BKB94

Tom, Let’s go for a ride so I can see what your talking about.

What suspension was on before the D2s? High spring rate doesn't ride hard? D2s front spring rate is 3 times higher than what I run in my 3500lb mustang that handles better then my E36 M3.

ST lower springs, New front Tokico blue strut inserts, like new rear Tokico blue rear housings, ST rear sway bar stock front, Poly bushing kit, stock strut tops front and rear. I'm shocked at how soft this suspension is and how under dampened it is. The rear is an issue with the ST springs sagging so bad even after shimming it up 3/8" the tire is up in the wheel well, not a look I like. During this discussion lets remember that a SHP springs are 134.4lbs front 129.5 rear and D2s are 448lbs front and 336lbs rear. This is a fun weekend car not a track car. Also this might be strictly a dampening issue. 1. - Bare minimum fix the rear sag with a camber plate that will raise the back and possible eliminate the sway bar hitting the floor pan. 2. - DIY Coil over sleeve kit with my choice of spring rates. With used springs this could be done very cheaply. But could quickly overpower the already poor valved struts. 3. - Cut a strut Koni adjustable strut cartridges front and back with the sleeve kit. Will take some work to see what strut will work best for a 1" below stock ride height. I would think this would be better then D2s and about 1/2 the price. 4. - Just give up and order the D2s, If it rides like crap swap the springs. It’s just money right. D2s are held in such high regard here but on other cars that have options for suspension they are considered disposable. Everyone has such a different concept of a great riding / handling car. So what are you running and how happy are you with it, what would you change. List spring rates, cartridges used, ride height. I will add that I’m a mustang guy and there are a ton more people tracking mustangs than quests. Both cars have almost the same spring ratio up front so we are comparing apples to apples up front, also most stangs race weight is around 3000-3200 same as a quest. mustang starting points for spring rates up front. mild street 250-325 street & track 350-400 Track 400-425 comp 450-525

This is my opinion and how I’m going about my build. this is a dead chassis and if custom parts are to be made they need to either use universal parts or parts of a chassis that will be supported for decades. For example if you’re going to reproduce suspension parts use universal poly bushings and or universal balljoints. Use a ford 8.8 center section for cheap parts and gear sets. Eventually all torque tubes will be gone, posi clutches will wear out, ring gears used up, CV joints gone. Updating the suspension to S13 / S14 components would probably be a good idea.

It's the little details that take forever. I have been working to finish up the engine compartment and underside of the car. Been on a few hell rides around my house and she is fun, makes all the correct sounds but does attract allot of attention. Cooling - Gates Molded Coolant Hose ID Guide This is what I have been using to find the hoses I need. So far 100% success rate. Only my low speed fan has had to kick on and it's quiet and brings the temp down. Seems I picked a good resistance for low speed fan. I will be shocked if this little rad and fan can keep this cool with AC on. Steering - It feels like a factory rack set up, No bump steer or other issues. Car has insane turning radius. If I had to complain about something it's a bit over boosted feeling. Steering feedback is one of the things I look for in a car and I'm usually very disappointed. My mustang has fantastic steering feedback but it’s running a race inspired rack with a lot of caster. Only other car that I owned that got it right was of all things my base model Focus company car, that thing felt great. Final thoughts it was well worth it and I’m glad I did it. Steering is tight and she tracks straight with awesome return to center. Only thing I might have changed was the U-joint connection to the steering column. I would have welded a splines end on the column and matching U-joint for a better connection. Hydraboost - I really didn't know how this was going to work out but I'm glad I did it. The massive amount of pressure this puts out along with the 1" master gives great feeling brakes. Modern cars brakes feel very different then the old vacuum brakes, this feels like my 2021 explorer and that a very good thing. Need to bed pads and see if my proportioning valve needs adjusting. Trans - I have 5 forward gears and reverse from my junk trans that is made up of many parts of other T-5s. It shifts great and is quiet. My master / slave combo is working nice and feels good. Engine - Adding the aluminum heads sent me down a path I had little experience with. I have not built many V8s and my first experience buying rocker studs. I ended up with a 1.9 stud and really should have went taller since the posi lock was lacking threads. This was all too tall to fit under the stock valve covers and I made the mistake to buy cheap stamped covers off E-bay, they leaked bad. I bought Fox body stock cast aluminum covers and no more leaks. Engine didn't run right after that and I wasted a few days swapping injectors, plugs, leak down and compression tests. Swapped EEC and it ran normal again, This EEC came from a basket case mustang that never ran right. It also had a piggy back tuner at some point and burned traces where that plugged in. It was to be replaced but since it ran out of site out of mind, new EEC coming tomorrow. New EEC in and all is good. Pretty sure the old EEC was dropped hard and I found 2 metal bodied capacitors touching the pins on a chip. I might test it later but it’s really rare for any eec to fail. Fuel gauge - This one has me pissed and wasted a lot of time. This complete tank I bought looks brand new inside and out and the fuel sending unit itself looked new. I keep adding gas 5 gallons at a time but the gauge always read low, full tank reads 3/4. Pull unit and my resistance is off 25 ohms full 135 ohms empty and should be 1-105 ohms. I cleaned it and tried to make the sweeper move further on the rheostat but little luck. I ordered a new sending unit and will see how that works out. HVAC - found the evaporator had a hole in it, swapped with a spare. Swapped a lot of O-rings trying to get a good vacuum on this thing. I don’t do many car system so maybe I’m asking too much but high 900 microns is as low as it will pull, it will then leak and shoot up to 1200 micron. Being all is new there should be no moisture in this system and I have purged it many times with N2. I am done at this point and will just run it and see if I find any oil if it leaks, pressure tested to 250psi and no leaks found. Suspension - The ST front sway bar did not fit the oil pan on the 5.0. During mock up with the front clip I had a lot of room around the pan with the stock sway bar. I can't explain it but the front clip and the car do not match at all, nothing I mocked up on the clip fit the car the same. I had to bend the stock bar on my press to make the front come out more to give me the clearance I needed. Dampening and spring rates are very soft and I actually smashed the rear sway bar into the floor pan on a dip I don't even feel in my mustang. I have ST lowering springs with new front Tokico inserts and rear used Tokico blues. At the minimum I'm thinking coil overs on stock struts, and maybe seeing what Koni has in cut a strut inserts. The rear of the car is way too low and I bumped it 3/8" with spacers but I'm out of threads. I ordered BMW camber plates for $50 and will be using them on the rear and that should lift me around 1", That might fix this issue for now.

I should have 2 of these but I can't find them. If you have one let me know how much shipped to 18092

I see on the Mookee site the front and rear camber plates are not for stock suspension. Thats why I was asking this question because the thickness of the plate I figured would lift everything. Also I'm used to the front plates having both caster & camber, looks like I will need to make my own from steel to reduce height. More projects, maybe just switch to 240 suspension???

I didn’t tell you what car we are putting them on. Haha

Well hit me up if you want to bring it over and install them. Could do the alignment too.

For those who are not on coil overs does adding mookeeh front and rear CC plates affect ride height? On some cars they come with spacers to shim up is this the case with these? I could go down in the front a 1/4 and up about a 1/4” in the rear to get the stance I would like.

I have not split my bumpers yet to see what kind of rust issues I have on the supports. What can be done to prevent this issue from happening again? I'm sure you can coat the foam in possibly a bed liner like product, It might melt it if applied thick. And in searching I did see mention of drilling drain holes and removing some foam around the fog light area. So anyone have proven solutions to this issue?

OK, I do have the metal under car shield and that thought did enter my mind. I will need to see if it has the holes that align up. Mitsubishi logic just doesn't jive with mine. I want to do some aero on this car, wish I kept the front clip to make some fiberglass panels. Want to funnel the air from the bumper opening into the rad and do a better job of directing air.

Mitsubishi loved brackets and 10mm bolts, this is a fact. I'm missing something here to attach the hood latch support to the chin spoiler, what did it look like?

No ford rack is way too wide. Not my first choice but went Saturn SC2 rack the other common racks are getting hard to find now, 240 and shadow Shelby. You are correct in that rub mark is where the ST bar hit. Didn’t want to notch the pan, might not be an option either. Bottom of car is pretty much done. Need to finish my hydroboost lines then take it for a drive. Next is body work, the monkey that owned this car got pissed at it and punched it in a few places and smashed in the roof. Not looking forward to the body work but I have fixed worse.

It's not a up down issue its a forward issue. The bar needed to go forward to clear the oil pan at full suspension bump because of the weird bends in the bar it goes in a weird arc. No room to move the bar mounting points forward. But as you can see it's all done except for needing shorter sway bar end link bolts. Even painted to match the ST rear bar.

That picture of the alignment is a bit misleading since I adjusted the tension rod but did not do a caster sweep. So in reality the right wheel is ahead of the left a tad but my caster is probably a full point lower then the left.

I have plenty of adjustment but pulls that wheel in front of the left wheel. Set back causes weird issues when one wheel is ahead of the other. Granted it’s not a lot but the fact that the rear of the car is all screwed up doesn’t help anything. Seems the rear cross member is favoring the left side in the car but again no slop in it to adjust it. If I put CC plates on it front and back the rear would be probably 80% dead nuts on and the front could be 100% with both wheels in line and proper caster split. As of now the right rear wheel is probably 1/2” further out then the left side do to the -camber and having the cam adjuster all the way out to correct toe. Left cam is maxed in right maxed out out. I will measure the unibody and see if that answered any questions. Car has all original paint and no signs of an accident. Like I said I’ll drive it and see if anything changes. Plenty of room to get creative with alignments, one thing in life a truly enjoy.

Stock bar had a little more room but still a bit too tight. Seems to be huge discrepancies between the front clip I used for mock up and the chassis I’m using. Good news is the stock bar bends easy and I manipulated it to get tons of room around the oil pan. I just need to bend out the ends so they match up with the A-arms.

Did a quick alignment so I could tighten up my cam bolts. Seems the right side has some issues that I can't fix without caster plates. On the front when I start to pull the right wheel front to add caster the wheel is now leading the other wheel (set back) this is not good and the cross member has 0 slop in it to adjust it there. The rear right is maxed out on the toe cam and I can't get it into a + number and it has a lot of - camber also. Not going to worry about it until she has some drive time and see if things settle. Decided to weigh the car and corner scale it to see if we have any issues there. I'm at 2824 with a running car 5 gallons of fuel, missing parts are spare tire, fenders, front bumper, hood, headlights. I don't know if that's even 150 pounds to add. Now the scales I built myself and they have been accurate to around 40 pounds, I'm more than happy with that for what I paid to build them. LF 804lbs RF 768lbs RR 700lbs LR 600LBS F 54.7% R 45.3% Full tank of gas will really improve this. I will try and get some height measurements and see if I can shim up the LR a bit to get better weight distribution.

Thanks to TSI-Tom I got back the stock sway bar I gave him. Will try it tomorrow. Thanks

Not one to follow the rules I have been doing a lot of welding lately. So far I haven't passed out and poop myself after hours of mig welding. I'm sure my pacer tech is going to flip out on me once this data log gets sent into the manufacturer. 2 1/2 down pipes to 3" going into a flowmaster 40 Delta Flow #9430412. It was a bit of a rush job and the plan was to tig but I'm scared to try the tig unless someone is on site with me. The tail pipes are in place but not finished welding and coating. Click to here it idle https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-WQksT2k/0/01daae9b/1280/i-WQksT2k-1280.mp4 Went with the $13 EVO peddle covers, I like the look as long as they hold up. These are not direct fit, I cut new metal backing the same shape as the pedal covers.

Ford 5.0 swap. The ST bar is real close and if I hit a decent bump it will hit the oil pan. Tried to cold bend it with no luck. Might fire up the 60ton press and see if it can get me a little more room.

I assumed since I had tons of clearance with the stock sway bar a aftermarket sway bar would fit. I was wrong and gave away my stock sway bar. If you are close and have a spare let me know.

I had my open heart surgery the 3rd and was home a few days when I went into stage 3 heart block. Went back the next Sunday and Monday they put a pacemaker in me. Thats not something I ever planned for and has a huge impact on my hobbies and carrier. For example I can't do any kind of welding, I'm pretty sure my rotary phase converter in my barn puts out crazy EMI so no 3 phase power for the machine shop. Any my job I just see no way in hell I can do it. I need to collect data and see if this pacemaker is contributing to my life or just along for the ride. Once I have 3 months of data I can decide If I do all the things I'm not supposed to do or If I need to play nice with it. They already tuned it to be very numbed down but there is only so much they can do. The ultimate goal would be to have it removed if it's not needed. This might slow down the build quite a bit. Hell I just sneezed yesterday and re-broke my sternum, Thats not fun at all. I'm doing what I can with my 5lb lift capacity and trying to not think about the what ifs. I am out in the barn every single day and doing what I can to keep some forward momentum on this project.

My car is missing all the rubber pedal covers and I'm not seeing much listed. I can find some mity max stuff that says it cross references for brake and clutch but nothing for the gas pedal. I will not use universal covers that clamp the back of the pedal. Any one have any ideas?