Finally, after months of sweating out what I needed to get and taking time to get parts ordered, I went last week and picked up most of the remaining parts for the car. Mike Forte helped me out from Fortes Parts and got me a nice collection of non-donor build parts to work with. I have (in theory) everything I need now to build it, sans the engine, transmission and associated bits like that.

Mike didn’t have the steering rack, so I’m waiting on the front end and I’m finding bits of hardware I don’t have here or there, but in general I have what I need I think. (Considering what it all cost, I sure hope I do!)

I ended up with a few wrong parts. I need to get different master cylinders for the pedal box because he gave me the wrong sizes, and I didn’t get the hardware that I need to mount the front spindles. I also seem to be missing (or can’t find/recognize) the various bits that go on the gas tank.

Mike’s a nice guy, but his ability to provide information to go with the parts he sells seems to be quite a bit below what companies like Breeze have, where they provide detailed parts list and instructions for everything they sell. Get him on the phone and he knows his stuff, but that doesn’t make up for not having real paperwork. I unfortunately have an unidentified boxes of parts with no indication what is what and how its all intended to work together. In hind sight, I probably should’ve gone with Breeze, as I think its going to take me two or three times as long to put the car together with the parts from Fortes because of the total lack of documentation for them. The whole reason I bought everything at once was to save time.

Live and learn.

Some of you may have noticed on the live camera that there’s a seat in the car right now. Thats a Factory Five “Street Performer” seat, which they’ve stopped selling. I picked up a used pair two weeks ago because, in my opinion, the low back replica seats are not safe. I may have found someone to buy the (unopened) short back seats that came with the kit.

I have the Recaro SRD seats from my old 911 that I want to put in the car, but  a quick test fit before putting the body on the buck makes me think they may not fit. I have to decide if I want to modify the cockpit opening so the SRDs will fit or use the significantly lower quality Street Performers.  In either case, whichever one I use will get recovered in leather and Alcantara, and will have seat heaters installed.

My guess is I’m going to need to take the body back off the buck and fit it on the car at some point this summer. I’m going to need to do that to ensure things are fit correctly in the engine bay and I can deal with seat fitting at that point. I’m hoping that I can get the Recaro seats to fit if I mount them slightly off-axis (which is not all that uncommon on Cobras I’ve found, where the seats are positioned pointing outwards slightly) as well as using different seat tracks.

I’ve had a few people asking me recently how things have been going this week with the car. Its been a very slow week on the car building front. Last weekend we helped a friend move, and I’ve been sick most of the week. I think I might’ve had a bit of a reaction to mold in her storage unit. In either case, really nothing has gotten done.

I spent an hour a few evenings ago cleaning the garage — we had a lot of tools out, and it was just generally messy. I also got a bunch of other parts organized and did some test fitting of the Dark Water Customs trunk boxes that finally showed up.

I have to say the DWC boxes are junk. At half their $175 price, I would’ve been angry about the quality of them. At $175 there’s really no excuse. When compared to the top-quality stuff that FFMetal sells, its even worse! They’re clearly hand measured and hand cut. They’re flimsy and saying they fit poorly is being generous. There are two access holes meant to access the quick-jack mounting bolts… cut in entirely the wrong spot. I haven’t figured out if I can salvage anything usable out of them or if I have to just eat the $175.

The “glove box” is a bit better. I think I can make that one work. In hind sight, $200 on a brake and $25 worth of aluminum and I could’ve easy made far nicer boxes. Two big thumbs down on DWC.

All the parts have been ordered. I was hoping to be picking most of them up today, but I haven’t heard back from Fortes Parts and my card hasn’t been charged so I’m assuming there’s been some delay. That changes this weekends’ plans of trying to get the front end together, but I can get the big parts of the rear end suspension together this weekend.

The planets finally got into alignment and one of the three companies I’d been trying to talk to about getting parts finally got back to me. I think I have the rest of the parts I need worked out and should have a quote real soon.

I’m not going to say what the total was. But it hurts. A lot.

Its going to be gorgeous this weekend, though, so it should be a good time working on the car with the garage door open!

I’ve been looking at various options for increasing trunk space. Given the point in time the trunk sheetmetal gets handled, better to make this decision sooner than later.

I looked at Cobra Earl’s touring trunk setup and decided I didn’t like the idea of cutting out trunk support members. Although it provides a bit less continuous space, I decided to go with Dark Water Custom’s trunk storage kit. While there I also picked up the rather nice rear storage box.

The seats I’m hoping to use are my Recaro SRD seats from my old 911. My first attempt to fit them made me think they may not fit, but if they do I may buy a second storage box and put them behind the seats instead of between them, as the SRDs can flip forward. Time will tell. I’m not terribly optimistic I can get the seats to fit.