440 fired up

We got Tom's car running Friday night. Still needs a few little things - like brake bleeding.
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Car Party success

The car party was very successful. Although we did have a few relatively minor injuries - Carl's new skin removal technique, Tom's grinder to the fingernail, and my repeated head bashings into jack stands. Overall it was great. In the end the flow of beer prevailed over the flow of blood and we got a lot done.

Here are the new bullitt wheels with the 281 caps and black lugs. Although my final ride height isn't set yet, the 275s on the rear seem to be a great fit. Much thanks to everyone who took the time to help me figure out the best tire width with the longer axle. Now that you can see through more wheel, I think I need to paint the rotors black where they are currently the lush rust color.

Carl and I did the rear suspension change over. Koni coil overs and all FFR control arms. It's akin to wrestling with a dead elephant - it doesn't move, but it certainly doesn't cooperate. Using the jack in clever ways and just brute forcing it seems to be the best way to get things to 'line up'. Factory Five did forget to send me the hardware with my shocks so a quick stop to the hardware store to pick up some bolts and spacers was in order. I ended up ditching the quad shocks entirely, but if I think they are necessary I can space them out and still use them. I also had to move the axle straps. Once I got the shocks mounted I realized I drove the bolt in back to front so I couldn't bolt the axle straps on without removing the whole bolt and the shock would fall out. So instead of turning the bolt around, I just found another spot - from the spring perch bolt hole to an axle bracket. It gives the axle a little bit more motion without binding so overall an improvement.

Here is all the crap that I pulled out: upper arms, lower arms, springs, shocks, and spring perches. If anybody needs any of this stuff let me know!

The side pipes were starting to get rusty and I has sprayed some polish on them from the rotary buffer last time I polished the car and it sort of cooked on. So Tom and Brandon pulled the pipes off and sanded them down. I don't think I prepped them good enough the first time I painted them, so hopefully this will last longer.

You might remember I had a problem with the fitment of the passenger window in my soft top. The easiest solution I think is to cut the 2 metal rods off that go into the door and reweld them a few millimeters forward. This would place the window back a bit. So I cut them off and handed it off to Tom to weld back on. It's a bit tricky because they have to be PERFECTLY angled so we actually place them in the door, position the window and do a few quick tack welds to hold them in place then pull the window out and do a complete weld. Everything was going great until we ran out of weld wire. We'll get that wrapped up today.

I also changed out the set screws in my steering column for much much shorter ones. Hopefully I can avoid pulling out any more wires! I also zip tied the wires up off the steering column which I should have done earlier anyway.

We lowered the car, played around with the ride height for awhile and replaced the belt. I think that's about it. I think very successful! Here is a before and after - sorry they are nowhere near the same angle.

Car party!

I'm doing all kinds of work to the Roadster on Saturday - feel free to come by and help, or just drop by to hang out!

* Replace all 4 control arms
* Replace mustang strut/spring with Koni coil-overs
* Install new wheels
* Adjust ride height/alignment
* Steering column work
* Sand and repaint the side-pipes
* Replace belt

Planning on dropping off the wheels and tires at Merchant Friday to have them mounted and balanced. I don't really want them actually HAVING the car.

440 First fire attempt

Although we didn't have total success, we didn't have total failure either. You can hear it trying to fire, but we're thinking the timing isn't quite right - hence the backfire from the intake. But we have fuel and spark, and presumably air - so it's close.

First Try

Sneak Peek

Here is a sneak peek at one of the wheels in the box.

Mega Delivery

I worked from home today so I could be here when the mega-delivery arrived. This includes the last piece of hardware for the rear suspension upgrade, all 4 new wheels, 2 new tires for the extra wide rear wheels, a set of black lugs, and '281' hubs.

The UPS driver was worried because I got 4 wheels and there were only 2 tires on the truck. But I assured her that's all I ordered and it was all good. These 275mm tires look incredibly huge and I can't wait to get them installed.

I went ahead and replaced the stock hubs with the '281's since they are so hard to do once the wheel is mounted. You have to access them from behind the wheel.

So the plan is to take the 4 wheels, 2 new rear tires, and 2 wheel/tires from the current car to Merchant and have them mount the tire on the wheel. Then I will mount them to the car here. Should be pretty good. Stay tuned for before/after pics.

Mysterious dash light outage - solved!

On the way home from work today I bought a new tap and handle. I had the steering column fixed in about 30 seconds. Wow, it's amazing how much better it feels now that the wheel is tightly connected to the rack.

On my way to work this morning, my dash lights went out. I figured I must have knocked some wires loose while I was working on the steering column. So after I fixed the steering column, I popped the dash bolts off and started looking for the wiring problem. Everything was looking fine, so I followed the power wire from the lights back to the fuse box and to the switch. No disconnections...

So I started thinking about the LEDs I'm using to light the dash. They are 12v LEDs and they are ON or OFF. Nothing in between. There is a chance that I'm not putting out quite 12v. Too bad my volt gauge is in the truck. hmmm back to the fuse box.

I guess there is a CHANCE that I blew a fuse rather than my wiring being weak and sucky. Haha, I should have more faith in myself. I blew a fuse - that probably is the result of me jostling around down there, but I threw a smaller fuse in real quick just to test and sure enough it works. A quick trip to the store to buy another supply of fuses and I'm good to go!

Also, I did a ton of wheel calculations and decided I need to go with 9" wheels in the back running 275mm tires. 10.5" wheels running 315s will not fit in the well. The 9" wheels only stick out .78 inches further than my current wheels. I need to order those soon. Since I don't have to wait for my suspension to be on to do 9" wheels I can get those ordered any time.

Wobbly steering and air tight cabin

So I have some good news and some bad news to report - don't worry nothing too bad. I'll start with the good news.

Since I've been without my truck for most of December, I have come to discover the need to windproof the cobra. I sprayed some great stuff expanding foam between the footbox and the body. This stops wind from coming in from under the hood. There is still wind coming from the cracks between the door and the body though. So I ordered some weatherstripping from a forum vendor. I gotta tell you, it's a world of difference. I actually had to cut the heat off today!

The next bit of good news is that I now have 2 of the 3 suspension components necessary to do my suspension upgrade. Also, I've started researching what size wheels will fit.

The 3rd piece of good news is that I found out why my steering wheel has the wobbly play in it before engaging the rack. There were 2 little cone washers that were supposed to go in between the upper rack and the lower rack. These press outward like springs and take up the slack.

Now for the bad news. I don't have those washers - I guess they got lost in all my backordered steering parts. So I decided to drill and tap the lower column so I could use a set screw. I went to the store and bought some set screws for my 1/4 20 tap. Then the trouble started.

* Drilling a hole in the lower steering column is tough because it's in the footbox and flops around when not connected to the upper column. Also, my headlamp died right in the middle of this operation. So after laying my lamp on the floor, I zip tied the steering column to a frame brace on the car to keep it from moving and lifting up as I drill. I Successfully drilled the hole in the steering column.

* My tap handle is being borrowed at the moment so I fumbled around with pliers and other stupid wrong pieces of hardware until I decided to put the tap in the drill chuck. Finally started making some progress when...SNAP. Yep I broke the tap off. Great, now I can't even put my steering wheel back in to go get another one. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even get the broken shard out.

* That is when I decided to use Carl's air hammer to try to break it out. After charging up the tank I took the air hammer to it and it was awesome. My new favorite tool! It was like BZZZT and that little chunk of metal went flying. So I can put the shafts back together now and drive tomorrow. I'll get a new tap and handle so I can finish the tap and tighten down the set screw.