Rust

Last week, I was showing off the car to John Ehlers who was in from Ohio. I had not really looked or done anything to the car in quite a while. It has just been sitting in the garage for a couple of cold months.

In the course of showing him things, I saw that I had left one U-joint for the steering shaft in place, connected to the steering rack. The rest of the steering shaft stuff was still in the house. Here is a picture of what 3 months of sitting in my garage did to it.



The one on the left is the one that was out in the garage. It should look just like the one on the right that is shown still connected to one of the steering shafts. Kind of amazing just how much it was affected by just sitting in the mostly closed, 40 degree garage for a while. Now I know why some of the other builders advised painting those parts. I thought it maybe wasn't that big of a deal. Lesson learned. They will all get painted before final installation.

Happy Birthday Cobra !!!

It is one year since I picked up 3,000 parts in Lee's Summit. Since then, I have had a blast learning about this hobby and car. Surprisingly, I only have about 129 hours of wrench turning in--much less than I would have originally guessed. I wish I were further along on the build, but I am where I am and it is nice to not have any particular deadline. Hopefully, I will soon break out of this engine/transmission delay and enjoy a little time (and warmth) in the garage again.

Slow period continues

I am still on the lookout for the right drivetrain, but not having much luck. The guy in Ellisville was able to get going the truck that I tried to test drive two weeks ago, but barely. It died several times while we were testing it. All he had done was to brush off the battery terminals. It defintely helped as it was less needy of being jumped each time it died, but it did need jumping a couple of times. I did manage to drive it around his cul-de-sac twice, but it wanted to die so badly. There are just too many things that could be wrong. Bad starter, bad battery, bad alternator, bad ignition box, bad wires, bad gasoline, bad carburetor, bad timing. Too much for me to try to figure out, so I am taking a pass on it again. He will likely just donate it to charity at the end of the week. Too bad, since his paperwork was in order, and the transmission did seem okay.

Donor search

This week, I did not do any work on the car. I did contact several people about used vehicles for sale that I saw on Craigslist. Today, I even braved snow to go look at an F-250 pickup from 1984. Nice guy, but when we tried to back the pickup out of his garage it died 4 separate times, each requiring a jump start. We never did make it all the way to the street, all of maybe 30 feet from his garage. There seemed to be a problem, so I passed on it.

Rethinking

I did nothing concrete on the car this week. Mostly did some rethinking/research and am now leaning towards using a different engine than the one I bought last fall. It is a long story, but I think I will have an easier time registering the car if I build it with an engine from an existing vehicle. I have been looking on Craigslist at a couple of 1984-85 Ford F-150 pickups as possible donors. The reason for going back to such an old vehicle is that it would be most similar to what the other one was, so I would not have to change much in the way of fuel, air, and spark delivery systems.

A riveting task this week

This week, I finished riveting the aluminum panels to the fiberglass cockpit firewall. It turned out pretty nice, actually, despite the fact that I had never riveted before. I even got Baba to play Rosie the Riveter for a couple of minutes and put one of them in. Here is a finished picture...



I started out using my neat air driven riveter. It was a cheap tool from Harbor Freight. It was really cool, when it worked, which was pretty rarely. I am not 100% sure why, but I think it had trouble ejecting the little nail thingys that are on the end of the rivet and used to pull it through the hole. I ended up buying a hand operated one at Sears for $10 and it worked much better. Here is a pic of that tool along with a couple of rivets...



I ended up running out of rivets, coming up about 10 short. I went to Harbor Freight to buy some, and the smallest package they had was 500. Fortunately, the box only cost $2.99. So if anybody needs some riveting done, I still have about 490 left. I will use a few later for connecting things like the ignition system and some other aluminum panels, so I figure it was a good investment. I also broke a couple of 1/8" drill bits. Gotta get a replacement sometime. Sears sells em individually; most places have them packaged in sets and I already have a couple of those.

Happy New Year

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time lately on polishing the aluminum firewall pieces. It is very frustrating--I know that I am following the directions properly and there is a lot of black grime that comes off when I rub, but it never gets noticeably shinier. So I think I am going to stop and leave well enough alone. Along those lines, today I affixed the heat shield to the cockpit which goes behind the aluminum pieces. Here are a couple of pictures...




In the first pic, you can see the loose fitting sheet being test-fitted on the passenger side. In the second, I am finished with sticking it on both sides.

I have also been working the phones and Craigslist trying to acquire a transmission, and possibly an old engine that would be easier to get registered. There may be news on this soon.

The next step on the build is to drill and rivit in the aluminum firewall panels. I expect to be working on that soon. You may have noticed that I moved the cockpit on top of my pool table for easier working.