Wayne Presley

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.