Curvy Road G3 Coupe Build

[forcefed1]

OK I fixed those broken photo attachments.

Thanks Gsides9!

It's been such a fun build I could definitely see something similar some other year.

Today after work, I worked on inside door panels. I made a pull handle from wood to verify my design before I go with aluminum. Im pretty happy with that. I also ordered leather swatches. With a little luck the mirror mounts will finish this weekend and Ill get those mounted to the doors.

I decided to go with door poppers. Future plans include glass windows. I don't want to install outside handles. I plan to hide a little switch in the wheel well. Anti theft is not a concern. All these interior challenges take me much longer. I have never done any interior work. This will be a good learning experience.

[Bob Brandle]

Forcefed1,
All of yesterday's photos are now appearing just fine. Thanks!!
Some wonderful looking ideas and construction you have there in your Coupe!!

Good idea regarding the hidden "outside" door latch. Why disturb the clean door when you can have a latch/door opening button hidden. Can't wait to see your design.

Regarding the door window in glass. There was a newly built Gen 2 Coupe by Andrew Freesh, that debuted at the Huntington Beach Cruise-In last month (April-2018) that had a custom glass fixed door window. If you can live with a fixed window (which I'm thinking that I can), it really looked slick!!
I've got some detail photos of it if you're interested. P.S., that Coupe was also in a dark blue with silver/gray dual stripes.....outlined with a thin red line on the outer edges of the dual stripes!!!
I'd like to contact Andrew myself about his car, but I cannot locate him anywhere in the Factory Five website or Forums, other than him being listed as winning 2018 Huntington Beach Cruise-In Best of Show Runner-Up.
Below are a few photos of his car's door windows.

Revised 7-5-2018

Bob

[forcefed1]

WOW those windows look GREAT i like them a lot! NO track at all. I like that I wonder how rigid it is?
I also like how he integrated the rear side windows right into the body.

[forcefed1]

I managed to work on a few more details.
as always here are some more photos.
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I really like the sport mirrors. I never liked how low on the door they had to be mounted. I made some aluminum mirror brackets then powder coated them gloss black. It's a nice detail for sure.
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I laser cut some rubber mount pads too IMG_0279_1400x1050.JPG

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I also made an aluminum center button to finish out the steering wheel.
All the billet aluminum parts inside the car will be removed and hardcoat anodized grey.
I bought some leather hides to wrap all the interior panels i'm fabricating in leather.

The door panels are ready to be wrapped. The inset part will get diamond quilted.

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The door handles will stay billet aluminum. the inside is hogged out to save weight. Im planning to fill it with foam and leather padding.

I installed door popper solenoids as I preferred that look over the aluminum handles I made. It kept the door panel cleaner and opens on the outside with a hidden switch once i get windows installed..
The door sills are installed too.

I should be doing all the leather work in the next few weeks as I learn how.
let me know what you guys think.

[Jimtmich]

Great finishing touches, and they all work well together. Nice Job.

[John Dol]

I'd like to contact Andrew myself about his car, but I cannot locate him anywhere in the Factory Five website or Forums, other than him being listed as winning 2018 Huntington Beach Cruise-In Best of Show Runner-Up.
Below are a few photos of his car's door windows.

Bob,

Look for Spaceclam on the FFCARS forum

John

[Bob Brandle]

John,

THANKS!!, Found the "Spaceclam Reveal" thread, etc. That's him, etc.

Forcefed1, the frameless fixed door glass on Spaceclam's Coupe was as solid as can be!

Bob

[P100DHG]

Does this have the race stance or street stance on the front end suspension settings?

[TheBabyBadger]

WOW! KILLING ME!

I wanna drive mine! Never mind the engine isn't even in it! Even worse, I'm back and forth on the spoiler and front bumper... I LOVE the way yours executed, still undecided which direction I will go. I'm caught between PURE and RIGHTEOUS... Couple questions:

1. Can you make more of the locators for the hood and trunk? PM me, I love them. Clean!
2. CTS-V brakes up front? I'm running SVE Cobras. Worked great on an 87 Race car but kinda ugly. What did the conversion consist of, how much invested?
3. I keep noticing my windshield doesn't have the black insert around the edge to hide the urethane (bothers me), but my rear glass does... is something wrong? Should I contact FFR?

GORGEOUS car and I LOVE the custom touches! Great job!

[forcefed1]

The car is on the street stance. Chassis is set at a height of 4.5".


2 the front brakes are 2016 mustang gt (non performance package) Cost me two bracket that i fabricated, and 300$ for the used set of calipers and rotors from a junk yard. look back through the thread you will see where and how i made them work.

[forcefed1]

It's raining. So i finally have a little time to show you guys some of the details I have been working on.

I bought a full cow hide of leather.
my mother learned to sew it and I learned to make panels cover them in thin foam and then stretch the stitched leather over them.

Here are a few photos from during the process.

After shaping the panels with wood I bought contact cement and sprayed it on the interior panels with an air gun. I purchased some 1/8" thick interior foam online stretched it over the wood panels to prepare for the leather.

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After letting the glue dry on the foam over night. I then did the same process again with leather and worked it over all the edges.

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Now that I'm all finished Ill take a few photos in the sun tomorrow with it all together.

[forcefed1]

Here are a couple of photos with all the billet parts i made trial fit before anodizing them.

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Some of you may recall I did away with the billet door pulls i fabricated for the interior here's the pulls I replaced them with installed. I also installed door opening solenoids
which operate from that flush mounted button.

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[forcefed1]

I originally decided i wanted modern billet switches with a real slick unique paddle. I bought the guts for the switches from digikey.com.
here's the original billet paddles I designed to work with those switch guts. Similar to the ford GT paddles.

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I had designed a cover plate for the whole cluster. Before fabricating the cover plate. I changed my mind on the entire switch. For rev 2, I bought new guts, redesigned and refabricated a new layout with new billet switches in it. This time the cover plate had finger separators the new paddles were a shape i liked more. Each switch has a lens on the tip of it with a light. The lens on the tip lights up amber when the head lights are on and the lens red when I toggle the switch.

here is a picture of the billet paddels after I grained them and anodized them
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I designed and fabricated the cover plate and toggle switches from billet.

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Here's the finish product after Anodizing grey and lasering the labels.

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here's the amber and red lights

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[John Dol]

Go mom!

Nice update, my DD has the diamond patterns and the blue stitching. I like it!

John

[forcefed1]

Sun came out this morning. I got a few good pictures. I also got to drive about 250 miles today! WHAT A REWARDING RIDE!!!

IMG_2075_1400x1050.JPG the billet part around the shifter is waiting for a lid on teh small tray in it then it too will get Anodized grey to match the rest of the stuff.

Take a look at the finished dash
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Im real pleases with the top "brow" with the small bump up and the seam in teh leather with the blue stitching. It all pulled together nicely.

[forcefed1]

Some of your guys will really like this touch.

I was able to fabricate some door sills. For a nice detail. I lasered an engineer drawing views of the front back and side of the car. I then assembled all the specifications for MY BUILD as notes on teh drawing and lasered all that right into the sills. I did this to both sides. This way when people are looking at it they can always read all about it right there while looking at it.

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[forcefed1]

I also powdercoated the calipers black. I really struggled for what color to do here. In the end I decided the whole car had so many interesting things to look at WHY call attention to the brakes? They are just 4 piston brembo 14" brakes. All kinds of cars have that these days. So all i did was engrave SHELBY DAYTONA on them and then I powdercoated clear over them to seal in the engraving. this way the attention stays on the body and the rest of teh car that no one else has and other real interesting special touches.


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[forcefed1]

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Man what a rewarding experience building this car has been!

I only have a little more to do. The final details are almost wrapped up!

I head to VIR Thursday and Friday of this week to get some laps in.

[Straversi]

Your machined billet details are amazing. A few photos show error and won’t open. Love to see the detail in the lazered door sills. Good decision on the brake calipers. Lots of expensive production cars with high contrast brake calipers and I always wonder why they want me looking at their brakes.
-Steve

[Bob Brandle]

I really like your Coupe's interior design and finishing touches!!! Congratulations!!! It'll all provide food for thought for my Gen 3 Coupe build that's still under two months since receipt of the full kit.

[forcefed1]

I just got home from a 2 day HPDE at VIR. I did NOT build my coupe to be a track rat, But, I did build it to be a very capable street car. I have been doing HPDE events for 15 years. I also race a BMW 328 in the champ car series. I got to say WOW WHAT A CAPABLE CAR. And the SOUND of that 2nd gen coyote with headers and FFR pipes WOW. I got SO much excitement from SO many people about the cars looks and just how awesome it was. People were making erotic gestures. corner workers pumping their fists in the air and cheering on the cool down lap. People on the side giving me thumbs up taking video.

Everyone that was there who came to look the car over with all the details and the build quality, could not believe that i was taking it on the track. I was NOT there to run the car hard and find the limits. It would be a HORRIBLE thing to brush the tire wall or worse because I pushed too deep into a braking zone or tested the aero through a turn.

Having said all this, WOW what a capable car. It is so easy to drive FAST. It is so THRILLING to drive FAST. FFR has made such a capable platform! Running Toyo R888s 325x 19 rear 275 x 18 front it was very balanced. I ran tire pressures of 31F 35R cold and that resulted in a nice balanced wear and feel. Im running a FFR front sway bar only on the middle stiff setting. I am running 2016 stock mustang GT 4 piston front brakes with 14" stock rotors and Hawk street HP 5.0 pads. The rear brakes are 2016 mustang GT performance pack rear stock brakes. the engine is a stock 2016 coyote with a BAMA tune. Running on 93 octane.

My rear wing was set to 3 deg AOA the front splitter at 2.5" Top speed with out pushing it was 144 mph. I never once pieced one good lap together. I constantly kept saying "dont push it let off and let people pass, the tire wall doesn't give a damn how many hours you have in this thing!" I intentionally stayed disciplined not to run it hard and risk running out of talent.

NOW there are a few things I will improve.
#1 my gas pedal arm is short. My toe actuates the pedal near the top of the arm. I am 6'2" with 12.5 shoes. this was the single biggest complaint. I struggled to feather the throttle in sweeping turns. with the arm on teh pedal being so short. a little push from my toe resulted in lots of power. I will be making a custom coyote pedal and electronics to fix this. a longer pedal arm would have more resolution and allow more precise control of power. some of the sweeping turns were not smooth.

#2 I would change.
I had more chassis roll than I wanted. I would try to add the rear sway bar and see if I can balance the front and rear for neutral handling. I removed it all together to guarantee it would understeer.

# 3 fuel pickup was horrible. I would run out of fuel in the turns with over 1/2 a tank full. I had to top off every session. I'm running the stock FFR tank and a mustang pickup and pump.

[T6Ted]

This is great to hear! I plan on tracking my coupe quite a bit. Sound like it's well sorted right out of the box.

[forcefed1]

Right out of the box for everyone wanting to drive hard, should be better fuel pick up system. My other suggested improvements may not be so important to everyone.

[Automan]

Watching this build was absolutely fantastic. So many ideas for my build. learned a lot. I would love to know the drawing for your ignition and start switches. FF shows key bezel ignition only. Would like to turn the key and then press a start button.

[Jacob McCrea]

So much to like here; thanks for taking the time to share it with us!

[T6Ted]

@forcefed1

Great Looking Coupe! I really like the blue.

Could you private message me your email? I would like to talk about getting a set of the S550 brake adapters made up for my upcoming build.

Thanks!

[Fbird]

Beautiful interior. Very nice layout.