Garage Mods and Car Delivery!

As is the case with most BLOGS, to read everything in chronological order, start at the bottom of the page with the BLOG entry named "The Beginning." The newest entry is always at the top of the page. Click on photos for full size versions!





The first thing I did to my garage was get rid of a bunch of stuff that was taking up space that I didn't really need. I then built an 8 foot wooden work bench and installed a bunch of electrical outlets. You can see one set of outlets above the bench. There are additional ones below the bench.



In anticipation of the 100+ degree summer days here in Texas, I installed a ceiling fan in the garage over the area that I expect to be doing most of my car building.



I should have done this a long time ago! I installed these overhead fluorescent lights. They make seeing things much easier. I've done tons of previous motorcycle work in the garage and always needed more lighting. I know, I know, you can see the the body of my FFR Roadster in the photo. I didn't take photos of the lights until after the car was delivered.. More information and photos of the car delivery will be posted soon!

Did you notice my nice little digital clock that I installed on my BLOG page near the top? Something so simple shouldn't have taken me 2 hours to get working right. Me and HTML sure don't get along very well together. Oh well, this BLOG stuff is much easier than trying to deal with a full blown web page.



Oh yeah, my little Sears Craftsman compressor gave up the ghost a few days ago. It was only a little over 2 years old and Sears said they couldn't order the parts I needed to fix it. For almost $350 it should have lasted much longer than 2 years! I went to Harbor Freight and purchased this new U.S. General 60 gallon compressor. I hope it will last a bit longer. It almost triples the air output, compared to my old compressor.

Here are the stats on the new compressor.

US General Model #US660V
3.5 Horsepower
130 PSI MAX
14.55 CFM @ 40 PSI
12.85 CFM @ 90 PSI

Still not big enough for serious paint work, but it should serve my purposes for now.

My clock says it's 1:30 AM.. Time to get to bed. Car delivery photos will be posted soon!

Donor Tear Down

Above is a listing of most of the parts that I will need to use from the donor Mustang I purchased. The only exception is that I don't need the steering rack or any of the suspension components. Since I purchased my FFR MKIII kit during FFR's "Winter Sale" I got a brand new manual steering rack and suspension components for no extra charge.

I started tearing down the donor 1989 Stang shortly after getting it home. The vehicle already had the transmission removed from the car because they were in the middle of changing the clutch when the decision was made to sell the car at auction. The T-5 transmission was sitting in the trunk of the car, along with a brand new still in the box clutch. The starter was not in the vehicle, so I'll be in the market for a new starter for my FFR Cobra.

The engine was one of the first things I removed from the car. Everything went pretty smooth and uneventful.







My friend Chris was kind enough to lend me his engine hoist so I didn't have to pay to rent or purchase one. The flywheel is pretty rusty because of the car was parked outside for a couple of years with the transmission removed. I'm pretty certain that I'll be able to get it resurfaced and it will be good as new.



The previous owner should have pulled the engine long before now. The photo is the engine mounts. As you can see the rubber is just falling apart.



After getting the engine out, everything else was pretty simple. It just took time to get it all taken apart without breaking things. The wiring harness was especially challenging. Many of the connectors were very brittle and wanted to break. In an attempt to make things easier later, I labeled all of the connectors with tape. The wiring you see in this photo is just the engine/dash harness. There's still a whole lot more wiring to get out of the car after this.



The dash area is getting close to being stripped right here.



Another progress photo..



The interior is now complete! That was FUN!

Although the donor vehicle cost a total of $835.00, to date I have sold a total of $375.00 worth of parts off of the car. Also, I found a total of $3.62 of loose change in all kinds of places inside the car. One of the dimes was Silver, so lets just call it an even $4.00. Also, one of the Mustang turn signal light bulbs was used in Cheryl's Pontiac Grand Am...... value = 49 cents! So currently, the total cost of the donor Mustang sits at $455.51. I still have lots of parts listed for sale on www.dfwstangs.net . Even if I don't sell another part, $455.51 is a DEAL for all of the parts that I will be able to use from the Mustang. A T-5 Transmission at the auto salvage yard easily sells for $400.00.



On April Fools Day 2006 the donor Mustang got rolled out of the garage and into the driveway. I found a wrecker driver that was willing to come to the house and haul the Mustang shell away for FREE. I had hoped to find someone that would be willing to give me some $$$$ for the shell, but after two weeks of hard advertising and writing creative ads I gave up and was ready to get rid of it if someone would just come get it. The wrecker driver was already headed to the salvage yard and said that he would take the Mustang and sell it for scrap. At $66.00 per ton, I figure he probably made about $25.00.



I'm not positive, but I think the Mustang thought it was a sick April Fools Day joke when the wrecker showed up and I told her that she was about to be headed to the salvage yard to get sold for scrap and crushed. At first I felt sort of bad, but the important parts of Mustang will live on in a brand new FFR MKIII Cobra car, so Mustang is actually still alive! Just getting a face lift of sorts.

So, that's it for this entry of Joe's FFR Blog. Coming Soon: Garage Prep Info and Delivery of the Roadster!

The Real Donor Purchase!

The REAL Donor Purchase!

On 01/25/06 I committed to purchasing a FFR MKIII Roadster from Factory Five. Before the shipping date I really needed to know what year of donor vehicle I was going to use for my build. The parts in the kit are slightly different, depending on which donor vehicle is used. I thought I was going to use a 98 Mustang Cobra, but later decided to keep that car since it was in such good shape and could be used to more than double my invested money. So the search continued!

I finally found the perfect donor car listed on the Rene' Bates auction site, http://www.renebates.com/ . Rene' Bates runs auctions for numerous municipalities and counties including most of the DFW mid-cities and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Hmmm, I have an aunt/uncle that live in Fort Lauderdale, I wonder what they would think about having a Mustang clunker in their driveway? naawww, guess I'll stick closer to home.

Back in February 06 I found an 89 Ford Mustang LX 5.0 on one of the Rene' Bates online auctions. This seemed like a natural for me! I've been playing around on eBay for years! As a matter of a fact I think I sort of motivated my Fort Lauderdale uncle into running an online eBay business. He now makes lots of money selling water logged and cart path golf balls. Okay, okay, he also restores, refinishes and sells PING Anser golf clubs. With the right kind of search you should be able to find some of his clubs for sale.

Anyway, back to the Mustang.. I purchased the 89 Mustang for $835.00 from the Hayes County Sheriff's Office on the Rene Bates web site. It was previously for undercover narcotics operations and according to the Hayes County Sheriff, the car runs like a top. That's part of the reason why it was being sold. The Sheriff said that the deputies kept burning up clutches, so he decided to sell it. When I got the car I found that the transmission was in the trunk along with a new clutch assembly. The car was apparently in the middle of having a new clutch put in it when the Sheriff decided enough was enough. The only thing I found missing from the car was the starter.

Yeah the hood's bent, but just look at those rear tail lights. I can get $20.00 a piece for those on www.dfwstangs.net!

Coming soon, "Donor Vehicle Tear Down!"

Donor Vehicle Purchased, ALMOST!

Well if you read my first BLOG entry you probably remember that I mentioned that along with ordering the FFR MKIII Roadster Kit, I needed to purchase a "donor car."
The donor car can be pretty much any Mustang or Mustang Cobra from 1988-2004. I was leaning towards finding an older 5.0 Mustang but was having problems finding anything that fit my needs. Best case scenario is finding an old wrecked Mustang (obviously if it's wrecked, it was running before it crashed, thus it would likely have a good running engine and drivetrain) While looking around local auction web sites I ran across an advertisement for a U.S. Marshall's Office Auction over in Fort Worth, Texas. They had a photo attached to the advertisement which was primarily advertising the fact that an 04 Corvette with custom flame paint job was going to be auctioned along with some Jet Ski's. In the background of the photo I could see what appeared to be a 98 Cobra! Oh yeah, 300+ horsepower, Cobra brakes, 4.6 DOHC mean screamin engine, high re-sell value of the Cobra parts that I didn't need for my FFR car! I could hardly wait for the auction. When auction day came, I drove over to north Fort Worth and registered for my first car auction. I located the Cobra and found that it had some minor body damage which didn't make any difference to me since I needed what was under the body for my Factory Five Roadster. Ahh ohhh, I wasn't able to get the hood up and when I asked the kid at the auction, he said that he couldn't get the hood up, the car wouldn't start and he didn't know what was wrong with it. After talking with the kid I noticed that he didn't exactly seem to know much about cars and he then mentioned that he's the one that preps the cars for auction. I also found that most of the other people at the auction were at the auction to bid on the Corvette and Jet Ski's! Another great thing happened next.. The Cobra was the second vehicle to be auctioned. In my opinion most of the people at the auction wanted to save their money so they could bid on the Jet Ski's and Corvette, so after a VERY short period of time I decided to gamble and purchased my Cobra for $3650.00! I had already done my homework and knew that a running 98 Cobra could be sold for $10,000+!! It would be one heck of a deal IF I could get the car running.

After towing the car home, as Hands would say on Boston Legal, "BINGO!" I put a new battery in the car and it fired right up!

Ahhh ohhhh..

After getting the car started and then after driving the rocket ship of a car, I was hooked! The car was way fun to drive! I couldn't tear this car apart, especially after remembering that I could sell the car and more than double my money! I just found a way to pay for almost half of my $13,000 FFR MKIII Roadster kit!

As of today I still have the 1998 Ford Mustang Cobra, but still plan on selling it and making some money on the deal! I just need to find some time to fix a couple of minor things on the car so I can hopefully get top dollar.