The Bolton Build - 818C

[FFRWRX]

I thought I should start a build thread since so many of them have helped me; hopefully I can pay back a bit and maybe help others.

The background:

I bought my kit partially built. It came from western Canada, made a brief stop in Mississauga, and then I bought it and brought it to Bolton (just north of Toronto, Ontario). I have not been in touch with whoever started this build, but they did a very good job. It was built to the point of a running car (2006 Impreza WRX donor) with some of the body panels in place. It included the Factory Five black wheels, most of the carbon fibre pieces, powder coated frame, padded interior pieces, trunk kit, and boxes and boxes of parts.

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When I got it, it wasn't really running. It would start with enough effort, but wouldn't have any power or run above idle. Not sure exactly what the issue(s) were, but I cleaned some of the grounds, corrected the spark plug gap (from .046" to .031") and replaced the O2 sensors. Starts and runs now.

I have a 4-post lift which makes it much easier to work on. I took the roof section off the car and hung it from the ceiling.

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First priority was to put an exhaust system on it. I wanted a catalytic converter to reduce the exhaust smell, and a muffler to keep it fairly quiet. I used 2 1/2" pipe. Since I have the trunk kit I wanted the exhaust to be well below that, which also means it can't cross over the tranny from one side to the other.

Being limited in the room to run any length of piping, I bought a cat, muffler, and some 'U' bends from Summit Racing and put it together. Please excuse my welds; I know they are pretty awful. It is the way I chose to adjust the bends that caused most of that. Instead of taking things apart and re-cutting the angles on the ends of the pipes, I cut a 'V' out of the pipe, closed the gap, and welded it. Good in theory, ugly in practice.

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I've got about 2" clearance with the tire and the CV boot, so I'm going to wrap the pipes. There is a support just after the muffler up onto one of the frame members. The tail pipe piece is clamped so I can adjust it to make sure it is straight and to see how far I want it to protrude.

Next priority was the wiring. The stock harness was all there, with the exception of the airbag stuff. There was so much wire and connectors stuffed into the center console that I just couldn't leave it like that.

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I've made a lot of progress with the wire diet, thanks to the information posted on the forum. I'll start to detail that next.

That's it for now,

Rick
former FFR1063 owner/builder -- the first Factory Five car in Canada

[jforand]

Welcome! I have an R going on the build forum as well. I anxiously await the day it moves on its own!

[FFRWRX]

The Wire Diet

I’m part way done what I think is a pretty serious wire diet. Before I get into the details, let me say a few things about it. The first is that this is a work in progress. So whatever I state here that I’ve done, I could correct later as I learn more. But right now the car starts and runs with the dieting I’ve done so far.

I considered several options with respect to the harness:

1) Leave it as-is with the stock harness. This was not really an option for me as there were so many wires and connectors all stuffed into the center console that I didn’t like it.

2) Do a wire diet. Lots of work. Pretty good information in the forum, but certainly not a complete start-to-finish guide. A lot of learning and research.

3) Buy a completed harness. iWire used to do a complete one and as of this writing are considering doing one again if they get a decent group by. Expensive though. They have a cheaper option where you do a lot of the work yourself, but still cost a bit. Also looked into Wayne’s (VCP) harness and decided against it.

4) Do a harness from scratch using a generic harness kit. Cheaper than buying a ready-made harness, but a lot of work.
I did read about many people that started a wire diet and then gave up and bought a harness. I can understand that now. There are times when the car won’t start and it is very frustrating trying to figure out why. There are so many wires, circuits, connectors, fuses, and relays with the stock harness that you will never completely figure it all out. The factory wiring diagram has 150 pages of just the circuits. The wiring diagram for my old MGB was 1 page (insert Lucas jokes here!). But with the method I used (even though I did run into the no-start a couple times) the issues can be minimized.

So, my advice to those considering a wire diet:

1) If wiring frightens you and you are really not comfortable with it, don’t do it. I’m comfortable with it. I did a wire diet on my first Cobra build. I did a harness from scratch in my 2nd Cobra build. I did an engine and dash swap in a Fiero and did most of the wiring from scratch. And still, this one was intimidating.

2) If you are going to just follow the thread that identifies the connectors and remove the circuits identified there (Mechie3’s thread “Wiring Guide: 06 WRX Sedan with Auto AC/HVAC”), and that is all you are going to do, I’m not sure I would bother. Yes, you will remove about 10 lbs of wiring and connectors which is a lot. But when you look at the completed harness you will think you haven’t removed anything yet. You will still have a huge tangled mess. My opinion of course.

3) The real savings comes after that previous step when you put the harness back in the car and then get serious about removing unneeded circuits and shortening the wiring runs.

4) Make sure you have the factory wiring diagram for your particular car. Read all the threads on wire diets and make notes; know where to find them later for reference.

5) Keep in mind that all the stock harness will fit in the car and work. That is what the 818 was designed to use. So if you want to just leave it all stock there is nothing wrong with that.

6) You can do as much or as little as you like. Once you start the wire diet you will find that some connectors have a wire removed from one end that you cut off. Now you can cut the wire from the mating connector, trace it back to where it comes from, and removed it too. Now you find that where you removed that wire, there was another one connected to that is no longer doing anything and you can remove it too. You will find some bulky connectors that only have a few wires left in them, so if you like you can cut out the connector and solder the wires (or crimp, whatever you are comfortable with). It can lead to a huge chain-reaction of removing things. For me, that was the enjoyable part, as the pile of unused wires and connectors grew.

Very briefly, here is what I did. Removed the whole harness from the car and dumped it on a bench. Removed the connectors and circuits I didn’t need using the guidelines in the Mechie3 thread. Removed a few more circuits that I was pretty sure I didn’t need. Put it back in the car, hooked everything back up, and then started more wiring removal. Ran into a few snags along the way that I will describe so hopefully you’ll avoid them.

Before I started this I couldn’t believe that people spent 40 hours or more on this. How long can it take to strip some wires out of a harness? You have the harness, the information to guide you, what’s wrong with people taking so long? When you start, you will see why it takes so long. There are times I spent several hours just to figure out why the car wouldn’t start after removing something that I had already disconnected and had the car running. Hours pouring over the various wiring diagrams and connector identification references trying to figure things out.

OK, with all that negativity should you even attempt this? If you are comfortable with it, have the time, and want to save thousands over buying a complete harness, then you should definitely do it. It is very rewarding to have 15 lbs of wiring cut out of the harness and the car still runs!

As I write this the harness is in the car, the car is running, and I am removing and shortening more wires.

So, the details………………up next………….

A preview of what I've removed so far:

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Plus this:

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Rick

[AZPete]

Rick, I agree completely with your well-written post. Since my 818 was very early (#25), I dieted the donor harnesses because there was no other option like I-wire or Wayne's harness. I did not have as much wiring experience as you because I bought the I-Squared harness for my Mk3 roadster. Terrified but determined, I used Mechie3's post of the terminals and the donor diagrams to cut out a lot, lengthen, shorten and then squeeze it into the center console. It was a huge thrill when the engine started on the first try and I learned a lot, but I spent about 2 months on the wiring. I don't want to diet a donor harness again, but if I had to, I would delete the many redundant circuits to make the scrap pile much bigger. A few guys designed and built very efficient harnesses from donor terminals and custom boards for 818R cars but did not have features that I needed for my 818C like cruise, turn signals, ABS, wipers, etc. Your advice will help others a lot!

[FFRWRX]

The Wire Diet Part 2 (or, What was I thinking?!)

Even if you aren’t considering doing a wire diet, maybe some of what I’m describing here will help in wiring up your car. I may be going into too much detail but I have the time and am not always good with keeping something like this up to date, so while I’m in the mood I’ll write.

As most people that modify the wiring in any way have certain features they want to keep and ones they don’t, here is what I wanted in my harness:

1) Retain the basic instrument cluster with all the gauge and light functions
2) All external lights working
3) The obvious one, I wanted the engine to function normally
3.5) Edit: forgot that I'm keeping the daytime running lights. There is a module and a large resistor for this, so there is some complication to it, but I'm keeping it.
4) That’s it.

What I wanted to delete:

1) All door sensors
2) Keyless entry
3) Interior lights
4) ABS
5) Airbag systems (these were already gone when I got the car/harness)
6) All A/C and climate controls*
7) Radiator fan controls*
8) Secondary Air system (air pump and all related components). No emission testing on “kitcars” where I am.
9) Body Control Module (was pretty sure I didn’t need it)

*Having said that (or written that) I am going to put A/C in the car and of course want the rad fans to work. So why delete all of the factory stuff if I’m just going to put it back in? From what I’ve found, the factory stuff is very complex and generally runs through the ECU. So there are a lot of wires to tell the rad fans when to come on. An aftermarket A/C system will be independently wired, not tying into the ECU or any other stock components.

Believe it or not, getting rid of the factory rad fan system deletes 2 fuses, 4 relays, and a mile of wire (I’m in Canada and we are metric, so make that 1.6 kms of wire)…give or take. An aftermarket system has 1 relay, the fuses combined with the wiring for the unit, and ties into the battery which is right up front anyways. And it has a thermal probe that goes into the rad, so the whole system is stand-alone and really helps to clean up the excess stock components. The A/C has a number of fuses, relays, and wires. The Secondary Air system has 2 relays. Think this doesn’t make too much of a difference? Here is what I’ve taken out:

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OK, enough talk. This is what I did. And as I said before, this is a work in progress, so if anyone sees me heading off a cliff please let me know.
When I bought the 818C it had the stock wiring harness installed, with the airbag module and sensors removed. That is an easy system to remove as it is fairly stand-alone. So you should at least remove that.

I pulled the harness out of the car and dumped it on the bench. I did weigh it first and it was 42 lbs (yea, yea, I’m in Canada and metric but I still think in lbs more easily). I don’t know if it was a mistake to just dump it all on a bench, as it was quite a tangled mess and I couldn’t see how to untangle it. So if you are starting with one from the donor, maybe try and keep it laid out a bit better. Makes it much easier to trace wires.

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First thing is to use Mechie3’s guide and remove what is identified there. He tells you where something is optional (want to keep a lead for powered accessories or something like that – I didn’t). Not wanting to put his effort down by any means (I don’t know that I would have started this without it), but it will leave you with questions now and then. Partly because you may have a different harness than what he started with, you may want to keep or delete things that differ from his needs. It would be a good idea to print out or flag all the pictures he provides of the various connectors as I found myself going back to it 50 times…probably more.

Where I differed from that right away was to delete the Keyless Entry and Body Control modules and all associated wiring. These 2 modules do tie into each other a fair bit so removing both makes sense. Also, if I want keyless entry later, I would buy an aftermarket system and not have something that ties into the ECU with all its associated wires.
So I deleted those 2 modules and pretty much everything else he said was optional.

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Having taken that as far as the guide went, I was pretty discouraged with what I had left. Maybe I was remembering the Cobra I did where most of the stock Mustang harness was left on the floor. While I did have 10 lbs of stuff on the floor, I still had a tangled mess of harness to deal with. You might be discouraged at this point. Or maybe you will think how well it is going. Glass half full, glass half empty, or glass twice as big as it needs to be!

So now I took the harness and dumped it back in the car, literally:

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Then I laid it out as it would be when things are hooked up. Didn’t look much better. All that work and it didn't look much different. In fact it looked worse, at least when I started it was all in the center console:

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At this point I thought it would be smart to actually hook up everything and not just leave it with the connectors close to where they will go. This step is very important! Before you go any further this is the only way to make sure you haven’t removed something in error that you need for the car to start.

Of course mine didn’t start. With the help of the forum it turned out to be very simple; there is a 2-wire connector for the immobilizer antenna (which is around the key switch) and I didn’t have that plugged into its mating connector. But even something so simple can leave you very discouraged at the time and ready to give up and buy a harness. And there are so many grounds all over the place. Some of them will be deleted later, but for now hunt them all down and connect them. It would probably be a good idea when you remove the harness to put some tape on them with a bright color. I know grounds are supposed to be black, but if you put black tape on them you won't find them in the mess of wire. I kept finding more and more as I tried to determine why it wouldn't start. So put a bright color tape on all the grounds so you can easily find them later.

So now you have the harness back in the car, it is hooked up, and the engine starts and runs. Beautiful! Time for a beer (a Canadian one).

This is when things get interesting. From here on I found it very rewarding as I deleted a lot of stuff as I progressed.

Time for that beer. For me, not you. You are working on your harness.


Rick
ps. AZPete summed up perfectly how you approach a wire diet: "Terrified but determined"

[sgarrett]

Yep....the harness has been the hardest and least satisfying part so far. And that includes lining up the doors! I haven't fully tackled the windows yet....but I can't imagine them being harder than the harness. For me it was close to 6 months of elapsed time I think.

But it is really satisfying when it is done! And especially satisfying when you did it yourself. Now when I have an issue I have no problem jumping into the wiring guide and finding the solution.

[FFRWRX]

While I was poking around in the early days trying to see why the car wouldn’t start or run well, I removed the MAP sensor to see if it looked OK. In my haste to install it, I broke it. It broke right where the O-ring sits:

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No big deal I thought, I’ll just buy a new one. Then I looked up the price….OK…now it is a big deal. These are over $200 for a factory part! On to plan B.
I have a lathe and like to make small things (currently working on a “Demon V8” – a 1/5 scale gas powered V8 engine with everything made from scratch even the spark plugs…..but I digress), so instead of $200 I could use $0.10 worth of aluminum and repair it.

I carefully trimmed off the bit of broken plastic from the main part:

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And saw that I had about .020” between the mating face (that mounts onto the intake manifold) and the surface to attach the new piece:

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I turned a small piece of aluminum to match the broken part. I included a thin flange to bond onto the main MAP part:

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Bonded it to the main part with a bit of instant glue. The bond isn’t really critical as the new piece is clamped down when the MAP sensor is installed; it really just has to seal against any serious air leak.

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Turned out to be a fun little side project. They are always fun when they work out. When they don’t work out, not so much fun.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

My intention in putting the harness back in the car was to shorten some of the wires that are too long. Due to the new configuration of the harness and related components (the ECU being at the back of the car instead of the front) some of the wires run all over the place to get to their final destination. So having everything hooked up and the harness roughly where you want it to be (not a lot of choice here) you will see a lot of extra wires in the middle of it.
The harness was not all connected yet in this picture, but what is all this stuff doing here?:

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But before I got to dealing with that, I thought I should pull the relays that I’m not using and see where that gets me. This is where I finally started to feel good about this wire diet.
There are 2 main relay holders. There is one at the front that mounts to the side of the fuse box (officially the “fuse & relay box”; that’s the large tan colored one). There is another one at the rear, referred to as the “main fuse box”. Seems a bit strange to me since the front one has more fuses and I would think it is the main one, but Subaru didn’t ask me.
Let’s start with the one at the rear. This one (ignore the white strap going over it):

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Here is what the relays do:

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Remember that I’m deleting the Secondary Air stuff and the radiator fan controlling stuff. See that? Six relays that I don’t need. I also don’t need the 2 fuses. It isn’t the fact that I don’t need the fuses and relays that is significant, but the fact that I don’t need any of the wires going to those fuses/relays. That is a pile of wire!
Something else I found:

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I don’t need the ABS motor or the Engine sensor, so 2 more components to delete. A bit of inspecting and you see that the fuse box is sort of a frame with the various holders snapped into it. So you snap out all those modules that are no longer being used and you get this:

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You can just see at the bottom the row of relays that have been removed. Now you take a saw to it and end up with this:

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This is a lot smaller now and can be mounted where the original unit couldn’t. And now all the wires that were connected to those fuses and relays can be removed. And here is where I made a mistake that I’ll describe and maybe save you the hours I spent trying to understand what I did.

I took out all those relays and made sure the car still ran; it did. Then I stripped out all the wires connected to them and tried it again; didn’t start. Huh? How can that be? The circuits were completely disconnected and the car ran, so deleting the wires shouldn’t have done anything. Technically correct.

Here is what I missed. In the wire diet so far you find that there are many splices in the wiring, where other wires run off from the one you are tracing; Mechie3’s guide points this out. When I was removing wires I would take the wire from the relay, for example, and trace it down to the main harness. Then I pulled on it a bit to see if I could identify it at the other end of the bundle running through the middle of the car. Most of the time you see it move, so you grab it there and continue tracing it to wherever it goes and cut it off. What I missed with one wire is that it had another one spliced into it buried in the bundle of wires. So I pulled at each end, identified that I had the same wire, and cut it out. What I missed was the wire spliced into the middle of the one I was tracing needed the connection to the front of the car to get power. Follow that? The lesson is, fully trace any wire you are about to cut out to make sure it is isolated from any other wire. And start the car often to find out if you messed up somewhere! The best time to start the car is when you do something and say to yourself "that couldn't have made any difference at all, so I don't have to try the car again".

I did find what I did wrong fairly quickly, but took many hours to double check that I could rewire the one I cut out (that I shouldn’t have) to another location to get power.
That was some serious progress in the wire diet; a whole section of a fuse box with a ton of wires….gone!

Next, the relay holder at the front.

Rick

[AZPete]

I've been there with the redundant wiring of the donor harness, so I appreciate your tracing and verifying routine before cutting out wires. If I had done that a few years ago, I would have cut out many more wires.

[FFRWRX]

There is a relay holder at the front of the harness that has 6 relays and 2 fuses. I think this attaches to the side of the tan colored fuse box. This one (ignore the Marr connector, it’s temporary):

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There is a strange/interesting thing with the wiring of it. These are the fuse wires on the back:

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The white and white/black wires run through the fuse. What sense does that make? It runs through a 10 amp fuse. Maybe they ran out of thinner wire?

It was a little harder to find out what these relays do. Even the factory wiring information I had didn’t show them. I supposed being relays they shouldn’t burn out and don’t need to be replaced. I found this:

Side Relay Holder (attached to fuse & relay box near dash):
In order (top down):

6. Rear Power Supply (wagon) / Heated Seats / 2004 manual lists this for the STI HID Lamps
5. Heater Mirrors ~ Heated Windshield
4. Starter Interlock [part of security system]
3. Fog Lamps
2. Power Windows / Sunroof
1. Ignition Relay *

Fuse-1 (blank) / Fuse-2 (blank) / Fuse-3 (for ABS control module system) 10-ampere fuse colored red / Fuse-4 (for Rear Power Supply / Heated Seats) 20-ampere fuse colored yellow

*I traced this circuit and found that this relay effectively controls the A/C, cooling fans, and blower-motor. So although Subaru calls it an Ignition Relay, it's really a cut-off switch to shut-down high-draw items such as the blower motor or cooling fans so that you get as much cranking power to the starter as possible.

So which ones do I need? Turns out I only need number 4. Number 1 was a maybe, but I deleted it.

With the wires cut off the back, and making sure the engine still started, I had this:

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The Marr connector that you see is from the mod described by Mechie3 for getting rid of the starter-cut relay. I later soldered them properly and saved the connector for my basement wiring.
Now with all the wires traced and removed (and some of them are fairly thick so it is a lot of bulk removed), there is only one relay being used. So out comes the handy saw again to cut the box down, and I’m left with this:

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Yes, that’s it! From a relay box with 6 relays and 2 fuses to one relay at the end of some wires, that can be tucked away anywhere. Now that’s what I call a diet!
And I have enough spare relays to last the rest of my life……plus a few years:

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Next, a bunch of connectors are removed along with miles of wire.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

As I’ve said (and others too) there are a lot of wires that go through the center console area that don’t really have to be there. A bunch of wires go from the engine (A) to the ECU (B):

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But to do that, they run up through the center console, through one or two connectors, and then back through the console again to get to the ECU. So how ever many wires that is, they are running twice through the console area.
After doing the basic wire diet, you’ll find that some connectors don’t have many wires left in them, like this one:

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So I took this connector and basically cut it out and soldered the wires together. I choose soldering since that’s what I’m comfortable with, but some people like to crimp. Either one is good as long as it is done properly.
In removing the connectors you’ll find that by tracing where the wires go, you can not only get rid of the connector, but a lot of the wires too. You’ll find that a lot of the wires start and finish at the rear of the car so you can take out several feet of wiring.

If removing the connectors makes you nervous, here are 2 things to consider. The first is that, to me, I can’t see ever using a connector to help remove a section of the harness if I ever have to. The factory needs the connectors to make assembly possible, but I don’t see that they are useful now.

And maybe more important, guess what the most unreliable part of a wiring harness generally is? Yes, the connectors! So by eliminating some of these connectors that will be pretty well hidden away under the console where you really can’t get to them anyways, you are making things more reliable.

Here is how I do it. I pick a connector that I want to delete and mark one side of it “start”. That is to help me remember where I started in tracing the wires. I put a clip on one of the wires and start tracing to see where it goes (yes, I could use a smaller clip but that’s what I have):

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Trace the wires and see where it ends. In many cases it will end leading into a major engine connector. I leave those connectors alone. So then I mark that end of the wire with another clip. Then I go back to the connector I started with, go through it and see if the wire is the same color (some of the wires change color as they go through the connector). No, I don’t mean magically change color, I mean they use a different color wire, so be careful with that. Now trace that wire and see where it goes. In many cases it will go to the ECU. Mark that end of it.

Now you have a wire that is marked near the engine and basically the other end of it that is marked near the ECU. So you cut it in those 2 places and connect the ends. At that point I pull the original wires out and back to the connector and either coil them up or cut them off the connector to help keep things organized as I continue with the remaining wires.

This is not quick and easy work. Take your time and be very careful checking the wires as you go. Some of them will go through another connector and may change color. But to me it is very rewarding to remove this:

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And replace it with this (running from the engine on the right to the ECU on the left):

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Here is another shot I took to show how much of it looks before trimming it down:

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See how the green and blue wires start from one place, run through a connector, and then go back to the same place they started. May make sense in the stock Subaru but doesn’t make sense here.
I didn’t remove all the connectors, just the ones in the center console area that seemed to have wires starting and ending at the back. And I took off the ones like this:

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A connector for 1 wire. Remove it and you get this:

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A splice joint replaces a connector and a few feet of wire. Not huge, but it all adds up.
Another one that can be deleted:

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This takes up a lot less room:

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That's all the pictures I can do in one post so.......continued....

[sgarrett]

Wow. Thanks for detailing all of the work. It took me so long to do it I ran out of steam to post these kinds of details. One thing I noticed, however, is I was a little too enthusiastic about removing things that I had to go back and add in again later. I have still saved all the connectors (and lots of other stuff I don't think I need) until I am all done.

One example might be those green connectors you removed. In the wiring manual it says those are connected for 'test mode'. I could be wrong, but I think they are usually not connected. You connect them to go into test mode. Of course, since I haven't gotten the car to the point yet where I know if I need it or not this is still just guess work on my part.

[Ajzride]

Yep, you usually only connect those two so you can flash the ECU. I replaced the connectors with a toggle switch.

[FFRWRX]

The green connectors you guys are talking about are still there. This is a different set of connectors. These were closer to the rear of the harness. Not sure what is running through them, but I can look into it for interest sake. The other green ones are near the front and I didn’t touch those. Replacing those with a switch sounds like a good idea.

Edit: You guys are partially correct....and so am I. Found it in the wiring diagram:

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What I removed/shortened was the connector that leads to the test connector. So many connectors!

[AZPete]

Nice clear explanations of a complex project. It's too late for me, but will help others.

[FFRWRX]

Nice clear explanations of a complex project. It's too late for me, but will help others.

Thank you. That's what I'm trying to do. There is a lot of information on wire diet, but it is scattered around. I'm trying to make it a little more step-by-step, but that isn't really possible with how complex it is and how most builders will have a different donor car and different things they want to keep and delete. So if I can show in fairly good detail what I've done, others can use it to guide them along. They can also know in a bit more detail what is involved to decide if they want to tackle it or not.

You have helped me a lot and you are going to help me again......I just ordered all the A/C components so I'm sure I'll be asking you questions when I start on that!

[FFRWRX]

At least this is one diet that when you are done the weight will stay off!

Like I said, be careful when tracing wires. Some of them change color through the connector. The factory wiring diagram is usually pretty accurate when showing the colors and the change through the connectors:

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Another bit of mess that can be cleaned up. Cut them off at a convenient point, re-join them, and save some wire bulk:

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So that is pretty much it. I’ll leave the harness for now. Once I neaten it up and put it back in the center console area I’ll see if more trimming is needed/wanted.

I went from this, when I got the car:

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To this now:

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I’ll tape it and/or zip tie it in places and see how it looks. This is what I removed:

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And how much does all that weigh you ask? Go ahead, ask.

17 lbs of wire, connectors, relays & holders removed. I started with a harness that already had the airbag stuff removed. When I weighed it initially it was 42 lbs. So now it is down to about 25 lbs. Not too shabby! But it isn't really the weight I'm concerned with, but weight equals complexity of wiring, and that's what I simplified.

Looking back, it was well worth it. I saved several thousand dollars over buying a harness and ended up with one that takes up so much less room. But it does take time and you do have to keep your wits about you when doing it.

Oh, I also have enough spare wire now to last for many car projects. I already used some to extend the tail light wires; hardly made a dent in my wire supply!

And speaking of tail lights, next step is to take the bunch of mismatched lenses and sockets and make some usable lights from them.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Since I bought my 818C partially assembled I’m not 100% sure what came from Factory Five and what was added or changed later. I assume what I’m showing here is part of the basic kit.
What I have is a black socket, a grey socket, an LED 2-color bulb, a conventional 2-filament bulb, a clear lens light, and a red lens light.

Here are a couple of the pieces:

131930

After studying this collection of parts I concluded that:

1 – the 2 color LED should be used in the clear lens light holder; this gives amber for turn signals and white for backup light
2 – the LED only fits in the black socket
3 – the conventional bulb only fits in the grey socket
4 – both sockets fit in the clear lens fixture; the grey one nice and tight and the black one a bit loose
5 – neither of the sockets fit in the red lens light

So, we start with the clear lens light that needs the LED bulb. Thus, the LED bulb goes in the black socket and that goes in the clear lens light. It is a bit loose though. I found that if I switch the O-rings around (put the one from the grey socket onto the black socket, the socket then fits nice and tight into the clear lens fixture. One done.

Neither of the supplied sockets fit in the red lens light. Either I’m missing something, some parts were lost or switched, or I don’t know what I’m doing.
I solved this by ordering some sockets on-line while I was buying other stuff. I think these were “GM” sockets. I wasn’t sure what I was getting when I ordered it.
The socket I got is on the right:

131931

It didn’t fit in the red lens fixture either, but a little work on that with a moto-tool and it fit. Not the neatest job, but the socket fits in and locks with a twist and it holds the 2-filament bulb. All is good now.

I installed the lights and wired them up and it all works and looks good. Those 2 color LED’s are pretty cool.

Compared to the wire diet, this was an easy issue to sort out. Others may have done it in a different way.

Rick

[lsfourwheeler]

The sockets used by the Hella lights supplied by FFR are very weird. Replacement sockets for the reverse/turn signals are basically impossible to find- I tried and ended up having to buy from FFR. I'm not sure what socket is used for the brake lights but you could try going to an autoparts store with the light and seeing if one there fits.

[FFRWRX]

I'm not sure what socket is used for the brake lights but you could try going to an autoparts store with the light and seeing if one there fits.

I did manage to make it work with the sockets I bought for the red brake lights, but you are right. It might have worked out better and easier to take the light to a store and see if something fits.

[Dave 53]

I just got my 818S home. I bought it in pretty much what seems to be the same level of completion as yours. It runs and is drivable, but the body work and interior need to be finished. I'm even more thankful it has an iWire harness after reading your post!
132194

[FFRWRX]

I just got my 818S home. I bought it in pretty much what seems to be the same level of completion as yours. It runs and is drivable, but the body work and interior need to be finished. I'm even more thankful it has an iWire harness after reading your post!
132194

Yes, the iWire harness certainly makes things easier. Sometimes we spend time to save money and sometimes we spend money to save time. Depends on what we are comfortable with. I admit that sometimes I'll make something just for the challenge when I could probably save time and money by just buying a part. I really had no idea how much effort there was in dieting the harness, but it seems to have worked out well in the end.

[FFRWRX]

When I got the 818 it had the A/C stuff removed. I’m putting A/C in the car and have the excellent reference put together by AZPete.
So I can order pretty much everything I need from Vintage Air, but I didn’t have a compressor on the car. In fact, the car had the clutch line running here:

132284

It was running right where the A/C compressor had to go. Not a huge deal, but the line had to be moved. Moving it from where it is now to the left of the compressor seemed the easiest way to go. The flex line from the slave cylinder sort of points in the wrong direction and forces the line to run where it is now. I would rather have it run on the other side of the large hose:

132285

There is a relief groove in the cylinder that part of the line fits in. I ground a new one where I wanted the line to go. I cut off a bolt with the same thread and made a plug for it before grinding:

132286

Now the line runs on the other side of the large hose:

132287

And comes out on the other side of the compressor:

132288

I ordered some of the parts I needed for the A/C belt tensioning, but didn’t have the main bracket. Didn’t feel like ordering one so I made one from some angle iron; welded and powder coated:

132289

Assembled the rest of the parts on the bracket:

132290

It is a pretty clever way they tension the belt. The only thing I don’t understand is why they use a reverse thread on the long bolt. Really messes me up when I’m trying to adjust it.

That got the compressor mounted and all the other A/C parts came in. In his reference AZPete used an evaporator (Mini Space Saver) that has been replaced by a newer model, so the newer one is what I ordered. Borrowing the picture from his reference, this is the evaporator he used:

132291

This is the newer one held in place:

132293

The main difference is the motor does not stick up higher than the main unit. Don’t think that makes much of a difference as there is room there under the top of the dash for either one. I bought the unit with heat, defrost, and A/C. It is being held as high up as it can go without doing any mods to the dash structure. I’ll prop it up like that, put the dash on, and see what it looks like from the passenger seat. It will probably be fine at that height.

---------------------------

On a completely different note, I’m considering my options on changing the shifter. The car came with the stock Factory Five one; shifter and cable setup. I’m saying “changing” not improving. The strange thing is that the shifter was so nice and tight with virtually no slop and very little movement from gear to gear; very different from what I’ve read. Now I never drove the car, only in and out of the garage a few times which didn’t really involve much shifting, but I’m comparing it to the shifter in a Miata (which I’ve had several and they have a really excellent shifter) and the Factory Five was at least as good. Strange.

So why do I want to change it then? The Engineer in me doesn’t like the fact that the cables run forward and then all around the car to get to the tranny. I also like the look of the setup with the cables running along the tranny and not having one come in from the side.

The Factory Five one (which I think is a Toyota unit?):

132292

I’m wondering if I could use it and modify it to have the cables come out the rear, or flip the whole thing around so the cables will then come out the rear with no mods. Any reversing of the throws would be done at the tranny, which I’ve seen many schemes from others that do that. It does seem to be a pretty good unit with very little play in it.

That’s it for now.

Rick

[Ajzride]

I turned mine around, the shifter arm just needs to be pressed out of the ball and pressed back in rotated 180 degrees. I might still have my rotated in the storage unit if you want it. Local machine shop did mine for $25. Obviously the the motion of the side to side (1-3-5) has to get reversed, which is not hard to do.

[FFRWRX]

I tried taking my shifter apart and gave up after releasing the 2 metal clips. It didn't seem to want to come apart after that and not really knowing what I was doing I clipped them back in. Yes, the shifter is in a bit of a strange angle if the unit is swapped around. I was looking at how the shifter shaft was splined into the pivot ball and wondered about pressing it out and turning it around. Did you take the whole thing apart to do that? Looks like I can maybe do it without taking it apart with some clever supporting in the press.

The side-to-side moves more in one direction than the other, so that will reverse when the unit is installed swapped around. I don't think that matters though, other than maybe the neutral position of the shifter itself may not be in the same position. I may give it a shot. I haven't used my press enough.

[Ajzride]

Remove the two clips, drive out the pin holding on the side (triangle) piece. Then a flat head pry bar (cat claw) can be used to work around the ring and pop it off. It's on really tight, but comes off and is plenty secure when it goes back on with the clips. Once you get it out, just use the press to remove it from the ball. I wouldn't attempt to press it inside the housing, the plastic is not really that strong, I broke one housing.

[FFRWRX]

Did some trail fitting of the A/C evaporator unit.

Kind of difficult to prop it up, but I think this is close:

132303

That is with it up very close to touching the dash framework. Seems to still be sticking down quite a bit. I'm not sure about the position of the dash, but I must have it close.

A question.....since I'm not sure I have the dash in the exact correct position, how much room is there between the metal framework and the dash itself? Looks like about 3 1/3" to 4", something like that.

I could cut out one of the support pieces and weld it back on higher up to allow the A/C unit to move up a bit.

Looks like my unit is about 8" high from where it would hit the frame at the top when mounted.

132304

And it looks like it needs about 3 1/2" clearance with the dash to run the ducts. The defroster ones may need a bit more:

132305

Without modifying anything it would have enough room for passengers feet, but maybe up a little higher would be better.

Rick

[Ajzride]

I moved mine a lot more towards the center, it gave the passengers foot more room, and tucks up behind the console. Since my unit had all the lines on the side, it gave me more room to work the bulkhead.

[FFRWRX]

Remove the two clips, drive out the pin holding on the side (triangle) piece. Then a flat head pry bar (cat claw) can be used to work around the ring and pop it off. It's on really tight, but comes off and is plenty secure when it goes back on with the clips.

Do you mean this pin?

132306

I tried getting that one out but the retaining washer won't let it come out. Couldn't get under that washer to pry it off.

[FFRWRX]

I moved mine a lot more towards the center, it gave the passengers foot more room, and tucks up behind the console. Since my unit had all the lines on the side, it gave me more room to work the bulkhead.

This is with it as far to the left as it can go; it is against the pedal box:

132307

I'm not sure when I had it propped up that it was all the way over to the left or not.

Edit: I was looking at your build thread Ajzride and you have a different A/C unit than I have.

[Ajzride]

Cut the washer off with a dremel, new ones are less than a dime at the hardware store. Then press the pin out with a c-clamp and a deep well socket.

Yes I have a different AC unit, thought you might still be able to go more left but I guess not.

[aquillen]

I spotted the shifter in a Corolla while roaming around in the scrap yard a couple years back, tracked it down to
.
03 04 05 06 07 08 2003 TOYOTA COROLLA
.
If you have a you-pull apart lot, you could have one to beat on for cheap if you break yours. (For that matter I have one to part with in my left overs).

[MonzaMan]

Hey Rick,

I'm also building an 818C, and am not too far away... Guelph/Cambridge area. I'm only back in Canada a few time a year unfortunately, so shop time is very limited. I'll be back all of August (with the first two weeks spent in quarantine). Maybe when I'm allowed into society, I could pop by for a look-see, see that I'm not completely going the wrong way on my build.

[FFRWRX]

I spotted the shifter in a Corolla while roaming around in the scrap yard a couple years back, tracked it down to
.
03 04 05 06 07 08 2003 TOYOTA COROLLA
.

I looked up that shifter and yes, it is the one Factory Five supplies. I also found a short shift kit that a couple companies make, so that is one way to reduce the throws for anyone that is using that stock shifter.

[FFRWRX]

Hey Rick,

I'm also building an 818C, and am not too far away... Guelph/Cambridge area. I'm only back in Canada a few time a year unfortunately, so shop time is very limited. I'll be back all of August (with the first two weeks spent in quarantine). Maybe when I'm allowed into society, I could pop by for a look-see, see that I'm not completely going the wrong way on my build.

Sounds good. I'm about an hour from you.

[FFRWRX]

Thanks to Ajzride I got the shifter apart. Just to make it a little clearer for others that might want to do this, here's how.

132423

Snap the 2 retaining clips open. They don't come right off, but they come away from holding the nylon ring in place. Use a dremel or something similar to cut off the washer that is holding the large pin (circled in blue). Maybe there is another way to get one of these off, but it certainly holds in place very well. Tap out the pin after the washer is off and the triangle shifter piece comes with it. Then you can pry up the nylon retaining ring at the top. It is held in place pretty well but it will come off.

132424

The reason I'm doing this is to see about reversing the shifter housing in the car, but leaving the shift knob and shaft in the same position from before it was reversed. This is all sort of an experiment to see if I want to use it after flipping it around. Not sure yet, but so far it's looking good. So I pressed off the ball with the short piece sticking off it, flipped it 180 degrees, and pressed it back on. It took a lot of force to get that sucker off! Getting it back on is the tricky part with the bend in the shaft.....can't press straight down on it.

While I had it apart I modified a few things. The shifter was too long for my liking so I cut it down a bit. Since I don't know what shift knob I'm going to use, this is how I rethread a shifter shaft. Instead of running whatever thread was on it to start with (which is difficult if you have to reduce the diameter of the shaft) I drill and tap it. I use a standard tap, doesn't really matter what thread you use. Then when I know what shift knob I'm using, I make a small threaded adapter piece and locktite it to the shifter shaft.

132425

I also did a small mod on the retaining pin. I didn't have a new washer to use, didn't feel like going out to find one, and also I thought I might want to take it apart again and didn't want to grind off another washer (which can mess up the nylon if you are not careful). So I drilled and tapped it, and made a retaining piece to hold it in place.

132426

Greased up and back together:

132427

Since I want to be sitting in the correct position to see where I want the shifter to be, I need the seats in place. They were in place when I got the car, but I found head room was almost lacking. The way the seats were mounted put them a touch higher up than they could be. With some mods to the mounting system I can drop them about 3/4", so I'm working on that. Since I have to get some metal to weld in to the cross pieces in the car that the seats mount to, I'll get some material to modify the dash area where the evaporator will go to raise that up a bit. Lots of different things on the go, but lots of fun.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

I wanted to change how the seats were mounted in my car to lower them a bit. The seat sliders were spaced away from the seat with hex nuts. Between those and the stamped mounting brackets about 3/4” was added to the seat height. I figured I could take off both of those pieces.

132583

The first thing was to weld in some extra pieces to the frame to line up with the mounting holes in the seat sliders:

132584

Now I knew that I wasn’t going to have dead-on alignment with the holes in the seat sliders and the new holes in the frame, so I wanted a little bit of play in the mounting bolts before they were snugged up. Also, I wanted the bolts to go up from the underside of the car into the seat sliders. Having the bolts go down from the top means a little more sticking out under the car and I didn’t want that (the bolt heads are thinner than the nuts). So here is what I came up with. Might seem a little finicky, but it got the job done.

I needed the hex nuts to be trapped in the seat sliders, but still be able to move around a little. Despite what it looks like in this picture, the nuts could rotate fully in the rail if I just put them in as-is.

132585

I gave each one 2 spots of weld on opposite corners:

132586

Now they can’t rotate in the seat sliders, but they still have to be held in place but allowed to move a little bit.

I cut the heads off some hex bolts:

132587

Now here’s the finicky part. I borrowed/stole this idea from how part of an engine I worked on was assembled. Slip a nut into the seat slider and thread the cut-off bolt into it. That makes guide pins to drop into the holes in the frame in the car, while allowing the nuts to float around. I also welded some spacers to the seat sliders to angle the seat back a little.

132588

Now the seat is dropped into the car, fiddling around a little so all the guide pins go through the holes and out the bottom of the car.

132589

Then carefully remove each pin and replace with a bolt.

132590

Now the seat is in the correct position and I can determine where I want my sawn-off shifter to go.

132591

I don’t know what seats these are. They came with the car and seem pretty nice.
I did notice that there is not really any point to having the passenger seat adjustable, since it sits pretty much against the angled frame rail at the front and the fuel tank at the rear. I may or may not still use the slider on that side just to mount the seat, or may make something solid to replace it.

While I have the welder out I’ll work on the mods to the frame under the A/C evaporator you can see in the picture. I may also make some structure to raise the console behind the shifter to make it more arm-height.

Nice working in the garage and welding when it’s 90F with high humidity.

Rick

[AZPete]

Very clever how you welded a spot on each nut, then made guide pins. I hope I can remember the trick whenever I might need it someday.

[Ajzride]

Very slick slick on the seat mount. I went through a lot of trouble to make mine so that there was nothing below the car and it was all in the passenger compartment, but I'm thinking it would have been better to have done what you did. Those little bolt heads being under the car shouldn't be an issue and it looks way faster to fabricate.

[FFRWRX]

Very clever how you welded a spot on each nut, then made guide pins. I hope I can remember the trick whenever I might need it someday.

I had to take the seat back out to work on the A/C compressor mounting and hopefully tidy up the wiring. While it is out I should machine the guide pins with a taper to make it easier for them to align with the holes in the car frame. Also, I thought if I put some RTV or something like that on the nuts the next time I install the seats, bolt them in, then it will cure with the nuts in the correct position and maybe I won't even need to use the guide pins after that.

[FFRWRX]

I went through a lot of trouble to make mine so that there was nothing below the car and it was all in the passenger compartment, but I'm thinking it would have been better to have done what you did. Those little bolt heads being under the car shouldn't be an issue and it looks way faster to fabricate.

When I got the car it had the nuts under the car with some excess bolt thread sticking out. Also, the car was lowered down a fair bit. The first time I drove it up onto the lift it stopped dead with quite a bang, like the whole power train suddenly seized up. Couldn't figure out what it was. The car still seemed OK so I backed up and took a bit of a run at it. A more sudden stop and a bigger bang. Finally saw that the protruding bolt thread caught on the joint between the ramp and the lift. It bent the 3/8" seat mounting bolts quite a bit. So it certainly is something to keep in mind with a lowered car.

[FFRWRX]

To mount the evaporator unit a little higher up in the dash, these 2 bars have to be cut out and modified:

132792

Not too difficult a job. I raised the bar up so the top is about 3” above the other structure, which still gives me about 1 ½” above that before contacting the dash.

132793

I welded on some small brackets to mount the evaporator and it sits very nicely now up into the dash:

132794

132795

Doesn’t really show much, but the unit is up under the dash with room above it to run the ducts:

132796

While I was in the area with the welder, I made up a small structure to raise the rear of the console. It puts it at a more comfortable height for an arm rest. It is just sitting in place here:

132797

I think I’ve decided to go in a different direction with the center console. Not all worked out yet, but I’ll mock something up and see how it goes……more later.

I mounted the A/C condenser in front of the radiator. The job went well and I was quite pleased with it. When it was in I noticed that the 2 fittings on the side of it are different sizes. Then the tiny light bulb appeared ….very dim though. What are the odds that I have it upside down? Well, you would think the odds are 50/50 that I had it right….or wrong. But anyone that works on cars knows that logic has a strange way of bending with things like this. The 50/50 odds of something being wrong when left to chance change to a 95% chance that you’ve got it wrong. Of course I had it upside down. Not a huge deal to swap it around but it did put a small damper on my enthusiasm for getting a small job done so nicely and quickly.

I really have to tidy up the wiring now as it is starting to bug me how messy it all looks.

Rick

[Jetfuel]

I really have to tidy up the wiring now as it is starting to bug me how messy it all looks.

Rick

Second that thought...and you'll be glad you did

Jet

[FFRWRX]

I decided that I would double-wall the rear firewall. There are of course the thick aluminum panels that go from the inside of the car, but, like others have done, I’ll add panels to the rear of the firewall structure. That way I can add extra sound insulation between the 2 metal panels.

Since the engine is already in, I’m working around that. And for now I’m just doing the part above the fuel tank. I can get the 2 main triangle pieces from the headliner aluminum piece:

132845

I’m going to put headliner insulation and material on the roof, but don’t see a need for the aluminum panel, so I’ll make use of it here.
A lot of fiddly cutting a fitting, but it looks good. Not fastened in place yet and I'll probably paint/coat the rear of them before attaching them.

132846

132847

I’m thinking I may put the center triangle piece from inside the car. It does give good access to the belts if they ever need servicing. If I cut and modify the panel that goes behind the seats and make at least the center triangle portion removable without taking out the whole piece, then I can also remove the rear cover piece and access that area of the engine. Sound good? At any rate, I don’t see any harm in doing to that way even if I never use it for engine access. The wires will all come through that center panel so it also might be easier to cut the holes and fit it from the inside of the car. I ran out of aluminum or I would have that piece done now too.

And yes, this is in preparation to tidying up the wiring…..getting there.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Oh, a couple questions.

What is this hose for and it is supposed to be hooked up? Looks like it attaches to a metal pipe that goes down into the engine/intake area. I don't know if it came off or was never hooked up.

132848

And this expansion valve came with the compressor. Do I need it? Not sure where it goes if I do need it.

132849

Thanks,

Rick

[AZPete]

Words to live by: "The 50/50 odds of something being wrong when left to chance change to a 95% chance that you’ve got it wrong." ;)

I'm glad you elected to use the aluminum headliner for your rear firewall because that caused me a lot of time and frustration trying to get it to stay up on the ceiling. For the headliner, I suggest you get some foamcore at an art supply store.

I agree with your idea of mounting the middle triangle of your firewall from the front. You could screw in onto the seat side of the frame and it would save a headache whenever you have to access the front of the engine. You'd have to remove seats and the thick FFR-supplied firewall, but then you'd have easy access. I wish I had done that.
!!!! Hey, future builders . . . Better still, but too late here, is to mount the rear-rear firewall before dropping the engine in. I learned this the hard way which cost me hours of frustration and some vodka for pain relief.

[STiPWRD]

What is this hose for and it is supposed to be hooked up? Looks like it attaches to a metal pipe that goes down into the engine/intake area. I don't know if it came off or was never hooked up.
132848
That hose originally went to the brake booster on the master cylinder. I capped it off on the intake manifold.

[FFRWRX]

That hose originally went to the brake booster on the master cylinder. I capped it off on the intake manifold.

So that would be a vacuum leak now?

[Bob_n_Cincy]

132969

[STiPWRD]

So that would be a vacuum leak now?

For sure. There are several places on the intake manifold you may want to double check depending on your setup - there are a lot of hoses attached to it.

[FFRWRX]

Got the aluminum panels temporarily attached. Yes, it can be a pain doing this with the engine in place, but I cheated in a few places to make it easier.

133127

Where I didn't have clearance for even a right-angle drill, I drilled through from inside the car. Yes, I drilled the hole through the frame and the aluminum, but still put the screw in from the rear. So I have some lightening holes in the frame now!

I used some aluminum angle that the center triangle piece will attach to. They are just in with clecos now, but I'll rivet those in. Not quite decided how to attach the aluminum panel to the angle as they are pretty thin. I could just use some double sided tape and insulation thick enough to be right up against the front panel to trap it in place.

133130

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Been working on the double-wall panels for the firewall.

Got the rear ones installed and insulated. I used Noico sound deadening mat on the aluminum panels.

133995

I needed some grommets to pass the wires through the aluminum panels and didn't have any suitable ones, so I 3D printed some. Two-piece design that clamps around the wire bundle and then slips into the aluminum panel.

133996

133997

Made a couple for the rear panel. This is the one that mounts in from the front side to allow access to the engine belt area.

133998

Then added Noico Red sound insulation.

133999

All buttoned up! If I need access to the engine belts, I can remove the center triangle piece, then the second triangle piece behind that. Probably don't even have to take the seats out.

134000

A great way to cut the aluminum panels (especially the 1/8" thick one) is with an air body saw with a piece of hacksaw blade in it.

134001

I mounted the rear fuse box and fuel pump relay to that panel. There is room behind the passenger seat and I might need access to it, so it seemed like a good place to put it. While I was in a 3D printing mode, I made a cover for it.

134002

I printed the sliders separate so I could glue them on in the correct place on the fuse box and the cover. This lets the cover slip down from the top over the fuse box and relay that is tucked under it.

134003

Really pleased with how it came out. I left just enough space for the carpet that will be on the aluminum panels.

134004

Rick

[AZPete]

Very nice work. especially the grommets and relay box cover. This is another for the "wish I had done it" file.

[FFRWRX]

I recently bought the E-Stopp parking brake system. This is an electronic system that eliminates the usual parking brake handle and mechanism that would otherwise be in the center console.

Spoiler alert…………….it is really cool!

I’ve been working on a center console design for a while now, using a custom shifter with rear cables. With the cables running out the rear of the console and the large wire bundle, I was concerned with having room for the parking brake cables too. Turns out that with the wiring tidied up it really isn’t an issue. But I didn’t want the parking brake handle taking up so much room at the rear of the console. So the E-Stopp seemed like an ideal solution.

I’m not the first one to use this in an 818. Brd.Prey did a very nice installation putting the unit at the front of the console where it is under the dash area and does not show. The unit is fairly long with it’s cable, so putting it at the front of the console works well.

The main unit itself can be mounted in the car or on the outside somewhere. The electronic control box is not weather-proof so it goes in the car. Since the main unit (a linear actuator in a very solid package) does not need to be in the car, I was looking for a place it could go behind the firewall so the parking brake cables would not enter the car at all. That would be one less thing (2 actually) running through the rear console area.

I did not want to modify the cables, so that makes it a bit trickier to find a place for the unit. The cables are the same length, so if the unit is mounted to one side, one cable has a very short run and one has a long run. I also needed to keep them away from the hot exhaust. As I mentioned, the unit is fairly long with the cable coming out of it; something like 21”. It has about a 2” stroke which is more than enough. After trying many different places and almost giving up, I found a good spot for it. I bolted it to the outside of this frame rail.

134383

I put together a video that shows a little better (hopefully) where it is mounted and how it is connected so I won’t show a lot of pictures here.

But, I needed the 2 parking brake cables to come into one to attach to the unit. There is a stock equalizer piece that the cables hook into that does this job, but it has about 6” of cable on the end that normally goes to the parking brake handle. That made it a bit too long for where I wanted to mount it. That is this part here:

134384

Several options here. You can buy a bent metal piece that basically duplicates this unit, but without any cable coming from the “single” end. If my local auto place had one I would have gone that way. But I’m impatient and didn’t want to order one and wait for it. Option 2 is to make one from a small bar of steel. I almost went that way but figured I had nothing to lose in trying to modify the stock unit first.

The cable coming out of the actuator has the same threaded piece on the end as this stock one. So you need to find a way to get this unit to attach to the threaded piece on the actuator. If you have room you can basically get or make a longish nut to couple the 2 together.

I figured that all I needed to do was shorten the cable part of this stock unit. And while I was at it, make a threaded piece (female thread) that would attach to the male thread on the actuator. All clear? It will be later. Oh, the bent metal one I saw that you can buy does not have any cable, but has a hole that would be used to attach to the threaded end on the actuator. So that would probably be the easiest way to do it.

The cable coming out of this stock bracket has a plastic covering on it, so I cut some of that off and then cut the cable with a thin grinding wheel. Oh crap!

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I found that the end did sort of wrap back up to what it looked like before I hacked into it, but I couldn’t get it in the hole in the mating part. I had already made the piece that the cable is going to go into and this definitely wouldn’t fit since it kept expanding as I tried to get it into the hole. A bit of puzzling and cursing, then a solution. I have some silver brazing stuff I bought for joining broken bandsaw blades. I coated the cable end with flux, heated it with a torch, and used some of the silver braze on it. Worked very well to hold the strands together. A bit of work on the grinder and I had a nice slightly pointed end on the cable that fit in the mating part just fine.

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I put more flux on it, added a bit of silver brazing foil, and stuffed it into the hole in the part I made. The part is just a short length of steel with a hole for the cable in one end and a female thread in the other end to match the one on the actuator.

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My original plan was to either silver braze the cable into the piece I made, or crimp it together. I wasn’t sure which would be better and if I could do a good enough job with either to be strong enough, so I decided to do both.
I borrowed/stole aquillen’s idea of using parts of a tap handle as a crimping fixture. Worked very well. I clamped the part I wanted to crimp into the square part of the black blocks and squeezed them in a press.

134388

I probably went overboard with it as I really squeezed the living daylights (whatever they are, other than the James Bond movie, they are gone) out of it. Better too much than too little I figured. Then I heated it with a torch to melt the braze too so I had it brazed and crimpled….belts and braces!

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This was a lot of description for small part, but it was really the only fabrication I had to do with this parking brake installation. The video will show how this part fits into the actuator cable, and how everything is mounted.

Before we get to that (don’t you hate a chatty introduction!) a few more details. The unit has a stroke of about 2” and you will see that I have about ½” left after the parking brake is fully engaged. The cables are a little looser than they have to be when it is not engaged, so I could probably adjust things to cut down the travel needed. Apparently, it pulls to 600 lbs and then stops. At that point it does not use any power so it is not draining the battery. There is also a wire on it that they recommend connecting to the ignition switch that disables the actuation with the ignition on for safety reasons. Weird then that the unit says right on it “emergency brake” when it only supposed to be used with the ignition off. You can eliminate this extra wire if you like. Also, there is a small trigger wire near the switch that I think can be used to light the brake symbol in the cluster to show the parking brake actuation.

So it is not all complete and tidied up yet, but without further ado…..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3le45u0C90

I still need to tidy up where the parking brake cables run, but they are pretty close to where they will end up. Just a few zip ties here and there.

This shows where the passenger side cable runs:

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And this one shows where the driver side one runs. Hard to follow it in this picture so I'll take some better ones. It sort of runs up into the engine area as it goes back, then loops down to the connection point.

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I’m really pleased with this system. Any questions or comments, let me know.

Rick

[aquillen]

Slick job - detailed writeups make my day, as you probably have already figured...

[AZPete]

Very nice writeup. I enjoyed following what you did.

[FFRWRX]

Thanks guys. I look at other writeups, like the ones you two have, and pick up little things to keep in mind later. Even if someone doesn't want to do the exact same thing, there is maybe something they will see that helps them later. I always take a lot of pictures whenever I am making anything, so to show them may help others at some point.

The 1/4-20 machine screws I used to attach the unit came from my box of hardware left over from my Factory Five Cobra build back in 1998. See....don't throw anything out! Only when you trip over it 3 times; and then just move it somewhere else.

[Ajzride]

Sidebar question:

When I did my mustang build thread, I was meticulous, sometimes posting 50 pics a day. I got the feeling these days that the preferred medium is youtube, so that is where all my details are on this build. Do you guys still prefer the write ups?

[FFRWRX]

Good question. I always read the build threads and really enjoy them. I sometimes look at videos, but not always. I suppose some things are better shown in a video though. For me, pictures show something right away. A video I have to go into and get to the part where I want to see a particular detail. Not that I'm so busy I can't spend the extra minute for the video.

But it is a very good question. Those of us that are doing build threads want to help others, so whatever format most people want to see we could be doing. I really haven't been into making videos, but after this one, it is kind of fun and maybe I should be doing it more. There are certainly times when it saves a 1000 words. Wait, a picture saves a 1000 words so a video must save more than that!

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Been a while since I’ve shown some progress. I took time off for other projects but got back to the car recently.
I’ve secured the parking brake cables in place so that pretty much finishes the work on that system. A few pictures to show where I’ve clipped the cables to the frame members. I made one small bracket for the driver side cable, but otherwise just used the frame members directly for attachment.

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136679

The next job was to install a remote master cylinder. As most know, the position of the “factory” unit is pretty much buried under the panel in front of the windshield. You either cut some access holes into that panel, move the master cylinder, or install a remote reservoir. I chose the remote reservoir option.

I used a 3 chamber unit (brakes front and rear and clutch). It has the outlets aiming to the side, not the ground, which is very good. I bought brass barb adapters to use rubber hose on them and then just needed a way to connect to the master cylinders.

136680

First thing was to drain and remove the brake master cylinder reservoir. To avoid making a mess, I wanted to get as much fluid out of the reservoir as possible before removing it. I found that it couldn’t be sucked out since there was a filter and float arrangement in the filler port. So maybe this isn’t the best way to get all the fluid out, but since I wasn’t going to use the reservoir again, I sacrificed it. I took a piece of pipe, heated it with a torch, and pressed it into the plastic reservoir. Did this on both chambers to remove a disk of material so I could get the turkey baster thing in there to get the fluid out.

136681

I machined some aluminum pieces to basically simulate the part of the reservoir that goes into the body of the master cylinder; they use the existing seals and have hose barbs screwed into them. Then I needed a way to keep them in place. There is a hole in the body of it that has a pin to retain the reservoir. I used that to retain a yoke that has a cross piece bolted to it, and that in turn has the 2 adapters bolted on. Much clearer with some pictures.

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Made a similar bunch of parts for the clutch master cylinder.

136685

Attached a bracket to the remote reservoir and attached that to a frame rail. All installed and hooked up. I think I have it in a position to be accessible and clear the hood.

136686

Another task done.

[FFRWRX]

I’m putting a fair bit of detail into this write-up, as I tend to do. Many people won’t be interested in so much detail for one small part of the build, but some might, so here it is.

I’ve been playing around with various ideas about which shifter to use. My car came with the standard Factory Five shifter (from a Corolla?) with the long cables running forward. It actually worked pretty well, but I didn’t like the cables starting out in the wrong direction and running all over the place to get to the tranny.

First idea was to swap around the stock unit and have the cables run to the rear. I modified the shifter shaft to do that and it looked like a pretty good way to go. Then I saw a video on Gordon Murray and his T.50 he is designing. He mentioned that the shifter looked so good that people asked him why he covered it up. He was also trying to minimize weight, so not covering it up saves some weight. That got me thinking…..if it is good enough for a $3M car it might be good enough for mine! Pagani also is big on the exposed shifters, but I didn't want something so fancy.

I didn’t actually see what the shifter mechanism looked like in the T.50, but I started designing one that I thought would look good, without being overly complex looking; clean on the top and the mechanism mostly underneath.

I modelled up the console frame, the gas tank, part of the dash, and the rear firewall to get an idea of what I had to work with. Then added a shifter. I call it an open gimbal design.

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137076

The orange thing is the wiring harness bundle just so I don’t forget I need room for it. The blue will be an armrest since there won’t be a parking brake lever. The power window switches mounted on the shifter panel I also borrowed from the T.50 design.

The idea is that the front-to-rear action of the shifter moves the one block in ball bearings, and the side-to-side action moves the larger open frame piece in its bearings. The side-to-side movement needs to move a cable front-to-rear, so that is what the ‘L’ shaped bell crank is for. The side-to-side movement seems to always have a spring to center it in shifters (not sure why when the front-to-rear never has one). I roughed in some springs on the side-to-side movement without much detail on how I would do that.

The concept seemed pretty good to me, so time to start making metal chips.

I started with an aluminum plate (1” thick) and left it maybe a little oversize; I can cut it down when I see what it looks like with the rest of the console. I do have a small CNC mill so I used that to cut the pieces out.

137077

The next pictures give a better idea of how it is supposed to work.

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137079

The ball bearings are pressed into the 2 parts and short rods slip in holes and are locked in place to retain the 2 parts.

The ‘L’ bell crank converts the side-to-side shifter movement to back-and-forth for the cable.

137080

At this point I puzzled over how to incorporate a spring to center the side-to-side movement. Then I realized the spring from the stock shifter would work in this design without too much adapting. A couple more pieces needed, but it should work OK.

I'm happy with how it is coming along so far.

Rick

[Ajzride]

Looks very promising. I started down this path but without a CNC I didn't get very far, especially when I realized I could get a knock-off K-tuned billet shifter for $150 on fleabay. Mine will be exposed along with the mechanical shift linkage, so I like your style.

[aquillen]

You may have looked at the shifter I made from scratch too. Mine came out very compact, but I have to say that I really like your design too. I think you are going to be very pleased with that.

[FFRWRX]

Looks very promising. I started down this path but without a CNC I didn't get very far, especially when I realized I could get a knock-off K-tuned billet shifter for $150 on fleabay. Mine will be exposed along with the mechanical shift linkage, so I like your style.

I looked at those shifters and was very tempted to get one. Hard to beat it for the price. Don't really know why I decided to try designing and making my own. Partly because I had a lot of aluminum plate I bought a few years ago cheap, and bearings and rod ends didn't cost too much.


You may have looked at the shifter I made from scratch too. Mine came out very compact, but I have to say that I really like your design too. I think you are going to be very pleased with that.

I did look at yours and it is a very nice, compact design. For some reason I got it in my head to make one without a ball joint that most have, and use ball bearings. Started as sort of an experiment to see if I could come up with something. So far, so good.

[FFRWRX]

The spring mechanism in the stock shifter basically has a stationary dowel that holds one of the spring arms in place while the other moves with the shifter, no matter which side it is moving to. Pretty clever. Hopefully the pictures show/explain this. I copied this scheme to add the spring to my design.

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137325

Since I’m likely going to have a shift knob without a shift pattern on it, I added a small plate with that on it. Also a plate that will have the power window switches in it.

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Pretty much done at this point. I had previously made a small square frame piece to raise the rear of the console a bit. This is what the whole contraption looks like from the underside.

137327

The steel frame-work is welded to the existing console structure. The large aluminum shifter plate bolts to that. So with it welded into the car, it looks like this:

137328

The shifter looks high but the pivot point is only about 3/4" higher than the stock shifter.

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I’ll adjust the height and angle of the shifter shaft if it needs it when the seat is back in and I see how it feels. Of course I seem to have ignored the shifter cables running through the firewall when I was closing that up, so I’ll take those panels off and see where to add some holes. I can at least hook it up temporarily with the existing (stock Factory Five) cable attachment points at the tranny. Right now I will have the same side-to-side cable movement as the stock one, but the front-to-rear will be reversed. I’ll re-reverse it at the rear when I make that part. Or I could leave it as-is and it will be like an early Ferrari shift pattern….1st gear to the rear and 2nd gear forward.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

With the shifter done, I moved on to the rear part of it; the part that attaches to the transmission. I’m also shortening the stock cables, so they will come more or less back from the firewall and not at a right angle to the tranny.

The rear part needed 2 bell cranks. One to take the shifter movement and convert it to rotate the shifter shaft coming out the rear of the tranny, and a second one to reverse the throw of the one that moves that shaft in and out. I used other designs I saw on line as a starting point, with the plan to machine the pieces from aluminum plate.

I dusted off the CNC router and used that to mock-up the main bracket that mounts to the transmission. Took several attempts before I was happy with it. There are a lot of things sticking out of the tranny that have to be cleared.

137831

137832

Got it close enough to make from aluminum. I powder coated some of the parts but have to remove it and clean it up for final assembly when I’ll coat the main bracket. I put a lot of adjusting holes in the bell cranks so I could fine tune the shift throw vs effort.

137833

I was going to make a new piece to replace the stock part that attaches to the tranny shaft, but managed to use the stock part by flipping it around; at least I think I ended up flipping it around, I had it apart and together so many times to figure out what I needed.

Looking in through the hole in the rear of the body:

137834

It comes close to the steel bumper that my car has, but should clear it OK even with slight engine/tranny movement.

So now I have 13’ long cables and only need 5 ½’. Rather than buy new ones, I thought I’d try shortening them myself first. I saw what “aquillen” did, but I took a different approach.

The construction of the cables is pretty interesting. I assume mine are the stock ones that came with the kit, but since I bought my car partially assembled, I’m not positive.

The basic plan was pretty simple (aren’t they always!?). I cut the cable near one of the ends to see what I had to work with:

137835

The plan was to remove the outer cable from the large threaded end piece, cut some off it, and crimp it back on. The inner cable would be shortened and crimped back into it’s end piece.
I soon discovered that you can’t crimp an outer cable without something inside it to support it; it will just collapse inward. Maybe the factory gets away with it by crimping it evenly all around. The stock one has a massive wall thickness where it is crimped:

137836

After some playing around and thinking I came up with how to do it. I didn’t think there is a need for the outer cable to be attached to the end fittings strong enough to lift a few elephants. There is really no load trying to pull it out. Also, the outer cable is made up of steel wires that will braze. I also wanted to reuse the end fitting if possible.
So, here is the plan. Remove the outer cable from the threaded end fitting, bore out the end of it so the cable can go back in, and silver braze it.

137837

There was a drawback to this method; the heat will melt the outer rubber layer of the outer cable, and the inner red plastic liner that the inner cable runs in. I kept the inner plastic liner from melting and plugging the passage by sticking a piece of 1/8” music wire in it when brazing, and ignored the outer rubber liner melting. Ended up with this:

137838

The second cable I did a little different. I made an adapter piece that the cable brazes into, and then that piece screws into the threaded end fitting. Takes a little less heat to braze since the adapter piece is smaller than the threaded end fitting. Not a huge difference, both methods seem to work.

137839

I smeared some RTV where the outer rubber had melted off, and then wrapped it with some tape when the RTV had cured. Seems good and strong and looks decent.

137842

Ran the shorter cables and hooked everything up. Once I sorted out which cable goes where (which took longer than it should have…doh!), it all works nicely. The shifter feels good with fairly short throws.

I think the next job is to get the heater and A/C lines all run and connected. Which means taking off the side body panels to run the lines. I seem to be making great strides backwards.

Rick

[roadrashrob]

That bell crank looks awesome!

[aquillen]

Nice work & very cool to watch someone else chop up their cables...

[FFRWRX]

The Subaru uses a heating system similar to the GM LS engines. With this design, you cannot just shut off the coolant flow through the heater core, or the engine could overheat. Instead of shutting off the coolant flow through the heater, you bypass it and let it still flow through the engine. If you are not using a heater, then you install the Factory Five short ‘U’ hose at the rear of the engine and it keeps the coolant flowing properly though the pump and engine. If you want to use a heater (or heat and A/C) then you need a different arrangement for the hose.

There are different ways of doing this.

One way is to do as GM and others do, which is to have an electrical valve with multiple passages that control the coolant flow. Basically, it has 4 coolant connections and switches the flow as required for heating without interrupting the flow through the engine. Found these pictures that explain it very well.

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I was going to buy one of these valves (there are a number of companies selling them), but then did a little more research and found something else.

Some people put together an ‘H’ of hoses that sort of does the same thing, but in a different way (if that makes any sense). What you do is allow the flow to go through both passages (through the heater core and the engine bypass) at the same time. You get enough hot coolant through the heater core for the heat that you need, while allowing the coolant to always be flowing through the engine/pump. AZPete shows this on his excellent documentation for A/C installation. I was undecided if I wanted to go this route or not, and then found this:

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It does the same thing as the ‘H’ hose arrangement, but perhaps looks a little better. It is made by lojkits; google it if you are interested in getting one. As they explain, the coolant will take the path of least resistance, which is through the main legs of the ‘H’ and through the heater core. When the heater is switched off (with the conventional shut-off valve) the coolant goes through the passage connecting the main passages in the block (the blue line in the picture) and allows the correct engine flow.

Now this block is $90 ($US, which puts it at about $150 Canadian by time I get it here), so duplicating it with heater hoses is a much cheaper option. Or, being cheap and having the tools and aluminum, I decided to make my own.

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When you make something on a CNC I think it is mandatory to put a logo on it. :)

Not sure if this should go near the engine, up front, or maybe doesn't matter where. There will be a heater shut-off valve between it and the heater core.

Rick

[Ajzride]

Hope this works for you, I never could get the flow right through the H I made. I wound up with an electric valve.

[FFRWRX]

What was not right about the flow? Not going through the heater sufficiently, or not going through the bypass hose when the heater valve is shut off; though I don't know how you would really know if it isn't going properly through the bypass hose/passage. Maybe I should keep it near the engine so the bypass part of it doesn't have too much of a pressure drop/restriction for the engine flow.

[Ajzride]

Mine was in the back near the engine and I couldn’t get flow to the heater core. The flow dynamics are much different in a mid engine setup than in a front engine like Subaru designed the water pump for.

[FFRWRX]

It is a long way to go through 2 hoses to get to the heater and back to the engine; about 24 feet of hose. Maybe with that amount of flow loss it is easier for it to go through the bypass passage? But I have the bypass block made now so I'll give it a try.

[FFRWRX]

I made a small addition to the heater bypass block I made. The fittings come out of the engine aiming towards the rear, and the hoses have to go to the front. I didn't want to make a 180 in the hoses for fear of kinking them, so I made up a 180 with some copper plumbing fittings.

139000

And the hoses run down the driver's side.

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For the A/C hoses, I didn't have the stock ones from the donor car that attach to the compressor. I found some fittings that bolt to the compressor directly and the hose fitting screw into them. I might have been trying to use them with the wrong size O-rings at first because there seemed to be no place for the O-ring to fit in between the compressor and the fitting. They might have worked with a smaller cross-section seal (which I think they came with and I found later) so I modified them to trap the seal in a groove. These are the fittings before modification:

139003

These fittings then take the Vintage Air aluminum lines. I had trouble bending the large one (-10 line) since I didn't have a tubing bender for that size line...it was starting to kink a bit. So looking at what I had, I ran the line without using that piece of line at all. I had a 90 degree fitting for that hose with the charging port on it. I arranged it so it went down rather than up:

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There is access to the charging port even though it looks like it is buried.

I ran the line along the bottom of the firewall to the passenger side of the car.

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I did manage to bend the smaller line and ran it on top of the engine.

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And they both come out here for the run forward:

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I'm working on 3D printing grommets now for the hoses to go through the forward panel to the heater unit. I didn't have any the proper size and the local auto parts places didn't either. Rather than order some I thought I try printing them with some flexible material. So far they are looking good, but that's for next time.

Rick

[Ajzride]

Where is sam hill did you find those adapters for the compressor? I ordered half a dozen different sets and never found any that fit. I eventually went to the junkyard and got some from a wrecked Subaru and had the -AN adapters welded on by a hydraulic shop.

[FFRWRX]

The Vintage Air catalogue has them. "OEM Compressor Refrigerant Line O-ring Adapter Kit", p/n 045001. Then I found that Summit Racing has them so while I was ordering some stuff from Summit I ordered those too.

As I mentioned, I'm not sure if I got the O-rings mixed up or not; the fittings fit the compressor fine but the O-ring seemed to be just trapped between the 2 flat surfaces. So when it was tightened down it just didn't work; the O-ring sort of squeezed out and since it was only bolted from one end it wasn't sitting flat. The fittings were thick enough that I machined them to have a proper O-ring groove and I think/hope they will seal properly. So having said all that, maybe they aren't the correct fittings after all? They do physically fit, but the O-ring didn't seem right.

[Ajzride]

They are not the correct fittings, but since you have a mill you can probably get them to work. The factory fittings have the o-ring down inside the compressor fitting.

[Frank818]

Awesome your shifter!

[FFRWRX]

Getting back to my build again. Have been busy in the basement workshop with various projects over the winter.

Also, I've been working on my Lambo build.

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[Ajzride]

That lambo looks even more cramped than an 818, not sure how you plan to get into that one.

[FFRWRX]

The Lambo certainly has more parts! It is pretty amazing, the design work that went into it. Even has functioning paddle shifters that work the sequential shifting tranny.

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[FFRWRX]

But back to the full size project.

I 3D printed some grommets for the hoses that pass through the front firewall for the A/C and heat. I used TPU which is a flexible material and it worked out fairly well.

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When I had them installed I realized that my design of the grommets was more complex than it had to be, but that's what engineers do; we design the simplicity out of things. Two heater hoses, 2 A/C hoses, and an evaporator drain line.

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And I used this on all the A/C O-rings. Read about it somewhere and it is interesting stuff. Like a sticky, liquidy rubber. Supposed to work very well at preventing leaks at connections.

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I had the rear firewall panels off to run the shifter cables and now it is all buttoned up again. I added some sound-deadener to the floor panels; thicker foam will go over that. The wiring is somewhat tidied up now, up to the dash area anyways.

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So it is time to work on the center console. I have some ideas on what I'm going to do there to have access to the fuse box and other relays that will be under the console panels. More on that when I see how it works out.

Rick

[blomb11]

So which ones do I need? Turns out I only need number 4. Number 1 was a maybe, but I deleted it.

With the wires cut off the back, and making sure the engine still started, I had this:

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The Marr connector that you see is from the mod described by Mechie3 for getting rid of the starter-cut relay. I later soldered them properly and saved the connector for my basement wiring.
Now with all the wires traced and removed (and some of them are fairly thick so it is a lot of bulk removed), there is only one relay being used. So out comes the handy saw again to cut the box down, and I’m left with this:

Rick

Rick, do you mind showing me where the starter-cut relay mod is you mention from Mechie? I was looking through his wire dieting thread and I did not see it nor his PDF doc. I could have overlooked it, but it would be super helpful. Thanks!

[FFRWRX]

You are right, he does not mention about getting rid of that relay. I've been hunting around trying to find what I actually referenced and can't find it. I'll keep looking and see what I can find.

Rick

[blomb11]

You are right, he does not mention about getting rid of that relay. I've been hunting around trying to find what I actually referenced and can't find it. I'll keep looking and see what I can find.

Rick

That would be awesome thanks! I have been using your dieting write up which has been helpful! I want to delete the secondary air pump because my engine doesn’t have it, but the harness does. I have removed the A/C already and just went ahead and cut out F127 the secondary air fuse/relay little box. After doing some more digging I see the relays are tied to the ECM, injectors, cam sensors, and wastegate solenoid. So I spliced the relays back into my harness. How did you remove this from your harness? How do you remove it but still keep the critical engine functions like the injectors? The ECM pin in question is C30.
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[FFRWRX]

The wiring diagram you are showing is a little different than the one I used. Pretty sure mine is for the 2006. Not sure if that matters or not. I removed all of those relays and wiring. From what I can see, C30 from the ECM powers the relays to open or close them. Does it care if it is triggering something that is not there? You should be able to pull all of those relays out (all six of them in that relay box) and still have the engine start and run. The rad fan won't work, but that won't matter for this test. The connection you are describing for the other functions is the one that also takes power from the C30 trigger, so trace it and leave it connected to the junction where it goes to the injectors and other systems. It looks like that is "E/G(TB)-11" in my diagram....correct?

Here is my wiring diagram:

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[blomb11]

I am referencing the 06-07 Subaru FSM so I believe they are the same in principal. I know you removed your rad fans, but I am going to leave them so I will have to see how to keep them intact. I will also look at the C30 line some more to see if I can find the junction to remove the relays, but keep the E/G(TB)-11 functions. Thanks!

[FFRWRX]

First thing, I did some additional machining to clean up the shifter assembly I made. Also made a shift knob and then powder coated all the various parts. I’m really happy with the way it came out. The switch at the rear is for the electronic parking brake.

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What to do with the center console panels? Since there is a lot of stuff in there that I may need to get at (shift linkages, wiring, fuse box, relays) I wanted it to be easily accessible. So, the stock aluminum panelling was out. Besides, with my shifter I would need to modify the stock panels anyways. I didn’t want small removable panels since that would most likely mean seams, joints, exposed fasteners, and a lot of work. The easiest thing would be to have it all removable. How about removable in a minute or two? How about removable without any tools? How about no exposed fasteners?

A quick mock-up on the side panels with cardboard:

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Something like this, obviously with some sort of panels on top. The forward one would run up under the dash and have a place for the A/C and heat controls. I could make these panels from thin wood, covered with foam and vinyl.
While looking at the cardboard pieces it came to me how to meet all the goals for the console panel attachment.

First, the cardboard pieces transferred to wood, then covered with thin foam:

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148269

I didn’t take a picture of them covered with the vinyl at that stage. But I did figure I needed to cut the side panels into 2 parts, since with the seats in, it would be very difficult to get them in and out if it was one long panel from the front to the rear. One panel will end at the front of the shifter and the other one will go from there to the front firewall.
So how to hold them in place without any exposed fasteners and no plastic door panel clips (you know, the kind that break off most of the time or else tear out of the wood panel)?

I 3D printed these plastic retainers. They are 6” long each:

148270

I stuck them onto the aluminum floor panel with 3M VHB double-sided tape:

148271

The panels slide into those retainers to hold them in place at the bottom:

148272

Now, how to hold them at the top? Magnets!! I’ve used the small rare earth magnets a number of times recently in wood working and metal work. I was originally going to use them to hold the side panels in place at the top and bottom, but then thought that the plastic retainers would be a better way. Then I was going to use them just for the top of the side panel, but thought of another way.
I made a top piece from slightly thicker wood. The sides of it go down over the side panels to hold them in place.

148273

This is the bottom of it with the magnets in place. The magnets are in small cups that apparently increase the magnetic force of the magnet. The cups are epoxied into flat-bottom bores in the wood. You can see how the sides go down to overlap with the top of the side panels to hold them in place.

148274

The top with the vinyl on it.

148275

The slots in it are for small storage pockets I’m 3D printing. There isn’t a lot of room for them since the shifter cables run through the area in the middle, but it will be useful for a phone or other small things.
When the printer finishes, I’ll put it all in place with the side panels and take a few pictures. I tried the top panel to see how the magnets hold and no issue there……..they really hold!

I’m really pleased with how this is coming out. I can pop the top panel off which then releases the side ones and then slide them up out of the retainers. Even with the seats in place it shouldn’t be an issue to remove them. No tools, no exposed fasteners.

Now I’m working my way forward with the panels. I’ll use the same concept there.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

And if you've never played around with these magnets, you might be surprised how strong they are. The ones I'm using are 5/8" diameter:

148276

Rear of the console done:

148279

148280

[aquillen]

Very nice. My console was made with similar goals. Three screws hold it in (the storage part from back up to the front of the shifter). And it was to be able to handle pushing off of it with one hand to heft my bulk out of the car, without flexing, etc. Nice work you got going on there. Looks cool too.

[J R Jones]

Besides my 818 project I have another roadster resto-rod in process, It is a 1929 neo-classic built in 1968. The body has been heavily altered and the original interior is redone. The interior trim panels were vinyl / foam over luan wood. With a soft top and side curtains, the wood is at risk of water damage. In one of my day-jobs I GC'd the reconstruction of a facility for food product manufacturing. A requirement was washable walls, with "dairy board". That is white thin polyester panels 2-3mm thick. Some are smooth on both sides, some a smooth side and beaded side. I bought a 4 X 8 sheet at Home Depot, cheaper than plywood. I cut my panels to fit and took them to my trim shop for vinyl covers and beads. Stitching can be predone, but they could not "sew" through the board. Should be durable in bad weather, thinner than luan, and more finished edges. Actually glue and double faced tape also stick better than to wood. One could laminate dairy board for thicker parts,

[FFRWRX]

When I was considering what to use for the interior panels, I did some google searches. Found a lot of the usual; some people that had been in the industry for decades that used nothing but luan wood without a problem, and others that said to never use wood. For what I was using it for, I thought plastic might be a good choice. Not that it should ever get wet, and traditional British cars had wood, and even cardboard, interior panels. So why did I end up using wood? The pandemic.

Stores are shutdown here in Ontario. They are open for "curb side pickup" only. So you can order on-line and then go and pick it up. If the stores were open I would have gone and looked at the various plastic panels at Home Depot. But I didn't want to order plastic panels without seeing them first to be sure I would be happy working with them. Since I've used wood before for interior panels, that's what I went with. But the next time I'm at Home Depot (when they are open) I'll take a look at the plastic panels they have.

[FFRWRX]

I made the front panels similar to the rear ones; thin wood, covered with foam and vinyl. I glued a piece of wood on the back that sits on top of the ¾” frame rail. Then I printed some plastic brackets that screwed on, and they trap the panel on the frame rail.

148691

The bottom of the panel is retained the same as the rear ones; it slips into the plastic retaining pieces on the floor. The plastic clips on the panel slip over the square tube so the panel can’t move in or out.

148692

At the rear, the top piece is retained by magnets, and that holds the side panels in place. For the front, there is no structure along the top edge of the panels for magnets to hold on. So, what to do.
My wife told me there has to be a cup holder. She also said there has to be a glove compartment, storage for extra keys, phone, sunglasses, etc. I said no. I said if someone wants all that they can buy an SUV. She knows I don’t keep cars long and is thinking what a potential buyer might want. I compromised with the cup holder since that worked out as a good retainer for the panels.

I 3D printed a cup holder, with places in the bottom for magnets.

148693

148694

I bolted a small strip of metal across the console tubes, and the magnets on the bottom of the cup holder grab onto that, which holds the top piece in place.

148695

I made a piece that goes from the console up behind the dash. This will have the A/C and heat controls.

148696

I wanted the 4-way flasher switch mounted somewhere, but it is a pretty big switch and sticks out too far for my liking. I printed a bezel that the switch goes into and it sits recessed into where ever it is mounted. I mounted it in the side of the front console piece. If you look carefully at the previous picture, you’ll see that hole in the diver’s side.

148697

With everything together, this is what I have:

148698

Needs a little finishing up here and there, but I’m pretty happy with it. The cup holder panel overlaps the sides, and the cup holder goes in and magnets down to hold it and the panels in place. The other piece ahead of that also overlaps the top of the side panels, and it is held down with a large screw-knob inside it. That is accessed by reaching in around the front of that piece. It only has to be loosened and moved up and then the side panels can be lifted and removed.

One other small thing. There is obviously a gap between the front and rear side panels, so I again 3D printed a small trim strip for that, that slides in from the top.

148699

And here you can see the 4-way flasher switch. Slightly hidden, but still easily accessible:

148700

I made a lot of use of the 3D printer for this. It is really handy for making small retaining brackets, holders, clips, and pieces like that. I don’t use it for anything that needs a lot of strength (though the plastics can be quite strong).

So maybe this will help someone with ideas on what to do with the interior. At least it is clean, easy work; no rust, grease, oil...

I can start to tidy up the rest of the interior now; insulation, carpet, seats.

Rick

[AZPete]

Beautifully creative console.

[FFRWRX]

Thanks Pete. Sometimes when you move ahead with something, without much planing of all the little details in advance, it actually works out!

[FFRWRX]

When I made my exhaust, I knew it came close to a few areas that I wanted protected from the heat. It wasn't too close, and there would be air circulation in that area, but the plan was always to wrap it to keep the heat in.

149119

When I took the original cat off the exhaust, and pulled the shield off it, I saw that it had some sort of insulation on it. I temporarily wired that piece onto my exhaust near the CV boot. Please ignore the crappy welding in all the pics. :(

149120

149121

After running the engine for a while I put my hand on that piece of metal and it was just warm.......very good insulation!

So I thought I would use that along with the exhaust wrap. I cut it into smaller pieces and wired it in place. If you are doing this, have good ventilation and/or wear a mask; the fibres in that insulation are nasty.

149122

Then wrapped over that.

149123

Back in place and ready to go.

149124

I haven't run it yet, but have read that it smells and maybe smokes for the first few heat cycles, so I'll back the car onto the driveway to run it. I overlapped it more than the instructions say, which is why I ran out and had to buy more; hence the different colors. The "titanium" one was supposed to be wrapped dry, which I did. The black one was supposed to be wrapped wet (well, not supposed to be, but recommended to make it easier to conform to the curves). I ended up doing that one mostly dry as well since they said to wet it but not to soak it, and it seemed difficult to do one without the other.

Running the engine will also let me see how the cooling system is doing and if there is air in it. I know there is, but will it come out with some heat/cool cycles is the question. Once I'm sure there are no leaks, I can put the body panels back on and get on with the build.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Small interruption in the build while I sort out a cooling system issue. Details here:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?39958-Yes-another-cooling-system-issue

[FFRWRX]

I wanted to get the roof put on to see how it fit and what additional work it would need. Seemed like a good idea to take the front fenders off first, and do the aluminum panels in that area. As was suggested in another thread, I drilled them all now and used clecos to hold them in place. The 2 panels with the arrows were riveted in since they would not need any work once the fenders are back on.

149753

The panels with clecos will need trimming to fit along the fender later, so they were removed after all the holes for rivets were drilled. I'll need a bunch of small patch panels here and there to seal things, but that will come when the fender is back on.

The roof was a decent fit, but of course needs some work and adjustments.

The rear corners need to be pulled down onto the rear side panels.

149754

The proper way to do this is to flip the roof over and bond some studs on the underside of the roof panel just in from the corner. A small piece of metal can then bridge the side piece with the rear piece and have a hole that the bonded stud goes through. Put a nut on the stud and tighten it to pull the roof panel down.

I got a bit lazy once the roof was on (not realizing that is was going to come back off many times) and took a different approach. I basically drilled counter-sunk holes and ran small bolts with counter-sunk heads to pull the panel down. I needed a few across the back and some down the passenger side as that was sticking up too. Doesn't look like it in this picture, but the roof panel is more or less flush with the surrounding ones now.

149755

I'll fill the small holes where the screws are and basically bond the screws in at the same time; grind off a little of the gel coat and use a thin piece of fibreglass cloth with some epoxy. I won't do that until I'm sure the roof is on for the final time so there shouldn't be much stress or movement around the bolt holes. Laziness now, more work later........oh well. But there will be other areas needing fibreglass/epoxy work as well.

The main area of concern is the A pillar and how it meets up with the front of the door. First thing was, I took off the thick piece of steel that is the mirror mount. No idea how you are supposed to get a seal between the door and the A pillar with this piece there. I'll figure another way to mount the mirror. So with that piece gone, I could lower the roof a bit more to minimize the gap between it and the door. BUT...

You still have the screw heads that hold the door panel in place. I machined the heads of some screws to make them a low profile.

149757

I was OK with that until I started trying to minimize the gap even further. I decided to counter sink the holes in the door panel and machine some screws so they would sit flush with the panel.

149758

I'll machine off a little more and then fill over the heads......or maybe not. When the door is closed you don't see these screws at all, so maybe I don't have to be too fussy with finishing them. I'm planning on having the car wrapped which is a little more forgiving with respect to surface defects than painting; not much more, but a little.

So now that I have nothing protruding above the top of the door skin, I can lower the roof down to get a nice minimal gap. Or so I thought. I had to grind out a fair bit of metal from this area of the A pillar to allow the roof to sit down lower without hitting the front edge of the door panel. And that was with the door panel skin trimmed a bit at the front. Funny thing is, it still does not allow the front piece of the roof to touch the frame in front of the windshield. Apparently you are supposed to rivet that part of the roof to the frame. Even with my roof being lower than a "stock" one, those areas are not in contact. Don't think it really matters though.

149761

I think the only way to get a decent gap here is to build up the bottom of the A pillar to bring it down closer to the door. As it is now, the gap isn't any where near even front-to-back on either door.

149762

And another issue with that area and thinking of how it is supposed to seal with the door. The top of the door panels slope up as you go from the outside of the door to the inside. With the door closed there is about a 3/8" gap:

149763

With the door open it almost rubs as that gap closes up:

149764

So how do you seal that area? Anything that lightly seals the top of the door to the bottom of the A pillar with the door closed will be heavily rubbing as the door opens.

I have a way that I think will work and is very simple. Too simple to work? I'll do some more fooling around with that area and see.

I decided to take a break from that area and put in the trunk kit I have. Well, well, you can't get that in with the roof in place. One more reason to take the roof back off.

Until the next time.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

This is an old picture, but........

149771

Is the inter-cooler supposed to be crooked like mine is?

[Ajzride]

Yes

[FFRWRX]

A little more work on the car and I see how the gap at the bottom of the A pillar works. The inner door panel fills it:

149794

Not obvious in that picture, but the gap mostly evens out front-to-back and outer door area to inner. The mirror mount goes in front of that and is roughly even with the top of that inner door panel piece. A rubber seal on the bottom of the A pillar might seal it.

My wife had a look at what I was up to and when I showed her she said it looked very strange with the inner door panel piece extending to the outside of the car where it will be exposed to the elements. Not sure how many elements it will be exposed to, but she has a point. Also, I'm not sure how this will work with the door windows. Looks to me like the window will be just outside this piece, but may cut into it. Also...

149795

These are supposed to line up? You can see that the inner panel can't be pushed back any further. The inner panel fits inside the door skin all around expect for the top, where it transitions from inside to outside (very top of the rear of the door in the picture above). This needs more thought.

Rick

[Frank818]

Woha that's quite a big gap you got there! I used screws on some areas where I had gaps but none were as big as yours, I don't think just using screws would make it conform "ok". :(

Wha'bout using some rubber seals all around the inner panel between it and the door, would that work? It would also seal up the door on the side pod which prevents quite a lot of air (and dirt) flying in from that area.
AZPete has great pictures of the D-shape rubber he used. I think it was D-shaped.

[FFRWRX]

Woha that's quite a big gap you got there! I used screws on some areas where I had gaps but none were as big as yours, I don't think just using screws would make it conform "ok". :(


In the manual they mention using a heat gun to shape that inner door panel at the top. I could see about heating it and bending it out to match the door skin. I'm not too concerned, if I have to use some foam strips I will, just seems strange to be that far off.

[FFRWRX]

I thought being 3 pieces I could put the trunk in after the roof was on....nope.

Not a huge deal to take the roof off to do it. Pretty sure FFR made this for the topless 818 and didn't update it for the 818C. Or maybe I just have an old trunk kit. It works fine with the 818C, just needs a little extra work.

The pieces fit fine but there is no support other than along the back.

149919

I was looking at what to weld or bolt to give it support and then came up with what I think is pretty easy. There are mounting pads that aren't used (for the trunk pins or something on the non C version). I bought a piece of aluminum angle, and found a some large square aluminum tube. I bolted the tube pieces to the trunk pin mounting pads, riveted the angle piece to that, and that lines up nicely with the front of the trunk piece and raises it up just the right amount.

149920

I may put a couple of screws to hold the front in place. The side pieces don't hit the body exactly, and there are those cutouts at the front corners of the trunk. I'll seal those up when I put the roof and hatch back on and see what else needs to be sealed.

With the hatch piece in place, you can see how it sits with the trunk.

149921

I'll make a dividing wall to seal the front of the trunk up to the hatch glass; only has to be about 3" or so. And to hide the trunk contents from the outside of the car, I could black out the glass for the rear few inches. Overall, I'm happy with how it came out.

Now I'm working on the power windows. More of a challenge there than the trunk, but I have something in mind that may work. Stay tuned.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

A teaser:

150044

[FFRWRX]

OK, on to the power windows. I'll go into my usual amount of detail here, so grab a coffee.

There have been many complaints about these and a lot of threads on how to modify them to get them to work better....not well, but better. So what exactly is wrong with the design?

The most basic thing is that when the window is up, there is only about 3" of glass left in the door. That is not enough to give good support to the window. BUT, if there were good tracks inside the door at the front and rear of the glass, that would help a lot. And why there isn't, and can't be, leads to other issues with the design.

This next part can get a little confusing, but may help someone who, like myself, is thinking how the window system can be improved.

The rear of the glass is just about straight, from an up-and-down viewpoint when looking at the glass from flat-on. So that will move up and down along the channel that is moulded into the roof. So far, so good. But the front of the window, roughly straight as well, is not parallel to the rear. So you can't have a track at the front since it wouldn't be parallel to the rear track and that simply can't work. I made a template that simulates the glass, and another one that simulates the roof channels.

150202

A bit hard to see, but the dashed line is about 1/4" away from the "glass" and simulates the roof channel. When the glass moves down, it would slide along the rear of the glass/channel, and here's what happens at the front:

150203

The front of the glass was lined up with the solid line. With the glass moved down only about 3", it has moved rearward and no longer has any support at the front. Again, this is with the rear of it moving down along the channel in the roof. So you can have a guide channel inside the door at the rear, but one at the front would not do any good. The glass will move out of the channel as soon as the window starts to lower. If the front of the glass was parallel to the rear, then this would work fine. But it isn't and can't be modified to make it like that. At least I'm pretty sure you can't cut tempered glass.

Assuming there is a way around that, there is another issue. The rear of the glass is curved in-and-out, when looking at the glass flat-on. This matches the curve in the roof channel. So when the window moves up and down, it goes through an arc. Nothing wrong with this, pretty much every car does it like this. Except the very old ones with flat glass, and giving it some thought, Factory Five should have just used flat glass and it all would have worked out better....but I digress.

The problem is, the front of the glass does not have a curve, it is basically flat. So think about the rear going up and down and moving in an arc (in and out from the side of the car) and the front is an 8" long section with no curve. So you can't have a track in the front since a long flat section of flat glass is trying to move in a curved track. Now some people have added a length of track to the front inside the door, and this works. It works since the non-parallel part of the glass at the front moves out of the track, but the nose of the glass right at the bottom will stay in the track. So there is support with a track like that, but only at the very bottom of the glass.

Now if you have followed all this....good. So we can add a track at the rear (inside the door) and another track at the front (that will only contain the bottom corner of the glass) and that will give decent support for the window. But it will not give much support when the window is up, and that is when it is really needed.

I played around with my templates for a long time trying to come up with a way to support the glass when it is all the way up and still have it move properly. There is only one way I could see to do that. Add a complete channel around the window, attached to the door frame and opening with the door. This used to be a common way to do it before frame-less side windows became more popular. The good news is that there is a fairly large channel moulded into the roof that can accommodate a feature like this. The bad news...well....it is a lot of finicky work. At this point I think it is going to work, but there is still a compromise in the design due to the way the glass is made (the flat at the front not matching the curve at the rear).

I couldn't find any steel channel with the correct dimensions I needed. I did find hollow rectangular tubing that would work after splitting it in half.

150204

This is 1 1/2" x 3/4" material, which gives a 3/4"x3/4" channel which is just about right. It has a wall thickness of just over .080" which was a little thicker than I wanted. But I soon realized that bending this to the shape I needed was not easy and it tended to go a bit pretzel-like, so having some extra wall thickness to smooth out later is a good thing.

This was the starting point:

150205

I bent the sections and tack-welded them together. I learned later that this was not the way to do it. Because the part on the right has to be bent in-and-out (from looking at it flat-on) the tack welds soon came apart. My tack welds tend to be as strong as a final weld, or come apart as I am brushing off the weld. My welds tend to be functional and sometimes almost pretty. But I'm good with a grinder, so all is well at the end of the day.

Anyways, I started bending it using a small hydraulic press with a block in it to keep the channel from closing up.

150206

I did this in small sections at a time to form a gentle bend. It worked fairly well for the top section. But the right section needed to be bent in the other direction on the channel, and this didn't go well. So I got out the oxy-acytelene torch to heat it and bend it. There are good and bad things about that.

To open up the channel it works well. Heat the sides red hot and open the channel. To close the channel didn't work so well. The sides tend to move out, then have to be heated and pulled in. To bend it "sideways" really doesn't work well at at; it bends, but in various directions.

Now I'll make it clear here that I am no expert at metal work; mill and lathe work, OK, but bending channel....not so much. I did get most of the frame done, but it was bent, straightened, re-bent, moved, pushed, pulled, until it was a pretty poor result. But with enough effort I was almost pleased with it. The car shows that modify and make body parts from scratch are not calling me yet.

150207

In case I wasn't clear, this will be attached to the door frame with some adjustability. Hopefully the window will slide up and down in this track and be fully supported the whole way.

There is one thing I did learn about bending the channel. It is much easier to cut it almost all the way through in several places, close or open the bend, and then weld up the cuts. Yes, there is a lot of welding and clean up needed, but the bends end up in pretty much the direction you want without also going in other directions. Of course there is welding distortion, so this is very much an iterative process.

There are still a few issues that I'm working out. Like I said, the front of the glass is flat, unlike the rear that moves in an arc. And there is the issue of the front not being parallel to the rear so not having much area for support (other than the very bottom curved part of the glass). I'm working on that area now and think it will be OK.

This has been a huge amount of work. Not there yet, but I'm still hopeful.

Rick

Don't know why I sometimes get an extra attached picture at the bottom.

[DSR-3]

Very nice.
Time and effort well-spent, and FFR should take note (copy) your work.
Some time in the not-too-distant future, you will forget the pain, but you will have a better car "forever".

[Ajzride]

Here is a similar but not identical mod on a GTM, by far the best solution and perhaps will give you some additional references. Too bad I can’t employ it with a Targa top.

https://www.ffcars.com/threads/window-treatments-gtm-327.415705/

[FFRWRX]

Having to take the door off to install or remove the outer door skin is a pain. The screws holding it on go up from the bottom and down from the top, so they are not accessible with the door installed. I don't like that.

With the outer door skin removable you can set the door latch and work on the power windows, get everything set up, then put the door panel on.

One way to do this would be to bond some brackets onto the door skin and use those to bolt to the frame. I almost did that, then came up with what I think is an easier way.

I modified some T-nuts (1/4" thread) by grinding off the prongs and shortening them a little.

150327

Then enlarged the holes in the bottom of the door and pressed them in. I used a little instant glue on the other side to hold them in place, but not sure that was needed.

150328

I enlarged the holes in the frame that the 1/4" bolts normally go through, enough for the body of the T-nuts to fit in. I cut some bolts short enough to engage the thread but not stick through the T-nut. There is enough clearance under the door to keep the panel contacting the rocker panel area to allow the shank of the T-nuts to go under the door frame, then the bolts pull it up into position. I put a rubber washer and a steel one so the protrusion of the T-nut shank above the door frame plate would not cause the bolts to bottom out without clamping the door skin.

150329

I was going to do the same thing at the top, if I decide to not use the provided mirror mount. Then I had a better idea. I threaded the holes in the mirror mount that normally bolt to the door frame, through the skin. The holes are almost the correct size for a 5/16" coarse thread; just a quick pass with the correct size drill first.

150330

Enlarging the holes in the frame and the door skin, and the bolts go from inside the door, up through the frame, the skin, and then thread into the mirror mount. Again, cut them to the correct length so they don't quite stick through the mirror mount.

150375

150376

If you want to get fancy you can use some sort of covers for the bolt holes in the mount. Even if you are not going to use the stock mirror mount, you can cut it down and use it for this scheme, as it helps fill the gap between the door and the A-pillar.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Continuing on with the power window modifications.

It is difficult to bend the track so it fits the shape and curve of the window glass very closely. I was having a problem with the front section:

150455

Only the bottom corner of the glass is in the channel and if the glass does not move precisely, it comes out of that part of the track. One issue with it slipping out here is that the glass can then move as it goes up and not go into the track along the top. After a lot of puzzling on what to do, I found a simple solution. Instead of cutting the rectangular tubing down the middle to make the channels, I only cut one side of it off to leave a deep channel. I cut slots in it to bend it to match the travel of the glass, then welded the slots.

150456

Since this is in the door, it doesn't show. This traps more of the front of the glass. Also, the track is "thicker" than the thickness of the glass by a fair bit, so the flat glass moving in a curved track should work OK.

Another issue I found is that the track at the rear puts the glass right in line with the door release tab in the latch mechanism. This probably depends on where the door frame ends up; it can vary on how close it is in-and-out depending how the latch is set up. I bent the tab at the bottom (where the loose bolt goes through to activate the door release) but that didn't solve the problem. I had to get more serious to move it out of the way.

So with that done, does the glass go up and down? I didn't want to motor it up and down since the glass is riding in the metal channel and I was afraid of breaking it. But I tried it in different positions to see how things looked.

150457

150458

I hadn't fixed the latch yet in that picture so I couldn't put the glass any lower. The glass was hitting the latch tab:

150459

But the good thing was that the glass stayed fully in the forward track and gave good support. The bottom of the glass is fully in the channel and the top of the front portion is still partially in.

150460

With the door panel on it looks pretty good. I realize I still have to cut some of it away for the glass to go in.

150461

150462

I'll clean up the channel and paint it. I have to add the channel liner that the glass slides on, then I'll try it with the the glass in and the regulator hooked up. If it works, one more door to go.

Rick

[roadrashrob]

While I'm far away from getting to the door window installation, I totally love what you did and will use it for inspiration when the time comes. Given all the challenges you had bending u-channel, and getting it to fit, what are your thoughts on possibly 3D printing a channel? I haven't done 3D printing yet, and would imagine I'd have to connect multiple sections, but the curved channel may be much easier to fit. Thoughts?

[FFRWRX]

While I'm far away from getting to the door window installation, I totally love what you did and will use it for inspiration when the time comes. Given all the challenges you had bending u-channel, and getting it to fit, what are your thoughts on possibly 3D printing a channel? I haven't done 3D printing yet, and would imagine I'd have to connect multiple sections, but the curved channel may be much easier to fit. Thoughts?

Interesting, but I don't think it would be good. Assuming you are talking of 3D printing with plastic. I don't think the 3D printed channel would be strong enough, but I generally print with PLA, PETG, sometimes ABS. I know there are stronger materials now, but they generally take a higher temperature and I can't use them. So maybe with a channel designed to maximize strength it might work. Would be a challenge to 3D model the channel, but maybe a fun challenge.

I would be a little concerned with the strength when the window is down and someone uses the channel to close the door. The steel one I have is plenty strong for that. The good thing about 3D printing is that it is pretty cheap to try things. Model up a section of the channel, print it, and see how strong it seems.

I'm hoping what I learned with bending the channel for the first window will make the second one easier. Heating and bending is not the way to go. Cut slots, bend to open/close the slots, and weld. Maybe with a proper pattern of the window (with the correct curves in it) a fabrication place could make a nice channel with proper bending equipment? This is obviously a huge experiment for me, and there are likely better/easier ways to do it. A home-made channel roller?

I appreciate the interest.

Rick

[Ajzride]

I will most likely be 3D printing some form of channel for mine. Print with PLA and then skin in fiberglass for strength.

[FFRWRX]

Still working on the power windows.

I've had it working with power, but not happy with it yet. The tracks need some tweaking. This is all the way down (and maybe even a little more than I'll set it since the bottom of the window is just about hitting the door skin.

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All the way up:

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I had to notch the door frame in this area to clear the glass as it went down.

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I put some paint on the frame but did a sloppy job with it. Need to smooth it out and do a better job.

The main thing I'm not happy with is how it mates up with the rubber window strip along the door. With the window down, there is no gap. But with the window up, there is a large gap around the middle of the window. I cut the curve in the door skin to clear the window in all positions. But I think I need to try and move the top of the window inwards when it is down so I can move the rubber strip closer to the glass and not have a gap when it is up. For those that have the windows done, do you have a fairly consistent space between the door cutout and the window in all positions, so the rubber is rubbing evenly all along?

I'm working on the second window now and I'll see if I can get it to fit better with the rubber strip. If so, I'll come back and tweak this one.

Rick

[turbomacncheese]

Man, that shifter and bell crank....noice.
I took a detour on my 818 that started with a 3d printer and has resulted in a cnc router of my own just because I want to make some of my own parts. I'm not too proud to say that I have trouble conceptualizing parts to do complicated things like this, but with all those fantastic pictures you took, I have a fighting chance. I think that makes your work DOUBLE impressive. I'm also really encouraged that you managed to shorten your cables. Well done all around!

[FFRWRX]

Thank you! I started with a cnc router as well for wood projects. Then started doing aluminum on it. Works well as long as you keep the cutter lubricated so the aluminum doesn't stick to it. If it does, instant ruin of the cutter and the project. I bought a small cnc mill with spray coolant (the "mist" coolant system could be used on a cnc router just as well) and an enclosure. Pretty much all the parts I make are what is referred to as 2.5D, as they are basically flat plates with various cutouts and external shapes. And it is sometimes a challenge to get the design from what you picture in your head to something that you can actually make. But fun all around!

Rick

[FFRWRX]

This has been a huge challenge.

I had the drivers side window working fairly well; not perfect, but not bad. So I decided to move on to the passenger side as that should be easy with everything I've leaned. Huh!

I had the basic frame done in a few hours and spent the next 6 days cutting/welding/bending/correcting...not easy at all. But I did learn more about how all this works. The main thing was that with the drivers side window I had the glass supported at the front and rear by tracks in the door, and the center of the glass by the power window motor assembly. That is too many supports fighting with each other. And as I said previously, because of the shape of the glass, the front support can't really be close fitting to the glass. So after days of trying to get the passenger side to work, I realized what the issue was. I cut out most of the front channel that is in the door to leave the glass supported by the rear channel and the center regulator (the motor assembly). It isn't perfect, but it works pretty well now. And the glass is nicely supported when up, down, and anywhere else in the travel.

Some tips for those that might want to try this. First thing....don't! Sort of kidding, but it is really frustrating when you realize that the shape of the glass is not designed to let the window go up and down properly. May sound strange but you'll find that out when you put some time into the windows, whether modifying them or not.

From the video, you'll see some of these details. The front of the glass comes out of the track when the window moves down. This works well since there are still 2 points of support. I also made the bottom of that track widen out so the glass finds its way back into it when on the way up. At the rear you'll see the top of the glass comes out of that track when the window moves down. I don't think the drivers side was doing that, but there is definitely a difference between the 2 sides. On the passenger side the window can go all the way down, so obviously the track is a different shape. The window moving out of the track at the top may be fixable with adjusting the regulator angle and glass support, but it isn't too much of a concern since it does work well, and it is still well supported by the glass below that point.

One other thing you'll see. The area of the door skin where the rubber strip contacts the glass looks all messed up. That's because it is. I cut that area out a bit too much and had to put some of the fibreglass back in. I'll smooth it down later. The tracks are lined with a felt-like material that is meant for this purpose. I bought a wide roll of it and glued it in place.

I haven't put the seal around the roof/door opening yet. When it is in place it will seal against the new window channel. And I bought stuff made for a 1/4" thick edge.

So now I'll go back to the drivers side and see if I can apply what I learned on the passenger side and get it working a bit better.

I've probably forgotten some details, so feel free to ask if you think you want to try this modification.

The video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlDmw1MR4to

Rick

[mikeb75]

Looking good!
IMO, add body work to the front edge of the window track to blend in the recess of the A-pillar to the door skin (I did on mine), it will look so much better.

[Ajzride]

I've been watching this intently trying to determine what I want to do so that I can get a decent window solution for my targa top. Since I can't put tracks all the way up the side, I have to come up with something else. You have me leaning towards throwing away the curved glass and getting something that is flat since I'm making 3 of the 4 mating surfaces from scratch.

[FFRWRX]

Looking good!
IMO, add body work to the front edge of the window track to blend in the recess of the A-pillar to the door skin (I did on mine), it will look so much better.

I saw what you did with yours. Very nice! When watching my window go up and down I did see that the channel I made is fairly well contained within the moulding along the roof, but that area doesn't look right (the triangle at the bottom of the A-pillar is recessed in a bit much).

151316

I was going to mount the mirror somewhere else and reduce the gap between the A-pillar and the top of the door, but then decided not to. I'll probably make a new mirror mount piece that moves the mirror rearward a little; with that triangle area and the window channel the mirror might be blocked a little from the driver. I was thinking of making a piece to build up the triangle, but not have it attached to the door like you did. Maybe a 3D printed or CNC'd aluminum piece with a logo or something on it? Maybe the new mirror mount piece will extend the full length of that space and help seal it.

I took a look at what my drivers side window needs to get it working better. Then went back in the house. :(

Rick

[FFRWRX]

I've been watching this intently trying to determine what I want to do so that I can get a decent window solution for my targa top. Since I can't put tracks all the way up the side, I have to come up with something else. You have me leaning towards throwing away the curved glass and getting something that is flat since I'm making 3 of the 4 mating surfaces from scratch.

The issue to check with flat glass is how it goes down into the door. Since it can't "curve" along a track and it has to be contained within the door. I did wonder briefly if something could be bonded to the front of the glass to create a curve similar to the rear of the glass, and also be parallel with the rear. Then tracks in the door all the way down should be possible. That would mean modifications to the roof piece at the A-pillar and I didn't want to get into that. There really isn't a huge curve in the glass, so maybe flat glass would be a good solution. Either way, with the window all the way up there isn't much supporting it within the door. Maybe something bonded to the bottom of the door glass to attach a track to?

Rick

[lance corsi]

2002 S-10 pickup truck window channels are what I used. They have the proper curvature to match our windows. Takes about 10 min to remove and they were cheap.

[Kiwi Dave]

Here's a post about Mr Corsi's S-10 rails:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?27468-Discoveries-spleen-venting-amp-818C-side-windows&p=447240&viewfull=1#post447240

Cheers

Dave

[lance corsi]

But wait, there’s more! The following are also candidates for window channel donors;
2007 Mazda 5 van rear door glass
2009 Ford exploder, front doors
2003 Lincoln Navigator front & rear dooors
2007 Saturn outlook front & rear doors
Hth!

[FFRWRX]

I went back and tweaked the drivers side window frame and got it working very well now. I think the window will go all the way down as well; I'll know better when the door skin is on.

A quick little video showing it in action:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CQFrLD6sEo

To run the wires into the door, I bought some guides for that purpose. Basically it is a plastic tube with some aluminum end fittings. It attaches to the door side and the tube slides in the other end attached to the pillar part of the car body. It worked well enough, but because of the geometry of these doors the tube would bend as the door opened and closed. Probably not an issue, but I didn't like that. I think with "normal" car doors the front of the door and the car pillar are parallel so the tube would slide more than bend.

I gave this a bit of thought and came up with a fairly simple solution. I 3D printed a ball swivel that attaches to the door so that swivels instead of the tube bending. The neat thing about 3D printing is that I printed it with a .010" gap between the ball and the housing so it printed as one piece. Then just break it loose after printing. It was printed as the one on the right and the left one shows it pivoted around:

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You can see it in action here with the door open and closed. Note the how the ball has swivelled:

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I've been working on the door skins a bit too. The easiest way to cut them out for the window opening, with the full frame, was to cut out more than enough and then bond back in a piece to fill the gap. Since you can't put the door skin on with the window frame in place until you've cut the opening, and don't know how much to cut from the skin without the skin in place, I found this worked out fine. Some pictures of a large piece bonded in, marked for cutting, then cut, then filled.

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I held the piece in place with masking tape from the inside and used instant glue to hold it. Then flipped it over, took off the tape, and put some matt and epoxy over the seam. Flipped it back over, dug out a small groove where the seam is and put more epoxy. I tinted it red since I had some colouring stuff; didn't really need to though.

I'll fit the door skins back on and then see what I want to do about the area inside of the window. That will likely be a removable piece of the fibreglass door skin.

Rick

[PhilO]

Do you think door pin contacts would work as well instead of the wires? Or is there not a good place to put the contacts like below?

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/kcw-10631?seid=srese1&gclid=CjwKCAjw1JeJBhB9EiwAV612y_IBeFClYaJIacR5tc8I ag34Uu4cbNbveUHU6iJCrSEDMkRqR55cehoCGOwQAvD_BwE

[FFRWRX]

I looked at those pin contact units a while ago and thought they were pretty cool. You would have to make up the brackets to hold it in place in a position so it would work properly; they have to break contact with the door open. I think it would have to be "inside" the hinge point so a gap opens when the door is open.

One reason I didn't go with that is in case I want to raise or lower the window when the door is open. That, and I've got enough "fussy" stuff going on with the doors without adding to the confusion. :)

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Or more accurately, moron doors!

The interior door pull. Yes, a minor part, but if you were running a company no matter how big or small would you feel OK shipping this out:

154376

How do you actually produce a part with such huge burrs?

OK, now we go to mount it. It goes where the red line is on the inner door panel:

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According to the instructions I have, it just attaches to that plastic panel. So when you pull the door closed you try and pull the inner door panel off. Nice design. Since I wanted it a little more secure than that, I put the panel in place and marked where the attaching bolts go:

154378

One goes where the tape is, and nowhere close to any of the metal in the door. The other just hits one of the bars; so with tolerances it may attach to that bar (but certainly not with the hardware supplied) or may miss it.

So am I doing something wrong, or did they really design this to attach to a flimsy plastic panel? And since it is closer to the hinge line than the rear part of the door, I can imagine a fair bit of force being put on it. And don't get me started on that door panel not really fitting since the inset part of it is up solid against the door framing before it is fully in place. It really has to be pulled in hard at the bottom.

I'm going to add in some additional metal so the inner pull attaches to something solid.

Rick

[lance corsi]

Rick, I feel your pain. I gave my door panels away after seeing the many issues. I made some from sheet aluminum and they look *****in.

[lance corsi]

They look great!

[FFRWRX]

Yea, I just want to get the damn things finished and move on to other areas. But I'll look at them again and see what else I might want to do. I'll take a look at what you did Lance....edit: Can't find any pictures of what you did.

For those that aren't here yet, here is a bit more detail.

This is a frame member in the door:

154383

When you put the door panel in place, the part of the door panel circled in red will hit that frame part. This is before the part circled in blue is pulled in enough to allow the door to close. So you have to pull the lower part, which is only a couple inches away, in really hard and hope the screws (that go into plastic) hold.

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You would think that since you are designing both the door structure and the inner panel from scratch you would make them work nicely together. You would be wrong.

Oh, then there's this gap with the panel in place:

154440

Can't move the panel back at all since it is hitting at the top and bottom ends. The fibreglass is up against the metal of the latch mount, so it can't be pulled in either. Just a really bad fit that will have to be filled somehow.

Rick

[aquillen]

It took me about 0.01mSec to decide an internal bracket had to be in there so it wasn't just pulling on the plastic. I rarely have felt like FFR should have done better - because well "kit car" and I know what they've been like before the FFR guys were even born...

But this door pull, from the ROUGH stamping itself to the (really?) mounting plan falls just a bit short of "minimum standards".

[J R Jones]

Having background in product development a basic tenet is you can fix the problem(s) once before production or a thousand(?) times thereafter.
This is opportunistic, if a dealer were in the middle he would negotiate a "fix" or stop selling the product. A guarantee or warranty would police negligence, commitment is not negotiable.
Skeptics like myself question Is this the exception or the rule? Well, actually I am keeping track.
jim

[TheHelixx]

Oh, then there's this gap with the panel in place:

154440

Can't move the panel back at all since it is hitting at the top and bottom ends. The fibreglass is up against the metal of the latch mount, so it can't be pulled in either. Just a really bad fit that will have to be filled somehow.

Rick

Idk if you want to go this far, but I made 2 cuts in the door skins then pulled them closed with glass tape. It tightened up that gap and helped with possible rubbing into the jam. I just put a few layers of fiberglass on the inside to hold the new shape and then filled the outside till smooth.

154476

I also abandoned the plastic door panels and made new ones out of fiberglass sheet from Home Depot. I made an inner lip out of fiberglass and drilled for grommets.

154478154479154480

[J R Jones]

Idk if you want to go this far, but I made 2 cuts in the door skins then pulled them closed with glass tape. It tightened up that gap and helped with possible rubbing into the jam. I just put a few layers of fiberglass on the inside to hold the new shape and then filled the outside till smooth.

154476

I also abandoned the plastic door panels and made new ones out of fiberglass sheet from Home Depot. I made an inner lip out of fiberglass and drilled for grommets.

154478154479154480

Helix,
That is bloody magnificent, I expect even Art is impressed. I suspect however, in view of the heat gun, your Home Depot sheet is ABS plastic. You demonstrate remarkable skill heat forming it into a functional and attractive shape. Compound contours are not easy.
I have used Home Depot "Dairy Board", (polyester sheets for wash-down walls) as my backing board on vinyl trim panels for a street rod. The dairy board will not distort when wet like wood paneling.
jim

[FFRWRX]

Idk if you want to go this far, but I made 2 cuts in the door skins then pulled them closed with glass tape. It tightened up that gap and helped with possible rubbing into the jam. I just put a few layers of fiberglass on the inside to hold the new shape and then filled the outside till smooth.

154476


I’m not sure from your picture where this is. Part of the gap I’m showing is where the latch mounts on the door frame, so the fiberglass is up tight against the steel so can’t be pulled in.

[TheHelixx]

Helix,
That is bloody magnificent, I expect even Art is impressed. I suspect however, in view of the heat gun, your Home Depot sheet is ABS plastic. You demonstrate remarkable skill heat forming it into a functional and attractive shape. Compound contours are not easy.
I have used Home Depot "Dairy Board", (polyester sheets for wash-down walls) as my backing board on vinyl trim panels for a street rod. The dairy board will not distort when wet like wood paneling.
jim

Thanks, but it’s the same stuff your talking about. I used it as a canvas and then wrapped a layer of fiberglass over the top to give it a finished look, the speaker and dash blend are cut out of it and I used fleece over the bump and tucked in behind where I cut out so I had less to fill. It’s def not perfect, but I didn’t need to put screws all the way around it. Once I coated it in texture and painted it, it’s not too bad.

[TheHelixx]

I’m not sure from your picture where this is. Part of the gap I’m showing is where the latch mounts on the door frame, so the fiberglass is up tight against the steel so can’t be pulled in.

If you look at FFRs picture closely, you’ll see they both cut the outside edge at the top further back and also put the panel over the edge to get it closer in the middle. The cuts I added were to pull the inside edge of the skin up and in to follow the contour better. It’s mostly when you close the door.. when the door is perfectly square it wants to rub in r tree he bottom to back just naturally because of the swing. If you make bigger gaps then you don’t need it I guess.

154494

[FFRWRX]

Here is one area where the gap is pretty large:

154496

Can't pull the fiberglass in since it is up against the steel door frame. And can't move the panel back any more. But I know what you mean about rubbing when the door is closing. I'm getting rubbing in the same area (where I can't pull the fibreglass in). With the door closed it is fine, even a bit large of a gap. And the door skin is thin enough in this area I can't really sand anything off it.

Going to make my own door panel to help with things like this large gap, the door pull having no metal under it, the strange way the inner panel goes from inside to outside at the rear corner, the inner panel actually being outside the car at the front......

Rick

[Ajzride]

Aloha818 had the best solution I've seen so far for the door striker/panel. Add a lip to the fiberglass:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?11586-Honolulu-818S-Hana-(work-build)-Thread&p=161744&viewfull=1#post161744

[J R Jones]

Thanks, but it’s the same stuff your talking about. I used it as a canvas and then wrapped a layer of fiberglass over the top to give it a finished look, the speaker and dash blend are cut out of it and I used fleece over the bump and tucked in behind where I cut out so I had less to fill. It’s def not perfect, but I didn’t need to put screws all the way around it. Once I coated it in texture and painted it, it’s not too bad.

Helixx, Ahh the Frankenstein technique, know it well. I buy FRP sheets and tubes for similar efforts. Thin materials can be bent over wood fixtures, fastened and bonded, then fasteners removed.
I have epoxy sheet flares bent to fit and if they break loose I do not want to be in close proximity.
I have one quarter panel that is not symmetrical at the wheel opening and has to come-in. Another pie-cut bend-bond exercise.
jim

[FFRWRX]

Started making inner door panels and realized that I have to sort out the inner door release first. And an inner door pull. And how the lock works. I generally don't think ahead too much (or enough) and just jump right in.

So I cut an inner panel from some thin plywood as a starting point.

154552

How to do the top of it and attach it there? Well, this is how doors were done 100 years ago, so good enough for me:

154553

This piece is shaped and attached at the rear with a small bracket bonded to the door skin. The tinfoil is just covering the fibreglass piece while it was curing, to hold the angle bracket in place.

154554

At the front, I had made a new mirror mount that moves the mirror rearward a bit, and also allows me to close and seal the gap between the top of the door and the bottom of the A-pillar. This is a picture from when I was going to use the plastic inner door panel. I've milled a shallow slot in the aluminum piece that will have a sealing strip bonded to it.

154555

Then the upper wood piece screws into the aluminum mirror mount from below:

154556

There is a small rabbet in that wood piece that the door panel will go into. It is rounded on the inside and outside edges. The idea is that the upper wood piece, covered in vinyl, will be bolted in place and the door panel will be the removable part, clipped into the upper wood piece and retained at the bottom. Some form of door pull will be bolted through the inner door panel into the steel framework. That's how it looks in my head right now.

Working on the various linkages now for the door release and lock.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

The instructions say to put a zip-tie to hold the lock mechanism in the unlock position. Then they supply a small bracket to go on the lock cylinder, presumably to activate the lock...hmmmm. No info on how to hook that up though.

Since I'm using the supplied Miata inner door release which has the lock lever on it, and I have the actuating rods, might as well hook up the lock mechanism.

These are the rods:

154570

The long one is for the door release, and the other ones that go through the reversing bracket are for the lock. The easiest way to use this is to forget the reversing bracket (which would have to be mounted somewhere) and just join the 2 shorter rods into one long one for the lock.

The blue is the lock, shown in the unlock position. The red is the door release. The bracket from the lock cylinder is not here yet.

154571

I made a short joiner piece from steel and silver brazed the 2 lock rods together. Could have just used a longer piece of rod, but didn't have any handy.

154572

Now for the tricky part. The tube piece joins the rods together for the lock. But there needs to be another rod going from that to the bracket on the lock cylinder. With everything in place I used instant glue to attach the rod in the correct place. Then, how to join it. I couldn't see how to hold it in place while silver brazing it and get it exactly right. So I used a method sort of like we used to use to make pushrods for R/C aircraft. May seem a bit crude, but I think it will do.

I wrapped the joint with some cloth, soaked it with CA glue, hit it with accelerator. Makes a rock-hard joint. Yea, looks weird.

154573

With the rods in place, you can see how they all hook up.

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Everything works nicely! Now I think I can continue with the door panel.

Rick

[J R Jones]

I am anticipating that the remote lock/unlock will eliminate the key-lock complexity.
I wonder is copper crimp sleeves for cable would work to join the rods? The crimp could be followed by solder or braze.
jim

[FFRWRX]

Been a while since I updated my build. The main reason is that I took time off to work on machining stuff in the basement. The main project there is making a 1/5 scale gas powered V8 engine:

170456

This is a "Little Demon" that is all machined from blocks, rods, etc, no castings. A real challenge.

But back to my 818C build.

I spent a lot of time working on the door gaps, and you can see my issues here, so I won't repeat my rant:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?43411-Is-it-possible-to-get-a-decent-door-gap-on-the-latch-side

Took the roof off the car again; I've had it on for the last time many times now!

I bonded on studs to be able to pull it down to meet the rear fenders at the rear corners. Also put some sound deadening stuff on it. Not sure how/what to cover that with. I'm thinking of a foam board panel with the headliner material glued onto it. Then that covered panel will be attached to the roof with glue, double sided tape, or some other means.

170455

My partially built kit came with the hood hinge, but it was not installed, so needed glassing onto the hood. I cut some tapered wood spacers to match the contour of the hood and the hinge plates:

170463

170462

170461

That hood is very flexible! Have to be careful opening and closing it when the car is painted since it won't automatically line up with the fenders as it closes. Not a big deal though as it does keep it light and, hopefully, there won't be a need to open it often.

So now that the studs are bonded onto the roof, what to do on the body-side to be able to pull them down? I was going to use a simple flat piece of stock on an angle across the rear corner of the car, from the rear piece to the fender, with a hole in it for the threaded stud to pass through. But since I have the trunk kit installed it isn't that easy at the rear. Also, I wanted something more or less permanently attached to the car, but not get in the way of taking panels or the trunk pieces out later. The reason for that is to paint the car properly would mean taking the panels off the car and I didn't want a loose bracket piece getting lost.

So after much thought, and attempts at getting the angles correct on these, I made up some brackets:

170459

These attach to the front of the rear fender flange. I used some counter-sunk screws into threaded holes in the brackets, and also a little epoxy. So they become part of the rear fender if pieces are later removed:

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While working on the brackets I found out that I can remove the trunk from the rear of the car with the rear body panel off. I needed to do that since I forgot to insulate the bottom of the trunk and it is above the exhaust. Also gave good access to tidy things up:


170460

So the roof went back on (for the last time?).

I took a break from the mechanical stuff to take the seams off the body. I was pleasantly surprised how well that worked out. The ones on the roof smoothed down very nicely and no filler will be needed. The front fenders will need a little, but it went well. I used a random orbital sander with 180 grit to start with and took it up to 400 for now. I'll do at least 600 after filling the areas that need it.

170457

I'm debating with myself on painting or wrapping the car. I found a place that gave me an estimate of $10K Canadian (about $7,800 US as I write this). Not sure how that compares with others today, but I think it is pretty good. The guy does have experience with fibreglass, has done a few "kit cars", and my brother has had work done at his shop and it is very good. He will finish the gaps, take the panels off to prep and paint, and then reinstall them. But he hasn't seen the car yet, only pictures and my description, and my thoughts on the amount of bodywork needed compared with other cars I've built; very little, I think based on how good the panels look. But I can see the estimate going up due to the complexity of removing the various panels compared with something like a Cobra which is basically one piece.

I am going to get an estimate for wrapping it, probably later this week. I talked with a shop that does very nice work. I don't have an estimate yet for that, but I'm guessing $4K? My brother keeps telling me that wraps only last about 5 years (actually, they can last longer with a car that is cared for and garaged as this one will be). I told him "when is the last time I kept a car for more than 2 years?". One factor is that the bodyshop is over an hour away, so I would have to transport the car there for him to see it. If the estimate goes up then I'm sort of stuck at that point. With wrapping, I assume that the estimate will be pretty much the final price. I can leave the panels installed loosely so he can to a better job with the seams between panels. And the wrapping place is 15 minutes away, so I can easily drop in if there are any questions.

I'd appreciate any thought or information on paint vs wrapping. And no, I don't want to do either myself. I have no idea what a car like this will be worth when it is done, but right now I don't see the $6K+ difference being worth it. Some people may not want to buy a car that has been wrapped (I certainly wouldn't if it was an "ordinary" car) since you don't know what is under the wrap. But with a car like this I don't think that would be a huge factor. But maybe I'm wrong.

And that's it for now.

Rick

[Ajzride]

If there is a high probability you will sell the car, I think a wrap makes more sense. You are correct you will not get 6K more for a painted car versus a wrapped one. And with a wrapped one it much easier for the next owner to make it the color they want.

[Scott Meyer]

Rick,

I may not have done a thorough job documenting my body work, and painting…but will say, the 818 was one of the hardest and most complex project I have ever done. I did all the bodywork and paint on my F5 Cobra back in 2010…documented on the old FFCars.com forum. After that I did a complete repaint on 2 daily driver cars and then partially painted an experimental Sonex aircraft I built in 2013-16.

So…while I’m not an expert, I’ve done enough bodywork to tell you it’s a rabbit hole to make it look good. $10K CAD seems like the going price and if you feel it’s worth it for you, do it. Wrapping this type of body with the individual panels and complex shapes will be challenging to make it look good.

One nitpicking item I had was the quality of the panels and fiberglass molding. Many areas around the nose and wheel wells had big air gaps embedded under the gel coat, and as I sanded the seams, it opened up the “holes”…a never ending process to fill and sand.

If you decide to go forward please post updates…it’s fun to watch what others do!

[FFRWRX]

I just finished sanding down all the mold seams and filling where required. I probably used about a tablespoon of filler for the whole car. Yes, I was shocked. In most of the areas the panel level was very good, so when the seams were sanded down no filler was needed. Only at the bottom of the passenger side front fender was there a mismatch. Could have almost sanded it out, but would have gone through the gelcoat pretty seriously, so used filler there; one of the few places other than small air holes that opened up.

Sanding the seams opened up a few air bubbles, but none larger than maybe 1/8" diameter and only a couple of those. I am really impressed with the molding of the panels as far as the finish goes. As far as gaps so, less impressed. I just did a trial fit with the windshield (fits well) and you can see where I've used filler:

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I did the prep work on my F5 Cobra back in the late '90's. It was the first one into Canada. It needed a LOT of filler in certain areas.

Scott, with all the bodywork and paint you have done, you are an expert. Many bodyshops do a lot of repair work, but not entire fibreglass cars. And my fear is the "rabbit hole" you mention. I think this looks almost ready to paint now. The bodyshop may have other ideas and the price could go way up. The guy that does the wrap (an ex body man that obviously recommends wrapping over painting now) said that if anything ever goes wrong with a panel that can be removed (mess it up finishing the car, or something under the gelcoat comes through later) I take the panel off, take it to him and for $200 he re-wraps it. Yes, you can do the same thing with paint but I don't think it would be that easy. I'll see what the wrap guys says when he sees the actual car.

Rick

[roadrashrob]

Rick,

Keep up posted on what the wrap guy says. I am leaning very strongly to wrapping initially as well, and would be curious what a "professional" says.

-Rob

[FFRWRX]

Working away on it. Got the rear hatch installed. Just a couple pointers that may help others.

The hinge mounts, that clamp around the roll bar, contact the headliner insulation I put on it. This is sound deadening stuff that is only about 1/8" thick, and I had to pull the roof up to get the hinge clamps into position. So if you have any thickness of headliner at all, be aware.

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But it did all go together pretty well. There is aluminum bonded into the fibreglass for the hinge bolts to go in. Drill the holes with a #7 bit and thread them 1/4-20. WD-40 is great when threading aluminum. And the aluminum isn't terribly thick so don't go crazy with the bolt torque. I did have to trim a fair bit off both sides of the hatch to get it to fit without hitting the sides. I have some temporary blocks to space it up a bit since that makes a difference to the gaps on the sides; the sides are tapered so the higher it sits the more the gap opens up. Not sure what I am supposed to use for the weather stripping. I have a bunch of F5 supplied stuff, but what I think I am supposed to use doesn't really fit over the fibreglass lip and doesn't look right; the rubber seal is on the end of the piece, not the side if that makes any sense. I'll order something suitable.

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I remembered that I have to get the wipers sorted out, since that means cutting the hood. I'm using the F5 supplied 2 wiper kit for a couple reasons. First, it came with the partially assembled car I bought, so I have all the bits. Second, the pictures I've seen of single wiper setups either don't cover enough of the windshield or sit too high up on it when parked; or both.

So putting the wiper assembly in place:

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It sits right where my remote master cylinder is! Why didn't you guys tell me? OK, so before I install the wiper system I have to remove the remote cylinder unit and re-mount it a little further away. Not a huge deal but I don't have any stuff for the hoses, so off to see what I can find.

Rick

[Frank818]

Second, the pictures I've seen of single wiper setups either don't cover enough of the windshield or sit too high up on it when parked; or both.

Hmm not that much. Depends where you locate the motor and the angle. Also you have to modify the little arm that swings so the 1 wiper can wipe the entire surface. Plus, you use a longer wiper blade. It doesn't cover, in % of glass surface, as much as 2 but it's close enough for most people. My wiper blade wipes up to 1in of the other side's windshield surround lolll. The blade sits pretty low and at least half of it if not more is covered by the hood, most normal cars have much visible wipers.

In the end though whether you choose 1 or 2 wipers you got to work somewhat to make the solution fit and wipe properly. Of course nothing is easy. :)

[FFRWRX]

I removed the remote master cylinder assembly and will make a bracket to mount it after the wipers are done. You are supposed to rivet the part of the roof that is under the windshield (fibreglass piece) to the framework in front of the windshield. Mine was sitting about 1/2” too high. I didn’t think it was a good idea to pull it down, so just made some spacer blocks and used screws instead of rivets. So I had to use a spacer block under the wiper motor bracket as well.

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I mounted the cowl piece that the wipers stick through:

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The instructions say it is supposed to be flush with the rear of the hood. Obviously, mine isn’t. Wondered about just leaving it and making sure the mating piece that goes on the hood matches up with it. Then thought I’ll just trim it down. So scribed it and cut it off on the bandsaw.

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Now for the bigger step, cutting the hood. Marked:

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And cut. With the trim piece in it looks pretty good. A small drum sander on a drill makes quick work of removing fibreglass to trim up to a line in the corners.

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While I’m messing around with that area of the hood, I installed these hold downs. I have 5 boxes of the F5 hood pins, but saw these used by someone else and really like them.

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I found the easiest way to line things up is to not put the push-button part in the hood, and play with the other part until it is centred in the hole and the top of the ball is just about flush with the top of the hood.

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The only minor issue is that the mounts for the pins are too low for these, so something has to be extended.

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I sacrificed 2 of the supplied hood pins. Drilled and tapped the end and threaded in the stem part of the new hold downs. Since the threaded part is ½” diameter and so is the hole it goes in, there really isn’t any room for adjustment laterally. I bent the mounting flange to get the ball to line up with the hole.

Pretty happy with the wiper setup so far. I know I criticize F5 for a lot for things done poorly on this car, but the wiper assembly is a nice piece of design and fabrication. The large bracket that holds the wiper motor and pivot bushings, and the way they modify the hood to fit the wipers……well done.

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And I like the way it looks with the dedicated area for the wipers. Not that the wipers are hidden at all, but reminds me a little of hidden wipers and wiper doors and other features that came and went. I’m thinking I’ll leave those parts black (repaint them or something) to contrast with whatever color I do the car.

Still working on the hood/fender/A-pillar/door interface to get everything to clear. Will be some fairly large gaps in this area, but not sure anything can be done about that given the way it is designed. But from any distance it should look OK and I'll see about some sort of small filler piece going in from underneath.

Rick

[Frank818]

Are you using springs on your Quik-Latches? I use their 20lbs spring and it works super well, it pushes easily the panel up when you press the button.
Overall I fitted 8 of those latches and am using them all the time, they never failed, nor worn down. Good addition to your build!

[FFRWRX]

Didn't think of using springs. And when I first read what you wrote I thought, what do I need springs for?

But a little more thought, and maybe it would be good. When I close the hood I sort of have to guide it onto the pins as it is pretty floppy. Springs would leave it a little above the catch as I lower the hood from the front, then I go to the sides and snap them down. And releasing it would probably be better too.

Thank you Frank! I'll give it a shot.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

A little more playing around with the hood.

There was a large gap on the passenger side of the hood/fender interface. Driver's side wasn't too bad. The curve of the hood on the passenger side didn't match the curve of the fender. There was very little gap at the ends but a large space in the middle.

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The easiest way to improve it was to cut the hood, at the front, back to this line and then blend it back about 8".

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Of course that would leave a larger gap, but then I could move the fender in closer to the hood, leaving the rear of it where it is. Sort of letting it pivot at the rear attachment point. One other thing I did.

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That picture doesn't really help much, but that is the underside of the hood, passenger side, with the front at the bottom of the picture. When I trimmed the front of it back it took off the downturned lip on the hood, so I put some masking tape on the outside and built up a small lip again with fibreglass. At the same time I built up the lip going farther back (built it up on the inside) then sanded it down on the outside to help it fit a bit better and still leave some downturned lip.

There is still a larger gap on the passenger side than the driver side, but can't really help that without major surgery. There is quite a severe draft angle on both the hood and the fender, so even with the hood touching the fender at the bottom of the interface, there is a decent gap at the top. I suppose sanding the hood lip pretty much completely off would help by allowing the hood to move closer to the fender. But then the hood would be even more flexible than it is now. The lip on mine is about 3/8" high in most areas. I'm trying to minimize the amount of fibreglassing I do. Especially with it being so hot out that it sets up very quickly, even with a fraction of the amount of hardener I normally use. Does make for quicker work though!

For those that haven't played with all the gaps in attempt to get them all to look nice (and even those that have) it isn't a matter of working on it until all the gaps are perfect. It is a matter of working on it until you give up and say "good enough". I'm nearing that stage.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

For those with the 818S, ignore this. You are going to say that your panels fit well and there isn't much of a gap. For those with the 818C (with the roof), this gap is another of those things that Factory Five is obviously OK with but should be embarrassed sending out something like this. Kit cars 40 years ago had better fitting panels.

Depending on how the roof, door, and fender line up, this is the gap that you'll have, more or less:

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The door panel swings into this space a certain amount, so you can't just fill it in. This is with the door open:

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Also, the door skin needs to be cut away a certain amount to clear the steel part of the A-pillar when the door is open, so can't just extend the door skin forward to fill the gap.

I wanted to do something about this before getting a wrap estimate. The simplest thing would be to ignore it and maybe put in a thin sheet of black rubber down in the space, bonded to the panels somewhere. At least then you wouldn't be looking into the innards of the car. But I wanted to do something better than that. So it was either extend the A-pillar or extend the fender. I did a quick mockup of both and went with the fender extension. That way the gap will be at the bottom of the current A-pillar, and looks better in my opinion.

I taped things up, carved a small block of foam, covered it with tape (since I'm using fibreglass resin that eats foam), and taped it in place. Looks like something from Star Trek:

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I covered it with resin and mat:

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On the passenger's side I just cut a flat piece of fibreglass resin/mat that I had laid up for something and glued that in place to start. Maybe a little less work doing it that way, but not much less. Anyways, here are a series of pictures. The piece removed, trimmed and glued in place. Then most of you know the dril, so I skipped the pictures of.... more fibreglass buildup, sanding, filling, sanding, filling...and then a bit of red paint to see what it looks like more or less blended in:

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Door open. A little more work to do on my mirror mount. The slot in the top of the mount will have a rubber sealing strip that contacts the bottom of the A-pillar when the door is shut.


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Really happy with the way it came out. Covers the huge gap nicely and looks sort of factory (not Factory Five!). The other side is almost done. Then a final sanding of the panels, mainly the edges to round them slightly, and I can get the wrap guy over for an estimate.

One other thing. I don't normally go into personal stuff here, but I had a bit of a delay since I got lens replacement surgery. You are supposed to avoid dusty conditions for a few weeks, but can see fine as of the next day. So I took a couple days off, then found these really funky safety glasses that protect from dust and crap very well. Add in a mask to prevent breathing in the dust and I look like something from a science fiction movie!

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The surgery is pretty amazing. It is basically what they do for cataracts, but they replace the natural lens with one that corrects (almost) the same as glasses. So you walk in after 35 years of wearing glasses and walk out not needing them. Modern technology, got to love it.

Rick

[Ajzride]

Good move on the eye surgery, I feel the same way about my lasik years ago. Best money I ever spent.

I've gone to a full face respirator for fiberglass work. It keeps the lens from fogging, keeps your lungs clean, and keeps your face from itching.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B4N6YND8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[roadrashrob]

I like the way it turned out! That's my next project once we resume work on the car in the Fall. Took the summer off to handle all the other chores that were long overdue!

I plan to fill that mirror bracket gap as well as what I learned at the build school was if you use the OEM mirrors, they are practically blocked by the A-pillar. I went with aftermarket mirrors.

[FFRWRX]

I've finally got it to the stage that I think it is ready for wrapping. Of course I could still decide to have it painted, but the prep was pretty much the same.

There were of course a lot of very small areas that needed filling. I've gone over most of the car with 2000 grit on a random orbital sander. Some small areas are just hand sanded with 1000 and there are certainly some scratches in areas I'm not too concerned about; very low down and the worst would be ones that you can barely catch a fingernail in.

I took the doors off for now. Here is my thinking. The doors rarely go back on with exactly the same alignment as they came off. That is especially true with mine that have the full window surround to align with the roof recess. So I figured the best thing would be to get the car wrapped without the doors in place. You also need them off to be able to get at the front of the rocker areas. Then I'll install the doors and do final trim and fit of the outer door panels, then take them to get wrapped.

At the rear I've put longer bolts between the bumper and fenders and left a gap there to wrap into. The roof can also be lifted at the rear to get at the seams between it and the fenders. I really don't want to take the front bolts off the roof and lose whatever alignment I have there now, so it lifts up at the rear and less as you move forward.

I've texted the wrapper to come over and see what he thinks of my prep. And of course to give me an estimate.

Rick

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[jbs72697]

Looks good. What color wrap are you going with?

[FFRWRX]

I haven't decided on wrap color yet. I"m pretty sure I'm going with something a bit....well....not conservative. Stay tuned. The wrap guy is very busy and can't make it out to see the car for a while, so I'll get back to working on the interior.

Rick

[Frank818]

I"m pretty sure I'm going with something a bit....well....not conservative.

That sounds like me! lolll
Can't wait to see the color!

[FFRWRX]

No news on the wrap yet, but I contacted a very well known place and sent them some pictures. They said $3,500-$4,500 (Canadian) which is about what I expected and am pleased with that. I'll go and see them in the next few days with more pictures and see what their schedule is like.

I've been working on the dash a bit. I bought the Vintage Air A/C stuff a while ago so I put the various vents in the dash. I put 4 A/C vents on the front of the dash and 2 defrost vents on top. For the defrost ones you are supposed to basically cut a slot in the dash and mount the hose adapter piece underneath. There is no way I could get a decent slot in the top of the dash. I suppose with enough work it is possible, but the trouble with plastic is if you use power tools it tends to melt and with hand tools it is tough going. So this is one slot:

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I machined some aluminum pieces to go on top. Powder coated them and some screws black:

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Much better:

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The underside with all the vents in place:

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And the top side:

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I'm not sure why I put the defrost vents so far to the outsides of the dash. I should have probably put them a few inches closer to the middle, but not a big deal.

The A/C vents are the plastic ones; the aluminum ones were very expensive and I didn't think worth the extra money. These mount with the outer piece going through the dash and then the piece inside, that the hose connects to, screws onto that piece. The issue is that these must be for very thin dash's. Even with the fairly thin dash plastic, with some sort of softer cover, there are barely enough screw threads to hold on the inner part. Less than 1 turn and then they sort of strip.

This is the inner part with the threads:

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I could touch it on a belt sander to remove some of the plastic and increase the thread grip length by a full turn. But I'll just put some plastic glue on the threads and tighten them just a bit. Maybe put some glue between them and the dash as well to keep them from rotating. Not a big deal as long as I don't ever have to remove them.

I can't mount the dash until the windshield is in, and can't do that until the car is wrapped. But I want to fit the dash to see how the wiring bundles from the steering column run to the centre area. There are a lot of wires (even with my diet) and not a lot of slack in them. I'm hoping I can get them all hidden without having to lengthen any of the bundles.

That's it for now.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Making progress, but backtracking a little too.

To take the car to get wrapped it has to be able to be driven at the shop. So I wanted to tidy up the wiring since a lot of it is hanging around the pedals. I found that there wasn't quite enough slack to get the steering column bundles tucked up enough.

172627

Some of them I could pull up enough, some I couldn't. As much as I hoped I was finished with the wiring, I had to lengthen some of the bundles.

While I was poking around in that area I saw that the gas pedal was a little loose. Looking at it again I noticed that it was fairly close to the firewall and several inches behind the other pedals. I thought it would be better if I spaced it forward a bit. It looked like sort of pivoting it with a tapered spacer would be the best thing since it was also at an angle I didn't like. So I 3D printed a spacer to move the bottom of it more than the top. Also made a couple angled spacers for the bolts since they wouldn't be sitting flat on the pedal housing now:

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Not a great picture, but this is the new position of the gas pedal:

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Once again, while doing that I remembered seeing instructions on shortening the steering column to move the wheel closer to the dash a bit. Seemed like a good idea since there is a space between the dash and the plastic column covers. So out came the steering column. I followed the instructions, which worked perfectly. Don't have a reference to them right now, but you can find it with a search. I shortened it 1 3/4". Then of course I needed a spacer for the new bolt locations:

172631

After taking this picture and going to install it I realized that I made the counter-bores a nice size for the bolt heads. But not a nice size for getting a socket on them to tighten things up. So back to the mill for a little touch-up. With the column bolted back in I took the opportunity to trim off the extra bolt length as well as these 2 brackets. One of the things that bothers me with car projects is brackets that aren't holding anything; I tend to trim them all off and hope I don't need them later.

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With everything back in place it looks good. The wiring for the instrument cluster is barely long enough, but I think it will be OK.

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Now I just need to put the drivers seat back in and the car should be drivable. Of course I have no idea where I put the seat mounting bolts, along with the tapered guide pins I made. Time for a semi-major cleanup of the garage to find them. It has needed it for a while now but I've been putting it off.

So, one step closer to taking it to get wrapped.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

it's off to wrap we go!

Finally off to the wrap shop.

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It will be a little while until it is done. They will wrap it as-is. Then I'll bring it home and install the doors and do final trimming/fitting of the outer door skins. Then take the door skins to them to wrap. Bring them home, attach them, and finally see what the completed wrap looks like. Exciting times!

The transport unloaded the car in front of the industrial complex where the wrap place is. They are sort of around the back. I drove it around the building, being the first time driving it other than up and down my driveway. Got into 2nd gear!

One of the wrap guys was so intrigued with it. I alway assume anyone connected with cars in any way knows what kit cars are; apparently not. He asked if he could drive it into the shop. I said sure. So he takes off, does a few laps around the parking lot first, grinning like a kid at X-mas. He said he was surprised how nice it drove..."just like a real car, steers and shifts perfectly". I told him he has now driven it more than I have.

This is the place I'm getting it wrapped: https://www.vaughanwraptors.com. They have places in a few cities in Canada and one in Florida. When a place is wrapping a Lambo and a BMW i8, it gives me confidence that they do a good job. Every review is very positive for the quality of their work. He said it would be $3,800 so $6,000+ cheaper than having it painted.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

The car is wrapped and has started going back together. I put together a video, but for those that don't want to watch it, here is a picture:

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The color looks amazing in the sun. The video really doesn't show it well enough. And it is really nice to finally be putting things together that, hopefully, don't have to come off again; like the doors after dozens of install/remove cycles.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCBUnP3C4SY

Rick

[Jetfuel]

It won’t be long now
Really like that color the lines pop out for sure

Jet

[roadrashrob]

Looks great! Curious on the hood louvers. Are they from ZDB? Didn't see any mention in your thread, but may have missed it.

[FFRWRX]

Looks great! Curious on the hood louvers. Are they from ZDB? Didn't see any mention in your thread, but may have missed it.

You didn't miss anything since I didn't talk about the hood louvers yet.

I thought louvers would look really nice on the hood in place of the stock perforated sheet metal. I wanted them a little thicker than just stamped or cut sheet aluminum. I also wanted them to be the same size as the recess in the hood. The fins are 1/8" x 3/4" aluminum and the end plates are 1/4" thick. I CNC machined slots in the end pieces to take the fins. They are a tight fit in the side plate where they meet at a right angle, and a loose fit in the other side plate. Since they go in on an angle on the one side I made the slots loose and used JB Weld to hold them in place on the "loose" side.

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JB Weld (the original one, not the quick one) takes powder coating temperature just fine and it actually takes the powder as well; must be the metal in it.

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There are small threaded holes in the bottom of the end plates to attach them to the hood. Really pleased with how they turned out.

Rick

[lance corsi]

Very nice!

[roadrashrob]

You didn't miss anything since I didn't talk about the hood louvers yet.

I thought louvers would look really nice on the hood in place of the stock perforated sheet metal. I wanted them a little thicker than just stamped or cut sheet aluminum. I also wanted them to be the same size as the recess in the hood. The fins are 1/8" x 3/4" aluminum and the end plates are 1/4" thick. I CNC machined slots in the end pieces to take the fins. They are a tight fit in the side plate where they meet at a right angle, and a loose fit in the other side plate. Since they go in on an angle on the one side I made the slots loose and used JB Weld to hold them in place on the "loose" side.

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JB Weld (the original one, not the quick one) takes powder coating temperature just fine and it actually takes the powder as well; must be the metal in it.

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There are small threaded holes in the bottom of the end plates to attach them to the hood. Really pleased with how they turned out.

Rick

Wow! Very nice...

[aquillen]

Great looking wrap! I also had fine results powder coating on JB Weld "original".

[FFRWRX]

A few more bits and pieces done.

I either misplaced, lost, or never got the roof vent grill stuff. But I do have a lot of grill covers that I don't need; maybe for the 818S version? So with the perforated grill material I cut a piece for the roof vent. For the surround I machined a piece of 1/8" aluminum with a recess for the perforated piece:

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I used JB Weld to hold it in the recess, powder coated it black, and attached it with double sided tape:

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I do have the pieces for the vents in front of the rear wheels. But I agree with some that think the surround aluminum was too wide. I do like the look of the surround piece, but wanted it a bit narrower. So I again used JB Weld to attach the 2 parts together, then marked them to trim it down. You can see I cut the "point" off the bottom of it which shortens it quite a bit.

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Powder coated it and am pleased with the look with the narrower surround.

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Oh, I also redid the headlight mounting using TheHelixx's method using under counter sink mounting hardware........brilliant! (https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?36917-Helixx%92s-818C/page3 page3 post #100)

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Then took full advantage of the beautiful summer weather in fall to take some pictures.

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Installing the windshield today.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Looking much more like a finished car now. At least from the outside.

I installed all the glass; my wife helped with the windshield as it is a little more awkward than the other pieces. Not too bad a job other than the urethane adhesive is the messiest stuff I've ever used. It really gets everywhere if you aren't very careful. I may put together some notes on what I did to help others.

The wipers are all done and work very nicely.

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I bought my kit from someone else and the rear and side windows came tinted. Was this an option? I like the look of it with all the other black trim.

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Not sure what is supposed to be used to seal around the rear hatch. I bought some press-on trim for 1/4" thick material with a fairly large rubber "bulb" on it. It didn't work out well due to the design on the hatch. The way the under side drops down as you move in from the sides was catching on the bulb and causing the hatch not to close properly. If I had cut back the lip on the roof another 1/4" or so it would have probably been OK. So looking around for something else to use, I found this trim that I assume was part of the kit:

174272

I don't see that this is useful anywhere on the car. And you can see in the background that several feet of it had already separated, leaving a rubber tube and a trim piece. So I pulled more of it apart and used the tube part. Worked perfectly! I cut it to fit with 45 degree corners, held together with instant glue. Then I glued it in place with more instant glue. Yea I know, I still have to do some painting inside the various panels.

174273

It is very soft and conforms nicely when the hatch is closed, leaving the rubber visible in the gap which I think looks good.

I tried a few different options for the sealing around the door windows, but didn't like any of them. I was using push on rubber trim, like I tried with the hatch. The problem is that the thickness of the window lip on the roof varies from 1/4" to almost 3/8" thick. The trim for 1/4" thick material opens up too much and doesn't grip well after that. I should have measured and sanded it uniform before I had it wrapped. Not a huge deal and I've order some self-adhesive rubber bulb that goes on the outside so the varying thickness won't matter.

I have to make the grill for the rear bumper piece, with a cutout for my exhaust. And I keep forgetting about the windshield washers that I have to make; I have a small bag of various parts for that. After that, I think it is the interior work to complete, including the door panels. Most of the stuff is made and just needs to be installed. Oh, and the dash with the A/C hoses. I'm sure there is more that I am forgetting but I'm very pleased with how it is all looking now.

Rick

[Shawn818c]

tinted glass was never an option from FFR.

[FFRWRX]

that take so much time, but make the car more personal.

I thought the rear needed some numbers/letters like Ferrari used to use; 308, 328, etc. If I was following Ferrari's older numbering method this car would be a "254 GTB". I think 818C will do just fine.

I modelled up a graphic and cut it from 1/8" aluminum and powder coated it black:

174880

174882

I was ready to try it on the car and then remembered that I had some carbon fibre sheet. Since the CNC was set up to cut the aluminum ones, I cut a set from carbon fibre:

174883

Came out pretty nice and saves 20 grams over the aluminum ones.........it's the little things. :)

Tried it on the car:

174881

Didn't like it as much as I did when it was on the computer. I pictured it a little higher up, but it is too wide to squeeze between the license plate holder and the tail light recess. Also, the letters look a little more blocky than what I was after. So played around some more and made another one:

174884

That's better. If I was to do it again I might make the letters a little bolder/thicker, but I could keep playing with it until I run out of carbon fibre so I think I'll leave it. Oh, the license plate is not real, just something I mocked up and printed out.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

A little more progress. I had made my mirror mounts some time ago and have tweaked them a few times to get them correct. I wanted them to serve several purposes:

1) Obviously hold the mirrors, but further rearward than the "stock" location so the A-pillar doesn't block the view, especially the passenger side.

2) Bolt on from inside the door so the door wouldn't have to be removed to get at the fasteners.

3) Provide a seal for the door to A-pillar which F5 doesn't address (as far as I know).

4) Work with my inner door panels. I'm not using the supplied ones since they don't fit well, don't attach to the metal structure, go from inside the car to the outside which I think is a weird design.

These mounts are machined from aluminum and powder coated. Ignore the shallow counter-bore; doesn't show with this in place and was in the piece of aluminum I started with.

178081

I machined a shallow groove in it to hold a seal, but couldn't figure out what to use. Then it suddenly came to me.....a piece of windshield wiper blade. I bonded a piece in place and it rubs up against the bottom of the A-pillar to form a perfect seal.

Door partially open:

178082

Door closed:

178083

And with the mirror bolted in place. I had the mirror covers wrapped the same time as the car. I wasn't sure if I was going to go for carbon fibre or just black, so decided to have them wrapped to see what it looks like. I really like it.

178084

Working on the rest of the interior door panel now.

Rick

[lance corsi]

Looking good Rick! Dave Kindig did a Pantera that color and it looked fantastic. Should show up well in traffic.
Btw, I received the 818 lettering and they look great. Thanks again!

[FFRWRX]

Got back to working on the car a little since we have some nice weather here to tease us.

I've probably spent as much time on the doors and door windows as the entire rest of the build. I really want to be done with them so I can move on. I'm almost there.

I 3D printed a piece to tidy up the door latch area a little:

Before:

183025

Now:

183026

I may do another one with a thin area that cover the screws and the rest of the plate. But I really should leave little things like that for later and move on.

The inner door panels are pretty much done and I'm happy with how they came out:

183027

Of course I tossed the factory ones and made new ones from thin plywood covered with vinyl. At the top it clips under the top trim piece that is bolted in place. There are magnets around the perimeter to hold it to the frame. Also, the door pull/armrest is bolted in through the door panel and into the metal frame, so it is solid and also helps hold the door panel in place. Added a trim piece at the top roughly the color of the exterior. I didn't want any exposed fasteners since to me that says "kit car" (or early British car). Still some minor fitting and adjustment to do, but I want to get on with the rest of the interior now.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Been working on the car on and off, getting the interior finished.

The rear window aluminum piece of course doesn't fit well all around the roof. Large gaps in places:

185332

I cut some smaller aluminum pieces and riveted them to the main piece to seal the gaps. Bought some trim rubber to fit the thickness of the aluminum:

185333

I cut the lower edge of that large panel so it doesn't overlap with the lower aluminum. That way I can remove the lower panel to access the front of the engine without taking too much of the interior apart. I added insulation to the panel and then covered it with vinyl. I'm not crazy about how it came out, but it will do for now.

185334

I'm working on sealing the open areas that you can see in the above picture behind the door. Has to the the worst job ever of supplying an aluminum panel that is nowhere close to what it should be.

With that done, time to get the dash in. But first, the A/C heater/vent hoses. Looks like some part of the robot from Lost in Space:

185335

A bit of a chore getting the hoses all hooked up with the dash almost in place. Then attached the dash. The dash is only secured with two screws at the bottom and I found that it wouldn't stay nice a tight along the windshield at the top. The dash is pretty flexible so needed an attachment at the top as well.

185336

This is hard to see, but what I did was drill a hole through the dash and through the fibreglass part that the windshield bonds onto. This is at the very front corner on each side. I used a small piece of aluminum with a threaded hole in it at the top and a bolt from the bottom. The dash is now held in place very securely. I suppose I could have dropped a bolt down from the top with a nut on the bottom instead of the reverse way I did it, but thought this would allow it to be closer to the windshield and not show as much:

185337

Nothing to do with the interior, but one fun little thing I did. I have a vinyl cutter I bought a while ago and sort of forgot about. I used it to cut some material to go on the calipers. Came out nice. Yes, these are the stock Subaru calipers that have a flat area on them just asking for something like this:

185338

I borrowed a friends A/C vacuum pump and charged up the A/C. Works very nicely with very cold air coming out.

A few more bits and pieces to seal things up, then the carpet, then the seats. That should put it a lot closer to being on the road.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Car is pretty much finished now, at least finished enough to get the Safety check. That is required in Ontario and just checks for things like lights, horn, good brakes, parking brake, good steering with no play or serious wear, the basics to make sure the car is safe for the road. I'll get that done and then finish all the little trim bits and pieces while putting some miles, or kms, on it.

Installed the windshield washer squirters. First attempt was a good rear window washer. Next one got it right. Made a front license plate holder for it.

Drove it around the area a bit for the first time. Really drives and shifts nicely. I really don't like driving a car without insurance on it. Working on that now.

I'll probably have to at least install the front splash panels before the check as I can see the front tire while sitting in the car. Probably not safe to get a rock in the eye while driving.

Pictures:

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And the reason the progress has been a bit slow lately.........bought another toy. So pretty sure the 818C will be sold not long after it is on the road.

186561

Rick

[FFRWRX]

Installed the various splash panels. It went easier than I thought it would.

187918

I didn't want to rivet the rear ones on in case they have to come off. So I made a small bracket with a rivnut on it and riveted that to the frame:


187919

Then bolted the splash panel to that:

187920

I did glue on yoga mat as many have suggested to keep kicked up rocks from making a racket on the aluminum panels.

After driving it around the block and blowing the intercooler connection off, I made a bracket to secure the side that wasn't bolted down. Lesson that I should have learned from mcamera.

187921

Fixed the rear hatch hinges which were going out of alignment from the bolt holding the 2 parts together not being able to keep them from rotating. I posted more details on this here:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?46761-818C-rear-hatch-hinge-another-poor-design

187922

Replaced the gas pedal that has been given me trouble since day 1. Every now and then the car would go into a barely limp-home mode. Start it again later and it was fine. I've read that this was not an uncommon issue with some of the drive-by-wire gas pedals. The new one has solved that, but never know for how long.

Drove it around a bit today in the 90F weather with high humidity......and the A/C worked very well! The evaporator drain was really pouring out the water when I got home.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

I drove the car around the neighbourhood enough to make sure everything works. Then took it for the "Safety" check. No issues and took no time at all. I've done many short drives since then (3 days) to sort out little issues.

I had an overheating problem that was caused by air in the system. I had the air out and everything fine, then turned on the heater one evening. Not much heat coming out. The next day it started overheating. Obviously turning on the heater for the first time introduced a fair bit of air in the system. Took several heat/cool cycles to clear it but all is good now.

I did notice the engine compartment gets very hot. Too hot for my liking. My exhaust comes fairly close to the rear bumper area and the body in that area was getting pretty warm. So I wanted some cooling air to flow through the engine area.

I was looking at a bunch of fans I had left over from previous projects and found this:

188417

I used this type of ducted fan in a Cobra for footbox ventilation. I tried it for size on the exit of the roof scoop into the engine area. Amazingly it fit right on!

188418

I could have glued it in place, but wanted it removable so I 3D printed a sleeve. I used TPU which is flexible and suppose to take fairly high temperatures. I wanted a duct at the bottom to direct the flow rearwards. I designed a fitting to do that, but it was going to take a long time to print. I stopped by Home Depot and, things still working in my favour, found a 3" street elbow that fit on the bottom of the fan unit. Perfect, since this will be a street car......that was a joke.

188419

I sawed off the larger part of it (weight savings :)) and it was looking pretty good. Sawed off the flanges, a little black paint on it and ready to go:

188420

Installed:

188421

I thought I would be clever and tap off the power for it (12V) from the Daytime Running Light resistor. But RPGs818SNA set me straight when that didn't work. I tapped the power off one of the rear tail lights, that comes on with the switch on the top of the steering column. So I can run the fan with the engine off to cool things down if I like.

I haven't taken it for a drive yet to see how much it helps. I also installed a turbo blanket since that gets stink'n hot as well. I did one more mod that I'll show later.

Oh, the car really drives nicely. I'm very pleased with my shifter; takes a deliberate effort but shifts beautifully. And it really goes like stink when you get on it! And the sound and noise level are exactly what I was after; nice sound but not too loud.

Rick

[FFRWRX]

As I mentioned, the bodywork at the rear of the car was getting very warm with the exhaust close to it on the inside. I do have the full trunk, and that may be trapping a lot of heat in the rear right side of the engine compartment. The trunk was well insulated, so wasn't getting hot....warm though.

I cut away part of the trunk to open up that area at the rear.

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The one thing I still need to do is make extensions to the trunk front and side with some rubber trim to seal against the rear hatch to isolate it from the engine area. I did want to retain some trunk space, so this worked out well. Now I can buy hamburgers, put them in the trunk, and when hungry pull over and grill them on the top of the muffler. Win-win!

Rick

[FFRWRX]

...make some more mods.

The small ducted fan I added to help cool the engine compartment didn't really do a lot. I think the main reason is that blowing cool air in doesn't help if there is no place for it to exit. There is the large grill in the bumper, but the exhaust is to the right of that. So...

I need an exit for the hot air, right about here:

189581

The exhaust is very close to that area on the inside:

189582

Powder coated the grills and attached them. Looks good:

189583

I improved the fan situation as well. Found a better fan that pushes more air and is very quiet. I mounted it in the opposite corner so the air is directed partially to the intercooler and then to the exhaust area. Hooked it up the same as before so the switch on the steering column controls it.

189584

The weather is a bit cooler now, and the car isn't running well enough for any long drive (if you are curious why: https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?46980-the-dreaded-throttle-control-error-codes), so I can't tell how effective it is. But this should work better to keep the rear bodywork cooler. I like to open the rear hatch after a drive to let things cool off. But with it closed this should push the air around and out the rear grills. I could make some sort of duct to get the air from the roof scoop inlet more directly.

Rick

[lance corsi]

I do believe that cooling is a major issue for most if not all mid engine cars. Lambos are prone to fires in the engine bay, Porsches have a cylinder scoring issue due to various factors including heat soak, and recently some fool burned a new Ferrari to the ground in a cornfield, although that one was due to pure dumbassery. It’s a difficult problem to solve. Since these are primarily sunny day cars, I’ve opted to use louvers on my hatch in place of a window to vent heat.

[Dave 53]

I'm sure the airflow inside an S engine compartment is different than a C compartment. But, I can't imagine that fan inside your engine compartment is really doing anything. Perhaps the best use of the fan would be to somehow suck hot air out.

My takeaway from the FFR wind tunnel test is that the airflow just outside the bumper cutout is a bit turbulent. Air does seem to be coming out, but the flow also breaks up a bit.
I wish the smoke wand operator moved the wand in and out of the opening to see more clearly what is happening because the airflow seems very sensitive to how far way you get from the plain of the opening.
https://youtu.be/I7XDxiXPtak?si=mUwhNtwzbC6LcOhu

Based on this, I installed my tranny cooler with a fan assuming the nature airflow isn't as good as it looks like it should be. One thing I learned is the fan doesn't blow the air straight out from the fan. It blows out sideways from the ducting. So, the fan ducting has to be completely outside the engine compartment. I haven't had the car on the track to see how effective this setup is. I have a transmission temperature gauge, so turning the fan on and off will tell. Also note the muffler wrap. Before the wrap, the right side of my transmission was over 100 degrees hotter than the left side.
189586

I started with a cat instead of a muffler. It was too loud, so I switched to a muffler and immediately was getting headaches from exhaust fumes. At first, I thought it was because the cat was killing the smell. Then I added a short extension to the tail pipe and it cleared the problem right up. In the photo, you can see the original and extended tail pipe length. I think with my original tail pipe length, the exhaust was getting caught up in that turbulence and some of it was getting sucked back into the engine compartment then into the cockpit. It didn't take much of an extension to get it clearly out of the turbulence. I see your tail pipe looks to be maybe even shorter than my original lenght.... I have my diffuser removed in the photo. I also see you don't have a diffuser and I'm sure that makes some sort of difference, good or bad.
189587

[cob427sc]

I noticed the same issue with the length of the tailpipe. Initially I ended the pipe just outside and under the rear bumper but kept getting exhaust fumes in the car especially when pulling up to a stop. There was no fancy end on the pipe and I bought a nice chrome extension which brought the pipe out about 4 inches and no longer have the smell/odor problem.

[FFRWRX]

When the rear hatch is closed, the car stationary, turning on my fan does blow air out the new exhaust exit grill. Not a lot of air, but I can feel it. When the car is moving, the air flow limits the temperature of that area. But when shut down, the heat soak really heats up the body panels, so my fan will help with that if I don't want to open the rear hatch for a while. I was thinking of hooking it up to a radiator-type temperature switch so it will run until things cool off a bit. The sensor would be somewhere in the rear area, ideally on a body panel.

The airflow into the engine compartment is very limited. The side vents are pretty small and direct air right into the front of the wheel well aluminum. The roof scoop provides air, but not until the car is moving a decent speed. So in stop-and-go traffic my fan will help move the air through the engine area. I will never track the car, so my concern is only street driving where it is generally slower speeds.

I could easily pull my exhaust tip out a little, but haven't noticed any exhaust smell. Wrapping the muffler would probably help the heat situation, but not sure I need it at this point. I have another fan that I could install in the grill on the left, but I want the air to cool the exhaust mainly.

[FFRWRX]

After a number of iterations I think I have a good solution to keeping the engine compartment temperature under control.

One fan is mounted in the front left corner of the compartment, near the exit of the roof scoop (this one I had installed previously):

191038

I added a 2nd fan closer to the exhaust on the right side. This one aims over the muffler and to the exit vent:

191039

Both of these are connected to the alternator with an inline fuse. So they are independent of the ignition being on. There is an overriding on/off switch and a thermostat from a radiator system.

191040

The last thing I did was add a heat shield at the rear. This prevents the hot air that the fan blows over the muffler from heating up the body panels and helps to direct it out the vent. The thermostat probe is mounted to the top of the heat shield.

191041

Went for a long drive today and the system worked very well. Even though the outside air temperature was cooler, the system kicked on during the drive and stayed on for several minutes after the engine was shut down. The body panels in the area were warm, but nothing like how hot they got previously. And I noticed almost nothing when opening the rear hatch after. Previously there was quite a blast of hot air from the whole area.

I changed the oil and tranny fluid which was not a big deal, other than not having a T70 Torx to take out the tranny drain plug. So, necessity being the mother of invention (and desperation being a not too distant cousin) I made a tool. Found a bolt with the hex just the right size. Ground off the flats on the edge of a grinding wheel. Bent the shank and presto:

191042

191043

It was touch-and-go since it was bending before the plug came loose, but it did work.

One other small thing. I made some new wheel centres (or centers depending on where you are).

191044

One final note. While the A/C works great, the heat doesn't at all. This has been pointed out in some other posts. I have what is basically an 'H' block, similar to the arrangement of what is done with hoses/fittings. It allows the coolant to flow to the heater and also bypasses that to route it back to the engine. The idea is that with the heater valve closed the coolant flows out to the 'H', through it, and then back to the engine. When the heater valve is open, it is an easier path for the coolant to go to the heater core rather than through the bypass and right back to the engine. Obviously the coolant was not informed of how this works.

The issue must be the long hoses and the restriction of the bypass through the 'H' block makes it much easier for the coolant to just go into the block and right back to the engine. The solution may be to get a valve that closes the bypass when the heater valve is open. For those unfamiliar, you can't just close the heater valve; the coolant flow has to always be circulating back to the engine. The Subaru system is similar to some other makes (late model Corvettes I think).

This is not a big deal right now. There is quite a bit of air blowing in from the rear of the the doors at the upper part where there is a gap. I have a 3D printed piece to seal that; that should stop a lot of cold air getting in. For me, A/C is much more important than heat since the car is driven in the summer and not the winter.

And speaking of winter, I'll do a few more small jobs like finishing up interior trim and other details. I'll keep driving it until the weather says "no more". It has been great taking it to various cruise nights and shows. Always gets a lot of attention.

191045

Rick

[lance corsi]

Rick, no chance of losing that car in a parking lot! That color really pops. I was thinking about directing the airflow from the two roof ducts onto my intake manifold to help prevent heat problems. I’m really looking forward to finishing tho and it’ll have to wait. For now, they both just dump into the general engine bay. I’m not using the rear hatch window, so that’ll help a lot. Just an open set of louvers where the glass would be.

[FFRWRX]

I never did conclude this thread, so I'm doing that now.

I sold the car in June. Though I don't think these cars are ever truly finished, it was finished enough to look and drive very well. It was a lot of fun driving it, but I seem to enjoy building and working on cars as much, or more, than driving them. When one car is done I sell it and move onto the next one.

So, it is gone.

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203800

I have a Sunbeam Tiger that I am working on, so wanted a car the didn't need any (much?) work and I could drive and enjoy while working on the Tiger.

The 818C replacement:

203801

That's it.........for now.....

Rick

[lance corsi]

Rick, glad to see you found a buyer and I hope appreciates the work you put into it. The details that make a car look finished seem to take the longest. I’m hoping to finish mine soon. We’re in the wiring phase now and the body panels are back from paint, stored in my back bedroom and even some in my living room. I’m not married. Anyway, my dad bought two Sunbeam Alpines way back in the seventies. He was a closet car enthusiast. He restored one car to like new condition and I got to drive it some. It was severely underpowered but considering the era, was about on par with some British crap cans. Good luck with your new project.

[Rob T]

Good Luck with the new build. I don't see the flux capacitor....

[FFRWRX]

Good Luck with the new build. I don't see the flux capacitor....

I'm in Canada and it's hard to find a metric one. I hit 88 kms/hr and nothing happened.

Here's the project car.

203856

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[Ajzride]

https://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor

[J R Jones]

Rick,
I had an unfortunately shortened season with my SCCA BP Shelby in the seventies and was offered a ride in a CP Tiger. We were a good match. After the first race at Indy with mechanical issues, we sorted them out and took a win at Elkhart followed by a lap record at Blackhawk. Against Datsuns, Porsches and Lotus, it dominated the straights and had to be slid through contested corners.
jim

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