Wayne Presley

How to make a Black Widow clone: The highlights are FFR Mk 3.1 (or Mk IV), IRS, Keith Craft 408, Verycoolparts.com stack injection, TKO 600 trans, Ram clutch, 3.08 gears, power steering, Halibrand wheels and stainless steel sidepipes. First thing to do when starting to build a car is to close your eyes and picture your perfect cobra. Pick your color schemes early and stick with them. Limit your under hood colors to 3, makes the engine bay look much cleaner. So the Stewart truck drops off your brand new MK IV and you verify the contents against the bill of materials and note your back orders. Back orders will get filled quickly and it's fun having brown santa drop presents off. Pull the body off and send it to one of the great painters on the forum (J. Miller customs, Street Rod Painter, Joey and Performance Automotive and Whitby's) unless you are going to do the paint yourself. The paint and bodywork are the most important aspect of the finished car so choose wisely. Now that the body is off it's time for time saver #1, take a Sharpie and mark the outlines of every frame tube on the aluminum panels. Remove the panels and get ready to drill a bunch of holes with a #30 or 9/64" bit as it makes installing the rivets easier. Time saver # 2 is making a rivet spacing tool, I use a carpenters L square with holes drilled down one side with a 2" spacing, the inside edge with 2.5" spacing and 3" down the short leg. Now flip all those aluminum panels over and lay the L square down the center of the frame lines and choose the rivet spacing you want to use on each panel and get drillin'. The time spent drilling the panels in bulk saves hours of trying to locate the frame tubes from the top and drilling one panel at a time. It also creates an amazing pile of aluminum sparkles that you can sweep/vacuum up in one fell swoop instead of continually tracking them in the house. The only rivets that you will see on the finished car are in the trunk and the footbox inside tops, fronts and the firewall so don't sweat it if you have an unevenly spaced rivet at the end of a run. Once you get the panels drilled it's time to powdercoat them, looks sooooo much nicer at six months after completion that polished. I chose red panels and bought black rivets to offset and emphasize the rivets. While the panels are at the powdercoater you can start on the suspension which is where I'll start the next installment.