Goodbye, Old friend….

After about 10 years of fun I decided to part ways with my cobra. I found my self on the “back side” of the fun curve. Building it was challenging but fun, and the pride I had from that build made every ride I took so satisfying. But after ten years that was wearing off and it was time to let someone else enjoy the car. It was very hard to let go after all that work and all those memories but it was time. The car seems to have a good home with a family of “car guys” who will surely get more use out of it than I have in recent years. So this is the end of this blog and this journey. The sunset today was absolutely gorgeous and it was a fitting end to a bittersweet day.

4/7/13 Its Done! (for the most part)

I drove up to Metal-Morphous today and picked her up. She started right up.   Had a greatride home….I have to get some “Real” pics of the car when I have time and a nice day.  In the meanwhile I plan to get the final gremlins out..and also put in the Alex’s Roadster’s wheel well liners.  I have to put some trim on the carpeting near the doors. I need to check that all of the body parts they put on were put on correctly (I found a few loose things – parking light, license plate holder, side mirror and still looking for more).  I need to make some faux-screw heads to cover up some holes in the dash where there used to be screws holding the dash to the hoop…I also need to do an oil change/analysis and tune the engine (runs rough when cold).  I also plan to bring the car to Mark Dougherty in PA to get the suspension perfect.

I  have to clean the interior and engine compartments a bit…lots of dust from the paint process….it was my choice to finish the car and have it painted as a finished car…most do the interior after for just this reason.  But I decided to drive the car for a bit to shake it out a bit before I had it painted.  I wanted to minimize the chance that I might have to pull the body off ever again to fix something.

So this is it….the journey is basically complete.  Just fun from now on.   I plan to get some real pictures and ill post them when I get them.  Maybe every year I’ll do a total maintenance look-over and possibly pick a project now and then to improve/upgrade/restore things as they get used.  Maybe Hawk XP pads are my next project 🙂

First pic with paint…

Driving her home

George washington bridge

parked…aint she a beaut?

good pic of the stripe and interior

2/5/2013 Trip up to MetalMorphous in Wallingford Ct

I went up to see the car mainly to 1) take advantage of the body being off to trouble shoot an electrical issue with the heater (I found nothing wrong) and 2) in light of #1 I wanted a reasonably simple way of removing the dash without removing the whole body.

In order to accomplish #2 I removed the screws that hold the dash in place along the dash   hoop…it is held in very well with the under-dash panel.  Up above I attached some aluminum angle and put velcro on the angle to hold onto the dash hoop…this along with the body lip pressing against the dash will hold it perfectly fine (I hope)

Here are some body work/paint pics so far

More details

More details

Body work mostly done ready for first gelcoat

Lambo Silver Stripe

Hood/trunk/scoop painted

Body off for paint

Stripe Color is Lambo Silver…and here the stripe is blocked off

Hurricane Sandy….Off for Paint Nov 2012

So I drove the Cobra for the majority of the summer…I put about 400 uneventful miles on the car.  I am very happy with the way it drives.   I did spin it once.  I have a healthy respect for the power of the car now.  I plan to take a driving course asap once its back on the road.

Cobra bundled up in a municpal garage for the Hurricane….Note Mclaren next to it…Great minds think alike!!!

 

My neighbors house…this hurricane was awful.

Driving up to Wallingford CT to Metal Morphous for pain.  Ron was a saint helping me out after the storm.

Driving up the Merit Parkway…great driving road!!!

The sign at Wallingford

Ron has had the car for a few weeks now…here are the first pics.  Weird seeing it like this…ugh…but I know she will look amazing in no time!!!

Another view

Rons first pictures

I’ll update more as they come available!!

8/2/2012 Legal in NJ!

Today I passed my inspection.  Joe B at the Asbury Park specialty inspection station was very nice and reasonable.    I passed with no deficiencies.  Next step I just wait for my title to come in the mail and go to the DMV for plates and registration.

Inspection took 90 minutes and the best information I can give anyone in NJ is go over the regulations in the “specialty car” packet you get from Trenton one by one and make sure you have fulfilled them.  Also, they don’t have it in the regs, but its common knowlege you need a brake fail light.  There are a number of clever ways to fulfill this reg (that isn’t even a reg, but they look for it).  I plumbed in a pressure sensor into the brake lines and put a light on the dash for low pressure.  Others put a float into the brake fluid reservior.

Next I get to drive around until the winter and it goes off for paint!  Wooo Hooo!!!

6/25-7/15 Final Assembly!!!! Awaiting Inspection 8/2/2012

The last three weeks have consisted of putting the body on, putting on the bumperettes, putting back on the doors, trunk, hood, windshield etc.  I had a few stray areas of carpet to do still and then it was the wind-wings, Sun visors, mirrors and a few test drives.  Its AWESOME.  I have finally gotten my go-ahead for inspection from Trenton and my inspection is on 8/2/2012.  The inspector was very nice and spent time on the phone getting me prepared for the inspection.  He told me the things that are most likely to fail me so that I can avoid those issues.  (stuff too low under frame rails, Non-conforming lights or windows, tires rubbing on frame, no brake fail light etc).  He seems very reasonable by the way.  Joe B is his name and he seems like he wants to pass you and you you have to not listen to him to fail.  Here are the pics of the car in its final, but pre-paint form.

6/10-6/25 DMV Submission, Fire Suppression System install, Put car back together (beginning)

So in the last two weeks I have submitted my paperwork to DMV  For anyone doing this in NJ this is the deal:  1) Get paperwork packet from the Special Title Unit at DMV in Trenton.  Fill out the two forms (the rest is info about what makes your car legal or not legal…read that to be sure you didn’t screw up).  Send in the forms along with 1) every receipt you got 2) proof that nothing was stolen (i.e. receipts or a notarized affidavit from someone like an engine builder that states that the engine was build by them and sold to you rather than stolen) 3)   7% sales tax on anything not already taxed 4) A description of how you built the car (I submitted my instruction manual and my build log from this site)

I put it all in  a very organized, large binder to make is as simple/easy as possible.  I sent it overnight, trackable mail.  I called a few days later and they confirmed they got it.  I called another week later to get a status and they thought is was funny I was calling so soon (silly me to think they might start to look at it 10 days after they got it)  They told me to wait another week or so.  I will call them before this week is over.

After they review everything they “allow” you to get an inspection.  The only station really to do this is Asbury Park, fortunately fairly close by.  As of last week Asbury had no “permission” to inspect my car.

If Asbury signs off on the car, then I get to pick up my tags!  Only thing after that is my emissions inspection which is all but waived because of my block-year.

But in order to do all this, I need to put the car back together.

After carpet I put in the speaker grilles:

Rear Grille

Front Grille

I need to get some more pics but I put the seats and belts in on both sides and put the Console in and the Tranny tunnel cover back on. Here is a pic of that (Ebrake boot also went on after this pic)

Seats and belts are on now too…will post a pic of that soon.  The S.S. Ebrake handle looks good though, especially with the boot on.

Pull Handle for Fire Suppression system in rear of tranny tunnel

I am almost done with my ESS fire Suppressionsystem install.  You don’t order from the company but their website lists dealers.  Easy install, just takes time. As of this writing I am waiting for more tubing to run one more line to the engine compartment.

ESS bottle in place, activator Cable installed and one of the pipes routed along trunk floor and into cockpit.

After I get the final tube installed, and the bottle filled, the next step is to test the electrical one last time before I put the body on, then its body on, mild body work, Roll bars on, Doors on, Hood On, Trunk on, windshield on and then off to inspection!!! hopefully within the next few weeks.

5/23-6/9 Carpet, Heat Protection, Welding Tranny Tunnel Crossmember, Defroster, Brake Bias Adjuster

In the last few weeks I have done the following:

Finished up my sound and heat protection, and installed the trunk Carpet.  Trunk carpet is not furnished with the kit, so you have to purchase more (I got mine from FFR) and custom, design and cut and paste in the carpet.  Its a pain , but here is the result…

Finished Trunk Carpet. I attached the access panels on top bare..I like the look!

Side view of the trunk carpet on the sidewalls.

Next, in light of Jon’s fire, I did a few things: 1) I tightened all fuel line connections.  Actually one on the distal end of the fuel filter was a little less snug than I would have liked.  It never leaked, but I tightened it up. 2) I bought some heat-shield products to shield various pipes/hoses and areas from heat.

Note heat shielding along where sidepipe will be next to car

Here is the stuff that velcro’s around hoses and pipes. I put it around the fuel lines near the engine/headers

Heat wrap around fuel lines

Someone on the forums pointed out that the PS defroster vent is hard to fit and he suggested making an end-to-side connection to the vent.   I crimped off the end and “gooped” it closed

clamps on end of hose while it dries

Vent modification

Side view showing how the vent is now hooked up to tube…again I used “goop”. Great stuff

Here is Lumen of the vent….very ample!

Someone modeled the car with and without the crossmember on the tranny tunnel that I removed to get the TKO 500 to fit….He said it lost some torsional rigidity with it cut…So I got some guys from the local marine repair shop to come by and weld in a new tube I bought.

Before

After

Finally, today I installed the brake bias remote adjuster.  Very simple.  Just took some thinking.

Remote cable arcing along inner wall of DS footbox…It works great

Here is the Handle

Riveted it in. Really cool addition.

And this week I sent in my DMV Paperwork.  Hopefully I’ll hear back soon and my only remaining things are:

 

Install last bits of carpet once back from Binder

Install fire supression system (ordered)

Paint crossmember welds

Do some body work, (minor adjustments)

Mount body and other parts

GET LEGAL!!!!

 

4/26-5/22 Interior work and pre-final assembly punch list

After finishing all of  my sound-deadener (HushMat) I placed my heat-barrier in the foot boxes and all vertical panels near heat (doors and tranny tunnel).

Covered pedals etc to avoid sticky spray on them. Silver is EZ cool and Black is HushMat.

Other side.

I hooked up the heater vents.  Routed the Defroster hoses and they will be hooked up once the body goes back on

Heater vents hooked up.

Defroster vent tube is on top. Heater vent tube is on the bottom.

I’ve been stressing about how to hook up the rear quickjacks/overriders and how to make it easy to remove them in the future.  I installed some coupling nuts so that all I have to do is use some threaded rods to hook up whatever I finally decide to use as my bumper solution.

Installed Coupling nuts so that installing/removing the rear quickjacks or whatever is easier and you don’t have to drop the tank ever again. In fact, to install this I only had to drop the PS of the tank about 2 inches. Just used a Jack to let it down and then pushed it right back up and bolted it back on.

Decided to spruce up the cubby cover.  Used 3m Vinyl “carbon fiber” to cover it.

Before

after

Used a piece of angle to make a catch for the latch. Had to use some extra aluminum to shim it thicker and have a tight fit.

Made a cover for the EFI computer which will keep it safe from people feet and also allow for carpet and a more finished passenger footbox

Before

After

Finally, Jon’s car caught fire and is totally gone.   Here is the sad picture of the fire, and one after the fire is out.

Fortunately he is ok as was his passenger.  It turns out he had a faulty connection on one of his fuel lines.  Totally not his fault, just a major bummer.  He ordred his replacement kit within 48 hours!!!!!  Here are his blog entries on the subject.

I’ll check back in when I’ve done a few more things!!!

3/25-4/25…Rear End Issues and taking the car apart for final steps!

So last post I showed how my wheels were set back a bit far in the rear wheel wells.   Its seems it was because the snout of my “pumpkin” of my differential was pointing more upwards than it really need to….furthermore, my drivetrain angle was a bit more down-angled than it needed to be.  So…

1) I removed the shims from my engine mounts to lower the engine down 1/8 inch

2) I cut one of the Tranny Tunnel cross members to allow the tranny to be boosted up 1/2 inch.  I also had to cut a tab off the tranny to clear the ebrake.

This tab is removable...it was blocking my ability to raise the tranny...it was hitting the ebrake mechanism

This cut bar would have contacted the shifter...had to go to raise up the tranny and get my pinion angles right

3) I added two 1/4 inch spacers to the Tranny mount and boosted it up 1/2 inch.

4) I checked the pinion angle a million times and now the drivetrain points down 1 degree as you look from front to back….that would typically have the snout of the diff pointing UP 1 degree so that they are on the same relative angle…but you want the Diff offset by -2 degrees to allow for some upward shifting during high torque…so in fact the snout is pointing DOWN 1 degree.

5) after getting pinion angle set, I removed the coils and  checked for binding at full droop and at full compression and thankfully..no binding!

6) with the diff pointing more down, my wheels were much better centered in the wells…

Passenger side

Driver's side

Finally, I added the Under-door aluminum panels…this was my last aluminum piece to be fitted to the car.  Note that I had already started removing seats etc by this time in prep for removing the body for the final push to road-certification!

We are looking at the curved piece at the bottom of the red door....Its one of the last pieces to go on the car.

After this was done, I started removing the seats, harnesses, Trunk, hood, Radiator cowling, quickjack bolts, doors, sidepipes, wipers and unhooked all the light wires.   I am ready to take the body off…I just need a helper.  Once the body is off (hopefully this weekend) I am in the final push to do the last things on the car, cut out for the defrosters and then reassemble everything!  After that its a few more test drives and off to the DMV for inspection.

Exciting!  Just need time.  Thats the thing in shortest supply.

3/12-3/25 Final Aluminum, Wipers, Re-assembly, Gel-coat test drive

Over the last two weeks or so I put the Elephant ears in, the Radiator Cowl Aluminum and put the roll-bars, seats/harness back in along with the side pipes.  I needed to do minimal adjustments to the cutouts to get all this to fit.  The body sits nicely on the dash hoop.

Typical elephant ear...note cutout for cobra earl vent. I used rivnuts to secure these...much easier to take on and off.

Here is the jig that gives you a rough approximation of the angle you need for the wipers to be installed right.  You do have to adjust this a LOT to make it work.   I took the advice of the MKIV site and used plastic tubing instead of the supplied metal tubing…much easer.

Here it is ready to drill a hole in the WRONG place!!! its supposed to be 15" on the Driver's side....this is the passenger's side...

Here it is with three holes...oh well. I guess I have some body work to do.

Wipers about to be tested with some water on the windshield

Yay, it worked!

Now on to some real issues:

I took the car out for a gelcoat drive….when I got back I realized the rear DS wheel was rubbing.  Some of it was the ride height had droped down from the extra weight…but if you look at the wheel…its really set back far in the wheel well…

Driver's side....its about 3/4 inch rearward

Here is Passenger side for comparison

So I went on the forums…and after taking a bunch of measurements and getting some advice, it seems that the driver’s side lower control arm attachment bracket on the axle is not perfectly lined up in the same plane as the passenger side one.    This is resulting in the DS of the axle being about 3/4 inch rearward.  I might have to get an adjustable LCA for that side to compensate.

In any event, the car looks great.  Here is a side view and a back view

The main reason for the rear view is to show the wheels seem pretty well lined up in the wells from a left-right point of view.

So I am trouble shooting this issue, puting the finishing touches on the car..Maybe gel coat drive it a few more times and then take the body off for some final stuff…then its DMV time!

2/26-3/11. Body Work

Like Jon, I am having my car painted by Metalmorphous in CT.  He apparantly does all of the “REAL” bodywork, so all I have to do is get the doors, hood, trunk etc on so it works, but he will do the rest.  Thus, what you see here is exactly that.  NO more, No less.

After doing the Scoop, I installed a Finishline Accesories Hood Prop.  Apparantly the gas-shock hood openener warps the hood over time.

 

This is the catch for the prop

Here it is in action

Nice prop!!

Next I went on to the windshield.  Just follow the directions.   I thought that the body work instructions were pretty good.   Not the best pictures, but good descriptions.

Initially there was a gap here in the gasket. I moved the window forward a few degrees and that went away.

Doors and Door Catches were next. Directions were good!

PS windshield post isn't curved right. when I remove body next, I will fix this.

Drilled holes and put in drain grommets for when I get stuck in rain

Installed trunk and latch

Roll bars went back on

Had to adjust cutouts a bit

Finally, I put a cover on my pedestal, and reinstalled it all.

Pedestal reinstalled. Fits perfectly You can also see here I installed the Heater vents

2/11-2/25 Clutch Safety, Mounting Body and Hood/Scoop

I’ve been busy “cleaning up” to get ready for body install.  I stopped putting in the sound/heat/carpet after having done the trunk only, because people warned me that my fiberglass work (as minimal as I plan to do) will make such a huge mess that Ill be happier if I only have to vaccum up bare aluminum.  I still need to do more, but I siliconed most of the openinings between the aluminum.  I installed all of my bulb-seal.

Here is a pic of my Tune Trapper antenna installed hidden behind the dash.  Fits nicely.

Antenna is the white thing

Then I installed a Clutch safety switch so you have to depress the clutch to start the engine

mounted some 1/8 aluminum angle to a nearby support beam. Works great.

installed some LED lights below the dash

Hidden...they are very thin.

 

And then Jon had some free time to come help me mount the body.  I still had a few “loose ends” I had to take care of before installing the body (like attaching my heater hoses for the hot air vents)  but I can do that when the body comes off next…

wow!!!

In a weird way, its painful removing the sidepipes, seats, seatbelts, roll bars…..You feel like you are backtracking.

Then I decided to start on the front and work my way back…

Hood hinges in place (actually did this before the body install). Note the radiator rail is not straight...Im trying to figure out why. Body is totally bolted down and seems straight. Preliminary info from ffcars.com says some of these bars are crooked fromt he factory. Ill have to see

Hood got hinge attachement points

Rivited on. I painted them too first.

Then I had to cut my hole for my Air Cleaner since the hood wont sit down without that hole.  It was scary cutting it out…was worried I would mess up.  Went well though!!

Yes, air cleaner is supposed to be offset a bit

Then I worked on the hood scoop…trimmed it all around to 3/4 inch as instructed.

Hood scoop trimmed and placed into position for me to gloat!!!

Thats it for now.  I have to finish the hood and go on to the windshield!!!

2/10/2012 Body Prep, Taming Wires, Dash Install,

Over the last few days the following happened:

1) I tested the lights and the brake lights didn’t work (that was because the trigger switch was too close to the pedal so was an easy fix), the flashers and hazards didn’t work (I have no clue to this day what was wrong but I unsecrewed and retightened every connection on the dash and now it works) and finally one rear bulb wasn’t working so I simply reinstalled it and its fine.

2) While troubleshooting the lighting issue, I tamed the dash wires and this is the before, and after

Before

after...much tidier

Then, I installed the dash “for good” with screws per the manual

Manual calls for 5 screws...I thought it lookd a bit flexed and flimsy so I put "tweeners" too (no pic of that here)

I tamed some of the wires in the engine compartment and used adel clamps to hold them safe and secure.  I also removed and reinstalled all of my header bolts with some loc-tite. It was amazing how loose some of them were after just a short amount of engine running.  I also looked over every accessable suspension bolt to be sure that they look tight and I’ll get around to putting some loc-tite or nail polish on them before I put the body on.

EFI harness routing into the PS footbox. Not such a great pic. Note Adel Clamp

It was now time to get the body ready for install onto the car (omg…how exciting!!)  I installed the front and rear lights (headlights were a bit confusing, but I got it figured out from the manual and Jon’s blog)

First you put the buckets in place. I bought some nylocks for the bolts. Extra security for cheep.

Then the light and trim ring go on next.

Here are the rear lights.  I put the brakes on top and the blinker on the bottom.  No law says what  you have to do that I could find.  Just make sure they are the same!  I did my weather paks different so I can’t plug the wrong one into the wrong harness port.

Easy insall but I had to enlarge the bolt holes a tad.

I started to put on the Cobra Earl Vent scoops…This is how I held it in place while the Silicone set that holds the scoop in place.

Piece of Aluminum bent to follow nose...large cable tie holding scoop in place.

Here is inside of scoop with Silicone applied. Note inside of front lights too...

I also put on the engine vent grilles….Just clamped them in place with some silicone for a day.  Seem very secure now.

Clamps are distorting the fins, but they line up with the clamps off.

Next, I put on the gas cap.  I swear it looked straight to me when I installed it, but this picture makes it look not lined up.  I am having a cow right now but I’ll go check the car tonight.  Not a hard fix, but I hate the extra holes in the body even if no one will ever see them.

I think its lined up with the axis of the body, the fender curved seams are giving the illusion that the cap is not straight. Ill check later...ugh

Finally, I installed a grab bar and curved some 1/8 aluminum to fit under the dash lip in the body to secure the handle (I can’t see fiberglass being the best thing for the handle to be directly attached to)…I put some 10-24 riv nuts in the aluminum “half-pipes” of curved aluminum and drilled the holes for the bar (got the bar from Tony D. Branda – pricy in retrospect you can find them cheaper try Finishline).  The bar then bolts to the little curved aluminum “pipes” that have the rivnuts in them.  It seemed very secure when done.

Here is the bar installed...below are pics how I got here

Used the 10mm socket to bend the aluminum around then cut off the pieces

rivnuts in place

Home made "half pipes" holding bar in place without relying on the fiberglass as much.

Finally for this week of little projects, I installed the wiring for my brake light fail light.  Note the really cool spiral wire cover that I used to cover the wires and create a harness.  This stuff is really cool.  I have used a ton of it to tame the wires.  I think I got it from McMaster Carr.  It comes in different diameters.  You use more than you think you will.  Ive used 50 feet so far.  Id recommend getting 75 feet as a starting order if you will be using this type of thing to harness your stray wires.

Note little harness going to sensor in brake line

2/3/2012 Dead Pedal, Headlights/Tail lights, Wiring Troubleshooting

My next job is to make sure the lights work before I mount them on the body.  You have to put the lights together and create weatherpacks that connect to the weatherpacks that were previously put on the Ron Francis Harness.  Before I did that, I quickly made a Dead Pedal to rest my foot on when its not on the Clutch.  Its 14 inches long, cut on the ends to match the floor and the curve of the bar it rests against at the top.  I epoxied a thin piece of carbon fiber to the front to give it a  finished look.

Dead Pedal Front View

Dead Pedal Side View

Then I mocked up my lights, front and back….they went on, and the brights/dims worked….but unfortnately the brake lights didn’t come on nor did the turn flashers or hazards.  Darn.  I plan to trouble shoot this over the next few days.  I pulled out the dash, and am going to go though it wire by wire (I needed to tame it back there anyway…this is a fine time to go at it).  After that, I will check all the fuses and relays, and finally double check that I wired the lights properly.

Headlights and Driving Lights ON!! Note pigtail on lights to give some length to ease hook up with the body on.

Tail lights also working!!! (flipped up so I can see them from the front while I test things)

What a mess. I plan to fix this while double checking my connections

1/29/2012 – Finish Front Speakers, Pedestal Install, Go Kart #2

I finished installing the front speakers today.  I had to trim the grills because they are round and abutted a straight edge in the car.  There was no way to put the speaker any further away.

Had to trim the edge of the grill because of the structural beam

Here is the back of the speaker

See why it couldnt go any further rearward?

Here is how I made the pedestal mounts.  Lots of Rivnuts

Screws (with sanded down heads) go UP from bottom of Tranny Tunnel cover into rivnuts on the brackets. Holes in the pedestal line up with the rivnuts on the vertical portion of the bracket and secure the panel. Note hole in Tranny tunnel cover for wires to pass too and from the tranny tunnel to tthe firewall area.

Here is the pedestal in place. The radio sounded great in my opinion today.

Pedestal painted, but not covered in any way.

This is the radio I used. See URL for company I bought it from.

I also took the car out on a longer and faster go kart than thanksgiving.  It was great.  Super fast, and handled great.  I decided that power brakes is not necessary.  I am very happy with the car so far.

1/27/2012 Front Speakers, Transmission Tunnel Cover

 

I got a 4 inch hole saw and made holes in the front for my speakers below the doors

Between this and the one behind our heads, sound should be OK

Next, I covered the rear shift cutout on the tranny tunnel cover, and drilled a 4 inch hole for the mid shifter I have.

Creative use of the covers....The mid shift is 4 3/4 inches to the left of the PS of the tranny tunnel and 12 11/16th inches behind he firewall. I later cut a hole for the rear harness at 3 inches back and 3 inches to the right of the DS of the tranny tunnel

Here it is in place.  Note the hole for the rear harness.

1/14-1/19 Finishing Cockpit aluminum, Seats and Seatbelts

I finally bit the bullet and riveted in the rest of my cockpit aluminum.  Its scary because you worry that you will need access later….Oh well. lets hope for the best.  I finished the install of my seats.  The seat brackets from breeze are nice, but a mild pain to install.  Im glad I did it though.  Of course, you have to remove and reinstall the seats to get the carpet in later.  Make sure the seat mount is evenly spaced between the inner and outer wall of the car (on its respective side) so that you can fit you fat fingers in to install the hold-down bolts.  Breeze’s directions are pretty clear so I won’t elaborate too much.

I made an oval hole for my speakers.  I installed them with a bit of cork between the speaker and the cockpit aluminum.  I am hoping that will minimize or eliminate rattling.  I found some 4X6 speaker covers on Amazon.  They are very nice.  I don’t recommend 4X6 speakers because as I now know, they don’t come with covers, and the covers I found were hard to get.  Typically 4X6 speakers are OEM replacements and fit inside the doors of modern cars, so they don’t need covers as there is one built into the door of the car.  My bad.

Seat Belts are pretty straight forward.  Many don’t install the anti-submarine strap.  Its an extra ten minutes, so why not?  You don’t have to use it if you find it to be a big pain.

My latest dilemma is whether or not to install an aftermarket brake boost kit.  In the few gokarts I’ve done, I found the brakes to be very heavy (manual brakes).  The car has so much power, I am concerned that the stopping power isn’t equivalent without some assist.  Still thinking about this one.

Seat Mounting plate in place. Note its parallel to the tranny tunnel. Note anti-submarine strap too.

Speaker in place, starting the harness install.

Driver's side done...Note the aluminum bezels for the shoulder straps.

Also, its a good idea to use an extra washer between the post on the car, and the metal end of the straps – that puts a small distance between the strap and the post and can prevent chaffing over time.  Its also clear that the speaker is kind of behind the seat…but there really isn’t any other great place on this build.

Both Done!!!

And for good measure, here is a shot of the engine compartment right now….

Purty, huh?

Thats it for now…gone skiing.

1/13/12 Seats

I got the Breeze Seat mounts.  They aren’t easy to deal with, but I think they serve a good purpose.  The directions aren’t totally clear.  You mount the bracket to the floor without any carpet/insulation.  Then you cut little holes in your carpet/insulation to sit the seat down on the pegs.  Here are the seats in place:

Seats in place...they angle outward on both sides...

You then have to pull out the seats to paint the mounting brackets.  Careful drilling the holes to mount the brackets…you can do some bad things on the other side if you aren’t careful.   I don’t have a pic, but I riveted in my rear wall too….

1/9/12 Cubby Lock, Rear Speakers

My cubby lock arrived today..simple enough just drill a hole and pop it in…well not so fast….the catch is too far back and ill have to fashion something to catch the catch when the door is closed…no biggie

Lock installed

Note that the catch is too deep and doesn't catch anything!!!

Then I bit the bullet and sawed out my 4X6 ovals for my rear speakers.  There isn’t any good place left for them…they will be covered by the seat for the most part…Oh Well.

Started hole with hole saw then used jig saw/dremel to finish.

Used Riv Nuts and bolts to secure the speakers. I put cork behind them to absorb some vibrations

Nothing too earth shattering here…but Im making progress!!!

1/8/12 Roll Bars, Plan Speakers

Spent the day installing the Tangent Roll bar mod.  Instead of an exterior “frankenstein” bolt sticking through the Roll bar (to hold the rear leg to the front hoop) it puts a friction clamp INSIDE the tubes and there is nothing on the outside.  Very clean.

No Bolt here!!!! its all on the inside

Here is the lower connector….see the bolt?  This is what it would have looked like

Drilling these is a pain...start small and work up to full size

Here is what it looks like when done

Looks great....

I am prett sure my 4X6 speakers are going just behind and lateral to each seat and the 4 inch rounds are going inside the below-door kickplate area….More to come on this

Overall its looking very much like a car!!!!

I made this!?!

1/6/12 Rear Cubby Door, Misc Electrical, Getting the Body Back in the Garage

Its been a mild winter, but eventually its going to snow….and once that happens then getting the body inside will have to wait until spring….So I took this opportunity while the ground was still soft to dislodge the buck from the ground (it had sunk in a few inches over the last 8 mos sitting in the back yard) and wheeled it around and into the other side of the Garage

with the body inside I can mount the lights and things like that....I can even trial fit the body if I want!!!!

Then I spent some time finishing up putting the individual weather packs onto the head and tail lights and fabricating grounds for each set of lights.  I put a dab of Automotive Goop on each screw to hopefully prevent any of them from backing out over time.  I spent some time putting whatever wires I could back into the looms, but some just have no proper place.  I got some spiral loom-creator stuff.  I think I like it!!!

Here is the Loom stuff

I have started wrapping around these three unruly ground wires...Here is the finished product...looks very respectable! I will spend some time cleaning up all loose wires and behind the dash as well with this stuff

Here is the finished product...looks very respectable! I will spend some time cleaning up all loose wires and behind the dash as well with this stuff.

Finally, I fabricated a door for the trunk cubby.  I did it slightly differently than Jon, but I think mine is just fine.  I am still waiting on the latch I ordered.  Ill drill that hole when it comes.

12 X 6.75 inch aluminum with hinge installed with rivets

Door installed....I used rivnuts on the bottom so that its removable if need be (like to service the latch, or if I loose the latch key...) Notice the nicely radiused edge....I ordered some edge grommeting for the inner edge so that its not sharp

I plan to install the rest of the aluminum, install the speakers and maybe get the console set up along with the under dash lighting and trunk lighting this weekend.  Then I can get the car off the jacks and maybe gokart it a bit more while its nice.  Still have rollbars, seat belts and seats to install….

12/30-1/2 (2012) Aluminum work, Side Pipes and trunk Wiring

I spent an inordinate amount of time fabricating a cover for fuel pump (their cutout is too small).  This is the final  result:

Here I have cut it better so I can access the fittings

Then I made a cover out of some scrap  I used little rivnuts to hold these block-off plates on

Its a different angle, but you can see how I covered that L-shaped cut out

Then I spent an even LONGER time making the top 2 pieces of the DS footbox removable.  Darn aluminum wouldn’t line up.  I had to make HUGE holes for the bolts to line up with the rivnuts.  Oh well.  After all that, I realized that without removing the body, I wont be able to remove the bolts…so I made a patch cover anyway…looks pretty good!

Patch panel for access to pedal box/wires/etc. Note holes in top piece for bolts into rivnuts in 3/4 inch tube

 

Then I bolted the side pipes on.  I am pretty sure they aren’t far enough away from where the body will sit…but I am going to wait until the body is on in gelcoat before I adjust them any more.

Driver's side

Passenger's side

Then I passed the license plate light up through a grommet and began the wiring work…note the pigtail extension I made.  I have to separate out the lights into weather paks…thats one of my next jobs.

Same pic as above...now look at that nice trunk wiring!!!

And the pigtail I spliced to allow release for trunk removal

Weather paks for splicing pigtail

Tomorrow I think Ill just work on the wiring at the lights….

12/28 Rear Alignment and Trunk Cubby Install

I measured both wheels from a similar point on Chassis and used the panhard bar to allign the rear end.

Driver Side

Passenger's side

 

Then I installed the trunk cubby.  I ordered a southco latch for it.  Jon has good info on how to make the door.  I might buy one though.

Trunk aluminum installed and cubby too!

Side view of cubby

 

I installed the floors of the cockpit too…here are pics.  Its starting to look like a car…wow.

Driver's side floor

Passenger's Floor

 

This weekend i’ll get more done.

12/24 Aluminum Mounting

Today I tied up a few loose ends (I try to tinker/fix a few nagging things every session) and then I embarked on my first few aluminum panel installs.

The first thing I did was move the clutch and brake foot pads over one notch…that gave me a little more clearance from the gas pedal.  The few times I gokarted the car I tended to hit the gas along with the brake.  This should help that.

Notice how I moved the pads over to the left a bit

Next, It has been bugging me that two points had metal up against things that I don’t want metal touching:  1) my brake line as it passes through the DS footbox to the underside of the car and 2) My alternator wires as they pass fromt he DS footbox into the engine compartment.  I put a plastic edge cover on both of these:

Rear Brake Line passes under DS Footbox and then curves rearward to rear brakes. Note the plastic edge cover to prevent chafing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Same protector stuff where wires pass through semi-circular cutout in the DS INNER footbox wall

Next, I got down to new stuff.  I put my most-rearward trunk panel in.  I had to redrill most of the holes to allow the rivets to pass through the powdercoating.  Its a quick zip with the drill, but a pain nonetheless.  I also read a comment on Jon’s blog that now is a good time to place a rivnut where the trunk latch will attach to the frame.  I noted a larger hole in the rear of the frame (see the picture,  you will see the rivnut – its bigger than the rivets) and assumed this was the right hole.  So I drilled it bigger to accept therivnut and crimped it in place.  You have to remove the right side gas strap to get the aluminum on, so put a jack under your tank so it doesn’t drop down.  These straps are a huge pain.

See the RivNut on the bottom right of the group of 4 in the middle of this pic? Its slightly to the right of centerline (1/4 inch off center), but thats where the hole was....

I was about to put the large flat, more forward piece of trunk aluminum in next..but I realized that once I do that I will have much less access to the panhard bar and pinion angle adjuster.  I will leave this one off until I can get the car back down off the jacks so I can adjust the pinion angle and center the rear end on the chassis.  Here is my understanding of pinion angle:  With the car at load, you measure the angle that the input part of the driveshaft is at (and this is usually sloping DOWNWARDS as it moves rearward….)This angle should be mostly parallell to the angle of the pinion which is the place where the driveshaft attaches to the “pumpkin” part of the 3 link rear end.   The pumpkin thus should be angled in a similar DOWNWARD slope so that the FRONT of the pumpkin is HIGHER than the REAR of the pumpkin (just like the ENGINE is higher than the end of the TRANSMISSION).  These two angles should be close to zero.  In actuality, there should be a slight negative angle (meaning the engine/tranny angle should be slightly MORE sloped downwards by a few degrees than the pumpkin’s angle).  This is because at high torques, the pumpkin tends to tilt back a bit more…and this allows for the two to come to ZERO on high torque loads.  Here is a good link to explain since there are some nuances to this.

The last thing I did was note that the access to the fuel pump, while large, doesn’t give access to the fittings.  This kind of defeats the purpose, so I will make a larger hole and fashion a larger cover than the one provided.

You can see the pump, but have no access to the fittings.

12/22 Finish Driveshaft Safety Hoop/Inspect Koni Shocks

I don’t know if I blogged about this, but I attempted to install a driveshaft safety hoop.  This keeps the driveshaft from tearing up your pelvis if it breaks free.  Its a good idea.  Anyway, the riv-nuts that came with the hoop kit are HUGE and I had a tough time getting them to sit in their holes (which I over drilled slightly)  When I was putting in the bolt in three of the 8 riv-nuts, I just pushed the darn things into the 4 inch tube.  This is going to bum me out because Im pretty sure its going to rattle around forever.  Darn. Anyway, I found these expansion bolts at McMaster Carr and they are expensive, but they did the trick.  They are a great way to salvage this type of a hole.  I drilled the holes out to 1/2 inch and tapped in the expansion bolts and then tightened them up.

Expansion bolts

Here it is in real life

Top left and bottom right are the rescue-bolts (these expansion bolts)

The other thing I did was remove all 4 wheels, remove all 4 shocks and check that they weren’t part of a Koni Recall (they weren’t)  While I was doing this, I noticed that my rear coils were contacting the rear axle.  They shouldn’t.  Went to the forums and some suggested changing the spacer arrangment.  Others said to flip the shocks.  That was the answer.

See how the coil is hitting the axle

I was able to properly torque all of the bolts and also the lug nuts for the wheels.  I also placed the spinners.   They twist on clockwise for the left side of the car and counter-clockwise for the right side of the car.  This helps prevent them loosening I guess.

Well that was 5 hours right there.

12/11/11-12/15/11 Tune Engine, Finish Electrical

Now that my engine is running again, I spent some time checking the timing (seems fine now 14 degrees BTDC).  I also pulled the codes from the EFI and I only had a low idle speed code…and that may be an old one I have to reset since it seemed to be idleing fine.

My DS header is very close to the DS footbox inner wall.   It is even melting the paint.

Check #8 Header elbow almost touching footbox...melting paint

Ill get a pic up soon but I put a piece of Thermo-Tec adhesive thermal mat on the footbox wall to protect it.  That should do the trick.

Before I put any body panels on I am spending a ton of time tidying up all of my wires and harnesses.  I am also dieting my harnesses and adding things like  my speaker wires so they don’t run separate from the harness and  clutter things up.   Here are some pics of that:

Clean Tranny Tunnel...On left near shifter you see some raw wires that will plug into the radio, but if you see the tunnel, there is only one loom traversing it on the driver's side. Very clean in there. Even the speaker wieres (royal blue wire emerging from loom on right) is inside the single loom of the tranny tunnel.

I got my radio from Vintage Auto Radio.  Its expensive, but its very small and fits in the custom built dash panel I fabricated.  Jon has the specs on how to fashion the console on his blog.  I plan to put two 4X6 speakers behind the seats and one 4 inch round inside each door kick panel.  I ran the wires today.

This is where the center console panel will go. These are the hot wires and grounds for the radio and two 12V receptcles which will run radar detector, GPS, seat heaters etc.

This is the radio mocked up.  I kind of screwed up cutting out the hole for the radio because I didn’t cut the radiused edges right…I have a straight edge.  But I think the dash covering will obliterate this screw up.

Nice looking!!!!

I followed Jon’s suggestion and got a common ground bus and mounted it.  I also mounted a small fuse panel inside the driver’s footbox to accomodate the things I added….footbox vents, two 12V recepticles, and anything else I might add.  Jon added some lights under the dash…not a bad idea, but I’ll worry about that later.

Inside the DS foot box....I put a fuse panel in.This is the common ground bus This is the DS just inside the firewall.

11/13/11-12/10/11. Engine Start, Engine Died, Engine Start

Not going to have too many pics today.  When I do have free time, I spend it building, not blogging.  My bad.  Nevertheless, there is a lot to be learned just from reading this entry.  On 11/18/11 I had my first start.  The final push to plumb in the cooling system and the heater was more involved than I suspected.  I REALLY wanted to go kart it on Thanksgiving with my family present, however.   The FF5 radiator has a pretty flimsy attachment mechanism, and the fan has no shroud.  Enter Breeze Automotive for both a “chin strap” to hold the radiator up from below, and also for a radiator shroud, which significantly increases the cooling capacity of the radiator.  I painted my radiator black, which makes it even more important to cover up the radiator with a large piece of cardboard when you are working on the car.  Any bends in the fins become even more noticeable.  Despite a lot of care, I already have one nickel-sized area of bent fins. I don’t even know how it happened.  Its very depressing.  You need to get a bunch or right-angle black rubber tubes of various sizes to make some of the sharp turns that the cooling system has to take.  I can’t recall the sizes of all of the tubes, but they were all available easily at my local NAPA auto parts store.    After you get that plumbed in, you have to fill it with coolant, and the system needs to “burp” a few times.  A 50/50 mixture of distilled water and antifreeze along with one small bottle  of “Water Wetter” was the recipe.  It took just under 4 gallons total.  You should fill the overflow tank 3/4 full as well so that the system can suck some of that up as it cools down.

After I did this, I triple checked all of my electrical connections and tightened all critical bolts.  I did forget one VERY important set of bolts, however, but luckily nothing happened.  I never torqued my lug nuts.  they were all on finger-tight.  when I went go-karting on thanksgiving, I was driving on barely tight wheels.  Darn.  I only noticed this on the post-go kart checkup….when I went to check everything I noticed these were ALL loose and then it hit me – I never even tightened them.  The lesson here is that no matter HOW exciting it gets as you get to this point in the build, you have to check EVERYTHING.

Anyway, I greased up all of the grease points on the suspension before the gokart.  Anyway, for engine start, I put about 2 gallons of gas in her and started her up.  At first, unless I had my foot on the gas pedal, she wouldn’t stay running.  That is apparently normal.  You have to set the idle speed a bit higher at first.  The next thing that had to be adjusted upwards was the fuel pressure.  The regulator has a large screw on the top that gets turned to adjust the pressure to 40 with the vacuum disconnected.  When you reconnect the vacuum hose, the pressure should drop.  Mine dropped 5.  I have no idea if this is the “right” amount or not.

The engine ran nicely from my perspective, (here is link to video of first run) and I knew I had more to do (timing, pull any codes from the computer etc) but things had gone so smoothly to this point I felt that those could wait, and I could push forward for the go kart in a few days. (If I had known how easy they were and how bad it was to ignore those items I wouldn’t have postponed them)

About a week later, on thanksgiving day I go-karted the car.  The link to the youtube is here: First Go Kart Video – Thanksgiving 2011.  Before you get all depressed that my garage is cleaner than yours, save the tears.  I spent 4 hours cleaning it the night before so I  wouldn’t be embarrassed by how sloppy my work area looks in a public youtube.  Sanford and Son would have been embarrassed to work in my garage the night before I took this video.

Other than the loose lug nuts, (which caused no problems) the go Kart went flawlessly (if you ignore the tail-light wire dragging behind the car).  It was the next few days of runs that was the problem….

So after the big day, I hunkered down to tune up the car.  I pulled out my timing light and was amazed to find that the car was firing AFTER top dead center (TDC).  This is VERY wrong.  the next thing I noticed was that after about 5 minutes of run time, the headers started to glow.  Either you are running very lean, or dumping raw, unburned fuel into the headers where it is burning.  I think it was mostly the latter in my case.  I went to advance the distributor, and unfortunately the EFI pigtail connector was contacting the thermostat housing before I could advance it enough.  So I pulled out the distributor and re-inserted it with more room to play.  While it was out I double checked that I was at TDC for cylinder #1.    After replacing it, the engine was not a happy camper.  Now, the headers were no longer glowing, but the CATS were glowing.

Is this normal??? I doubt it!!!

Shortly after I noticed this, the engine stopped working.  Unfortunately I had very little free time the next week after this, but in the meanwhile I basically took apart all of the easy, accessible parts of the Mass-flo system and put them back together.  I retightened the manifold bolts (some suggested I might have a vacuum issue) and ultimately I found out that the problem was with the distributor.  Here is how I figured that out:  I put a timing light on the Coil wire….it flashed when I cranked the engine.  I then put the timing light on the spark plug wires….and got no flashing.  Thus it must have been the distributor.  I pulled out and reinstalled it, again making sure to get cylinder #1 to TDC and after this move, the engine started up RIGHT away.  Go figure.

So this is where I am.  I need to recheck the timing, and pull the codes, but the engine is running very well right now.  After that, I will go back to the actual building of the cockpit etc.

Finishing Electrical and Accesorizing the Engine

The engine as of October

I did change the way my Mass-Flo Harness entered the engine…I drilled a 2.5 inch hole in the little triangular space to the far left (looking from front of car) of the top part of the passenger’s foot box.  There is a triangular space created by a few 3/4 inch square frame tubes.  Its perfect.  This allowed me to mount the computer in the passenger’s foot box, but avoided having to have the harness come up in front of the fire wall and then bend back to go through the hole I showed on the last post.  This seems to work way better.  Jon put his Computer IN the engine compartment which I worry will be too hot in the summer, so I opted to put mine in the car, away from the engine heat.  So far his car is running fine with it there.  I followed the instructions on the roadster build manual website and grounded the computer casing and integrated it with the harness that came with the FF kit.

Mass Flow Harness comining up from PS footbox

Computer in PS foot box right wall. Note ground (Red terminals) on top right of box to 3/4 inch tube and Fuse box in way lower right corner of picture (Hard to see because its black but wires are going into and out of it)

Below is a close up of the distributor.  I don’t know why I took this picture other than to show what a beautiful job I did installing my custom cut/crimped and installed distributor wires and how nicely I routed them with clips along the engine.  Please note how I routed the fuel line from one fuel rail to the other.  It actually interferes with the water hose (see later pic on this entry)….my choices are 1) install a longer hose to come around the water hose or 2) use an angled fitting to clear the hose.  I am not sure yet what I will do, but at least for now, a longer one is my easiest choice.

Close up...Not sure why I took this

See how coolant hose interferes with Fuel line (unhooked and on left dangling behind the alternator)

I finished the Dash electrical.  Not everything is hooked up yet, but the engine stuff is…Since this pic was taken I actually installed the dash with temporary clips onto the dash hoop.  I found this to be one of the most dauting tasks so far.  You just have to do a little every day and focus on one circuit at a time.  Also, don’t be afraid to take apart the harness to get at individual wires and to understand where things are going.

Back of Dash. Yes, there is some order in there somewhere.

The only thing left before engine start for me is to plumb in the water cooling system/heater.  I started it last night. I am almost there!!!  Had to buy a 90 degree right angle piece of 5/8 inch rubber hose to go from water pump upper outlet to the inlet on the engine.  Its too close of a bend to use a straight tube and hope it will make the turn.

5/8 inch rubber hose with 90 degree bend...its purchased that way and cut to right length. Don't use straight hose and hope it will work. Too close

I wanted my radiator to be black otherwise it really stands out from the front of the car.  I used radiator black paint after priming it with self-etching primer.  There is some debate if painting the radiator is good or bad, but Im doing it.

The Goods

Aint it purdy? Picture looks much more "variagated" than it is...it looks smoothly black all over in real life.

And finally we have the engine compartment with the radiator and shroud (didnt show pics of that assembly, but the fan is not mounted directly on the radiator…its attached to a shroud to draw more air through the radiator).  The cardboard protects the radiator fins from me dropping stuff on it and bending the fins.

Current compartment 11/13/11

9/6/2011 A Mish-Mosh of Where I’ve Been and What I’ve done

Its been a few months since I have posted.  In the meanwhile I’ve moved, Gone to Alaska for two weeks, and had an earthquake and a hurricane.  I’ve been working a little here and there on the car, but each little session hasn’t seemed to be enough to blog about…but now I think its been enough that I really have made some good progress.  Here goes.

I got overwhelmed with the Electrical, so I did a few other things:  I put the driveshaft on:

Then I put the Shifter on because you need the car to be in gear so that you can tighten the bolts on the driveshaft.  I actually dropped a bolt in the open gear box and after recovering from my heart attack I fished it out with a flexible magnet.

Stock FF5 shifter modified to fit on straight…its too long so I ordered a shorter one from Forte’s Parts

I also installed the Mass Flow EFI, Fuel supply lines and the Distributer…

I mounted the Wiper Motor and Heater/Defroster.  I took a tip from Jon and my plan is to mount every electrical device now so I have targets to hook up to.  It should make the wiring a bit easier.

Also noted on the other pictures, but detailed below is the P.S. foot box vent system in place.

And finally, I put a block-off plate over the small hole in the right side of the firewall to make it easier to cut a large hole for the Mass Flo Harness.  As it turns out, I am currently thinking about moving this hole to the top of the Foot box so that all of the wires are out of the way.  I might thus re-block off this hole in a future post.  For now, this is where the harness is going (pictures not taken yet of the harness in place just of the hole..see below).

Again, the main thing here is I am just biting the bullet and putting everything in place.  I sometimes worry that I am putting things in the wrong place, but I have only had to move a few things.  I moved my Barometric pressure sensor to the D.S. Footbox inner wall to get it away from the Coil.  And as I said above I am probably going to move the hole where the Mass Flo harness passes into the car. (I mounted the computer on the P.S. inner-aspect of the outside footbox wall)

More pics/into soon.

5/12/11 Dash

Dash test-fit onto dash-hoop

Aint she a beaut?  I think so.  I have some issues to deal with still, but for the most part it was straightforward.  I chose to put the tach in the more central position and the spedo on the left since I think the engine speed will be a more critical issue to keep a primary eye on while driving with a manual.  Basically you cut out your holes for the switches and gauges (make sure to center them perfectly!!!) and then you cover the dash with a foamy-vinyl cover (or whatever you plan to cover it with).  Place in the switches and gauges and Voila!!! You have a dash.  Don’t forget to take a few extra whiffs of the glue that holds the dash material onto the dash metal….Good stuff!!! (JUST KIDDING – use plenty of ventilation and consider an organic vapor mask).  I also made an under-dash center panel from scratch that will house the radio and 12v Outlets.  Here is a picture before I bent the tabs.  No pic yet of the finished product but it looks great.

.40 aluminum will be bent along these tabs (not the midline though).

5/11/11 It Begins! Electrical/Wiring Part 1

I have tried every tactic to avoid delving into the electrical system.  I simply don’t know enough about this stuff to feel comfortable.  I have read and read and read.  I have asked questions and I have studied the wiring diagrams.  I am taking the plunge.   I am using the MKIV Manual Build site to guide me.  They have relatively simple diagrams and guidance.

Below is a few days work.  At first I was reluctant to open up the beautiful Ron-Francis Harness.  But for the most part you have to so you can figure out all of the circuits and wire them properly.  What is slowly developing is what was aptly described by Jon as a veritable “Vomitus” of wires.  This is only the beginning.  Its going to get worse….Much worse.

This is the Dash Harness opened up and hooked up to a large terminal block

4/9/2011-4/17/2011 Trannys and Engines and Clutches OH MY!

I got a lot of Big stuff done the last week or so.  I have been too busy to blog about it until now.   Here we go.

First, I got my Engine Delivered.  Here it is:

Isnt she a beaut?

Next I had to put together the clutch system and mate the Transmission to the engine.  I had never done anything like this before, there were no directions and I had to research this on the internet step by step.  Here is the end of the engine that drives the driveshaft.  You must put a pilot bearing in that slot in the very center of metal circle with the bolt-holes in it (Flywheel goes on that).

The Business end of the Engine. Flywheel goes here

Next you have to put on the separator plate.  It goes on some metal dowels sticking out of the engine block but doesn’t get bolted on yet.

Note pilot bearing not yet in center. More pics about the pilot bearing later in post. Starter comes in the hole on the right side of the separator plate

I don’t have a pic of the pilot bearing in place, but its the little metal ring on the left in the below picture.  All I can figure out it does is keep the transmission lined up with the engine.  The roller-bearings inside the bearing prevent any friction between the engine and the transmission drive shaft which actually stabs into this pilot bearing.  The metal thing on the right is the throw-out bearing which activates the clutch.  More on that later.

Pilot bearing on left, Throw out bearing on right

Next you have to put dowels in the flywheel.   You chill the dowels in ice water and heat up the hole with a heat gun then you bang the crap out of the dowel to get it in.  Works like a charm though.  for my flywheel the dowels went in the very center of each group of holes.  Its different for every clutch so be sure where to put yours.

Ice water in glass, heat gun on hole. Bang like crap, rinse, repeat X 3

Here is one dowel in place.  Make sure it is flush or slightly recessed.

After dowel placement.

After getting the dowels in place at the benchtop (you can put them in on the engine but I had a hard time accepting the concept of hitting your dowels on the flywheel while its on the engine.  Too scary) you bolt it to the engine.  The bolt pattern is NOT symmetrical so you have to spin it around to get it perfect.   There is a lot of misinformation out there about how hard to torque the flywheel bolts.  Many sites say 75-85 ft/lbs but ANY resource out there about 7/16-14 bolts (I think thats what they were) will say that is way too much.  Especially since you have to put some teflon paste onto the bolt to stop oil leakage (which increases the pressure in the bolt hole due to the hydraulic pressure).  My Transmission salesman, Mike Forte of Forte’s Parts Connection said 60 ft/lbs is WAY more than enough.   Thats what I went with.  Mike is great and I recommend doing business with him.    Anyway, here is the flywheel in place.

I torqued the bolts to 60 ft/lbs and put teflon paste on the bolts before torquing. You can see the pilot bearing in place now.

Next the pressure plate goes on and gets held in position with the clutch alignment tool (a pretend transmission end that simulates what the transmission will fit like).

Clutch over the pressure plate (not seen - its under the clutch) The clutch-alignment tool is in place in this picture with the ring on the end for removing it before mating with tranny.

Nest you have to mate the transmission to the engine.  You can put the Bellhousing on the engine and stab it with the transmission or put the B/H on the Transmission and mate the two.  Also, the throw-out bearing goes inside the bellhousing on the clutch fork.  I tried mating the two with the B/H on the engine and had no luck.  It worked better for me with the B/H on the Transmission side.  Whatever you do, don’t use the bolts to draw the two together.  You will damage something.  Only use the bolts once its mated 95% and the rest is just a matter of tightening.  It takes patience.

Bell Housing on the engine. Ultimately I took this off and put the end we are looking at now on the transmission, and mated the two after that move. You can just see the Throw out Bearing on the clutch fork in this pic.

WOOOO HOOOO!

Next, the car had to be rolled outside.  Not enough ceiling clearance for the engine to be put in here.  I don’t know if I blogged about it but I did the rough alignment this week after I put the wheels and tires on and also got the front coil/shocks on after that.   I needed to steer it out of the driveway so I am officially a “Roller” now.  Woot!

Dont do this....Unless you are in a rush like me. Drill was on a very low torque setting.

Car outside…engine prepped and ready to go.  I also put a 90-degree oil filter adapter on the engine so I could remove my oil filters easy.   In stock position its too tight of a fit.

Easing it in...

I did this with one other person (a third didn’t show).  Its doable, but hard with two.  Also, my engine hoist can only hold 500 lbs at max extension, so I had to dial it back one notch.  That gave me less freedom to place the engine easily.  If I did it again I would have the ability to extend the boom further.  We had to move the engine, the engine lift and even lift up and down the CAR to wiggle the engine into place.  Fun with physics!!  Ultimately we got it in over about 30 minutes from the time the engine was up in the air.

Check out that grin! the engine is IN!

I rolled the car back into the garage.  Here are two pics of the car now…one has Jon Weiswasser in the pic.  He is building too.  His blog is great for info.

I cant believe how far this has come! Still much to do.

Big help!!!

So after it was all in I checked under the car to see if the oil pan was too low.  It is…but what is even scarier is the bellhousing is really low too.  I will need to shim up the transmission mount a bit (Forte’s has shims for that) and possibly even change the engine mounts to slightly higher ones.

Rut-Roh....

Here is the transmission sitting on the crossmember in the tranny tunnel.  Its not supposed to do that. Its a bit low.

Tail of Tranny sitting on crossmember.

I also looked at my oil pan…it scraped along the battery-holder bolts during installation and made a mess of the bottom.  I might have to change the pan anyway due to clearance issues so I am not going to bum out too much.  Its all cosmetic, but still…

camera looking up from ground at bottom of oil pan....looks awful.....

Now I am on a well deserved vacation.  Dash and electrical wiring is next for me.

4/8/2011 Wiring Harness, Turn Signal, Dash Startu

The last few days I have been laying in the wiring harness, but not making any real modifications to it yet.   I have been reading a lot to understand the wiring issues.   I mounted a few things on the firewall.  My engine is being delivered tomorrow.  I don’t know if it was mentioned yet but on the Dyno it was rated at 437 HP with 417 Ft/Lbs torque.

Tonight I decided to mimic Jon’s order of stuff and I began to prepare the dash.  First you have to make the hole for the steering column a bit bigger to accommodate the Russ Thompson turn signal.  Like Jon I chose to take the hole all the way through the edge of the dash aluminum so I can put on and remove the dash without having to remove the steering wheel.  When you cut out that piece (see picture below)

Dash with Steering cut out in place

the dash looses significant strength.  I chose to cut a small piece of aluminum and mount some riv-nuts so that I could bolt the aluminum “patch” piece on to restore strength.  It worked great.

Low profile riv nuts in place

Patch in place and integrity restored!

I also adjusted the steering column length so that the Russ Thompson turn signal could be mounted.   I had to machine down the end of the steering column to get the steering wheel mounting boss to slide on.

Driver's Side at this point

The necessary gap between the turn signal and the steering wheel

Its 2:30 am and Im going to bed.

4/2/2011 Positive Battery Cable Rear Wire harness and Ebrake Cables

I cut and spliced the positive battery cable to length tonight and mounted it along the driver’s side 4 inch tube.  I need to jump from the battery cut off switch now to the solenoid….but I don’t have another ring terminal to splice to….so that will have to wait.  I also placed the rear wire harness in place (and will probably have to take this out to do mods on it..but at least I now know how it goes.  Finally, I got new 1995 mustang GT ebrake cables that are a bit shorter than the ones they send you with the kit and thus don’t have to be routed under the chassis (which is a no-no in NJ).  I am not sure I did this right, so if you are following this blog and doing what I do…please follow up later and see if I am right…..

right rear wheel ebrake routing

left rear wheel ebrake routing

Birds-eye view of ebrakes meeting at rear differential. Note rear wire harness too

birds-eye view of ebrake cables passing through the bracket on the chassis inside the tranny tunnel. Again, note the rear wire harness in the tranny tunnel

ebrake cables attached to Ebrake T bracket

Positive battery cable routed up along Driver's footbox and attached to battery cut off switch

Main trunk of wire "vomitus" coming into firewall area. FUN!!! I drilled a few holes in the firewall to zip-tie the trunk to the firewall and keep it still and tamed.

 

 

3/30/2011 Mounted Electrical Components Continued

Today I mounted the Solenoid and the Battery cut off switch and Battery “Memory Keep Alive” unit.  The hardest part is envisioning where all of the wires will be going later on and thus knowing where to put these things.   Again, the MKIV Manual site is a goldmine…but I still had to put my battery cut off switch on the inboard side of the driver’s footbox because I plan to put my radio and power sockets into a custom made console which goes right where the MKIV Manual site puts the cut off switch.  I might have to route the Battery + Cable to the LEFT rather than to the right because of this set up.   We will see.

Here is a picture inside the footbox showing the battery cut off switch and the fuse holder for the Memory keep alive unit.

Fuse holder is little thing on left with two wires and the cut off switch has the red key thing in it. Yes I checked to be sure my leg won't hit this area when driving. It looks much closer than it really is

Next is a close up of the INBOARD side of the driver’s foot box showing the battery cut off switch and the keep alive wires hooked up.  To the left in the picture is the solenoid just under the firewall.

We are standing at the front of the car looking backwards towards the driver's seat

Here is a wider view of how the hood area is shaping up.  Note my personal wire-tsunami forming in the pedal box on the right.

We are standing at front of car looking back and slightly towards the driver's seat in this wider picture.

Thats it for tonight.  More electrical stuff tomorrow and probably for some time to come.

3/29/2011 First Electrical Steps – Fuse Panel

The other day I took the wiring harnesses out of the box and almost died.  It looked so darn complex.  It was late so I went to bed.  Today, I decided to forge ahead.  The first issue is that the harnesses and fuses have to be significantly altered to adjust for the Mass Flow EFI system I plan to use. The  mk4build.com website actually outlines a build with a Mass Flow EFI on a Ford Small Block engine….so its a good idea to follow the basic flow of what they did.   They suggest removing the fuses on the components that aren’t being serviced by the harness but are actually controlled by the Mass Flow EFI system.  They also suggest removing and terminating the wires in the fuse panel that are no longer being used…but I am afraid I will screw something up so I might just stick with the fuse removal for now.

Jon recently referred to the mass of wires you have to deal with as a “vomitus” of wires.  He couldn’t be more correct.  I only have dealt with ONE of the 4 harnesses and I am already overwhelmed by the sheer number of wires and connections involved.

I decided to mount all of the mountable components first:  the fuse panel, the battery cut-off switch, the solenoid etc.  I will go on to laying the harnesses next and then do the dash.

As an aside, I spoke to Tom Martino of Tom Martino Racing yesterday and my engine is ready.  On the Dyno it made 437 HP and 417 Ft/lbs of torque.  Damn.  I will pick that up in the next week or so.

First pic today is the fuse panel as seen from above.

Back side of fuse panel....We are looking down into pedal box from driver's side of the car

Next pic is the same fuse panel taken from below.  I mounted this mostly with riv-nuts…but note on the far right I put one self-tapping nut/screw thingy as after I had mounted the panel it still had a little bit of flex at the end…and I didn’t want to remove the whole thing.

Fuse panel from below.

Back up above I tapped a hole for the ground for the fuse box and sanded away the powder coat for better contact and secured the ground to the frame here.

Contact point prepped.

Grounded!

Tomorrow I plan to finish mounting the mounted electrical components and working on the harness layout.

I ordered some different cables for my E brakes.  They should come fairly soon.

3/22/2011 Battery Box and Battery Install

I went with the Breeze Battery Box instead of mounting the battery in the trunk as they would have you do it at Factory Five.  The breeze box hold the battery between the front cross member and the first horizontal 4 inch tube.  Its a little tricky measuring and drilling everything.  I ended up placing Rivnuts on the rear side of the box but did use the supplied rivets for the front of the box.  Here is a picture of the box installed:

View of battery box from passenger seat looking forward at box

And another view

Looking down at he box from above. Front of car is to your left, rear of car is to your right

Once you get the box in place, you place the type 51 battery in the box and then start hooking up the ground lines.   Here they are in place.  Again I used Rivnuts to hold the insulated line clamps in place.

Engine ground line along right sided 4 inch tube....loose end will hook into starter on engine.

There is a ground cable jumped off the negative terminal of they battery into the frame of the car.  That is shown here.  A few zip ties helped hold the cables against the tubes in a few places.

Battery in place with engine ground and frame ground in place.

I still have to center the rotors on the brakes with another shim.  I need to cut back my outer tie rods and I need to bleed my brakes real soon.  These are my next projects.  Engine comes in soon.

3/14/2011 Engine field trip

Today I went to see my engine builder Tom Martino of Tom Martino Racing.   This guy is the real deal.  I had to drop off my Mass-flow EFI to him so he could finish the engine and dyno it.  His shop was great and the engine looks good so far!  Here is a pic of how it looks so far….

HOT!

I should have the engine by next week or so.

I tried to bleed my brakes last week and they leaked like a sieve so I have to do some fixing of that.  Parts are on order.

Been busy, so sessions are short and sweet.

3/13/11 Accelerator Pedal, Battery Box and my poor dog

I am totally heartbroken.  I got my delivery of my wheels on Friday and when the UPS van pulled out of my driveway he accidentally hit and killed my dog Jake (white dog in picture).  I am devastated.  Jake was about to turn 16, which is old for his breed (Westie) but he was very healthy and it was not his time.

Jake on left, Weenie on right. We will miss you Jake!!!

After a sad few days trying to make sense of it all, and also trying to make sense of the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami fiasco I got back to work.  I had bought a polished stainless accelerator pedal from  Russ Thompson.  Here is a pic of that.  Its about the easiest install you can imagine…of course its tougher because 1/2 of the foot box is installed already.

Cool Stainless look.

The pedal comes with a clamp that attaches to a horizontally oriented frame piece on the upper right part of the driver’s footbox.  It literally takes 10 minutes to install.  Removing the old pedal was the hard part.