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.

Fetched about half the ordered parts from speedon on friday. The other half still wasn’t there! Come on GD, I’ve been waiting forever now. Apart from unpacking and identifying what is what I went about on a trial fitting spree.

The gearbox was the bottleneck for delivery, (Tremec == GM so that may have something to do with it). It is here now but still without a flywheel and clutch assembly, so the only thing I can can do with it is temporarily mount it on the adapterplate and bell-housing and put it away for a while until the other bits arrive.

The throttle valve was converted to a cable operated one, but on assembly to the engine it touches some little pipe behind it. (what is that, anyway?) So, some adjusting to be done there.

The engine mounts go together with an adapter plate. As assembly they are mounted onto the engine in two steps, easy peasy. I noticed the mount does not mount flat onto the adapter plate, should there be a rubber between them or is is just forced onto it? On final assembly I’ll get back to that.

And finally, the modified thermostat outlet. I’m going to polish that a bit later on to smooth out the welds a bit. Also, there are basically 2 ways to mount the outlet. Shown here is the one where the outlet is most ‘outwards’. If the outlet is turned 180 degrees it moves a bit inwards. When the engine goes in the chassis I’ll have to revisit this too, judging what’s best at that time.