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. 

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.

Having a rolling chassis is nice, but having it rolling of the hoist is another thing (not that this has happened yet). So, a working handbrake seemed like a logical thing to do next. The original handbrake end-bracket was to small for the supplied handbrake cable. Adjusting it (by cutting a slot in it) did not seem a good idea, as it would create a very small contact area for the bit at the end of the cable.

In one of the drawers at speedon Mischa found something that could fit, and with a bit of effort, it indeed did.

(apologies for the blurry picture) With a bit of sanding on both parts, i.e. the cable and and the bracket, made it fit.

The ECU has arrived too with a nice semi-assembled harness. Now I need a handful of connectors and I should then be able to construct a complete harnes and finish that part.