Monday and Tuesday this week I had the day off from work, and the Christmas festivities were over, so I spent two solid days working on the Shelby clone project. The only interruption was to send the book manuscript on disc off to the printer on Monday; hopefully I'll be able to get the printed copies by the end of the month.

Before I got started on the car today I called ATI. I still hadn't received the transmission I ordered earlier this month, and wanted to know if they could give me a schedule. It turned out that the Powerglide to FE bellhousing had not arrived at ATI from the foundry yet, and would probably not arrive until mid January. So, I will have to wait until then to see my new transmission.

In the shop this morning I decided on a change in plans. Rather than working on getting the new quarters and other sheet metal welded in place, I decided to work on finishing the roll cage instead. I figured that the roll cage would help strengthen the frame structure of the car when it was finally welded into place, and I thought that would be a good thing when I was welding on the sheetmetal. So I started with the roll cage on Monday morning.

In short order I had the passenger side roll cage front upright bent and tacked into place on the front hoop, and sitting on it's 6" X 6" plate on the floor. Next I started working on the sidebars that go from the front uprights to the main hoop, across the middle of the door opening. Here I had to stop and figure out how best to proceed, because the main hoop was positioned just behind the door openings, and the front uprights were positioned just ahead of the door openings. So, when I put in the sidebars, access to weld to outboard side of the sidebars was very limited because they were up against the interior panels of the car. I wasn't all that great at welding in confined areas, so I spent some time figuring out the best way to do this.

In the end I settled on the idea of welding in the sidebars across the door openings from the inside, and making these welds as solid as possible, 180 degrees around the tube where I had access. Then, since the sidebars were going to be configured as swing-out bars, I could cut them at the connection joint up near the main hoop on each side. Then, I could cut the tack weld between the front hoop and the front uprights on each side, and completely pull each front upright and its attached side bar out of the car. This would give me access to weld completely around the sidebars where they attached to each front upright. Then, I could pull the main hoop forward past the door openings(since it still had not been welded to the back half frame rails) to get access to the outside half of the sidebar stubs that had been welded to the main hoop, so they could be welded all the way around. Finally, the main hoop could be repositioned, the front uprights could be repositioned, the sidebars could be clamped together into alignment where they had been cut, and the front uprights could be welded to the front hoop.

This work took me most of the day Monday to get accomplished. I also had to add a gusset plate to the front upright / front hoop junction on each side, because the angle of the front uprights to the front hoop was pretty extreme. After I got the gusset added and everything welded from underneath, I pulled the 6" X 6" plates out of the way, pushed the whole cage back a few inches so that the main hoop was off the back half frame crossbar, and dropped the whole cage through the floor again so I could weld the top of the front uprights and gusset plates in place. After I was done welding, I took the opportunity to paint over the top of the cage bars with a chassis epoxy, since I wasn't sure that I would get this opportunity again. I finished the day by putting the cage back into its final position, and cutting the side bars down near the front of the door opening, where they would pivot open when finished, and then painting the rest of the cage where the welding had been completed.

Tuesday I worked on getting the front frame support bars installed. These bars run from the front cage uprights forward along the top of the fenders, and then bend down to weld to the front subframe up near the front end of the car. My plan was to cut the shock towers and inner fenders completely out of the car at some point, so these two bars had to run close enough to the front fender mounting points so that I could add tabs to the bars later for mounting the front fenders. Therefore I wanted the bars to run straight along the inner fenders at the top for a good four feet before they curved down to the front frame rails.

Also, the attachment of the bars to the front hoop was a concern. Where the bars would attach was ahead of the door opening, so I wouldn't be able to easily weld around the entire joint with the cage in the final position. I had thought about this already, which was why I hadn't welded the cage to the back half frame or the 6" X 6" plates yet. My plan was to tack the front frame support bars to the front uprights, and then pull the cage straight back so that the joint was exposed through the door opening, and I could easily weld all around the front upright to front frame support bar joint.

In order to do this I had to make sure that the front frame support bars went straight through the sheet metal to the front uprights. Where they had to go through, they had to penetrate the sheet metal of the car in two places, spaced about 10" apart. If they went through at an angle, it would be impossible to pull the rest of the cage straight back and get access to the joint for welding.

In order to make sure the hole for the bars came straight through the sheet metal, I tool a 1/4" diameter 12" long drill bit and lined it up from the engine compartment to aim straight at the driver's side front upright. The drill has a level on top, so making sure to keep the drill level, I drilled through the outside sheet metal, and then farther in through the inside sheet metal. Using these holes as a position indication, I used my plasma cutter to cut the holes in the sheetmetal, from the engine compartment side for the outside panel and from the interior side for the inside panel. Then I fed a test piece of chrome moly tubing through the holes, and made a few more trims with the plasma cutter, until the tubing would slide straight through and contact the front upright.

Next I bent up the driver's side front frame support bar, notched it to fit against the front upright, and trimmed it at the front of the subframe rail to fit on the top. I had to cut away the inner fender forward of the shock tower in order to get the bar positioned where I wanted it. I trimmed the bar to fit the subframe rail, clamped it in place, then climbed into the interior to weld it to the front upright from the inside. I repeated the whole process on the passenger side, then pulled the cage straight back and finished the welds through the door openings. Finally I pushed the cage back into its final position, and after double checking the position to make sure I had everything right, I welded the main hoop and the rear support bars to the back half crossmember.

This was another milestone for the car. I still had more welding to do on the cage attachment points, but now the cage was set in place and wasn't going anywhere. I was planning on finishing this work up on the weekend

Wednesday and Thursday I was back at work, but we had Friday off for New Year's, so after some family obligations in the morning I was back out at the shop. I started by welding the 6" X 6" plates to the floor of the car, and then welding the front uprights to the plates. This was a little tricky due to access issues, and I had to use a mirror behind the front upright tubes in order to see what I was welding around the back side of the tube. Fortunately, this isn't as tough as it sounds, and if you go in small increments it can be done; it just takes some patience. From there I built some 1/8" plate pieces to weld onto the front subframe where the front frame support bars welded on. Since the front subframes are just glorified sheet metal on these cars, I wanted to use the large 1/8" plates to spread the load on the subframes. After I tacked the front frame support bars in place up front I moved back to the back half frame rails, which were still only tacked in place. I removed the wheels, tires, and axle housing for access, and welded the back half frame rails securely to the rocker panels and the rear 2X3 rectangular steel tube that was welded to the taillight panel. Finally I cut two more short pieces of chrome moly to run from a different spot on the rocker panel back to the back half frame rails, for additional strength.

On Saturday I focused on the front end of the car. I wanted to cut the core support and inner fenders out, but before doing that I had to put a framework in place to support the front of the fenders and other front end pieces, plus the radiator. After an hour of thinking about the best way to do this, I decided on a simple framework made from 1" X 1" 16 gauge square tubing. As I was getting going on this Steve showed up with a couple of hours to help out. Between the two of us over the next couple of hours we got the square steel tubing welded in place, and also welded some tabs onto the front frame support tubes that were lined up with the holes in the inner fenders that the fender bolts went through. Then we used the plasma cutter cut away all the core support, inner fender, and shock tower sheet metal. This was an extremely cathartic experience for me; I have hated the shock towers in Ford Mustangs for years and years, but have never completely removed them from a vehicle. As we pulled the pieces away and threw them in the scrap file, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Look at all that room! The cammer and the headers would fit in here with no problem now.

After Steve left, I decided that with the inner fenders and shock towers gone, I could mount the struts on the spindles and see what they looked like. Sure enough, as soon as I got back to the front end, things started going wrong again. The first thing I did was to try to fit the adapter plates included with the Fatman kit to the spindles. These are two pieces of 1/8" steel plate that act as spacers between the '94-'04 Mustang spindles and the '79-'93 Mustang struts, because the brackets on the bottom of the Mustang struts are spaced farther apart than the width of the ears that they bolt to on the spindles. The adapter plates in the kit came in pairs, welded together with a nut in between them. A jacking screw was threaded into the nut, to be used for camber adjustment by jacking the strut away from the spindle. Unfortunately, this assembly did not fit on the spindle; it was too narrow. This wasn't that big of a deal to me because I was going to replace this assembly with some custom plates anyway, but I wondered what kind of a jig they had used to build something that didn't fit. Next I grabbed one of the struts, which had been sitting in the box next to the car for the last month or so, and test fit it. I figured that even if it was loose it would give me an idea of what I needed to do with the strut upper mounting point. However, I was surprised to see that the strut fit perfectly onto the spindle! There was no adapter required! This would have been fine, except that I was relying on using those adapter plates to allow pivoting of the strut so that the upper strut mount could be moved outboard. Essentially, I couldn't use the strut as it was.

This was another big disappointment, and I didn't really know how to proceed. I plan to give the people at Fatman a call on Monday and ask about this. I left the shop a little discouraged on Saturday night.

Sunday I decided to leave the front suspension work again, and worked at getting the sheet metal welding done on the quarters, trunk drop downs, and outer wheelhouses. The driver's side went along with no trouble; I kept a wet rag next to the panel as I was welding, and just went around and around each quarter panel, welding a button at a time, until I had the seam completed. Underneath I welded the outer wheelhouse and trunk drop downs in place after some additional trimming of these parts, and plug welded throught the quarter panel lip to the outer wheelhouse. On the passenger side, I decided I wanted to reposition the quarter panel just a little, so I drilled some more holes, took out Steve's sheet metal screws and put in some Klecos in slightly different locations to move the panel an eighth inch here and there. Finally I got to welding, but kind of petered out by late afternoon without finishing the welding work on that side. I'll get to it later. I went inside because I need to start getting going on building a web site to advertise my book. With the book at the printer the clock was running on this, and I didn't have the first clue about how to put a web site together, so I wanted to start reading a book I'd purchased on the subject. Hopefully I can talk to the people at Fatman next week and solve my problems with the front suspension install, and get back to work on the car next weekend.

As usual this week I had a bunch of family commitments in the evenings during the week, but I made an effort to be out in the shop late each evening to try to get as much done on my book edit as possible, so by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around I was just about done. At 4:00 on Saturday my pals Jerry and Steve showed up at the shop to give me a hand.

I've known these two guys for over ten years. We got to be friends through the model airplane hobby, as we were all flying radio controlled model airplanes back then. My barn is a nice, heated shop, so we had made a habit back then of getting together at my place to work on our airplanes over the winter. Jerry and Steve would each bring a plane over and we'd spend a fun evening doing wood, fiberglass, or paint work on the planes. We all got going making fiberglass molds together, and by the end of the "airplane phase" we were all making molds of giant scale World War II planes, and pulling out fiberglass replicas to build and fly.

Gradually over the years our interests morphed back towards high performance cars, which we'd all had some experience with earlier in our lives. Steve has owned a '67 Chevelle for many years, and when I bought my Mach 1 in 2003 and started working on it, he followed shortly thereafter with some improvements to his Chevelle. In 2004 I expanded my barn to have some more space, and in 2005 I bought my dyno. Steve built a 400 small block and ran it on my dyno in 2006, and also about that time Jerry bought a '67 Mustang coupe from me to work on as a father-son project with his son Steven. The car was pretty rusty, and Jerry and Steven replaced a whole bunch of the sheet metal on the car.

Over the years the car hobby has taken over for us. Steve has acquired and restored a 1950s Buick, and also an early '70s Camaro, and has his daughters running the Camaro and Chevelle at the drag strip. Jerry and his son finished the Mustang, and then Jerry picked up a Factory Five Cobra replica and built that. They've also been over to my shop quite a few times helping me with my projects along the way. Whenever they come over, the amount of work that the three of us get done together is pretty staggering, and to be honest most of it gets done by Jerry and Steve. Those guys really move along on the project.

Steve and Jerry are both expert welders and fabricators, and both of them are a lot better at sheet metal work than I am. We were all at Steve's 50th birthday party a few weeks ago, and agreed that we all needed a barn night to shake off the Minnesota winter doldrums. This was a perfect opportunity for me because I needed to get the new quarters, trunk drop downs, and outer wheelhouses hung on the Shelby clone. Did I mention I HATE sheet metal work? With Jerry and Steve helping I figured I could make a big dent in this part of the project.

When Steve and Jerry arrived we started talking about how best to proceed on the sheet metal installation. I told them basically how I wanted to approach the job, and in short order we got to work. Pretty soon the driver's side quarter panel was off, and we were trimming the sheet metal for installation of the new panels. Here's some pictures:





At the bottom of the top photo, you can see the modification to the lower rear of the quarter to provide additional tire clearance. We cut a pie shaped piece out of the quarter, bent the fenderlip back, and re-welded it to the fender. We gained about an inch and a half of tire clearance like this. You can also see the holes we drilled in the inner fender lip; I will plug weld through those holes to the outer wheelhouse, to hold these two parts together. In the bottom photo the 1" X 1" tube frame that I had added earlier to the back half frame is visible. The bar on the left side of the photo is level with the original trunk floor, and we were able to just hang the new trunk drop down from this square tube, making for an easy installation.

As we were working, Steve pulled out a box of self tapping sheet metal screws, promoting them as the best way to hang the new panels prior to welding them in place.

Jerry and I took exception to this idea. Whenever I do sheet metal work I like to hang the panels with Klecos. Jerry agreed, and this led to some good natured Kleco vs. self tapping screw commentary. I'm afraid that Jerry and I were really rubbing it in.

"Hey Jerry, I need to hold the outer wheelhouse in place here. What do you think I should use?"

"Gee Jay, I think I'd use some Klecos."

"Klecos, huh? You think Klecos are the best solution here?"

"Klecos are the only way to go."

"OK, I'll use some Klecos. Hey, look over here at the bottom of the trunk drop down. I can use some Klecos to hold the drop down to the quarter panel."

"Klecos would be perfect for that. I'm going to put a couple of Klecos in the back of the quarter to hold it to the taillight panel."

"Boy, these Klecos sure are useful devices."

"Yeah, I don't know how anybody can do sheet metal work without Klecos!"

Jerry and I went on and on like this at every opportunity, but whenever we did Steve would fire up the grinder and make so much noise that we couldn't talk. Eventually Steve got tired of listening to us and moved to the other side of the car to work on the other quarter panel.

The sheet metal work went amazingly quickly, and by 10:00 PM we had all the new sheet metal hung on the car (either with Klecos or self tapping screws, depending on who had done the work LOL!). We thought about staying a little later and starting on the welding, but we had spent the last six hours working pretty hard, with only a short break to have a pizza and a couple beers, so we decided to call it a night. Jerry and Steve took off, and I went inside and crashed, happy that we had been able to accomplish so much in such a short period of time.

Sunday I was going to start the welding, but I wanted to try to get the book edit finished, and after reviewing the corrected manuscript I found I wasn't happy with some parts of it, so I went back to make some more changes. I ended up working on it all day, and I'm still not quite satisfied with it, so hopefully I can get it finished next week and get the welding done after that. With the Christmas holidays coming up next week I've taken a few vacation days, and I should be able to free up some time to work on the car in addition to my family obligations.

Monday this week I got on the phone to Fatman Fabrications about the problems I found with the parts in my front strut conversion kit. I told them about the missing piece for the rack, and also about the nylon rack bushing that didn't fit. I emailed them some pictures of the rack and bushing and they said they would look into it. They called me back later in the day, and said that the rack bushing they sent was actually for a manual rack, because they thought I was going to use a manual rack with the setup! I don't know how they got that confused, unless it was because I talked to them about using the power rack as a manual. I also had asked them about using a manual rack, and they told me that they just weren't available. So somehow this got the whole issue confused, and I got the manual rack bushing set instead of the power rack bushing set.

In any case, though, they promised to send me the correct rack bushing, and also the missing steering rack stop piece. I was hopeful that these parts would show up this week.

I had also read a little further along in the instructions for the strut conversion kit, and found that if wanted to use the stock steering column I needed to use a teflon bushing to support the steering shaft at the bottom of the column. Normally the shaft is supported by the steering box at the bottom end, but with the rack conversion the only support for the shaft was the bearing at the top of the shaft. I had measured the diameter of the steering column tube last weekend, and I knew the shaft was 3/4" in diameter, so I ordered a hunk of round teflon bar that I could machine to fit in the end of the tube to support the shaft from Enco mfg. I figured I could get that machined over the weekend.

I also finally decided to go with the ATI Powerglide transmission this week, and called them to order it. They figured it would be a couple weeks, and I would have it before Christmas. I needed the transmission before I could finish welding the brackets to the rear end, because I wanted to have the engine and transmission dummied into position and the car at ride height to set the driveshaft angles before I tacked the four link brackets, rear coil over brackets, watts link, and rear sway bar brackets into place.

On Thursday I got the call from Discount Steel that my chrome moly tubing had finally arrived, so Friday on my lunch break from work I ran over there and picked it up. When I got home on Friday night, there was the UPS package from Fatman, so I was set to go for the weekend. Friday night I got started right away because I didn't have any family obligations, so I pulled the steering column out of the car and took it apart to figure out the best way to convert it to connect up to the DD tube on the steering u-joint. Inside the Mustang column the steering shaft starts out round, and the flattens on the side to the 3/4" DD shape. Then a sleeve fits over the shaft and slides along it, to provide for a collapsible steering column in case of a front end impact. The sleeve is welded to a flange that sticks out the end of the column, and bolts to the rag joint on the normal Mustang steering box.

I had some extra DD shaft from a previous project, so I cut off the end sleeve and pushed it up as far as it would go on the original shaft, and pinned it in place. Then I cut a piece of the spare DD shaft and slid it inside the sleeve far enough so that it still had over 6" to go before it bottomed against the original shaft, preserving the collapsibility of the column. Then I cut the shaft off about 1" past the end of the column tube so I had room to mount the steeing u-joint.

Over at the lathe, I chucked up the piece of round teflon stock that I had ordered earlier in the week and turned it down to fit inside the steering column tube. I left a ridge on one end so that it would stop after slipping inside the steering column for about an inch. Finally I bored a 3/4" hole through the center, and cut the piece off from the starting stock. I pushed it into the steering column tube, and added the u-joint on the end. Re-installed in the car, the end of the column looks like this:



Saturday morning I opened the package from Fatman and found the missing steering rack stop. I installed the stop and the other inner tie rod end on the driver's side of the rack, installed the boot, and then using the new nylon bushing that also came in the package, installed the steering rack in the car. Before I tightened the rack I took another piece of DD steering shaft and connected the u-joint on the column to the u-joint on the rack. After it was installed, this setup looked pretty good.

Just to kind of get some of the parts off the floor, I installed the outer tie rod ends, the steering arms on the spindles, and hooked everything up. But before I could think about installing the struts, I had to get to the cage.

I spent the rest of the day on Saturday and all day Sunday on the roll cage installation. The back half frame crossmember made for a very nice place to put the main hoop, so after taking some careful measurements I bent the hoop up and test fitted it in the car. I had left it a little long, so I adjusted the position of the hoop so it was up against the headliner, marked where the bottom of the hoop should be cut off, and then removed it and cut off the bottom few inches of the legs. At that point I took the time to pull the headliner out of the car; it needed replacing anyway, and with the new hoop cut to the proper height in the car I had a reference point for the distance I wanted to keep the cage bars away from the roof. Then I reinstalled the main hoop and clamped it in place so it stayed in position.

From there I got the rear support bars for the main hoop bent up, cut in my new tubing notcher, and tacked in place on the main hoop. Finally I cut and notched a straight piece to be the main hoop crossbar, and after dummying in one of the fiberglass seats I was planning on using in the car, I set the height of the crossbar so that it would support the seat back per NHRA regulations, and tacked it in place. Since the roll bar is made of chrome moly tubing, all the welding has to be done with a TIG welder. I was able to get the crossbar welded all the way around with no problems, and about halfway around each of the rear support bars where they attached to the main hoop. At the end of the day Sunday I pulled the main hoop forward and dropped it down between the front of the back half frame crossbar and the floor where it had been cut away, so that the top of the main hoop dropped down about 12". This gave me plenty of clearance to weld around the top side of the rear support bar to main hoop junction. Finally I set the main hoop back up on the back half frame crossbar and called it a day.

Next week I should be able to finish up the cage work inside the interior, and start looking at how to position the bars that go forward to the front frame rails. After that I can tack in the top strut mounts to those bars, and see how the front suspension will work. I'm looking forward to getting to that point.

For the most part I had a pretty good week on the 69 Shelby clone project. On Monday I ordered a bunch of parts, including the Mark Williams axle components, the Currie axle housing, and the Fatman front suspension kit. Then it was on to ebay to pick up the spindles and hubs, and the power steering rack I needed for the Fatman kit. Finally I went to the Summit racing site, and found some Strange Engineering adjustable struts for an '87 Mustang to use with the Fatman kit.

Thinking ahead to the the weekend, when I expected to have my roll cage tubing, I stopped by my friend JC's house after work on Monday to borrow his tubing bender. This bender is made by an outfit called Pro-Tools, and uses a hyraulic jack and some dies to bend roll cage tubing. Part of the roll cage drill also requires a tubing notcher, to achieve a nice tight fit where the tubes meet prior to welding. JC also had a tubing notcher that I could borrow, but it was a fairly low quality, Harbor Freight-ish tool, and we both agreed it would be better to have a sturdier one with more options like offseting the notch in the tube, so Tuesday on my lunch break I called Pro-Tools and ordered one of theirs. Next time JC builds a cage he can borrow my tubing notcher, so I won't feel like such a sponge because I'm always borrowing his bender!

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights this week I was tied up with activities for my kids, but on Wednesday night I got out to the garage and started thinking about more details on the car. One thing I knew would be a problem was the stock master cylinder location; the SOHC valve covers were so big that they pretty much completely blocked this area, making repositioning the master cylinder a necessity. I was hoping to be able to convert to an under dash master cylinder like the ones available from Wilwood, but looking under the dash there didn't seem to be an easy way to get that kind of a setup mounted. It looked like it would be easier to make a bracket that repositioned the master cylinder up and to the left in the engine compartment, and use a series of levers in the bracket to transfer the force from the brake pedal pushrod through a couple of pivot points and up to the new master cylinder position. I tentatively settled on that solution.

On Thursday the Mustangs Unlimited sheet metal parts and the Mark Williams rear end components came, but I still hadn't heard from Discount Steel on the steel I had ordered. Friday morning I gave them a call and found out that the chrome moly roll cage tubing had been delayed until the next week. However, they did have the rest of the parts that I needed, so I headed down there on my lunch break to pick up what they had. I figured I could at least work on getting the back half frame installed over the weekend as long as I got the 2X3 rectangular steel tubing I needed. I also dropped the Mark Williams case, gears, and spool off with BradFORD, so he could set the gears up in the case for me. He promised me they'd be ready next week.

On Saturday I decided to start with replacing the front floor pans. I hate sheet metal work, and replacing rusty floor pans is at the bottom of my list of fun things to do with my car, so I thought while I had a high level of enthusiasm for this project I'd be best off to get this distasteful task out of the way. Using a metal cutoff wheel on my 4 1/2" grinder, I trimmed the floor pan on the driver's side around the subframe underneath, and then moved out from there to cut the remaining rusty sheet metal on the driver's side out. I ended up cutting all the way up to the seat pedestal and rocker panel on the outside, and about 4" inboard of the subframe on the inside, before the rusted metal was all gone. Then I laid the patch panel in place, marked it underneath for trimming, trimmed it to size, and got it fit into its final position. I drilled some holes where the panel overlapped the original floor to install some Klecos to hold it in place, and also some larger holes over the flanges of the subframe rail so that I could plug weld those areas. Finally I broke out the wire feed and went to town, welding short sections spaced apart by a few inches around the periphery of the replacement panel to minimize any warpage. Once the outside was tacked I plug welded through the new floor panel to the subframe before finish welding the periphery. Finally I got underneath the car and ran a solid bead all along the subframe rail to the new floor pan; I wanted this to be particularly strong. After four hours, the work was done. Now I was all ready to cut a hole in my new floorpan so I could drop the cage through! Seemed a little strange...

After a short break I tackled the passenger side, which was rustier than the driver's side and ended up taking a little longer, but by 8:00 PM I was finished with the floorplan replacement, and looking forward to Sunday when I could start the installation of the back half frame.

First thing I had to do on Sunday was trim the sheet metal in the back of the car. I had originally cut the trunk floor and inner wheelhouses out of the car with a plasma cutter, which wasn't very precise, so the whole cut needed to be cleaned up, and the metal shined up so I could weld to it in some spots. Another nasty job, and it took me a couple hours to get it done. Finally I was ready to start with the fun stuff, and I wanted to begin by putting the 2X3 square steel tube along the back of the taillight panel. This piece had to go in a certain spot so that I could weld the trailer hitch receiver to it, and also be positioned so that the top of this tube was level with the trunk floor, allowing it to serve as a reference point for the trunk drop downs. I cut the tube to the same length as the distance between the existing trunk drop downs, and slid it up from underneath so that it was between the trunk drop downs and up against the trunk floor and taillight panel. Out came the wire feed, and I ran several long tacks between the 2X3 tube and the taillight panel.

Next I jockeyed the back half frame into position underneath the car. With my floor jack under the center of the back half frame's front crossmember, I jacked it up until it was just under the car's rocker panels. Taking some measurements between the inside of the rocker panels and frame rails going towards the rear, I got the back half frame centered under the car, and then marked the crossmember. I dropped it back down and cut the excess crossmember from each side off, leaving it 1/8" short so that I could weld an 1/8" thick reinforcement plate to the inside of the rocker panels before welding the back half crossmember to that.

I jacked the back half frame back up again, this time putting the frame up about halfway past the start of the rocker panels. The rear frame rails were longer than necessary, so my plan was to cut them off flush with the rear 2X3 rectangular tube that I'd already installed. It was at this point that it dawned on me that I really didn't know exactly how much of the back half frame to cut off. The frame contained the front mounts for the four link bars, and the four link bars positioned the rear axle housing, and the axle housing positioned the wheels in the wheel wells. In order to make sure that the wheels were centered in the wheel wells, I needed the axle housing and the other rear end components.

At this point I called it a weekend. I should be getting the Currie axle housing early next week, and also the set up case and gears from BradFORD, so I'll have what I need to get the back half frame installed over the long Thanksgiving weekend. With that put into position, I should be able to start on the roll cage also, providing the tubing comes in before Wednesday. I'm looking forward to a productive weekend on the Shelby clone project after the family activities on Thursday.

This post is the first of a series of weekly blog entries chronicling my efforts to build a new street/strip car and prepare it for some race track action during the summer of 2011, culminating in a return to Hot Rod magazine's Drag Week event in September. Please note that the first entries, up through January 23, 2011, were written after the fact. As I learned about building web sites in January of 2011, it became clear that adding regular new content to a site would help keep visitors coming back. A lot of people had expressed interest in my new car project, so I thought a weekly blog detailing progress on the car would be of interest. Of course, by the time I discovered this the car had already been under construction for more than two months, but fortunately I had a written schedule of tasks that I had been keeping, allowing me a record to refer to for the earlier blog entries. I have recreated the salient events of the build as accurately as I can with this record, but the timeline may be off a little from actual because of this process. All blog entries from January 30th forward are real time.

Jay Brown, January 30, 2011

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My book is done! Seems like it has taken me forever to get the thing written, get all the pictures and graphs finished and arranged in the text, collect all the data for the appendices, etc. All the dyno testing was finished by January of this year, and it is obvious that I seriously underestimated the amount of time it would take to finish the writing. The layout of the book, especially, took much longer than I had anticipated. But now it's finished, save for a cover design and an edit from a service that I hired. I can finally start thinking about a new car project.

This year was the first year that I'd missed Drag Week since its inception in 2005. The event had become a yearly highlight for me, giving me the opportunity to run a car at a race track on consecutive days that I would not normally get at home. The closest quarter mile track to where I live is about 120 miles away, and with a family and the associated busy schedule, it's hard to break free on any given weekend to go to the track. Plus, most of the track events revolve around bracket racing, and I'm not a big bracket racer, preferring instead to make modifications to the car and see how it affects the ET and MPH, and participating in the occasional heads up grudge race. For me, Drag Week addressed these issues, and came with the added benefit of a community of participants that were, for the most part, top shelf racers. The week long get together with like minded individuals was about the best vacation I could imagine.

Unfortunately a variety of events conspired to prevent me from attending this year. The time required to get the car ready was hard to come by last summer, and it would have taken away from the time I spent working on the book. The book had become a monkey on my back, and I simply had to get it done. Plus I didn't want to go back with essentially the same combination as the year before; a lot of the guys at Drag Week like to do that, but I prefer to have something new. Early last summer I'd tried to run the 585" SOHC that I took on Drag Week 2009 on methanol, to at least have something a little bit different and go a little faster at the track, but I was unable to get the engine to work properly on methanol with the Hilborn injector setup converted to EFI. So if I was going to return to Drag Week in 2010, it would be with essentially the same 585" SOHC / '64 Ford Galaxie combination.

In the weeks leading up to Drag Week I'll confess that I also felt a little burned out on drag racing in general. I hadn't gotten to the track at all last summer, and not having to worry about getting the Galaxie prepared for a week of racing was appealing. So I decided to skip this year's event.

I regretted that decision just as soon as Drag Week 2010 started, and the coverage started showing up at Bangshift.com and the Hot Rod web site. I missed my friends from the event, and wanted to be there racing! Too late, dammit.

I threw renewed effort into finishing my book, promising myself a new car project as soon as it was completed. While writing I began looking around for a 1965 Mercury Comet project car. Given Dyno Don Nicholson's extremely successful Mercury Cyclone SOHC match racer that ran in 1965, I thought it would be fun to do a Nicholson tribute car, upgraded with some modern components. I searched ebay, craigslist, and the high performance car and racing sites for the last several weeks, looking for a suitable candidate. I had previously found fiberglass front end components, bumpers, and doors at the Crites web site, and I figured Iwould use those on this car, so what I was looking for was a car that was relatively straight and rust free in the floors, quarter panels, and roof. I had decided that for this car, I was going to abandon the sleeper strategy that I employed with my '69 Mach 1 and the Galaxie, and put in a spartan interior and racing buckets to save some weight. So, the interior of the project car didn't matter either.

Unfortunately, after several weeks of searching a suitable candidate had not appeared. I saw plenty of cars in the $6000-$8000 range that would have been fine, but they were mostly complete, nice cars that I would have had to disassemble and sell a bunch of good parts off of before I could use them. I didn't want to do that, and the prices were more than what I wanted to pay anyway. Then there were a lot of cars in the $500-$2000 range that had rusty floorpans and quarters, and I didn't want to mess with the rust if I could avoid it. I did find a few candidates that looked pretty good in the $2500-$3500 range, but they were post cars, and I wanted a hardtop. So, after the unsuccessful search process of the last several weeks, this week I began to rethink my options.

Since 2004 I'd had a 1969 Mustang shell sitting in one of my garage bays. Here's a picture of the car I took when I first got it home:



I bought this car to turn it into a pro-street style vehicle, with an SOHC engine. The original concept was to put two turbos on the car, and remove the two inboard headlights to let the turbos get their air right from the headlight openings. I thought I could turn the car into a Boss 429 clone, but with the SOHC engine instead. The Mustang was purchased in Kansas and was relatively clean, and when I got it home the first thing I'd done was pick up an S&W race cars back half kit and cut the back half of the floor out of the car. Photos below:





But then the project got stalled because I was spending more time working on my '69 Mach 1, and then Drag Week 2005 was announced and I spent a bunch of time getting ready for that. Shortly after DW05 I finally got my first SOHC motor together, and that occupied a bunch of my time also. Work on that original cammer engine also made it clear to me that I needed to do some development work on the SOHC before I could feel comfortable building a twin turbo version. Slowly, the '69 Mustang fell down the list of priorities until finally I stuck it off in a separate garage as a future project.

As the ongoing search for a '65 Comet seemed more and more futile, I began thinking more about the '69 Mustang. I had become familiar enough with the SOHC so now the turbo motor seemed like a possibility, and I had acquired most of the necessary parts. However, I was still waiting for the cylinder heads to be done, and the porting work was going slowly at my local shop. It was not clear that I would have time to build the car, and build and tune the turbocharged SOHC engine, in time for use this summer at the race track or at Drag Week.

Early this week I decided to look more seriously at the '69 Mustang as a candidate for the new car. I opened up the storage garage where the car was sitting, and gave it a good once over. I took an inventory of the parts that I had for it, and what I was missing, and then started searching online for some things I needed. I was primarily looking for fiberglass front end parts, and maybe a trunk lid. Most of the fiberglass parts I found didn't exactly fill me with confidence in terms of appearance and durability; I at least wanted the car to look pretty stock on the outside, maybe with a Boss 429 flavor, and be durable for street use. The fiberglass fenders I found didn't appear to be real high quality, at least from what I could tell from the online descriptions. I found one company that offered fiberglass doors for the car, but claimed they only weighed 10 pounds each! In my opinion this wouldn't work well on a street car.

On Wednesday night I was looking at the Branda Performance web site when a big flashbulb went off in my head. There was the Shelby Mustang fiberglass section, and everything required to build a Shelby clone was listed on the web site! This included fiberglass fenders, hood, and all the other front end components, plus the trunk lid, quarter end caps, and taillight panel. I had investigated building a '69 Shelby clone around 2002 or so, but found that not all of the parts were available. Since I didn't want to do a half-way job on it, I decided not to pursue one at that time. But now, at least according to the Branda site, all the parts were available, including the chrome trim that goes around the grille mouth and had been so difficult to get for so many years, even on the used market.

I've had a spot in my heart for '69 Shelbys for many years. Back in 1976 and 1977 I had just started my hot rodding career, and was driving around in my Dad's old 1967 Mustang fastback. That was a great car, with an orange-red paint called Poppy Red and the black deluxe interior with the brushed aluminum decor panels. The car only had a 289 and a C4, but for a kid just out of high school it was great! I filled all the rust holes with bondo and gave it a paint job with some black racing stripes down the hood and trunk lid, slapped on a set of Cherry Bombs and a Holley two barrel carb, and thought I was the fastest thing on the street. I found out different, of course, but I drove that car for two years and it cemented my attachment to old Mustangs. Back then, on my way to work every day I drove right by a house with a '69 Shelby GT-350 sitting in the driveway. It was painted Gulfstream Aqua, and appeared to be in excellent shape, which was entirely possible in 1977. I longed for a car like that, and this eventually led me to buy my '68 Shelby convertible, but ever since those days I've wanted a '69 Shelby fastback painted Gulfstream Aqua. Driving by that Shelby every day burned the appeal of that car into my mind.

The trip through the Branda website made it appear that building a Shelby clone was now possible by buying all the required parts. The Boss 429 clone theme was forgotten for the '69 Mustang, and visions of the five NACA ducts on the hood of the '69 Shelby, and those '65 T-Bird taillights, filled my thoughts for the next 24 hours.

Thursday I called Branda to try to confirm on availability of the parts. It turned out that ALMOST all the parts were available from stock. Most importantly, all the fiberglass parts, including fenders, hood, trunk lid, taillight panel, and side scoops werein stock. Most of the trim items were available also, with the exception of the lace trim that goes under the Shelby lettering on the trunk lid, and two of the chrome "eyebrows" that go around the grille. According to Branda those parts came in and out of availability, because they were normally made by a small manufacturer in small production runs, and only on an irregular basis. When I expressed an unwillingness to buy almost all the parts, and be stuck waiting years for the pieces to finish the car, the guy I talked to at Branda steered me towards an ebay auction for a pair of the eyebrows, and they looked to be going for a reasonable price. I decided that I could fake the lace trim if it came down to it, so I bit the bullet and ordered all the parts needed for my '69 Shelby clone. Just this weekend I won the auction for the chrome "eyebrows", so after the parts from Branda arrive all I'll be missing is the lace trim for the trunk lid.

I felt pretty excited now that I had a solid direction to pursue with my new car, and was itching to get going on the car right away. Usually when I start a big project I put together a plan and schedule; this is just one of those things that I've been doing since I was a kid, because it helps me figure out everything that has to be done and how long its going to take. This weekend I tried to specify the project a little better, so I could schedule it out and see how long it was going to take me to get it done. The first thing I did was move the car from its storage garage into my normal shop, so I could work on it over the winter. This entailed moving a few other cars around, and rolling the Mustang in on three floor jacks because all the running gear had been removed when I cut the floor out of the car. Once I had it in the shop, I set up the S&W race cars back half kit next to the car to try to figure out a plan. Since I'd originally bought the back half kit I had been educated somewhat on the ability of many drag cars to run fast on fairly small tires. I had never really liked the looks of the big steamroller tires on the back of a car, and after learning about proper chassis and suspension setup over the last five years, I'd decided that I didn't want to run those big tires on this car. But here I already had the back half kit. What to do?

The back half kit contained a replacement rear frame with the mounts already welded in for the four link system, so I still wanted to use it. I decided that what I would do was install the back half kit, but retain the stock outer wheelhouses, and replace the inner wheelhouses with the aluminum wheel tubs I had. I felt that this would give me a little more structural rigidity in the rear quarter and trunk area, since the quarters and trunk drop downs tied into the factory outer wheelhouse. The tires I was planning on running were 29.5" tall, and 10.5" wide, so they would fit into the factory outer wheelhouse just fine. This approach would also give me a little bit more room in the trunk, which of course is rather limited in a Mustang to begin with. I had to start from scratch for a rear end for the car, so I would narrow the rear end to match the tire sizes I wanted to use.

Next I thought a little bit about the engine. The solution here seemed obvious. The 930 horsepower SOHC that I ran in my Galaxie at Drag Week 2009 was sitting on a stand in my shop. It would have been nice to put the turbo motor together and run that in this car, but I was less and less sure that I would have time to build that complicated engine and the car in time for racing this coming summer. So, I would bank on using the big SOHC engine in the Shelby clone, and if the turbo motor turned out to be available, so much the better.

The next item up for consideration was the rear quarters. Although this car was relatively clean, it still had some rust issues both ahead of and behind the rear wheelwells, at the bottom of the quarters. The trunk drop downs were also a little rusty. I hate rust, and had figured to just cut these sections out and weld in some patch panels. I had the car jacked up in the air, and so I test fit the wheels and tires I was planning to use under the car. As I suspected, the rear wheelwells were not long enough for these tires, even though they weren't the big ones. Here's a photo showing the tires in the wheelwells:



I had run across this problem before with my Mach 1, where the small tire size seriously limited the ability of the car to hook at the track. I wanted to avoid this issue with this car. After looking at this I decided that I would trim the wheelwell opening at the rear by cutting a pie shaped section out of the quarter just behind the fender lip, and then bend the lip back and weld the quarter back together. But doing this after already welding in a patch panel back there seemed like it might be problematic.

Mustang sheet metal is usually pretty cheap, so I got on the Mustangs Unlimited web site to see what complete quarter patch panels would cost. They were even cheaper than I thought they'd be at $89 per side! I decided that rather than weld in patch panels in front of and behind each wheelwell, it would be easier and require less body work if I just hung the entire quarter. This would have the additional advantage of allowing me to make the modification to the fender lip while the quarter panel was off the car, which I thought would make the job much easier.

Doing a little more research on the Mustangs Unlimited site, I found that the trunk dropdowns were dirt cheap, and so were new outer wheelhouses. Although my wheelhouses were pretty good, there were a few spots that were questionable, and give the low cost of replacements, I decided that I would replace all this stuff together, so I was working with clean sheet metal.

Now I felt I had a pretty good handle on a plan for the back half of the car, so I moved to the front half of the car to try to figure out the best way to proceed. The distance between the shock towers on a stock '69 Mustang is 28 inches, and the SOHC engine is 32 inches wide, so the shock towers either had to be cut back to allow the engine to fit, or removed entirely. A Boss 429 engine compartment conversion would be one solution; on those cars, the shock towers were moved out and if I recall correctly some modifications were made to the suspension system in order to allow the Boss 429 engines to fit. This would make for a nice stock looking setup, and there is an outfit in Cannon Falls Minnesota that I believe will sell part or all of the components needed for this conversion. But one issue is that even with the widening of the engine compartment, there is still pretty limited room for headers with this arrangement. I wanted to get some good headers on this car, with straight pipes coming out of the ports for a few inches before turning to the back. That wouldn't be possible with the Boss 429 engine compartment.

On my Galaxie, I had purchased an Art Morrison front clip assembly to replace the front section of the frame, and give me more room under the hood for headers. This clip used a Mustang II style double A-arm suspension, with a front mounted rack and pinion setup, and Wilwood spindles and brakes. The downside of this setup was that I had to change to a rear pickup on the engine's oil pump and a custom aluminum rear sump pan, but overall this setup worked really well. The most important thing was that it freed up a bunch of rooom in the engine compartment for the headers, which was the primary reason I installed the kit. However, on the Galaxie I was able to weld the Morrison clip into place directly to the original frame. I wasn't confident about doing this on the Mustang, because the front subframe rails are pretty much just heavy sheet metal. The Mustang chassis relies on the shock towers and the shock tower braces to distribute the front end load into the unibody structure. If I installed the Morrison kit I would want to cut the shock towers completely out of the car, but I thought this would make the front end substantially weaker than stock because of the requirement to weld the front clip to the thin factory subframe rails with no additional support. As a result I wasn't sure that a Morrison kit would be a good solution.

One potential band-aid for this problem would be to run a roll cage bar from the forward cage uprights down to the factory subframe, to provide an additional support. I had done this on the Galaxie even though it probably didn't need it. But on the Mustang I felt that this bar would support the Morrison front clip and take some of the load off the sheet metal factory frame rails. This is the solution that I'm most favorably inclined towards at this point.

Another alternative that I'm still considering is to forget about the Morrison package, and try to piece together my own Mustang II suspension for the front. In this case I would mount the suspension components directly to the front subframe rails, rather than try to weld in a front clip kit. Again, this would be a little marginal because of the limited strength of the factory subframe, but again with support from the roll cage this may be acceptable. However, I would have to come up with my own rack and pinion conversion if I went this route, and of course mounting the rack is rather critical for proper steering. But I've seen this done on a couple race cars, and I like the idea of keeping the front subframe intact rather than chopping it off and welding on a rectangular steel tube frame rail section.

The last thing I considered over the weekend was the roll cage. The car will need a full cage because I want it to be legal to run 8.50s at the track. The cage would also have to be chrome-moly to keep the weight down. Installation of the cage is always a little tricky, and I don't weld with mirrors all that well, so it was important to have a strategy of how I was going to build the cage and fit it into the car, and also get it welded together correctly. On a typical unit body car, what is done is to cut holes in the floor where the main hoop and front uprights are located, then take 6" X 6" 1/8" steel plates and cover the holes; these plates eventually get welded to the floor, and the roll cage bars are welded to the plates. But prior to welding the plates to the floor, they can be moved out of the way so the cage falls through the floor. So, you build the cage in the car and weld the required seams from underneath, then pull out the plates, drop the cage through the floor, and presto, you have access over the top of the cage to weld the bars together on the top side. Using this approach you can get a very tight fit up against the roof of the car, without having to go through any welding gymnastics.

With this car, the back half kit would allow the cage to be moved back slightly and be dropped over the forward frame crossmember of the back half kit. So, the plate trick with the holes in the floor underneath was only required for the front roll cage uprights. I figured I could build the cage and weld the bottom sides of the seams at the top, then drop it through the floor and weld the top sides of these seams, then weld in the front frame supports that would have to slide through the firewall by fitting them in place with the cage in its final position, tacking the tubes in place, and then sliding the cage backwards about six inches to get access all around the tube for the final welding. Then the cage could be pushed back to its final position, and welded to the floor and frame rails.

As I was thinking about the cage construction though, I started noticing some issues with the front floorpan where the 6" X 6" steel plates would go. I had thought that what I had was surface rust in this area, but as it happened I had a trouble light laying under the car, and from certain angles I could see pinholes through the front floorpans. I took an awl and started punching away at the floorpan, and found it was much weaker than I had thought. The subframes underneath looked good, but the floors definitely needed replacement. I added a pair of front floorpan sections to my Mustangs Unlimited sheet metal list.

Sunday night I put this entire plan into a spreadsheet with a schedule, giving myself some extra time for unknowns like the front suspension, and figured out that if I started soon I would need until the end of February to get the chassis work completed on the car. Then it would be time for bodywork and paint, and then electrical and trim, before I was ready to install the engine and take the car racing. One other item that I haven't yet settled on is the transmission; I will think about the best approach for that this coming week. I will be doing more front suspension research and transmission research, so hopefully in a week the concept for thiscar will come together a little more.