Team Daily FFR Mk3.1 Build: It's now out of our hands.

Well, the long weekend with Brad, Christina and family has come and gone. Everybody arrived on Thursday afternoon ready for a few days of golf carting, video gaming, school festivals and general goofing around with the cousins. The primary goal for the trip, however, was to transport the car, now mechanically and electrically complete, up to Whitby Motorcars in North Carolina for final body work and paint (and a few additional items...more on that later).

On Friday I worked until lunch while everybody slept in to recover from the long trip. Jim Strickland was nice enough to loan us his Toyota Sequoia, so after leaving work I picked up the auto trailer from U-Haul and arrived at home, where all the kids were already in high gear and Brad was in the garage tinkering. Of course the first thing we did was roll the car out, fire it up, and have Brad give everybody rides around the block. The girls loved it... some a bit too much if you ask me. How soon do they turn 16? And finally, Christina was able to drive the car for the first time. As someone who spent countless hours installing thousands of rivets, tightening hundreds of bolts, fabricating countless modifications and connecting miles of wires, I have to admit that I was a bit nervous when Christina strapped herself in and said "It's been a long time since I've driven a manual car." All my worry was for nothing, though, as Christina did a great job and made it through our little 1/16 mile test track (down the street, around the park and back) safely. No speed records broken, though, as Brad commented he wasn't sure if this car has ever been driven so cautiously (code word for "slow").

After everybody had several test laps, we set about getting the car up on the trailer. For a normal car this process would have been a piece of cake. When the car only has 4" of clearance, though, it takes a bit more ingenuity. As it was, the ramp was a bit too steep so the bottom of the car would not clear the transition from ramp to trailer bed. With a little head scratching, several 2x4s and using the slope of our driveway (Christina's idea) we were able to get the car on the trailer with about 1/4" to spare. The only casualty was one bolt from the side pipe heat shield that caught an edge and snapped (of course nothing is standard on this car, so a $15 replacement has already been ordered and is on the way). The custom car cover from California hadn't arrived in time, so after covering the car with a slightly modified (grommets added for tie towns) temporary cover, we were all off for the Fall Festival at the kids' school.

At 5 on Saturday morning Brad and I met in the hallway, both looking a bit tired, ready for our 6 1/2 hour journey to Greensboro, North Carolina. OK, so the most commonly asked question we get as soon as we say North Carolina is, "Doesn't anybody in Atlanta paint cars"? And the answer is yes, there are lots of people in Atlanta who paint cars. There are not a lot of people, however, who have competed the body work and painted almost 300 of this specific brand of replica. After lots of discussion, we decided it was worth the extra drive time to get the car into the hands of somebody who had "seen it all" and would be prepared to handle any of the quirks of working with a Factory Five car. And after spending nearly 3 hours with Jeff at Whitbys (and learning about all the quirks) we know we made the perfect decision. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. The drive was actually very uneventful. My biggest fear was that at some point I would look out my window to see the trailer passing us on the left, or I would look in the rear view mirror to see an empty trailer. Since I didn't start this blog entry with a major announcement, I'm proud to say that we experienced neither of these disastrous, although rather exciting sounding, scenarios. Two bags of beef jerky, 4 cups of coffee, two bananas, a bag of sunflower seeds and 8 Chick-Fil-A Chicken Minis later we found ourselves in Greensboro, North Carolina unloading the car. Having learned our lessons loading the car, the unload was simple and uneventful.

Three hours touring Whitby Motorcars and talking with owner Jeff Conner is like turning two kids loose in a giant candy/toy/shiny breakable objects store. We saw at least 6 Roadsters in various states of assembly, 2 '33 Hot Rods, 2 GTM Supercars and several other non-Factory Five cars too numerous to mention. What caught our eyes, however, was one particular blue and white Roadster that was nearly complete for a client in New Orleans. My pictures don't do the car justice, but the "fit and finish" was absolutely perfect. Everything about the car was perfect, and if you hadn't known it was a replica car you would have sworn it came directly off a showroom floor. Jeff is a perfectionist, and I was very excited to find that this car represented the standard for finished cars. If Brad's car looks anything like this car, it's going to be spectacular! We shared with Jeff the 3 page list we compiled during our drive, listing every possible item we could think of that needed, attention or addition. After Christina's test drive, Brad decided to add power steering. I told Brad that I was all for it as long as I didn't have to install it. You may recall my story about the last minute addition of power brakes a few months back. Well, to make a long story short it nearly killed me. Jeff took the complete list in stride and didn't seem shocked by anything. Like I said before, we definitely took the car to the right person.

Aside from a totally uneventful return drive to Peachtree City, which included listening to K-State go to 6-0 for the season by somehow beating Texas Tech, this is where the story will end for several months. Hopefully I will be able to post a few progress photos from Whitbys (but based on Jeff's computer competence don't count on much), the next photos you will hopefully see will be of a finished car in 3-4 months.

Here are a few photos from our journey and time spent at Whitbys. I apologize for the poor quality of the photos, but they're from my phone.