Finished Driver Side Floor Pan and Radiator Plumbing

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I cut a couple of 2.5″ pieces of 1/2″ steel tubing. I’m going to weld them in a little proud of the upper and lower surfaces and then grind them flat.

I used a couple of welding magnets to hold the tubes in position.

After an ugly weld job, I ground the tubes flat and cleaned up the hole. I also did the same thing on the underside of the floor.

I reinstalled the seat pan and drilled the left side to the transmission tunnel.

I picked up some silicone couplers from HPS Performance Silicone Hoses. I removed the upper radiator tube and swapped in the silicone couplers.

These are much nicer than the cheap rubber hoses that came with the radiator tubes and shouldn’t suffer from cracking as they age like the rubber hoses.

The hose connection under the radiator cap on the water neck will connect to the hose fitting on the bottom of the coolant reservoir. I’m using the same silicone tubing that I used for the PCV valve and breather connections. I’m using one of the decorative ends which covers a standard hose clamp, but I had to trim part of it because of hose close the radiator comes to the hose fitting.

I need to route the hose along the top of the upper radiator tube and then down the x-frame and up to the reservoir. I haven’t figured out exactly how I’m going to secure this yet.

Finished Drilling Floor for Seat Tracks, Wheel Spacers and Brake Hoses

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I removed the seat and drilled the final hole through the floor and rear 2″x2″ square tubing.

Afterward, I removed the aluminum floor to get access to the steel floor underneath.

The bolts that attach the outer seat track will go all the way through the lower part of the square tubing. I used the bubble level in the rear of the drill to ensure I was drilling perpendicular to the top surface and then drilled through the bottom surface.

I also drilled through the lower floor the same way.

Afterward, I used the unibit to enlarge these holes to just over 1/2″.

I’m going to be putting pieces of 1/2″ OD steel tubing through these holes and welding them to the upper and lower surfaces before grinding them flat. It’s too late to run the grinder tonight, so I’ll take care of that tomorrow. The spacers will allow me to tighten the bolts properly without deforming the metal. This isn’t much of a concern with the rear 2″x2″ tubing since it has fairly thick walls, but it’s really important with the forward hole through the two thin pieces of sheet steel.

I’ve been concerned with how little space there is between the front brake calipers and the inside of the wheel. If there is even the smallest amount of flex in the wheel, the wheel could hit the caliper. To pick up some extra space, I picked up some new 0.125″  aluminum spacers. These are nearly 0.040″ thicker and quite a bit lighter.

Here is one of them installed. The only disadvantage is that these are made from shiny aluminum and are visible between the spokes of the wheel.

I noticed a while back that my front brake hoses are hitting the tires when turned to the steering stops, so I need to replace these. They’re also 18″ long which is longer than is necessary.

I picked up a couple of 16″ brake hoses with a 90º fitting at one end. Even with the wheel all the way to the stop, there’s plenty of room between the tire and hose.

The hose misses the tire and chassis as they wheel is turned from stop to stop.

When the wheel is at the other stop, there’s plenty of slack in the cable.

Coolant Reservoir and Seat Tracks

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Last week I started thinking about where to mount the new coolant reservoir and I settled on mounting it just behind the radiator, centered over the x-frame. I needed a way to cantilever it out from 3/4″ cross tube that supports the upper end of the radiator, so I welded up some additional 3/4″ tubing to form a couple of L shaped pieces.

These will be welded to the upper 3/4″ tubing, but that’s mounted at a 45º angle, so I need to cut some notches in the forward end of these.

These notches should let the supports fit tight against the tubing and be perpendicular to the ground.

Here’s how they’ll fit against the support tubing.

I took some careful measurements to ensure these were centered, the right distance apart, parallel with each other in both axes and perpendicular to the 4″ round tubes in the chassis (so that this will be completely vertical).

I then welded them in place and installed 4, 1/4-20 rivnuts. I also cut off a bunch of the extra tubing since I left them long initially.

Here’s the installed coolant reservoir. I set the height of the reservoir so that the cap is slightly higher than the cap in the thermostat housing so that this is the high point in the coolant system. I also installed a plug in the side of the reservoir and a hose fitting in the bottom that will tie to the hose fitting under the cap in the themostat housing. The hose fitting just under this cap will connect to an overflow hose that will just run down to the bottom of the chassis to vent any excess coolant.

With the coolant reservoir installed, I turned back to the seat tracks. They come with four studs installed, but I need to remove them so that I can install screws through the floor. I ground off most of the stud with a grinder and cutoff wheel, then drilled through the remaining part until it popped out. Here’s the before and after picture.

Using the measurements that Factory Five provides on their seat track instructions, I carefully laid out the position of the seat tracks. The right one is centered over the 4″ chassis tube on the left side of the car. I drilled and tapped the holes for 5/16-18 screws and screwed it down.

The screws are low profile enough that they won’t interfere with the operation of the track. This is the front end.

And this is the rear.

The upper part of the track is screwed to the seat, but the existing hoes aren’t spaced right to line up with the cross tubes in the seat frame. The FFR instructions have you elongate the hole at one end. I drilled a couple of 5/16″ hoes in the tracks just behind the existing square holes.

I used an air file to smooth out the sides. I didn’t need to square off the far end of the hole because it’s already radiused for the 5/16″ bolt that goes through it.

I then drilled holes in the bottom of the seat frame and installed the tracks. They’re slightly off center (by 13/16″) to align the center of the seat to the center of the steering wheel.

I reinstalled the seat and re-bolted the inside track to the 4″ round tube.

With the inside track locked into position and both tracks adjusted to the rearmost position, I marked where the forward hole should be drilled. The long blue line just below where I marked is where the plans specify that the outboard track should be installed. I shifted this track inboard slightly because it would have put the holes in the seat frame right through a weld.

I drilled the hole and dropped in a screw to hold the track in place. This is drilled out to 5/16″ since it’s not tapped. I’ll ultimately drill it out further and install a spacer between the upper and lower steel plates.

Before I can adjust the seats, I need to tie the two locking mechanisms together. I used the connecting wire that came with the kit, but I had to shorten it over 1″ since these are not remotely installed according to plans.

With the handle moved to the side, both locking mechanisms release at the same time. By installing these to the seat first and then attaching the inside seat track to the chassis, it guarantees that both locking mechanisms lock and release at exactly the same point. Without doing it this way, it would be easy to get one track slightly in front of the other and both sides might not lock at exactly the same time.

Strut Hoses and Trunk Aluminum

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The parking brake cable rubbed against the strut reservoir hose, so I used a zip-tie and a short piece of plastic hose (extra from the brake bias adjustment cable housing) to tie them together while keeping them separated.

The hoses connecting the front struts to the reservoirs have a hose that is too long for our application. I had the hoses just making a gentle bend between the two and it went so high that it interfered with the upper control arm. I removed both reservoirs and put an extra bend in the hose. This places the hose completely clear of both the upper and lower control arms and should easily handle the flexing during suspension travel.

I realized that there were a couple of extra pieces of trunk aluminum that I never drilled to the chassis, so I took care of that before heading to bed.

Figured Out Seat Track Mechanism

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Most builders just bolt the seats to the floor, but that won’t work for us. Jenn and I are nearly one foot different in height (5′ 4 3/4″ vs 6′ 4″), so we have to have an adjustable seat. Factory Five sells a seat track that works for the Roadster, but it only locks on one side. This won’t pass the technical inspection at some tracks, so I decided to see if I could find a seat track that has dual locks that could be made to work with the Roadster seats.

This is a set of Summit Racing seat brackets (part #G1153). It appears to be the same exact manufacturer and part as the one FFR sells, but it has dual locks. The instructions specify that the upper bracket in this picture is installed pointing the other way (rotated 180º from what is shown in this picture). This puts the handle on the outside of the seat track. Adjusting the seat would require swinging the handle even further outside the seat track which is not something there’s room for in the Roadster. Instead, I reversed that track and tied the linkage together using the extension on the adjustment arm.

I clamped the tracks to the table and spaced the front ends apart with a piece of scrap metal. This works beautifully and both sides lock and unlock together. I can’t use the included linkage (shown) since this puts the tracks too far apart, but I can easily use a piece of safety wire and fabricate a linkage of the exact right length.

Wrapped up Parking Brakes, Reinforced Chassis and Adjusted Brake Pedals

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With the final location of the adjustment mechanism determined, I drilled the upper hole and installed a riv-nut. I then taped the ends of the cable and cut off the excess. I’ll replace the tape with a different cable termination during final reassembly.

The cables exit the adjuster very close to the driveshaft. I want to add additional support for the cables to ensure they’ll never make contact with the driveshaft.

I added a couple of adel clamps above the differential to ensure the cables can’t drop and come in contact with the driveshaft. There’s now no way to even flex the cable enough to contact the driveshaft.

With the shifter and parking brake in place, I trimmed and reinstalled the old cross member in the top of the transmission tunnel.

Here’s the finished transmission tunnel. I couldn’t weld the underside, but I’ll take care of that when the chassis is bare again.

I trimmed 1/2″ from the pushrods of each master cylinder. You can see that the jam nuts are nearly bottomed out on the shafts.

This moves the pedals forward another 2″ or so. They now sit about 5.75″ forward of the firewall. If this isn’t sufficient clearance, there’s plenty of adjustment to move them farther away from the firewall.

I then installed the adjustment cable. I left a section without the housing to allow a tighter bend radius. I was worried that this was going to be too tight of a bend and that I was going to have to go through the sidewall of the footbox and into the engine compartment, but this works very well.

I installed the other end just to the right of the steering shaft. I could only drill through the lower two holes, so I added an adel clamp to further secure the assembly. It’s plenty rigid, especially for the infrequent use this will see.

Finally, I installed the appropriate label to mark the direction of rotation necessary to achieve the desired biasing. I won’t be able to see the label from the seat, but it’s pretty easy to remember that right is rear.

Installed Parking Brake

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I’ve been holding off on installing the parking brake until the gear shift was relocated. With the gear shift in its final location, I can now determine the final location of the parking brake lever. I picked up a Lokar hand brake from Summit Racing to replace the unit from Factory Five. It came preinstalled with a simple bracket, but the Wilwood universal parking brake cable kit came with the adjustable bracket shown at the bottom left. It was a simple matter to swap this bracket out.

I temporarily positioned the parking brake handle and the adjustment mechanism that secures the end of the cable sheath.

The adjustment mechanism will be bolted to the side of the tubing at the aft end of the transmission tunnel. Because of the angle of the tubing, only one of the two bolts will land on a piece of tubing, so I welded in a piece of thin plate steel.

This is approximately the angle that the adjustment mechanism will sit at. I’ll drill and install a rivnut for the upper bolt once I determine the final angle of the adjustment mechanism.

I temporarily clamped the parking brake in to see what kind of clearance I’d end up with between the gear shift and parking brake handle. This looks like it is going to work out well. The final check is to see how comfortable this is to pull when sitting in the car.

I temporarily installed the steering wheel while I was at it so that we could determine a comfortable seating position.

I sat one of the seats in the driver’s side of the cockpit and Jenn and I both got in to evaluate the position of the parking brake, gear shift lever, steering wheel and pedals. It looks like the parking brake location is going to work out great. Even with the mid-shift, we also determined that we want a gear shift lever that tilts forward slightly to put the shifter in a more natural position.One unfortunate discovery is that our plan for a dash that curves down to intersect the transmission tunnel won’t work because it will push my knee into the side of the steering wheel. It looks like we’re going to go back to the stock dash panel (though we’ll order a blank so that we can lay out the gauges where we want them.

One unfortunate discovery is that our plan for a dash that curves down to intersect the transmission tunnel won’t work because it will push my knee into the side of the steering wheel. It looks like we’re going to go back to the stock dash panel (though we’ll order a blank so that we can lay out the gauges where we want them.

Finally, we determined that the pedals need to move forward a bit. This is a fairly common tall-guy mod, so it shouldn’t introduce any problems.

With the final location of the parking brake determined, I welded on the forward bolt.

I then installed the parking brake and clamped the rear bolt in position before welding it as well.

I then bolted the parking brake in place so that I could make the final determination of how long to cut the parking brake cables and the angle of the adjustment bracket.

I re-routed the parking brake cable from the caliper.

It now routes under the aft diagonal chassis member where I installed a 1/4-20 rivnut and an adel clamp.

After trimming the cable sheaths to length, I ran the cables through the block and tightened down the set screws. I test the parking brake and it locks the wheel securly at about the halfway point in the pull. I have plenty of adjustment if the cable stretches over time.

Finished Installing Pro 5.0 Mid-Shift Kit

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I stopped by Harbor Freight and picked up a set of punches. I bent the 3/16″ punch a bit until I could use it to drive out the roll pin in the forward lug of the aft shaft.

You can see that I started driving the pin out from the left side. This was a mistake as the pin hit the case before it could be driven out completely. This wedged the shaft so that it couldn’t be rotated or slid forward/backward. After scratching my head for a few minutes, I decided to try and bend the pin to make more room to drive it out. I hit the side of the pin with a punch and bent it enough to move the pin a little more.

After a few rounds of bending the pin and driving it further out, I managed to free the lug from the aft shaft.

Here’s how the pin was mangled in the process.

I put a rag back under the forward shafts in case I dropped a roll pin, and then began reinstalling the shift lugs. First up is the new center lug on the 3/4 shaft, this time installed upside down so that it can be driven from above.

I then reinstalled the outer lugs on the 1/2 shaft (bottom) and 5/R shaft (top).

I packed the intersection with moly grease.

I applied some black RTV to the flange and installed the cover over the aft cavity.

I then applied some black RTV on the flange of the forward cavity and installed the cover plate. Finally, I applied another thin layer of RTV and installed the shifter. All of the bolts were torqued to 20 lbf-ft.

The shifter came with a rubber cover to keep dust out of the mechanism. I’ll have to remove this (or at least pull if back) to adjust the mechanical stops, but I need to wait until I have a shift lever installed.

Started Installing Pro 5.0 Mid-Shift Kit

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Jenn really wants to move the shifter forward and have a more vertical shift lever for a more traditional feel. We picked up the mid-shift kit from Mike Forte that includes a Pro 5.0 shifter and appropriate mounting plates and hardware. First up is to remove the bolts and forward cover plate. The RTV they used around the edge of the cover plate held it on tenaciously and was a pain to clean off of the flange after removing the cover plate.

The instructions from Tremec have you knock out the roll pins holding the three shift lugs and just let them fall to the bottom of the aft case. It’s pretty trivial to fish a rag under the lugs to catch the roll pins though.

After removing all three roll pins, the lugs can be slid off the shafts pretty easily.

Here are the three lugs. The kit from Mike includes a replacement center lug, but it looks identical to the one I removed.

The new center lug is installed upside down so that the opening is facing up, but it can’t be installed until the forward lug on the aft shaft is remove (the one on the right in the picture). Without removing the shaft, it’s a bit of a pain to remove the lug because you can’t get a punch directly aligned with the roll pin. I managed to drive it part way out, but I’ll need to fabricate a slightly angled punch to drive it the rest of the way out.

The reason that Tremec doesn’t care if the roll pins fall to the bottom of the case is that they want you to separate the front and back cases to entirely remove this aft shaft, and it’s pretty easy to retrieve the roll pins if the aft case is removed. That’s not strictly necessary though; once the forward lug is removed, the aft shaft can just float and won’t interfere with the shift lugs. The weight penalty is negligible, and it’s way less work to leave the case halves mated.

Cobra Experience Museum

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I took Jenn and the kids to the Cobra Experience museum in Martinez, CA this morning. They had a “Cars & Coffee” event in the morning with a bunch of custom cars including 4-5 Cobras. We’re considering something similar to this for our dash, so I grabbed a picture.

All of the cars in the Cobra Experience museum are genuine Shelby Cobras. This is an early 289 slab side Cobra; Jenn really likes the grill on this car.

Another 289 I believe.

These are both 427 Cobras.

Virtually every kit Cobra I’ve seen has polished side grills, but every single Shelby Cobra in the museum had painted grills. Jenn likes the looks of these better, so we’re going to paint ours.

I thought this was amusing. 🙂