Build Thread My First Notch Build Thread - Remember me?!

Hey guys. I'm finally getting a chance to update the progress of my car. Well...I have the fan on a switch that I turn on and off as temps demand. I have it wired through the relay board and its working fine(using 10g wire for everything). Yes, I bought a new relay board. So that takes care of temp control for now.

I since I put the catch can on the car it has to be making at least 75-100 more hp(of course that's a mild exaggeration). Before the catch can if I punched it from a 1st gear roll it wouldn't even spin the tires(M/T drag radials w/ 35psi of air). Now if I punch it from a roll, under those same conditions, except with only 25psi of air in the tires, 1st and half of 2nd gear are useless.....USELESS!!!

So needless to say I've been a little bit of a happy camper lately. I even went out to play with a couple of my buddies about a week and a half ago. They have faster cars than me but we still had fun. One has a 93 notch with a stroked terminator engine with a Gen2 TVS blower w/ a 6-spd(650rwhp), the other(his twin brother) has a 2015 GT with a Roush blower and many other upgrades and bolt-ons w/ a 6-spd(740rwhp). Yes they pulled away from me but not as hard as I was expecting. My little low compression n/a notch didn't do too bad. Of course the 93 is the fastest of the 3 of us. He has the power:weight advantage.

I finally took my 6 y/o son for a ride in the car today. It scared him a little bit but he had a big smile on his face the whole time.

These are the cars...in case you were wondering.

Hey guys, remember me? Well its that time of year again....getting ready to go to TX2K. Why is it that every year around this time me and my buddies have to scramble to fix or install things on our cars RIGHT before its time to go? Here's my current adventure/headache. I had been having an oil leak from what I thought was the rear main seal. I thought somehow it started leaking due to the extra crankcase pressure that was also causing oil to push past the PCV valve. So, my buddy let me do the work in his garage so I could use his lift. During this process I discovered and UNcovered a couple of issues. I realized I didn't go over the WHOLE car with a fine tooth comb. I had loose bolts, loose nuts(well, just 1) and I think my k-member moved back.

When taking attempting to remove the driveshaft I had to fight to get it out. I didn't have enough play to push it into the transmission to get it past the pinion nut to get it out. Initially me and my buddies thought that with the rearend hanging down it allowed it to swing forward just enough to not allow it to have enough play. We came up with is after I fought for a while to get it out. Well when I finished changing the seal and got back to putting the driveshaft back in our theory was WRONG. I let the car down onto jack stands under the rearend....still couldn't get the driveshaft back in. I tried adjusting the UCAs so the rearend could turn down enough to get it in....NOPE! I ended up detaching the UCAs from the rearend and we finally got it in. But there was very little play. After getting everything back together and I test drove the car I have pretty bad high speed(80+ mph) vibration. So I'm thinking the k-member moved toward the rear by maybe 1/4" or so. I'm going to get under the car tomorrow and measure the distance from the tail of the tranny to the face of the pinion yoke. If it's not the same as the measurement I gave American Powertrain for them to make my driveshaft, that will confirm that the k-member moved.

In other news, prior to this I had a chance to make a test hit at Da Pad and me and my buddies went to the track. Unfortunately they only let us run the 1/8 mile because the tope end of the track was a little wet from rain the day before. The verdict...17" drag radials can't hold the torque that the car is making. BUT I also haven't played with pinion angle and I didn't do too much adjusting of my shocks and struts. So I still need more seat time and adjustment of the suspension. The Spec stage 3 clutch is either on or off, there is no slipping it off the line. As we all know the 2 great disappointers are the dyno and the track. They both have lived up to their names with this car thus far. I don't remember what my times were at the track but on the calculator I pulled up, my first run equated to a mid 12. That was the only run I hooked halfway decent, but I short shifted 2nd. So if I would have hooked again the rest of the day I might have pulled off what could have equated to a high 11 at least....which is still disappointing to me. As for what happened at the Da Pad, ice skating. I wish I had video but the video that my buddies wife sent me was really grainy.

Yeah Dave, this is the aggravating part of "building it, not buying it".

hoopty5.0 said:

My car does this too and it irritates the sht out of me. Glad to see Im not the only one it happens to

Congrats on getting it running, albeit with gremlins. It'll come in time.

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Yeah, its a combination of reasons why mine looks like that. 1. Sub-par body work on the radiator supprt area 2. Hood fitment due to not adjusting the hood hinges good enough 3. I had to adjust the stops all the way up just to reduce the amount of play in the hood....did I mention sub-par body work?

FoxMustangLvr said:

Update? How's the car running?

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Wow it's been a while since I've been around, huh? Well just the other day I think I figured out what may have happened to cause the driveshaft to not have enough clearance to go in and out without issue. I'm thinking I tore the polyurethane motor mounts. I think that's letting the engine move around how it wants and it settles towards the rear of the car taking away the clearance needed for the driveshaft. I think this is also the reason for the high speed vibration under slight load. It's funny, at WOT the vibration isn't so bad but if I ease up to over 75 or 80mph the vibration is downright scary.

So.....as soon as I get a few extra pennies I'll order a set of solid motor mounts. Hopefully that will solve that mystery that's been haunting and puzzling me for a couple months.

I'm also still planning to get a Stinger PIMPxs and matching harness this summer. I can't wait to get that because when the car was dyno'd last year due to all the issues that arose during the dyno session, the tuner was only able to get the tune happy at WOT. So cold starts, driveability, and low speed cruising need to be tuned. I'm also going to get the rearend rebuilt.....AGAIN. Hopefully 3 times will be the charm.

Oh, I also cut 1 coil off of the stock rear springs. I saw an old youtube video from Team Z that said that that worked great for fox mustangs. Of course this was way before they developed their own rear springs.

Actually they said a high mile V8 rear spring.

David Zimmerman said it in this video. Go to 3:45
View: https://youtu.be/fSWCB75V9Sk

*UPDATE*
Hey guys I have a couple of updates. I changed the motor mounts. I ended up getting Maximum Motorsports solid motor mounts. I was trying to get the ones LMR sells but they were on back order without a definite date of availability. Actually MM was the only ones who had solid mounts in stock. I installed them this past weekend and WOW what a difference! I always heard that with solid mounts you feel EVERY vibration....well that's absolutely TRUE. I didn't realize just how much vibration rubber and polyurethane mounts absorbed. I still don't know if the solid mounts fixed my issue with the driveshaft not having enough play to be taken out without disconnecting the rear suspension. But, a lot of the vibration affiliated with bad motor mounts went away. I still have some driveline vibration that I'm sure will clear up when I shorten my LCAs back to stock length, set my pinion angle to where it needs to be and I will also take the driveshaft to a local driveshaft shop to get checked to see if its still balanced well and make sure the u-joints haven't started to fail. I'm also gonna get the rear wheels re-balanced to rule that out.

But....the best part this update is that I ordered my Stinger PiMPxs engine management today! I also order the Engine harness they offer that's customized specifically for use with the PiMP in a mustang and I had to get a wideband O2 sensor. So i got the Spartan2 wideband sensor, controller and gauge that Stinger sells. I'm so excited because I know there are some things that can be tweaked with my tune to improve how the car idles and drives not at WOT. When the car was on the dyno in March of 2017 I had so many issues that prevented the tuner from tuning things like that. When he finally stopped when my fan controller had taken a crap, the smoke coming from the exhuast due to the crankcase pressure overpowering the PVC system, and I had a pretty bad vacuum leak.....he said he got it happy at WOT.

Shannon with Stinger Performance informed me that my MSD distributor could give me a problem so I either need to go back to a stock distributor or get a Ford distributor shutter wheel and install it in the MSD distributor. I don't even know what the shutter wheel is. I'll google it. I actually have a stock distributor in my garage....somewhere. I used it to prime my oil system before I started the engine for the first time.

@a91what Steve I'll be asking a lot of questions about MS tuning really soon, buddy.

a91what said:

Sweet let me know if you need anything.

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I sure will. Thanks!

So this came today....

Just waiting for the harness to come in. I don't know why I didn't came with this stuff. Maybe it had to be made or drop shipped. I'll email Stinger tomorrow to find out.