Build Thread Want To Blow 5 Years And $50k On A Foxbody? Step By Step Instructions Inside!

I managed to nail down my vacuum leak issue. I mentioned earlier that a T fitting was leaking. Once that was fixed, the gauge was still bleeding down ever so slowly. I narrowed it down to the fuel pressure regulator. I isolated that and put the vacuum directly to the regulator. It bled down relatively quick. Because it's hard to hear a very small vacuum leak, I decided to apply pressure to the regulator. I set my compressor to 20 psi and put the hose on the regulator port. I heard a distinct hissing coming from somewhere, so I grabbed my handy mechanic's microphone and hovered it around different areas of the regulator. The air was coming right from the adjustment screw on the top of the regulator. I unscrewed it and noticed there was no kind of gasket or sealer on the threads, so I wrapped the threads in some Teflon tape. After re-testing the vacuum to the regulstor, it was rock solid. Didn't move a bit.

I'm going to call fuelab and just make sure there isn't an internal issue with the regulator that was causing the leak through the screw threads. If some tape is all that was needed, I'm happy with that.

I tested the whole vacuum system again. Set it to 20in and went to get some lunch. And hour and a half later I came back and the gauge was at 14in. Good enough for me! Time to start this thing up again and see what kind of vacuum I see now. I just need to wrestle the fender liner back in and get the wheel on first.
I
 
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I am not an audio expert, but I remember way back in my highschool days, a friend of mine had sometype of filter between his speakers and the wires. It was there to filter out "ground" noise from what I recall.

Joe
 
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Joe
 

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Ground loop isolators work sometimes, but are typically a band aid to cover up the real problem. I have a hard time believing that I have ground issues with the way my grounding system is set up, but who knows. I've been wrong before.
 
I forgot to post a finished picture of the hatch area. Came out pretty well, and now the interior smells like fresh carpet. Win.

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The back area is attached with these square clamps. They fit snugly around the 1/2" square steel I used for the frame. Makes getting to the battery very easy. I also drilled a bunch of holes where the speaker sits. Seems to get the job done!

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I believe I'm going to reroute my water pump and fan wiring. The water pump power lead is bundled in with my alternator wire and the fan wiring is bundled with the fog light wires. I can distinctly hear the PWM signal in my speakers. When I unhook the fan and water pump, there is no more noise. I installed a 200uF capacitor filter on the input of the controller, but the noise still prevails. Those high inductive loads need to be isolated better. The audio system sounds great when the ignition is in the accessory position though!
 
Looks like pollen is all over your car. O'well, some things will get neglected in the name of progress. Good work on the interior. Do you have any small fans, like computer fans, blowing over your amp or electronics under your wood hatch panels to keep things cool?
 
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The car is a mess of pollen and MDF dust, inside and out.

I'm going to keep an eye on how hot that area gets. It's easy enough to tap a small fan off a 12v switched source I have back there if I need to. I had the amps in the same area before, and they didn't get very hot at all.
 
The receiver itself draws less than 15A. I was able to hear the fan in the front dash speakers prior to installing the amplifiers and other 4 speakers. The front speakers are powered directly off the receiver. I'll research those choke coils and give them a try!
 
Not much to update at the moment. I haven't touched the car in the past 2 weeks. I've been on vacation and have had a lot of other stuff going on. I did receive a replacement water pump motor last week. I need to get that bolted on and then I can work on getting some miles on the engine before bringing it to the dyno again.
 
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Thanks guys. I'll get something that will do the job one way or another.

I finished installing the new water pump motor as well as re-wiring the electric fan and water pump to the Holley instead of using the DCControl. I liked the DCControl and had no problems with it, but I liked the idea of simplifying things and having the ECU control as much as possible. I bought a 30A diode-protected relay at Napa to control the water pump as well as a giant 75A diode-protected relay for the fan. The ECU provides two separate negative triggers, one for each relay. The diode protection is important because of the huge momentary (microseconds) voltage spike that occurs when you switch off a relay off. That can create a backfeed to the ECU and damage it. A 20A fuse protects the 12V to the water pump relay and a 14ga fusible link protect the feed to the fan relay.

The nice thing about the Holley is that you have an unlimited number of ways to configure the fan and water pump based on certain inputs. I have my fan set to come on at 190 degrees and turn off at 180 degrees, but only when the engine is above 650 rpm. This keeps the fan from coming on when I turn the ignition on but don't start the car. I can also wire in a manual override switch to provide the grounded output to the relay if I decide I want the fan to run with just the ignition on for some reason. I can even use the VSS input I created to have the fan turn off at highway speeds. Cool stuff!

I'll hopefully have time tomorrow to start the car up and take it for a ride. I want to enable the closed loop and learn at idle to see how the car reacts to self-tuning the idle. I have the compensation limits turned way down because the car is relatively close to being fully tuned. The ECU was previously set to only enter closed loop and learn above 1800 rpm.
 
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