Herman's Factory Five Racing 65' Roadster Build Site

JUNE 2007

6/5/2007 - For awhile now, I've always felt something was missing in all of the photo's of my roadster. When I first got the painted body on the car back in September 2006, I felt the car was perfect without any other body marking, however, I had already ordered the "Powered By Ford" side emblems while the body was at Ken Pike's shop so I figured affixing just these emblems might look good. When the first one went on, I almost felt like taking it off; it just didn't seem right at the time; however, over the last 6 months, it seemed right at home. I believe it's because the vast majority of Cobra's have a side emblem so it seemed like it was more naked without it.

Then along came spats. But having seen the polished aluminum one from B+L, I knew I wanted those and now they're on the car.

But still, something kept me wondering what else was missing. Well, as of yesterday, I addressed the missing pieces: Cobra emblems.

For something that's about 2" in diameter, I have to admit it seems to make all the difference in the world. These pieces are from Finishline and as you can see, they are very nicely done. The car NOW feels complete.

In addition to the emblems, I've finally addressed the rear license plate illumnation. Back last November when I was getting the brake and lamp inspection, the license plate electrical wasn't quite done. I wanted to use jamb-tacs to make the wiring a bit neater. However, I used a few feet of wires just to get it to work and pass the lamp inpsection. It stayed this way for the last 6 months and I was getting tired of snagging the wires everytime I stuffed something in. So while I was at it with the emblems, I decided to finish the jamb-tac "lower" portion (I had fnished the upper portion around Dec. or Jan., by fabricating a bracket that sits right where the handle/latch is located.).

Initially, I fabricated an aluminum bracket.to rivet to the lip of the trunk aluminum near the latch, however, the latch hook itself was unable to turn with the bracket in the way! In looking at the upper assembly, I have about a 1/8 to 1/4" of clearance from the hook to the plastic of the jamb-tac. My lower bracket was simply too thick! Then while I was trimming the lower bracket, I got the idea of simply mounting the plastic jamb-tac by itself to the fiberglass of the trunk rim directly inline with the upper, using "Shoe-Goo" silicone. This stuff is used for minor shoe repair and I've used it on a number of high-stress areas before so why not here.

After doing a lot of measuring/aligning, I wired up the lower jamb-tac, then 'shoe-goo'd' it to the fiberglass and kept it clamped there for a few hours. Then I tested it and I'll be damned, it works!

I still have to remove and clean off the 4 zip-tie anchors (you can see one of them next to the lower jamb-tac) and I'll clean up the expose wires with some wire loom but otherwise, it's a done deal. The one thing I am contemplating is to use up the last of the aluminum sheet that I have from the front radiator shroud, and make a "plate" to cover up the gaping hole that allows access to the license plate illumination and wiring. It would give a "finished" look to the assembly and would also hide the 2 pins from the deck emblem as well.

6/10/2007 - On Saturday morning, I was to have a friend over and drive him around in my Cobra on the way to a gathering of car enthusiasts at Santana Row in San Jose.. We didn't get further than a 1/2 mile when BAM, the shock on the passenger side broke! We limped home and we took his car to the gathering.

Afterwards, I went back home and began to examine the damage. It appears the shaft had sheered off right at the nut which secures the heim joint to the shaft and keeps the spring "hat" in position.

This has been a known issue which only affects about 1% of all FFR's. I can only attribute it to an installation error on my part. The first of which is orientation of the shock. I had the shock body mounted on the chassis instead of the lower control arms. I've installed a number of Koni's, Bilsteins and Eibach shocks and struts in my VW Passat as well as others and in all cases, the shock body was always on the control arm, not the chassis. Maybe this is the reason why.

The other fault was not retrofitting a set of thick washers that was sent by FFR to help "spread" the load of the nut on the coil hat.

Since then, and as of this month in fact, FFR has worked with Koni to develop a new shock (this would make it their third in 10 years) but would not be a free replacement. I can understand this but at $1,000 for all 4, I started to look at other alternatives and Gordon Levy did issue a thread that showed the differences between his shocks, specifically made for Levy Racing, and FFR's. While I do believe FFR will have a great shock, I still foud it odd to have a coil-over "sleeve" as opposed to Levy's threaded body units. Not to mention his are also made of aluminum and the dampening adjustment is done while still on the car, as opposed to normal Koni's where you need to remove the shock entirely to adjust dampening. Both are life time warrantied. The cost for Levy's is about $1500 but I really do think the Koni's the Gordon sells are worth the money. I will be making a call to Gordon Levy of Levy Racing, and ordering his custom made Koni's. Everyone on the forum has nothing but good things to say about the difference his Koni's make.

6/12/2007 - Today's work was to get at least one set of trim rings installed for the roll bars. I started with the driver side today. One of the first things I knew needed to be done was one of the trim rings require bending to conform to the body shape. Both the oval trim ring and the round inner trim ring lay relatively flat, however, the outer trim ring shows a gap foreward and aft; it's kind of hard to see in the first two photos but trust me, they are there. To make the ring conform, I figured I would need to use a pipe or some other curved surface and protect the aluminum with several layers of duct tape. What I discovered was a metal dolly I had acquired about 20 years ago to work on the sheet metal of my old 65' Mustang. I found a curve on the dolley that was a close approximation to the curve on the body. I probably spent a good 30 minutes pounding a little at a time, trying not to over do it or put creases or chips into the aluminum. But when I finally got it to fit, it was perfect. One thing you need to remember is the rubber gasket material is thick enough to take up any very minor variances. The results speak for themselves.

Next up was fitting the bar. Now this is where things got a little interesting. Not thinking about the rubber gasket, I slipped in the bar pieces and notice it was rather tough to get it due to the rubber "grabbing" onto the bar and at one point, pulling the gasket out on one side of the bar!

Even worse, I coud not get the bar to seat into the chassis because the rubber was just thick enough to prevent me from pulling the bar together (in my case) to seat it. I finally figured out that I need to unscrew two round trim rings ( oval one was fine) and slip both the rings and gasket up to the apex of the roll bar, then seat the roll bar into the chassis, then bring the trim rings back down and screw them into place. What a pain though, trying to get the darn thing in before the light bulb came on! I think everyone has those moments during the build so I don't get too worked up about it. Now I know what to do on the passenger side!

Nicely bent!

6/20/2007 - I received the Levy Racing Koni shocks w/Eibach springs today. I know some people want to know the differences between them so I'll detail what I know based on the frist look.

The most critical area I wanted to look at was the shaft thickness. You can see I scribbled in some numbers. The Bilstein shaft is 0.435" thick, while the Koni's are 0.547" thick. this is a 0.112" difference, or an increase of 20% cross sectional area. Personally, that is quite substantial.

Another obvious thing noted was the presence of a secondary spring or as many refer to as a bump stop. The Bilstein has none. A third obvious difference is the number of coils. The Eibach coils ( one pair @ 550 lbs., the other pair 600 lbs. ) are more in line with what I've seen on my Volkswagen and on other VW's I've installed various performance struts onto (Neuspeed, Koni and Eibach). Another big difference is the sheer size of everything; the surrounding body over the ball (hiem) joints, and the body itself. Yet when weighed on my bathroom scale, it comes out lighter ( approx. 5.5 lbs ) than the Bilsteins ( 6.5 lbs.). The Koni's are single adjustables; the rebound adjustment is controlled w/o ever having to remove the shock! The Bilstein has no adjustability. And finally, the Koni's have a true threaded body. The Bilstein had a coil-over "adapter" installed.

All I can say is, the Koni's are the shocks I always felt should be on this car. I knew going in with FFR, I'd get the default ones and that I'd someday upgrade to Koni's such as these. I just didn't know it was going to happen so soon. :)

I'll be installing these this weekend and I'm anxious to try them out! I beleive that if I get the car to the same ride height again, there should be no change in any of the suspension settings (toe, caster, camber); my original ride height was 4.5" so that's what I'll be shooting for. The springs will be a bit stiffer than the FFR supplied 450 lbs. all around, but we'll see what happens. My wife really did enjoy that "cushy" ride; wonder if she'll notice! :)

6/30/2007 - Since the delivery of the Koni's, I took time to assemble the shocks correctly and ensured it was OK to install them with the body of the shock absorber mounted to the frame and the shafts mounted to the lower control arms. Also, adjusted the rebound to the 1/2 mark, and then after a few hours, the car was back on the ground. The first ride was actually on Friday, 6/29, when my shakedown ride was actually my commute to work! Right away I noticed that all of the small dips and bumps that would make my windshield creak every so often was nearly eliminated. The ride felt very smooth. Steering response is about the same but the ride quality seemed to improve noticably. On the freeway, expansion joints appeared to have been smoothed out as well. It's so odd that even while increasing the spring rates all around, that the car could still feel so smooth; this is a testament to Gordon Levy's commitment in working with Koni's to come up with a very compliant setup.

Today, I went over to meet with another builder, Robert, with his modular motor donor; his entire build is fairly unique. And his milling sources at NUMMI in Fremont, allowed him to add some custom touches; I will no devulge or spoil is coming-out in the future but I do know based on what he's told me, it should make for yet another unique ride. I wanted him to feel what the Koni's felt like since he's running the Bilsteins now but they are also the "improved" version. I counted the coils and they are a 10 coil count.

I decided to take him to the weekly Livermore get-together at the Rock House Pub for breakfast; the temps were around 60 deg. at 8:30AM. We took the long way there by hitting Niles Canyon Road (route 84); unfortunately, we hit a caravan of cars but the drive was still beautiful; I have not been here since the early 80's when I used to bicycle 100KM rides through this area. It hasn't changed a whole lot with the river still active alongside the road, trees and mountain sides in some sections reminded me of Hwy 50 in Lake Tahoe.

What I found interesting was even with a 2nd passenger, the 600# rear springs ( a 25% increase over the 450# springs) seemed to prevent the 315 tires from rubbing the aluminum behind each seats.

Later in the day, I drove my buddy Chris to drop off his car at Wheel Works. Chris has had the most seat time in my FFR as a passenger and he confirmed that the ride was much smoother than my previous shocks; his comment was "it feels like a passenger car." I have to wonder if this is what a BMW Z3 feels like? :)