Hi All,
Welcome to my HM-2040 build, purchased as kit in February 2022, and delivered to me on September 7 in the
middle of the night 
My goal is a build in 200-300 hours, which I'm keeping track of, and about 3 months. I originally was set on completing the car in 2022 so I could get in line immediately for the California SB100 registration, but I'm starting to think that they don't "sell out" of sequence numbers quite that quickly.
I imagine I'll mainly use it as a street cruiser.
By the time the kit arrived, I had ordered and received the engine, transmission, flywheel, bell housing, clutch, and wheels. As of this writing, I need to get a fuel pump, delivery of my tires, pulley kit, water pump, expansion tank, and engine mounts ASAP. Once the engine is mounted, I'll be looking at a driveshaft with a couple week lead time from MDL, and whatever else comes up.
Specs:
408W roller motor, Holley Sniper, MSD, Scat Crank, Aluminum Heads, see dyno sheet below. (please ignore those awful valve covers!)
Tremec TKX
Trigo 15" 427 Wheels
Mickey Thompson Sportsman S/T 295/50 and 245/60
Ram Lightweight Billet Steel flywheel
Ram HDX Clutch
Taking delivery of the kit was a little bit of a challenge, as I have a long (200') uphill driveway, and the two streets from my driveway are not accessible by the tractor-trailer dispatched by Stewart Transport. Poignant that the trailer was plastered with Factory Five all over it. I had to grab a Uhaul trailer and meet him up the street, as you can see below.
This kit is one of the last ones off the line, and Jake has been amazing to work with, who has essentially taken over after Alec's departure. When it shipped, he was told that it was complete aside from the hinges, which were at powder coat. When it arrived, it was missing quite a bit of stuff, all of which has been accounted for, is in Iowa, and is being completed/shipped out to me currently. These include the 3rd member, some frame parts and the aluminum panels that lingered at powdercoat, and some miscellaneous parts. Some of the build manual is outdated, for instance, I received an aluminum fuel tank, but the build manual shows something else. Finally, the last little snafu was a communication issue early on which led to my headers arriving uncoated. I searched and found a local company who builds professional headers and does the polished ceramic coat, so I won't have to ship the exhaust back out to solve that issue.
Along with this thread here, I plan to do some video logs on youtube as well, and will post video links here as I complete them.
BUILD PROGRESSSo its been about a week, and I was able to cut the holes in the body and mount the windshield, assemble the rear suspension and the front suspension.
A couple of issues came up, including the axle side of the rear end trailing links not matching in design to the manual. In short, the brackets welded to the axle for the trailing arm were not wide enough to need/accommodate any spacers, there was 1/16" of space on each side, which I took up with a 5/8" washer with a small OD. Per the manual, there were supposed to be "5/16" spacers on each side the heim joint which apparently go through the heim joint, which seemed impossible and which were not provided, and there were supposed to be 3 sets of holes in the axle mount when there were only 2. So in the end, the heim joints went easily into the brackets on the rear end, it needed a 1/16" "spacer" in there, and everything snugged up well.
The front suspension went together easily and per the manual, however, one of my lower control arms suffered the issue of the two legs not sitting evenly in the brackets welded to the frame. After searching the forum here, I used a floor jack and some wood blocks to widen the legs, and it all went together great. The upper shock mount is significantly wider than what is suggested by the build manual, which states to use one 1/2" washer on each side inside the mount, however, it will take 1/4"+ of spacer on each side to take up the space. My ball joints screwed into the receptacles without freezing/heating, and I will need to grab a socket to snug those up. I did shorten the 5" swedge tubes to 4.5" as it seemed like the camber was not going to come into place without it, which was another piece of wisdom I picked up from searching the forum here.
I hope you enjoy the pics and video below, "Clocking In" has become the theme, as I plan to work on the car more hours per week than I work in my career, which I'm thankful to say is in the 15-20 hour range.
