Boss 427

Hey Followers. Thanks for sticking in there. Believe me, this waiting game is getting hard on me.

Talked to Jeff at Whitby on June 11. He said we are shooting color in about another 2 weeks. This is the first place you’ll see the pics, if I get any, so check back about June 25! I hope…

If you’ll remember, I installed reflector LED headlights from Watson Streetworx a while back. Well, that design is at least 5 years old and there’s been an amazing amount of improvements in LED lighting since then. After doing a LOT of research and reading and asking questions, I’ve decided to upgrade to a set of JW Speaker 8700 Evolution J2 LED projector headlights. These are not cheap, but they are American made, DOT legal, and some of the best and most desirable projector LED headlights available. All reports say they have fantastic beam design, light output, hot spot and reliability.

I got them in 2 days off Amazon, and they fit the F5 buckets, mount rings and trim rings like a glove. Had to cut off their wiring plug, install an extension, then install my 4-pin Weatherpack connectors.

Now some may think that this look doesn’t belong on a Cobra. Maybe not. Maybe it’s too ‘ricer’ for some. I think it will look great, right along with my non-Halibrand copied wheels, my hi back racing seats and my dual roll bars.

I’ll write back soon as there’s some news…

No pictures, but heard today that the body is in first primer and sitting outside in the North Carolina sun, outgassing all those nasty solvents. Block and reprimer in about a week, then outgas again. Then final blocking and color.

Got some pictures from Jeff @ Whitby Motorcars. He said it should be in primer next week…

Gettin there! More news soon!

With the Boss all loaded up, I headed down to Greensboro, NC to meet my bro, have some fun and get ready for the next stage.

Arrived at Whitby Motorcars and got the Boss unloaded.

Then decided to fire it up with open headers just to get it the short distance into the shop. Cant have a bunch of old guys trying to push the thing around. And oh yeah… that 427W sounds really, really good with open headers.

While we were there, got to hang out with Jeff for a bit and talk cars. He eventually worked us towards the back room and finally got to see my body shell again. Its the one in the middle that still has a lot of red on it.

Another 4-6 weeks and I’ll be headed down to bring the Boss 427 back home. Wont be much more to tell you in the next few weeks, but any updates I get, I will be sure to post up. Once again, as usual, if you’re still sticking with me… thanks for following.

Spent the last few days installing seals, dropping the dashboard some more so it fits tight with the switch panel, cleaned her up a little bit.

Loaded her up for the trip south to Whitby’s tomorrow.

I’m sure there will be more pics taken tomorrow. I’ll post em up soon as I get home.

Next time I see her, she’ll be sporting a brand new dress. 😉

After spending about 6 hours working on the roll bars, I’ve called it quits. I sent out a lot of emails and tried some contacts to get these bars polished… some responded, some didn’t, and those that did were +$500. Put it on the back burner.

Have been talking to Jeff @ Whitby Motorcars since the Boss 427 body went into the shop about 7 weeks ago. I’m taking the Go-Cart down to Greensboro, NC and dropping it off on Thursday. The body isnt ready yet, but should be very soon. I hope to get a peek at the Boss’s shell and see what stage it’s at. Hopefully, this is all starting to come together. When they are done, it will just be a quick weekend trip down and back to bring her all home.

While speaking with Jeff, turns out he can absolutely polish the Breeze roll bars. So I’m taking those down with me to drop off at the same time. I’m not asking him to install them, but I’m excited to be getting some of these things done.

Hopefully another big update by the weekend.

Never really liked the way the trunk carpet was laying around the drop box I installed. I had to install the carpet in a lot of little pieces, and some of the overlaps weren’t staying down. Decided to do some trim work around the edges to clean it up and add some definition. Started with some 1/2×1 aluminum angle, cut to length, trimmed and notched then painted black. Installed with some 1/8″ rivets. I’ll touch those up with some black in a little while.

Got back to the roll bars. Received my tubing sander earlier this week, but couldn’t get started until this weekend because of some work travel. This sander came with lots of sanding belts… grits from 60 to 800. I didnt want to start too rough and make more work for myself, so I started with the 160 grit. Difficult to find a way to secure the roll bar without scratching it up, but came up with a wood clamp that seems to work OK. Spent about 10 minutes with the sander and 160 grit, and this is going to work. Yay!!

Thanks for still following and I’ll be posting more soon…

While waiting on my new tools to arrive, I got some work done on the Serpent Express Trailer. I dont know how much I’ll use it once the car is done, but its nice to have in case I want to do some traveling with the Boss.

I wired up and installed 3 additional LEDs to the back. The side units are bolted to the steel uprights inside, while the center is just bolted to the fabric. I used a 1/8″ thick strip of aluminum inside to back it up. Couldn’t mount it higher on the steel tubing because the joints were in the way.

The center light has the turn signal segments separated, while I wired the side lights to flash the entire unit for each individual signal.

Well, I have a video of the lights working, but it appears I can’t post it in my blog… doesn’t recognize the mpeg format. I’ll work on that.

Anyways, the other thing was to install a factory Ford Trailer Brake Controller on my F150. This is a sweet unit, as once the ECU is updated, it not only controls trailer braking, but displays its settings on the trucks central display. It also integrates with sway control, anti lock brakes and some other obscure functions. Expensive, but the best way to go.

Got some more trailer work planned for later… standby, and thanks for reading.

So I went back to trying to polish the roll bars. I stopped by ACE Hardware and bought a rubber pad for my drill with 3 packs of stick-on paper…

It was nice to have the speed, and this appeared it would work, but I was only sanding a strip about 1/8″ wide at a time. And sometime it would chatter across the work, creating spots where the sanding didnt work then it dug in too deep. Also, the big pad with my drill was almost impossible to get into the tight spots.

Gave up in frustration. Checked the internet, read some articles, and found that the pros are using what is called a tubing sander. They use it primarily for stainless handrails, which is exactly what I need. Did some searching and found this unit on Amazon with some pretty good reviews. It will be here early next week… I’ll let ya know what happens. In the meantime, I’ll figure out a way to secure the roill bars to my workbench.

Worked on my foglights a bit. You’ll remember this is the set I got from the manufacturer as it was their final proving set. The glass lenses have fogged a little bit, but I’m going to work on seeing if those will polish out, too. So I cleaned and painted the bracketry flat black…

Then installed the stainless grill in the center…

Then installed the lights.

You can see a bit of how the lenses aren’t perfectly clear, but thats OK… I got a $300 part for $50. I can afford to replace the lights with something different if I want to.

You can see the LED bulbs I installed, as everything on my car is LED. From Superbright LED, the unit on the left is a 27 piece H3 unit, made for fog lights, and on the right is a blue 5 piece that replaced the little 194 that was in there. Not sure how I will power the blue one yet… maybe tie it in to my parking lights. Hopefully the blue will go with a few blue accents I’ve incorporated into the car.

Once again, thanks for sticking with me. Back soon…

Been getting a few things done on the Boss since I heard the body is starting to be worked on. One of the biggest that I’ve faced is polishing the stainless Breeze rollbars.

This is a pic of how the bars look as they come. Its called a “brushed” finish, and is created when the tubes are straight by running them through a grinding machine.

So since my car has polished stainless sidepipes, polished stainless bumpers, chrome windshield frame, etc, I didnt want to have the roll bars brushed and look different from the rest of the car. I had done some I-net searches and got some quotes for the professionals to do it, and most wanted between $250 – $400… per roll bar. I decided to give it a shot myself.

My first attempt was with a 5″ orbital sander and 80 grit sandpaper. The problem with this is the flat surface of the sander doesnt get around the tube very well. Spent about an hour and got frustrated… just very little progress.

So I got some 40 grit paper, and while it did remove a lot of the brushed scratches, it was still not going as well as I thought it should. It appears what I need is not grit, but speed. I tried using my dremel with a small, flimsy 60 grit disc, and it ate the stuff off like crazy. Unfortunately, I destroyed 2 of those little discs in about 4 minutes. So I have more thought and work to do.

While I’m thinking on this, I wiped another item off the To Do List. I had bought these seatbelt bezels from Replicar Parts and hadn’t installed them because with my tall seats, I don’t believe you’ll see them. But since I have em, might as well install them. I removed the belts, drilled the mount holes, trimmed the carpet and installed the bezels. The lower holes I used pop rivets as they go into the support frame. The top fasteners are stainless screws, washers and locking nuts. The screws are way long, so I trimmed and filed those to be neat.

I think it lends a nice finished look instead of the belts just disappearing into the wall.

Thats about it for now. I’ll do more updates as things get done… with the nice weather coming now, I’ll be working on it mare and more.

Thanks for reading.