Building a GD427 Cobra Replica

The throttle setup, converted from the electronic standard one to a cable operated setup, touched slightly on the block.

A careful couple of minutes of filing made sure it ran freely. On the outrun to the back of the engine of the cable I mounted two rubber P-clips to guide the cable across.

I think I’ll put some shields on top of the valve covers later on, which can then neatly hide the cable from sight.

As said earlier, I would rather have the electronic throttle valve, but for safety reasons that’s not allowed.

To complete the engine—gearbox mating I just need one part now, which is the pilot bearing for the front of the gearbox. I ordered the original GM-part earlier, not realising my Tremec gearbox is of the Ford variety, which has slightly different dimensions. So, I still can not complete the mating, but there’s lots of other (little) stuff I can complete, such as installing the fuel rail adapter. Click! Done.

In the batch of parts I collected last week, I got the correct length drive-belt. Installing this is also a job of two seconds. The coverage on the pulley isn’t that big, but the belt only has to drive the  alternator, so it should be ok.

Startmotor can be bolted on now I have the correct length of the bolts. It’s pretty close to the exhaust, I could not even get it assembled without removing the header, so the starter will probably need some heat shielding. 

Continuing with little jobs to finish the rear end backend. First up was the final assembly of the top bolts on the diff. It’s not exactly clear to what value these should be torqued, but I guess the value of the original Jaguar bolts will come close. The lock-wire went considerably smoother than earlier (on the diff bracket). I only needed 3 attempts this time!

On to the front, there are six bolts on the suspension which need their head drilled for the lock-wire. Mostly a patience job, making sure the bit gets cooled properly and preventing to much pressure on it. 5 bolts went fine, during the sixth the drill-bit broke. As such that isn’t a disaster, you count on the smaller bits to break soon, but the bit got stuck in the bolt! The bolts are jaguar specific and as such a rip-off (around the € 10,- mark I believe). Having no choice, I ordered a new one.

Having the bench drill now is essential, a hole like below just would not be possible by hand. (1.5mm hole, 2.5mm finish)

Back to the back again. The handbrake mechanism comes with two extra helper springs which somehow need to be attached to the chassis. There are two or three locations which would be suitable, but only one of them was reachable with the rivet tool I have. It remains scary to drill holes in the chassis.

At the right bottom you can see the black dot of a more preferable location (it pulls on the spring straight instead of in a slight angle), but unreachable for my tool.

Going from the engine to the back of the car I wanted to trial fit as best as possible the complete exhaust to see where it will attach to the chassis, how much clearance it gives etc.

Starting at the headers, which are quite nicely made, I noticed that on the right side the frontmost sparkplug lead and the second frontmost on the left, are a bit to close to the header for my taste. It’s nearly touching the header on the left side and completely touching it on the right side.

The other three are positioned much better in between the headers. Perhaps the alu heat shields can be made a bit shorter?

At the back of the chassis the exhaust is fitted with what looks like a piece of old tire. I drilled three holes in the rubber, bolted it onto the bracket and cut a bit of the rubber to make it look neater.

The U-brackets go through and together they hold the middle piece of the exhaust pipes.

Here’s an overview picture of the complete underslung exhaust line. It’s quite different from the more traditional (in GD terms) exhaust where the pipes are together in the center.

I had hoped the ends were a bit closer together, but there’s not much more room to bring them closer, given the current size dampers.