I worked on the car a little bit over the weekend in between the chills and the sweats!  I found that the sidepipes didn't line up as well as I thought.  I had to remove about 3/8" of material in front of the passenger side pipe opening and about the same amount from the rear of the driver side pipe opening.

I finally got up the nerve to tackle the hood hinge installation.   I've read numerous frustrating accounts of installing FFR's hood hinge.  Now I know why.  It took quite a while to get the hood frame bent into a shape that matches the curves of the hood.  Once that was done, I started on the hinge itself.  As can be seen in the pictures section, the hinge arms are horribly crooked as welded from FFR, and the triangle shaped pads that mount to the hood are crooked as well.  Most people end up stacking washers under the pads to level the hood, and bending the hinge arms to center the hood.  This is a trial and error process that can literally take days before it's perfect.  Based on a tip I got on the forum, I used a different approach.  I cut the triangle pads off the hinge arms and bolted them to the hood, centered on the bolts.  Then I straightened the hinge arms and mounted the hinge to the car per FFR instructions.  Using some nuts as spacers, I centered the hood in the hood opening at the correct height and duct taped it in place.  Then I reached in through the nose of the body, and tack welded the arms to the triangle pads.  Viola!   A perfectly aligned hood and no stacks of washers!

Sunday morning I installed the FFR supplied wipers.  I had already mounted the motor before the body was on.  The holes for the wiper shafts had to be filed out quite a bit before they were large enough.  I also had to cut the angled bushing down a wee bit and correct the angle before things went together well.   I was a little worried about the whole cable drive wiper thing, but it all works quite well when it's finished.  By using a DPDT switch and two SPDT relays, I was able to get both high and low speed, as well as self parking.  If anybody wants the wiring diagram, email me.

I had been pondering how to mount the K&N cone type air filter since my speed density fuel injection systems doesn't have a mass-air meter to clamp it to.  I had the filter clamped directly to the throttle body, but it interfered a little with the edge of the hood opening.  I cut the factory plastic air intake right after the bend, just before the corrugated part starts.  This is just about the right diameter to clamp the filter to.  It looks pretty cool with the filter angled forward and down just a wee bit, but still up high in the engine compartment.

Sunday afternoon, Bill & Margaret Dane stopped by to check out the car.  Bill is a possible future FFR builder!  I hope I did a good job selling.  Perhaps the Smiths will cut me a commission check?  ;-)  Of course, we had to go for a ride too!  Man, I need to finish this thing and get it legal!

After Bill and his wife left, I decided to try my luck with the doors again.  Over the course of this past week, I've been thinking hard about how I would fix the alignment issues.  I had pretty much decided that I would grind out the holes to allow me a little more adjustability, however, the hood hinge cutting/welding went so well, that I decided to use the same approach with the door hinges.  I cut the door mounting flange off the hinge first.  Then, I bolted the hinge to the frame with the bolt holes centered, and bolted the mounting flange to the door, again with the holes centered.   I taped some of the FFR rubber bumpers in the door jamb to keep the door flush w/ the body then held the door in place with my knee while tack welding the hinge to the mounting pad.  I removed the hinge assembly, rewelded it along with some stiffening gussets, and put it all back together.  PERFECT!  Now, lets hope the the passenger side door goes as well!

I did some tidying up and last minute stuff before the body comes back off.  The FFR-supplied remote oil filter mount had a microscopic crack along the top of the housing.  When the engine reached normal operating temperature, it would weep oil.  Not enough to drip, just enough to be visible.  I bought a replacement through Summit.  It's a little beefier and fits the same mounting holes.  Best of all, NO LEAKS!  I also replaced the transmission mount with a solid Moroso mount since I have solid motor mounts.

I finally got around to drilling both sidepipes for oxygen sensor mounting bungs and welding them in place.  Pretty straightforward stuff.  I marked the locations with the pipes on the car in order to best hide the sensors, then removed the pipes for drilling and welding.

I was procrastinating on wiring the headlights and taillights because the body will be removed again for paint.  I decided to go ahead and wire them up using bullet connectors so I could just unplug them when the time came to remove the body.  For better visibility, I wanted to run all four of the taillights as brake lights.  I needed to find a way to let me run the bottom two as turn signals without the brake lights over-riding them during stopping.  Based on a suggestion on the cobraforum, I picked up an $11 trailer harness adapter at the local Autozone.  This gizmo is intended for wiring a small trailer that has only two lights.  It allows the turn signal to flash over the brake light.  So, I wired the bottom two taillights through the gizmo and the top two direct.  Now, I have all four as brakelights for maximum rear visibility and the bottom two are turn signals.  Sooooo, for example, if I'm slowing down to turn left, I'll have three lights bright for brake lights, and the lower left blinking for turn signal.  Works GREAT!

The European light bulbs that came with the turn signals and taillights had too much resistance for the stock blinker.  I replaced them all with standard 1157 bulbs and it works fine now.

I also dis-assembled my body buck and rebuilt it.  I removed the legs, shortened up the ends, and put the whole thing back together to hold the body for paint.   I used some of the left over lumber to add additional cockpit bracing so I could remove the center brace while doing bodywork.

Actually pulling the body off the car and putting it in place on the buck was anti-climactic.  Took two of us all of about 30 seconds!  This part of the project is kind of depressing.  I made reasonably quick progress getting to this point, now to only go backward.

Once the seams were ground it was time to start filling them.  The concensus on the cobraforum is that West Systems Epoxy is the stuff to use for these bodies.  Since it is a proven product and there is lot's of talk about how good it works, I followed along.  The first step is to "paint" in a thin layer of straight epoxy to seal up the ground fiberglass.  Once that's done, further filling is done with epoxy mixed with fairing filler.  Masking tape is used along the seams to keep the epoxy from running all over the place.  The tape lines are moved a little futher out on each successive fill.   This stuff takes about 24 hours to dry hard in this weather.  I've been block sanding with 80 grit sandpaper between coats of epoxy.