HM2017 Build

[s_reynolds]

Enjoying these builds. Many innovative approaches being incorporated.

[Redstang69]

Roll bar looks like it came out good.
What are all the holes drilled at the back of the cockpit tub for?

[Jeff K]

The holes are for attaching the trunk liner shelf to the cockpit.  You can see the inserts in the trunk liner shelf in one of the pictures from my previous post.  This makes for a solid shelf to install the battery on.

[Jeff K]

Being 6' 3" I need all the leg room I can get in my car.  Also, I want to sit as low as possible, so my head doesn't stick over the windshield much.  While I could probably gain more room by installing an aluminum racing seat, I don't want to spend the money and I like the look of the provided seats.  To create head room, I plan on mounting the seats directly to the floor eliminating the seat sliders.  I'm not worried about anyone else driving my car.  Also, I shaved off some of the foam from the bottom cushion.  For some added leg room, I disassembled the seats and reconfigured the frames and back boards under the foam to allow the occupants to sit further back, gaining an extra inch of leg room.  I forgot to take pictures of this.

[Jeff K]

To achieve a more traditional look for the seats, I disassembled the seats again and cut the seat frames down to create low-back seats.  I ended up removing 2-1/2" of frame.  That was the easy part it turned out.  I thought I could then take the seats to an upholstery shop and they could easily modify the seat covers to fit the new shape.  Boy was I wrong.  For the price they were talking about, I could have bought new seats.  With no alternative I bought some upholstery thread and modified the covers myself, hand sewing them back together.  Each seat took over 8 hours to reconfigure and sew the cover.  Not something I want to do again.  All things considered, I think they came out pretty good, at least the parts you can see.

[FFR428]

Wow. That's a pretty cool modification. Very nice job. Nice sewing skills too!

[s_reynolds]

Lot of work, but looks great!

[Jeff K]

To create additional leg room for myself, I increased the depth of the seat depressions in the rear wheel tubs allowing the seats to be positioned further back.  This added over an inch of leg room and still left plenty of room for the tires.  Between my previous seat modifications and now this wheel tub modification, I now have enough leg room.  In fact if the seat went back any further, the steering wheel would be too far away.

[Jeff K]

I ended up filling in the factory-cut front quick jack holes in the body.  I cut new holes to position the quick jacks higher on the body.  The previous holes were a little too low I felt.

[Bob Worley]

I ended up filling in the factory-cut front quick jack holes in the body.  I cut new holes to position the quick jacks higher on the body.  The previous holes were a little too low I felt.

Jeff, I had to do the exact same thing....

[Jeff K]

Since I have time on my hands while still waiting for an engine, I decided to do some rough body work.  I recontoured the body around the tail lights to better fit their rectangle shape as others have done.  I had earlier added some fiberglass on the inside in this area.  While I was at it, I also recontoured the front fenders around the headlights so the body better matched the chrome rings.  Still have some work to do in this area but I'll save that for later.

[Greg K]

How crucial was it to add material inside in the rear tail light area? Thanks for showing these two details.

[Jeff K]

Greg, I'm not sure if I actually sanded thru the fiberglass body into the added material.  Hard to tell.  If I didn't, what's left is very thin and needs the strength from the added material.  If you go easy on the corner rounding, you're probably ok not adding material.  Easy to add fiberglass though.  I didn't add any material around the headlights.

[Jeff K]

After installing the front turn signal lights in the factory-cut holes, their position on the body didn't seem right.  After looking at pictures of original cobras and others, most of them have the turn signal lights lined up with the head lights and higher up.  So I cut out new holes and filled in the old ones.  Much better.

[Jeff K]

Looking for another project, I decided to mock up the radiator in the car.  It took some work but I'm happy with the finished product.  As with most things on this car, some tweaking is required to get the parts to fit just right.  I ended up replacing the heavy bracket that fits on top of the radiator.  I wanted the upper shroud to sit lower to better clear the hood hinges when the hood is closed.  This required a shorter bracket which I made from some scrap steel I had lying around.  A side benefit of the new bracket is that it weighs 2 lbs. less than the original.

I also decided to add a fan shroud.  These help so much keeping the engine cool.  I bought the same shroud others have done from Summit.  The fit on the radiator is almost perfect.  The opening in the shroud is sized for a 14" diameter fan.  Since the supplied fan with my car is 16" diameter, I enlarged the opening to fit.