Ken Roberts
Supporter
Beautiful car Mark. I love the look of the side mirrors mounted on the horizontal part of the doors or hood.
Mark B's Build Thread
- Thread starter MarkB
- Start date
Mark
Love it, A GT40 for sale right now has the exact same color . Beautiful . I struggled with the paint decision as well, decided to go the Plasti Dip route for now like Cam, until all the cracks and rub spots are sorted out. but will paint gloss black the inside spider surfaces like Cam did . Cerakote on the calipers is a great idea, they really "pop" . Great job overall . the carbon fiber dash is super nice. I decided to cover mine with leather and that was a super hard project for a novice without sewing capabilities, way more than I bargained for . you did the right thing .
Hope to come and visit soon.
Hector
Love it, A GT40 for sale right now has the exact same color . Beautiful . I struggled with the paint decision as well, decided to go the Plasti Dip route for now like Cam, until all the cracks and rub spots are sorted out. but will paint gloss black the inside spider surfaces like Cam did . Cerakote on the calipers is a great idea, they really "pop" . Great job overall . the carbon fiber dash is super nice. I decided to cover mine with leather and that was a super hard project for a novice without sewing capabilities, way more than I bargained for . you did the right thing .
Hope to come and visit soon.
Hector
I'm curious if anyone else has run in to this issue: When turning moderately hard to the left with a full tank, I was having issues with fuel leaking at the flange. For the longest time I thought it was leaking at the large o-ring on the cap itself, but when I disassembled the filler to prep the car for paint, I realized that the problem was actually the thin factory rubber gasket that came with the Sparco filler. It was too thin to form a proper seal around the raised holes in the filler neck flange. I cut out a new one from cork gasket material. It's still hidden when installed and after driving around a few times since then it looks like that fixed the problem. You can see how thin the original gasket is compared with the new one below:
Joel K
Supporter
Looks fantastic Mark. Congrats!
Wondering how painting around the windshield went. Most builders have painted the body then installed the windshield.
I’m thinking to get the car on the road in Gelcoat to pass inspection and registration then do the same thing like you and have it painted afterward.
Any issues with painting around the windshield caulking?
Wondering how painting around the windshield went. Most builders have painted the body then installed the windshield.
I’m thinking to get the car on the road in Gelcoat to pass inspection and registration then do the same thing like you and have it painted afterward.
Any issues with painting around the windshield caulking?
Thanks Joel!
Yea I'm glad I took the approach of driving it a bit (have 1900 miles on it prior to paint) just because it helped to expose pops, cracks, etc. and made it easier to fix minor things without having to worry about scratching it.
For the windshield, when I installed it the edge of the polyurethane needed to be cleaned up anyway (bit of a gap all around) so the painter just taped the edges of the windshield. I now need to do a final pass with poly for a finished look (it's not bad unless you look very close).
This weekend I finally redid my alignment after putting it off way too long. I did an initial rough alignment back before I had the body on (to get the wheels centered/aligned prior to locking down the body). It handled fine on the street and even at the Texas Mile so I kept putting off redoing it. I did an SCCA track night at Harris Hill (small, rough track south of Austin) a few months back just to see what rubbed/overheated, etc. and I noticed it handled like crap (relatively speaking) so I figured alignment was at least a part of that.
Well I finally got to it yesterday and yea it was pretty bad. I had nearly 1/4 toe in on the front and close to that on the rear. Camber was ok in the front (about -1 degree) but on the rear the left side was 0 and right was -0.6. So I set the front and rear toe to 0, front camber to -1 and rear camber to -0.6. When I go to the track, I'll re-align it to put more camber in.
Drove it a bit today on some twisty roads and so far, it's much better. Lesson learned -- don't procrastinate. OK realistically I'll still procrastinate but I'll worry about that later
.
I also picked up a set of scales a while back and tried them out today. I didn't use the level area of my garage, so the weights aren't fully accurate side/side but was interesting to get the basics. The cross weights definitely need some adjustment, but I need to properly level it first. When I have a free day, I'll set it up properly and adjust the corner weight a bit with some weight in the driver's seat. Here are the numbers for what it's worth.
Well I finally got to it yesterday and yea it was pretty bad. I had nearly 1/4 toe in on the front and close to that on the rear. Camber was ok in the front (about -1 degree) but on the rear the left side was 0 and right was -0.6. So I set the front and rear toe to 0, front camber to -1 and rear camber to -0.6. When I go to the track, I'll re-align it to put more camber in.
Drove it a bit today on some twisty roads and so far, it's much better. Lesson learned -- don't procrastinate. OK realistically I'll still procrastinate but I'll worry about that later
.I also picked up a set of scales a while back and tried them out today. I didn't use the level area of my garage, so the weights aren't fully accurate side/side but was interesting to get the basics. The cross weights definitely need some adjustment, but I need to properly level it first. When I have a free day, I'll set it up properly and adjust the corner weight a bit with some weight in the driver's seat. Here are the numbers for what it's worth.
| 20 Gals gas, no driver | ||||
| Left | Right | Subtotal | F/R % | |
| Front | 499 | 595 | 1094 | 40.1% |
| Rear | 822 | 813 | 1635 | 59.9% |
| Subtotal | 1321 | 1408 | ||
48.4% | 51.6% | |||
| Total | 2729 | |||
| Total without fuel | 2603 | |||
| Cross FR+RL | 1417 | 51.9% | ||
| Cross FL+RR | 1312 | 48.1% |
Mark:
Did you anodized the cap or did you buy it like that ? I love the black color. Also dumb question, could you use the gasket between the two metal pieces and so everything will be on the outside of the spider instead of sandwiching the fiberglass or that would be too thick and will not clear the rear clam? I hope I am making sense . I think the supplied gasket seals well between the two metal pieces but not 100% sure .
Hector
Hey Hector, I had the cap/lever and flange powdercoated to go with my "want to be Batman, but not rich enough" theme.
I do have it set up where everything is on the outside of the spider so the gasket is sandwiched between the cap flange and filler neck. The bolt holes on the cap flange are raised up a bit on mine -- not sure if the newer ones are. They are nearly as tall off the rest of the surface as my original gasket was thick. Mine is also from 2014 so possible the gasket dried out a bit over time.
Great. Thank you, super helpful information.
Took it to a exotic car event here in Austin today. Not my normal scene, but had a good time. The SLC got quite a bit of attention. I was getting a kick out of letting a few kids sit in it and at one point had a line of kids which included a few of their parents. It's still strange to me how the 911 parked behind me looks like an SUV next to the SLC.
Neil
Supporter
Get used to it. That will happen every time!
Looks nice. Kind of validates the opening for the intake.
With around 2200 miles on the clock, while it's a blast to drive, I was never very happy with the tune on the engine. Normal street driving (i.e. when I'm not getting on it), it would buck a bit, smell a lot (no cats), and the throttle off-idle was basically a toggle switch. Obviously some of that is because of the solid roller cam, but I always thought it could be better. The couple places I had it tuned while building it made good power, but never spent enough time on low speed drivability.
So I finally bit the bullet and trailered it down to PatG tuning in Victoria, TX earlier this week. He has a pretty good reputation and I had spoken with him about my goals. He spent about 3 hours with it both on their Mustang dyno and some street driving after with me at the wheel. I drove it around today for about 1.5 hours and it's WAY better. You can still tell it has a big cam, but it's smooth in normal driving and the smell is reduced quite a bit.
The big surprise though, is that I wasn't looking for more power (it did 571 RWHP on a dynojet last time I had it tuned). Apparently between my revised exhaust and the new tune it brought it up to 605 RWHP on the Mustang dyno (which typically are more conservative. So bonus
I'm signed up for a track night at MSR Cresson (south of Dallas) on June 18 so it will be good to get it on the track. It's a shorter track so won't need the power anyway, but I want to try it out there before I hit COTA.
So I finally bit the bullet and trailered it down to PatG tuning in Victoria, TX earlier this week. He has a pretty good reputation and I had spoken with him about my goals. He spent about 3 hours with it both on their Mustang dyno and some street driving after with me at the wheel. I drove it around today for about 1.5 hours and it's WAY better. You can still tell it has a big cam, but it's smooth in normal driving and the smell is reduced quite a bit.
The big surprise though, is that I wasn't looking for more power (it did 571 RWHP on a dynojet last time I had it tuned). Apparently between my revised exhaust and the new tune it brought it up to 605 RWHP on the Mustang dyno (which typically are more conservative. So bonus
I'm signed up for a track night at MSR Cresson (south of Dallas) on June 18 so it will be good to get it on the track. It's a shorter track so won't need the power anyway, but I want to try it out there before I hit COTA.
