Made it!
So, how'd we do? Well, okay. The car made it down and back fine and actually seems pretty stable on the freeway. It hunts in ruts, but on smooth road it goes straight. Autocrossing on the other hand was brutal! It has tremendous forward grip but loses lateral grip mid-corner in the most bizarre ways. It also will understeer like a pig on really sharp corners, no matter the speed. I was able to wrangle it to a 47.804 to win CAM by 3 seconds over the season champs, and 35/63 raw. However, the car was unstable and almost undriveable when pushed. During the fun runs I looped it twice with no warning, and on post-race teardown we found metal shavings on the course where I spun.
Needless to say, I packed up and booked it home and right back to my buddy's alignment shop.
See all the rubber? Turns out at full suspension loading, the front tires were rubbing the coilovers, which was causing the front end issues, and the rear tires were rubbing everything including the quad-shocks, which caused the spin as the right side one was actually rubbing wheel.
We replaced the LF spindle since I already got one, and good thing as suddenly the alignment specced out the same side-to-side. We also put 1/4" spacers all the way around and then replaced the front LCA's with QA1 tubular ones:
Yes, that means the only stock Ford part in the front suspension is the actual spindle.
We were able to dial in -1.5 degrees of camber, 4.5 degrees of caster, and 1/4" total toe-out and squared the rear as best we could. The left upper control arm is bowed, so I need to make some rear suspension decisions (help!).
So, now what? Well, we are waiting to hear back from the vendor on the blue wheels. They did admit to a bad batch of them, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm considering having them powdercoated. The car is also ready to go to the bodyshop for the full repaint. I'm paying extra to do the whole car, including all the jambs. We are going for a full re-color, and some body mods. I have a pretty trick idea for the back...