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I am getting rid of these two new gauges that came with the kit.  The oil pressure gauge has never been removed form the box.  The speedo is mounted but never used.  I will pack it in the box that will come with the electronic speedo I just ordered, so it will basically be new in almost right box.  Any reasonable offer will be taken. 

Speedo - 201005

Oil Pressure Gauge  - 201008

Hi All,

Just a quick update without much progress.  I did finally get through the DMV and got my license plates about a month ago or so, and within weeks, the registration came up due for renewal!  Obviously due to the fact that I started the Reg process LAST March, and it took a whole 11 months to wind through it. 

Developed a high idle issue with the Holley sniper, which really makes the car a bear to drive.  Just seemed to have that sorted out now, which took a new IAC valve.

Going to replace the fuel sender as I'm getting very poor performance of the fuel gauge.  Also getting fuel starvation at low fuel levels.  My tank is 9.5" deep, and I will start to get fuel starvation around tighter turns, with the gas at about 2.5" up from the bottom.  Yet another perk of a carburetor...  Not sure if this is within normal limits, or if my fuel pickup is not having a good time down at the bottom of the tank.

The rear suspension is still working quietly, thanks to replacing the rod ends with the FK brand units.  I'm not having any noises in the front at this time, and I probably have about 500 miles on the car.

I'm ready to consolidate my efforts and get to fitting the interior aluminum panels, in order to seal up the cockpit and prepare for the carpet.  I actually have no idea how those panels are attached to the body/tub, so thats what brought me back on the site to look around!

Plans for paint are on hold until I'm really happy with the car.  I also hear a lot of horror stories of people's cars getting sequestered for long periods of time at the painters, not something I want to deal with. 

Still playing with the suspension and trying to get a good plush ride.  I think one of the problems is that so many of the roads where I live are just awful and rough.  You have to get quite a ways out of town to find smoothing winding roads to enjoy, so I'm still aiming at getting a plush ride for around town so I'm more motivated to drive it. 

I see that there is one newer kit than mine, HM2041!  I think I got some of your stuff in my initial shipment 

Looks great Jeff! And I'm glad to hear your DMV registration is coming along. 

Even though I have few miles on my car still, I have managed to remember to tell everyone to watch their leg as they step out of the car!

I plan to get the Shell Valley heat shields, as they come in Ceramic and will match my header finish.

https://www.shellvalley.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=product/product_id=140/mode=prod/prd140.htm

It's a creaking that is almost constant as you drive over the imperfections of the road, and if you grab a rod end heim and pull it back and forth, it will create the same creaks.  I believe the FK heims solved my problem, but I was only able to do a spin around the block.  The QA1 heims that came out were definitely looser than when they were new.

Perhaps your car was supplied with other, better heims?

Also, have we figured out if the creaking is just a solid axle problem, or if the IRS is doing the same with the Qa1 parts.

Looks awesome Jeff!  Lots of satisfaction in a job well done.  I will likely use your idea, as mine is binding up a good bit.

Congratulations! Let us know how it drives that first time. Mine was a shocker lol. For my car, between the softer rear springs, the new heims by FK as suggested by Aaron, faster steering rack, and softer front springs that have yet to go in, I think that it's going to finally be a nice smooth ride and responsive steering.

Hi All,

Just wanted to give an update.

I took the cobra to the Good Guys car show here in the Bay Area yesterday, at the Alameda County Fairgrounds.  I think mine was the only car out of a thousand that had no paint!  Only two other cobras there on Sunday when I entered my car. 

Over the last month or so, I removed the body to finish up some things, as well as try to get the body to sit lower in the back.  If you may recall, I experimented with lowering the suspension in order to get the back at the right spot, but this didn't work.  With the body off, I cut the back of the cockpit tub, and rejoined the top section lower, so the body was almost sitting on the frame in that area.  I had to cut, lower, and reweld the crossmember that the trunk hinges mount to. 

At the back, I enlarged the mount holes to use the 3/4" chrome mounting bars, with the larger grommets.  So now, the rear bumper holes are floating (tight fit) on the chrome tubes, instead of being sandwiched with washers and a bolt.  The top body hole is now mounted to the bottom frame hole, and I will have to weld a plate onto the frame to mount the bottom body hole.  This means the back of the body went down 2.25"....and still the body is a bit high.

Currently, the frame is almost level, slightly tilted back.  I will be able to lower the suspension a bit more to get the right look. 

I fastened down the cockpit tub nice and tight, and used some caulking around the foot boxes. 

The new steering rack works GREAT.  Did I say GREAT?  I mean GREAT.  Much better steering feel.  The rack dimensions were close to the original.  I had to use 3/4" of spacer between the rack and the frame to clear the pinion, and after all my measuring, the rack sits the same vertically, and sits forward about a 1/2". 

The smaller brake master cylinders did the trick...braking is much less effortful, and there is still not much travel in the pedal.  The front master is a little spongy, after bleeding it a few times, I'm thinking thats because it is undersized.  However, with both masters connected to the balance bar, the feel is good, and I can lock up the tires without too much effort.  Between the steering and brake mods, the car is much nice to drive around town. 

I ordered some cheap seat tracks off amazon, which are an amazing upgrade.  These tracks use large cylindrical rollers between the upper and lower frame of the seat track, and roll smoothly.  As opposed to a bearing race with a bunch of small BBs.  The tracks are a little shorter than what Hurricane supplies, however, my frame had two sets of holes for the front seat mount, and the other hole I didn't originally use was the perfect spacing for the seat tracks. 

https://www.amazon.com/KUAFU-Universal-Sliders-Compatible-Adjustable/dp/B09LM31VXZ/ref=sr_1_3_sspa?crid=3DZB9KQTE45NO&keywords=kuafu%2Bseat%2Bsliders&qid=1693243240&sprefix=kuafu%2Bseat%2Bslider%2Caps%2C184&sr=8-3-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1

I'll be sure to take a couple more pics to show details of the above, but wanted to get this out before it slipped my mind.

The car looks great!  Forgive me if I missed it, but did you polish that gelcoat?

Curious to hear your impressions of driving it?  If you hadn't seen, I'm finding brakes, ride, and steering to leave a lot to be desired as supplied by Hurricane.  Slowly working through those issues though with good progress.

Paul,

As always, I appreciate all of the experienced input. My assumption is that the rack is identical in its dimensions, but I will see when it arrives. I don't plan to track my car, except maybe to push it to the limits to learn how it handles and responds. As it is, I don't find the amount of steering input required to be comfortable or enjoyable, so it's worth a few hundred dollar experiment.

I also know that the length of the steering arm on the spindle will also affect the quickness of the steering. Curious if you have an idea of what your rack is lock to lock, and how long your steering arm is, who knows, it may not be the same spindle.

Secondly, Brandon at Krause racing mentioned the same thing. He thought the steering response was extremely slow, and he raced Cobra 's back in the day.  So it's worth a little time and money to experiment with.  I will read up on bump steer to make sure I understand any problems in the performance if and when I do install the rack.

I've spent a good amount of time sideways in a 1993 mustang, an e28 BMW, and my current E 90 BMW, and when I got this cobra sideways, it scared the piss out of me.

Hello all, just a quick update here.

Not much building work going on right now, but since I have a temporary registration, I have been putting some miles on the car.  My main focus right now is dialing in the ride.  There are all kinds of squeaks and creaks and noises, and an otherwise quite harsh ride.  My initial plan, because of the kind of driving I plan to do, is to the get the car to ride plush.  From there, I think it will be easy to stiffen up as my driving habits change.  I have done the following to smooth out issues:

Rear suspension:  Lots of bad creaking here from the heim joints.  I isolated the worst offender to be the upper link (Ford 9" rear).  I purchased some poly bushings as an experiment, and installing them definitely took out a majority of the creaking.  Its not a permanent fix, though, as the bushings don't articulate as they need to, and I'm seeing them get deformed already.  However, with this alone, the rear suspension sounds satisfactory. 

I did decide to purchase a few of the Sealflex rubber heim joints, and will install one of these on each control arm, which will hopefully add a little more plushness to the ride and quiet down the remaining creaking.  Those will go on in the next couple days.

To get the rear of the car where I wanted it, I either had to lower the suspension ride height, which would mean the frame would sit closer to the ground in the rear, or remove the body and cut the back of the cockpit tub down to allow the rear of the body to sit about 1" lower.  Jeff K.'s suggestion was that the body was in a good place, and lowering the rear is an easy experiment, and obviously I'm not looking for the car to handle excellently, so I lowered the rear.

At the right ride height, the shock springs would come loose at full extension.  It appears that Hurricane supplied 10" springs and the US502 shocks in my kit, though QA1 specifies a 12" spring for the shock.  So I purchased a lighter, longer spring, installed it, and am pleased with the result at this time.   QA1 spring rate guidance for a car of its weight is way less than the 400lb spring that Hurricane supplied.  With the 12" 275lb spring I installed, the spring has preload at full extension, and compresses down close to the suggested amount (25%) when the shock is loaded.  And it rides really nicely.  If I plan to keep this ride height in the rear suspension and want a stiffer spring in the future, I will probably have to purchase a shorter shock for the rear.  OR, cut the cockpit tub and lower the body.  I also have to figure out what hits first at full extension, and add some kind of bump stop.  So I would say that the rear end is mostly dialed for my initial build, and I will experiment with the rubber heims to add a further degree of plush. 

Front Suspension:  The work at Krause appears to be dialed in.  I did purchase lighter springs, though purchased the suggested length spring for the supplied shock, which is 10", not realizing that the supplied spring is 9".  So I'll install those in the next few days, and see what happens with ride and ride height.  I do know that Krause did adjust the front ride height, but not sure if that required an excessively loose spring adjustment, like the rear did. 

Steering:  My rack is about 3.75 turns lock to lock.  I feel like all I do in that car is turn the wheel, and I can't imagine how much input it would take if I got sideways, so I determined that the fastest steering ratio I can get would be a 79-93 mustang rack from Unisteer, which is listed at 2.5 turns lock to lock, with the same rack travel (5").  I am hopeful that the swap will be straightforward.  I have the offset bushings that will line up the difference in mounting holes (16" center to center on the car, 15.5" center to center on the 79--93 racks.)  I ordered the rack and should have it going in the next week.

Brakes:  I determined that the calipers were correctly installed on their respective end of the vehicle, and will be trying the master cylinder experimental swap out to 5/8 and 3/4, as opposed to the 3/4 and 7/8" as supplied by hurricane. 

Next up would be to remove the body, firmly mount the cockpit tub, and dial in the body edges, mounting, and connection points.  Still waiting for the special process of the titling process to come through, to be able to get the smog exemption and finish the registration.

Regarding the driver seat sliders, I put my seat belts below the sliders, and I used a 3/4" or so spacer to lift the sliders off the floor.  I found that because the fiberglass of the floor isn't flat, the mechanism was binding and worked very poorly, was impossible to move the seat.  After raising the sliders up on the spacers, it now works poorly.  Which is an improvement over very poorly/not working.   

For the passenger seat, each box section tube has sets of holes.  before you install the tube to to the seat bottom, you install the 4 bolts that will be long enough to go through the floor, through the 4 large holes first, so that the head of the bolts will be inside the tube.  Then you take that assembly, and mate it to the bottom of the seat, and put the supplied bolts up through the bottom of the tube, and thread into the seat bottom.  Call me if you want to go through it over facetime or something.  I'm available mostly any time. 

I plan to ditch the seat sliders for something more....less poorly functioning.  I guess I need to measure the distance between the holes on the seat bottoms, unless someone has that handy. 

Seems like every state has a different system.  Some people seem to have an issue getting through the California process, but the process has been in place since the early 2000s, and my run through has been very easy.

Well I know we would all like to be able to post that our cars went together and drove great, but I'm finding that the most challenging part of the build for me is...now.  The car is built for the first time, with rough and basic body work, and rough around the edges as a car, and its time to slowly work through those issues.  So, I would love to hear here, or on PM, about your impression from first drive to where you are at now, and where you would like to get to.

I'll be the first to say, that the car is currently a challenge to drive and enjoy, but as I tweak on stuff (alignment is a big thing), more hope is entering the picture.  Doesn't help that my daily driver for the past 7 years is such a sweet car.

Paul,

Thank you for the input.  I used the large tube style of weatherstripping that was originally placed onto the cockpit tub flanges from Hurricane.  It compressed down pretty easily, and the contours between my pieces are definitely not matching.   I've had some discussion with Jeff K, and I'm wondering about ditching the flange altogether, and bonding brackets to the underside of the body, that would then bolt to the back wall of the cockpit tub.  I know he has done some body work modifying some areas, and we are going to compare notes this weekend.  I've never done much fiberglass work, and not sure how strong a body to bracket bond would be, or if it would either creak, or eventually crack, or if its important to have some movement between these parts at all. 

Great milestone, congratulations.  Curious to see how things go when you start driving it around, I know on my build there are some kinks to work out for sure.

Looks like you snuck in a very nice original coolant overflow tank, and didn't write about it.  I want one of those!  Do tell...

Hello enthusiasts,

Sorry for the huge data dump....

I was excited to give an update here on a lot of progress, and a few questions.  After some very slow going for a couple months just busy with other things, and waiting for my first inspection, I'm happy to say that I can now jump in the car and legally drive it around!  Unfortunately, that was not in time to go to a local cobra meet at the Cobra Experience museum locally here in Martinez.  There were about 15 original cobras, and about 25 replicas, along with other Ford muscle cars.  It was a great opportunity to see a bunch of originals up close, and see the varying condition of them, differences in just about everything on the car, and the like.  I got a real kick out of the labels below the different dash knobs and switches, I think I'll pass on that level of originality 

Since last post, I have completed:

+ All of the wiring.
+ Spent some hours trimming and fitting the doors, hood, and trunk
+ Installed the hood latches and some temporary brackets to catch them
+ Installed the trunk latch with great difficulty, still need to create the anchor point
+ Chose a position for the windshield, and bolted that in

I called for Insurance, got a policy for $650 a year from Grundy, and that is with a few thingies on my driving record.

Took the car to the CHP (Highway Patrol) for the VIN inspection.  From what I gathered from him, since the VIN was not stamped in the frame, he had to assign a VIN from a sequence, and we had to place and rivet a plate on the frame with that number.  So my official VIN looks like CAXXXXXX, with the Xs being numbers.  I was a little bummed that I couldn't get HM2040 as part of the VIN, but that's life. In California.

Took the car for the Brake and Lamp inspection, and that was a breeze.

Returned to the DMV last week to continue the process, and was given a 30 day moving permit, so now I can drive it!  Next process is to make an appointment with the smog board (California BAR referee), who will inspect my smog equipment, make sure that I actually built the car, and didn't buy it factory built, and give me the final blessing.  Then it's back to the DMV to finalize the registration and get a plate.

I had an appointment at Kraus racing late last week to do the alignment.  Getting the front end straight was fairly straightforward, and he put in about -.9 degrees camber, and about 4.5 degrees caster.  The rear was a little more tricky.  Initially he had noticed that the rear axle was bound up somewhat, with an extreme pinion angle, which made sense with some odd running characteristics I was noticing.  He was able to straighten things out, he corner weighted the car, and it looks like it's a 49/51 weight balance as is, and it's about 120 lbs heavy on the driver side with me in it.

After getting home and driving the car some more, there was a lot of creaking in the rear end (Ford 9") that I narrowed down to heim joints making noise.  I noticed that the shocks were not perpendicular to their mounts, and came to realize that the rear end was still bound up.  It looks as though the axle needs to come forward about ½" to get the wheels in the center of the wheelwells, which should straighten up the shocks and unbind the axle.  If they need more, then the bottom mount can be trimmed to tuck the shock closer to the axle.  For now, I removed the spacers from the shock mounts, and the rear compresses smoothly now.  Most of the creaking is gone, however, I'm still getting a significant creak in the upper control arm.  And am under the impression that the heim joints can be noisy, and do wear over time, creating more noise.

I started to search for alternatives to the solid spherical heim joints, as I don't plan to race the car, or even drive it very hard, and would prefer a "comfy' ride over really firm tracking.  And...its all an experiment in building a tweaking.  I came up with a couple things that may work.  One is a poly heim that is slated to not work on 4-bar suspensions (Is that what this is?), as it can't twist or have any axial movement. 

https://www.speedwaymotors.com/Steel-Rod-End-Heim-Joint-Poly-Insert-5-8-Inch,21289.html?sku=91002088-RH&utm_medium=CSEGoogle&utm_source=CSE&utm_campaign=CSEGOOGLE&gclid=CjwKCAjwp6CkBhB_EiwAlQVyxQR6XTPfo_XA3uHnoMHwB_IVekSQkfDtGHflcGtfNvmW5dSLnlSqQhoC51YQAvD_BwE

Another is a rubber bar end that may work for the trailing arms, and is slated to work with 4-bar suspensions, however, they won't fit in the axle side of the trailing arms.  They would work, however, for all the 6 other joints.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sit-sf88r?seid=srese1&gclid=CjwKCAjwp6CkBhB_EiwAlQVyxY2BCoak9_0wIivDsA6IllDdrNHLlQddeDO25pgGOBaw0Od56ZTPjhoCxMoQAvD_BwE

https://www.speedwaymotors.com/Speedway-Forged-4-Bar-Rod-End-5-8-18-LH-Thread-Zinc-Plated,25125.html

So I purchased one pair of poly, and one pair of the speedway rubber ones, and will fit them into the one upper control arm which is creaking badly, and see how that goes.   Any input is much appreciated.  And I took my tires down to 22 PSI as well.  295/50/15.

For now, the car sits evenly, with the frame level with the ground, and all measures lining up.  The back of the body is not only high, but doesn't sit evenly, and there will be significant body work there to fix.

Some other tidbits:

Tach and Water temp gauge were not functioning initially.  I traced it down to the Haywire Dash connector, which had the two signal wires switched on one of the connectors.  Problem solved. 

The headers are LOUD.  Crisp.  I would sacrifice some of my 538 ft-lbs of torque for a more moderate sound.  I'm speed researching the issue now, but it looks like there was the perfect Flowmaster sidepipe muffler some years back:

https://www.holley.com/products/discontinued_product/parts/13530320

but now discontinued.  Apparently they were quiet with no power loss, and very pricey.  I read of putting a short glass pack into the sidepipe, with good results.  Depending on what's inside the current sidepipe, that could be done easily by cutting off the tip and putting it in there.   People also angle the tip in a specific orientation to reduce the sound in the cockpit.   If there's no DIY insert I can use that's effective, I'll probably learn to live with it for the time being. 

The brakes are very hard.  I can lock them up, but around town type of pedal pressure is significant, and I'm a strong guy.  I haven't really bedded the pads since that's hard to do when you are also first driving a build.  But my first directions will be working with the pads, then other pads, then smaller master cylinder bores, and lastly, inline brake boosters. 

There is a whole lot of sound coming from the body to frame/trunk tub/cockpit tub interfaces.  I certainly need to put more bolts through the cockpit tub and trunk tub into the frame.  The body is currently mounted at all of the specified points, and it moves a lot.  Jeff K has the opinion that you want the body to be hard mounted at a lot more points, which would require bonding brackets to the body, and use those to fasten to the rest of the car.  Since the back of the body needs to go down significantly (all mounting holes were predrilled by Hurricane), I'm going to look at options to bond bracketry and have more mounting points. 

I'm wondering if the body is designed to "stretch" tightly over the back of the cockpit tub, to get the back half down, or if I'm going to have to cut down the back of the cockpit tub so the whole assembly is lower.   I'm worried what will happen to the fairly decent door gaps if I simply pull the back further down.

I'm not thrilled about the steering ratio, and would like to look at different racks that would give quicker steering.  I think the steering effort is fairly easy, probably easier than my two BMWs with power steering.  I get 3.75 turns lock to lock, which produces 5.25" of travel at the rack.  Perhaps the answer might be different spindles with a shorter steering arm.

The engine is running great, I was initially suspecting some RFI issues with the Holley Sniper, but so far, even with the large steel air cleaner base, the engine control appears to be smooth and consistent.  I need to look into programming for a cold start, as I pretty much have to hold the throttle to keep it running until it gets a little heat in it.  It does not appear to behave like it has any kind of hoke function at this time, though I know that having an IAC valve, it should be able to add air and fuel and get the revs up to warm it up.

First gear is basically useless, I may opt for taller rear end gears in the future. 

So I have arrived to this great point where I get to drive the car, build on it, tweak it, experiment with it, try to make it fit me, the driver, which is so much fun, and the excitement is back!