For Decades my father and I have wanted to build a kit car, something different. Last October I pulled the trigger because my father's Parkinson's disease was starting to take hold and he was losing hope. The change from that phone call has been amazing, we talked daily about it, shared videos and forum posts on the Daytona build constantly. (Thank you all who have taken the time to do this, not only do we have a wonderful resource, but also it fanned the flame my father needed to regain hope.) Researched, bought and rebuilt an engine together. He can't turn a wrench like he used to, but he is there and is helping.
Last Thursday the kit showed up at 5:30 AM and though he couldn't be there in person to see the unload, I got some video and pics. We spent the day doing inventory. I thought he would be completely spent but he was ready to roll the next day.
A quick summary of my initial plans
FFR 65 Daytona complete kit w/ IRS but not the wilwood brakes.
85 302, still trying to figure out what cam and heads we are going to use (I'd like ~400 HP)
A nice grand tour type interior
cameras for back up and rear view
Trying to decide if I want a front camera
No clue on paint, waiting on my bride for that one
I put together a Kanban board so I know what I have done and what is left based on the manual, edwardb and the cobra daytona build channel on youtube. Oak Hollow and Yellville have also given me a few ideas.
I have never had so much fun being frustrated with myself!
I have made progress, be it ever so slow. Front suspension is in and luckily factory five is shipping missing parts faster than I need them so I am basically able to follow the manual. ( At least I thought I was) The steering arms caused some re work... twice. The first time on I had them flipped and upside down, then just flipped, but now they are on. Sadly this meant having to torque the hubs a couple of times, but I needed a work out. Sadly my father blames himself for the mishap, though I have told a number of times the process would have been the same. Working by myself today because he became ill and selfishly I am bummed he is not here.
We are to the rotors and calipers and I can't find the bolts to attach the calipers to the front assembly. Can someone tell me what I am looking for? The parts list has the disc brake hardware kit on back order, is what I am looking for in that kit? If so, is it a common bolt I can pick up at Ace? I did not get the wilwood brakes so they are the standard grey calipers that I plan to powder coat. Going to attempt to powder coat the parts myself. I need to pick a color soon. Thinking a burnt bronze to go with the Ruby Red Metallic... Matches my truck.
I'm looking forward to seeing your project and I think it's wonderful your dad is getting to see a dream come true. My son and I are looking to do a FFR build someday before I get too far gone to help.
Has anyone else had an issue with the 7/8"-1.25" adjuster bung going into the Upper IRS control arm. One went in like butter (by hand) while the other took 2 hours of sweating, pushing, a bench vise and a few choice words. I know it wasn't cross threaded, but I did notice the threads were getting flattened. I worry about this because I think it will hinder the ability to adjust it for alignment. Do I call FFR for a replacement or just live with it? Any advice is appreciated.
And I like your idea of using a kanban board. I am
3 plus months in and am starting to lose my way a little. Am waiting on a friend to help with the engine. Have started a number of things and starting to feel disorganized. Also, my job and many landscaping projects are getting in the way!
It was a powder coat and my Dad's 80th bday so I kind of went backward as far as the build but it is better that I did. Attached are some of the things I powder coated as compared to raw. I went with a burnt bronze color.
Last edited by TangoUniform; 06-26-2023 at 02:48 PM.
Well, its been a week since my last update. I have done a lot of powder coating (My poor easy bake oven ) and even more thinking and rethinking. My wife and father call it the rabbit hole. Well, this one may have cost me $500. When I bought the kit, I went with the complete kit and skipped the cost of the Wilwood brakes and I was fine with that until I found out I had to cut off one of the ears of the spindles on the IRS. What if me or someone else wants the bigger better brakes, so I priced out the cost of 2015 rear calipers, rotors, pads and such which came to a little over $500 bucks.
I am an autocross "racer" so I have lots of car friends, which makes access to parts a little easier, maybe too easy. I found a friend that had a full set of brakes from a 17 PP2 mustang, so I thought "problem solved" and I bought them for $500. Here is my dilemma, the rears, bolt on perfect, the fronts, not so much. I need to get an adapter made and I think with the help of a local machinist that specializes in automotive parts I can do it with spacers and an adapter or he has also said cutting off the ears of the front upright and welding new ears on I can use the Brembos. If I do that, I need to stick with 18" or larger wheels.
My struggle is this do I:
A) put the 17 rear brakes on and leave the fronts as the ones that I received in the kit? Larger rotors in the rear than in the front seems... off
B) Cutting the rear spindle and using the brakes from the kit seems like it will be difficult if I want to improve the braking
c) Using the 17 brakes may complicate the build and limit my wheel size to 18"+ wheels
right now A or C seem like my best options. I would appreciate those with experience building these cars any insight i may have missed
thanks!
I have the suspension and brakes done and went with option A after talking to a couple of other builders. I will post pictures soon.
I have hit the turbo button on the spending. The FAST EZ-EFI is in, the pro m hanger, inline fuel pump and trick flow filter are en route. I was updating my kan ban to do board and realize I am close to really start attaching the aluminum panels. I talked to the guy at second skin and am thinking of going that route. This will not be a race car otherwise, I wouldn't care too much about heat reflection or sound deadening, but this will be a mountain carver and the drone and heat might make it less enjoyable. Has anyone used the heat wave, Luxury liner pro and Damplifier pro solution on their build?
Also, I am torn whether to use the rubber lines for fuel lines that came with the FAST kit or run SS hardlines. I haven't run the hardlines for brakes yet and fuel and brake lines are on my list to do for next week
It has been a while since my last post and though I have worked a lot on the car, I have been busy with a lot of other things too.
It is fall in the rockys and that means the turning of the leaves PXL_20231006_164739039.MP.jpg
but mainly I have been turning drillbits into useless sticks of metal and painting the aluminum panels. I am kind of sick of being in the paint booth all dressed up in a resperator and Tyvek suit WhatsApp Image 2023-09-23 at 10.01.54_80094cfd.jpg
Now comes for the permanent application of the panels and the application of the second skin sound and heat deadening material as well as the rebuild of the engine (347 stroker)
My brother in law has been taking videos of the build and I am anxious to see the edited results. I became a software engineer so I did not have to write or present to people. So yeah, I'm a natural.
I hope to have pictures of the parts I painted and installed on here soon. Sadly, I have to repaint 2 panels because I painted the wrong side, which made my wife, the love of my life, howl in laughter at my expense.
I have the suspension and brakes done and went with option A after talking to a couple of other builders. I will post pictures soon.
I have hit the turbo button on the spending. The FAST EZ-EFI is in, the pro m hanger, inline fuel pump and trick flow filter are en route. I was updating my kan ban to do board and realize I am close to really start attaching the aluminum panels. I talked to the guy at second skin and am thinking of going that route. This will not be a race car otherwise, I wouldn't care too much about heat reflection or sound deadening, but this will be a mountain carver and the drone and heat might make it less enjoyable. Has anyone used the heat wave, Luxury liner pro and Damplifier pro solution on their build?
Also, I am torn whether to use the rubber lines for fuel lines that came with the FAST kit or run SS hardlines. I haven't run the hardlines for brakes yet and fuel and brake lines are on my list to do for next week
As always feedback is appreciated
Mike
I went with the MSD Atomic 2 for efi and have no complaints. It is on a Ford Cleveland 393 stroker that I built. I have only run it on the run stand, not in the car yet. I did go with full stainless lines for the fuel and brakes, seemed to be the most dependable route. I am curious to see how your heat deflection and sound deading go. That is an important item on my list. I was looking at buying one of those Flir thermal imaging cameras for your phone to determine where to focus my effort on blocking the heat. I figure it will pay for itself, at $300, vs putting heat deflection material everywhere. Keep posting updates, I know it seems like nobody is reading them, but they do.
I have a FLIR setup I built using a raspberry pi that is worth its weight in gold. I currently use it to track temperature of my tires when I autocross my Boss. It is well worth $300 since I built mine pre Covid, it was cheaper, but took a considerable amount of time and effort to build it.
My spending saga continues as I pulled apart the candidate engine that WAS going into it. In short, I wasted $1000 bucks. Bored 60 over, oil delivery was blocked cylinder walls were shot pistons were garbage, lifters were mismatched... in other words it was thrown together with anything they had rolling around the shop with zero care. I guess its time for a call to blue print for a long block. Ugh.
Out in the garage enjoying the evening chill, though its been pretty warm these last few days, looking for parts and mumbling to myself... "I know I saw those parts somewhere." "What in the world? How did it get there" or I can't find it and back to the forums for pics or words of advice.
Here is where I am:
No luck on finding local engine, so it is going to be powered by a 347 stroker from blueprint
ran the brake hard lines only to find the front braided brake lines missing so I ordered another pair from breeze ( now I just need to find some clips
I can't find the red brake hoses that go from the Master Cylinder to the reservoirs, found some 1/4" hoses that are black, but not rated to 250lb pressure(only 100) I have checked every box and still no luck. I am hoping someone will tell me if those will work or do I make the commute to the parts store.
I researched the 1 vs 2 brake reservoir discussion and think I'll stick to one for the brake and use the second for the clutch.
I think I will tackle the emergency brake until I figure out the hose situation. PXL_20231118_234113089.jpg
For fuel lines, I used 3/8" Nicopp with braided line only in the short sections between the fuel pump and fuel filter and the front section at the firewall to the Holley Sniper (what I used).
The Nicopp lines are VERY east to work and I bent almost everything by hand. It's so forgiving it's crazy.
Thanks! I am thinking of putting the reservoirs along the side like in the picture IMG_20231201_202150_01.jpg
I am thinking of shielding the line to protect them from the heat of headers by adding aluminum plates under the triangle portion of the driver side
chassis
I researched the "How many hydraulic reservoirs should I have?" question a lot too. I came up with two reasons that point folks to having 3 instead of two. For my build I wanted the front and back brakes on two separate systems so if one fails you don't loose all your brakes. So, I thought I would do front brakes on one reservoir and rear/hydraulic clutch on another and just run two. Then I installed my hydraulic throwout bearing and it says you can't use high temp brake fluid with it. So that led me to having 3 reservoirs. One for fronts, one for rears, both on high temp brake fluid. And then one for clutch running standard DOT 3 stuff. Your clutch might be different but this is how mine worked out. If I wasn't gonna run high temp fluid, I would probably just do 2 reservoirs, front and rear/clutch.
It has been a while since I posted anything and though most of this is for my sanity maybe someday someone will have a question that this or one of my posts can answer though Shakey, edwardb and https://www.youtube.com/@cobradaytonabuild1671 along with countless others have been my saving grace.
To date, the engine, sans distributor, is ready for the bell housing, clutch and transmission all of which I have on hand.
The chassis has the gas tank, diff, suspension and brakes are on and ready to go. I was one of the lucky ones and had 90% of the parts delivered with the car and did not have to jump around a lot in the manual.
I have drilled out 40% of the panels and installed maybe half of those.
Here is what I have learned:
This has really helped keep me organized, I am not sure I have the best columns but they work for me. There is something satisfying moving the cards into the next state, especially after the suspension is done because visibly they aren't that noticeable.
I went through the manual online and made cards from that then went through the popular threads and picked out things that were noteworthy or things I would like to add to the build and added them to the build. I have also tracked hours and costs and special notes if I found something that was not in the manual or made me think. I hope this is not my last build and I can reuse the board as a reference.
Delivery was cool, probably one of my top 100 days in my life. The driver was super helpful even though it was 5 AM. Luckily my wife and sons were around to help move the chassis and boxes
My father and I went over the inventory and I used Cobra Daytona Build's idea of writing in general what was in the box. Basically I wrote the bolded headers that were on the inventory list as well as the parts that were missing. This really helps when looking for parts and for when the backordered stuff arrives so you can put things in the right box.
One lesson learned was while going through the boxes, mark what should be painted/powder coated. I wish I would have done this because it would have made the powder coat/ paint days more efficient. AMAF, I wish I would have decided to powder coat stuff earlier as I had to pull off components that I had put on to powder coat. It was worth the effort but it was not efficient
Vs
Powder coat is nice as it will take some punishment before it scratches and chips and it is super easy. I did not have a good 220V outlet in the garage so I found a largish toaster oven that I could use to powder coat the smaller parts. It worked for calipers, hubs and stuff that size. I am limited in size and I wish I would have had a circuit installed in the garage and built a closet to bake the larger pieces. I decided to paint the larger pieces, like the engine compartment panels, transmission tunnel and the underside of the panels.
Painting was interesting but with a little advise from the Sherwin - Williams guys, it turned out okay.
no paint
vs paint
I think I like the results and plan to have the stripes the same color with either a dark blue or dark maroon
Make sur you clearly mark the side you should paint as I did have a mistake and will have to rough up the painted side for second skin adhesive panels and paint the other side. You live and you learn
Speaking of learning, the engine was a learning experience. I bought an engine off of a local man that had never ran it and was built by a local shop that had recently gone out of business. It was a well known shop and he had the information on it as well as it seemed to turnover appropriately, so I bought it thinking it would go into the Dayton.... Wrong! I decided to change from a single 4 barrel carb to a dual quad, very much over kill on a 302, but is sounded like a winner. as I took the intake off I decided to look at the lifters and found the rollers were pocked and need to be replaced, so I dug further and found the pistons bored 60 over and the wall had scarring. I flipped over and found the oil pump gasket askew so no oil could get through. So it became an expensive, heavy paperweight. So now I have a Blueprint engine...
The last thing I did was add the brake, clutch and power steering reservoirs and built a couple of panels that I think makes the engine compartment complete
There is probably ton more I could say, but in a nut shell, this is where I am. Next up electrical, I mean how hard can it be?
Tango - Sorry to hear about the engine. Have been following along and you're progressing nicely. Question - what is the application you are using to track your build/questions? Looks interesting, so many detail about these builds to keep track of, seems like a great system you have.
Tango - Sorry to hear about the engine. Have been following along and you're progressing nicely. Question - what is the application you are using to track your build/questions? Looks interesting, so many detail about these builds to keep track of, seems like a great system you have.
RHK, I use w
ww.trello.com To hold all the info in the build. I set up a number of lanes which track progress and remind me of things I need to do.
As I read through the forums, watch videos or read the manual, I added the cards and in the notes added links to the places in the pdf or websites. I even added the urls to the parts I was considering if I did not use or have the parts in the kit
It made going back to check to see if I was doing it right... somewhat easy. If I want to build another, I can move the cards back to the start and do it all over again. Let me know if you want more info
I was able to spend some time with the card, it sucks when real life gets in the way of having fun
I figured it was time to start with some of the electrical and found a place to mount the fuse box
I have seen this placement in a number of builds and it makes good sense
While I was doing that I decided I did not like how the rear brake line was routed and made a change. Luckily I used the copper/nickel lines and was able to correct the line without having to bend a new one.
This got me looking at my Kanban board and how my original schedule was supposed to be and I realized I had not made a detailed plan of what panels were to be painted, covered by second skin, under coated or left raw. So I sorted and marked the panels
Excuse the mess, please
Just as I was getting back to the electrical, Fed ex showed up with the primer, paint and clear for the engine compartment and some other panels.
Side note I spent an hour on the phone with Eastwood, really nice guy because I know talking with a person that doesn't know his head from a hole in the ground when it comes to paint can't be easy. Any way, he recommended this optiflex prime which you can roll on with a foam roller or spray. I sprayed the last batch of primer, but did not have nearly enough to complete the task, which I blame on me and the person at the paint store. So I had to but more. Has anyone here used that before and if not is anyone interested in an application and review video or blog entry? My Brother-in-law is a video producer and has been dying to be involved in the project.
Since I had not drilled all the holes in the panels, I have decided to get the rest of the panels drilled out.
so I started with center console
and the part that meets up with the firewall is nowhere near the right angle needed for a good fit. Did anyone else have that issue? I took some angle iron and clamped it to the frame to bend it down and applied a little heat to help it keep that shape. I am hoping that was the correct thing to do
I then broke out my trusty harbor freight hydraulic hole punch and punched holes so the reservoirs can stick out of the extra engine compartment panels I cut out. I still have some learning to do when it comes to cutting aluminum. Sadly my punch was about 1/16" to small so I spent an hour filing it out to make them fit. But the results were good
The garage is a wreck, so I need to spend some time cleaning it all back up
I am always up for comments or warnings from you all and thanks for looking
I put this stuff on the panels with the wheel wells. It came out a bit splotchy but it will work, I had hoped for a smoother finish but it seems pretty tough and it does quiet down the panel noise, not as well as the second skin but I think it will make a difference when sticky tires pick up the rocks.
It took 4 cans to cover all the pieces I wanted covered, which is more than what you see in the picture
Now all I need is some warmer weather so I can primer and paint the panels in the engine compartment.
I watch all the builders threads on the forum and saw Narumps build thread and saw he was painting and it brought up this question. Rather than hijacking his thread, I figured I would throw it in mine.
This may have been covered, but painting body off is preferred by the paint shop I think I will use. (I hope to eventually do my own paint, maybe next build ) How difficult and what precautions should you use when installing the body on the frame.
I watch all the builders threads on the forum and saw Narumps build thread and saw he was painting and it brought up this question. Rather than hijacking his thread, I figured I would throw it in mine.
This may have been covered, but painting body off is preferred by the paint shop I think I will use. (I hope to eventually do my own paint, maybe next build ) How difficult and what precautions should you use when installing the body on the frame.
Thanks
I think if you have enough people and are careful there shouldn't be any issues. Keep in mind I'm not giving it a "show quality" paint job. 2 coats of color and three coats of clear. Sanding, cut and buff. I will post how the process goes and if there are any issues to watch for.
Thanks: 
Likes: 
Reply With Quote
) and even more thinking and rethinking. My wife and father call it the rabbit hole. Well, this one may have cost me $500. When I bought the kit, I went with the complete kit and skipped the cost of the Wilwood brakes and I was fine with that until I found out I had to cut off one of the ears of the spindles on the IRS. What if me or someone else wants the bigger better brakes, so I priced out the cost of 2015 rear calipers, rotors, pads and such which came to a little over $500 bucks. 
Originally Posted by TangoUniform
