Herman's Factory Five Racing 65' Roadster Build Site

October 2007

10/7/2007 - Last Friday, I finally received my replacement windshield after waiting a month, so this weekend I took time to replace the cracked glass:

Removal was pretty straight forward. The weather stripping came off without any issues and using some Permatex "black" gasket silicone, I tacked on the weather strip to the new glass and used some masking tape keep it in place while it dried. One thing I recall from a person who passed on a tip about replacing glass was to do the installation on a very sunny day to get the glass hot so it would be more flexible so thankfully, it was very warm and the glass really was very flexible as I could bend it without cracking, by at least 1/2"! I noted some bumps along the top corners; excess material/glass, so I took a file and filed down the surface until they were smooth, prior to putting on the weather strip.

While the thing was baking in the sun for about 3 hours, I also took off the protector plates (see the two black rectangles on top of the glass) at the base of the windshield mounting posts and used the Permatex to keep the rubber gasket material from sliding away from the protectors themselves, something I noticed over the course of the year.

Reinstalling the entire assembly was interesting. I did manage to strip one screw, the bottom screw on the driver side wind-wing. I'm not positve yet on what to do so for now, it's one there with just Loc-tite Red just to keep the screw from backing out but essentially, the windwing cannot be adjusted w/o the possibility of pulling out that screw! I think in retrospect, if I had removed the posts from the car, it would have been much easier to screw in all of the screws without any issues but it would of been a lot more work too.

I have not installed the visors yet. At this time, it appears after testing the depth of all of them, I could remove up to 3 threads from the end to ensure I never crack the glass again and still have enough "bite" to keep the visors firmly in place. I will take some time to do this right over the course of the week.

10/9/2007 - Tonight I tackled the top visors on the windshield. As you will recall, ONE of the screws was just a bit too deep and thus the cracked windshield. And also upon dismantling the old windshield, I found 8 distinct holes in the weather strip where the 8 screws secured the aforementioned visors! Yes, I was that close to cracking the glass in 7 more places!!!! The fact that only one did this meant the screws just need around 1-2 thread taken down but how does one go about this easily and consistently?

Well, of all things, I happen to have an old wire stripper (electricians tool) which also has 6 threaded areas for cutting down various screws (sometimes necessary when working with junction box screws and light switch screws that are too long.) I figured possibly this can be used. I took one of the screws and the closest fit was a 6-32 threaded hole. Upon tigtening the screw into the wire tool, guess what? Only 2 threads are exposed, however, to use this tool to actually cut stainless steel would be folly; I'd end up doing more damage than good! So I took out my Dremel tool with a cutting stone wheel and used it to cut down and smooth out the screw up to where it laid flush with the tool. The first one turned out pretty good.

But did I take enough off? To verify this, I took one of my calipers and measured the depth of the hole to the glass/weather strip in each hole. I then took the ground down screw, slipped it into one of the visor mounts, and measure it up against the screw past the bottom of the mount and I have about a 1/2mm air gap whereas one of the un-cut screws was just "past" the bottom of the caliper - this would represent the glass! The delta is about a full 1 mm but that's really all that's required.

I proceeded to grind down all 8 screws and measured each one against the caliper and I was consistently getting a good 1/2mm gap every time. I was very confident there was no way the screws would contact the glass. Upon mounting all 4 visor mounts, nothing made a sound or even sounded like it was scratching anything. I even pushed the windshield back and forth a bit (yes, I'm pretty crazy to take this risk.) As far as I'm concerned, it's a done deal!

I also took the time to mount the visor a bit differently; in the Finishline instructions, they have it such that the acron nuts are exposed to the wind but I saw a Superformance car last weekend and he had it flipped so the "screw-side" was facing the wind and he used chrome bolts instead of the screws! I will be looking for a comparable set as it looked very slick to me when positioned this way with the chome bolts exposed.

I hope this little instruction will help others avoid the problems I had but more importantly, I hope it serves as some type of process. I can't guarantee this will work for everyone since I'm not sure everyone has an electricians tool with the same thickness as mine to achieve what I needed but maybe it'll give you some ideas such as finding some thin steel stock of the same thinckness and tapping a hole and mimicking the same thing!

10/18/2007 - Wednesday, I received a couple of items from Mike Forte. I purchased a set of T5 spacers to replace the "stack" of washers I was using to raise the rear tail housing. I never was comfortable with using just washers, despite the fact they were hardened. The 3 plates stack up to a full 1" height. Will have to find time to install this later on.

The other item was something I've heard about and wanted to try and that was Mike's aluminum quadarnt. Now I already have the FRPP version to replace the original plastic unit, but with the King Cobra clutch, it's still stiff in traffic and can be a bear to hold in stop-n-go traffic. So I installed Mike's quadrant last night and there is a noticable difference. I'd say the overall effect is slightly easier depression of the clutch pedal but the real treat is the holding effort is far less. Since I'm not a math major, I can't calculate the vector force required between the two and how the "curve" affects how much pressure is required to hold the same force after a certain distance has traveled, but by pure feel, all I can say is it works! In the picture, I can say that Mike's starts out closer to 90 deg. from the pivot point where the FRPP unit starts around 70 deg. The other thing is the length of the lever is 3" for the FRPP but Mike's is 1/4" longer so as we learned in physics, a longer lever will always make things easier! Lastly, the profile of the curve. Here, I can't say why this helps so I'll just assume the steeper rake of Mike's unit does a better job than the contant radius of the FRPP unit. Heck, I can use my arm to push it and it's not all that hard now. Now this is not to say it's like a hydraulic unit. No, it's not, but it does make a difference.

10/23/2007 - Last Saturday, my Whitby's stainless steel windshield brackets arrived. On Sunday evening, I removed the windshield again and removed the old brass strips after taking a marker to all 8 holes to ensure the new brackets would align correctly. And as per instructions, I used my friends belt sander to grind a slight angle, using the old brass units as a guide. By today, I finished all of the sanding so both sides would fit snugly and line up with the original marks. Then it was back onto the car. Now there is something I discovered after an hour of frustration trying to get the wind-wings mounted. The screws would only go in at an angle. And the angle was a bit more then the original brass units and perhaps after finally giving in, I think the wind-wing mounts need to be ground down at an angle as well to line up correctly. Looking closer at the angle of attack all the screws took, it's now obvious why some of the screws stripped in the first place. Oddly, I kind of like the way it looks without it. I will try driving without them for awhile before I even decide to grind the mounts down.