Moved!

December 18, 2014 -

  Here's a photo of the roll bar work I got done yesterday.  Today I got the LeMans gas cap on and connected it to the fuel filler connection tube.  That's the big shiny thing on the right rear quadrant of the car and a piece I think is very cool looking.  I remember when I got the shipment, that was one thing I would take out and show people.

  Just in case I got pulled over driving the 5 or 6 blocks to the new garage I bolted up the driver's seat harness.

  It was much colder today than yesterday but still fun to drive!  Here it is right before pulling into the driveway and garage at the new place.

Body

December 17, 2014 -

  This was a big day and I had high hopes.  I put the last of the bulb seal on that needed to go on before the body and put some foam on the sides of the foot boxes.  Here are some past shots before the body went on.  The sun rays were kind of cool and that's the body buck in the background.

  This one from the rear is funny cause my shadow makes it look like Homer Simpson took this photo.

My Dad helped me put the body on.  Thanks Dad!

  What you aren't seeing in these photos is what a giant pain the rear quick jack bolts are to put on.  You need to drop the gas tank in order to put the bolt through.  (And I only found that after fiddling for an hour and then calling Factory Five. [Pro tip: The passenger side tank strap is really hard to get all the way up to where it needs to meet the bolt hole. I used a two by four on its side between the strap and the jack which both lifted the tank and pushed the strap up into position.])  In the afternoon I got the roll bars on with their cool grommets. (Would definitely recommend them as they look great.)  (Photo tomorrow when its lighter.)  Lastly, the car didn't start. Maybe I loosened the fuel pump connection when lowering the gas tank. Will have to figure it out tomorrow.  Guess the car isn't getting moved today.

License Plate Wires & Horns

December 15, 2014 -

  From the FFR manual I had the license plate wires laying like this over the passenger side trunk wall.

  I thought it was pretty obvious that the body will pinch those wires (in the black plastic tubing.)  My savior internet friend Dale told me you need to drill a hole in the trunk floor and run them up through a grommet so I did that like so:

  You can see how dark it's getting trying to work at the end of the day in December with no lights.  I also mounted the high and low horns behind the radiator on the driver's side.

  I'll try and get a lighter photo but that is them above the green wires.  I also put the foam and bulb seal on and am pretty much ready for an extra hand to help put the body on and then get it into a lit garage!

Roll Bars Drilled

December 13, 2014 -

  I finally finished drilling the roll bar mounts.  Again, this was the hardest drilling of the entire project.  I guess that is good as you want some hard steel in your roll bars to protect you.  After the drilling I pulled the roll bars off and cleaned off some flaky metal.  I also thought I might get the drill shavings out of the mounts with a handy retracting magnet I have.  Here are the shavings from inside the mount.

   

Roll Bars Attached

December 9, 2014 -

  I finally got the roll bars to attach.  The trick here is that you need to file off a bunch of the powder coat paint on the rear roll bar mount so that the rear leg can slide down far enough so the hoop roll bar can come all the way down.  Then you can pull the rear leg up and into the hoop roll bar's mount.

  Once this is in, you can start drilling the mounts.  Like the manual says, start small and work your way up to the 5/16" bit.  This is the *hardest* drilling of the entire project I have felt so far.  Have a plugged in drill or very charged up batteries and have some sharp bits! I broke quite a few bits doing this (some big ones too.) If a bit is really stuck into the far side like I had, one tip it to use a hammer and punch and punch it through. Hopefully that won't happen to you. The above picture is to show the nice joinery from the Tangent internal roll bar attachment kit.

Aluminum Panels

December 7, 2014 -

  I put in the rest of the driver's side inner top panel on the footbox.  There's a cutout hole in it which I decided not to rivet in but screwed in as it seemed like one might want access to that later on (for reasons like adjusting the balance bar on the brakes.)

  I think you can tell in the above photo that I had some more light to work with today.  :-)  Also, big thanks to my neighbor Zack for letting me use an extension cord to run the air compressor that runs my riveter.

  Before the body goes on I thought I might go around and put in some panels that might be hard to drill holes for once the body is on.  Here are two oval patch panels in the trunk I put on.  Again here I used screws because these cover the fuel level sender in the fuel tank and the fuel pump.  I've had a couple times where the fuel pump connector was iffy and needed some adjusting so I didn't want to rivet myself away from opening this up in the future.  I may later on use a screw with a flatter head though.  These were the screws that came with the car holding a bunch of aluminum panels in place.

  Next up is to finish fitting the roll bars to get their mounts drilled.  I think bulb seal goes around some spots on the car and then the body! Then it'll get moved to the garage I'm at which has power.

Roll Bars and Driver Footbox

December 6, 2014 -

  I worked on assembling the roll bar attachment kit from Tangent. It looks like this on both ends:

  As the big nut is screwed tighter it pulls the bolt head down which flares out the vertical metal pieces.  Inside the roll bar this will lock onto the insides of the tube that is the roll bar.  Then you just screw both roll bar parts together on the long threaded rod you see going out of the picture above.

  I also worked on putting in the driver's side top inner footbox panel.  I got it fit and partially drilled but I think from this picture you can see, I ran out of daylight. (I'm working in a garage now with no power.)

Windshield Wiper Motor

November 30, 2014 -

  I started to give up on being able to put in the windshield wiper motor because there was so little space available due to the heater on the passenger side of the engine bay firewall.  When I mentioned bagging it to my internet friend and fellow MK4 builder Dale, he said, "You've come this far on it, might as well figure it out. Also, are windshield wipers required in your state?"  So I got motivated and worked it in there until it fit.  I felt pretty good about it afterwards and knew I shouldn't have been thinking of giving up on it.  Thanks again Dale!  Here's the wiper motor just left of the black heater:

  Next up, I siliconed and riveted the outter top panel of the driver's side foot box.  Thank you Michele for the help riveting.

  While helping and unbeknownst to me, Michele snapped a few of me working.  See, I do read the directions, even if they don't always make sense.

  Here's a rare one of me using gloves to avoid cutting myself on the aluminum panel edges:

  I need to move this car project to another garage soon so I am motivated to get the body on as that would be a pain to move to the other garage (with the body buck.)  It would be a lot easier to move the car (drive it? [it's only a few blocks...]) with the body on.  The wiper motor and that footbox panel needed to go on before the body as I thought those would be hard to access once the body is on.  I think there's one more panel to rivet on (the driver's side top inner footbox panel) and drilling bolt holes for the roll bars before I can put the body on.  (So close!)  Unfortunately, the rear leg of the roll bar isn't fitting on the frame mount.  That's the next problem to solve.

Rear Brake Brackets

November 25, 2014 -

  After getting another set of brackets for the rear brakes, putting them on, and finding they didn't fit I was getting tired of the rear brakes.  (That set was identical to the old ones that didn't fit.)  Finally, November 24 I got the newly redesigned set of brackets.  I put them on the next day and there was some space between the caliper and the wheel. It wasn't a lot of space but enough and I'll take it.

  Here is a comparison of the new and old brackets.  The new one has a rounded edge as it goes around the bolt hole.  (In Wilwood's parlance, it is fully "radiused".)  The old one has a flat cuttoff as it gets to the bottom edge around the bolt hole.  In the below photo the bottom one marked PS is the old bracket.

  Lastly, there is a new code stamped into the redesigned bracket, 12364 LBB.

  I also put some more dynamat inside the passenger footbox and in the transmission tunnel.  I love how solid that stuff makes the car feel.  Oh and I found a wire nut in the driver's fuse box area that I replaced with a soldered connection.  Wire nuts = bad choice for this application.

Dash

November 14, 2014 -

  It's been a little while since I posted but I have been putting work in on the dash wiring and rear brakes.  On the latter I got a new set of brackets from Wilwood but it turned out that they were the same as the old ones and didn't give any new wheel clearance.  They should get the newly redesigned ones today and send them out to me sometime next week.
  On the dash I think I have a wiring problem with the hazard switch and I still have to wire up the wiper switch and I also need to figure out what to do with the red indicator light I have.  Apparently there's no check engine light feed in the this wiring harness.  I've read that some use this as an indicator of a fault in the alternator so maybe I'll do that.  After mounting the dash I turned on the engine today and it looked like all the gauges worked except for oil temperature.  I didn't drive anywhere so I also am not sure if the speedometer is working.  The gauge lights light up though.  I also want to point out that I corrected a bad wiring practice photographed earlier.  I replaced the wire nuts with the blade cutting style wire joiners that come with the kit.  Wire nuts wouldn't be good in a moving and vibrating environment.  Thank you for the help there Dave!

  Also, another note on the wiring in the back of the dash.  The kit comes with a bunch of short wires that I think are meant to daisy chain the grounds of the smaller gauges and the 12V gauge feeds.  Strangely though these short wires can only connect to one terminal on both ends so they're useless for daisy chaining.  Cut off the ends and crimp two wire ends into one of these connectors and then you can hop from one terminal to the next as drawn in the diagrams.

Footbox Panels

October 26, 2014 -

  I riveted on a small patch panel on the driver's side of the transmission tunnel:

  Then I riveted on the outside wall of the driver's side footbox and another patch panel on the front of the footbox.  That panel on the front needed a little filing to get a good fit,

  I also put together a bunch of the gauge light wires and their grounds together with wire nuts.

Dash Related Stuff

October 20, 2014 -

  I put silicone and riveted the dash extension piece on and then cut the dash extension oval cover plate to size with the wire bundles.  I then siliconed and riveted the cover plate on which you can see here:

  I also put the wiper switch in the dash next to the horn button seen here:

  I did have a big update a week and a half ago which I posted on the ffcars forums but not here.  It turns out that Wilwood has updated the design of the rear brake bracket to give the 1/4" of wheel clearance that I've been saying all along they need.  (They had an old design that did this but changed it and it made the caliper touch the inside of the wheel.)  Unfortunately the production time is 4 weeks until these newly designed brackets can be sent out to me.  I'm happy that I don't have to "custom cut" my own bracket though.

Coolant

October 4, 2014 -

  I had a couple of problems getting the coolant system to work right.  First the radiator fan wouldn't come on.  It turns out you need to ground the green wire that goes into the relay in the chassis wiring harness.  It is the green wire with the yellow wire nut in this picture.

  So then the fan came on once the engine warmed up to 195 degrees.  The problem was then that the engine didn't stop warming up.  I had put as much coolant as I could in the fill cap.  I think running the engine pushed around some air in the system though.  Then I opened up the fill cap, was able to put more coolant in and for good measure opened up the driver's side petcock on the radiator and filled through a tube there until the fill cap started to over flow into the over flow tank.  This is what the radiator petcock looks like that I am referring to:

  Now the engine doesn't heat up past about 205 degrees which is a good operating temperature.

Dash Gauges

September 19, 2014 -

  I finished gluing up the back of the dash and put the gauges and indicator lights in today.  I also put in a turn signal switch all the way to the left.

Dash Work

September 10, 2014 -

  This is going slow in part because I've been traveling a lot and because you need to wait between each gluing.  Here is the back with the glove box on.

  Here is the front of the dash.  I think it looks pretty good with the glove box installed.  You can also see two of the larger gauge holes done for the speedometer and tachometer.

Dash & Footbox

September 1, 2014 -

  I've been working on the dash for over a week now.  Drilling the right size holes for different switches, ignition, lights, etc, then gluing the dash padding on, trimming that, then gluing the covering on, trimming, etc.
  Here's the dash padding on.

  Then, a few days later, here is the dash surface being glued on over the white padding.

  You can see how it needs to be cut so that it can fold over the edge and make it around the curves of the dash.  You can also see some books weighing down another side which is drying.  If you look towards the far edge, that is the bottom of the dash and has a 90 degree edge to it.  That was not easy getting the padding and covering to glue to a short surface that actually turns more than 90 degrees back so it was hard to put weights on it to hold it while it dried.  Thanks for the extra hand Michele, in getting that glued down evenly.

  While that was drying I went out to the garage and finished up trimming a spare piece of aluminum for the driver's footbox expansion I did earlier.  This piece has 4 separate 90 degree edge bends up which are in the engine bay side of the footbox.  (Those edges bent up are needed to rivet the existing footbox wall to.)

  If you look closely at the top of the photo you can see the bottom edge of the expansion from above.  This gives the right leg a lot of room and only starts to feel narrow if your foot is pressing *all* the way down on the accelerator. I don't think I should be doing that anyways. ;-)

Battery Box Cover

August 23, 2014 -

  I finished cutting the hole for the glove box and put in the mounting screws for it.  But then I thought before I glue the padding and dash cover on maybe I should check if there are any more holes to drill.  Sure enough I think all of the signal light indicators need holes drilled and I think I'm missing one indicator light. I also think I need an ignition hole but I'm going to check with the forums and maybe Factory Five on that.
  I also started trimming an aluminum piece for the driver's side foot box floor to finish the kick out I did for more foot room around the accelerator.
  Lastly, I also put a proper grommet in the battery box hole where the switch cable comes in to the positive battery terminal.  Then I put the cover on the battery box. Sharp looking I think!

Glovebox

August 17, 2014 -

  It took a while but my glovebox finally came in the mail and that's what I had been waiting on to get started on the dash.  Here's the box and the new dash covering that came with it:

  Here's me part way through cutting the hole in the dash for it with the paper template that came with it:

Water Temp Gauge

August 3, 2014 -

  I have been having a tough time getting the oil pressure gauge to work.  I wired up the water temperature gauge and it seems to be working.  It was nice watching the temperature go up and seeing this gauge work until I realized that I don't think the fan on the radiator was going up so if the car isn't moving then this temperature is going to keep going up and the car might over heat.  Another problem to solve I guess.  Here's what the gauge looks like:

Fuel Line, Start, and ...... Go Kart!

July 28, 2014 -

  I think I had mentioned last time that upon starting up the fuel pump the fuel line was leaking.  After taking apart the end from the fitting I could see that there wasn't a good flaring on the hard fuel line.  I tried to flare it with my hand tool but I think the larger lines are harder to flare by hand (as opposed to the smaller brake lines which I flared a bunch of times successfully.)  So I went and bought a new one yesterday.  Here's what the line looks like flared from the factory:

  After work today I tried putting in the new fuel line and promptly kinked it using the wrong slot in my line bender tool.  I went and bought another fuel line, happy that was only a $9 mistake.  After putting this one in and starting the fuel pump there was no leak in the back but the front was leaking.  Not quite yet down in the dumps, I thought I would try tightening the fuel line nut into the fitting a little more.  (It was in such a hard to reach position with two wrenches that maybe I didn't tighten it enough?)  After about a 1/2 or more of a turn I ran the fuel pump again and there didn't appear to be leakage.  So then, I thought it was time to turn the key in the ignition all the way.

  And since that worked....

Rear Brake Fix and Seat Heater

July 26, 2014 -

  If I haven't mentioned this before the rear brake caliper was *really* close to the wheel, touching the driver's side wheel in fact.  Factory Five admitted that I had the wrong mounting bracket and sent me a new one.  Here you can see the new one next to the old one.  Notice how much shorter it is, which will let the caliper sit lower and give the wheel more clearance.

  After getting everything back together, now you can see daylight between the brake caliper and wheel.

  I also started working on putting a seat heater in the stock seats that come with the kit.  The bottom cushion was pretty easy.  The vinyl cover there is lightly glued on to the foam cushion and peels off fairly easily.  There is some padding backing the vinyl and that tended to rip as it separated from the foam.  Just go slow and keep your fingers close to the materials making contact and it'll come off ok.  I used the cobra heat seat heaters.  The tape they come with is pretty useless but I sprayed some Sprayway 92 adhesive and that stuck pretty well to the foam and seat heater.  I started working on putting the seat heater in the back and that is a much bigger job!  You have to remove about 40 hog rings to pull the vinyl covering off the back. Here's what that looks like.  (The seat heater is red.)

  I'm in the process now of putting the hog rings back on.  It's a job worth splitting over more than one day.  In the picture you can see the seat cushion flipped over forward and the seat heater wire coming through a hole I made in the foam so that it will come out below the seat.

Start Attempt #1

July 20, 2014 -

  I tried to start the car.  First there was no sound of the fuel pump going.  I went around back and pushed on the electrical connector to the pump and it started.  So that connection doesn't sound the best... I was later told it needed some crimping but it is a plastic part so I'm not sure how you crimp plastic?
  Then as I got the starter to start turning the engine over my friend told me to stop as there was a massive fuel leak in the fuel line where the hose from the filter comes into the hard line.  I also found some small leak up front but I think I fixed that by tightening a hose clamp.  The rear leak wasn't fixed after tightening the nut on the hard line to the fitting.  Factory Five is sending me a new hard fuel line fitting.  All I can think of is that it just isn't sitting right in there.  They are also sending me new rear brake brackets since the rear brakes are way too close to the wheels.

E Brake and Various Stuff

July 15, 2014 -

  I've done a few various things.  I put on the emergency brake handle that I assembled in my living room over the winter.

  It didn't fit the greatest so I used the dremel to chop off the end of the forward most bolt on the handle which was rubbing the aluminum panel when the handle went down.  That helped but then the Factory Five guy told me to bend the bracket on the frame.  Well that was pretty difficult with the panel on.  I couldn't get a very good grip on it.  That would've been nice to know earlier.

  I also added the ground strap to the engine.

  I felt fortunate to find a bolt leftover that fit nicely into an engine block hole for the ground strap.  This is the first thing in the manual I can remember in quite some time that has been straightforward and complication free.

  I added some of that heat shield sheath to the alternator wire plug that ran right next to the header.  (You can see more of it going under the header protecting the clutch cable.)

  I have also been working on gathering up wires back into bundles as they run back into the engine compartment from behind the dash.  You may not believe it but this is cleaned up from what it was before.

  Challenges I've run into along the way are finding that the driver's side rear brake caliper was rubbing the inside of the wheel.  I had to remove the brake and take out some washers on the caliper mount bracket.  I don't think its rubbing now but its so close on both sides in the rear wheels its got me wondering if I was sent the wrong part somehow? Or is this how it should be? Will be finding out soon. I also tried putting on the emergency brake cables but they don't seem quite long enough. A problem to be solved tomorrow I guess.