Alan's RCR40

Ed McClements

Supporter
I had a lot of play in my steering and found that at each point that the steering shaft mates to the universal joints that there is play at the milled “valley” that captures the mounting bolt. As there are at least three of these points, the slop stacked up significantly. I added two set screws at each junction, 90 degrees to each other, to clamp against the steering shaft (see pic) and the problem is eliminated.

Hi Alan

Just a thought - take a look at the bottom right corner of page 37 of this catalogue:-

I think you have the same high-strength steering UJs, which need to be torqued to 70Nm (about 50lb-ft) to successfully clamp the spline.

Cheers,

Eddy
 
Just noticed your 40 is RHD Alan. How are you finding that driving?
Dave Miller
Dave,
the biggest issue is making right hand turns where the approach road is not perpendicular to the road that you are turning onto. If it is a full merge, like on a highway, my mirrors are fairly effective. If it is somewhere between a merge and perpendicular approach, the lack of window behind the “passenger” door window makes it very difficult to see out the rear 3/4 view and see approaching traffic. You need to plan ahead and try to straighten the approach as much as possible, and definitely need to loosen your harness upon approach. Other than that I am ok. I will say, it was a big decision when placing my order.
 

Brian Stewart
Supporter
Hi Alan,

I have a little auxiliary mirror mounted on the inner window frame. It helps hugely in the situations you describe above.

Mirror.jpg
 

Neil

Supporter
I used a pair of mirrors that I removed from an F-86 Saberjet canopy to get an adequate rear & 3/4 view in my street Manta Mirage. They are curved, slightly convex metal mirrors. I mounted them to the inside of the windshield surround.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20180422_183133243_HDR.jpg
    IMG_20180422_183133243_HDR.jpg
    346.6 KB · Views: 469
Brian.
I believe that Chris reached out to you. The principles may be the same even with a linkage (although I don’t know your adjustment options). But essentially, I didn’t have my shift lever aligned to engage the reverse lockout correctly - the shifter was hitting the wall of the shift lever housing and not finding the lockout groove. The result was that I was essentially forcing it into reverse. We adjusted cables to align the shift lever for and aft to align with the slot in the gear lever housing for reverse.

1st is backwards towards the rear firewall isn't it?
I guess the thing to check here would be if first is still hard to get with the reverse lock out lever lifted up and the top plate removed.
if so the rod probably needs to be rotated slightly so the 1st is more vertical, moving 2nd and 3rd slightly off vertical and further away from the center of the gate. How much clearance do you have between 4th and 5th and the right side of the housing Brian?
has the bottom of the shift linkage casting been opened up?
 

Chris Kouba

Supporter
Location of 1st depends on the shifter set up. On the RCR's it's left and FWD, on others I believe it's left and AFT. The issue was that Alan wasn't getting lateral displacement due to how the reverse lockout is built into the shifter. We adjusted it so the R-1 selector would be easily engaged without the lockout tab knocking the shifter box housing in the cockpit and everything fell into place.

After connecting with him yesterday, I have had word back from Brian that similar adjustments (although made differently due to his original rod linkage set up) have corrected his problem and he's shifting well now too! Good news all around.

If anyone has any further questions, feel free to PM or start another thread in the gearbox subforum, but for now, back to Alan's adventure...
 

Brian Stewart
Supporter
Yes - all good now (thanks Chris). Sorry for the thread drift Alan.
 
It has been a while since I posted. I have been driving the car as much as possible and crossed the 3,500 mile mark today. It seems that I never wanted to put miles on my former fun cars and worried about keeping them clean all the time, but my objective with this car is to add miles as often as I can.

The car is an absolute hoot to drive and I have been enjoying the Oregon wine country roads this summer. It hasn’t been trouble-free, however. I am keeping track of the amount of days that I am down due to issues and it has been “down” about half the year. None of the issues have been particularly difficult to fix, the time delay is primarily due to other priorities… like work. A major contributor was a six week gap to have a custom radiator built as the RCR unit failed in December. I went with a shrouded Griffin and although not cheap, I highly recommend the company as they were incredibly thorough and professional throughout the process.

Besides the radiator issue, the car had its first flatbed ride when my coolant down pipe from the thermostat housing to the pipes that run up to the radiator became disconnected at a hose connection. This was my error as I didn’t have the pipes flared when made. I subsequently had the ends of the piped flared and have had no issues. IMG_5563.JPG

I may have posted that last summer my right headlight mounting failed. As I assumed that RCR used the same construction methods on the left light, I expected to have an issue… and did when the left mounting broke loose in June. I now have a much more robust headlight mounting system on both lights and think I should be good for the future.

I was getting a smell that I first thought was a slipping clutch under hard acceleration/high revs. I eventually realized that my vented oil fill cap was venting oil onto the headers at high revs. I subsequently (on Keith Crafts advice) eliminated my PCV valve and the vented oil fill cap and vented both valve covers to a remote Canton vented oil catch can that I mounted back by my oil filter and oil cooler. IMG_5963.JPG

My most recent failure was a failed MSD coil.

Along the way I needed to adjust my alignment as it was set up with too much negative camber at the front. Chris Kouba (once again) generously donated a bunch of his time to help me re-do the alignment. We had a great couple of days and converted my garage into a GT40 garage as Chris worked on his car at the same time. IMG_5647.JPG

Besides all of the above, I have been driving the thing. I have had a couple of outings with a neighbor’s Ferrari 488. He noted that wherever we take our cars, the 40 gets all the attention! IMG_5768.JPG

Keeping with the Ford versus Ferrari theme, I made a FvF themed cornhole (bean bag tossing game) and think they came out really cool. IMG_5969.JPG

I’m hoping to hit 5k miles by the end of the year as we will have great driving weather the next month and a half and with the moderate Oregon weather, I am usually able to drive all year. IMG_6418.JPG
 
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost three years since I posted updates on my car. In that time I have switched coasts with a move to South Carolina and now have 9,000 miles on the odometer. I had a couple years of perfect reliability and then last spring was chasing fuel pump issues that finally culminated in leaving me stranded on the side of the track at Road Atlanta during parade laps at the Mitty Historics. I solved the pump issues but this February took the car out of commission to solve a water pump leak that has persisted from day one and a misaligned alternator bracket that resulted in a horrible squeal when really getting into the throttle. Anyway, work got in the way and I only just got the car back on the road after six months. And this brings me to the reason for my post… these cars are an absolute thrill! For those I see starting builds - I can tell you that the end result - driving makes it all worth it. Plenty to do still on the car, but my goal is to keep adding miles exploring the SC and NC mountains.
71175682893__E7FDB3D3-18E1-48AB-B403-1DC760B20411.jpeg
 

Neil

Supporter
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost three years since I posted updates on my car. In that time I have switched coasts with a move to South Carolina and now have 9,000 miles on the odometer. I had a couple years of perfect reliability and then last spring was chasing fuel pump issues that finally culminated in leaving me stranded on the side of the track at Road Atlanta during parade laps at the Mitty Historics. I solved the pump issues but this February took the car out of commission to solve a water pump leak that has persisted from day one and a misaligned alternator bracket that resulted in a horrible squeal when really getting into the throttle. Anyway, work got in the way and I only just got the car back on the road after six months. And this brings me to the reason for my post… these cars are an absolute thrill! For those I see starting builds - I can tell you that the end result - driving makes it all worth it. Plenty to do still on the car, but my goal is to keep adding miles exploring the SC and NC mountains.
View attachment 131578
Alan;

The mountain roads in SC & NC mountains are nice but don't pass up the WV mountain roads, Route 250 between Bartow, WV and Staunton, VA used to be my favorite drive back when I worked for the Observatory in Green Bank. I drove my Pontiac GTO (a Royal Bobcat) on that stretch of road and when I bought the Ferrari, I drove it there, too.The Ferrari with its 3 liter V-12 was significantly faster than the GTO- even with its 6.5 liters and 360+ horsepower. It was a question of being able to maintain a faster average speed and the Ferrari was a delight to drive. A GT40 on that road would be REALLY fun! Route 33 isn't a bad drive, either. :)
 
Back
Top