Herman's Factory Five Racing 65' Roadster Build Site

January 2006

1/1/2006 - HAPPY NEW YEAR and what a New Year this will be. I'm into the thick of the build in year number three and in the last 2 months, the kit has gone from a bunch of parts to some semblence of a car. The roadster could have been considered a roller by December but due to space constraints in the garage, I have never put the wheels on all 4 corners but trust me, it is beyond roller state. Electrical by I-Squared Engineering should be on it's way this week and has been the driving force to get the brakes and fuel done. I suspect I will be taking a few months to get the electrical ironed out. Not because it's complicated but I need to ensure that running of the wires will be clean, bundled, clamped down in as much of a professional manner as possible. I'm guilty of having a wiring fire in my 65' Mustang and I do NOT intend to repeat that mistake.

I'm currently working the external electric fuel pump and filterr. The IRS makes the conventional spots for mounting a pump and filter, undesireable. Near the end of December, I was cutting out some steel plate to use for the moutning plate just behind and above the IRS pumpkin and before the fuel tank. I mocked up the setup to ensure eveyrthing was positioned exactly as I had planned and the only change I needed to perform was the 1/2" SS braided line from the fuel pickup. It was too long so I ended up removing about 7" of the line to make a much cleaner bend...

1/8/2006 - I took a break from the fuel line stuff and began working on the dash wiring. The plan is to have a two modular connectors to allow the dash to detach from the car if I need to service the gauges or switches. After seeing "GarageFreaks" dashboard, I knew I wanted to come as close as I could to a "clean" wiring harness. I'm quite a ways from completion as you can see, but I'm off to a good start I think with the gauge lighting (ignore the twist-ties; that's just temporary to get it out of the way for the next run of wires for "IGN" and "GND" of each gauge (except speedo of course.) I'll be running individual lines for each electrical sender unit (water temp, oil temp, oil pressure, fuel level and tach.)

1/9/2006 - I continued on tonight after going to Radio Shack and getting a male and female 12 pin modular connector. For the dash gauges, I'm only going to need 10 connections. It's a bit tedious crimping down the stress relief tabs, then the wire crimp tabs, and finally the solder. I drew out which pins were for what and decided to put it on my website for additional reference:

1/11/2006 - I returned a number of Russell AN fittings due to some reconfiguration of the lines and poor hindsight on my part, ordering male connectors when I should have ordred the female fittings. But all will be rectified in short order. For now, I had a little time tonight to get the -6 AN bulkhead fitting installed. The proper size hole should be about 14mm or 9/16" but all I had was a 1/2" bit, so I took a metal reamer on my drill to enlarge the hole just enough for the fitting. The plan is to have all flex hoses up to the fuel pump and filter. For the return line, I wanted to terminate the flex hose in the same area so this is where the bulkhead fitting comes in.

From fuel filter (feed) and bulkhead fitting (return) I will be running 1/2" and 3/8" hard lines (aluminum) along the chassis, terminating at the fuel pressure regulator in the engine bay, where a final flex lines goes to the inline filter and then into the carburator line.

Originally, I was thinking of hooking up the inline filter in the middle of the flex line but after some careful thought, this seemed far too cumbersome; what I now plan on doing is using a 45 degree female coupler between the inline filter and the Holley fuel feed tube -essentially hooking up the inline filter directly to the Holley feed tubes. This elminate a second SS hose with hose ends (thus, 2 -6AN fittings to be returned.) No photo at this time since the 45 deg. coupler is being ordered, but it'll be a bit more clear when it's all installed.

1/17/2006 - The I-Squared Engineering system was picked up from the US Post Office today. When I got the system home, I was greeted by less wires than found in the American Auto Wire kit, a smattering of 24K plated gold pieces, a nicely designed power system, a small but functional control system, and various other pieces which make up this beautifully designed system. In a nut shell, this IS the system for this century and I my hats off to Chris and company for putting forth what I feel will be a ground breaking system for all hot rods, component cars or restoration projects.

I opened up the American Auto Wire box again and took some lousy pictures because truthfully, since I don't want to open the sealed bags (trying to sell the AAW from FFR), the pictures looked terrible and doesn't fully reveal the size of all the wiring, fuse box, buzzer/relay components, and the other parts which make up the kit. Hopefully, those that do own them and review my pictures, will be able to tell me more.

I will critique a few things which I feel I-Squared Engineering will need to address to fully compete head-to-head with AAW aside from the obvious price difference.

1) The AAW kit came with (2) of the headlamp sockets; these are simply the plastic 3-prong molds which plug in back of the headlamps. I-Squared Engineering (ISQE) doesn't come with these.

2) The AAW kit also comes with a GM style headlamp switch w/built-in dimmer. Again, ISQE didn't come with one.

3) The AAW kit comes with a standard key switch (off, on, start). Yes, ISQE didn't come with this as well.

Aside from this, the rest of the kit is top shelf. Without futher ado, here are the pics:

1/18/2006 - This morning I assembled the 1+1 System and tested a circuit. As you can see, the toggle switch is hooked to the Master Controller. I selected CF12 for this test. On the Power Controller, I installed a line to CF12. My trusty adjustable power supply was utilized. I attached power and ground leads, attached my VOM 'gnd' lead to the -12v on the gold plated post and 'test' lead on the CF12 wire. I cranked up the power supply to 12v. The system performed a breif POST (power on self-test) and soon, both boxes were talking to each other continously; the large blue LED's on each unit is the indicator as seen on the Master Controller. When I flipped the toggle switch, it clearly registers 12V and it's associated LED is now a bright blue. When the switch is off, all but about 2.5v remains. However, when I put something like a indicator lamp to the circuit, the voltage now reads 0 and the CF12 LED is completely off. Now that's a smart fuse box!

1/22/2006 - This weekend had a couple of milestones accomplished and while I have some hip, shoulder and elbow pointers from all the drilling under the 4" main rail, I felt a great amount of relief that I've finally come to the "roller stage" of the build. The fuel lines I had originally felt were going to be "hardlines" was decidedly a much harder issue than even the brake lines. After wasting about a yard of aluminum tubing, it was clear to me I wasn't going to get very far. The difference between the brake lines and the fuel lines is, the brake lines I had a lot of opportunity to join lines and none were extremely long. Also, the smaller diameter steel appears to bend much better than the larger aluminum tubes. The fuel lines require specific compression style junctions which I did not have access to at the time so I couldn't just stop at a certain bend and continue on with another section.

I finally decided to break down and purchase about 14' of -8AN and -6AN stainless braided hoses and fittings for the newly revised runs. This is a costly lesson in knowing one's limitations and probably lack of patience. Guilty as charged. I located a local speed shop ( Speed Merchant in San Jose, CA) I obtained the pieces I needed and finished up the plumbing and all of the mounting along the 4" main rail under the passenger side. I actually made a minor mistake in the routing of the return line, but it won't affect the operation of the pump. Just doesn't look very professional. Maybe in the future when I'm up to it, I'll do it again but right now, I'm probably just a bit anxious in getting this car finished on schedule (Summer 06').

With the fuel lines routed, I decided now would be the time to put the wheels on the roadster for the first time and utilize the wheel dollies. It's now looking more like a "car" at this point and farily excited about getting this finished.

I didn't get the engine in as planned but a preliminary test confirms I can get the engine hoist between the front wheels so it's likely it'll happen very very soon!!!

1/26/2006 - *EDIT 7/6/2006* This was suppose to be the entry for the motor installation into the FFR, however, since the motor is no more, the entire day's work has been lost, however, it has been replaced with a CHP 347 Stroker motor.

1/28/2006 - I took a measurement between the pinion flange of the IRS and the tailhousing seal. I measured 11-5/8". With this now recorded, I can proceed to calculate the exact size of the driveshaft and send out the donor part to be shortened.

While I was in the tranny tunnel, I also took a level measurement and noted that the IRS (fixed position) is 4 deg. higher than the tail housing. I inserted a couple of hardened washers under the transmission mount and this brought it to within 1 deg. before the Steeda Tri-ax shifter housing would poke above the transmission tunnel. 1 degree isn't going to harm anything so this will be the final setup here.

Not pictured is the Lakewood bellhousing from below the frame rails. Essentially, the engine block plate and the Lakewood bellhousing are both 1.5" below the frame rails. If the car is set at a normal 4" ride height, the lip that is exposed rides 2.5" from the aslphalt. There are some rather large speed bumps that I know of that would touch this piece. I used my straightedge and marked a line to denote the cutt-off point.

As mentioned on 1/26/06, there is an interference with the bellhousing and a 3/4" tube closest to the starter. After some more observation, I believe I can remove up to another 1/4" of material and not breach the bellhousing. Hopefully, this will not take nearly as long as the bottom of the bellhousing.

I removed all of the tranmssion and engine mount bolts/nuts but decided I would wait until another weekend where I'm up to cutting the bellhousing at this point of the day, so the remainder of the day was devoted to more forward progress work. I worked on both of the trunk "floor" panels; with the fuel tank and fuel system in the way, it took some time to trace out all the frame members from below, so I can measure/space out the drill holes and drill out the aluminum. Once this was done, I completed the rear-most panel first, drilling out all the frame holes as well as the aluminum. I started on the next panel when I realized that I needed to provide a 1/2" hole for the "3rd leg bracket" since I will have a passenger side roll bar.. A third bolt goes through the corner of this aluminum panel and it just so happens it overlaps the first panel edge as well. So after some fussing around and aligning both panels, I drilled out the 1/2" hole. At this point, I was pretty tired of dirlling out the dozens of 1/8" holes, so I went to the radiator and removed it in anticiapation of the engine removal (next month?). This required drilling out the rivets again on the lower support bracket. At that point, I decided it was time to replace the 4 rivets with two 5/16" bolts instead, so again, more driling on both the frame and bracket. So now I can remove this bracket at any time w/o drilling. :) Overall, not an exciting day but got a number of things done which is always a good thing.

1/31/2006 - I had received my battery box from FFMETAL.com this week and if you can believe this, I forgot that the location of this box is exactly where the fuel pump and fuel filter is sitting! After a few days of agonzing what to do, I finally decided to keep it and try to make this all work. I figured that a battery box in the trunk area takes up way too much space and there's little of that as it is in these cars. The FFMETAL battery box allow an Optima battery to sit below the trunk, between the fuel tank and IRS rearend. A hatch is also included so you simply unscrew 4 screws and you can remove the battery when necessary.

The plan now is to mount the fuel pump on the passenger side of the battery box itself, and the fuel filter under the box on the driver side or possibly the passenger side; I haven't made up my mind yet. With this relocation, I will need to make some new lines and possibly need new fittings; fortunately, I have over 5' of -8 AN line so fittings is all I would need to get, depending upon the arrangement. The return line utilized a bulkhead fitting and hopefully, I can still use it.

Tonight I spent time following the FFMETAL's instructions which include removal of the short cross-brace 3/4" tube so that the box can sit in the middle . With the box clamped in to place, I'll be working on this area though February. Engine may be worked on during this month as well. I'm not planning on completing any electrical at this rate, until the end of March.