The Grand Finale

Britannica Dictionary definition of GRAND FINALE

grand finale noun

plural grand finales

: a very exciting or impressive ending of a performance or event

December 31, 2022

This is the end of a long road and is the final page, a collection of tasks large and small that will bring us to the completion of the 33 Hotrod project. As of this writing, we are about 1 week shy of 10 years from when the Factory 5 kit arrived, back on January 8, 2013.

To jump to that page click here: DELIVERY DAY

On this page you will find notes, pics, vids and comments on all of the tasks and jobs that it took to complete the car. I’ll try and keep things in the order that things happend, however it seemed I had to jump around from front to back, up and down, over and under to get things done. I could have just updated the appropriate page with the site, but some things might have seemed like such small additions and may have gone un-noticed.

For that reason all posts going forward will end up on this page! All I have to do now is figure out where we left off 🙂 Lets go back to April 2022

April 2022

You must know by now that I generally do nothing in the summer time. The last big milestone was back in April when Todd came over to help me install the roof. This step is covered in the Body Section, plus things like the seats and headliner coverered in the Interior section but here is a “Video Reminder” for you of where we left it after Easter.

APRIL UPDATE

July 2022

Despite the normal summer break, this July I felt it was time to get serious about getting the car off of dollies and get it back on the lift.

First up – Clean up the garage. If you’ve browsed this site you’ll recognize that this entire build, except for body and paint, happened in our 2 car garage. Yes I have a lift, but still, a lot has to happen each and every time I go out to work on the car. I call it the “rubix cube” syndrome… move, shuffle, stack, move some more, then swing, twist push and pull until the correct part of the car has room around it. While not ideal I’ve proved it can be done! I have a bunch of pictures of all the things like old parts and jacks and stuff that was sold to clear things up. I’ve even rented and off site storage garage to keep my Harley, the trailer and eventually all the parts shelves. Good news, I made about $1000 selling garage junk. BONUS!

Some of the garage junk sold

August 2022

With that job completed I found the time to get the car uncovered, off the stands and on the ground.

The cover Ken and Tracy gave me for Christmas

It hadn’t run in a while so I checked all the fluids, added fresh fuel and some Seafoam to clean up any tarnish build up. Poured some in the tank and some right down the old gullet. Here’s a video; still some smoke from the Seafoam. Wished I’d taken a video of it 15 minutes earlier… neighbors thought the house was on fire for all the smoke! 🙂

Running after about a year

MUST GET IT BACK ON THE LIFT – I don’t have pics or a video but the next day, I backed the car out of the garage and with Julie as my guide, drove it back up onto the lift so I could work on it more easily. First, all the painted body parts (fenders, boards etc) stored on the lift had to go downstairs, the plywood removed from the lift, tarps folded… you get the idea.

September 2022

Something that has been bothering me for a while is the headlights. Simply how do they get wired up with the InfinityBox system. So I figure, may as well determine what does what on the FFR headlamp/signal units and go back to the wiring schematics to match things up in my mind. More on this later as we decided to use a different and much niftier headlamp. For now lets do some testing.

October 2022

A Cure for Rear Visibility – What’s behind you DOES matter!

I put a Ram on the road to drive and it has a feature, something I’ve heard about but never experienced, a “digital rearview mirror”. It’s a brilliant invention. Basically a wide angle backward facing camera that allows you to see traffic behind you and almost right beside you. PERFECT for this car. Why have I never seen anyone else bitch about this on the Factory Five Forums? Maybe more open top than hardtop hotrods built?… but believe me, you cannot see shit behind you in these things.

I drove that RAM for 2 days and decided I MUST add one of these rearview mirror to the hotrod. Amazon has hundereds of them but after a little research landed on a Vantop – HF610T 10″ 2.5K Front and Rear Mirror Dash Cam. It’s a bit smaller, has fewer features and found it at BestBuy for onle $135 bucks! I bought a bracket to mount the camera in the rear glass properly on Amazon for $12, a hardwired power supply for $18 and a bracket/mount for the camera at AliExpress so it can sit on the dash rather than hang off of a glass mounted mirror (which i do not have).

This is how it looks installed… See installation video below.

DIGITAL MIRROR INSTALLATION

November 2022

Another milestone will be to activate all of the features in the InfinityBox system, specifically to train the “InMotion Cell” that controls, power windows, door poppers, power parking brake etc. By train, I mean set the limits for example of how low or high the windows will travel by checking for voltage spikes in the motor it’s controlling… Here, watch this video

The InMotion Cell is in the trunk, the one on the right.

A bottom stop has to be put on the window track. I do not want the glass to travel below the weatherstrip and stop at the top or when a finger or arm happens to be in the window opening. That meant the door panels had to come off – what a pain in my ass.

For the lower stop, just a small screw in the track, and for the top stop, after instaling the weatherstip around the opening, I used a piece of 2 way stick foam on the top edge of the glass to cushion it when it reached the top of the opening.

Update Video – Here’s where we are so far!

Update for Mid November

Buttoning Up

Inside the carpets had to be tucked in, switch panels mounted (read that srewed down) and wiring tidied. For the most part that went smoothly. I have all or most of the audio and electronics, antennas, speakers etc coming down the passenger rockers and across that footwell. I made a removeable “pipepline” so I can get at if I need to.

Also, Todd fabricated me some stainless steel sill plates that note only look awesome, will offer some scuff protection but keep the carpeting taught. PERFECT!

A Giant “Step” for Mankind

Fenders and Boards Finally Get Installed

I never thought this day would ever come. Todd Dixon (Dixons Autobody) comes to the house to help install the fenders and boards which is definitely a 2 man job. This guy is fearless where I stress about everything. It all went of without a hitch and…

OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW GOOD IT LOOKS

Let There Be Lite!

You want some stress? Think about drilling holes in the fenders to mount the headlites.

After much discussion on the forums about whether the lamp buckets could be mounted to the rad supports on a full fendered car (some say yes, some no, some unsure) I’m here to say no way, at least not on my car! I won’t go into the reasons, let just say it’s a bit surprising that there is no real guidance to “full fenders” from Factory Five. Should I have mocked this all up before paint – YES, but I did not and so here we are.

The decision was made after messing with it for quite some time, to mount them to the fenders. Again i will not go into detail but as you can see there are no straight edges to measure from, to align them to each other in terms of height, depth, centering, angle and so on. The expression measure twice, cut once does not even come close!

With the aid of levels, lasers, fabric tape measures, painters tape, sharpies and strong cold snacks, the buckets got located.

As I said earlier, I decided to change the lamps. Rather than the rather cheap FFR ones, I opted for LED “Daymaker” style lamps with DRL / Signal Halos. Actually this were pretty cheap to on Amazon. I chose these

Zmoon 7″ Round LED Headlights – 200W Halo Headlight Angel Eye Ring DRL & Amber Turn Signal Lights High/Low Beam

And they look awesome (IMHO)

January 13, 2023 (Friday the 13th)

Today it was time to connect the headlamp/signals up. The wiring coming from the infinity box system ramps up the power to the head lights to avoid blowing fuses.

Unfotuneately the “running lamp” come on with the low beams. I had thought the white halo would come on with ignition but the master cell was not programs with DRL, rather running lamps. It’s fine.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, the video below has gotta be worth 1,000,000 or more.

May 28, 2023

Today we will do our first ShAkEdOwN Test drive

First we must detail the underside and all the chassis bits that have accumulated dust and debris over the last few months. Also have to polish the wheels and check tire pressure and fluid levels.