I'm here !!!!!
It's been a ridiculously crazy 6 months or so since I last updated, and I have certainly been neglectful in not doing so. My apologies to all for not being better at that. So much to talk about, not sure where to start, I guess health would be the easiest. So far, my health is holding, so I am very thankful for that. The docs tell me that at some point it will for certain rear its ugly head again, but I have been good so far, yesterday was good, today was good, so I am not expecting issues tomorrow.......I'll take it!
I don't allow myself to look any further forward than today and tomorrow. I'll deal with what's coming when it comes, as I am told it most certainly will; for now I am enjoying the respite. When it does show up again, I'll fight like hell as I did once already, and do whatever I can to once again beat it back. It's been a number of months since I have had any issues, so it's been a good time health wise.
As for the car, the news isn't necessarily bad, just not much to talk about. My garage at home is small and cramped, and there really isn't much room right now for the car. Jim (ElMariachi) had it at his house for quite a while, and we got a little electrical work done while it was there. Jim started a Trans Am type Mustang project and needed the room, and Bill (MTPockets) was great about taking the car into his huge shop, where it sits now. The problem is getting over there to work on it. I wonder myself why its so hard to get over to the car, and as I look back I realize that back when the car was at my place up North, I would do most of the work between 8PM and 2AM. That's just the way things worked out, the kids were done for the day, all distractions were over, etc, and I would go out in the garage alone and "tinker" on the car. In hindsight, they were great times, and I so miss being able to do that.
However, I now live in Texas, I have no basement anymore for storage, and where I live does not allow garden sheds, so the garage is full of stuff that would normally be in one of those two places; bikes, lawnmowers, etc. Jim and Bill have been beyond awesome, to the point that Bill even gave me a key to his shop. Work has been insanely crazy since October, and I just need to do much, much better at making time to get things done.
The good news is that I was able to get to the TCC meet in San Marcos, and my wife and I had a tremendous time. Of course I had no Cobra to drive, but I ran around with my daily driver, and we had a blast. I even got to catch up with Jay Nordstrom there, it was great to see him! Gary, I'm sorry I missed you. I would have loved to see your car. One great thing about the TCC meet was that it re-focused me on getting the car done. My wife had been somewhat disengaged from the car; she knew it was something that I badly wanted to complete before I couldn't anymore, and on that basis she was eager to see me get it done. That's changed a bit now; she had such a great time at San Marcos and met so many people that she likes that now she's actually pushing me to get it done. I have to make the time, and I WILL make the time.
I look at what needs to be done on the car, and in total it's still somewhat overwhelming. However, I have decided to concentrate on one area at a time, and just complete one project on the car before I proceed to another. So, with that in mind, I have a few major areas that I need to finish on the car. The first is the electrical system. As I have said before, I am a zero with electrical. To me it always has been, and remains, a Voodoo science. One of the local guys down here is a genius at it, and he came over Jim's house one day with a couple of other guys, and got through some of it. They sorted out more in about 4 hours than I was able to do in a month before. The problem is he's super busy, I have been super busy, everyone is, as is always the case. It has been very difficult to get him back, which I totally, completely understand. I've been so busy that I think I was placating myself in thinking, "Well, I can't work on the electrical, so I will wait until that's done before moving forward". The bottom line is, I need to purposefully make time and move forward in other areas, and I will do that. My wife is leaning on me pretty hard now! You guys know what that's like, I'm sure....
So, the plan for me now is to sort out the MAJOR projects remaining, and tackle them one at a time. I've decided to just move past the electrical and start at the front of the car and work toward thew back, one project at a time, until the entire roller is done, then do the powertrain and drop it in.
The first project at the front is the whole radiator /
oil cooler area, and the associated tin baffling, etc. Now, the Contemporary is an awesome car, but in retrospect, it's probably the completely wrong car for me in that everything for it needs to be custom fabricated, due to them being out of business for quite a few years. This would all be easier if I could just pick up the phone, make a call to the manufacturer, and tell them to send me the parts I need. Unfortunately, I can't do that, and while I am terrible at electrical, my custom fabrication skills are just about as bad. Luckily, Nick Acton has lots of custom made parts available for the Contemporary, and I am in the next few days going to order a neat radiator bracket and top aluminum shroud to get the radiator set in at the proper laid back angle. From that point, I will test my lousy skills at trying to make up all the aluminum that surrounds the radiator and
oil cooler. Hopefully I don't botch it up and it'll be up to the standards of the rest of the car. When I got it down here to Houston, I hadn't seen it in a very long time, and when I finally saw it again I realized once again what a really nice car it is.
From there, the interior needs to be done. I had the seats recovered back in NY, and the guy who did them did a horrible job. I'll try to find a somewhat reasonably priced guy around here in the Houston area to tackle them again. I'll get a carpet and door panels done, and I'll put vinyl on the rear bulkhead, and that should do it for the interior until I get the dash back in after the electric is done.
Next, I have to put in the emergency brake system. Believe it or not, this is a part that I am really apprehensive about, because I can't for the life of me figure out my way past a problem I have (there's those darned fabrication skill problems again!
) The Jag rear calipers have the emergency brake application levers at the top of the caliper. The brake lines also come out the top of the calipers. When I bent the brake lines, I couldn't get the 90 degree bend that transitions the line from coming straight up out of the caliper to parallel to the ground close enough to the caliper itself, so now the brake lines interfere in the path the cable needs to take to span the space between the two levers. Somehow I have to keep the brake lines lower to the ground as they come out of the calipers, and I don't know how I am going to do that. Anyway, that's the next project.
After that, I have a really neat floor mounted pedal box that I bought once again from Nick Acton way back. Somehow along the way lots of parts from the inside have been misplaced, so I think I need to send it back to him to get it basically reassembled. That shouldn't be too difficult to get in once I get it back.
Moving to the rear of the car, I will soon be picking up a Watts link setup from Nick Acton. For those of you who have seen the Jag rear setup in the Contemporary, there in no fore and aft locating setup at all on the early cars, the lower control arm is just sort of hanging in the breeze. There is no locating arm or conventional trailing arm at all on it. I'd feel a lot more secure with the Watts link setup on the car. I'll buy that when I can and have it welded in.
The last of the bigger projects is to drop the fuel tank back down, try to install a sending unit in it that'll at least give me a rough idea of how much fuel is in the car, and run a fuel line to the front with electric fuel pump somewhere in the back of the car.
And then, there's the electrical system.....
Obviously, in addition to all these somewhat major projects is a load of minor ones, but this will certainly come close to getting the car to a roller stage. At that point, it's drive line time.
That's about it for now. Again, I am really sorry for neglecting to keep everyone updated. That's entirely on me, I allowed life to get in the way, and of all the people, I should not allow that to happen with all you guys. You all deserve better, and I will try very hard not to let it go this long again.
When I come on Club Cobra I click on "new posts", and for some reason I did not see that guys were posting on this thread. It became dormant for so long that I had stopped directly checking on it, looking only at the list of threads that had been posted on since my last visit. I will make it a point to come on and look directly at this one first.
Again, as always, a million thanks to all you guys, even with the long delay in getting the car done, it looks like I may very well get to drive it one day. That will be a VERY cool day!
Boy, that was a LOT of typing, my fingers hurt!