The long and winding road....again!

[stephen low]

G'day All

Just an update on where the rebuild is at, on Stiffy's prompt.

I can say bits of the car are all over the place at present. I'd stripped the car down to allow the boys to work on it and am now slowly reassembling.

Marty did a great job straightening out the chassis on what only seemed (and looked) mildly bent bits at first but which needed a bit more tweaking than first thought.

Marty added his own form of radiator frame and modded the seat belt anchor locations to allow me to relocate the belt retractors into the boot. He also added a fourth roll bar point for the missus's bar and third leg points. I thought his mods. very well thought out given the space restrictions.

The first pic. shows the sandblasted chassis and new radiator mounting bracket out front.



The second pic. is the modified seatbelt attachment tower. The cross pieces at the top are Martin's addition to allow the reels to mount below and allow the belts to roll over the frame and into the cabin. The cross pieces at the top also provide the bolting location for the inside leg of the roll bar.



I used Por15 and only brushed it on. Finish isn't bad though I perhaps wish I had some spray painting skills. It would have made the application easier and quicker, however it is done now. As shown below.



And I also had all my suspension bits blasted and have given them a Por15 coat. These have come up well.



Am belatedly getting the springs blasted too as I found they had developed rust spots beneath the paint coating. Will cheat with epoxy style spray packs on these.

So the rebuilt engine is with Don S. being finalised and just with RPM heads for the moment. I have ordered a TKO600 to replace the buggered T5 I had. The previous owner must have been a drag king, as the gearbox was totalled. And I have my diff being checked as well.

Seems I'll have a new old car painted care of Greg and I'll approach all roundabouts with far more circumspect in the future.

Cheers

[Rebel1]

Good stuff that POR15......bugga to get off ya skin tho.

Looks great Slowy

[LoBelly]

Nice to see you're getting the cobra back together Stephen.

Looks like a military grade radiator mount - You can be confident that it will stop any other telegraph poles that try to make their way into your engine bay

LoBelly

[400TT]

Looking good, making some very good progress.

Nothing like bouncing back from something like this and making the Cobra better than it was originally. I think it just pushed your existing plans forward didn't it.

Yeah, that POR15 stuff is great. No matter what I do, it always gets somewhere on my skin and you wear it around like a tattoo until it eventually wears off or until your skin cycles over.

[sambo]

Making good progress there Slowy and I'm sure it's also good therapy after the "incident"!

By the way, do you have shares in POR-15?

[stephen low]

No shares Paul sadly and two tins ain't cheap but that was off-set by the free sandblast c/o a contractor I use at work.

And not so sure about the therapy as I've had to finish off a pergola first and am having to concentrate on my little yacht now that I stupidly decided to rejuvinate between seasons. Once that is done I can concentrate all my efforts on the car.

Given my parts are scattered far and wide it's not causing too many issues though I'm sure Marty and Greg want to knock the project over from their side.

Must a bit more careful with the brush than you blokes plus a pair of rubber gloves helps. Have had a spot or two but that's all. No temp tattoos for me!!

Can someone remind me how to load the pics up via the html link. The ones here are hopelessly too small for detail.

[Aussie Mike]

Progress looks good Slowy. Hope you get it all back together for some summer cruizing. That's what I'm looking forward to when the weather warms up.

Cheers

[NASSTY]

Originally Posted by stephen low

Can someone remind me how to load the pics up via the html link. The ones here are hopelessly too small for detail.

Hi Steve,
Looking great. New old Cobra is the way to go. The POR15 is great stuff. I didn't get it all over me either. Perhaps some of these blokes don't know about latex?

Re pics, upload them to your gallery. Once there, you will see at the bottom of each pic a http address. Copy that address and paste it into your post. If you have a second window open showing your gallery it's easy to copy and paste the link straight into your post.

With your 302 being stretched to 347, with cam and heads you won't know yourself!


Cheers

[Aussie Mike]

It's about time you uploaded som newer pics of your beastie Al. It's been over a year since you posted anything.

Cheers

[stephen low]

Thanks Al, but I'm even struggling to delete photos from the gallery to free space for new ones. Suspect I should be a good boy and throw some coin at the moderator.

How does one do that? And more importantly how do I make it tax deductable!!

Anyway, Al the motor is just staying 302 at present, that seems bad enough for me for the moment, but I do like a warm version that Don built up. But as has been discussed elsewhere, with an EEC-V I need the aftermarket ECU and E303 cam to make it fun. Plus an injector capable modified intake and then I'm almost there!

Cheers

Steve

[NASSTY]

G'day Steve,

One approach for the intake is to make a plenum box and bolt it to your lower manifold. The main restriction in the ford manifold are the top runners. It's not too difficult to make a box up and bolt a 4 barrel on top. That way you retain the stock fuel rail etc. The plenum will give you the volume for throttle response, the 4 barrel t/b will flow 1000cfm, much more than the stocky and you'll now have short runners which will help out the top end. One of my cobra buddies (of which this was his idea to try and do) has done this to his 302 but he used 2x4 barrels. Throttle response is amazing! You wouldn't think 2x1000cfm would work on a 302 but it does. It also looks old school to boot if that's your thing.

Regardless of aftermarket ecu you choose, I'd suggest you factor in a wide band a/f meter as well. I'd recommend one from www.innovatemotorsports.com called LM2. I've got an LM1 but they're no longer available. You can get them from Rocket. You can't really self tune if you don't have a wide band a/f meter. I got mind for less than $400 aud but I figure the new LM2's will be a bit dearer. The cool thing about these meters is that the linear output can be configured to suit the ecu you have, so that what's recorded on the meter is the same as what the ecu records. Then you can datalog on your ecu and see everything that's going on. It's cool stuff and makes tuning a lot easier.

It's not too difficult to get some big numbers from a n/a 302. All it takes are heads, cam and a decent induction setup. 302's love a rev and the bottom end will cope. Do the above and stroke it to 347 and your cobra will pull harder than a 15 y.o. !

Edit:
Btw, Seimens make a great injector. I'm using Deka 63 pounders. Duty cycle is at 30% at WOT. It might be over the top size wise but the low duty cycle allows you to more control when the injectors fire which allows you to shoot deeper into the cylinder therefore reducing lost fuel out of the exhaust valve during overlap. You'll need to check the duty cycle with your new setup as the Tickford motor was probably running 18 ponders and it's d.c. could be close to max (80%) with the mods.

G'day Mike,
Yeah, it's been a while since I last updated pics etc. The Cobra was registered last Christmas. It's still in undercoat and has no trim but I've been busy making things work properly and doing fine tuning, as there was no time left to do these things before rego. I won't post pics on Steve's thread but I should post some new pics up. Part of the problem is that I've been driving the beast too much!!

Cheers

Al