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_BwEAnother 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_BwEhttps://www.speedwaymotors.com/Speedway-Forged-4-Bar-Rod-End-5-8-18-LH-Thread-Zinc-Plated,25125.htmlSo 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/13530320but 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!
