Duane,
Your reasons for rejecting the KMP are valid. But I have to say, the fiberglass answer is right in your garage.
ERA can be the only logical choice. Correctness, detail and structural integrity are known and obvious.
It's clear that you know this because it's what you chose for your personal car.
The main question I think is whether Peter would sell 3 ERA bodies to put on unknown (to him) chassis. The result would not be 'an ERA' and he may wish to protect that.

all i can tell you is .it's a brand new F5 Mk4 body, rite from the mold, check their website out for all the details on the mk4 bodys. I doubt ErA is gonna sell you just the body(s) so your best bet is to just splash a mold from your car, and you'll have just what you want, plus ,you'll have a mold and you could go into business selling bootleg ErA bodys.

Curious to know what kit you are looking to re-body.

Chase,
I believe your answer to your "main question" is correct. The bar has been set high, that is for sure. I for one am glad that ERA does not just sell parts and how they work hard to maintain a reference standard with reduced variability. I'm definitely not looking to help figure out how to rebody an ERA. ;)


All,
I'm definitely not one to want to attempt to go into production or to help others to try and compete against faboulous Cobra cars and companies that already exist today. However there are some situations that come up from time to time with friends and colleagues with cars they are building or wrecked cars or chassis-only cars where I scratch my head saying why put a ton of work to heavily modify, flare, or fix a body, why not just start with a great body skin foundation nice right out of the box and custom fit it to the chassis. Is it a lot of work, yes. Less time than fixing an entire body, possibly. Would it be worth it, maybe. ... just a little research project to see what the options are to help out a few friends who've been talking about this gap for the past decade.

Thanks to all for your leads, feedback, emails and private messages. Will be following up soon.

Duane:

Quick search over on ffcars.com revealed the following threads...plenty of pics here of the improvements of the Mk4 (the one that Mr_Bruce is offering you) over the Mk3 FFR body.

Mk4 Bodywork thread - FFCars.com - Factory Five Racing Discussion Forum

MKIV - "standard red gel-coated body requires less bodywork" - FFCars.com - Factory Five Racing Discussion Forum

Moochfest 2010 Pictures - FFCars.com - Factory Five Racing Discussion Forum


- Allen.

Hmmmm. The FF5 Mk 4 really does look much better than previous versions to me. I might sit down later and compare it with some pictures of originals for my own edification.

Interestng thread!

Paul :)

Thanks Allen. The links and photos are helpful. Looking at the photos, I can immediately see what has changed and some things that have not. Aside from changing of the mounting points which our local body guy has been doing for years, on the new body you can see they worked to round the rear quarters a bit, dropped the tail height, but for some reason did not extend the rear section of the body to hand down a bit further and some of same issues on the door still exist if you look at what that guy had to do to full in areas on the body and doors to get it to line up reasonably. I'm not saying fiberglass bodies should be perfect, but as many cars/bodies that have been built and the time to redo the molds over and over, I can definitely see why ERA spent over a year or more alone on the new slabside body to try and nail it. Maybe I just need to look at something other than Cobras any more. Here is a door photo from that MK4 link / thread you sent that shows even after some work many of the same problems on the doors and body we saw on the M3, all still there. Hmmm. Definitely looks better but I see multiple things I would still want to change immediately; for example, I could see wanting to cut off both quarter panels right down the top-center spacing it out and adding about .75 to 1.0" inch width. For some reason, being super critical of shape, the body still looks like a hybrid cross of a 289/427 shape to me in the rear. Getting closer, but seems like a new speed racer Mk5 version is in order. Thanks for forwarding, very helpful to many I'm sure.


http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/j...6/100_2317.jpg

No problem, Duane. Glad to contribute.

Wow...that condition above is with the best-fit door alignment??!! Holy crow!.

- Allen.

Duane....you are more than welcome to come and take a look at my Midstates body....
give me a call and you can stop by anytime....
i'm a block west of the Jimboys Tacos on Fulton ave.
Bob 402-270-3484....

i'll "fix" that F5 body any way you want, just write a check.

Mr. Bruce,
For starters, can you cut off the entire MK4 at 3/4s clip and replace it with an ERA 427 SC flared clip right in front of the doors? :LOL:

how about a whole bootleg ErA body? there is a set of molds out there floating around.

RustyBob,
If you come to one of the local Norcal breakfast meetings or with us down to Sonoma on the 21st of this month - please let me know and we'll go from there. Midstates was one of the first cars I looked at way back before I got my first Unique. I always enjoyed the history of the company and reading customer comments including the original founder's passion for his cars and his customers. Thx.

Mr. B,
I heard something similar to this about five years ago, and even a few references from folks who claim the maker of their particular un-named cars/bodies originated from said molds. However, but nothing I could quite put my finger on that led me to believe it was 100% true. If there was a pre-existing mock up body just sitting somewhere to do some experimentation, there may be some interest to see what could actually be done to cross-adapt it and to validate some ideas or assumptions. Thx.

I took a mould from CCX3080 here in South Africa. I modified the inner rear tub. It's now CSX4000 behind the seats so that you can see the roll bar and place the batterie behind the passenger seat. I also have a spare tire insert digitised, which needs minimal rework (only one has been made)

The inner tub is one piece to avoid the hassle of the CSX4000 3-piece fibre assy, plus tunnel, firewall pieces in aluminium. Quite tricky to seal.

I speak to Mickmate to make a plan. If the interest is reasonable I send the moulds over.

Bonus is, you can get spares for your Contemporary too.