Cobra plan for 2010

The cobra has had a pretty good December so far and things are looking good for 2010. This month, I found a grease fitting that I had missed during assembly that was the source of my suspension squeaking. I actually missed the fitting on both sides, but the passenger side came pre-greased while the driver side didn't. A little bit embarrassing, but hey, everybody makes mistakes. Also, I finally got around to shortening the passenger side tie rod so I could get my alignment in check.

I got some of the parts I need to do my rear suspension upgrade for Christmas (thanks mom and dad!) and the rest of the parts are on order. Right now with the stock setup, I have a good 8-12 inches of sway in the back. It's unbelievable really, and makes accelerating through turns downright dangerous. With the new parts there should be a lot less play, and a lot more control over the stiffness of the ride with a set of koni coil-overs.

After the coil-overs I'll focus on a new set of wheels and getting the biggest freakin' tire I can fit on the back in there. I'm thinking about taking it to Fastlane and having them order the wheels - that way if they don't work I don't have to worry about returns. I don't want any rubbing on the body.

After the rear suspension and wheels I will focus on sourcing a new transmission. Right now I am on the watch for a good used T-45, but I might end up looking for a new transmission instead. I like the T-45 because of the gearing 1-4 are pretty close together with a very overdriven 5th gear. I don't want 6 speeds because with a car with this much power, the time taken up shifting could be spent in the power band in a 5 speed. In the rx-8 the 6 speed was essential because of it's lack of power, but we don't have that lack in this case.

There are several new 4.6L builders on the forum so it's an exciting time to be a part of that scene as well.

I've also spent a lot of time working with Tom reassembling his 440 for his 1968 Imperial. His other vehicles have met untimely demises so we've been rushed to get it on the road as soon as possible. Meanwhile he has my truck, therefore I would like to get the Imperial on the road before any bad weather strikes. A cobra with crappy rear suspension, rear wheel drive, summer tires and power to spare does not fare well with winter weather. So far nothing worse than rain though.

Tuned!

I got some new stuff to report: first big news - I finally got 'Toast tuned. I'm putting down 275 rwhp and 280 tq.

I started working on my alignment a bit too. I need to take the passenger side tie rod off and shorten it, but in the meantime I compensated on the driver side. This means my steering wheel isn't centered and I can not turn as far to the left as I can to the right. But at least the wheels are straight.

Dyno Run

Rain

The rain today has come as unexpected and I had, in fact, counted on it NOT raining. I had left the windows down in my truck and those spungy cloth seats are SOAKED. To make things even better - I restained the deck last night and the rain is now running the stain all over my yard - SWEET...

Oil Change

17 quarts of oil to change all 3 cars, plus 20 oz for the lawnmower :-)

Shelbatop!

I drove in to Greensboro for a family lunch this Sunday. I got to see a lot of people I don't often see, including Trevor & Alisa and their lil' chitlin Morgan. Robert & Nancy were in from Colorado. All the usual fam was their too- mom, dad, grandma, justin, jamie, mac & sherry.

We were playing some yard games out in the front when I got a visit from my old childhood buddy Joey Cheek and his mom. It's always nice to see somebody that you only see occasionally so this weekend was very good for me in that regard. I've seen Joey several times since he 'went famous', but I haven't seen his brother Michael in forever - I wonder what he's up to.

We put the top back on Shelbatoast for the drive home. This was the first long, high speed drive with the top on, and it help up great. No problems at all. I do need to find a way to put the top on without scratching the crap out of the car though!

but in the end...

But what I really need to upgrade first is the transmission. Not so much upgrade, as repair. A master rebuild kit runs about $250 for the T-45 transmission and should be fairly basic to work on - especially for someone who knows the transmission. I'll probably see if I can get fastlane to rebuild it. While they have it there, I'll most likely have them dyno-tune it as well.

After the transmission and tune, next up would be the suspension upgrades and then the engine upgrades.

or an engine upgrade?

So I've ditched the idea of putting a blower on this thing. I am skeptical about how the old engine would handle it and I don't really want to rebuild it. Instead, the plan is to go with the old N/A regulars - cams intake & tune. I figure I could easily see an extra 35 horse with that, which would put me at or above 300 at the wheels. Could always delete the cats too and pick up a few more.

Still holding off on the idea of switching to 3.73s in the differential. I like the highway cruise at 2K rpm too much.

coil over rear suspension

I have been considering adjustments to the rear suspension set up. Here is the plan as it is now: going to stay with the 4 link setup, but switch to coil-overs for the shock/spring and switch to tubular links. This would allow me to get rid of the crappy ghetto mustang spring setup and the loose control arms.

Ultimately what this would do is improve handling particularly through corners. What I don't like about it is that it'll be stiffer and wont grip quite as hard on acceleration. Overall it's a much nicer setup that is way less ghetto and old. Total cost is $750 plus tax & shipping.

Soft top pt. 2

So part 2 started on Saturday morning. I was installing the lift-the-dot snaps when Brandon and Allison came out to pick up some stuff they left over Friday night. The snaps are a pain to install: you have to punch a hole through the fabric for the stud, then you have to cut 4 little slots around the hole. Then you feed the grommet spikes through the 4 slots and slide them into the grommet backing on the other side of the fabric. Then you bend the spikes over to grip the fabric. They work really well once installed, but my fingertips are worn off from the process. Brandon and I broke one of the studs installing it in the body, so I'm going with 11 snaps instead of 13. No big deal. All the snaps are in place - thank goodness.

During soft top part 1 we noticed that the rear brace was too short. It's final position should be just behind the roll-bars, but we couldn't get it to fit there properly without it smashing up against the roll-bars. So Brandon and I came up with the idea to build what we entitled an 'extend-o-bracket'. We worked together to come up with a design that would keep it from lowering the brace further than we wanted. I'll take some pics of the 'extend-o-bracket' later and post 'em up.

Later on Saturday, Diana helped me to glue the windshield brackets to the fabric top. It wasn't pretty - or easy. We stretched the top tight and put a piece of tape on the corner where it laid over the windshield. Then we rolled it back and put some glue on one side of the bracket. We tried to position it as best as we could, using guestimation way more than I was comfortable with. We did a test fit and made some adjustments, then we glued that sucker together with contact cement. That stuff is really messy and I'm not too good at it so the glue is pretty much everywhere. Once it all dries completely, I'll spray paint all the over-glue black and it should be pretty unnoticeable...relatively unnoticeable...passable.

Anyhow we got everything glued in place and it's clamped down right now. It takes 7 days to fully cure. Luckily for me - rain in the forecast for the next 7 days so ugh.

Oh I almost forgot, the door windows mount in by 2 posts that slot into 2 holes in the door. I measured very carefully and did a visual verification that the door posts line up. Unfortunately, it's such a tight fit that the slightest variation causes it not to fall in place. I used the grinder on the posts and got the passenger side to fall in. It's still not very pretty though, there is a gap between the window and the canvas on the backside, and it's too close to the window. I might have to summon on Joshes welding skills once again to place the posts in a slightly different position on the window. The door posts aren't really movable.

Once the glue is dry I'm supposed to drive a few hundred miles before I place the braces back in.

Soft Top

After watching Shelbatoast get poured on in the parking lot for about an hour during work yesterday, I realized the time to install the soft-top is definitely past due. Luring a few willing friends with steaks and beer, Josh and Tom came out to help with the process. This was a good thing since I was pretty nervous about drilling into the finished fiberglass.

We had to make an emergency run to Ace hardware to get a special tool. Even in the Cobra we only got there with 5 minutes to spare. But we found what we needed and came back to get started. After setting the windshield at a 53 degree angle and cranking it down, we got started drilling some of the holes and installing the ferrules. After that we pulled out the hardware and assembled it on the body. We draped the soft top over just to get a feel for how much clearance there will be. Honestly, there is a lot more room inside than I expected. And although this little paragraph doesn't make it sound like there was a lot - quite a bit of work was involved in all this. Plus, the engine was hot from driving to Ace hardware :-)

Left to do is install a couple of snaps on the body, drill 2 post holes per door, install the snap grommets on the soft top, stretch & fit the top, contact cement it to the boughs and install the bough snaps. I'll probably have folks come over and help with this too because if the contact cement portion goes anything like the dashboard cement, I'll need all the help I can get!

Graduation from FFR

Here is my graduation post for the Factory Five Racing Forum. It's a pretty long read and there are follow up posted further down.
http://www.ffcobra.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1974377#post1974377

Paint Pics

I took this picture after the final paint had been completed. The ghost stripes are very subdued with the heavy reflection of the sky in the paint.




The stripes are a little more apparent in this picture. Also, you can see the wind wings attached to the sides of the windscreen, and the brake vent covers at the bottom.




In this pic you can see all the 'new bits', the rock guards on the back fender well, the wind wings, and the brake vents.



I have new tires on the way, a new license plate, and plans to get the soft top mounted. Stay tuned for more pics!

Finished paint

Well, last night Josh and Brandamonium came over last night and we corrected the ride height, and mounted the rollbars. I also did some touchup on the rollbars and cleaned up the engine bay. We sprayed the quickjacks with a silver paint since they were starting to rust.

It's really almost done now - only things left for 'completion' are mounting the windscreen, wind wings, rock guard, brake vent screens, lubricating the suspension and mounting the soft top.

It looks great - Josh did a super job w/ the paint, I'll post up some pics the next day the sun comes out.

Late night painting the roadster.

It's been a tough week - being crunch time at work and crunch time on the cobra. Earlier this week Josh and I built a make-shift paint booth for proper ventilation. A sweet 2x4 frame with painters plastic stapled to the wood. It's so big that it takes 2 people to close the garage door. One person to bend back the main 2x4 so the door will clear and one person to close it.

Also earlier this week we sanded back the clear coat and removed all the 'trim' from the cobra. Removing the rollbars was especially fun...Last night we taped it and cleaned it up and Josh painted it. We laid on the stripes - Josh painted them - then we pulled the tape and sprayed the clear.

I took a few pics of the process last night with my camera but didn't get home until well after 1am so I took one with my phone so I could post it up today. Consider it a teaser pic - you can see the ghost stripes if you look very closely between the picture's grain. Hopefully next week we'll cut & polish it and reassemble everything. At that point it will be 'done' and anything else I do to it will be enhancements to a final product.

Mountain Trip

Diana and I took a trip to the mountains with Brandon and Allison last weekend. Brandon and I went up a few hours before the girls so we could drive the mountains. We (read: I) had a few car problems I had to work out, and the weather stopped us once so we got there later than we would have liked. We did get in one really good ride even though it started raining on the way back.


Following Brandon on the dirt road wasn't the best. When we first got to it, it was dry and extremely dusty. Then my side pipe fell most of the way off and was dragging the ground occasionally. I didn't realize it had fallen most of the way off so I was just driving REALLY slow thinking that the dinging sound was rocks being kicked up. After we fixed that problem, we made pretty good time up the mountains, but I still breathed in a LOT of dust and dirt.

The scenery was AWESOME and we had a great time. We'll be heading up there again soon. I would have enjoyed some cruising along the blue ridge pkwy.

Side Pipes

I know it's been awhile since a post on here, but things are slowing down a bit with the car being almost done. I did have some exciting stuff happen today that I should write about.

A few weeks ago I took the cobra in to Merchant tire to get it aligned. They said the pipes hung down too low to get it on their machine. They were gonna try to get some ramps or something and call me back. Well, last night Brandon and I pulled the side pipes off and painted them with some semi-gloss barbeque paint. Since I had the pipes off today, I took off a little bit early from work so I could run out to Merchant and have it aligned between rain showers.

They still had to run out to home depot to get some planks of wood to keep from scraping on the bottom. But I got a little discount for going in there all the time. It's all about who you know, not what you know. Such a true statement. The car feels good with the new alignment. I'm pretty excited about it. I actually had it pretty close by eyeball. Everything was withing acceptable spec except for the toe which was off by 5/8".

Well, this afternoon Josh came out and brought over a spare J-pipe for the flange. I cut the flange off with a cutting wheel and Josh welded it on to extend my pipes a little out from the body. We mounted everything up and installed the heat shields. I think it really looks much better.

$5 Rides

Had a pretty busy, but great weekend. Went to a smallish car show Saturday morning to meet up with my buddy, Trey. He has a 91 porshe 911 that I've been wanting to check out. While I was showing him the Cobra lots of folks came over and took pictures and asked questions. I wasn't trying to be part of the car show, but hey whatever! It was kinda nice.

After that I limed, fertilized, and seeded the lawn with Diana. I had a gig that evening at Ruckus. It wwent pretty great and we had a good time. I didn't get home until 3:30 though so it was pretty exhausting. Sunday morning I got up and headed to Greensboro in the cobra. Most of mom's side of the family was there to check out the car. A bunch of folks went for rides including Uncle Mac, grandma, mom and dad.

Because the car doesn't have polish on it yet, it's very static electric and pollen just sticks to it!

Drove back to Raleigh, made dinner and went to sleep.

Louvers done

I was really getting annoyed not having the side louvers in since without them you can see inside the engine bay and can view all the siliconed up seams and whatnot. So after work today, I got those installed and got the rear splashguards done. I also sealed up a few places that road debris was making it into the cabin from.

Windshield wipers - successful test!

So, according to weather.com there was a 0% chance of rain until 10pm. Diana and I hit up a movie at the colony theater (20 miles away in raleigh). As you have probably ALREADY guessed. It started raining when we left. Successful test of the windshield wipers. Believe it or not we really didn't get too wet. At highway speed the windscreen blocked most of the rain. BUT - the rain that went in the hood scoop got sucked up into the heater motor and blew in the vents. So we had to turn the heater off...DOH. I'll have to fab up some kind of shield around the heater air intake. Also, I really need to install the rear splashguards because rocks are getting in my trunk somehow! And I really want to install the side louvers because it looks like crap being able to see in to the footbox.

Roadworthy? Maybe... Street legal? Yes!

This morning I got up with State Farm and they were happy to give me exactly the policy I needed. After that, I went and got the plates.

I had left my car on after testing out the windshield wipers so I had to take my battery in and get it charged. BUT THEN FINALLY, I got home and slapped the plate on the roadster and took it for a drive. It was awesome! AWESOME. Everything I had hoped for. It handles excellently, and even more importantly very predictably. Of course it's fast. I drove around close to home a bit and eventually took it out to band practice in north raleigh. I was a little afraid to drive it that far, but I had no problems. Got home and took my wife out for a late dinner.

Too bad it's supposed to run for the next several days! I still have a lot left to do, but things are winding down now :-) Oh I almost forgot, on the way home from dinner, a cop caught up to me on the road. I got over to let him pass (since he was going faster than me) but he slowed down and matched my speed just behind me. He got beside me at a light and backed up so he could read my plate (I guess). I was a little nervous that maybe my speedometer was uncalibrated or something, but I guess he was just running my plate. He did a U-turn at the next block so I guess everything is legit :-)

Insurance

Just got off the phone with State Farm, they are writing me up a quote now. I could have plates by the end of the day!!!

It is a registered car!

Ol' Shelbatoast is just about ready to hit the streets a'runnin. Inspection today went great and then Brandon rushed me over to the license plate office to register. I tried to get it insured on the way, but Geico gave me the middle finger. I'm trying State Farm next. I hope I don't have to go with one of those antique car companies because they only let you drive a few thousand miles a year.

Anyhow, hopefully I'll have state farm tomorrow and it'll be on the road.

Radiator is done - Inspection ready?

The radiator is officially mounted! I added a 4" plate of steel across the top of the radiator which gave it enough height to mount up properly. It's still kinda ugly because I mangled up the side pieces a bit, and the radiator fins are not in the best shape, so I'll probably pick up a screen of some kind and angle it with the radiator. I don't like the flat screens.

Josh played around with the wiper cable a bit, but to truly fix it - I'm going to have to call on his welding skills again. We'll probably cut a few more inches off so the weld isn't going to interfere with any of the wiper gears. I think he's going to head out Sunday to take care of that.

Also, I finally got around to making a mount for the fuse box in the front. It's not the best, but it'll do for now.

Completed Interior

Well, the interior is completely done except for the clock gauge on backorder. The heater ducts are run and the vents are in place and stuff. I ran some liner along the door to hide the carpet edge.

Last of the body modification work

Last night Josh came out and we got a lot of the fiberglass cutting stuff done - (I hate cutting the body - makes me nervous) We (Josh) got the hood latches done, the wipers about done, and the defrost vent done. I say vent (singular) because I don't have room for 2 ducts. The stupid heater box is right where the passenger side vent should be. I think I'm just going to close off the Passenger defrost duct and only use 3 hoses. I didn't want to have 2 vents and be asymmetrical. I feel like it's ok to have ONE and be asym. Still waiting on my clock gauge to come in and then I can FINALLY close up the dash (very excite!)

Last of the carpet installed.

Today I finished the lights. Brandon and Chris L came over and while Chris worked on his STI, Brandon helped me finish up the interior on the cobra. We got the last of the carpet in and remounted the seatbelts.







Here is a picture of the current state. Really getting close to done now!

Lots of little things

2 days ago I mounted the doors and latches and did the under door aluminum. I also accidentally ripped up a piece of carpet on the driver side - crap!

Last night Diana helped me install the roll bars. It was actually really horrible - it pulled the body back and stretched everything out and made awful sounds...required a LOT of rubber mallet beating - but we got them in. I spent about 45 minutes struggling before Diana got there to help. With one person to beat on it and another person to guide it - we were able to get it done in about 20 minutes.

Today we installed the rear view mirror, the windshield (not the final install), the brake lights and turn signals. I spent the time to do the rest of the wiring behind the dash. The only thing left now is to pop in the new gauge and run the heater ducts and the dash will be done. (finally) We mounted the side view mirror, but I cut the rubber grommet to small and I need to replace it with some new rubber.

I started to install the headlights but the wires are too short and I didn't feel like extending them tonight. The real roadblock I hit, is that the radiator is about 3" above the radiator mount...I haven't figured out why or what exactly is going on.

I'll post some pics tomorrow.

Here is a pic of about where I am now. It's been rainy ever since Josh painted the car so I haven't got any decent shots till now. The only thing I've done since then is install the hoodpins. I'm a little weirded out about how to do the hood latches so I'm skipping them for now. I'll come back to them when I run out of time. Gotta say, it's looking pretty good.



Here's a shot of the hood pins finished.

Body Mounting

Brandon came out today and we got a good bit of work done. Did a few odds and ends and then started the body mounting process. We got the main bolts done and got the trunk mounted (hinges, and latch system). We got the new Le Mans gas cap installed and new filler neck done. Next up is the doors and hood. I haven't mounted the dash yet because I still need to get back there for some random stuff. Wire up the alarm, wire up the clock, run the heater ducts

Gauge lights - finally

I finally got around to looking at the wiring diagrams for the fader knob for the gauge illumination. I had one small hitch when I realized the wire was cut from the fusebox. I wasn't sure if it was cut from the knob, or from the lights, so I just guessed that it was from the lights and I was correct. So I wired up my little harness and it worked out pretty well! It doesn't 'fade' as much as I would like, but I'm thinking that's because the fader doesn't start at a high enough resistance. If I put a few resistors in line it should be fine. I just need to guess at what resistance I need.

Also, I got all the bulb seal pressed on and I'm ready to mount the body. I need a second person to do that so I'm gonna have to wait! But it's ready for the final mounting!

Black is ON!

The base coat black and 1 coat of clear have been applied! Josh did a great job - it's fun to watch him paint. Except for the clearly visible cloud that is created as seen in 'exhibit A' on the left here.




Here is the finished paint. It's a bit grainy since I didn't turn all the lights on and it's fairly dark in there. I'll take some pics as soon as the body is mounted out in the sun.

Driveway work

Working out in the driveway today since the weather was so nice. I already broke one of the bulbs in my gauge light setup. I might have to figure out something amazing to pull this one off...

Got a visit from Joshes cobra today. You can see it parked in the driveway behind my body.

Interior

The interior is pretty much done. Here is a shot with all the switches in place and the steering wheel attached. I still have it zip tied up because I haven't illuminated the gauges yet. I have bought the lights though! I just have to figure out how I'm going to wire and mount them.

Then I'll mount the dash with a couple of nice interior screws, ground everything with a bolt, and call it done. Except for the heater ducts...and the mirrors...and the rest of the list...

Last night most everything behind the dash was hooked up. Only things not hooked up are gauge illumination and Check Engine Light. I think I'm going to hook the CEL up so that it comes on when the lights are on instead of when there is a diagnostic code thrown. I've already left the lights on a couple of times... Hopefully this will help.




Here is a shot of me holding the 'near complete' dash up.

B-Quiet!

Saturday was the official B-Quiet day for ol' Rosemary. (lol) B-Quiet is a sound dampening/vibration reducing material that you lay in between the aluminum and the carpet. Tom came over with his roller and heat gun to help get the process 'rolling'. Brandon and Justin pitched in and soon there was a well oiled process in place. Eventually we stopped working and partied down a little bit, but not before Justin cut several more panels to shape.

When I got home from work today, I put all those panels and then Brandon showed up to help wrap up the B-Quiet. We finished it quick enough that we had time to start the carpet installation.

You can see in this pic that we got carpet on the back wall, back corners, transmission tunnel and floors before we ran out of adhesive. We still have under the doors and the foot-boxes to do. Since you can't really finish up under the doors until the body is installed, were skipping that part for now. But we did get the e-brake boot , and the shifter boot installed.

Primer complete, Gauges complete!

Wow, a lot has happened in 2 days on ol' Shelbatoast (aka: Rosemary). Last night we finished up the body work and shot the primer. Sounds easy, but there is a LOT of worked packed into that one little sentence. I think we were in the garage for about 7 straight hours. So nice to see it all in one uniform color.



Over the past week, mom painted the new gauge faces and dad mounted them up to the dash. Another extremely packed sentence!! So I started to install the gauges and wrap the dash in leather tonight. Here they are with tape of the gauge faces in prep for the spray adhesive.




Here they are just after I sprayed the glue on the dash metal and the leather.






Here is a shot of the final product. I think they look really good - very happy with the end result!






Here is a close up of the five 2" gauges.








While I was reinstalling the ampere gauge, I broke the glass. So for now I took a rosemary bottle cap (yes, out of the spice cabinet) and cut it to fit over the gauge. Here is a shot of the cap over the gauge. It's pretty funny and works for now...

Primer

A lot more filling & sanding last night - then we cleaned up and shot primer on the underside of the hood, trunk, and doors. HazMat squad to the rescue!

Panel fitting

Though it's a lot of work, it doesn't really yield a lot of interesting pictures - 'hey look they added some more gook and sanded it back down.' But rest assured, I am not slumping on the job! Josh came out today and armed with grinders and sandpaper, we fitted all the panels and laid in a little more 'schmutz' in key areas to get the doors level.

Next things to do are:
Flatten out the trunk panel a little - the edges are still sharp. The driver side pipe is a little crooked and if I went with it as is, would have to cut a much larger side pipe hole in the body. I'm going to try to redo the rear mount to minimize the pressure pulling back on the pipe. Hopefully this will eliminate the need to cut too much fiberglass from that hole. After that, we pull the body, clean it and prime it. We're hoping for good weather on Thursday. We'll spend time Wed. getting cleaned up and ready for spraying thursday. Things look good!

Here is a picture of the mammoth engine peeking out of the engine bay. You have to look under a lot of the wiring to see the engine heads spanning the entire bay. When you do realize you are looking at engine...you kinda go "oh...OOOHHHHH."

Ghetto gauges - before

I just wanted to post a couple of pics of the crappy ghetto gauges.

Gauge kit finally arrived

Today the body was mounted back on the chassis for the first time since it was first delivered. Josh started trimming the panels for the final fit. The wheels don't look quite as bad as I thought they would. Maybe I wont have to rush to get the vintage replica wheels.

Meanwhile, my gauge conversion kit finally got in from Factory Five. I got 4 words for you about that. I am not impressed. The gauge faces are not big enough to fill in the gauge hole. I'll show you some close ups later - but I'm going to have to either come up with a new, larger gauge face - or I'm going to have to come up with some kind of border to put around the current gauge face to extend it outward. It's a lot of work for something that looks kinda crappy. Right now though, I just want to get it on the road!!

More bodywork!!

Brandon and Josh came over and plowed out another level of bodywork. We're really getting down to it now. Josh is doing some final low level sanding, after which the body can be mounted and the doors, trunk, and hood fitted. While Josh was pounding out the bodywork, I did a few odds and ends like riveting aluminum panels in place over various openings to seal out water, and test fitting the wind shield. Pretty good stuff.

Hopefully tomorrow the gauge kit will be in and I can finish the dash while knocks out the remaining sanding, and then we'll mount the bod. I'm so exited!

Trunk Carpet

Not a whole lot of action going on here lately, mostly just little things that don't look like much. As mentioned previously the wiring is done. I think I'm going to add some fog lights later in front of the radiator, but that will be a project for next winter. Right now I just want to get it registered and on the road. To do that I need to get it primed as soon as possible and get the gauges in as soon as possible. Hopefully this week will prove to make a good divet into the final touches!

Diana helped me lay out, measure, cut, and glue the carpet into the trunk. It really helps hide the battery box and looks a lot better than the aluminum panels with scratches, rivets, and silicon all over it.

Only 1 CEL!

I did some basic testing with the engine running and found the alternator to be doing NOTHING. After about 10 minutes of idling, I had dropped from 11.3v to 10.3v. I called up Josh, who is pretty knowledgeable about this stuff. I'm glad I did because I was ready to buy a new alternator.

Turns out the alternator has a line that runs through the gauge pod. There is something in the pod that gives it some resistance - a light or something - and without this resistance the alt DOES NOT CHARGE. I plugged the gauge pod in and it charged up fine. Since I'm still waiting on my gauge conversion kit from FFR, I just had the pod sitting out - hell it seemed to run fine without it.

Also, I wired the ACC up directly with the ignition ON and it fixed the problem with the windshield wipers not working. So my 'on' switch - 'push button' start combo is all wired up and working now. I'm gonna change out some plugs to some heavier gauge stuff, but it'll be done soon.

Oh here is a piece of good news - After having wired everything crucial up and driven it around the neighborhood several times, I only have 1 engine code - smog pump circuit! That is exactly what I was hoping for (I removed the smog circuit and haven't flashed it out yet) So things are back and track and going well once again - though this one had me a little worried

Body progress

Yesterday Josh and Brandon came over and really hammered out some bodywork. It's almost ready for some primer! I did some rewiring in the meantime, but I need to use heavier gauge wire and re-rewire.

Also, my battery is dead so I either have a bad alternator or a drain somewhere. Josh is going to head out today and see if we can find the source. It will probably be a light day in the garage. Do a little electrical work and call it a day. Thursday and Friday I'll probably wire up my 12v port and a small interior light.

The other day, I didn't really have time to do any work on the car so I decided to turn my engine cart into a roll-a-shelf thingie. I'm tired of having tools disappear so now I can just put all the tools I need.




So I FINALLY got around to ripping open the transmission wiring harness and pulling out the O2 sensors. I re-wrapped them and only had to extend one of them. So they are finally done - finally! I also adjusted the ride height.

Wiring is almost done.

I am done with routing and dieting all the wiring harnesses. Here is a box full of everything I cut out from the mustang. The only things left to do are:
* Horn button
* Hi/Low beam switch
* Cruise Control
Also, I want to do some form of anti-theft metrics. The ignition wires are exposed below the dash making it a pretty highly hot-wirable car. I guess most people aren't concerned because it is mostly a weekend car. But I'll be leaving it unattended for long periods of time at work etc. I'll come up with something...I have a few ideas and Josh has some separate ones.

Here is the dash all mocked up. The only things not attached are the gauges and the cruise control. Also, I'm planning on bolting some kind of a 'glove box' in between the transmission tunnel and the dash.

Last week, The new shift assembly came in so I dropped it in and bolted the FFR shifter up. I took Brandon for a quick spin around the block. Then drove downtown to meet up with Josh and pick up his new air compressor.



We came back to my place and did some body work, grinding off the fiberglass filler and doing some odd jobs on the car. Josh spread putty on the back half of the car, but sanding out the filler took a bit longer than expected so we didn't get the whole thing done. A few more aluminum pieces are in place now, like the transmission tunnel and the door sills.

Diana and I drafted out the control layout for the dash and I'm hoping to get those hooked up tomorrow.

First Drive! Go kart style!

Got home today, and started the prep for first drive! I screwed in the seats, bolted in the 5 pt harnesses, reattached the old shifter, and secured a few loose wires. Josh and I then bled the brakes. After tightening a few loose brake line nuts, it was off to the races! This is the actual first drive - just pulling out of the driveway.

After a quick trip with Josh in the copilot seat, we made a quick adjustment and then it was Diana's turn to ride. Here is the in car video.

Pre-body fittings

Test fitting the rollbars. It's a very tight squeeze, and I have no idea how the final installation is going to be with the body on. But I think it will do in the end.






Here is a pic of the exhaust installed. I'll probably have to take it off again at some point, but I wanted it on for the test drive.










Josh has really knocked out the dash wiring. Everything is going great in this department, left to do are the high/low beam switch, horn, and cruise ctrl.