hrosenthal
07-13-2012, 12:26 AM
I finally got to go visit Factory Five yesterday and place my order. My MK4 should be ready for delivery in about 3 weeks.
All the great things I've heard about FFR from this forum are true. Understand that I am about as green as can be for this project. I have a bad habit of taking on tasks that I know nothing about -- fortunately, I usually work through them successfully. Jason at FFR spent a great deal of time answering all of my questions, sometimes more than once. I also had the opportunity to meet Dave, who was nice enough to take me for a short ride in the MK4 in the showroom. It was a great day and well worth the 4 1/2 hour drive each way.
Prior to my FFR visit, I used the instructions posted on http://www.ffcars.com/FAQ/bodybuck02.html by Bill Haas to build a body buck (Yes, I built my body buck before I placed my order).
Frankly, building the body buck was more intimidating to me than the MK4 project. I was inclined to hire a local handyman to build it for me, but figured that if I can't build the body buck, I probably shouldn't be planning to build a whole car. I'm happy to say that, I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.
One big shortcut I took was to purchase the OSB and 2x4's precut. They did this for free at Home Depot. I gave the salesman my list of items, along with how I wanted each piece cut. I walked out of the store with all my cutting done except the end faces, which needed to be drawn and cut with a jigsaw. Another advantage of having the lumber pre cut was the ability to load everything into my truck myself and pretty much complete the entire assembly on my own (I used clamps to hold pieces in place for drilling and gluing). The only help I needed was flipping the buck over after it was complete.
Drawing the end faces was a bit tricky. The template provided was much easier to interpret than the template included in the FFR manual. With a bit of thought, I was able to transfer the template onto the OSB and use a jigsaw to cut the pattern.
Now I'm just counting the days to delivery.
I'm attaching some images of my completed body buck as well as photos taken from my factory visit.10641106421064310644106451064610647106481064 910650
H
All the great things I've heard about FFR from this forum are true. Understand that I am about as green as can be for this project. I have a bad habit of taking on tasks that I know nothing about -- fortunately, I usually work through them successfully. Jason at FFR spent a great deal of time answering all of my questions, sometimes more than once. I also had the opportunity to meet Dave, who was nice enough to take me for a short ride in the MK4 in the showroom. It was a great day and well worth the 4 1/2 hour drive each way.
Prior to my FFR visit, I used the instructions posted on http://www.ffcars.com/FAQ/bodybuck02.html by Bill Haas to build a body buck (Yes, I built my body buck before I placed my order).
Frankly, building the body buck was more intimidating to me than the MK4 project. I was inclined to hire a local handyman to build it for me, but figured that if I can't build the body buck, I probably shouldn't be planning to build a whole car. I'm happy to say that, I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.
One big shortcut I took was to purchase the OSB and 2x4's precut. They did this for free at Home Depot. I gave the salesman my list of items, along with how I wanted each piece cut. I walked out of the store with all my cutting done except the end faces, which needed to be drawn and cut with a jigsaw. Another advantage of having the lumber pre cut was the ability to load everything into my truck myself and pretty much complete the entire assembly on my own (I used clamps to hold pieces in place for drilling and gluing). The only help I needed was flipping the buck over after it was complete.
Drawing the end faces was a bit tricky. The template provided was much easier to interpret than the template included in the FFR manual. With a bit of thought, I was able to transfer the template onto the OSB and use a jigsaw to cut the pattern.
Now I'm just counting the days to delivery.
I'm attaching some images of my completed body buck as well as photos taken from my factory visit.10641106421064310644106451064610647106481064 910650
H