Progress Thread Nicholase "lights out" build-

Time for an alignment. I have an older QuickTrick Gen4 home alignment set up. It works good. They have a newer model I've been tossing around grabbing. Maybe next year. I'd much rather do this myself than someone I don't know leaning all over my fenders with a belt buckle on. I have trust issues lol. So it's just part of the hobby to spend money on tools to do things myself. I know I'll do a better job becasue I can take as much time as I need.

I got it all set up but the mini disc battery is dead. So tomorrow I'll snag a battery and get started. The caster, camber and toe will be set to the MM camber plate instructions. Also want to check my bump steer tie rod ends and adjust those to match the control arm angle.



When I finish the alignment the wheels will come off and I'll go over every fastener, torque it and paint marker it. Probably a good time to put the new inner fender splash guards in.

Today was alignment day. My specs came out as:
Driver Passenger
Caster. +3.9 +4.2
Camber. -0.8 -0.8
Toe in 1/16" 1/16"


Part 1 caster and camber:
First I start with caster. The way this works with the Quick Trick Gen4 is you center the wheel and install the wheel frame. Then level the vertical and horizontal bar. With the wheel centered put a sharpie mark 0° on the top rotating plate. Turn the wheel to 20° and zero the level, then turn back through 0 and to 20° the other direction. Read the number and multiple by 1.5 and thats your caster.
Pic caster drivers side wheel turmed 20°:

MM suggests 4° for stock K member street car. I added .3° to the passenger side which helps make up for road crown and drifting to the right die to the crownof the road. Anywhere from .25-.5 is ok for the offset. If anyone is wondering, with the MM caster plates pushed all the way to the firewall as far as they go I read +4.6°.


Then its time to set camber. Again level the wheel frame vertical and horizontal. Then place the QT level attachment in front of the wheel on the turntable and zero. Then attach the QT level to the frame and adjust camber to spec. MM suggests .75° (±/‐ .25°). I set it to .8° both sides.

Pic drivers camber:


Pic passenger camber:



Then its time for toe!

Part 2 String the car:
The QT4 comes with some tapes that stretch side to side in front of, and behind the front wheel. This works good to check the toe, but if it's off it doesn't help to adjust it becasue you don't know what side needs moving. There would be no way to get the wheel straight. So to set the tow I string the car. This is something anyone can do and it's pretty easy, but a little time consuming.

You'll need 4 heavy jackstands or heavy objects, some string, a slide caliper and ruler. Here's how I do it:

First break free any jam nuts and whatever will need to be loose to set toe. Then go on to string the car.

Set the jack stands by the corners of the car just a bit behind the front and rear bumper. Then tie a sting between them and stretch tight. The height of the string should be about center of the wheel to get the widest measuring area.

Pic jack stands used to tension string rear:



Pic jack stands used to tension string front:


Then it needs to be made square. When its all said and done the string should be about an inch from the wheel lip. This isn't a critical measurement, but closer is better to get accurate measurements in the next step. Rather than measuring, I stick out about an 3/4" on the slide caliper and lock it down. Then just use the protruding tip as the guage.


Now we measure. We'll use the rear wheel to get this square. Measure the distance of the sting to the wheel lip at the rear of the wheel and also the front of the wheel with the tip protruding from the caliper. This needs to be EXACTLY the same. Keep moving the jackstands until the front and back wheel lip measure the same to the string. This is why the string should be fairly close to the wheel, so its easier to accurately measure.

Pic rear of wheel with caliper tip protruding:


Pic front of wheel with caliper tip protruding


This seems like it wouldn't be very precise, but even extremely small gaps can be seen.

Pic small gap, not good enough yet:


Keep adjusting until it's perfect. When it is, do the other side. If you haven't put the dog in the house yet, nows a good time

So after all that the strings are now perfectly parallel to the sides of the car. I'll spend the next hour as best I can not to trip over the perfectly adjusted trip lines.

Part 3 setting toe:
Now we move to the front toe adjustment.
Much like we carefully measured the wheel lip to the string in the back to build this contraption, now we'll measure the front wheel lip to the string. Before we go farther we need to center the wheel and secure it with a wheel cradle, or ratchet strap.
Pic wheel cradle:



If you don't have turntables youll need to make some. Two sheets of 1/8" steel with oil betwen them under each front wheel works good. The wheels need to be able to turn easily and not drag.

Keep adjusting toe until the measurements are even at the front of the wheel to the string and also the rear of the wheel and the string. Its takes a while to get it perfect without a helper. At that point the wheel is perfectly straight, no toe in or out. Then set the toe in to your desired range. I use 1/16" toe in on each side. So the front of the wheel will measure 1/16" more than the rear becasue the front is pointing in a bit and slightly farther from the string. So if you had 5/8" in the rear of the front wheel, you want 11/16" at the front of the front wheel.

I used a metal slide ruler to set this but the marks didn't show up in the pictures well, so I used a yellow folding ruler for visual reference.

Pic rear of front wheel measurement:


Pic front of front wheel 1/16" greater than rear measurement:

Part 4 setting bump steer:

MM suggests for the tie rod ends to be parallel with the lower control arm. So after I had toe set I measured and it was off a bit. So I moved around the shims until it was the same. Took a few off the bottom and put them on top.

Pic control arm angle:


Pic tie rod angle:


Then I re-checked toe and it moved. So I re set it and re-checked bump steer. All good to go.

Alignment complete. Onto the next.....

I'm working on buttoning things up. I have quite a punch list to finish before I really get this out for the spring and focus on the tuning. It's all small stuff, just a bunch of it. I put in about 10 hours today. Got a decent bit cranked out.

Started doing one last smoke test. I ended up finding a leak on my power pipe bwtween the MAF and S/C inlet. Wonder if this is behind the random stalling I was having. Seems likley.


To get the pipe out without scratchig it to hell the easiest way is to remove the S/C. So while that was out I swapped pullies. This pulley made 10psi on the stock engine. I'm assuming it will be a little less with the better flowing heads and intake. I'm hoping to be around 8psi.


I use a heat gun to warm the pulley and it slides right off. Warm up the new one and slide it on. It calls to torque the retaining bolt to 30ft.lbs. To hold the pulley I use a strap wrench. It usually spins even with the strap wrench holding it. To prevent that I wrap the pulley w/ blue tape backwards, sticky side out. That gives the strap something to bite on. It works real good.


I fixed the powerpipe leak and reassembled. One trick I found for the discharge pipe it to rub some dish soap on it. Makes reassembly easy.



I put a wrench on every single nut and bolt in the front suspension and brakes. I marked each one with an orange paint pen as I went. This is a practice we use at work for important stuff. I feel good nothing got missed here.


Then I took down this huge box from the garage attic. It's been up there for at least a year. Time to put the fender liners back in. I've been holding off until I was pretty sure I was done with the engine management and wiring behind them. I cracked one of my factory ones so figured I give these a try.


The fit was better than expected, most of this kind of stuff is pretty cheesy. These actually aren't bad, but it's not OEM quality. They are much softer and thinner than the factory ones. The softer material did make them pretty easy to install. There were a few spots where they seemed funky, so I warmed them up with a heat gun and pushed them flat with my hand in a welding glove. Worked well.




I noticed one of my sway bar bushing was split again. So I replaced them with some stiffer ones. Hopefully they aren't too noisy. I replaced the brackets too.


I want to lube my other poly bushings. I decided to buy a dedicated grease gun and the special polyurethane super grease. This should last me forever. The stuff is expensive at 56 bucks for a 14oz tube.


Should be an equally busy day tomorrow.

91AOD5.0LX said:

Unbelievable work as usual! Thanks for taking the time to document everything and explain it all in detail along with sharing all your tips! That’s big work in itself so thank you Sir!

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Thanks man!

So today was more of the same.
-Replaced original narrowband bung plugs with different style that has copper crush washer. Want to make sure I'm not getting any atmosphere in there.
-Snugged up all exhaust clamps and hardware, smoke test exhaust and found no leaks
-Check all brake line connections with a wrench and inspect front braided lines for any rub marks or possible issues. Looks good.
-Pull rear wheels and torque all suspension and brake hardware. Paint pen as I go.
-Lube front and rear control arm bushings with my new super lube.

-Inspect my fuel lines for any potential issues. Found one. Back in this link I did my new fuel system. Its all -6an line from the tank to the rails.
https://stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/nicholase-90-fox-build-punch-list

I used some hardware I can no longer recommend. Fuel line clamps from "Finish Line Factory". These are apparently 3D printed from marshmallow powder, or maybe machined from last Easter's leftover peeps.


The top clamp was curled up, but the main body was also droopy. They used to be flat on the bottom. So I replaced all the ones by the exhaust or anything warm with basic stainless P-Clamps. Glad I caught that. Don't need no fuel line dropping on the exhaust or driveshaft, that's for sure.

I didn't get many picture's today. But I did get it out for a real nice cruise. The alignment came out great, it feels alot more stable. No rubbing from the tires on the new inner fender splash shields which is good.

I'm not totally sure the powerpipe leak I found w/ the smoke machine was an issue leading to the random stalling. It was cleary an issue that needed fixed though. I was experiencing stalling while coasting, like when you push the clutch in coming up to a stop sign. It happened quite a few times in my previous test drives. Today it stalled once, but then never did again. I was trying to make it stall by recreating the scenario as often as I could. Maybe the leak was an issue and now it's re-learning?

Jury is still out. I was thinking about pulling the lower intake if this persisted becasue I am still seeing a 15% fuel correction at idle to correct for a lean condition. The engine management instructions say it's indicative of a vacuum leak or air entering the exhaust somewhere.. Not sure I want to do all that if its just something thing I'm overlooking. So maybe I'll hold off on that. The one stall was disappointing, but not being able to recreate it after might be promising.

Next up is to get my optional fuel presure sensor plumbed in. Maybe tomorrow.

It sure was nice to get it out. After the first few miles I stopped the paranoid listening for problems and just enjoyed the ride. Oh, the stereo sounds pretty decent!

Today I worked on installing the PSID fuel pressure sensor. This will measure fuel pressure, as well as vacuum / pressure in the intake. It will help with more accurate fueling, particularly under boost. With the computer knowing the FP and intake conditions it can better determine how much pulse width to use. More fuel will leave the injector with 12" of vacuum helping suck it out than trying to push out fuel into a pressurized intake. I'll now be able to set the fuel pressure using the same sensor the computer is using to determine pulse width rather tham using an outboard guage. There is a fail safe warning if FP drops below a certain threshold the CEL will illuminate.

I'm using a pressure sensor from a 1999 Mustang and an adapter from Aeromotive / TF and some various fittings.


Has a vacuum nipple on the bottom to monitor intake conditions.


I made some adjustments to my fuel line. This is the line that comes from the fuel rail to the regulator.



To access all this better I pulled the upper intake. Making it's first appearance from the garage attic is the A/C dryer. I wanted to mock it up so my lines and PSID sensor don't interfere with it when I get to that point. In this picture the fuel feed line is visible, it the one with the gold heat jacket on it.


I used some heat shrink hose clamps for some of my PCV and catch can setup. Never used them before and wanted to try them out. They seem pretty decent. Not sure I'd buy them again though.


Got it all back together and checked for fuel leaks. The PSID sensor mounts directly to the fuel rail ORB fitting.


Tomorrow I'll get it stated and enable the PSID sensor in the software and goof around with that for a while.

While I was in there I was trying to notice any possibility of a lower intake leak. The lower runners were super clean. I can't see how there could be a leak. I did it with the engine out and took my time. I pulled the plugs for a look see. Figured if it was sucking air from the lifter valley it would be sucking oil vapors as well and I'd have oily plugs. They all look perfect. I think I'm going try and forget about that as a possibility, at least for now.

This morning I wrote a new tune including the fuel PSID (Pounds Square Inch Differential) sensor. It was pretty simple. I just had go to the sensor section and enable it, then go into the injector slope section and enable PSID compensation. I saved a new tune and just named it PSID sensor so if needed I can just go back to the previous tune. Then I started it up and played around with it.

I set it to 39.5 PSI with vacuum removed from both the regulator and PSID sensor, which I believe is correct. I'm kinda on my own with support no longer available.


Just to make sure it's working I did some testing with my vacuum/ pressure pump. It's interesting observing it's behavior and I can see why it's probably a good idea to have. Because it reads the pressure differential I observed the reading go lower as I applied pressure. So with a few pumps of the pressure pump I saw the value lower into 20's. So simulating boost w/ the hand pump I can see how that would affect how much fuel is getting into the engine with pressure in the intake. Now that the PCM knows this differential it can increase the pulse width as conditions in the intake determine.

So with this set, I grabbed a very unprofessional and possibly overconfident collection of tools and went out for a ride.



One thing I did when I saved the new tune was clear the adaptive fuel strategy memory. So this is a fresh start like I never drove it before.

On my ride I didn't experience a single stall. It's running great. So whatever is causing the 15% fueling correction is still undetermined, but doesn't seem to be effecting drivability at all. This is something I can tinker with over the summer, but I feel its not going to be any significant issue. So I'll continue with my "to do list".


One of my road test "proving grouds" is the local park. Its a long and windy 15 mph ride with lots of stop signs. Low RPM, slow speed is where tuning issues usually show up the most, like bucking or odd throttle tip in hesitation issues. It did perfect, very smooth.

I stopped to pop the hood and check for any fuel leaks. I did check like a paranoid squirrel in the garage a dozen times lol. But you can never be too sure. While I was there I popped a few pics.

When I was doing my alignment I did some slight tinkering with the stance. What do you guys think? I put in 1/4" spacers on the rears. I think it looks pretty good but interested in feedback.









Regarding the previous stalling issue, I'm considering as a speculative explanation is all my previous road tests were with the MAF completed exposed with no wheel liners or shielding. Maybe air tublulance at speed was causing the stalling issue? Just a thought. I've since installed the wheel liners and my MAF shielding I made and it seems bang on.

gkomo said:

Great news on the tune!

Regarding your stance request for opinion, photo #2 looks perfect. I personally like an ever so slight rake from rear to front which it sort of looks like you have. I know different photo angles can make things look skewed, like photo #3 makes it look like it squats slighlty in the rear but i know thats not the case since photo #2 is different to me visually. Long story short i think its spot on.

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Good call. I see what you see on the drivers side photos. I think it's just the angle. I went back and looked at some other pics of the drivers side I took today at the same time. Here's the drivers from a different angle.





But.... maybe I should bump the rear up a touch to avoid that look from certain angles.

Noobz347 said:

Do you have a PWM fuel pump or return style?

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Return style

Noobz347 said:

Totally probable. I had to change up my initial inlet for my combo too. I had the MAF out in the fender well facing a bad direction with no shield in front of it. It didn't like that at all.

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Yeah, maybe that was it? It definitely didn't like pushing in the clutch at speed and letting the RPM's set to idle. Thats when it would stall. The faster I was going the worse it was. It does seem probable. Especially in the turbulence of the wheel spinning right next to it, not to mention all the air rushing under it probably creates a venturi effect?

So I went out for another test ride. Again no stalling. It seems like it's learning. I tried every scenario to make it stall and couldn't. So fingers crossed!

I took it out on the highway, everything felt great at 75 mph. Alignment seems great, the driveline vibration I had is gone. Did a 3rd gear pull and was watching the AFR. Seems pretty solid. I really need to figure out how to data log. Next time out I'll have to do some homework on that. I did a 3rd gear pull for the first time. Really pulls hard and sounded good doing so!

I was hoping to be around 8psi with the pulley change, and that got me right there.

I feel pretty good about all this so I'm going to finish up the A/C. A while ago I bought a kit from Classic Auto Air. It's a Sanden compressor and conversion kit. I've already installed the compressor, condenser and evaporator core. So now its just the lines and some wiring.

I started with the wiring. The new engine management harness came wired for the A/C. I didn't want to assume the plug is wired the same as the factory, so I did a quick test to check polarity at the plug.

I soldered a jumper to a sacrificial feeler guage. I'll keep this in the tool box "weird things" drawer.


I jumped the low pressure switch and turned the key on. This should send power to the A/C clutch plug. Nope. Hmmm. So I started the car. That did the trick. I thought the factory set up just needed key on, maybe I'm mis remembering. In any case this EMS needs to be running to power the coil.

Now that I'm sure what wire is positive, I move on to wiring it in. The Sanden compressor has this:


A single positive wire with the ground hooked to the case. I'm going to wire it like the factory set up so the diode is properly in line.

So I adjusted my old factory A/C harness. The diode was in a spot I didn't like. So I moved it. Staggered, soldered and shrink wrapped




I had some two way weather pack connectors in my tool box. So I crimped and soldered them onto the harness side and the new compressor leads.


Weather packs on first so I don't forget them! That's happened more than once lol.


I routed the new wiring down and zip tied it to my crank position sensor harness.



Then I started test fitting the hoses. I watched a YouTube review of this kit before I bought it, and he had issues with one of the hoses being way too long. I thought I'd be okay becasue I mocked it all up with the engine out. Well, now that it's in there it ain't gonna go the way I thought. So I'm having the same issue as the reviewer. This is excessive!


I could just about loop it in a circle. So I called around and found a shop that makes custom A/C lines. I'll swing by in the morning and hopefully he can clone it, but make it half as long.