can find SN-95 Mustang GTs for $3,500 to $5,000 all day long. That's not too bad for a rear-wheel drive, lightweight, late-model coupe with V8 power.

At Car Craft we've always been more interested in ways to find maximum performance for minimum Benjamins than any perceived cool factor, so when a 1999 Mustang GT popped up on Craigslist for a mere $1,500 dollars, we knew we had to take a closer look.

Surprisingly, the photos didn't look that bad. There were Cobra badges on the Mustang's bright yellow fenders and grille, but since Ford only painted Cobras red, green, black and white in '99, we figured they were bogus. What was the real reason for the low $1,500 asking price? A quick call to the owner confirmed that the transmission was busted: third and fourth gears were no longer along for the ride. He'd just spent $3,400 on the car a few weeks ago, but lost third and fourth in a bit of spirited driving and now was so disgusted at the thought of paying to have the transmission fixed he was willing to dump the car for a song. The good news was that first, second and fifth still worked, so the Mustang could be driven instead of trailered.

The transmissions Ford used in Mustangs from this era equipped is Tremec's T-45 five-speed. Generally, the T-45 is a good transmission, but it's notorious for breaking shifter forks, and in stock form can only handle moderate power. In fact, there's a whole cottage industry that's sprung up building steel or billet aluminum shifter forks to replace those that break, and we were pretty certain that was the only problem with this trans. So we swung by the bank, grabbed the cash, and set out from the author's home near Charlotte, NC, for the three-hour drive to the coast to see this Mustang first hand.

In person, this Mustang is definitely a 30/30 car (it looks pretty good from 30 feet away driving past at 30 miles per hour). The yellow paint has been touched up at least twice, and neither time by a particularly good paint-and-body man. Some panels are a bright yellow, while others are more orange, and there's a ridiculous run where the passenger-side fender has been repainted. Three tires are Michelins while the fourth is a Firestone. There are bare wires in the interior where stereo components have been hacked out. The exhaust is absolutely rotten from rust. And a growling sound from the rear end has us worried that either a pinion or wheel bearing is about to give up the ghost. But hey, $1,500, and the tank was three-quarters full of gas.

So we handed over the cash and hit the road for home with Car Craft's newest project car, hoping nobody would notice the fake Cobra badges until we had a chance to pry them off. Besides the faux badges, the car was also a little embarrassing to drive because of the transmission. With third and fourth gears missing, you had to rev the engine in second gear like a want-to-be street racer and then drop it into fifth, where the two-valve 4.6 Modular (which is definitely down on power) lugged a bit as the car slowly climbed back into a usable rpm range.

It wasn't until we got back home that we discovered yet another issue. While filling the fuel tank we noticed a horrendous leak dumping fuel all over the pavement. It turned out to be another common Mustang malady—the rubber donut gasket sealing the gap between the fuel fill tube and the tank had practically disintegrated, acting more as a sieve than a seal. There's no way the seller couldn't have noticed the leak, but he somehow forgot to mention it. Or fix it. Apparently, creating a biohazard whenever he hit the pumps was the preferable option, or that's maybe why the "full" tank was only three-quarters full.

Fixing the leak wasn't tough at all. After driving the Mustang around long enough to burn most of the fuel out of the tank, we dropped the tank, pulled the fill tube out, and replaced the gasket with a new one before bolting everything back up.

That was the easy part. Next on the to-do list was the broken transmission. Ford's engineers didn't make it easy; just removing the starter requires using a couple of ratchet extensions to reach the forward-facing bolts all the way from the front of the suspension. But it can be done without any special tools or skills. We did it with the Mustang on jackstands in the floor of our shop.

Jim Cook Racing Transmissions rebuilt the T-45, which you can see in the accompanying photos. Showing the step-by-step process would take far more space than we have here, but we did want to show you some of the highlights. Shop owner Jim Cook showed us the root cause of T-45's breaking shifter forks is actually synchronizer wear. When the synchronizer wears, it causes the gears to grind when trying to shift. It's that extra force required to get the transmission to shift that causes the weak aluminum shift forks to eventually break. You can upgrade the to billet aluminum or even steel forks, but that can get pricey. Since we hope to pretty quickly boost the power levels well beyond the T-45's relatively low capabilities (We've been told around 400 lb-ft of torque is about all it can reliably take.) we just want to get the T-45 back together to give us a baseline before eventually putting something beefier in it.

Next time, we'll take the car to the chassis dyno to find out just how much power our 240,000-mile 4.6 Modular V8 is making. Eventually, we hope to turn this sad SN-95 into a ridiculously fun autocross/pro touring car with daily driver capabilities. Stay tuned, because we've only just begun.

See all 19 photos

See all 19 photos Besides the obvious respray on various panels, the car also showed signs of being in at least one fender bender. It still drives well and tracks straight, so we're assuming any damage is cosmetic. The driver's side door gap is a sure sign the hinges are worn and the heavy door is sagging, but there are bigger fish to fry with our $1,500 Mustang, so fixing that is project for another day.

See all 19 photos The interior is run-of-the-mill Mustang, except for a couple of quirks. When we first saw the Hurst shifter handle, we were excited that at least this mostly stock Mustang had been upgraded with one of Hurst's excellent short-throw shifters. But further inspection proved the previous owner was truly all about image over performance. He'd simply bolted up a Hurst handle and left the shifter stock. Annoyingly, the backlighting on the aftermarket radio changes color every 10 seconds. We've yet to figure out how to make that "feature" stop.

See all 19 photos Ford's 4.6-lifter, two-valve Modular V8 first appeared in Mustangs in 1996, but 1999 was the first year the 4.6 got better PI (for "power improved") cylinder heads that boosted horsepower from 215 all the way to 260. This was achieved by improving flow through the heads, shrinking the combustion chambers from 51 to 42 cc's, and a new camshaft profile that increased valve lift. Besides a cold air intake and one aftermarket coil, our 240,000-mile engine appears to be stock. Our very unscientific butt dyno says the engine is down on power, but as soon as the transmission is fixed we'll get on a chassis dyno to find out for sure.

See all 19 photos The first time we filled the fuel tank, the Mustang tried to create its own EPA superfund site. Turns out the fuel fill tube gasket had rotted out, which is a relatively common problem for Mustangs from this era. Thankfully, replacing it is as simple as dropping the tank so that you can pull the fill tube free (That's it in the top of this photo.), and then squeezing the new gasket into the hole in the tank.

See all 19 photos Despite several coats of rust penetrant and whispering plenty of threats, one of the bolts connecting the exhaust manifold to the exhaust pipe simply refused to budge. We ended up breaking it off. We'll have to drill the remainder out of the flange before reassembling the exhaust system, but that, like so much else we're discovering with this car, is a chore we'll tackle later.

See all 19 photos Once the exhaust and driveshaft are out of the way, you can finally turn your attention to getting the transmission out. Don't expect it to be a picnic. Here, Nick Helms resorts to connecting several extensions just to get the starter off. A forward-facing bolt requires you to actually go in all the way from in front of the suspension to reach it.

See all 19 photos Jim Cook of Jim Cook Racing Transmissions begins the process of tearing into our T-45. In its stock form, Cook says Tremec's T-45 is can reliably hold up to around 400 lb-ft of torque. We're certainly hoping to exceed that by a lot on this Mustang, but we also don't want to spend a ton of money beefing up this T-45 right yet. For now, Cook is going to show us some cool tricks to get this trans back up and running on the cheap.

See all 19 photos Cracking the T-45 open can be a bit of a puzzle: The gearshift offset lever (It's what the shifter connects to.) on the shifter rail doesn't have enough room to be removed inside the shifter housing, but the tailhousing can't be removed while the offset lever is still in place. The trick is to remove the roll pin that holds the offset lever to the shifter rail, unbolt the tailhousing from the transmission's main housing, then slide off both the tailhousing and the offset lever at the same time.

See all 19 photos Inside the tailhousing are the assemblies for fifth gear and reverse, as well as the electronic speed sensor drive gear. The cast aluminum shifter fork for fifth and reverse, shown here, revealed some hairline cracks on close inspection, so we will be replacing it.

See all 19 photos Next to come off is the bellhousing.

See all 19 photos With the bellhousing out of the way, the third/fourth shifter fork is revealed. Notice that the fork is still on the slider, but the top of the casting is broken, allowing it to slide away from the shifter rail. We found the rest of the casting in the bottom of the transmission.

See all 19 photos Cook inspected the rest of the gear assemblies and, thankfully, didn't spot any other major damage.

See all 19 photos Here's a better look at where the shifter fork broke. Cook says he's seen this plenty of times with the T-45, and it's always with the third- and fourth-gear shifter fork. Apparently, that's where everybody likes to do their powershifting.

See all 19 photos The T-45's shifter fork design isn't faulty, it's just weak. The real cause for the transmission failure is worn synchronizers that should have been replaced long ago. The synchronizer is the dark gray ring. It rides on a cone that forms the leading edge of the gear. The synchronizer works by increasing friction as it rides up the cone to match the rpm's of the spinning gears. But when the synchronizer wears, its I.D. grows, which allows it to slide all the way up against the gear, as you can see here. Ideally, the synchronizer should stop with at least 0.030 of an inch gap (approximately the width of a credit card) before it gets to the gear itself. On this Mustang, third and fourth gears have obviously been grinding for a while, requiring extra effort to get the transmission to shift. All that extra force and gear wear eventually caused the fork to break. What is the lesson here? If your transmission starts grinding gears when you try to shift, get it fixed before something even more expensive goes wrong.

See all 19 photos Forcing the transmission to go into gear when the synchronizers are worn can cause a ridge of metal to form on the front edge of the sliders. Replacing two shifter forks (3/4 and 5/R) along with two new synchronizers already cost 240 bucks—at Cook's cost—so he showed us a trick to save a little dough. By lightly sanding the I.D. of the slider you can knock down that ridge of metal and make it nearly as good as new. Again, if you plan to make the transmission last another 200,000-plus miles you might want to spring for the new sliders. But if you are short on cash or just trying to get by, this is a great option.

See all 19 photos Here, you can see the correct gap with a fresh synchronizer.

See all 19 photos The main shaft and cluster gear all have to be assembled inside the case, but we mocked everything up to help give you a better idea of how all the major components on the T-45 go together.

See all 19 photos Before letting our freshly rebuilt T-45 go out of his shop, Cook checks to make sure the shifter is properly adjusted and everything works smoothly. Now all we have to do is get it back in the Mustang.