Herman's Factory Five Racing 65' Roadster Build Site

January 2005

1/3/2005 - Happy New Year to all! Temperatures in CA have been below 60 for the last few weeks. This prevents me from doing much more with the gas tank since ideally, I'd want temps to be around 70 deg. for painting the top coat. Not that there's any rush mind you since the kit is still 2 years away. However, I did spend a little time removing the pedals from the pedal box. I may sandblast the box later before putting on a coat of POR-15. But again, the temperatures aren't conducive to effective drying so I'll wait to do both later this year. For now, the pedals are off:

1/5/2005 - Found a little time to remove the surface rust. I applied the "Metal Ready" solution to the pedal box and after two applications (about 10 min. total):

1/8/2005 - Just painted the pedal box with POR-15 today. I posted the picture next to 1/5/05's entry so you can see the comparison.

1/15/2005 - The fuel tank is officially painted. The POR-15 topcoat was actually done over the course of 2 days, one for each side. I had roughed up the finish of the POR-15 using a scouring pad. However, the streak of black continued to show through on a few areas. After about an hour, I touched up those same areas. The results are pretty good, but as mentioned before, nobody will see this tank once it's in the car.

1/22/2005 - My order from Summit Racing had arrived today. Actually, part of the shipment came on Thursday: Powermaster 100 Amp alternator and a March 15/16" crank spacer. The March pulley kit w/alternator bracket came today.

I finally got around to undercoating of the plastic fuel tank pan today; it was a nice sunny day so I took advantage of the moderate weather:

1/24/2005 - Thanks to FFCobra.com, esp. Aaron Silidker for pointing out that Jeg's et-al, sells "shims" for the waterpump flange. I'll be ordering a 2 sets of the Moroso shims from Summit Racing, MOR-64035. While I was at it, I'm also getting the serpentine belt that I forgot about. According to March's catalog, I need a 39" 6 rib belt. Will be getting a Good Year Gatorback belt GTR-4060390. Still, it seemed rather sill to order just $25 worth of stuff and still pay nearly $9 in shipping/handling. Then I remembered that I did not get the last of the Autometer gauges: fuel gauge. According to the Autometer website, Autometer #4418 is for 89' Fords to present (my donor being a 91'). Just as a precaution, since the fuel tank is readily accessible, I removed all of the di-electric grease and took a number of measurements with the tank in the normal position (with just a pint of fuel left). The reading I obtained a farily consistent 26 ohms. I then flipped the tank upside down; this would give me a "full" position and then some as I do not believe the sending unit was meant to "top-out" against the tank; then again, maybe it does? In any event, I measured a consistent 161 ohms. According to the Chilton's manual, it's 22.5 empty and 145 at full. So I'm figuring this is in the ball park. Now the order is about worth the $9 shipping/handling.

I did hit Home Depot for the 7/16"-18x1-1/2" allen bolt for the tensioning rod (lower location). I finalized the tightening for this part of the assembly. I'll need to hit up Napa Autoparts for the 5/16"-24x1" allen bolts as NOBODY carries this size; checked 2 Home Depots, 2 Orchard Supplies, a Kragens and a Pep Boy's all day Sunday. These are the water pump pulley bolts needed to clear the decorative nose, pulley and 1/4" of spacer(s) when they come in.

*EDIT 7/6/2006* Note that all pulley assembly was done on the older motor. Similar setup used on the new CHP 347 Stroker.

1/26/2005 - The Moroso shims arrived today, as did the Goodyear Gator Back 39" six-rib belt and Autometer Fuel gauge:

1/29/2005 - I finally tackled the rear differential casing. I tried using the sandblasting cabinet with aluminum oxide and it did a decent job in removing quite a bit of grease and rust. However, it was getting to the point where the cabinet is just too small to reach around and see into despite my best efforts to continously clean the plastic cover. I finally use wirewheels for another 30 minutes, followed by a good dousing of Metal Ready from the POR-15 kit. Once I was pretty happy with the casing, I painted on the POR-15 black.

1/30/2005 - Between house cleaning tasks, I managed to clean up the diff. cover pretty well. I will still paint the cover with an aluminum colored paint to create a more uniform looking cover. Here's an old "before" and "after":

1/31/2005 - I purchased some high-temp engine enamel and finished off a couple of coats of aluminum on the differential cover. Didn't think I had an entry for the last day of January but here it is: