Almost...

Hurricane says my kit is ready for pickup. So this coming Tuesday is the day that Jim Jones and I are driving to KC to pick it up. The only thing we know won't be there is the radiator which is backordered and will be sent to me directly from the maker. I expect lots of pictures from the transport adventure.

Delivery Delayed; Body Buck Built

I was unable to pick up my kit last week because Hurricane has not fully received all of the parts that they need. Some things can be backordered, but some cannot, and the late arriving part was coming from the fiberglass supplier and too important to just backorder. So now, we are hoping that Hurricane will have everything by this Wednesday, Feb 13. I am not going to hold my breath, and actually, it would not be all that bad if it slipped a little more as I am going to be very busy this week and weekend doing the TYCOON simulation at Wash U.

I have however completed the construction of my body buck.

Here is Jim Jones (who really does have a forehead) helping me get the OSB home from Home Depot in Sue's Denali. It did not quite fit so we had to rig up some bungee cords to keep them in place to get them home.

From there, I worked on meticulously measuring and cutting them to the specs that Paul Proefrock had on his website.


After doing as much as I could by myself, I had to call on my nephew, Nathan Halley, to help construct the rest of the buck. It took us about 2 and a half hours one evening to glue and screw everything together. I think it turned out great.




The final product was finished the next day when I added the vertical brace, evened up the shelf, and finally added the foam insulation pieces to protect the fiberglass body where it will be resting on the buck.

Lots of things were learned along the way. Like make sure that your battery is fully charged when drilling/screwing into such dense wood. And that the foam pipe insulation is already scored so you don't have to cut it with a utility knife. Ask me when I found that out.

My wood posted on the internet and it is not a porn site!

Today I went out and purchased most of what I will need to make the body buck. Happily, all the lumber fit beautifully in the trunk of my Passat. I really love that car. I did not think twice about the fold down seats when I bought it, but I love that feature and have used it many times. Here you can see how easily it swallowed up all of the wood.

Here is a picture of all the materials unloaded in my garage. I still need to get two 4x8 sheets of OSB, but that would not fit in the Passat. I will impose on a friend later in the week or wait til next week and use Sue's Denali.


When I am done, it should look something like this...


For more information on the plans I am borrowing, go to Paul Proefrock's site.

"Delivery" date seems to be set

I heard from Hurricane this week that my kit will be ready for pickup on Friday, February 8th. That is basically 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Hurray!!! It looks like it will be me and Nathan going to KC to pick it up. The plan is to use Sue's Yukon Denali and renting a Uhaul car trailer. Have to nail that down next week as well as moving the money around to pay Hurricane the balance. And I will be building my body buck to store the fiberglass body until it is ready to be worked on.

This week, I have done a lot more work preparing my work areas. Here is a picture of showing the newly covered tabletops, power run, computer and TV setup, and a new stool. Man, I am having fun.

A New Use

About a quarter century ago, Jerry and I built some wonderful wooden tables for my electric model train set. Hours of fun were had. My dad worked during his sickness on models for the layout. The Halley kids all spent many hours on my knee playing with the trains. But about a dozen years or so ago, I decided to take them down to reuse the room where they were located. They have been sitting in a closet (named the "big dog" room to tease a tiny little Abby who was afraid of big dogs) ever since.

Well, last week, in preparation for the arrival of something like 3000 parts for the Cobra, I decided to create a workbench area in my laundry room and to reuse these tables as the workspace. Cleaning the floor took several hours,

not even counting the time wasted looking at the old finds, things I completely forgot I had. A dozen or so tee shirts, a childhood toybox, amazing sports memorabilia, and a couple of folders from my college days including several papers I wrote that I didn't even understand anymore.

Once I had the space clean, I had to tackle the job of ripping up the train stuff. Hundreds of little nails holding the track down, more to keep the cork roadbed down, removing piers holding up the raised track areas, wires running everywhere. Here is a pic of one of the smaller tables during the process.


The process was not too bad. Smartly, I did the destruction in the big dog room, so I don't have little nails all over. I ended up just doing two of the large 4 foot by 4 foot table. I still have 3 others that may end up getting reused in the garage at some point.


So when I put them together, I have a new 4 by 8 workspace. And it is right under a heating and A/C outlet.


I think I will probably end up doing something to revitalize the tabletops. They are pretty dirty and the green paint is uneven. I think I like the green color and it should make for a nice background down the road when I need to take more parts pictures, but the surface is not too great to write on and I probably ought to put down some vinyl to make it easy to clean up grease, paint, and glue.

This week, I am going to try to get my hands around the tool needs.

2008 The year of the snake?

The Chinese say that 2001 was the year of the snake and that 2008 is the year of the rat. Not true. For me at least. 2008 is definitely going to be the year of the snake. A Cobra, specifically.

I have finally done it! I have ordered my Cobra kit from Hurricane. It should be here around the end of February.

As I did some more thinking, I realized that there was no way that the strategy of buying a completed car was going to work out happily. It was going to be impossible to find a better fit than the one I missed out on last month. Some other things congealed in my mind, specifically that my workmanship will be sufficient in comparison to the other half dozen or so cars I have seen lately.

So I contacted Hurricane and found out that they would be raising their prices significantly at the first of the year. Time to shit or get off the pot. So I am taking a risk. The kit is ordered with no engine/transmission lined up. Just a notion about what I will want when the time comes and that the world will provide.

12-20-2007 Santa didn't come early

Right before Christmas, I came across another Cobra for sale locally; just a couple of miles from my house, in fact. The car was built by Todd Twillman--a beautiful, yellow FFR with black stripes. It was equipped with an AOD behind a stock 302, just about perfect for what I want. The asking price was $21,000--again, right in line.

Sue and I test rode it. It was fine. We both fit well, the noise was just right, impressive but you could converse. The ride was just right. Perky acceleration but not ridiculous. The paint and body was nice but not so perfect that you'd be afraid to drive it. There was plenty of information online about the car as it was being built and driven over the past several years.

Thousands of miles with fine reliability. Even a couple of videos of Todd's car at a dragstrip.

It had been listed on Craigslist for about 2 weeks after being for sale at a local car museum for several months. The day of my test ride, another person who had seen the online ad also took a test ride. He was from Springfield, MO and put an offer in on the car below the asking price. He was also quite anxious to buy it.

Todd was kind enough to call me back and let me get in on the bidding. It was a very tough decision for me and the hurried time pressure was uncomforting. Anyway, I swallowed hard and offered Todd his full asking price. An hour or so later, I heard from Todd that the other guy topped me by a grand. I really did not feel comfortable enough to go further, so I let him have it.

In hindsight, I kind of wish I had gone farther. Simply put, there was no way that another deal on a finished car could ever come along so good. I liked the car, the history of the build, the price, the location, the owner...almost everything. If the "buy and drive a pre-built one at an acceptibly low price" strategy was going to prevail, this was surely the car. And I missed out on it.