Arrowhead's 33' Hot Rod Build

[Arrowhead]

Wet sanding the epoxy was a drag, took a lot of elbow grease. But I got it all sanded, cleaned the garage, put plastic up and seal up around the doors. Got 4 coats of color on, the silver was slow to cover, need to clear coat tonight.



This is the first coat so it's a little blotchy, but after four coats it's pretty even. You can't tell from the picture, but it's really bright mettalic silver.

[Arrowhead]

Got everything clear coated last night. Came out pretty good but had a few runs, no big deal. Very little orange peel so I'm happy.

[Arrowhead]

[Arrowhead]

Pulled the body off again for another round of primer and blocking. Everything was in real good shape, but with that many sand throughs, it needed another couple of coats. Oddly enough, with the removable hard top, there are quite a few panels to paint and it's tricky to get everything setup up so there is room to move around,and that's with no fenders.

[Jeff Collins]

Looking good, almost there, sand, buff, sand buff. Nice job!

[Arrowhead]

Thanks, luckily I upgaded to a DA w/ 1500 and 3000 sanding discs so that will take some of the pain out of it.

[Scott Meyer]

Great results! Metallic Silver is a tough color to get even (I used a Honda Metallic Silver on my roadster).

[Olli]

That looks great!

Olli

[ClemsonS197]

Looks great. Can't wait to see it in the sunlight.

[geoffav]

Great job. I liked it in primer so this is going to be over the top when done.

[5speed]

looking great.

[riptide motorsport]

Very nice, I feel all warm inside!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sweet color.

[Arrowhead]

One cool thing I figured out was the A/C vents unscrew so you can attach the tubing to the vent and then stick it though the hole in the dash from he back and then screw the face plate on. Makes it a lot easier than trying to push the duct on with the vent already installed.





Installed the carpet and boots.

[Arrowhead]

Installed the door panels and used "Neat Knobs" from Watson Street works for the interior latch. After messing with the cable setup, I came up with a rod setup that connects the exterior handle directly to the latch. It work pretty slick and is fully adjustable. The only issue now is I have to push down really hard on the interior knob to release the latch. I'm also not sure if the rod setup will clear the windows when I install them so I might have to change it around again.











My solution for the poor fitting water fall was to just cut it off and trim it with windlace.

[Arrowhead]

I wanted to install the roll bar but wasn't sure how to go about drilling the holes. I think towman posted something about taping around the outline of the rollbar and then using the hole in the tape as a template to locate the holes in the waterfall. I put the rollbar in place and taped around the holes. I removed the roll bar and then carefully slid the waterfall into place without disturbing the tape. Then I could sight down inside the tape and draw the hole locations on the water fall and cut them out. Worked pretty good.



I remeber reading or hearing that you should paint the flange black where the glass sits or the body color will show through so I taped it off and did that.






I also made a headliner out of regular auto headliner material and 1/4" poster board. I used velcro to hold it up and I think it came out pretty good. I make a pattern out of paper and then transferred it to the posterboard. Then I used 1/4" tape to make the outline smaller so there would be room for the headliner material to wrap around the board.

[Arrowhead]

Redneck powder coating.

I had not sent the rollbar out for powder coating when I had the chassis done, can't remember why now. But now I had to either powder coat it, paint it or cover it with some thing. I tried covering it with the extra black vinyl that came with the kit, but that turned out horrible. I could have painted it, but that would be process of sanding, priming, blue base, blue candy and clear - it's a formula I had worked out that matches the powder coat color.

It was too big to fit in my oven so power coat at home was out - or was it? I know from powder coating a bunch of small parts that the powder actaully will melt at a pretty low temperature. So I had a redneck moment and got out my torches. Now the powdr is flamable so you can't have an open flame around - but if I can preheat the part, shut off the flame, than I can spray the powder.

So I took about 15 minutes with my torch and heated up the bar evenly to about 200 degrees. I shut the torch off and quick grabbed my powder gun loaded with silver, dusted it on and sure enough it melted right down. I then swapped the blue in quick and dusted that on and it melted just fine too. It didn't flow out nice and smooth, it has more orange peel texture than if it was in an oven, but it looks fine and I'm happy with it.

[Arrowhead]

I got the hood and side panels mounted so I roleld it outside and stuck the roadster windshield on for a couple of pictures. I think the hard top will be let on most of the time so I figured I see what it looks like with out it.










Still had to sand and buff the hardtop, that was a lot of work.

[Arrowhead]

Got it done just in time to make a big local cruise in. Still have a few loose ends t owrap up. Need to install the side windows, final connect the A/C hose and charge and run the exhaust out the rear. Have a few paint blemishes to touch up also. I had a pretty elaborate flame job planned but now I'm not so sure.

[Racer 28]

Looks Great love the blower!! Drive it and fix things as you see them or when they come up!!!

[timdks]

Awesome.

[DaveBoyd]

That thing turned out SWEET!!! Good Job!

[Arrowhead]

Got the loose ends finished up on the chassis and most of the body parts sanded and buffed so it was time to put the body shell on.







I broke the front suspension down to install the new suspension bolts and to cut he rear lower control arm so I could get less caster.




I took a different approach with the insulation and used the foil faced bubble wrap type insulation - I have my reasons and it's not all about price.

[blacktavert]

looks great, love the blue frame

[Arrowhead]

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Have a few loose ends to finish up though.

A couple weeks before I was done, I heard Factory Five was looking for a customers car for the Good Guys Columbus show. I contacted them and told them I would not be done in time, but I was planning being at the Syracuse Nationals if they needed a car for that show. They contacted me a week later and said they would like to have it at thier booth so we made the arrangements and I drove it the 3 hrs to Syracuse and it was on display for the whole show. They were a great bunch and I had an awesome time.

[Arrowhead]

The hood hinges I made worked out great, but I never had time to finish them. They were just kind of raw aluminum and I wanted to clean them up. I drilled them out to add a little detail and then polished them.













I also added the polished CNC resivoirs on the firewall.

[Arrowhead]

All polished up and ready to go.



Here it is at the FFR showroom ready to go to SEMA.




It was in this spot in the Ford racing area for the whole week. The show was awesome and got to meet a bunch of fellow FFR builders.














On the way back from Vegas, they stopped off in the Nevada desert for a photo shoot. Pretty cool.

[Arrowhead]

If that wasn't awesome enough, they called me when I got back home and aksed "would you be ok with us sending it on tour with World of Wheels?" Well yaa!

It went to ten shows from November to March.

Houston




Cincinati




New Orleans




Kansas City




Dallas

[Arrowhead]

Even went to the Detroit Autorama




Salt Lake City




Winnipeg




Omaha




Boston

[Arrowhead]

Well the hot rod came back last week, almost three years to the day of when I first placed the order for the kit.

I aquired a full fender set over the winter and I wanted to try them on. I didn't think they would fit with the over sized tires and they didn't fit at all. It looks cool, but you could never turn the front wheels and there's no room for suspension travel. I like the look of the fenders in general, but I think it looks better with no fenders the way mine is setup anyway.

[Arrowhead]

Wow, been almost a year since I updated this thread - and a lot has happened. Even though the build is "done", I still have a bunch of things to finish up. I had every intention of tearing it down over the winter, but it kind of made a detour.

After the Syracuse show last summer, FFR seemed to take a liking to how I built the car and wanted to take it to another show - the SEMA show in Las Vegas!!!!!!!!! There were some things I really wanted to do to spruce it up, so I spent the month of October getting it ready.

The engine compartment was looking a little sad, so I pulled it apart and got new polished pullies and painted the engine.

[timdks]

Very outstanding. Quite a well deserved recognition of your talents. Saw your car in KC in all its glory. Looks better in person, even though you've got some great glamor pics.

[Arrowhead]

Since the controller for the electric steer unit is not weather proof, it needs to be sealed or mounted inside, but of course the harness is not long enough to reach into the cabin. So I had to extend the harness.




Electric steer unit installed and harness extended.






Mounting the controller was a PIA becuse the bolts have to go in from the back - so you can't mount on a flat surface with no access from behind. Soooo I had to make a bracket to mount it on.




Finally got around to finishing the A/C hose layout. I had most of the hoses cut and fittings in place, but never got around to the final connections to the compressor. Now I just need to take to a shop and have hte ends crimped. I'm not too thrilled at the layout, it's not very pretty, but it will be mostly hidden by the side cover.

[ehansen007]

I plan on weatherproofing my unit with this stuff. Supposed to be out by mid 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqGkC...eature=related

[timdks]

I plan on weatherproofing my unit with this stuff. Supposed to be out by mid 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqGkC...eature=related

Good old nanotechnology. That should keep it dry enough.

[Arrowhead]

UPDATE AS OF OCTOBER 4, 2014

Well it's confession time. It's been three years today since the hot rod went on the "rock star" tour to SEMA and World of wheels car show circuit of winter 2011-12'. I drove the car quite a bit that following summer, did some autocross and a bunch of car shows. But things kind of stalled out after that.

[Arrowhead]

The winter of 2012 I decided it was time to finish up some loose ends line install the power windows. The more I thought about it, the engine was in need to freshening up so it would be a good time to do a rebuild. It was a salvage yard engine and the oil pressure was getting low. I had no other projects going on so I tore it apart with the intent of having it back together for summer.

How to tear down a hot rod in a weekend:
(sorry for the crappy pictures)

[Arrowhead]

I also notices about 1/32" play in the top ball joints. Since I was getting some parts powder coated, I figured I might as well replace the joints now and have everything powder coated at once.

[Arrowhead]

I also wanted to make the rear suspension adjustable. So I got four heim joints and bungs to fit the existing control arms.

[Arrowhead]

I originally had polished the firewall and foot boxes and grew to hate having to try and keep them clean and polished. So I removed them while the engine was out and put them in the pile of parts to powder coated.

[Arrowhead]

The new parts came for the engine so I put that back together. Forged pistons and rods, new rings, bearings oil pump gaskets and seals of course. Even reconditioned all 32 valves with new seals and relapped the valves.



Spirolocs are fun: