17 years and counting...

[svono50]

• Once everything is aligned you can go around and tighten everything down to the specified torque in the instructions. Next on the list was mounting the swaybar with the supplied relocation brackets. You have to move the swaybar down and forward to make sure it clears the propeller on the Watts link. This should have been straight forward, but when you throw in an Eibach swaybar, things required some additional work. I ended up purchasing all new fasteners and having some bushings made up to better accommodate the new fasteners. The supplied screws and nuts would work for the bracket to lower arm, but I didn’t care for the fact that the washers under the screw head and locknut deformed when you tightened them down. I replaced them with 10mm Grade 10.9 flanged head screws and flanged lock nuts to eliminate the washer deformation. The brackets were designed to use the supplied 7/16” diameter screws, but the Eibach swaybar can only accept a 10mm (~3/8”) diameter screw. I was able to use the same, but slightly longer, 10mm screws for the swaybar to bracket mounting. With the swaybar now hanging a good 2-3” lower, I made sure it was justified upward as much as possible before I tightened it down. The ‘dips’ in the swaybar hang noticeably lower than in the stock location, but they also line up within the diameter of the tires, so rolling over speed bumps isn’t affected, but if you straddle something on the road, keep their clearance in mind. The brackets position the swaybar perfectly between the lower flange of the differential cover and the propeller of the Watts.

[svono50]

Couple extra pics to add to #4 above. All the pics were because this was one challenge I didn't expect in this project, so I figured I would show how I solved the issue of my aftermarket swaybar mounting.

[svono50]

• With all the suspension bits in place now came putting the tailpipes back in. Luckily my exhaust is still held mostly together with band clamps and comes apart in pieces, so fitting things back in went pretty well. I discovered that the muffler brackets would not work in their original positions, but simply swapping them from side to side let the tailpipes hang perfectly. You can see from the pictures there is plenty of clearance on both sides for the stock sized 2.25” pipes. You should be able to get 2.5” pipes in there too. A 3” tailpipe would be a pretty tight fit, but if routed correctly should fit as well.

[svono50]

• Now you can get your car back down on the ground and take it out for a road test. I used the supplied rubber o-rings on the rod ends, which are intended to be ‘noise suppressors’ to prevent rattling/clunking. So far my Watts link has been dead silent after ~700 road miles and one track day, so I suggest following the Fays2 recommendation to use them.

• Has this Watts link improved my car?? I have to say yes! I can’t say that the changes are ‘earth shattering’, but I can say that it has seemed to really ‘settled’ the handling of the tail of the car during cornering. The normal tail wagging that occurs because of an upset during a corner has virtually disappeared. My initial test was a corner near my house that has a small median rumble strip that you can clip during a left-hand turn. I have clipped this rumble strip in the past and it always unsettled my suspension and caused a good ‘wag’. With the Watts link it cause only a simple vertical bump with no wag at all. I ended up circling around the block 4-5x just to confirm the results, every time it was a non-issue clipping this little bump on the inside rear, even under mild power application. The next test was a track day at the Road America course in Wisconsin. Unfortunately it rained heavily during my track day, but it did give me a chance to see how it behaved in a ‘slick’ setting. On several occasions I applied a bit too much power coming out of the corner causing the rear to step out, max was a good 45 deg angle to the line of the track at over 45 mph…can you say pucker factor! Normally letting off the throttle is met with a good amount of snap over steer in the opposite direction, which usually just getting worse from there. I found that the rear would only slightly over travel in the opposite direction even with me over reacting and getting totally off the throttle the first couple of times until I acclimated myself to the conditions and adjusted my throttle modulation technique. A friend of mine was behind me with his GoPro camera recording during one severe ‘off-angle’ corner and it almost looked like I knew what I was doing. At the time of the writing I have had the Fays2 unit in for about 3700 miles, which has included two track days, two auto-x events and a 3000 mile road trip down to Alabama. The unit has performed flawlessly and remains dead silent. I still have yet to play with its adjustments for raising/lowering the roll center. More to come later.

I did take a video of my Fays 2 in action on a short street drive, which can be seen on my Youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/svoturbo4

[svono50]

• These are a pretty straight forward install item, depending on which style of arm you choose. I ended up going with the adjustable arm with the Roto-joint. I figured if I ever wanted to play with my pinion angle I should get the adjustable versions. Since these were installed with the Fays2 watts link I wanted to let the Fays2 unit do all the lateral locating work and to free up most of the inherent bind in the rear suspension. I don’t like the idea of the PM3L (Poor Man’s 3-Link) where you remove one upper arm and rely on the other to control axle windup. I also didn’t want to go to a full-on rod-end style arm, so the Roto-joint seemed like a good option. The fact that the Roto-joint allows 28 deg of rotational movement and is rebuildable by replacing the Delrin (nylon) inserts certainly influenced my decision on these units.

[svono50]

• The install started by getting my car up on jackstands, where I placed the rear stands under the axle to hold it at normal ride height. My theory was that the control arms should be in a relaxed position and ease their removal, which did seem to be the case. I first loosened and then removed the bolts from the upper arms and simply pulled them loose. I used my floor jack under the nose of the differential to take the tension off the bolts and they popped out easily.

• Next I used the stock arms to set the length of the UMI units. Since I wasn’t messing with the pinion angle, I simply set them to the same length and locked down the jam nuts, making sure the two ends were parallel to each other. I already had poly bushings installed in my differential unit, but this would be a good time to consider doing the upgrade if are planning it. Bolting them in was just the reverse of the removal. Before you snug down the mounting bolts be sure to remove the floor jack’s pressure on the differential to allow the suspension to be ‘naturally’ loaded on the suspension components.

• All that was left was to road test the setup. I did find that I had to retighten the front mounting bolts of my arms after 50 or so miles. The arms were giving a slight ‘thunk’ sound as I would either load or unload the suspension and it turned out the front points were moving on the mounting bolts. I have since put a few hundred noise free miles on the arms since and no more suspension sounds. Since my car already had poly bushings, I have more than the normal road noise in the cabin, but these arms didn’t seem to raise it any further.

[svono50]

• This is a pretty straight forward project that isn’t too difficult and can be completed in an afternoon. I suggest reading up on the instructions 2-3x to make sure you completely understand all the steps and pre-assemble the components so you don’t have to hunt and peck to find the right parts as you progress through the project.
  
• Start by pulling all the components out of the box and going over them to make sure everything is there. Loosely pre-assemble the components into their respective driver/passenger side plates. Read over the instructions once more. Now measure the total height of the strut to the top of the strut tower on both sides and note that distance down. Mine measured 3” to the top of the adjuster pins on my replacement Koni’s in the stock onion-head plates. This measurement will help determine how many spacers you will need to put on your strut rods BEFORE putting everything back into the car. This helps prevent having to install/remove/install things.
  
• Make sure you are on solid ground with the wheels pointed straight forward. Now get the car up into the air safely on jack stands and pull the wheels. Remove the calipers and hang them off to the side ensuring the brake lines are not damaged. Place your floor jack under the spring cup on the side you start working on to support the a-arm. Loosen the strut retaining nut, but don’t remove it. Remove the rivets in the strut plates, if they still exist, and also remove the (3) nuts on each strut plate as well as the plates themselves. The floor jack should have most of the a-arms tension on it now. Remove the (2) strut to spindle bolts and separate the strut from the spindle. Gently lay the spindle outward to prevent damage to the tie rod and ball joint boots. Lower the a-arm a couple of inches to allow the bottom of the strut to clear the a-arm and remove it from the car. Now remove the strut retaining nut and onion-head/dust boot assembly from the strut.
  
• Of course our onion-head strut mounts are a bit different than the ‘normal’ strut mount plates used on the rest of the later Fox-body Mustangs, which changes the design of the dust boot, so now comes the main modification of the project. Remove the dust boot from the strut mount body by snipping the band clamp off and pulling it off. Some prying may be necessary depending on the amount of rust between the boot and body. The new bump-stops are designed for a much smaller diameter dust boot flange, but can still accept modified SVO dust boots. Cut off the top flange of the boot and clean up the edge of the main boot body. I used a Stanley knife to cut the flange off and some shears to trim the upper edge of the boot’s body. The supplied pan-ties won’t work properly, so I ended up screwing the boot to the bump stop with (3) self-tapping sheet metal screws around the perimeter. Not very elegant, but they worked very nicely.

[svono50]

• My replacement Koni struts came with a 3/4” spacer on the top of the strut rods, which I ended up keeping and added the Maximum Motorsports spacers on top of. Start with (1) 1/2” spacer and (1) 1/4” spacer on the rod and place the pre-assembled plate onto the rod. Now measure from the bottom of the plate spacer washer to the top of the strut’s adjustment stem and compare to what you wrote down about the stock setup height. You may need to adjust the spacer stack, but the additional 3/4” spacer height worked for me. Now you should be ready for re-assembly.
  
• Disassemble the lower plate from the plate assembly and put it into the strut tower from underneath. Stack the standoff spacers and washers onto the lower plate’s studs and place the top plate assembly onto the studs as well. Finger tighten the (3) main nylok nuts onto the studs. Position the caster adjustment plate in the furthest rearward position and tighten down the (2) nylok nuts. Now slide the lower and upper plates to the furthest inward position and lock down the (3) nuts. *This is something I wish I had known before putting everything back together, as it takes quite a bit of force to get the plates slid all the way inboard with everything together. It is much easier to adjust back out while the car is sitting on the ground!
  
• Place the dust boot/bump-stop onto the strut’s shaft so the bottom of the boot overlaps the top of the strut body by ~1”. Place the top of the strut up through the plate’s bearing, place either the 1/2” or 1/4” spacer over the strut rod and hand tighten the strut retaining nut in place. Now maneuver the strut and spindle together to reinstall the strut to spindle mounting bolts. Install the caliper back onto the spindle, remove the floor jack from under the a-arm and move to the other side to repeat the process.

[svono50]

• Put the wheels back on and set the car back down on the ground. Bounce the front end a couple of times to settle the suspension. Now tighten up the strut retaining nuts on both sides and confirm the overall height of the tops of the struts does not exceed the original height. If it does, DO NOT just close your hood before checking clearance!! Take the car out for a quick spin to make sure no ‘strange’ noises are present (i.e.- something loose or interference exists.
  
• Next, get your car aligned to your preferred specifications so you don’t cause any excessive tread wear, as moving things around will throw your toe measurement out of whack. I currently have my car set to max caster, -1.6 deg camber and 1/8” toe out, which should work well with my occasional track day/HPDE and auto-x event. That camber setting is the maximum amount I can get running the Eibach Pro-Kit springs. The stock onion-head units would only allow -0.4 deg max camber for reference. Running stock springs should allow quite a bit more negative camber, so consider that when you get things set up.

Driver's side (before/after):




Passenger side (before/after):


*I added the green cap on top of the caster plate screw to prevent damage to my A/C suction line, because the line sits against it with some tension.

[inerceptor]

Nice Job Ted. Looks good. Nice write up as well on the steps it takes to install the C&C plates.

[svono50]

Thanx Chad! It always seemed like other folks have a bunch of drama with installing CC plates, so I was fully prepared going into it and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was much easier than anticipated. Of course, doing some prep work ahead of pulling things apart helped too.

[svono50]

Over the past several years I have been experiencing an occasional ‘blipping’ idle issue. My initial ‘racing’ idle issue was caused by a faulty engine coolant temperature (ECT) sensor, which made the EEC default to something like -20 deg F temps, so it was full enrichment/choke mode. This would cause the idle to race up to 2000+ rpm when the engine was warmed up. The ‘blipping’ issue causes the engine to jump up to ~2000 rpm and fall back to idle in a somewhat random cycle like I am blipping the throttle over and over again while sitting still. More of an annoyance than anything and kind of embarrassing when sitting at a light next to a Viper or Corvette as it appears you are ‘challenging’ them to a stoplight race. I finally got around to hooking up my scanner and putting the EEC into ‘wiggle’ test mode to see if I could figure out what was happening. This test mode allows you to literally wiggle your wire harnesses around to see if it will cause any issues, hence the name. While in this mode your EEC will immediately output a code, even if the fault was intermittent and would not normally ‘set’ a code. I discovered that a couple of harness connectors would trip various codes. Those codes were directly related to the sensors at the end of those harness leads.

The suspect connectors are located along the firewall behind the intercooler. One of them is a 4-pin connector and the other is a 3-pin connector. These connectors supply signals to various sensors, including the throttle position sensor (TPS), engine coolant temp sensor (ECT), idle speed controller (ISC) for the air bypass valve and knock sensor (KS). Both the Ford EVTM and Haynes manuals show these two connectors as a single 8-pin connector, which they obviously are not on my car. The first time I looked over these connectors in 2012 I discovered that one of the female pins of the 4-pin connector was opened up, so likely that particular pin was not making consistent contact and interrupting the signal back to the EEC. That specific pin was the signal return path to the EEC for 3 sensors (ECT, KS & TPS). I pulled the offending pin out of the connector and massaged it back to a closed position, which worked great for about one year before the problem came back. I pulled apart the 4-pin connector and sure enough, the female pin had started to open back up again. I have a feeling the location of the connector doesn’t help matters, as it is right above the exhaust down pipe, so I have a feeling it goes through some pretty severe heat cycles.

Harness removed from vehicle:


Location of connectors along firewall:


Connector pins before/after:

[svono50]

Since I knew the factory connector isn’t holding up, I started to look at what replacement options I could find. I had considered wrapping them with some insulation, but felt going with more robust/new connectors was a better long-term route. I went with the Weather Pack brand connectors, which were developed by Packard Electric and now owned by Delphi. They are a pretty standard connector used across multiple industries and generally on GM brand vehicles. They have a very good reputation for being very heat/moisture resistant along with being specified on a lot of replacement/aftermarket wiring harnesses, which is what lead me to go them. I planned on building my own connectors, but after looking what goes into ‘building’ one of these with the different variations of housings, pins, tools, etc I started searching out purchasing pre-made pigtail connectors. After some searching I found a small vendor in Colorado selling them online for very reasonable prices, they are Columbine Automotive Products. For less than $30 I had two replacement pigtail connectors and all I needed to do was splice them into the existing wires.



In hindsight, I would have seen if I could have specified both wire size and colors to better match the factory wiring, but I was able to work with the pigtails as supplied. They had slightly larger gauge wires, which made soldering together the connections a bit more challenging, but nothing too difficult. I certainly learned that I need more practice soldering wires together! Attached is my cross-reference documentation that shows the factory to splice connector color chart along with the circuit information that it all belongs to. Now if I ever have to dive back into things, I will have good information to help me keep things straight. From start to finish the physical job of splicing in the pigtails took ~4 hours, as I took my time to get everything prepared, soldered and rewrapped. I didn’t want to have to do this twice. When I test fired the engine up, things were back a nice steady idle. Even a bit of jiggling and moving of the harnesses didn’t cause any hiccups…hooray! At the time of this writing I have ~500 road miles on the new connectors and I am extremely happy with the results. My idle is much more consistent and my part-throttle cruising is much less choppy. Not once have I had an issue with the RPM blipping up/down. I am hoping the idle control will now remain this way for years to come.

Soldering 'fixture' to hold the wires for applying heat/solder:


First soldered wire, not pretty but a solid connection:


Sensor end connections w/shrink wrap and re-wrapped before covering:


EEC end connections w/shrink wrap and re-wrapped before covering:


Finished connectors:


Replacement IAB connector/pigtail from Rock Auto:


Cross-Reference Document (PDF format):
Specs - EEC Harness_TPS-IAB-KS.pdf

[gbeaird]

• Now you can get your car back down on the ground and take it out for a road test. I used the supplied rubber o-rings on the rod ends, which are intended to be ‘noise suppressors’ to prevent rattling/clunking. So far my Watts link has been dead silent after ~700 road miles and one track day, so I suggest following the Fays2 recommendation to use them.

Keep an eye on those o-rings. I was under our 'other f-body' doing some exhaust work and noticed the o-rings were gone and/or cracked. It's a C Prepared car, so I'm not sure if I'll replace them. They do keep the dirt out of the nooks and crannies, though.

Same results here, on 'the other f-body'. The car is more stable, and right and left turns react the same. Slaloms are really nice now, too.

[svono50]

Thanx Gene, they are on my yearly spring checklist to inspect. So far they are hanging in there, but I do expect to replace soon. The Watts made a huge difference with left/right handling as well as any bumps you encounter while in the midst of a turn (i.e.- auto-x parking lot expansion cracks or track rumble strips). Now I need to 'tune' my rear suspension to get better grip on corner exit with some guidance from the C-C crowd of course.