Several posts back you mentioned tying several grounds into a common point. It will work fine AS long as you did not reduce wire size to extend the wires. A ground is a ground!!
The 4th of July weekend was pretty much a bust, at least as far as the car goes.
While all of you were busy with barbeques, picnics, parties, family, friends and of course fireworks, I was up in Wisconsin opening up the summer cottage. For those who have never done such a thing, it is often rather eventful. You never know quite what to expect. Past experience has taught me to be prepared anything. For example, I have had to deal with frozen plumbing, trees falling on the driveway and the house, malfunctioning yard equipment, shattered toilets, renegade mice, carpenter ants, wild turkeys, deer, bear and bats.
So… While you were all having a wonderful time I was fixing this year’s problem, namely pier crushed by ice. All I had to do was lift the wet end of the pier a scant 5 feet and slide the pier supports back into place. An easy task if you have any type of jack, which of course, I was sorely lacking. To make a long story short, I finally elevated the pier using tactics that the ancient Egyptians would have been proud of.
We are moving along nicely at this point, but nothing worthy of a photo. After all, how many photos can you show of sanded primer? Also, as we get closer to the completion, we have decided to only show detail shots. We are going to save the long overall shots for the big finish later this month.
With that said, I am off to work. Tomorrow, I will post some detail photos of the velocity tube installation.
We are getting down to crunch time here and are looking for additional hands.
So...
If you live in the St Charles, IL area. If you are really into mustangs. If you are mechanically inclined (or have body working skills). If you are not afraid of hard work, etc, etc, etc....
I am having a real tough time deciding on the seats to use (if you remember, the Cobra seats sat about 2" to high).
I have considered Recaro, Sparco, Flow Fit, Corbeau, etc...
There are so many choices out there that I am having trouble making up my mind. Also, I have never planted my butt in any of these seats. This makes the decision very difficult at best.
As far as requirements go, I want seats that look, feel and fit similar to the 03 Cobra seats. I would really like them to be leather with suede inserts, but all leather will suffice. Electric controls are not mandatory, but they would be nice if I can keep the seat 2” shorter than the originals. The seats must be useable with a 4 point harness. And I also need the seats to fold forward (for access to the rear).
The seats need to be a compromise of performance and comfort (If they are not comfortable, I will never complete the power tour next year). They need to accommodate butts of all sizes (you never know who is going to end up driving or riding).
The Sparco Milano, Recaro LXF, Cobra Misano L, Corbeau legacy, etc... all look pretty good, but all I have to go on are the looks.
What a rush. Lately I don't know if I am coming or going.
Anyway....
Wayne has been busy solving body fitment issues. Here are a couple of shots. The first is of Wayne hard at work. He is contemplating the gaps. If you listen closely you can hear the buzz as he thinks about the best way to even out all these inconsistent gaps. He has had to weld extensions on to some panels while trimming back others.
Shush. Be very quiet. We better move on before we disturb him. :-)
Next is a photo of what the gaps look like before Wayne works his magic. Compare that to the 4th shot showing the repaired gaps on the opposite side of the car.
Last we have a shot of the car starting to go together for final bodywork. We are currently fitting / clearancing the hood (stock 65 with a bulge for the massive blown 4.6)
No the problem isn't Wayne. The problem is the width of the front track.
If we leave things exactly as they are, we will end up with a front wheel flares that stick out about 2 1/4", while the flares on the back stick out about 2". If we do this the car will have a rather strange appearance where the front track looks wider than the rear. To resolve this issue we need to shift the front wheels inboard about 1". This will give us a 2" rear and 1 1/2" front flare, which should look more appealing. We were giving consideration to resolving this issue by using front and rear wheels with different backspacing. We didn't really like this idea because we want the wheels to look identical on all 4 corners and a 1" diff in backspacing would be pretty obvious.
So, we called our friends at Maximum Motorsports and asked them if they could make us a custom lower control arm that would be 1" shorter than stock. They recommended that we use a fox control arm which is 3/4" shorter than the SN95 piece.
Wo Hoo!!!
This will solve a number of issues we were having all across the board.
Well, back to work on the fenders, hood and front end.
I guess it was only a mater of time. I was using the HorsePowered.com database to store the photos of the project and tied to them via a link.
Well....
It appears that HorsePowered is no more. The photos are gone and so is any evidence that their website ever existed.
No worries though. I still have all the photos of the build and I have been working on a website for the project. I will be able (with a little help) to restore all the links.
In the meantime, I have been cross posting all the photos to a local Chicago website. Photos can be viewed at...
Wayne has been meticulously plodding through all the remaining bodywork. He has spent what seams like endless hours working and reworking everything from the cowl to the rear bumper. He constantly has to point out the reasons to me. A little wave here, a little ripple there, this doesn’t line up quite right, changes to the door effect the contour of the quarter, the body lines that run along the edge of the roof to the trunk are not quite symmetrical, and on and on.
Wayne had to get the doors finished and installed in order to send the car out to the aluminum fabricator. Originally, we were going to have him come to our shop, but he convinced us that he needed the car at his facility to do the job right. The job is to fab up the trim panels that will seal off the top and sides of the dashboard.
I, on the other hand, have been working on mechanical details. The hood latch is almost complete. I am going to remove all the extra material at the back of the bracket after I fit up the front end, grill, hood, etc… I also have located the shock tower brace. I will be able to complete the fabrication of that item after I install the ductwork for the air inlet. I have the welding of the ductwork complete. We just have to have the parts painted to match the blower. We felt that if the paint matches the rest of the engine intake system, it would look like it was supplied by the factory.
I also replaced the lower control arms with the shorter FOX items. You can see the difference in length in the photo below. This solved all the problems with the front wheel / flare clearance issues. We did have to flip flop the caster plates in order to get the correct front end geometry, but other than that, everything went quite well.
Finally, here are some photos of the car as she sits waiting for pick up. Upon return, we should be able to complete the front end and get this baby ready for paint.
Here is a shot of the rear end with the lower valance in place. Note that the bottom edge of the valance runs parallel to both the gas tank and the ground. Also, in order for us to get the flare contures correct, we had to shift the bottom of the quarters out about and inch or so. In order to get the rear valance to fit up properly we had to segment the panel (add two pie shaped filler strips). If I hadn’t said anything, you probably would not have noticed.
And finally, here are some photos of the interior. The door panels are two that we have used for fit up porposes only. Note how the 03 dash meshes up just right with the 65 door panels. We are going to eliminate the vertical ribs in the center of the door panels and fill that area with a simple padded insert. Maybe we can come up with some embroidery with a SN65 emblem. We are going to use the standard door pulls instead of the pony items. I like the way the standard pulls line up with the angle of the 03 dash.
