The Hurricane Motorsports saga

This article hit the Dallas newspaper today.

And here is a little more.

Sounds like the only car parts these guys will be making are license plates!

Slow week

I did not really do much car work this week. Cable TV/Internet changeover took a lot of my attention. I did talk to Paul Proefrock this week after he had a long, very positive conversation with the owner of Old Dog Hot Rod shop, Bill. Bill was one of the experts called on to testify when Missouri legislators drafted the current bill that prescribes how replica cars are to be treated. He spoke of how well aware the folks in Jefferson City are with the problems that the local highway patrol inspectors and that the simple answer is to just trailer it to Jeff City when the time comes and that there would be no trouble getting my car passed through with the Keith Craft engine that I bought last fall. I have heard similar sentiments from others and am convinced enough to continue building around the engine I have rather than searching out an old beater that would satisfy Troop C. So next up will be acquiring the right tranny.

I did see where Utah NBA basketball owner Larry Miller died. He was also a huge Cobra guy. Here is a pic of his casket in the standard Guardsman Blue with white stripes color scheme of the Cobra.



Maybe the side rails should have been Cobra exhaust side pipes.

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.