Time is money

A few years back, just when I was starting on planing this project, I met a guy on the street driving a Cobra. I jump up and down and waived at him to pull over. He did and we chatted. I remember he was suggesting to go "all new parts" route instead of "donor" build. I remember a the time I thought, it's just way too much money to buy all new parts at retail prices. I still maintain that opinion but I have more to say. I am sure, I read it on FFCars too. Essentially, it comes down to what you have at your disposal: time or money. Here's my example to illustrate the concept.

I started my assembly from the part that was the most "in my way" in my garage. Well, the engine is really the  biggest obstruction but it's not going in just yet. However, the rear axle was lying with it's arms sticking out and constantly being the tripping hazard leaving painful scratches. The time has come for that thing to move into its new home. Of course, I could just grab it and bolt it in as is but it just would not look right. The dirt and dust covered part attached to a shiny glossy black frame. In addition, the Mustang was over 10 years old and needed some help in preventing future rusting. So some prep work was in order. I somehow ended up using Rust Check products. They are readily available at the local Canadian Tire and have an extensive variety of rust prevention products. They are a Canadian company with a convincing claim. I just hope that their claims are true.

The rear axle is only one of many bits that make up the rear end. In fact, the axle is probably an incorrect reference. To prepare the parts I need to clean, wire brush, degrease and paint them. So if I want to achieve a good result I would need to prep individual parts as much as possible. That means that I had to disassemble first. I took off all the obvious parts: linking arms, sway bar, anti squeal brackets, vibration dumper and brake shields. I could continue on with brake mounting brackets, hubs, etc ... but I had to stop somewhere. As I was taking the parts off, I was getting them done too. Here, for example, is the lower arms before and after wire brushing.

And here the same arm but now painted.

In the end that's what the rear axle looked like before I started to brash it. As you can see, there're some surface rust there. The axle looked pristine before I cleaned it. 

Here the same axle after I took a grinder with brush wheel to it.

Here I have to reveal my secret. Since there was some considerable surface rust, I elected to apply some Rust Converter. Well, I really did not see any colour change as shown on the label but I assumed it did its trick. The next step, before any painting is degreasing. I found Dupli-Color surface prep at Canadian Tire. I applied that liberally with a clean cloth. Once that's all dried up, the last step is to spray paint it. My choice was Rust Paint in glossy black. It looks good and protects the metal too.

Once it's all dried up it's ready to go. You probably guessed it takes an hour or two to get to this point. Alternatively, I could get a new axle and skip straight to this point. That's probably what everyone is talking about. The time invested into the prep could be saved and the build could be sped up by the use of new parts. In addition, Factory Five and some other shops offer some attractive alternatives to Mustang donor parts. But I am not complaining. It's fun in its own way to spray paint the parts.

Here the axle is in its new home. The advantage of using donor parts here is that sway bar. Other options use tubular lower arms and loose the sway bar. Life will show if that sway bar does more good than bad.

Shedding skin

Now with the inventory sort of complete I get on to the real fun stuff. Let's put the car together. Ironically, the first step is actually to take the car apart. The fiber glass body must come off and then all of the aluminum panels should head to the shelves. The only problem is that the body is one piece that does not fit on the shelf nicely. So we need a body buck! The manual actually has some drawing and measurements for building one out of plywood and 2x4s. Also the guys over at FFCars have some advice. I had some 2x4s that were intended but not used for the pick up trip and some plywood that was left over from under the mustang shell. All I was missing was my in-law. He was the best pick for the job for two reasons: (1) he is a strong man and will help me lift the body off the frame, (2) he has a jig saw. :) Well, he showed up with jig saw and a bunch of other tools as well as a case of assorted screws. After a short while we saw this

We moved the body to the outside and rested it on the cardboard. Even though the drawings from the manual and the revised rear part from the forum where close to the actual shape of the car, they were not exact. It was no obstetrical

The problem was addressed with a smile. The buck was relativity simple to build and I had just the spot to hide the snakes skin.

It fits there amazingly well! It really appears as if that spot was meant for it. Although, Factory Five assures that the body is resistant to the elements and would be perfectly fine if stored outside uncovered, I would sleep better knowing that it's protected from harsh Canadian snow.

Some blue tarpaulin, some left over vapor barrier plastic, some tuck tape and voila! I hope raccoon don't make it their home. Oh and don't mind those parts on the tree. Didn't you hear of organic swaybars? Well now you know where they come from.

What did I get? What did I get?

Usually when I get a present I can't wait to open it. I just can't let it sit there.

What you saw in the previous post were the major parts. Stuff you can't really put in a box. But the car has many other parts that fit perfectly fine in a box. So here's the rest of the parts

That's almost all 17 boxes there. I have a few more coming from another source in mail.

I would not lie. I was not as excited as a kid on Christmas to jump into opening them. The sheer number of large boxes deterred me. However, Factory Five asks their customers to perform inventory of the entire contents of the purchase in the first 45 days since the receiving. The paper work package from Factory Five contains a comprehensive packing list. Every nut and bolt is on that list and must be checked off. It all is a lot of tedious work. On the other hand, there's the excitement of opening the boxes and finding some of those "cool" parts. Check this out

That's the fuel filling door. This thing is enormous and makes a loud rattling metal noise when it swings open.

Here are some more funky parts:

The steering wheel is a skinny wooden piece. Feels kind of strange holding it after the normal thicker modern steering wheels. But it looks fantastic. The adjustable upper control arms will be hell to tune in for the wheel alignment people. If one one arm is turned then all of the characteristics are changing simultaneously.

Some nice bling for the cockpit. And noise canceling technology which renders stereo useless (as well as every other sound outside)

Hmm... that muffler is a bit too skinny. I wonder if it's effective. Let's see if this test adds clarity

Let's peek from the big open end

Results: well... the back pressure should be low. There's still a doubt if it makes exhaust any quieter. In fact, I ordered and a set of catalytic converters as an attempt to make the care quieter and a bit greener too.

By now I actually went through all the boxes and checked things over. I am missing a set of seat tracks for sure but I am not sure about the aluminum panels. I can't really match them all to their description. Some of them are labeled but not all. I am planing to try to put them against the car and see what they are. There could be a legend in the manual too. I gotta read that thing.

Journey to the source

Once upon a time I was having a coffee with a friend and we were talking about our usual car stuff. At the time I was looking at all the options of getting my hands on the Factory Five kit. I guess I complained enough about all the costs involved in transporting it over to make him say "just go pick it up". It's not that I did not consider that before but at that moment it occurred to me as plausible. More details to follow. It would cost me about $1200 to have the kit shipped. But it would only come to somewhere a tow truck can pick it up and perform the final delivery. So there's a cost for the tow truck too. Now, since the kit would be coming on the fright train, it would have to be boxed in a crate (read as $600). Put the tax on top and we are in over $2000 just to have it in my garage. In fact, that's probably word to word what I said to my friend over that coffee. The option of picking it up may sound cheaper but is it really? UHaul would charge me over $1200 for the renal of the pickup and the trailer. Add hotel and gas to that and we are getting awfully close to that shipping cost. But at that coffee moment, I remembered that I had a friend whom I haven't spoken to for years and he had a pick up and interested in cars. He just might be up for a little trip to US with me. In fact, I called him right away and to my surprise he got excited about the trip. Turns out, he even knows somebody who could borrow a trailer to us. During moments like that I start to believe that there's someone out there looking out for me. :)

My plan was to go over in April. The main idea was that the weather would be nice enough to work on the car. When it's too cold it's just a teaser: it's there but you'd freeze the minute you'd step outside. Also, the drive would be easier on us if there was no snow. So the date was set! Factory Five was waiting and the hotel was booked with no refund option. Come the day and ...

the freezing rain comes. There is an inch of ice on the road and the truck is cocooned in ice too. The plan was to leave in the morning on Friday. Drive leisurely to the Wareham MA. Check into the hotel and find a pub. Well that was not going to happen. My friend showed up at my door step after 2:00 pm. We quickly dropped all the necessary things into the truck and were off to the US. The most important task at that moment was to get out of city before the rush hour. Which slowly turned into: get over the border. Followed by: make it to the hotel. Google maps assured us that it would take about 9.5 hours. Will's (the friend) GPS was stubbornly showing arrival time early next morning. We drove non stop for as much as we could but the GPS was right and there was nothing we could do about it with cops on the road. By now, we ate all the snacks we had in the truck and had to stop for food. In fact, it was our first stop for the trip for needs other than gas and washroom. It was 12:00 am, however. On the positive note, we where only one hour away from the hotel. (It was sincerely a positive note after 8 hours of driving). What made the things even more hectic is the fact that Factory Five was waiting for us at 8:00 am that morning. With no time to loose we hit the road. But of course, then I missed the exit off of the toll highway and had to make a loop. At the time Will reassured me that if the hotel were to give away our room they would have done so by now. As I was driving, I was thinking of how disappointed I would be if the already paid room was given away and now we would be left to sleep in this truck. However, sleeping in the truck was not meant to be. The room was waiting for us and at 2:00 am we were checking in. Obviously, the beers were not an option anymore but the shower, conformable bed and a breakfast in the morning meant a lot to us. 

Next morning we made it over to the Factory Five. We where not the first ones over. There was already a pickup with a kit loaded onto the trailer. We later learned that the person was also a Canadian and was on his way home to Ottawa. We were advised to load the kit first since one more party would come later and we all would take the tour of the factory. Both, Will and I, were surprised how well the kit fitted into pickup bed and trailer. There were about 14-15 boxes and they all nicely fitted into the truck bed with one box on the back seat. Even the chassis and body fitted nicely on the 12' long trailer. We were thinking it would be overhanging by a foot and a half. It did overhang but it was almost negligible.

By now, the other people showed up for their 33 Ford kit and we took the tour.

The rotisserie frame

The fiberglass molds

The assembly of frame, aluminium panels and fiberglass body

And the lucky Cobras who found their good home awaiting the pick up.

All in all the tour was interesting but the take awaymessage is simple:

These guys have the best job

The following should illustrate my point

The last one is the prototype car based on Subaru Impreza. They get to tweak it until some time this summer before it goes into production. Now they have a few go-karts parked next to the loading door. I am sure I would quit my coffee habit if I were to take those for a spin at my breaks instead. 

We had to part with Factory Five. But before I move on to the boring 950 km, here's one more pic from the show room

And the last one with the shiny big truck

For the next 10 hours we had a small red car following us very closely. But now we both were excited, exhausted but excited. We got some people gave us thumbs up, honks and even a little girl waived. It was a great feeling to see this in the rear view mirror

It actually brightened up our day. The fact that it was raining all day nonstop did not matter. We did complain about the absolute lack of descent food at the road stops but in the end it was pure fun. Luckily, we did not have any problems at the customs and were heading home. We did end up getting home past 10:00 pm. My wife prepared a nice dinner. It was very much needed after all the fast food and snacks that we were surviving on for the past 2 days. We had a beer and called it a day. It was our chance to catch up on some sleep.

Next morning a few of my buddies showed up to help getting the car of the trailer into the garage. I was stunned by their eagerness to get to work. It took us no time to get everything off loaded.

And the end result

It was a long couple of days but the joy of seeing this was overwhelming. The next burning desire is to see what in those boxes. he he ... I hope she does not find out I posted this pic :)

First jewel

Yeah, this is a bit strange coming from me. I rarely think about the beauty adders. The Subaru is the dead give away. However, for this car my opinion is exceptionally different. This toy is not an everyday car. It's unique. It's got too much "me" in it. So I put everything I like to see in cars into this creation.

Rule number one: the brake calipers have to be red. I tried to reason with my wife about this. She couldn't care less about calipers but I insisted. So she came up with "make them black" and "who looks at those anyways" answers. At that point, I figured out I was right and she was wrong and went with the obvious red. As if there could be any other choice.

I know it's March April now but I started this earlier. It was cold out there. The fingers get frozen quickly while holding metal tools or parts. Thankfully, it is not much effort to take the calipers off the front spindles. So here they are in my basement getting worm.

The only tedious part of the process is to get the calipers extremely clean. Otherwise the paint finish would not last. I tried some simple things first: degreaser and brake cleaners. While it's not entirely useless, it does not bring the calipers to the ready state. Some elbow greasing with a wire brush showed good signs of hope and the rotary tool came to mind. A set of various wire brushing bits and 30 min with the tool resulted in a very attractive results.

The shiny caliper has been cleaned compared to the untouched one on the right. Some time later the second one got the same treatment.

This is an almost ready state. I would only apply some spray cleaner right before laying paint. It should degrease as well as get the last dirt and dust off. I went with VHT products. The reasoning was simple: G2 paint is hard to get here in Canada, Duplicolor got some positive and not so positive reviews, VHT has shown good results. I also have to admit that I did see their advertisement at the Toronto Motorsport Park which did contribute to my decision. I also did use their product for exhaust on my Subaru, so I am not entirely new to the brand.

VHT offers the complete solution for caliper painting. Just read up their website http://www.vhtpaint.com/products/caliperpaint/. I did get their cleaner and paint. I skipped the primer and clear. I noticed that the product number on the clear is in the same pattern as the colours. That made me think that there's nothing really special about the clear but ... well clear. On the other hand, the primer might have been a good idea in the retrospect. I will definitely try to use it when i'll get to the rear calipers.

So one fine day the calipers came out of the basement and the spray of red paint was applied. The sun was shining and the calipers were magnificent.

As you can see the paint on the first coat did not quite cover the caliper uniformly. That's what made me think that primer might have been a must. Later, after 2 more coats the calipers were covered completely but not smoothly. The reason for that is that I suck at painting. On the bright side the paint smoothed out itself after about an hour and made me feel better. The next step would be to bake them. VHT requires their paint to be cured.

I had to stick them in the oven. To prevent any sort of chemicals ending up in my food later, I went for baking bags.

Next step is the oven

And they came out looking HOT but with some imperfections. I saw same brake fluid leak damage and some paint peeling off.

So there's more work to be done. I went back to clean up the spots that were in need of help and re-splayed the calipers again. I am not sure that VHT caliper cleaner is a good thing now. They are ready for the second trip to the oven now but would have to wait for the rears to be ready. I want to put them in together.

I guess this is to be continued ...

Warning: The following content may cause temporary speech impediment

This is somewhat special moment. I just got the first 4 boxes with Factory Five logo on them. Inside of those I found these:

And just to put it in perspective:

These are WIDE. In fact, when I pulled the front ones out of the box I've mistaken them for the rears. However, when the rears came out it all became clear. 

Here's an interesting thing about the wheels. They are actually drop shipped by the original manufacturer to the Factory Five customer. So, there's a shipping fee. The fee is usually high for customers in US but for Canadians it's extra high. For cases as such we have cbi usa. They will receive the package for you and allow you to pick it up some time after. A friend of mine was actually doing his run to pick up his parts and brought my wheels with him. Perfect timing. Many thanks to my buddy too.

Now all I need is the rest of the boxes and a trailer load. Which should be coming soon. :)

Santa got a new order

Christmas is a bit different for kids and adults. Kids get to write a letter to Santa, wake up on Christmas day and find the present under the tree. Where as I had to write a letter, provide the credit card and schedule a pick up date way past Christmas. But the heck with that! I am not complaining (the taxes are excepted). The order is in and the little elves at Factory Five are hard at work.

Well, there's not much else to report. We got snow, meaning we are well into the hibernation season for the project. I am planing on doing some minor prepare, clean and paint jobs for donor parts but with out the heater in the garage nothing exciting is down the stream.

April is the tentative time for the pick up of the kit. It takes Factory Five some time to put the kit together and also the Transportation Canada to approve the import. Also there's hope that the weather will be warmer.

For now: Happy New Year everybody!