This morning I picked up the rest of the powdercoating. I went a bit overboard and ended up powdercoating essentially all of the remaining panels (25 in all, for a total of just under 40 panels I got powdercoated). I’ve test fit most of them, and took advantage of that to get some photos of them as well as some of the other work I’ve done recently.
Read on for pictures… this is a long post with a lot of pictures, so be warned!
Last weekend was the 2008 Factory Five Open House. Once again, the pilgramage was made down to Wareham, MA for this gathering of everything Factory Five. This was the third I’d been down for it and the second year I caravaned down with the local Cobra guys.
For photos and videos, read on …
Yes, its been a while since I posted an update. I was away on business for a week and a half and didn’t get a lot done during that time. However, I have gotten some minor things done.
Last Friday I spent a good part of the morning getting all of the sheet metal positioned and drilled in the car, including the nose pieces and the cockpit pieces. Friday afternoon I dropped 25 some-odd pieces of sheet metal off at the powder coater, and should have them back next week. Friday afternoon I got the SpeedHut.com gauges ordered, as well. They should also be here next week.
I finally got an e-mail from the vendor I bought my Boss-EFI system from, and its being shipped to me tomorrow. I guess I’ll have THAT next week as well.
Today I got the passenger side 4-into-4 header installed as well.
Its all little baby steps but progress is being made. When the fuel injection and gauges show up, I may look at taking a week off from work and just trying to make as much progress as possible on the car.
I will get pictures posted soon of these bits.
I’m going to write two quick posts tonight, first this one with some updates on this website and another with a quick update on work I’ve done on the car.
First things first, I’ve added a custom Google Search to the site. On the navigation bar in the right column, click “Search Factory Five Information”. This right now only indexes a few sites, but I’m adding them as I find good sources of FFR information.
I finally got the Gallery integration fixed from when I broke it a few months ago. As part of doing that, I also added PicLens support to the gallery. If you click down into the galleries themselves from the posts or via the “ReplicaBuilding.com Photos”, you should get the PicLens buttons if you have the browser plugin installed, or you can use the “Start PicLens Slideshow” link to use a Flash version. Its pretty slick. The plugin can be installed from the PicLens button on the right navigation column as well.
I added a Videos link as well to the navigation. That page has links to a couple YouTube videos and downloads for HD versions. Right now its just two videos from the Factory Five 2008 Open House. (A post about that is coming, too…)
Finally, the logo up top got changed. A guy on the FFCobra forums was doing these computer renderings for people. The one in the logo is a color combination I asked for a rendering of, and is at least in the same vein as what I’m thinking for my car right now.
I haven’t gotten any more work done so far this week, and I likely won’t get much more work done in the next week. I’m planning on working all day on the 13th on the car to get some more work done since the 14th is the Factory Five open house, and I won’t get to work on it that day either.
I pulled all the non-attached sheet metal off the car Monday as I was originally planning on getting it to the powder coater this week, so I’d have it back by the 13th. Once the return fuel line and the rear wiring is in, I’m ready to get the rear end sheet metal riveted in place.
I decided, though, to wait until the 13th or perhaps the following week to drop the metal off. Some of it isn’t drilled for rivets yet, and without any holes to hang them from it would be harder for the panels to be powdercoated. I think I’m going to focus on really finishing the sheet metal next week. The only remaining bits are the cockpit pieces, the elephant ears and the cover for the glove box. I really need to cleco all the parts back in, fit the corners of the cockpit, fit the glovebox lid and THEN get them powdercoated. Most of that will be covered with carpet, but the sides facing out from the car I’d like to have protected.
I’m still waiting for the Boss EFI setup to show up. Unfortunately the vendor I bought them from has gone silent and isn’t returning e-mails. I’ll be issuing a chargeback on the transaction if I don’t hear anything by the end of next week. That will be disappointing, as it shows the lack of professionalism among vendors in the Factory Five space, and could delay another month or six weeks getting the intake, but the vendor is already violating his merchant account policies, and I can’t risk going over 90 days and being unable to issue a chargeback.
Its annoying.
I spent a few more hours working on the car today. I don’t have photos of it, so this will be a short update tonight.
I was up and in the garage before 7 this morning and spent four hours or so working on the car. At least half of that was spent cleaning up the garage, particularly getting tools organized and put back. It had gotten unworkably cluttered in there.
I also drilled out and got the strain-relief/grommets in the firewall for the alternator wiring and the solenoid wiring as well as the rear harness This evening I found the 10-12 gauge ring crimp-on terminals, so I was able to get the alternator wiring done and the solenoid wiring, as well. I worked a bit on the battery wiring, and got the holes drilled in the trunk floor for the remote battery terminals.
I decided to try to get the rest of the sheet metal to the powder coater this week, so I also did some fitting and drilling of the rest of the sheet metal. I’ll try to get it finished up tomorrow night.
Thats about it for today. I’ll see how far I get tomorrow with the sheet metal and will likely post pics then.
Today was a busy day with the car. I decided to buckle down and start the wiring, as it was clear that was one of the next major tasks and was a pre-requisite for getting the engine started whenever the Boss-EFI system finally shows up. But thats a rant for another time.
I ended up spending a good bit of time wandering around Lowes hoping to figure out a good way to cobble together my e-brake parts into something workable. The stuff from Fortes is really just worthless. I may look at entirely different options other than Lokar handle, but for now I’m going to try to make it work.
Read more for pictures of today’s progress…
I haven’t had a lot of time in the last week or so to get much work done on the car. A couple hours here and there is all I’ve managed, as I had company last weekend. I have made a couple of decisions for some changes in direction, though.
On Monday, I sold my I-Squared MOSFET power system. I had originally bought the system because it was advertised to have a level of customization that was greater than it actually had. While the system is reprogrammable, it was not end-user programmable which was what I really wanted. I’d spent a lot of time planning on how I would use it anyway, but in the end I decided it was better to sell it to someone who actually wanted to use it and to buy a standard harness for now. Hopefully the new harness will show up this week, and I’ll try to get the car wired over the weekend.
I also decided I was going to sell the gauges I have for the dashboard. I haven’t sold them yet and I haven’t narrowed down precisely what I’m going to use yet, but I am going to use something different. I both don’t want to deal with the hassle of mechanical gauges, and I really want more space behind the dash to give more options for heat and fresh air venting. Right now I’m leaning towards the Revolution Series gauges from speedhut.com. They’re very shallow, so I’d gain a lot of room behind the dash, and also don’t mean running three or four cables and hoses into the dash.
In terms of actual work on the car, over the weekend I got the water neck installed and the rest of the radiator hoses. I had to get a different thermostat because the one I bought from Breeze didn’t fit the housing. I am still not happy with the recovery tank I got from Summit, so I’m still looking for an alternative. I also have the emergency brakes mostly installed. I need to get some hardware to mount the handle, but other than that they’re all in.
I’ll post pictures of the progress this week.
I took an hour tonight and did some more work on the car. Most of my order from Summit Racing showed up today, so I was able to get some of those parts on the car. I’m still waiting on the thermostat housing and I’m not really happy with the recovery tank I bought, so I may return that.
Other than doing some cleaning in the garage, I got some of the stuff from Summit installed. The rest of the post will have pictures and what I did.
This weekend, like a few lately, was largely spent (where the car was concerned) driving around looking for parts because some vendors don’t seem to understand when someone says “I want everything I need to get this done”.
Because I was missing so many parts I needed, I only managed to get the de-gas tank installed and a little bit else here and there. I did get a pretty good list of additional parts I needed and placed a big Summit Racing order.