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@BEAR-AvHistory
Without re-reading the whole thread: Anything you wished you'd known prior to starting the Cobra?
Part of me is thinking about a Locost build & doing it over time, including DIY-ing building the frame, while searching for a suitable donor (probably a NA Miata).
@BEAR-AvHistory
Without re-reading the whole thread: Anything you wished you'd known prior to starting the Cobra?
Part of me is thinking about a Locost build & doing it over time, including DIY-ing building the frame, while searching for a suitable donor (probably a NA Miata).
No. Have built a number of cars over the years all from scratch. This was my first complete kit & it was a very easy job. Did not use any doner parts so no cleaning or rebuilding. With the Locost there are now a lot of pre made sections which is something to look into. If you are not a experienced welder a pre-built chassis could be a good plan. Thing to remember is its your life on the line & poor weld penetration could ruin your day.
Helped a guy a zillion years ago with a 7. They are very basic which is very good for a home builder.
Best one. Part reproduction, modified original, crash parts, modern stuff.
1981 280ZX T-Top to full convertible. A experiment that worked out & was one of the longest running cars I had outlasting the StingRay. I6/5MT. All three of my girls took it to highschool , college & the youngest to her first real job. Car came back to me & was eventually given to make a wish. Top was a modified Triumph sports car & the trunk lid the 280's rear hatch with window filled in.
The trunk lid & one of the 12 or so big & small blocks the Corvette had over is life time. This one is a converted small block at 406CI called a Mighty Mouse at the time.
Noticed the Mach I in the pictures. Nephews car. Was a 351 Windsor AT my brother in law & I converted to a 351 Cleveland MT. Ability with cars kept me out of the infantry to become a track vehicle recovery mechanic. Most of my friends & school mates growing up took their bachelor's degrees & lack of a manual skill straight to AIT after basic training.
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 11-05-2020 at 10:51 AM.
Added another EV to the sand patrol. Not enough seats in the first one for the number of people who show up. Bought this one did not build it. Need to get back to the FFR.
Acura TLX head lights
Buggy race time
Can take it out as soon as the license plate shows up. NC Street legal 35mph+ runs at the towns speed limit.
Brunswick Islands. At one time had a place at Bald Head OBX but the drive & ferry was getting onerous for a quick weekend. All quality high speed roads & causeway to the Brunswick Islands. 2.5/7 hrs Door to Door from Raleigh
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 01-20-2021 at 07:58 PM.
Gorgeous, man...
reminds me of some of the houses down in the Keys...or some places in some sleepy towns on the West coast of FL.
I went to OBX one...my God that slow drive East
Knee better, 52*F in the garage & back to work. Bell Housing installed. Two projects going COBRA in Raleigh & upgrade of second RED beach buggy to 35mph street legal condition in Ocean Isle Beach. Need to add front wheel brakes & wipers.
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 03-10-2021 at 03:56 AM.
TKO-600 slides in place nice & easy with home made locating pins. Old farts working alone sometimes need to make their own tools before yelling for help. Due to lack of clearance upper pin on drivers side needs to be removed once the clutch disk is engaged. Other three will stay in place until the transmission face is seated up to the bellhousing.
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 03-13-2021 at 08:47 PM.
did you try sending them pictures of it with some s62 valve covers double sided tapped to it?
Yeah but it did not fly. Some hall monitor type spotted the shifter & said thats not BMW OEM.
I said it was a special super M optional item. Even showed him my BMW-M performance driving school hat. He had the nerve not to believe me. What happened to trust among sportsmen? So I guess I will have to settle flogging their cars. Only thing wrong with that is my release form says I can't kill nanny.
Can you have a passenger ride along? Maybe they could turn it off for you.
No passengers. True story with passenger. At the Performance Center Delivery school you can bring a guest who also gets to drive. My daughter, as competitive as her old man, & I have swapped being in the guest seat as we both bought cars. She was the guest when I got the 440MPPSK. On a road course timed run I have had her beat every time but some have been very close Payback sucks. I shut down the all the nannies to get a slight edge & put the car in the dirt ass first. She only cut a few nannies & made a perfect run. Have kept my big mouth shut ever since.
Maybe redemption will come when she get her Pig Snout M4 6MT convertible. That or further humiliation.
No passengers. True story with passenger. At the Performance Center Delivery school you can bring a guest who also gets to drive. My daughter, as competitive as her old man, & I have swapped being in the guest seat as we both bought cars. She was the guest when I got the 440MPPSK. On a road course timed run I have had her beat every time but some have been very close Payback sucks. I shut down the all the nannies to get a slight edge & put the car in the dirt ass first. She only cut a few nannies & made a perfect run. Have kept my big mouth shut ever since.
Maybe redemption will come when she get her Pig Snout M4 6MT convertible. That or further humiliation.
Good to see that you two still have competitive spirit. Yeah, going off-course hurts, even when it's not your car. Mainly your pride that takes a hit.
Got a chance to flog the 2021 Pig Nose M440 on the 23rd. This car watered down from the M4 will do 0-60 in under 4 seconds. With dash info showed it pulling about 1G through the turns & makes a really nice noise with the flaps open.
Was a fun morning with 3 sets of 3 laps each in the 2021 M440. Good technical course & was easy to see who has done this before. Nice exhaust rapp & some good tire squealing from the fast drivers. Unfortunately the runs were not timed. Was competitive as I could generally close up on the car in-front & pull-away from the car behind. Said generally because some of the guys were quicker. Think if it was timed I was around 5th out of 30 in my group. They had 3 separate tracks running with 3 cars on the course at the same time. Our pit had 6 cars all 440's
The car has a piggy nose but is an outstanding driver & expect it would give my Z4 a run for its money despite its bulk. Is bigger & heavier than my 440 was but handles like a much smaller car. The organizers helped out a bit by putting a red cone at all the apexes so it was a lot easier to set up for the turns.
This was good because it was a long course & we did not get a chance to walk it.
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 04-27-2021 at 02:46 AM.
Transmission cradle & driveshaft armor base in. I did a heavy duty driveshaft hoop as the drive shaft sits right at my right hip. Would beat the crap out of me if it failed. Main section of the drive shaft is less than 1 foot long. Tiles are 1'X1'. Brainiac can't find two mounting bolts so installed my transmission location pins as place keepers till a ACE hardware store visit. Intend to finish the drive train tomorrow with the drive shaft & starter install.
Even though mine will be much less HP/tqe, I'll probably look into a driveshaft hoop, for the same reason. Need to get a good look at how it sits & see if the steel frame tunnel will be sufficient, or if a hoop would be worth adding still.
Even though mine will be much less HP/tqe, I'll probably look into a driveshaft hoop, for the same reason. Need to get a good look at how it sits & see if the steel frame tunnel will be sufficient, or if a hoop would be worth adding still.
Have seen pictures of one of the guys on the FFR forum that had a universal fail under load. For those that don't know the FFR car body is a non structural vinyl ester composite shell. The frame is steel & all the interior panels are aluminum alloy. The broken drive shaft bent the tunnel frame & ripped up the alloy paneling & part of the seat. Driver lucked out with some scrapes & bruises.
A bunch of us got together for a group buy & had a fabricator make up hoops that could be installed without pulling the shaft. On a periodic bases the fabricator makes a limited run of the hoops. A few other suppliers have gotten on nboard but believe the original ones are the strongest & easiest to install.
Yeah, I'd plan on a 2-piece hoop. so the bottom could be removed in the event the d/s needs to be pulled. Will probably have to weld in a couple tabs to mount it to.
Yeah, I'd plan on a 2-piece hoop. so the bottom could be removed in the event the d/s needs to be pulled. Will probably have to weld in a couple tabs to mount it to.
These are pretty good shots of my Metco unit. Mounts to existing bolt openings in the transmission cradle & vibration insulator.
Still need to final torque & mark the bolts for easy inspection.
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 06-23-2021 at 08:12 PM.
Thanks, that makes the concept make more sense in my head.
At the moment, as I bought it, the drivetrain (engine & trans, at least) are direct/solid mounted to the frame. We'll see how the NVH is when it's actually built & running. Hopefully, with the Dorito-spinner, it won't be too bad.
Fits & starts. Not getting a whole lot of time work on the car. To much other stuff interfering. Had a solid day today. Starters in engine runs no leaks. Need to adjust the clutch, right now no disengagement. Finished most of the wiring, gotta check two leads on the transmission. Not sure I still need them with the GPS Speedometer. That & the tach are a little bit over done with the snakes but figured this whole thing is a bit over the top & the gauges are custom made. Speedo has functions similar to Dragy with a small LCD screen at the bottom where this gauge has RPM X1000.
Looks normal during the day. When the lights are on all the white turns to blue similar to the ambiance lights in my regular car. The needle turns red.
Making sausage. Wires being bundled in ribbed tubing. A really big pain in the butt. Took almost the whole day to clean it up. One bad area in the car not enough room for everything.
Don't look at the sausage making behind the curtain. Dash attached, transmission tunnel recovered to match dash. Wires for entertainment system, vent fans & USB ports bundled in ribbed tubing. Will put in console next. Then mount steering wheel, relocate RF brake hose, bleed brakes, install front fender liners, adjust clutch & I might get done before I turn 80.
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 07-27-2021 at 12:24 AM.
As a electrical engineer I don't mind wiring, my pet peeve is working on corroded/stuck suspension or exhaust.
The painstaking part of it, is going to be sorting through the wiring I have & what may need to be added.
Probably repurpose a large table we have & spread the loom out to trace what goes where.
The painstaking part of it, is going to be sorting through the wiring I have & what may need to be added.
Probably repurpose a large table we have & spread the loom out to trace what goes where.
Ran into the same thing. The main harness is in three sections - engine to dash, dash & dash to rear & is made for three different but similar cars. Its also a carbureted engine package developed before the COYOTE engines became popular. So there are a lot of wires that go nowhere. The harnesses undergo a dieting to help simplify things.
Some of wire integration & specific sheetmetal modifications were done by a few of us who were the COYOTE pioneers hit with the arrows. A sheetmetal piece I worked out (much prettier than mine} is now included with the COYOTE instillation package to shoehorn the thing into an engine bay designed for a 289 FORD. Integrating this with my electronic engine management system was really great fun, NOT.
Thanks to some of the guys that know electronics nobody burnt their car down. One of my son in laws, BSE from the Pratt School of Engineering in ECE decided I was, well nutz, when he asked what we were all doing. Your going to stuff that into that? Sure why not.
That said him looking over my shoulder & kibitizing helped get the car running when it was first built. He is a plank owner with my Wife other son in laws, grandson & daughters all of whom set some of the 3,500 rivets in the car. Was with me yesterday when I started it up for the first time after the do over, with great confidence in Gramps, holding a fire extinguisher.
Hit the key a few times & click, click. Thought my 8 year old Red Top finally died. He said try turning the red thingy between the seats. DUH, forget to reset the master kill switch.
Last edited by BEAR-AvHistory; 08-09-2021 at 10:53 AM.
Yeah, luckily, yours is a well established kit.
The Locost, it's a bit more, primitive I guess. So many variations on drivetrain & accessories & chassis sizes. And, I'm running a standalone ECU.
Also, it was originally being built as a track car, so I'll have to add in the road-legal bits. Luckily, it has a full fuse block from Painless Wiring, so that should help.
As a electrical engineer I don't mind wiring, my pet peeve is working on corroded/stuck suspension or exhaust.
Agree 100% its the main reason my car is a no donor car version. All new nice clean parts. There are enough things to do rather than cleaning old parts that might quickly fail. Have a bucket of parts cleaner - use it for my guns.
If you saw my last post in my build, I got the keg split & now comes the dirty task of cleaning is up to see if the donor is worth rebuilding (and sourcing the missing parts like an intake manifold).
Parts availability is getting more & more scarce for a low-ish production 30 year old drivetrain & a car that's been out of production since 1992.
Yeah, luckily, yours is a well established kit.
The Locost, it's a bit more, primitive I guess. So many variations on drivetrain & accessories & chassis sizes. And, I'm running a standalone ECU.
Also, it was originally being built as a track car, so I'll have to add in the road-legal bits. Luckily, it has a full fuse block from Painless Wiring, so that should help.
Lots to learn.
Yeah, you have taken on a very major project. A great feeling of accomplishment when you finish it. You will not see one on every corner. As near as we can figure FFR has knocked out based on serial numbers about 10,000 kits in 4 series have been manufactured. No way to figure how many are actually built. We turned out 18 for the Ford VS Ferrari movie in the Research Triangle.
11-03-2020, 03:59 PM
Due to lack of clearance upper pin on drivers side needs to be removed once the clutch disk is engaged. Other three will stay in place until the transmission face is seated up to the bellhousing.
But, those 
