The Body

October 31, 2015

So we have to make relief cuts in the body to make ready for it’s installation. Need access to the wiring from the dash and the cowl under the hood. An aluminum/carbon fibre dash panel will cover the gaping holes and hold the instrument cluster, but for now its just removal of fibreglass.

November 28, 29, 2015

One new milestone achieved. The body is on!!
Ok… so everyone says paint the car body off. NO WAY… not this cowboy! That body is on and it’s staying that way!
One of the key dimensions is the depth of the interior. This is critical they say so that doors fit better and easier. Here is the picture from the manual.

SO… when we test fitted the body last year we faced all the normal issues with the firewall etc. and also that the body was not at the same height from the ground on each side. Resolving that was a chore and all the while trying to maintain the depth dimension of 45.5 inches…. near impossible.

At SEMA this year I spoke with Tony Zullo at the FFR booth and told him I was fearing the body install and how the doors would fit if not done correctly. He said “Fear not… install the body like this and its 123”

First get the body fixed to the firewall. Next an most importantly make sure the door sills are all the way down and all the way in hugging the frame tightly. Fasten them from the sides not the top of the sill

Last raised the back of the body with a jack stand until the opening is 45.5″, check that all gaps are alike side to side and and attach the rear mounting points in the rear wheel wells.

The body has enough flex in it to make all this happen but working from front to back rather than side to side and up and down is SO MUCH EASIER!!

DONE AND DONE!!!

**The front speaker holes had to be drilled from outside in to ensure missing the frame**.
**Wiring headed up front had to be buttoned up down the driver side. Used the zip tie separator method… not that anyone will ever see it!**

Below are the rear supports I made to help strengthen the connection from the firewall to the body essentially creating a sandwich. These supports are tapped and act as the nut as they squeeze the body to the firewall on both corners

THE BODY IS ON! – here are some pics

April 30, 2016

So the dreaded doors go on now. This job is not for the faint of heart. Sure it looks easy but you need 8 hands. Here are a playlist of 5 videos done by Eric Hansen at Factory Five showing the steps. These helped me a lot.

Here are pics of my attempt

May 19, 2016

Now the messy part begins – the grinding, the filling, the fitting and the straightening. This is not the type of mess I want to attack in my residential 2 car garage, so its a flatbed ride to my buddy’s Body Shop! Dixon’s Auto Body & Glass.

Todd Dixon, my friend and owner will take on the dirty work himself. He has a heavy truck section in his shop where this chaos can happen.

Step one is to rough fit, fill out, block sand and prime the fiberglass parts at his shop!

Neither Todd or I were happy with the way the front fenders flapped like wings. Unbelievable really, that FFR has no support mechanism for them. Need being the mother of invention, Todd fabricated these bolt on supports. You can almost sit on the fenders with them bolted to these braces.

Fenders need something solid to mound to. Factory Five has nothing but the side panels holding them. Not a great design IMHO

Feb 18, 2017

After the primer, it all came back home so I could take the time needed to get the doors, trunk and hood all functioning properly, gapped nicely etc.

We go on another long pause before I finally attacked the rest of the rough assembly. Once spring hits the car takes back seat to the cottage, and motorcycles etc. so it won’t be until fall that I get back to working on it.

November 2017 – February 2018

Next the rest of the primed parts like the running boards and trunk lid need fitting.

February – April 2018

The trunk lid was a bitch to do this late in the game because I already had some of the trunk floor installed for the battery and InfinityBox Cells. Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it. I removed the floor, put the car on the lift and stood up trough the bottom, inside the trunk with some lights to mark the holes.

I believe the car needs some airflow under the hood so I found these these nice side louvers from Street Dreams By Ross

January 2019 – March 2019

I final Screw up enough courage to attack the power widow frames.

I want to build the window frames designed by Tim Collins, a design engineer in Michigan that I found on the Factory Five Forum, who came up with what I believe to be the perfect solution for those 33 Hot rod builders opting for power windows. It is a self contained structure that is installed inside the door shells.

Not only did he supply CAD assembly drawings, but a complete bill of materials. Rounding up all the parts was a challenge but they turned out very well.

**These Last 2 pics are out of order just to see how they looked installed in the doors.**

December 2019

So this is how we left the car in 2019. See pics below… Essentially all the body panels are fitted, mounted, riv-nutted fastened and functional etc.

At this point it is all I can do at home. The “bones” are complete and the body and all parts are fitted, but now I need professional help. The car has to go to back to Dixon’s body shop to get it through to the final stages of assembly that can be completed in my garage.

March 2020 (COVID-19 HITS)

Now the car has gone to Dixon’s Autobody again. Todd Dixon is an extremely talented guy. Again he has allowed me to bring the car there and basically leave it in a corner of his heavy truck repair area in his shop until it’s painted.

Todd will make this his own project to get the car into paint, systematically tackling one project at a time like making sure each panel, door or lid is perfectly gapped, prepped and functioning. and readied for paint. This will all happen during the COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

As you can see from the pics above, the roof needed quite a bit of work to get a nice gap all around its base. A small issue with the trunk latch hardware from FFR. See below.

The fenders and running boards were prepped, had the edges rounded and had their insides sprayed with Rhino Guard (Dixon’s does our spray in liners as well) to protect from star cracks in the paint should a stone get kicked up inside. Once painted, they will come home with me and await re-installation onto the car.

Story Time

I’ve made the decision to paint the grill and side vents gloss black to compliment the gloss black wheels. Todd agreed but told me the grill would have to be removed to do it properly.

I asked, no… I begged and pleaded with him to paint them on the car. If he only knew the lengths it took to assemble the grill, AC condenser, rad, fan shroud and fan as one unit, I was sure he’d have understood. Finally he acquiesced… But of course he was lying to me!

The pics below were sent to me about 1 hour after leaving his shop.