Herman's Factory Five Racing 65' Roadster Build Site

2008 Journal Entries

Due to the lack of a build, I've decided this year to keep just a running journal for the year. I believe it'll make things easier.

2/13/2008 - Since the beginning of this years, Northern California has finally gotten some much needed rainfall. This cuts into my driving time on the weekend but when weighed againt a possible drought, I'll take the time off. Besides, it gives me time to work a bit on SNKVNNM.

The only news so far has been the addition of Bob's great looking spinners (faux knock-offs) with the modern Cobra logo. The spinners were designed to be bolted into the wheels but allowed to turn so all lug-nuts could be accessed. The only hard part was tryng to align the cobra with one of the arms as seen in the picutre. The end result is pretty nice for this kind of car.

3/6/2008 - Last week I was driving a friend of mine to lunch since he had never been in the roadster before. I did a nice on-ramp full throttle run onto the freeway and I could smell coolant - lots of it. I don't think he noticed much but after dropping him off I drove back to work but took it easy on the way home. When I did get home, I began to try and spot the leak and up on the right corner of the second Ron Davis radiator, was a trail of coolant. I looked at the cooling fan (passenger side) and it was covered in coolant; some dried, some still wet. So on the weekend, I removed the entire radiator and pressure checked it; the leak is occuring on the upper right corner where the front tube joins the tank. Unlike the first radiator, this leak was hard to see. But it's still in the same spot as the previous radiator. I had used some insulation for pading but now I'm beginning to believe there needs to be more or simply a better method for mounting. As of this writing, I've contact Gordon Levy and he's shipping out a box to have me ship the radiator back to his shop for futher inspection.

In the meantime, knowing it may be a few weeks, I've taken advantage of the down time and began working on things I've been really meaning to do. The first was to drill the correct bolt holes for the 3rd legs of each roll bar! Originally, I had drilled holes for them but realized when I was done, that I had drilled the wrong area! Hey, it was 1:30AM....I guess I was really tired!!!! With the holes drilled out correctly, I'm having a friend weld the old holes up this coming weekend and after smoothing them down, I'll take them to a chrome plater to have them triple chromed!

Another thing I've been meaning to do was install a key ignition! I figured it might be time to just try this and add yet another thing the theives have to worry about. I just completed that little project today and ran the MSD ignition line to it.

I still have Forte's T5 spacers and will tackle that this coming weekend, along with a long overdue oil change. I just tunred over 3,100 miles but the filters been on for a year. I did drain the oil and I found a sliver of metal but mostly fine powder like substance on the magnetic drain plug.

Finally, I've begun looking for cracks and gaps where air and debris is coming in at both the trunk area (near the tail lights) and firewall. Man there are a lot of gaps!!!!!

3/13/2008 - As mentioned earlier, there is stuff to do and today was the day I got to work on some of those items.

It actually started last week when the the Ron Francis ignition key switch with a real looking car key, arrived and I promptly installed it. It wasn't very difficult taking only about 1 hour total (steering wheel required removal in order to get a staright shot with the drill.)

It's a good thing I left space next to the switches for the ignition switch since it did cross my mind early on during the design phase of the dash. As they say, it's easier to remove material than it is to fill in material in terms of building a car... or anything else for that matter.

Yesterday I got down to fixing the small leak in the water pump. The leak is coming from the very top between the cover plate and pump body. After purchasing a replacement gasket, I used Permatex High Temp RTV (red) and went to town! I used a number of clamps to secure it along with the 4 bolts and let it sit over night. Today, I used more Permatex Red and as before, applied a generous bead around the water ports and perimeter of the timing chain cover and secured all of the bolts including the alternator brackets. Without a radiator though, not much else can be done.

Next up was the T5 spacers. This wasn't difficult, just a bit lazy in doing it. I know this sounds crazy since nobody will ever see them but I polished the edges and they came out rather nice! At least it looked good for the photo op! :D

Finally, the 2 stainless steel cup holders. Now this was a bit tricky and just to save the drama, the holes are not exactly lined up. Trying to determine where the 3/4" diagonal tube in the tunnel was a calculated guess at best. I noted that it starts from the corner at the very front of the tunnel and ran toward the hand brake, about 1/2" past the "coil" of the brake mechanism. I took some 1" masking tape and outlined where I felt the tubes were. Then using a water bottle, I gauged the space between it and the shifter in 1st and 3rd and 5th gears; also had to keep in mind how close to the dash the bottle would be. What I ended up with works but going back to the misalignment I alluded to, once the driver side hole was done, I stuck my finger in the hole to see how close I really was to the diagnose tube v.s. the masking tape. I was about 1/2" off towards the passenger side! I had to move the passenger position a bit forward by 1/2" so I could avoid hitting one or both 3/4" tubes as I was fairly close to the apex. In retrospect, I could of moved it about 1/4" and still made it, albeit very close! But regardless, the two do not look lined up but such is life. The end result though, is a nice addition to the cockpit.

3/15/2008 - Today I installed a new Stant In-Stant fill gas cap to replace the Dodge Viper cap. I liked the idea of just flipping the Le Man's cap and to start fueling but since this utilizes the original Mustang filler, this is the next best thing to replacing the FFR supplied unit with a real funnel version as found in other replica's. Since I was working this area, I decided to take time and rework the 6 screws that secure the Le-Man's flange to the body. I had originally used pan-head screws but when you spin on the actual flip cover, the bottom runs into the heads. So this time, I removed the flange and counter-sunk all 6 holes. I purchased 6 tapered SS 10-32x1" screws and as you can see in the photo, these now lay flat or just barely below the surface of the flange. This is more of an undertaking than you may imagine because in order to easily work on it, you need to remove the back-splash aluminum. So this actually started with drilling out the 6 rivets that held the aluminum in place, before I could even begin removal of the nuts and screws. But overall, since I had all afternoon, I wasn't concerned about the time.

After installation of the modified flange, everything looked really good and in the 2nd photo, I caught a reflection of the posters I put on my garage roll-up door that I thought was kinda cool.

Afterwards, I attacked a bunch of other "gaps" in the trunk to reduce and/or eliminate all the dust and gravel that has made it's way in. With natural light to help, I found a number of additional gaps and cracks I did not seal, including the seat-belt anchors on the driver side. I know I did the passenger side but don't know why I neglected the driver side! Now that's done.

The roll-bar area is the last and the gaps are pretty large. Part of me was thinking "alumium tape" so that's what I used; had I used the GE SiliconeII, a lot of it may of dropped through.

Finally, the driver side parking brake cable. It has been rubbing lightly along the inner rim and after looking at a recent photo from Larry Johnson's idea of using zip-ties to secure it to the lower control arm, I did the same thing. Now it misses it by a good margin.

3/18/2008 - As I was rummaging through my workbench, I came across my wipers... again. I have truely wanted to NOT install these and for the last 2 years the car has sat with just 2 stubs sticking out of the bonnet. I didn't know what was worse: having just the stubs or having wipers that were non-functional. You see, I never completed the cable portion that turns the wheels in each mechanism. I had installed the flared aluminum tube between the two wheels but I ran into the issue with the retaining nut at the motor end. The hole is about 1/16" too small in diameter for the supplied aluminum tube. But as of today, that was history! I finally got out my step drill bit and enlarged the hole. Once that was done, it was an easy matter of measuring the tube length, flaring both ends (with the nut in place or course,) bending the tube to match the first wheel mechanism and finally just bolting it altogether. It worked out beautifully and in fact, with just a slight bend of a piece of steel behind one of the wheels (too much play) the thing works really really well. I was shocked to be honest after hearing all the horror stories. I did spray some lithium grease everywhere to make things smoother and I think that helped a bit. While I don't have a self park feature since I'm using I-Squared (the power goes directly to the motor, not the switc) I can time the wiper movement it pretty easily in slow-modeto within about 1/2" of rest if not dead on. :-)

One thing I did have to do was fabricate a new set of grommets. The ones supplied didn't cover the holes I had enlarged for a "better" fit of the wheels, so using some old intertube, I roughly cut out new grommets about 1/8" larger all around (using the old ones as templates.) If you're not looking closely, you won't notice the difference. Hope to find better material down the road but this will do for now.

3/27/2008 - Some time a couple of years ago, I felt I needed vents... front and bottom vents, for the heater. This was well before I knew how "weak" the Mini-Heater from Southern Rods was. I purchased a set of vent boxes from a member for $50; each box, driver and passenger sides, contained two front facing vents and one bottom facing vent. The big problem was space... there simply wasn't any for the driver side. The passenger side had possibilities but once I saw the boxes needed 3" hoses and the mini-heater only required 1-1/2" hoses, the point was rather moot. These boxes were designed for a much larger capacity blower like the ones from Vintage Air. So the boxes sat for the last 2 years collecting dust but I had it in the back of my mind to actually make use of the ball-type louver controls. I finally found time last weekend to tear apart one box and look at how I might get them to work (one passenger, one driver.) I found that I needed a 2" round tube to exit the back of the vent casing, but I also needed a way to reduce it to a 1.5" diameter for the heating hose. The answer was an expensive but perfect solution.

I had a piece of wet-dry vac extension that was 2" in diameter. I found it fit quite snugly in the louver casings so I cut the extension to size and fitted them in; they were a tight fit and fotunately for me, there was "flange" material on either side of this extension such that the tubes would never pull through! Then I went to Orchard Supply Hardware and found a "multi-tool" adapter which looked like a telescopic cone and one of the steps was 1.5" in diameter! The other side would fit the modified extension tubes almost pefectly.

So putting things together, I was finally able to install vents, with the help of a 2.5" hole saw. The results aren't bad. I had to remove the radiator fan override switch for the driver side but I'll reinstall it somewhere nearby.

3/30/2008 - This past weekend I sealed up the final(?) gaps in the trunk - the roll bar mounting up-rights. In order to ensure the silicone would not simply drip 'through' the farily large gaps, I used some masking tape underneath. Once I've let the silicone cure for 24 hours, I'll remove the tape.

Next, the two hortizontal 3/4" square tubing that runs behind the street performer seats. I followed the FFR pattern and half of the 3/4" is covered, half is not. I thought this was rather lame so I finally decided to patch it up with spare carpet. While I was there, the metal that's expose at the door "striker" is about 3/4" wide and about 4-5" long so I put some carpet there as well just to make the carpet look continous.

I did buy a SPST toggle switch for the fan-override that was displaced by the driver side vent; the original toggle was one of those that illuminate but it's also fairly long and the new location is very close to the door hinge (to the left of the driver vent.) I drilled out a 1/2" hole and mounted the new toggle switch. No big drama here. Tested it and it does activate the I-Square circuit for both fans.

Next up the new radiator support bracket I've been thinking of. I've purchase 3 feet of 2"x1/8"x36" steel stock from Orchard Supply Hardware, along with a 2"x1/8"x36" steel stock for what will be "L-Brackets." The idea behind this new mount is to attempt to improve upon the Gordon Levy unit. While his does seem to work, isolation seems to be the big issue for me. After having 2 leaking radiators, I felt I needed to at least make a better attempt to isolate vibration from the radiator.

The issue for the lower mount is Ron Davis supplies a U-shaped channel across the bottom of the radiator, but it's only 1/8" deep! Gordon Levy has a 3/4" stand-off on top of the length of 3/4" bar as seen in the picture (the black bracket on top.)

In the same picture, you will see I will use 2 L-Brackets which will sit below the length of steel, supported with rubber bushings normally used for things like shocks or swaybars to isolate these units from vibration. The close up picture shows how things will go together ( I haven't drilled the holes yet becasue I'm waiting for the radiator to come back from Ron Davis.)

The 2" channel on the R-D radiator will have a generous bead of exterior silicone as used in the build of my aluminum pannels. This should keep the radiator from shifting on the 2" steel stock. I may also have my friend weld a length of angled steel for strengthening the under side of my new support bracket, but we'll see what happens.

I feel this is a much better impovement for isolation than thin stips of "mouse pad" or weather strip material. Maybe this is overkill... but given I'm on my 3rd radiator, just call me paranoid but these things are too expensive to tempt fate a 3rd time!

4/2/2008 - On Monday, Gordon Levy contacted me to let me know R-D fixed the problem and is shipping the radiator back to me. The problem is somewhat unknown, however, they do say I am experiencing electolosis and to remedy the problem as soon as possible. In the meantime, I've purchased a Zinc Anode plug for the radiator to give the electricity flowing through the coolant, something to chew on. The anode came yesterday from Summit Racing but that's not all! When I saw it was over $11 to ship these days, I felt I better make it worth my while so I purchase something I've been intrigued with: Wilson Manifolds carb spacer. This expensive spacer is always seen on literally every engine in Jeg's Engine Masters contest. And in a Mustang online magazine article with a 331, an extensive dyno tune was being covered and when a good sized Wilson Manifolds spacer was the only thing added, (no rejetting at all) both torque and horsepower improved by a few in each. While it's not like getting a turbo charger, I felt I may as well try it. Here's a few pictures of it in a mock up. I need to get taller carb studs now ( about 2-1/4" to 2-3/8".)

4/6/2008 - The entire weekend was devoted to completing the radiator support bracket. On Saturday, my fellow Cobra owner Jon (he's built an E-M) was called upon for another welding job, however, this time, it was ME that got behind the self-dimming welding mask.

Just to back up a bit, my original design was to use a 2"x36"x1/8" steel stock to support the R-D radiator; and use L-brackets with rubber bushings normally used for shock absorbers, as a good support bracket with adaquate isolation to vibration. However, upon initial assembly, the middle of the steel stock is easily bowed with some weight on it. So my friend Jon happen to have a good 30" of steel angle and I used this to support the underside of the bar, keeping clear of the L-brackets. I was going to have him weld but he allowed me to give it a try since he did have some painting to do so naturally, I said SURE!

Keep in mind I have never welded anything in my life! I've soldered things so I have an idea of what a good solder joint looks like a but using a MIG welder is totally different. The welder is a Lincoln portable, 220V wire feed unit. He first showed me how he welds and then gave me a few tips on some things, like wearing long sleeved shirt, direction to weld so I can see what I'm doing, and some technique on keeping things aligned, which I totally blew! After the quick 5 minute lecture, he let me have at it! I have to say, this was a great new learning experience and while my welds would have to qualify as the butt-ugly joints of the year, it got the job done. Here are pictures of the painted / completed suport: The paint used was recommended by Jon, Applicance Epox paint by Krylon. I gave everything 2 coats.

The bushings used were originally for use with a 7/16" diameter rod but I wanted a bit of overkill and used a 1/2" bolt and this required drilling out that last 1/16" with a drill bit but afterwards, everything fit snugly into place. In the slightly compressed state as seen on the picture on the right, it still has enough elasticity to keep things from being sent up to the radiator.

As for the radiator itself, I will used some of the left over silver colored silicone used on the aluminum pannels, to adhear the bottom channel to the bar.

4/17/2008 - After 4 weeks, my roll bars returned in a very nice chrome finish. I mounted them today and now I realize I did a rather sloppy job in the overall alignment of the gap between the 3rd leg and the main hoop on both sides. I guess a lesson learned: measure twice, drill once. Not something I'm going to dwell over too much but it sucks. I may try to elongate holes on the "inner" portion so I can even them out but with the Huntington Beach gather looming and not a whole lot of quality time left for the roadster, I'll have to fix the problem after I return. But the glam pics aren't too shabby but I'll take better ones hopefully this weekend... or at HB!

I still want to put some miles on the new radiator mount and ensure my cooling won't strand me next week on my 800+ mile trip to and from SoCal.

I also have to see how well I'll be able to deal with the noise of a long trip; I've purchased some disposable ear plugs for both me and my wife but I'm also testing out a boom-box ( 5 hours on the road might prove too much for my wife to be listening to simply 18 wheelers and my exhaust!

Also going to see how accurate my new TomTom GPS is and perhaps see how accurate my speedometer/trip meter are; these GPS systems are great little devices; I was using it all the way to Los Angeles this past weekend on our vacation with the kids (Universal Studios.) The same issue with "noise" will be tested with the roadster and GPS to see how I'll be able to adjust to it IF the voice on the GPS isn't loud enough; my wife may be the one doing the voice over for me. :D

4/20/2008 - I made some significant progress on the front radiator aluminum (side panels). I noted that the radiators was not as tilted as the previous mount had positioned it. I setup the panels again and except for about the first 6" up top (due to the 1/2" rubber spacer I used at the upper mount points) the rest of the panels did not touch the radiator; in fact the gaps were as big as 1/2". The radiator is a bit more "upright" than before. I wanted to keep the panels so I cut out the first 6" near the top of each panel for now. Then re-bent the remainder of the panel that used to touch the radiator, until they were within 1/16-1/8" from the radiator tanks. I filled in a generous amount of silicone between the tanks and aluminum and re-riveteed the panels. As I had done before, I've tested for ground and there is still no grounding of the radiator! When I get the chance, I will revisit the 6" of panel I had relieved and possibly just make a new set of panels if needed.

I also recieved a last minute order on a couple of things I've always wanted to do. The first was to replace the BG fuel line to the Mighty Demon bowls, with a better looking fuel log. This one has a 1/8" NPT fitting for a fuel pressure gauge. I've purchased a liquid filled gauge this time around. This things really looks a LOT better than the "loopy" looking BG unit.

Finally, I replaced the stock "Wagoner" headlamps with two Hella H-6074 H-4 style lamps; these are DOT approved and E-Code as well. The H4 bulbs can now be replaced without replacing the whole lamp. Better yet, you can installed more powerful bulbs as well!

As you can see in the photo the Hella unit has a distinct patten to it. The Wagoner unit seems like any other headlamps on a 60's car..

An interesting note about these lamps are the small brackets used for the mounting hardware. When I now look at what FFR supplied (those small metal tabs) it makes prefect sense because they fit EXACTLY into these metal brackets!

So far, they're not loose but I haven't driven it yet with the new lamps so I'm not sure how well they will hold up.

Oddly, I threw away one set so I re-used the thick alumiunm tabs I made up which still work great for this purpose.

I still need to readjust them before the Huntington Beach gathering so I don't blind oncoming traffic!

Finally, while dumping some old valve springs, and guide seals of unknown condition, I was looking at the pushrods. On a whim, I cut one down to about 2" or so, polished it, and drilled it out a little. Then massaged my turn signal "toggle switch" to it would create an interference fit into my newly created turn signal lever!!!! I don't know why - like I said, it was just on a whim; I was tired of always trying to "reach" for the switch and I didn't see a whole lot of room for a normal VW lever. I liked Rod's idea ( dv/dt ) but with the switch I had in place already, I was looking for something different. I'll work with it for the trip to Los Angeles; with about 800 miles, I'll know whether to scrap it or keep it.