Hello Dustin,
You have to be careful with the scaling, very low means can put extremes in the data and those can cause precision problems in the output datasets. The best way to get a feel for our prefered processing order is to look at the output scripts of afni_proc.py. There are numerous pesky problems that you have to watch for, so if you are writing your own processing pipeline you should verify the output of each step and not just the final outcome.
cheers
Ziad