Progress Thread Nicholase 90 fox build

[nicholase]

Newer member here. I've been learning alot from this site and really enjoy reading everyone's build threads. So I thought I'd start one of my own.

I'm pretty far along with it now. So I'll update when I get time to get caught up to current.

When I was younger I worked as a mechanic at a local Ford dealer. I went through a program called the ASSET program. It was at a community college for training and then alternate work at the dealer. This was in 93. So when I was there foxes were still being sold new. I totally remember being infatuated with a red Cobra.

Fast forward a few decades and I had the itch for another fox. They are tough to find here in NY. At least unmolested clean examples. I looked at probably 2 dozen until I found my car two years ago.

I found a 50k mile 1990 GT that was really clean. It had a oil leak from the rear main area, and the original paint was heavily oxidized. I've done several paint restorations but I wasn't sure about this one. Other than that it was original down to the plugs and date stamped plug wires.

So I hauled it home. A perfect project car that no one had ever been into before.

From a distance (and in the rain) it looked pretty decent. But once you got close you could see the oxidation. This picture was after i tried a spot to see how deep it went. It was oxidation along with what looked like heavy acid rain etching.

To restore the paint i needed to wet sand the entire car. The only way to do it right is disassemble. I removed the spoiler, windshield and back glass window trim, mirrors, door windor trim, door lock cylinders cowl vent and pretty much everything I could. I also pulled the rear quarter windows as the trim was showing its age.

Then I wet sanded the entire car with 4 different grits. This took about 30 hours. Afterward I polished it with 3m perfect it machine polish. 3 grits and various pads.

This is the result

I refinished the rear quarter glass molding and all the window trim, mirrors, and antenna cover with SEM trim black.

During the paint restoration stage I also did "phase one", which was get it comfortable to drive and replace the aging consumables.

Engine / trans
-Motorcraft plugs
-Motorcraft wires
-Motorcraft cap and rotor
-Motorcraft coil
-fuel filter
-Steeda triaxis shifter/ white shift ball

Suspension
- 17"×8 Pony wheels w/ Nitto 245/45/17 front
- 17"×9 Pony wheels w/ Nitto 275/40/17
-Ford performance coil springs
-New spring isolators
-Sway bar bushing and links
-Koni STRT struts/ shocks/ quads
-Maximum Motorsports HD LCA's

I pretty much gave it a good look over and did all the basic stuff like brakes, wheel bearings and stuff.

I also found some Ford NOS 5.0 badges to replace the originals which I removed to clean up the paint.

I dove it like this for a summer.

 

[nicholase]

When that first summer was over I planned a little winter project. I needed to address the oil leak which I believe was a rear main. I figured it was a good time to do the clutch if I'm going that deep, and if the exhaust is coming off I may as well do that too right?

So here we go:

I wasn't sure if the pan was leaking too, so I replace the pan gasket as well as rear main.

I installed a Ford Performance disk, pressure plate, flywheel, TO bearing and pilot bearing.

Also replaced a few other things while I was in there.

I installed stainless ceramic coated JBA shorty headers and a Bassani X pipe with cats. In this picture is the original flowmaster exhaust that was on the car when I bought it. I put on a Magnaflow 2 ½ exhaust shortly after I took that pic.

At this point I'm wishing I put on a beefier clutch setup. We'll see how it holds up.

 

[nicholase]

After the winter repairs I drove it for another summer and took the time to map out where I wanted to go with it. I decided I wanted to start with a Vortech entry level kit and some supporting mods. Then as I felt comfortable with that build off that to the HO kit.

During this past winter I stock piled up some parts and began the current phase a few months ago.

I started with the fuel system. I had a couple surprises here. When I dropped the tank the vent line was smashed flat between the tank and body. That would explain all the hissing when I opened up the fuel cap! Lol. Wish I took a picture of that.

The tank was in pretty good shape, but I noticed the baffle around the pump was loose and rattling. One of the spot welds had broken. So I replaced the tank and pad kit. Also the filler neck grommet and body side rubber.

I used a 255lph Walbro GS340 pump. Pretty sure that's the original pump.

I'm not a fan of crimp connectors for anything. So I soldered the leads and shrink wrapped.

While the tank was down I took the time to clean up the chassis real good. I also unplugged every connector I could find, cleaned with contact cleaner, checked the pins, and greased with electrical anti ox.

 

[Cheapskate207]

Great work! Thats an excellent car! I’ll be following along.

 

[General karthief]

Nice score

 

[AeroCoupe]

Man I cannot get over the paint restoration. Just amazing!

 

[bird_dog0347]

Fantastic work so far man! I can't wait to see where it's at now.

 

[91AOD5.0LX]

Love it all! Keep it coming! I will be following your work!

 

[gkomo]

Super clean, great work! I'm digging the 17" Ponies.

 

[nicholase]

I went with Maximum Motorsports weld in subframe connectors. I like how they tie into the floor pan with the seat bolts. I welded them in per the instructions. However I thought it would be nice to add beefy jacking pads to the front and rear of the SFC's that would incorporate additional bracing. So I made some while I was at it.


First I pulled the carpet. It's getting replaced anyway. I also didn't want to worry about starting a fire.


After trial fitting the SFC's and marking up the chassis, I cleaned up the weld areas to bare metal and hit them up with some 3m weld through primer. I did this to the frame connectors as well as the chassis. This will prevent any corrosion between the SFC's and the chassis after welding. I usually wipe it off any exposed areas before I weld, I just like it behind the weld. Some people weld through it. Just preference I guess.

I supported the vehicle with ramps in the front and jack stands on the axle tubes to simulate a loaded suspension. Putting some cardboard between the ramp and floor made it easy to tap the ramps out until the suspension was relaxed.

Once everything was level side to side / front to back and I was happy the suspension was totally settled I tacked them in. I checked the door gaps and opened / closed the doors a few times just to make sure everything was cool.

Then I welded them in. I brushed the work areas with some Eastwood rust encapsulator plus. I wanted to get a coat on some of the areas before I added the jack pads because they will make coating some spots difficult. It's nice stuff that can be applied to bare clean metal, painted metal, or even rust.

I let it dry for a few days while I fabbed up the jack pads out of 1/8" plate. The rear brace is welded to the SFC, the outside triangulates out by the torque box. The inside comes up on inside of the frame rail along side of the muffler and is welded higher up on the frame rail. The front brace welds to the SFC, and the top of it to the subframe where is meets the floor board. This is where I was concerned about the carpet being in the car.

Afterwards I gave the work areas, and the connectors themselves a few coats of the Eastwood coating.

The jack pads are really helpful and I have no worry about denting the SFC's at all. They should also add some stiffness which is never a bad thing.

 

[nicholase]

While the exhaust was off I welded in a bung for my AEM wide band guage that will be going in. It's going in my Bassani stainless steel X pipe so the mild steel bung that came with the kit isn't going to work. I used an Earl's performance weld in bung # SSOXY018ERL.

I had the stainless welding wire and tri mix gas kicking around from the last project.

The instructions from AEM mentioned the minimum distance to the cylinder head port and also the clock position of the senor. It landed in a real handy spot just past the bend with plenty of clearance for the sensor.

While reading the instructions for the guage install it mentioned several things that can damage the sensor. One of these was thermal shock. It read "Thermal shock (e.g. allowing the sensor to fully heat without starting the engine, causing cold exhaust to cross the
hot element, or a blown head gasket, etc.".

I called AEM to ask a few questions and get some more specifics. They mentioned over the phone that the sensors are sensitive to moisture. They pre heat very quickly. A common cause for failure is the sensor being pre heated with the key on and then the engine started causing the condensation in the exhaust to harm the sensor. They mentioned anything longer than 5 or 6 seconds of preheating prior to starting the engine could cause damage.

A situation I saw myself getting into is working on the car for whatever reason with the key on for a while and the sensor heated. Then needing to start it up and worrying I'll harm the sensor.

To mitigate this I had a few ideas. I thought about using the fuel pump positive wire to switch the relay. But I figured having the guages turn on during FP prime and then kick off, and back on again when started would get annoying.

So I went a different route. I used a oil pressure safety switch to ground pin 85 on the relay for my gauges (AFR, FP, Boost). The pressure switch is designed to turn off an electric fuel pump when the oil pressure drops in a crash scenario and can be wired to NO or NC contacts.

I wired it like this :

It works real slick. The pressure switch closes the contact at 2psi. So the guages come on while cranking just before the engine actually starts.

To install the additional oil pressure switch I used a tee fitting threaded into the oil pressure tube located by the oil filter. I installed the factory oil pressure sender and the new oil pressure switch into the T. The new pressure switch required a Reducer for the tee fitting.

ARB Tee Fitting 740106
Holley Safety Fuel Pressure Switch12-810
Milton Reducer fitting S-650

 

[AeroCoupe]

Great work man and thank you for the detailed documentation!

 

[nicholase]

To wire up the guages I used wire and relays from Painless wiring. I soldered and shrink wrapped all the connections. The relays mount under the driver seat next to the factory fuel pump relay.

While the plan is to install a Vortech entry kit right now, I know I'll be upgrading to the HO kit. So I put in provisions for the T-Rex pump while the carpet is out. It's a good time to just run a fused 10g power and ground from the battery now and be ready for the pump when that when day comes.

One relay is for the guages, the other is for the future T-rex fuel pump, and of course the factory fuel pump relay (green plug). The other grey connector is for the power lumbar. I taped up all the newly made harnesses and wrapped them in braided nylon protection.

The T-rex wiring routes to the back following the factory rear harness. I wrapped the new one with the nylon braided protection as well. This picture is the rear drivers side floor where the harness goes to the hatch area.

I mentioned replacing the carpet earlier. It had a few bad spots and while I really like the red interior, it is a lot of red. I decided to give a black rug and floor mats a try. I used the mass loaded carpet from ACC.

The pic below is the relays under the drivers seat. The new ones fit nicely on the factory bracket. I just needed to drill a hole on each end to mount the relay. I pushed some clip on nuts over the new holes in the bracket and used self tapping screws to attach them.

Here's the gauges mounted in the a-pillar pods and the black carpet.

 

[nicholase]

As I mentioned I went with the Vortech entry level kit. It's the V3sci head unit with the straight cut heritage gear set.

It went together well. Here is a progress shot, unfortunately I didn't take many photos at this stage.

Up and running. This is very basic with just the FMU and the included 12:1 disc.



After a few rides and watching the guages I felt comfortable everything was working correctly so I ordered the HO upgrade from Vortech and a few other things. It made right around 4.5 Psi of boost.

 

[gkomo]

Is that the $3k kit?

 

[nicholase]

Is that the $3k kit?

Yeah, I think it was around 3500.

Edit, yes, it's the 3k kit. It was a little more because the heritage gears are additional.

 

[nicholase]

The HO kit consists of a larger one peice 8 rib crank pulley, new 8 rib 3.31 blower pulley, an aluminum pressure pipe with the Bosch bypass valve, a T-Rex in line fuel pump and the MSD6btm. That stuff all went together without a hitch. I'll focus on the stuff outside of the kit.


An area I was concerned with was blowby. I'm currently not running extreme boost levels. I'm looking to keep it under 10. However I don't want to worry about blowing out any gaskets and seals so I did some preventive work to alleviate any concerns.

To make my sealed PCV system boost ready I used two UPR catch cans. One mounts to the firewall mear the evaporator just under the A/C line. It's dark in the pic below. It's for the PCV. It's a fairly simple set up, I used one of the 3/8" UPR pro series one way check valves to prevent any pressure from going into the crankcase under boost. These are nice check valves. They flow very well and require hardly any vacuum to open. Some of the other ones I tried were very restrictive.

The second catch can mounts to the shock tower. This goes between the oil filler tube and the supercharger inlet at the power pipe, after the MAF. Under normal driving it will act like traditional intake flowing metered air into the engine. I used the catch can to avoid any possibility of blow by oil to get into the SC while under boost.

You can see the check valve just next to the EGR valve.

The UPR power pipe has no provision for this. To make one I drilled a hole in the plastic portion and threaded it witn a NPT tap amd sealed the threade with tread sealant. (The vortech elbow does have a provision it can be seen in the video above)

I installed remote drains for the catch cans. That way I don't have to try and unthread the body to drain them. I mounted the drains under the radiator support with existing screws for the air deflector. I just cut a few pieces of steel and drilled and tapped them for the shut off valves.

I can reach under and drain them real easy. So far the supercharger inlet catch can hasn't accumulated any oil which is what i figured as the oil filler neck is baffled. It's mostly just to be safe. The PCV catch does accumulate a bit.

I replaced the oil fill cap with a screw in UPR pressure relieve. This has an air filter on it to catch any oil if there is any blow by escaping. It uses a one way check valve so it is shut under vacuum or any non pressure situation. That way it doenst act as a vacuum leak amd plays nice with the MAF. In the event there is a spike in pressure from blowby it will vent to atmosphere. It's sort of like a safety net. So far it hasn't shown any signs of anything escaping. It's clean as a whistle. So I'm thinking my PCV system is working well.

 

[nicholase]

To make sure I had good spark under the new found boost I felt I should update the factory ignition. I used a Performance Distributors screamn demon coil and 10mm LiveWires plug wires. Also popped on a MSD cap and rotor. The plug wires are super nice. Definitely seem like a quality item.

 

[nicholase]

I relocated the MAF to the fender well with a UPR power pipe. I made a harness extension by soldering in about 24" of new wire and taping up the harness. I wrapped it with braided nylon cover.

However the powerpipe came with no provision to mount the MAF. It was just flopping around in there. So I made a mount for it.

I re purposed the factory MAF bracket and rubber mounting isolators. It needed some cutting and bending but it holds the MAF nice and secure.

I noticed the air filter was pretty exposed and although I don't routinely drive it in the rain, it happens. So I didn't want to worry a about sucking in a bunch of water. I made a splash shield out of aluminum. I cut it with large tin snips and used clip nuts with sheet metals screws to assemble. Still plenty of air flow, but no splashing water up in there.

 

[nicholase]

I mounted the MSD 6BTM in the old air box location. I made a cover for the fender cut outs that were there and painted it black. I found a billet MSD mounting plate that has 2 Dzus fasteners to easily remove the box. It looks nice and I like the quick release fasteners.

I soldered weather tight duetch connectors on the wiring for the box so I can easily remove it if need be.

For the powerpipe I trimmed the hole, painted the edge and used some door edge molding to finish it off.

It seems to be in a good position to stay clean and dry. The billet mount stands the MSD box off the inner fender quite a bit. So wash water that runs down between the fender / hood gap mostly goes around it.

Just to help cut down some of that water I put a drip edge along that portion of the fender. It's just a piece of self adhesive door weather strip I got at the home center. It was clear but I painted it black. It corrals any water that runs down the fender. When the hood is closed the weather strip touches it and creates a channel for water run off without going down the inner fender.