Mid January 2013... update

Well, it appears that I need to change this Blog from a weekly to a Bi-monthly issue.

Had a busy weekend. Finished building the Body buck and actually placed the Body on the buck. The body is made out of fiberglass, 3/16" thick. Just so you know... the fiberglass body is purely a cosmetic part of the car, it is not a structual member. This also goes for the sheetmetal. One of the reasons that I choose the Factory Five roadster over othe kits. The chassis is designed to support the vehicle.

This buck supports the body while it is off of the chassis (the body will live there for a couple of years). This buck design allows the body to stay in the garage during the build. I had to build the buck high enough to allow the body to stay above the chassis and only taking up half of the garage floor space. It has locking casters on the bottom of the legs, which allows me to roll the buck and body in and out of the garage.

Body buck during construction, inverted

I also took the time to take some photos of all of the body mounts to record the hardware stackup.

 

On Sunday night I had the buck completed and had Lori (wife), Jennifer (Daughter) and Jacob (Son in Law) come out and help me lift the body off of the chassis and lift it up to also 60" high to get it on top of the buck. It was almost comical watching Lori and Jenn tippy toeing to be able to help lift the body onto the buck.

The next thing that needed to happen is that the buck and Body had to be able to fit buck back in the Garage and clear the chassis as well as the garage door. Lori was stationed on a step ladder to make sure we didn't hit anything...Plenty of Room!

 

 

 

This gave me a chance to have a closer look at the chassis.

 

Driver side foot box

Front Tubes and suspension mounting points.

The Buck is 80" wide and 8' long! It needed to be wide enough to clear the tires and wheels once installed.

I still need to install some shelves on the inside of the buck so that I can place some of the sheet metal as well as the doors, trunk. Would also like to install a couple of more cross braces to remove any concern of rolling the buck out on to the driveway... no a smooth surface, cobblestone.

Next step is to document all of the sheet metal on how they are installed from the factory. In addition, I need to mark all of the tubes and supports where they come in contact with the sheet metal. This is where all of the holes will need to be drilled.... planning on putting a Rivet every 2" to give me a good, hopefully vibration free install. The kit was shipped with 1500 rivets!