It's been awhile since I have shared progress with y'all - I last worked on the car almost a week ago. We didn't get much done that day - I had only been in the shop for a couple of hours before I started feeling like I was coming down with some kind of illness. I was, as it turned out. By Wednesday I was feeling pretty bad. 

We (by which I mean Grant) did get the parking brake handle put together before I left, so there was some progress made.

I was feeling better by Saturday. Even if I hadn't, I think I probably would still have made the half hour drive to London, OH for the annual Cobra drive-in. While it is pretty likely that a plurality of the Cobras there are Factory Five, there are plenty of other variants in attendance.

I liked this one for the size of the wheels (small-ish) and big fat tires. I don't want to offend anyone, but I really don't like the look of 17" or higher wheels. They probably drive better, though, but I'm not looking to build a race car.

I was also intrigued by this mini windshield but again, it looks great but its not for me.

Here's the big guy! The guy in the grey T-Shirt is Dave Smith - he built Factory Five and still runs it. A lot of people want to talk to him, so I had to loiter around for 15-20 minutes before I could have a chat with him. As it turns out, the first guy that I was emailing with on the subject of missing parts, Dave, was this Dave. Talk about hand's on!

I thanked him for his help. I thanked him even more profusely for passing me off to Madison. 

Nice guy. I really enjoyed talking to him.

Not every car that shows up is a Cobra. These are the colors I'm considering for our Cobra. It's a historical faux pas, though. There was not a single Cobra wearing these colors.

I'm still thinking about it, but I really, really like these colors.

I got there early enough to 1) get a chance to talk to the big guy, and 2) to get a good spot on the road to watch the cars arriving to town.

I was intently watching for Matt and his wife Mary. If you watch the video below you will at one point yell "Matt!."

Here they are! 

Matt shared a couple of pix showing the cars all getting in line for the parade:

Thanks, Matt and Mary! I intend to be in that line next year.

As far as building goes, I recently learned that the state of Ohio requires windshield wipers on kit cars. I don't mind that, but they cost $500. Ouch. That said, they're pretty.  Windshield wipers aren't all that unique - I'm going to see if I can find some a bit cheaper. The state also requires a defroster - F5 also has a heater/defroster as an option. It's another $500.

That's going to look cheap compared to wheels and tires, though. And the day we will need them is coming fast.

I was also intrigued by the inner panel/pouch on this door. Those are on my list as well.

There was also a lot of variety in stick shifts. 

I didn't actually see it, but I actually heard one car that had an automatic transmission. [shudder]

I was also very interested in the rain covers. Those too are spendy, but I suspect that I'm going to want one at some point.

This is the driver's side foot box that I've been working on lately.

This is one of four or five streets that were packed with cars.

I like the windshield wings and know where to get them. I have not seen embroidered F5 racing seats, though. I really like the look and they're probably somewhat safer than the seats that come with the kit, but I'm going to start with the standard seats and maybe replace them later.

Three years ago (before I had twin grandsons) I would never have even noticed this lost and lonely shoe...

 That's it for now. Tomorrow is a shop day but I don't know what we will be doing. Personally, I would like to get started on the brake lines - I need a break from figuring out where all of the aluminum panels go.

I came across a nifty old Cadillac the other day and was afforded the privilege of taking a few pictures - just sharing because it's pretty.

Today we decided to get the pedals in place before doing something rash like riveting on more panels. It was pretty straight forward after the usual Easter egg hunt for the proper hardware. The horizontal plate is going to support the throttle, brake, and clutch pedals. 

The big cast monstrosity below is the brake & clutch unit. 

The clutch and brake pedals dangle down from the base.

My back is unlikely to forgive me for not putting the foot pads on the pedals while it was all still on the workbench. Access is still pretty good, but there was still a bit of contortion involved.

These are fluid reservoirs. The one closest in for the clutch. The other two are for the front and rear brakes. The golden threaded rod behind the pistons will allow us to tune the balance between the front and rear brakes.

Forgive me for the cluttered background, but this is the gas pedal. No assembly required, although it did come folded together and will be tuned further once the engine is installed.

It was about time for me to head home. We covered the reservoirs to keep any grunge getting into them.

Work time for this step: 6 hours.

Unproductive time: 1 hour. As usual, hunting for parts and hardware.

Frustration Level: 1/10.

Total time of build: 63 hours.

Tweaks to the suspension

 

The work this week was mostly focused on the suspension. 

Again. 

We received the missing parts that hold the bottom of the shocks onto the rear axle, so those were the first things to get installed this week. It looked simple enough to do, but there is always a hidden complication hiding in the bushes. In this case it was the incredible rigidity of the provided shock absorbers. They might as well be simply bars of steel - their moving resistance is extremely hard. 

I will make a final judgement on them once the car is on its wheels and has the extra weight of the engine on them, but chances are that they will eventually be replaced with something squishier. I'm not in any hurry to throw money at it.

Yet.

The bracket on the left side is mostly the same as the right side, but different enough that it would be very difficult to get them backwards. 

As long as we were in the neighborhood we decided to attach the brake fluid lines. The green topped bolt is actually a "banjo" bolt. 

I was familiar with what a banjo bolt does, but not exactly how it does it. I have one on the engine of my airplane that acts as a fuel distributor, but I always assumed that there was some level of witchcraft involved. 

Nope, no magic at all - it's quite simple if you take the time to Google it. Which I did.

The secret is that there is a matching fitting that completes the system.

It's hard to see, but there is a matching hole inside the ring at the end of the hose. That matches up with the holes in the bolt. The purpose of the system is to pass fluids around to other places. In our case, the liquid will be brake fluid.

The hose will not run the entire length from the brake caliper to the brake fluid reservoirs - the majority of that trip will be via rigid metal tubes. The short flexible hoses are needed because the wheels will move upwards and downwards when on the road.

There needs to be a little tab somewhere to hold the end of the flexible hose with the rigid metal tubes. F5 suggested mounting the tabs with rivets, but Grant prefers to weld. Fewer holes in the chassis is a good thing.

The primer will need a touch-up.

For various reasons that I more or less understand, we moved the mount of the front A-arms to a higher location on the chassis. This will lower the front of the car little bit which is very likely to have an effect of the driving feel, but since I will have nothing to compare it to, it probably won't bother me. If it does, we can always move it back to the original spot. That won't be as easy as it might sound - another reason for moving it on the first place was some obstruction between the suspension and the "F" aluminum panels behind them.

The change in geometry caused a new problem with the threaded steering pushrods - they had to be shortened a couple of inches. Even with the rods shortened they would still reach far enough to go back to the original position if it comes to that.

Meanwhile, I started drilling and clecoing the firewall into place. We're nowhere near ready to start riveting panels in yet, but there's nothing stopping me from getting ready for it.

Matt drove up from Cincy to 1) take a look at our progress so far, and 2) give us a chance to look at a completed F5 Cobra. 

There was a lot of interesting stuff underneath. It isn't exactly what ours will look like since Matt's is a Mk3 and ours is a Mk4, but it was still very informative.

We had the fuel tank installed incorrectly, so Matt helped me get it set up correctly.

Work time for these step: 12 hours (Two work days).

Unproductive time: 1 hour.

Frustration Level: 2/10.

Total time of build: 57 hours.

We finally get a brake...

Uh, yes, I do know the difference between 'break' and 'brake' - you try coming up with topical and clever titles for these reports every few days. It's not as easy as it sounds, you know. 

(Yes it is.)

I arrived a bit early so the shop was not yet open - Grant has a lot of farm to take care of and was off somewhere doing farm stuff. I decided to head into Greenville to visit the county fairgrounds where there was a 50-50 chance of finding my dad for a quick visit at the stables. 

That didn't work out, so I did something I have wanted to do for many, many years but never gotten around to. There is a small cemetery just on the outskirts of town that I have always been curious about so I stopped to take a look. The gravestones were all of the same type, and they looked to be at least a century old.

It's a cemetery for Greenville residents that died in the Civil War. Most of the stones have weathered away - they're just blank stones for the most part. There were a few that were still legible, though.

Grant was just about ready to go by the time I got back.  

FedEx had dropped off a 50 lb. box earlier in the week - I did a mental calculation and decided that a package that heavy must be the front brake rotors and hopefully a pair of brake calipers. I didn't dare to hope that F5 actually sent calipers of differing gender. If you recall, we received two left-side calipers for the rear brakes. That has yet to be resolved, although Grant did go ahead and buy one. I suppose I'm going to eat the cost of that.

I was correct on my assumption of he contents of the new box. It didn't take much guessing given the state of the package. When FedEx drops off a box, they literally drop it.

I wasn't super happy about it, but if you have never put hands on brake rotors you might not know how heavy and robust they are. If you have never put your hands on brake calipers, though, you might not know that they are not nearly as heavy and robust as, say, brake rotors. 

I was a bit worried about the condition calipers, what with them apparently being as rare as hen's teeth. 

The rotors were just as easy to install on the front as they had been at the rear.

There are two parts to each caliper (ignoring the brake pads) - the first part is kind of a mounting bracket to hold the actual caliper.

They come with a few very light and very fragile looking springy clippy things that I am guessing keep the brake pads from chattering.

Then the brake pads were installed.

Building up the brakes was a one-person job, so I puttered around trying to find something I could do. That inevitably ends up being on possible thing: fix the *#&$@ aluminum panel mess.

I'm not even going to hint at how long it took to get this far...

There's a whole lot more aluminum to deal with, but it's starting to come together.

We're slowly getting to the aluminum parts that have part numbers written on them. I would like to hope that having the part number will make getting the right piece in the right place at the right time, but I am not very confident that it will. That said, I am far more comfortable working with the panels than anything else. 

So far.

Work time for this step: 4 hours.

Unproductive time: 1 hour.

Frustration Level: 1/10.

Total time of build: 45 hours.