On this particular issue, there's no point in comparing to another 'stang... This is definitely a failure-mode issue. At startup and during the warm-up cycle, there is an almost inaudible moan/whine sound, and at first, during normal low-load driving, the sound is still there, but hard to pick out over the cacophony of the normal exhaust (headers, ORH, resonators, Flowmasters) and the suspension noise. Get on the car, however, for example, accelerating smartly up a highway ramp to merge speed, and the noise rises in volume sharply, to sound almost like a centrifigul supercharger, which from the last look under the hood, I'm pretty sure I don't have.... When the noise is loud, you can feel it pretty much throughout the car, and it does sound like it's coming from forward of the front seats. After you get off the loud pedal, the noise slowly fades back to a more background noise. By the time I can get the car slowed down and the hood popped, the noise has kind of receded into the background again, and under the hood is fairly well masked by the normal injector chatter and valvetrain noise.
As I said, it's not an accessory-drive issue, since I've run the car completely without a belt, so that leaves out the AC compressor, ps pump, alt, and all the idlers. It almost sounds to me like a trans does when it's low on fluid, but the car doesn't chatter in and out of neutral under high G-load activity, so it's probably not that, either.
I will happily accept responsibility for my actions (installing or misinstalling aftermarket parts), but if this is a warrantable failure, then I would really not want to dig into my pocket for an engine, which is what I fear it would be if I let this go too long, or drive the car hard until the issue is resolved.
I think I'm going to have to just run the car from dealer to dealer, until I can find one that will give me the time of day on this issue. I would go straight to Sutton, but they're 70 miles or so away, and with my luck, the engine would let go completely halfway there...
