The One Guy Garage - Factory Five Racing Daytona Coupe Rebuild - Project Lazarus

Okay guys and gals, it's been far too long since I finished my last build thread on here and it's time to rectify that. I'm going to be starting on my new project here in few weeks now that all the parts are arriving my house projects and my trucks 300k mile service are done taking up all my free time.

I'm also going to be trying something new and crazy for me, I'll be making a video diary of the build and sharing that with you guys. And since all Hot Rod/Rebuild shows have to have a cool name for the shop, I went ahead and gave mine the title of The One Guy Garage. Why? Well I'm only one guy and I couldn't think of anything else snazzier, so get off my case.

But I digress.

Back to the car. It's a Factory Five Racing Daytona Coupe and unfortunately it bit it's previous owner pretty hard when it got up onto a rumble strip at Roebling Road and met up with the pit wall. Thankfully the PO survived the collision but did have some nasty bumps and bruises afterwards and spent some time in the hospital with neck injuries (he was not wearing a HANS or neck brace). Afterwards the car sat while he decided what to do with it and eventually his wife and the desire for other projects one out and it was offered up for sale.

Which is where I came into this story. I found it on Racingjunk.com for a very modest sum with a very nice covered trailer included. I gathered up all the funds from my previous Wheeler Dealer cars and headed off on the thousand mile round trip to pick up the car one weekend. I looked it over and decided it was exactly as described and in better shape than I had hoped for. So it and all the spare parts and broken bits were loaded up and we headed back to south Florida with my prize.

I got the car unloaded after getting the garage cleaned up and made into a workable shop environment, and here is where it sits today awaiting parts.

So there it is, in all it's twisted, rusty, bent, and deformed glory. I have a ton of work ahead of me. Lots of welding, lots of cutting, and really a lot of fun I think. This will be my biggest undertaking yet (and most expensive) but I'm pretty confident that I can get it to a driveable state by the end of this year, it might not be looking pretty but that'll come.

Cool!

Cool project. Did you get the drive train and all those bits with it, too?

looking forward to this one!

BoxheadTim wrote: Cool project. Did you get the drive train and all those bits with it, too?

I did not get the engine and transmission from him. It was a little more than I was wanting to spend and hi was running a carburetor setup whereas I am going to be running fuel injection.

I bought a donor Mustang that I'll be pulling the engine and trans from for this project. It's a 351w that appears to have had the Edlbrock catalog thrown at it. Allegedly it is stroked, but how much I have no clue and the guy I bought it from did not know either. So I'll be tearing into it to find out exactly what it has going on inside it.

The Daytona does have a very nice Gordon Levy 5 link out back and Gordon Levy Koni Double Adjustable shocks.

I'll also be grabbing the power steering and power brakes from the donor car as the original build did not include those options.

Looking forward to how you resolve some of the crash damage. I guess the good news is that I ASSUME all the bent bits are made from standard dimensional steel stock, and can be fabricated without too much trouble.

NOHOME wrote: Looking forward to how you resolve some of the crash damage. I guess the good news is that I ASSUME all the bent bits are made from standard dimensional steel stock, and can be fabricated without too much trouble.

I'm not that much of a masochist. I bought a front cut from Factory Five that is basically everything from the engine mounts forward. I plan on taking the old frame and using sections from it to sleeve and weld the frame.

Make sure you put new seat belts in it. They are one time impact use, and after an impact like that, they will have stretched for sure.

Good luck!

Good luck with the build. One of my favorite factory five offerings.

I'm not that much of a masochist.

We'll see, very cool..

I've often considered a project like this. I'll be watching.

Very ambitious. Is this a flip or a keep?

Looks like somebody punched the console when they crashed.

t25torx wrote: I bought a front cut from Factory Five that is basically everything from the engine mounts forward. I plan on taking the old frame and using sections from it to sleeve and weld the frame.

That is really smart. I was thinking of suggesting you buy a whole new frame, I didn't know they would sell you just the part you need.

Awesome project BTW, I remember seeing one of those at Sebring a few years back and they are really spectacular cars.

jimbob_racing wrote: Very ambitious. Is this a flip or a keep?

I am not sure yet. I was looking for a really cool autocross, weekend, and possible track day car when I ran across this. But I got such a good deal on it, that once it's all rebuilt I'll have a hard time not flipping it.

bgkast wrote: Looks like somebody punched the console when they crashed.

That's where the shifter came forward in the crash. The whole engine pulled forward in the collision. Thank fully it's just aluminum and is easy to bend back

t25torx wrote:

jimbob_racing wrote: Very ambitious. Is this a flip or a keep?

I am not sure yet. I was looking for a really cool autocross, weekend, and possible track day car when I ran across this. But I got such a good deal on it, that once it's all rebuilt I'll have a hard time not flipping it.

bgkast wrote: Looks like somebody punched the console when they crashed.

That's where the shifter came forward in the crash. The whole engine pulled forward in the collision. Thank fully it's just aluminum and is easy to bend back

Goes with the torn engine mount I would guess

Hmm what could these things be?

t25torx wrote:

NOHOME wrote: Looking forward to how you resolve some of the crash damage. I guess the good news is that I ASSUME all the bent bits are made from standard dimensional steel stock, and can be fabricated without too much trouble.

I'm not that much of a masochist. I bought a front cut from Factory Five that is basically everything from the engine mounts forward. I plan on taking the old frame and using sections from it to sleeve and weld the frame.

Thank the higher power. For a second there I thought we were all going to have to come and pull you off that wall. I know they do this for the spec racers but was not aware that they did it for the standard coupes.

How fast was he going when he hit the wall?

So this weekend I finally got a couple free hours to work on the coupe and this happened.

I broke out the angle grinder and stated hacking away. I took more pictures but my camera decided not to recognize the SD card so this is all you get.

I needed to get the mangled section off the front to make it easier to make the final cuts further back on the frame.

2 big cuts late I had this.

I next started drilling out the rivets for the drivers foot box.

Front panel removed.

Floorboard removed finally.

I'll be making my final cuts to the frame right behind the engine mounts and in the middle of this round side bar. I'll have to cut this square brace out to get at the frame.

Removed the aluminum firewall sections to be able to cut this brace out and weld in the new ones.

May not seem like much but it was nice to get working on this again. I need to start busting my hump on this to get it to a rolling state, I'll be moving in about a month and it needs to be able to roll up onto the trailer.

Long time no update. With the house done it's now time to get this car into a rolling state for transport to TN. The plan is to get the front welded on, all the suspension up front bolted back together, wheels on and then the new front cowl installed. Once I get settled into the new place in TN I'll go back over the front suspension and make sure it's all bolted back to spec and get the steering connected.

So today I worked on chopping off the rest of the front end and squaring it up to get ready to install the new unit. I measured 20 inches back from the crossmember on the old car and the new piece to mark my cuts and hopefully get things to line up once all the metal dust has settled.

Then I took the new front and trimmed off the excess tubing to make my sleeves.

One of the sleeves before I cut a 1.5 inch section out of it to allow me to shrink it down to slide into the frame.

First sleeve installed. I tacked these in place to keep them from sliding up into the frame when I put the front section on.

The new front end slid on pretty easy, just needed a few whacks with the mini sledge to get it fully seated.

It came together pretty well. The drivers side has no game and will weld up good.

The passenger side will need a little more weld than the drivers. But that's why it's sleeved, so it doesn't rely on the butt weld solely for it's strength.

Tomorrow I'll burn it all in and start reassembly of the suspension. I'm gonna step out to Harbor Freight in the morning to grab an auto-darkening welding helmet to make the welding go a bit faster.

Damn.. This gonna be good.

Good to see this moving again.

I love it.

I burned all the big stuff in today. Things went well, I gave my little flux core welder a workout though, had to stop and let it rest a couple times as it was nearing it's peak duty cycle. I also picked up an auto-darkening mask from Harbor Freight this morning and man is it nice to not have to get things line up and then hope you are in the same spot when you flip your mask down.

On to the welds. They may not be as pretty as the FFR ones, but they have good penetration and will grind down nice and smooth for painting.

This is the drivers side.

The side bar welded up nice.

The passenger side needed a little more filler so I can grind it down later, but it turned out good also.

Then pretty soon I had full frame again!

The last thing to do is weld in the upper brace bars. But I'm not sure how high up the shock tower they need to be welded. I put out a request on the FFR forums to get the measurements from someone so I can finish this part up and install the suspension.