HM-2016 BUILD THREAD (MN)

[Bob Worley]

Fun times!  What great family memories y'all are making - keep the updates coming

[Russ Rittimann]

Yep, what a fun family experience.  Keep the updates coming.

Russ

[aarvig]

Well, nothing like getting this party started by building a body buck.  I had previously contacted Paul P. and had him send me the plans for a rolling body buck, which he did.  I really debated whether I wanted to hang the body from the ceiling or put it on a rolling buck.  Hopefully, the body is only going to be on the buck for a a short period so I opted for the rolling buck.  Only about a hundred bucks in lumber and screws vs. several hundred in winch or block and tackle/cabling.  The buck can be repurposed into shelving as well.
So I carefully measured the board out to match the contours of the Hurricane and I am glad to say that Pauls plans are right on. 

The boys and I getting started:


Project completed:


Tucked into the garage over the car.  The rear wheels are fixed and the front pivot and have brakes.  It makes it easy to slide in and out of the garage.  This is our one car garage, our garage has a two plus car garage 90 degrees (L-shaped) to this one.  So in addition to storing the body the buck will keep the foot traffic coming in and out of the house from banging up my project.  Overall, this was a fun project.  Thanks Paul!

[Russ Rittimann]

Nice going.  Nice to have some helpers too.  You will really appreciate being able to move the body out of the way to work on the chassis.

Russ

[Bob Worley]

I just wanted to point out that the body goes on top of the buck, not under it   

[aarvig]

I just wanted to point out that the body goes on top of the buck, not under it   

HA! No wonder I cut all those fancy curves it the wood!
Seriously tho,  My neighbors thought I was building a bunk bed.  It managed to draw three of them over to see what the heck I was building.
I'm waiting till I have the necessary man power to get the body off...hopefully this weekend!

[mandmGuys]

Now the fun begins. Congratulations you now have a Cobra!!!

Mark

[aarvig]

I thought I would update this thread for those following.  I had a few friends over to the house a while back to talk cars, get me motivated to build and to show off their cobras.  Several people from the neighborhood excitedly showed up wondering what all the cool cars were doing at my house.  We had two Factory Five MK4's and one Gen 1 Hurricane 427.





Starting in the middle and going clockwise that is Levi (my middle son), Dan Emberly (Hurricane owner), Craig Miller (Black FFR), Mike Monear (Copper FFR), my dad (Rick), and yours truly...the chiropractor getting ready to throw out his back.



The body comes off real easy.  Just have two people pull out along the rockers, lift straight up on the front and push it back.  Make sure you have someone on the back so the body doesn't slide off and land on its butt.

[aarvig]

Up onto the buck...man I should have made this thing shorter, or height adjustable.  Its a good thing the body will be up there for awhile.



All done!



I actually decided, after much discussion with current builders and with Jason (lead builder) not to cut the windshield post holes or roll bar holes out until the end of the build.  The purpose of this was to eliminate the possibility that anything during the build could interfere with the body causing the holes to need to be moved during final fitting.

[aarvig]

Getting started I discovered I had a warped rear brake rotor dust shield.  The rotor was making contact with the brake shield and making a nice squealing noise when I moved the car.  A quick call to Hurricane and Jason had a new brake rotor dust shield/e-brake setup on my front door step.  I pulled the axle out and replaced the shield with the new one.  Here is a pic of the bent one.  We are not sure how in the world that thing bent...if it was a forging issue or assembly issue.  But you can clearly see how the forward e-brake shoe is pushed out...

[aarvig]

After all the suspension components are installed (rear axle, coil overs, steering rack, lower control arms, rear and front brakes) the next order of business is to plumb the brake system.  The manual has you start with the rear brakes first.  Because my car has a 9" Ford Live axle the rear brake plumbing consists of flexible stainless lines connected to solid lines that follow the shape of the differential up to an inversion T installed on the top of the differential.

First of all, I've never seen a banjo or banjo bolts before.  The only banjo I knew of was the musical instruments.  The kit includes (4) 15" stainless flexible brake lines.  Two of them are packaged individually and have straight ends and two of them are in a GM metric kit and have a 90 degree fitting on one end.  (All Allstar Performance brand...good stuff).  I was confused because the manual calls for the 90 degree fitting to be on the front brakes and the straight fitting on the rear brakes but the banjo from the front brake kit (the GM Metric kit) only screwed into the rear caliper...like this:



So I immediately emailed Jason and as soon as I emailed him I realized my error.  He emailed me back right away with a very tactful email and a wonderful diagram of how they are SUPPOSED to be assembled.  I had emailed him back while he was emailing me saying it would help if I assembled it properly to begin with.  It was worth a laugh. 

Here are the parts needed for the rear brake line plumbing:



First order of business was to bend the straight brake line to match the one that comes pre-bent from Hurricane.  This was easily accomplished using a tubing bender and my thumbs.  Once the lines are in you have to work them a bit anyways to get them to fit so don't try to make perfect bends here.



Here is the banjo and banjo bolt installed CORRECTLY in the rear brake caliper:



Here is the 15" flexible brake hose installed from the banjo to the adapter.  Hurricane kindly welds the brackets for these on the live axle before they paint the frame and axle:

[aarvig]

For those who may be curious, here is the configuration of the adaptor and retainer that converts the brake lines from flexible to solid:



Here is the hard brake line installed:



I was curious about where the Earls Performance caliper adaptor went.  I found it in my kit and a quick call to Jason made me realize that it goes in the "T" on top of the differential.  It is for attaching the 21" flexible brake hose line form the rear diff to the drivers side frame rail.



Here it is, all plumbed up:

[s_reynolds]

Looking good! Keep the pics coming.

Sam

[Dan]

Hi Aaron,  nice to see you're well underway.  One other thing to consider holding off cutting as long as possible is an trimming you need to do to fine tune the side pipe openings.  I ended up taking off more off than I needed to, which I realized once I got the body installed for the last time with the panels all gapped.  My car was already painted, so it limited what I could do to rectify at that point. It didn't help that one of my headers was so far off that the side pipe was angled 6 inches off parallel from the frame. I assume the Lake City cars are a bit more consistent, but the Gen I cars were notorious for fit issues getting the body squared up correctly.  That's probably true of all component cars (FFR is famous for poorly made body panels). It's a balancing act because you want to install the side pipes to get an idea how square everything is, but the closer you are to the final body install with panels gapped the better.

[aarvig]

Hi Aaron,  nice to see you're well underway.  One other thing to consider holding off cutting as long as possible is an trimming you need to do to fine tune the side pipe openings.  I ended up taking off more off than I needed to, which I realized once I got the body installed for the last time with the panels all gapped.  My car was already painted, so it limited what I could do to rectify at that point. It didn't help that one of my headers was so far off that the side pipe was angled 6 inches off parallel from the frame. I assume the Lake City cars are a bit more consistent, but the Gen I cars were notorious for fit issues getting the body squared up correctly.  That's probably true of all component cars (FFR is famous for poorly made body panels). It's a balancing act because you want to install the side pipes to get an idea how square everything is, but the closer you are to the final body install with panels gapped the better.

Thanks for the advice Dan.  I am going to wait until final fitting to cut anything.  I have seen enough people who have had difficulty with hole alignment that even though it is not fun to pull the body on and off, I'm going to do it because I like fiberglass work even less.