Slowly getting back

I did manage to spend a few minutes on the car this week, as the neck pain has pretty well diminished, but I still have very little left arm strength. My physical therapy exercises will hopefully work, but may actually take a couple of months. Ugggh.

Anyway, I had an easy task to do this week. Or at least I thought so. I mounted the ignition control box to the passenger side footbox. There were 4 little rubber feet that cushion it from vibration that simply needed holes drilled and nuts tightened. Simple enough...except the instructions from the manufacturer, MSD, were wrong. They said to use a 1/8" bit, but that was not near big enough for the threads of the feet to pass through, so I had to re-drill them (twice actually as I was guessing at the perfect size which turned out to be 3/16"). I placed it so that I can later install footbox vents if I so decide. Pics will follow.

Another lost week

I am sure ready to be done with the arm/neck problems. The pain is a lot better, but I have almost no strength in my left arm and cannot raise it above my chest. I start physical therapy on Tuesday.

No Work

I had my MRI and epidural steroid injection this past week. The results were not all that I hoped for. The pain is greatly reduced, but I am still taking the medications as well as the effects of the shot. I have cut back a bit and the pain does not seem bad. However, I still have very little strength in my left arm. I can only raise it a few inches and cannot keep it up on its own. I am trying some stretching and it seems to be working just a bit, but I may need to take some physical therapy treatments. Anyway, it makes car work too difficult.

I have done a little thinking about whether or not to install fresh air ducts into the footboxes. Many people say they are needed, but they are not part of the kit per se. Now would be a good time to put those in. Still thinking...

Bad week

I did not work on the car this week. I started out putting time in searching for my nephew's lost dog. Happily, after 83 hours of being AWOL, Snowy turned up over 3 miles from home. She is home and doing fine now.

The really bad news was that I re-injured my neck. Three years ago I suffered a terribly painful couple of months with a some protrusions of nerves in my neck between a couple of vertebrae. Well, this week it came back. Not that surprising; if anything, I was lucky to be good for so long since the last treatment. Anyway, I am set for another MRI and hopefully another ESI (epidural steroid injection) right after that. Last time I got relief almost immediately. Right now I am drugged enough to be out of the worst pain, but I can't really lift my left arm. So the car is back on the back burner for now.

Ignition system begun

This week, I accomplished mounting the ignition coil to the engine block and connecting it to the distributor. This was not so easy a task as you might think. Most guys attach the coil to the front of the driver side engine heads. In my case, I already had the power steering pump using those bolt holes with the special mounting plate I had Jerry build for me a couple of years ago. There is just one big cable running from the coil to the distributor, and it would not have been a huge deal to locate it far away, but I did not have a cable long enough and did not want to spend any more money than necessary. And besides, it seems like such a natural place to put the coil right on the front of the engine.

I tried lots of ways of reusing the holes that were on Jerry's plate. There were 3 holes with bolts holding the plate and PS pump in place. Normally guys would use the outside ones, but that was impossible for me. And using the 2 inside holes was close to fitting, but just a little too close. Eventually, I widened the coil bracket holes, changed the angles of the bracket a bit, shortened the bolt that closes the coil bracket loop a couple of times and used a bit of oil to lube the outside of the coil just enough to squeeze it into the bracket. It even required a special precise installation order to get everything to clear all of the bolts in the area. Of course, this was only determined by trial and many errors!

Here are a few of the finished pics...





Next, there are a couple of signal wires that run from the ignition box to the distributor and a couple of power wires that run from the ignition box to the ignition coil. So I had to decide where/how to install the ignition box. Most people put it on top of the passenger side footbox. So I spent a lot of time browsing the pictures of every finished Hurricane and every Cobra replica up for sale on the main website where they are sold, Cobra Country. I am pretty sure how I want to run things and that I will indeed put the MSD ignition brain on the PS footbox, but it got too hot and too short on time this week to finish that job.

49.99726

That is how old I am as I write this post. I had hoped to be able to start the car by tomorrow, but that won't happen. I lost too much time this spring on the windshield wipers. Maybe by the 4th of July; I am back to making good progress.

This week, I finally settled on the right wire twisting and soldering techniques, so the splices for the rear light branch were much easier.



I got all of those wires (brake lights, tail lights, fuel sender, grounds) run through the cockpit to the trunk area. There they sit til later in the build when the trunk gets put into place.





Now I am going back to work on engine wiring. There is SO much involved--battery, fusebox, ignition switch, ignition box, neutral safety switch, alternator, voltage regulator, starter motor, solenoid, ignition coil, distributor, carburetor choke. I am spending a LOT of time reading and trying to get it all straight in my head.

Learned alot; Accomplished a little

I don't have much in the way of good photography this week, but I did spend some significant time working on the wiring. When I got to the point where I was supposed to splice in extra wires for the front headlights (high beam, low beam, ground, parking) I learned that my soldering skills were really much worse than I remembered. I ended up trying over and over again to get a good clean looking connection that did not have gigantic globs of solder, but it was a struggle.

I ended up trying several different ways of making the mechanical connection of the wires, of soldering, of heat shrink wrapping. I must have done things over 7 or 8 times on one set of wires alone. Later, I tried crimping, but that did not go any better. Multiple tries to get the wires to fit in the connector, to get a good crimp, to get it all heat shrinked. Lots of fishing wires in and out of the loom, too.

In the end, I did get all 4 splices made and looking halfway decent. Some were soldered and some were crimped. I think I have the hang of the right techniques for twisting the wires together, for soldering, for crimping, for shrinking the heat wrap. Some of my problems are from crappy tools, but mostly its is me.

Anyway, the front light branch is basically in place and next come the front engine branches for power and signals, and the rear light branch. I am probably going to go to the rear light branch next as that is more straight-forward with what is required. Another upcoming step then will be to affix the fuse box under the dashboard. Hopefully I will get to all of that this upcoming week.