New Cobra Owner in Hawaii

[520SC]

Aloha, everyone! I just joined Club Cobra and I'm happy to be here!

I've been wanting to own a Cobra for many, many years, and finally got my chance last week when an add popped up on Craigslist. I immediately jumped on a plane and headed to the Big Island of Hawaii (I live on Oahu) to see it. After a thorough inspection of the car and a thrilling test drive, I bought it. It's a Street Beasts 1966 427 SC. The kit was purchased in 2004 by the owner of Automotive Engineering in Kailua-Kona, and assembled as time allowed over the next nine years. Construction was completed in 2013, and the car was painted silver with black racing stripes in 2015. Engine: Ford 520 cid (a bored and stroked 429), cast stroker crankshaft, billet rods, forged aluminum pistons (10.4:1), aluminum cylinder heads, Comp Cams 268 hydraulic flat tappet camshaft, Edelbrock Performer RPM dual plane intake, 750 cfm Holley mechanical secondary carb. Transmission: B&M C6 auto. Rear End: Ford 8.8" with 3.73 gears. Accessories: power steering, power brakes, power seats, tilt steering, AM/FM/CD.

I can see that there are many good people here with lots of experience. I look forward to chatting with you and trading maintenance/repair/tuning tips. I hope I can put my previous (albeit, not extensive) performance car experience to good use and help others with their cars!

Take care,
Todd

[Phx Mike]

Congrats and welcome to the club! Sounds like a great car. You will have to post some photos of your car with that incredible scenery!

[40k Later]

Aloha!!
You'll want to join our Street Beasts owners club, 70 plus owners with a ton of experience. Enjoy your purchase blazing (or more like stop and go these days!)
down the Likelike highway. Get some photo's posted soon! Pretty sure I seen that car in Pahoa a few years back like 2012/2013 maybe.

[twobjshelbys]

OK, so do this for me. Pack it on a ship and take it to Maui and drive it as fast as you can on the Hana Highway. Trip report mandatory

[520SC]

Originally Posted by Phx Mike

Congrats and welcome to the club! Sounds like a great car. You will have to post some photos of your car with that incredible scenery!

Thanks, Mike. I will certainly do that as soon as I have some time to drive to the windward and northern sides of the island, which provide the best backdrops for pics.

Originally Posted by 40k Later

Aloha!!
You'll want to join our Street Beasts owners club, 70 plus owners with a ton of experience. Enjoy your purchase blazing (or more like stop and go these days!) down the Likelike highway. Get some photo's posted soon! Pretty sure I seen that car in Pahoa a few years back like 2012/2013 maybe.

Heheh, you're right about the traffic on Oahu these days. It's agonizing during the weekdays, but I plan to use this car mainly for weekend cruises. What's the URL for the Street Beasts Owners Club?

Originally Posted by twobjshelbys

OK, so do this for me. Pack it on a ship and take it to Maui and drive it as fast as you can on the Hana Highway. Trip report mandatory

Whoa! I know they call it the "Hana Highway" but it's really a narrow, curvy, two lane suicide run, somewhat like Pike's Peak. Cliffs on one side, and a sheer 200 foot drop to the water on the other side. I think I might need a little practice before even thinking about it.

I just checked the Roush website. That 427 IR is sweet!

[40k Later]

Hit the Portal tab on the upper left on this page and once it loads look on the right side of the page, it lists social groups and that is where you'll find the Street Beasts link.

[Ron61]

Congratulations an what sounds like a great Cobra. Just don't get dizzy driving around and around the island and have fun.

Ron

[hinoonaz]

Congrats, that must have been the Cobra I saw on Kona 3 years ago. never did catch up to it. Enjoy

[Andrewyoung78]

Aloha Todd, welcome to the cobra family on oahu. Im from kailua side and we had a cars and coffee today and another gathering at kapolei wendy. come out and introduce yourself sometime. mine is a dark silver/silver superformance.

Andrew

[cycleguy55]

Originally Posted by twobjshelbys

OK, so do this for me. Pack it on a ship and take it to Maui and drive it as fast as you can on the Hana Highway. Trip report mandatory

Good luck getting any kind of pace on the Hana Highway - unless you can somehow arrange to have it blocked off for a personal run. My experience is that it's so plugged up with gawking tourists in rental cars the pace is pretty gentle. I guess that's not surprising, considering most of them consider vehicles transportation appliances rather than devices to be enjoyed, and that turns over 0.2g are likely to end in calamity.

To be fair, my experience with the Hana Highway was in late December 2014 when every rental car on the island was booked and gridlock became an everyday event - hardly the idyllic experience in paradise! I did enjoy, though, more than keeping pace with the fellow who tried to lose me on the Hana Highway. He was driving a Mustang and I was in a low-rent Hyundai Elantra. He was no doubt unaware I once held a local track record for front-drive cars... (I know, not much of an honour, but still valuable when renting cars.)

[Leecbr]

Welcome Todd,

Congrats on your Street Beast Cobra purchase. Great looking car!

I have some cousins who live in Waianae. Years ago I stayed with them for a couple months over the summer. I'll never forget the beauty of that place.

Have fun and be safe!

Lee

[520SC]

Brian, the talk about racing along the Hana Highway was just a joke. Attempting to do that would be suicidal.

[twobjshelbys]

Hana traffic is somewhat seasonal. We were there in Feb and was able to have some nice sections where there was no traffic. I wasn't going excessively fast, definitely within the capabilities of me and the car but our passengers got car sick and we had an evening group dinner so we headed back about 1/3 way instead of going all the way around. I hope to go back and drive it all the way around.

[HI Cobra]

Welcome to the Cobra madness! There are plenty of Cobras there and good people who own and drive them. I recently moved to Texas where the roads,
lack of traffic, and speed limits allow one to have some fun with them. Big
Island is probably the best island to own one for driving it, because Oahu is
just way too crowded - and too many speed traps. Be careful and enjoy the ride!

[520SC]

Originally Posted by Andrewyoung78

Aloha Todd, welcome to the cobra family on oahu. Im from kailua side and we had a cars and coffee today and another gathering at kapolei wendy. come out and introduce yourself sometime. mine is a dark silver/silver superformance.

Andrew

My friend, Scot, also recently purchased a Cobra, a Unique Motorsports 427 SC with a stroker small block 427 and a 5-speed manual. It's blue with white stripes. I expect that we'll attend Cars and Coffee events together, so if you see his car and my car (silver with black stripes) parked side-by-side, that'll be us. Hope to meet you soon.

I tried to post a link to the Bleizn FX March 2017 cruise night schedule, but because of the web link, it's stuck in the administrators' in box for approval. Go to Google and query on Bleizn FX March 2017, and the schedule will be the first hit listed. I think we'll attend the Friday, March 10 event at the Manana McDonald's (Pearl City Walmart).

Originally Posted by twobjshelbys

Hana traffic is somewhat seasonal. We were there in Feb and was able to have some nice sections where there was no traffic. I wasn't going excessively fast, definitely within the capabilities of me and the car but our passengers got car sick and we had an evening group dinner so we headed back about 1/3 way instead of going all the way around. I hope to go back and drive it all the way around.

I attempted to post a link to a picture of the road to Hana, but to no avail. I wanted to show the readers what we're talking about. It's by no means an appropriate place to challenge a Cobra's speed and handling capabilities.

If you do a Google query on "road to Hana" and select IMAGES, a pic of that road will be the first hit. Scary!

Originally Posted by HI Cobra

Welcome to the Cobra madness! There are plenty of Cobras there and good people who own and drive them. I recently moved to Texas where the roads, lack of traffic, and speed limits allow one to have some fun with them. Big Island is probably the best island to own one for driving it, because Oahu is just way too crowded - and too many speed traps. Be careful and enjoy the ride!

I agree, Flip. My car will see very infrequent full throttle pulls. It's just too risky on Oahu. Plus, I still have a 2014 moving violation lingering on my driving record. One more strike, and I'm out. These things are tough to insure.

[Ron61]

Todd,

I believe there is a certain number of posts that you have to have before you can post picture or links in threads but I don't recall what the number is. I am not sure if you can make an album or not until you reach that number, but if you can you could put your pictures in the album and members could then go look at the album.

Ron

[cycleguy55]

Originally Posted by 520SC

I attempted to post a link to a picture of the road to Hana, but to no avail. I wanted to show the readers what we're talking about. It's by no means an appropriate place to challenge a Cobra's speed and handling capabilities.

If you do a Google query on "road to Hana" and select IMAGES, a pic of that road will be the first hit. Scary!

"There are over 56 one-lane bridges and it snakes around more than 617 hairpin curves. And there are plenty of tourists trying to make the trip. In addition, you can easily run into rain."

Descriptions and photos:

The Road to Hana - Hawaii Top Ten

Hana, Maui | GoHawaii.com

Road to Hana Maui | Preparation for Hana Highway

[Andrewyoung78]

Todd, we will be meeting this sunday CNC at 8am-11am at ala moana near bloomingdale parking lot upstair. hope to see you and your friend there.

[520SC]

Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it on Sunday. My car will ship on Friday and arrive at Honolulu Harbor on Saturday. Pickup will be no earlier than Monday morning. I think Scot plans to attend.

[QTRCOBRA]

Another new street beasts member here also

Coming all the way from the middle east (Qatar)