ERA 753 - Final Assembly in Progress

[fkemmerer]

More progress this week. We got our rear wheels from ERA! I had the Goodyear Gumball tires installed on the rims and balanced. After installing the wheels on the car, I set the ride height to ERA specs. The car's stance looks great. Here are a few pictures with the wheels and tires on the car:





I had to set the rear shocks at almost the lowest setting possible to get the car to the high side of ERA's recommended ride height. With the adjusters cranked almost to the bottom of the shock, the car is at 5 3/4" from the ground to the frame rail in the back. At this point, the rear coilovers are about 1 1/2" out of the spring pockets with the car jacked up in the rear. The car is only missing the seats and the tunnel at this point, has all fluids in the engine, and has 1/2 tank of gas so I think that I must be near final weight. The issues that I'm seeing may be because of the all aluminum FE that I'm using has less weight than a cast iron big block? It may also be that the car needs a little more time to settle now that its on its wheels. Bob, what do you think about his? Do I need to consider springs which are less stiff for my coilovers?

- Fred

[Chaplin]

Fred-
Once you drive it, the fronts will settle down a little more. I just swapped out an iron block 428 for an all aluminum FE and I did have to drop the front springs a little bit- maybe 1/4" inch or so- to compensate for the difference in weight between the 2 motors. But the stock ERA springs are fine for an aluminum FE. And the car looks great by the way.

Can you do me a favor? Can you measure the height from the the floor to the middle of the fender lip on both your front and rear fenders- I'm still screwing around with my ride height trying to get it where I want it and yours looks pretty good.

[fkemmerer]

Originally Posted by Chaplin

Fred-
Once you drive it, the fronts will settle down a little more. I just swapped out an iron block 428 for an all aluminum FE and I did have to drop the front springs a little bit- maybe 1/4" inch or so- to compensate for the difference in weight between the 2 motors. But the stock ERA springs are fine for an aluminum FE. And the car looks great by the way.

Can you do me a favor? Can you measure the height from the the floor to the middle of the fender lip on both your front and rear fenders- I'm still screwing around with my ride height trying to get it where I want it and yours looks pretty good.

Unfortunately, I am away traveling so I won't be able to make the measurements for a week or so. To give you a reference, the distance from the bottom of the frame rail at the rear to the ground is 5 3/4". The distance from the front of the frame rail to the ground is 5 1/4".

[Roger Cormier]

Hi Fred,
your car with those Rear Billboards mounted (finally) will make Sal G.cry
I'm sure that all that polishing alone sets your car apart from others, but what you've incorporated with the FAST system definately puts it on a higher level.

[fkemmerer]

Originally Posted by Roger Cormier

Hi Fred,
your car with those Rear Billboards mounted (finally) will make Sal G.cry
I'm sure that all that polishing alone sets your car apart from others, but what you've incorporated with the FAST system definately puts it on a higher level.

Thanks Roger. I'm getting pretty close to the end at this point. Just decided to add a accelerometer to the FAST computer setup. This will involve a little extra work but I will be able to record acceleration, braking, and cornering G's with the FAST computer. This should be a helpful tuning aid. Especially when I get to the stage for setting up the electronic traction control. Only downside to this - more wiring....

[RedBarchetta]

Originally Posted by Chaplin

And the car looks great by the way.

X2...no doubt. Can't wait to read about performance/handling with all the electronics on this car. Definitely one of the better (and certainly far more sophisticated) builds on this forum for any replica. Nice work!

-Dean

[Metal-morphous]

Fred,
It looks fantastic!!! You just made up my mind on what the next set of tires are going to be for my ERA

Ron

[fkemmerer]

Originally Posted by RedBarchetta

X2...no doubt. Can't wait to read about performance/handling with all the electronics on this car. Definitely one of the better (and certainly far more sophisticated) builds on this forum for any replica. Nice work!

-Dean

Thanks Dean. I will post information on how the final car performs when I get it on the road. I appreciate the nice comments.

[fkemmerer]

Originally Posted by Metal-morphous

Fred,
It looks fantastic!!! You just made up my mind on what the next set of tires are going to be for my ERA

Ron

Hi Ron,

Thanks! I'm going to try to get stencils made as you suggested to help me to paint the white letters on the tires. Are you still thinking about EFI?

- Fred

[fkemmerer]

We installed an accelerometer in our Cobra today. This device allows the FAST XFI computer in the car to record G forces for acceleration/braking, lateral G's, and vertical G's while the car is in operation. The accelerometer should be useful in tuning the Electronic Traction Control and other suspension elements of our Cobra.

The G-force measuring sensor is a small device which is mounted directly to the frame near the center of the car (its the small red device in the lower part of the following picture).



We also upgraded our FAST XFI to add the cabling for the Controller Area Network (CAN) which FAST supports. The CAN is a sort of network that allows all sorts of additional controllers and intelligent sensors and output devices to be added to the FAST system. The accelerometer uses the CAN to communicate with our FAST XFI computer.

Now its on to the electrical connections between the computer and the engine.

- Fred

[fkemmerer]

Well we completed the last of the EFI wiring harness construction and we got our cobra running today! It really runs sweat and sounds great! I need to do a little fine tuning on the cold warmup part of the program yet but other than that we're set. We also got the hole cut for the shifter and the interior back in also. We have a number of little things to fix and adjust but I expect to take a short ride tomorrow and will post some pictures when the car is out in the sun.

- Fred

[fkemmerer]

After some tuning and cleanup on a few details, we rolled our Cobra out of the garage from the first time today and took it for a few short rides in our development (no plates or registration yet).





The car runs great and it really handles well with the Goodyear Racing tires! Could not really get too carried away inside the development roads but I can tell the car will be great!

Here's a video of a the car running - it sounds awesome (thanks to my friend Jim for reving the car while I shot the video).

http://www.anitafred.net/Video/Cobra/Roll Out Video.wmv

Now its on to registration!

- Fred

[madmaxx]

WOW!!!!! This is the nicest build I have seen since being on the forum. Love all the technolgoy, keep us up to date on pluses and minus of each. It is stunning!!!

[sp1410]

Absolutely beautiful!

[fkemmerer]

Thanks for the nice complements guys. Once I get the car registered, I will dial in the Electronic Traction Control and do some more on the road testing. I will post as progress is made there.

- Fred

[fkemmerer]

The video of our Cobra in an earlier post was too big for most people to download in a reasonable amount of time. Here's a new version that is about 8M which should download in a few minutes for most folks:

http://www.anitafred.net/Video/Cobra/Roll Out Video.wmv

We've also updated our webside with a nearly complete story on our build including more information on all of the electronics on the car. I've also added some background and information about what is involved in tuning an EFI system for those who might be interested in installing EFI on their car. The link to our Cobra webpage is:

http://www.anitafred.net/Cobra.htm

This is our second EFI project. The first was a blown and injected 1963 Corvette. For folks looking for some additional EFI information, the link to our Corvette page may be found at:

http://www.anitafred.net/Vette.htm

I hope that this information is useful to everyone.

- Fred

[RedBarchetta]

Saw a pic of that 'Vette about a year ago and fell in love with it. Now I know who built it! Very nice....

-Dean

[fkemmerer]

Well, ERA 753 is registered, insured, inspected, and on the road! The day began with a visit from a NH State Trooper. He checked all of the paperwork including the statement of origin from ERA, all of the invoices for the kit and components, and the chassis, engine, and transmission serial numbers. After all of this, he wrote on a VIN form and provided a VIN sticker which went on the firewall above the driver's side footbox. He told me that because the car was intended to be a copy of an original Cobra, I could title it as a 1967 Shelby Cobra. Next came a trip to my town clerk. The town clerk checked with NH DMV and finally concluded that it was, in fact, OK to title the car as a 1967 Shelby Cobra. The town clerk issued a temporary title, registration, and tags. Next, we called Grundy and got insurance on the car. The final stop was my local inspection mechanic who inspected the car. I put about 25 miles on the car before I had to go back to work. We are going to take our Cobra to our local cruise night this evening. I can’t wait to drive it some more! We still have lots of fine tuning to go and I will continue to post here as we make progress on that front.

- Fred

[RAO-3]

Congratulations Fred, glad to hear that everything went so smoothly with the inspection and getting it out on the road. Great driving weather now.

Ray

[fkemmerer]

Some updates on ERA 753 as I've worked out some of the bugs.

First, I had alot of trouble getting the reverese speedo in my car to work correctly. After breaking several cables and trying a new speedo, I finally got the problem worked out by doing the following:

1) I have a Tremec TKO 600 5-speed. Its important to route the cable properly and avoid any sharp bends. The proper routing is to loop the cable out of the back of the trans and down close to even with the bootom of the chassis, then up over the top of the trans to the passenger's side, then back to the left on top of the bell housing and through the firewall.
2) I took my reverser apart and greased all of the moving parts with red axle grease (some of the bushings where the shafts ride in were dry). I also carefully shortend the square drive the connects the reverser to the speedo per ERA's manual and added 2 shims between thre reverser and the speedo (ERA provided these).
3) I removed the insides from the cable and re-greased it with red axle grease.
4) Doug provided me with a short piece of 3/16" brake tubing to go on the end of the cable before it goes into the reverser. This keeps the cable from working out of the drive gear on the transmission end.
4) I think the combination of the cold weather (I'm in NH) and the fact the the reverse speedo heads are a little stiff when new was a problem. When I first put the whole setup together on my bench and ran it with a drill, the speedo needle would jump slightly each time the trip odometer advanced. I also noticed that after about 10 mi or so things got slightly better. I then set up an air drill and ran 125 mi (no typo, it took over an hour) on the speedo on my bench. After this all of the jumping had gone away and the whole unit (cable, reverser, speedo) seemed to run much smoother and a little free'er.

After all of this, I put the unit, cable, and reverser back in the car and the speedo is now working fine (no jumping, etc). I have almost 100 mi on it without breaking a cable. I could not get past 25 mi before the fixes.

I'm also doing some tweaking on the tune on my EFI system. Seems the exhausts on the car are more restrictive than the dyno headers that the motor was tuned with (no surprise). This involved driving the car through a variety of load points and speeds to adjust the VE table. I am getting pretty close in the normal ranges that the car runs in on the street. I'll need to invest in a chassis dyno session in the spring to complete the tune under full load (its not safe to do this on the street).

The car is really shaping up nicely. Don't know if I'll get to the Electronnic Traction Control before the weather turns bad. I want to get the base tune right and get a few more miles on the car before I stress it with to set the traction control.

- Fred