https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/blog.php?8-Wayne-Presley Builder community site for Factory Five Racing. en Sun, 03 May 2026 04:31:11 GMT vBulletin 10 https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/images/misc/rss.jpg https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/blog.php?8-Wayne-Presley https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/entry.php?106-Suspension-Time Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:53:43 GMT So in my last installment you have all your drilled panels powdercoated and set off to the side. On the front suspension hopefully you picked up the... So in my last installment you have all your drilled panels powdercoated and set off to the side. On the front suspension hopefully you picked up the FFR Mk IV spindles as you get a much better front geometry without the jacking of the SN95/spindle adapter. Take the center sleeves out of the urethane bushings and grease them up well and put them back in the urethane. Bolt the lower ams in the chassis but do not fully tighten them, we'll do that later. Set the spindles over the lower ball joint and align the cotter pin hole 90 degrees the spindle shaft and tighten the nut and install cotter pin. Pick up the upper control arm and install the ball joint. I use a vise to hold the ball joint and use the arm to tighten the BJ in the arm. Attach the arms and tighten bolts fully. Put upper ball joint into spindle and align hole at 90 degrees to the spindle shaft and tighten nut and install cotter pin. Get out your steering rack and bolt it in, attach the tie rod ends and install them in the spindles. Bring the spindle to ride height and tighten the lower arm bolts. You may or may not need to cut the outer end of the tie rod end as it depends on the spindle and rack used. Install the shocks and the front suspension is done.

The IRS is a more involved than the three/four link. Start by putting the pumpkin in the frame, it takes some wrangling and it's much easier to do with two people. Start all 4 bolts and tighten. Now for the, "I hate this smelly slimy grease" phase of the install, the CV axle rebuild. Get on some clothes you won't mind throwing away when you are done. Take the clamps off the boots, the outer CV is a tri bearing type and comes out easily. Put the center axle in the vise, take a drift and give the inner sleeve a good rap to just move the sleeve past the outer circlip. Once past the clip, light taps will walk it off and catch it before it falls. You don't want to drop it, finding and reloading the bearings sucks. I had you do the outer first because the inner can be tough. I use a pipe 2" longer than the axle and just slightly larger than the axle. Slide the pipe over the axle, hold vertical and drop on the concrete and use the inertia of the axle to pop it out. Use paddle nose external snap ring pliers to remove the snap rings off the old axle and install them on the FFR supplied axles remembering to place the boots between the snap rings. Speaking of boots, www.northracecars.com has some great silicone boots survive high speeds much better than the black boots. Reassemble the axles in reverse order of disassembly, clean up and throw away those stanky clothes. As a side benefit your hands will smell like the grease for a few days. Thread the rod ends into the lower arms with 3 threads showing outside the lock nut on the rear of the lower arm. Bolt the arm in the rear with one washer in the back, rod end and then fill in the gap with washers. This keeps the tires from rubbing the aluminum behind the seats. Bolt in the front arm with no washers since that will change when you get your alignment done. Quick tip is to superglue the washer stacks together once you figure out how many in front and back of the rod end you need. install the axles into the diff and put the rear spindle over the CV stub axle and install the lower bolts but leave loose. Install upper arm with quad shock brackets pointing down. Bring the axle to ride height and tighten the control arm bolts. Bolt in the shocks and the rear end is done. ]]> Wayne Presley https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/entry.php?106-Suspension-Time https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/entry.php?66-FFR-Roadster-Cookbook-Black-Widow-Recipe Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:43:32 GMT 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,... 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.







]]> Wayne Presley https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/entry.php?66-FFR-Roadster-Cookbook-Black-Widow-Recipe https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/entry.php?63-FFR-Roadster-Cookbook Tue, 22 Feb 2011 04:45:20 GMT Hello everyone, many of you have known me for years and as many are meeting me for the first time. I'm writing this to provide the new builders with the knowledge amassed building or finishing over 15 roadsters, providing insight on choices and to save them $ by not double buying parts. I built my first FFR in 1997 with chassis number 1387 nicknamed the Grape Ape. I built the car before there was a forum so it was rough by todays standard but I loved it. It was a 377 stroker with T5 trans with the only rear suspension available at the time, the stock mustang 4 link with aftermarket control arms and 373 gears. I built it using a donor mustang and a long block from Ford Performance Solutions. I topped it with trick flow heads and intake. It was loud, purple and glorious to drive, I even had a guy offer to buy the car on the spot at the first car show I entered. I declined but offered to build him one just like it and he accepted. It was pretty much built by the book, stock brakes, depowered mustang steering rack, stock coil springs with stock mustang rear shocks, and stock radiator out of the donor. It was great but the more time I spent driving the car the more I wanted to upgrade and make the car better. I autocrossed the car numerous times and while the car was fast, it had a bad habit of spinning out if you got into a corner too hot or applied too much throttle on corner exit. About that time FFR was releasing the new IRS and I installed the first customer retrofit of the system (followed very shortly by David Borden). The car was totally transformed, the front suspension worked better since the torque imparted by the 4 link was gone, the ride was cushy, and the snap oversteer was completely eliminated. The IRS pumkin had 3.27 and made the car much more enjoyable on longer trips. Now I turned to making it a better looking car since Russ Thompson raised the bar sooooo high with his Radio Flyer. There was so much to take apart and redo that I decided to sell this car and build a new one. I wanted to incorporate all the ideas from my build and others to have the best car out there. Only problem is that there a number of extremely talented builders out there and someone is always better than you. Garage Freak's car in a testament to that, so much of that car was hand built. The next installment of the blog will be my recipe of how to build a very clean FFR roadster with the least amount of time and money and the maximum amount of fun and value. ]]> Wayne Presley https://v1.thefactoryfiveforum.com/entry.php?63-FFR-Roadster-Cookbook