Back to work

I spent a few minutes today putting on my headers and their gaskets. I had painted them a few months ago, but they would have been in the way if I had attached them, up until now. Since I want to test fit the cockpit very soon, I wanted them in place. The clearance from the cockpit footbox to the headers can be very small, in some cases less than an inch.

Anyway, it was pretty easy. I had already bought some cheap header bolts that are the correct size, but unpopular with other builders because they tend to loosen too easily. We shall see. I do see that they are a huge pain in the neck to try to tighten once everything is in place. Here is a good picture showing the header in place with the spark wire in place.



You can see one bolt to the right of the plug in place and one hole to the left of the plug with no bolt. It is extremely tight in there and getting a socket may be terribly difficult, especially once the cockpit footbox is in the way.

In the end, I spent about a half an hour on this task, and another hour scouring the internet to double check that they were not upside down. They fit pretty nicely either way, and I would not have been the first builder to make that mistake. It turns out they are fine. Here is a finished picture that has been modified to show up a little better on the computer.



And big thanks to Gil Kleine who came by my house tonight and helped me move the cockpit out to the garage. The Passat is now sleeping outside, so pray for no hail.

No work

I did nothing on the Cobra this past week. Instead, I will post a neat story/video of an FFR getting built by/for a guy with ALS.

Shifter

I worked a lot on the shifter this week. I picked up a spare rod to try bending to fit better, but that did not work. Eventually, I ended up connecting a straight rod to a new replacement bolt that was longer than the original. This allowed me to move the rod closer to the transmission itself and hopefully clear the fiberglass cockpit tub. I do not know yet if that did the trick as I need another set of hands to test that fit.

Here is a good picture of the shifter mounted on the transmission where you can clearly see the steel rod connecting it to the transmission arm.


And here is another from the driver side showing the shifter itself.


Finally, here is a closeup of my modification to bring the connecting rod more into the location that it would have been in had I been able to use the replacement shifter selector arm from last week. Like the extra nuts being used as spacers?


It does shift, but it is a little stiff. Not exactly sure what to do about that. It is still all just mocked up and will definitely have to be loctited if I decide it is good to go.

I also picked up a tap and die set this week at Harbor Freight. This was part of my messing around with the shifter linkage work, but I also want to use that to make nice threaded holes for bolts that will be for the electrical grounds. I may finish the battery cables and terminate them to grounds this coming week.

Pictureless progress

I did start work on the shifter. It went smoothly enough, though one hole on the mounting plate seems to have been stripped out of the box. I suppose I could have done it, but I really don't think so. I got the mounting plate on, and I had it located farther to the rear of the car than the one other guy who has used this AOD transmission before. I thought it would look better with the shifter farther back in the cockpit.

It turns out that included in the shifter kit is a new replacement for the transmission selector arm. I decided to try to replace it as the instructions indicated but I could not loosen the old nut holding it on. I had tightened this nut before when I had to flip the selector arm to be pointing up a few weeks ago, and I guess it got too tight. Anyway, there just seems to be no way that the offending nut will ever get loosened. I tried every tool possible to no avail. Penetrating oil did not work. I thought about using heat, but ended up deciding to modify the existing arm to connect to the new shifter linkage. I used my cutoff wheel to remove part of the old arm but left the main part and bushing I needed to work with the new stuff I had. The good news is that it seems to work. The bad news is that when Nathan and I tried to testfit the cockpit, it was going to be in the way of the fiberglass tub. So I will have to re-engineer something else.

Passat fixed?

I think the dealer finally has my Passat fixed. They had it basically all week. Keep your fingers crossed.

On the Cobra, I did manage to get the fuel pump back on. It was really difficult. It turns out that I had put on the gasket last time. Oh well, I had another anyway. I eventually got it on using the air wrench rather than a special nut driver. I will eventually need to monitor it carefully to see that no oil leaks around it. I also rerouted and shortened the rubber fuel line going into the pump as I tightened the connectors just a bit more. Here is a picture of that whole area finished off.

You can see the very small oil pressure line coming out from the engine block between the fuel pump and oil filter. The two shiny hoses are the braided stainless steel power steering lines going up to their pump.

I did not start working on my shifter yet. My back was a little sore for some inexplicable reason this week, so I did not want to do a bunch of work on that since it will entail lying on my back. This coming week, I will, though. Oh, and I did re-install the spark plugs I took off some time ago. I don't think I will need to spin the crankshaft over any more, so back on they went.

Not very motivated right now

Sorry to say, but I haven't done much on the Cobra of late. The Passat is STILL giving me troubles. I did receive the oil pressure line. I spent about 10 minutes putting its pieces together and is shown in this picture.


Today, I installed it onto the engine block. Here is a poor pic showing the port hole for the line, located between the oil filter and the fuel pump.

Unfortunately, there was almost no way to get any tools on this line, so I ended up taking off both the filter and the pump. No problem on the filter, but the pump is a bear to get back on. I knew I needed to do so, because I had not put on the gasket originally. Right now, the project that I was hoping would take no more than 10 minutes has gone on about an hour and a half, with no completion in sight. It is just very hard to get that fuel pump back in place with the fuel and power steering lines in place. I really need a third hand or at least a 9/16" nut driver, which is actually quite rare.

I also took some pictures of the shifter kit parts. Here they are...

Car work confined to my Passat

The only car work I got done this week was the continuing work on my Passat. It needed its 80K maintenance last week, which went fine except for a great coupon book I had in the back seat that turned up missing. Within a week, I had lost a hubcap, and had the check engine light come on again. The dealership was pretty nice about everything. They comped the hubcap which turned out to be a set of 4 new ones, since they could not match the missing one. They also offered to cover the labor on the second service for the check engine light with me paying for the part.

The only thing Cobra-related this week was that my back-ordered transmission shifter arrived. It looks really great. And I like the Lokar instructions for a change. The only possible problems I see is that the tunnel may not be quite big enough for the linkage, and the shifter itself sits pretty far forward, most likely farther than the existing cutout in the tunnel currently sits.