We don’t know where he gets the time, but in the 6 months following our last update Arrowhead has been busy. The Factory Five Racing ’33 has been sanded, rubbed, tweaked, painted and buffed to perfection, and now looks like a complete car. Doing all the work himself makes this car that much more impressive, but the fit, finish, and custom touches are really impressive regardless. When we say all the work himself, we mean ALL the work. The short list goes something like this. One off home built Mod Motor Roots blower intake, Megasquirt EFI, Body and Paint, and Interior. Seriously, this barely scratches the surface.
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November 2010
The Factory Five Racing ’33 has been a real hit for both the company and the customers who have purchased kits and built cars. Built to be an awesome “all around” car, they car stop and handle with some of the best high end exotics out there and their looks is pure American hot rod. BangShift member Arrowhead has shared his story and the build of his car in awesome detail in our much read project cars section. This is one mean rod!
There are several really neat parts to this car, but by far the neatest one to us is that he’s doing it on his own at home. By “it” we mean, building the car, building the MegaSquirt EFI system on the engine, making up an intake manifold to fit a big ass roots blower on top of the four cam Ford mod motor and all the other odds and ends that come with a scratch build project like this.
There’s even some good sidebars with this one as well. In particular there was a problem with the engine in the car, which came up as a red flag to the DMV in New York where this car is. Crappily, Arrowhead had to pull the engine out and give it to the state in order to have his car back. Not one to be deterred, he plopped another engine in the chassis and actually had the car at the massive Adirondack Nationals car show this summer in upstate New York.
There’s no paint on the body yet, but the chassis and suspension components have been powder coated. He’s going to get the paint situation corrected this winter when the snow starts flying up there in New York.
Factory Five makes nice stuff, we can say that with 100% confidence having driven a few of their cars in anger on the race track. The coolest part of the ’33 hot rod, in our opinion anyway, is the ability builders have to personalize them. Arrowhead is doing a great job on that end with his car!
PROJECT LINK: A Factory Five Racing ’33 Hot Rod Build with TONS of photos!
Building a car from start to finish all by yourself means a lot of time and a lot of work. Despite a few hurdles along the way, our boy Arrowhead has never faultered.
I don’t know why it surprises us, after watching him build his own blower intake for the Mod Motor, but Arrowheads method and design for his hood hinges really impressed us. What a cool piece, and not an easy thing to build for a car that is designed to hae a forward opening hood.
In typical glass bodied hot rod tradition, lots of filler was needed to get gaps this nice and tight.
Shooting color in your garage is nothing new, but this is no basic color. It took several coats of the silver metallic in order to get the color consistent, and then several more coats of clear to get the gloss. Hours of color sanding and buffing make it shine like it should, and now the intricate flame paint scheme that was planned may not even happen since it looks so good silver.
Insulation, wiring, and interior were all done at home as well.
Here it is done. Well as done as hot rods ever get. Arrowhead said in July that he was going to drive the hell out of it all summer and then do some touchups and figure out what to do next. If his past performance is any indication, he’ll be busy this winter and we’ll see what comes out of the garage come springtime.
