Building a GD427 Cobra Replica

So, the garage has yet again a new floor. The top one of the images below is from the current situation, the one below it is from the first attempt (already 2 years ago!). Spot the differences…

Let’s hope this time the cracks will not appear. Having to clear out the garage, store everything somewhere and put everything back is definitely not my idea of a good time.

On the cobra-building front it’s a bit quiet due to lack of parts, though I could do a few jobs on the chassis and suspension I guess, but for many of them I want to be able to take measurements of the engine, gearbox and other stuff before I do them.

I have been assured that the parts will be available for collection next week, so it should not be that long before I can get cracking at a slightly higher pace.

As I need to clear the complete garage by monday, having the cobra on wheels and rolling was necessary. Although this is a (self imposed) deadline, when the thing was on wheels and actually rolling it did feel more a milestone than I had thought.

Again, I have to applaud Gardner Douglas for their ‘fit’. The differential and the chassis get together by 8 bolts, 6 of which drop in pretty easily and the rear two need a little flexing of the diff cage; exactly as outlined in the build video.

Today I rolled the chassis to the garage of a nearby friend. It will stay there for the next week while work is being done in the garage. My girlfriend did take some pictures of the cobra’s maiden voyage. Alas, there was no card in the camera, so no pictures of that. (Not that it was that spectacular anyways.)

The trip, however small, was useful though. You get all sorts of information you do not get by keeping the chassis static. Here’s what I learned in 300 meters rolling the car from one garage to the next:

• the routing of the brakeline needs rethinking, on full steer it touches the tires; (I imagine it will be even worse with the wider wheels which will be fitted)
• there was a slight ‘tick’at the rear left (hand-)brake caliper, could be the brake-pad;
• old tires, all different and a suspension not setup make for a crappy ride;
• it is very easy to lose nuts and bolts if they are not tightened;
• inertia of moving mass is easily underestimated;

So, not much to do for the next week but nag with my suppliers for delivery of the gearbox, which seems to be the bottleneck in the delivery. The gearbox fit also determines the precise length of the propshaft (so I’ve been told), so partial delivery also doesn’t make sense either. Patience… (more…)

I am working towards a situation where i can fit wheels to the front temporarily, so the chassis can be positioned over the rear end, not unlike a wheelbarrow. After that I’ll want to fit temporary wheels to the back as well because the garage needs to be cleared out by the 20th of July. After we created the new floor, some cracks started to appear and I made an arrangement with the contractor for repairs this summer.

So, that means we’ll need to clear out the whole garage, again, and having some wheels on the chassis makes that a whole lot easier. Ideally I want to have the suspension set-up completely by that date, but we’ll see.

One thing I noticed at the front was that the damper bracket opening was a bit smaller than the one on the left. This is probably caused by the welding process which puts strain on the metal and causes it to bend. We’re talking 2 milimeters I think. With a piece of thread and two M12 nuts I carefully widened the bracket a bit, just enough to get proper clearance on the damper.

“It’s been 117 days since my last confession…”

So, perhaps a little status update is in order. Although I declared the garaged finished earlier, there’s always something that needs to be finished/improved. So, this summer we place 2 new windows in the south wall.

Although not a very big job, it always takes more time than originally planned. And yet again, I forgot to take a picture of the finished project!

Blogging wise, time was spent migrating from Blogger.com to a local WordPress installation. This allows me to use all the server stuff I already have in place in the office anyway and gives me a bit more control over the blog. I also got fed up with google analytics slowing the blog down even further than I do myself with all the pictures.

WordPress also gives me a couple of extra options which would be harder to do at blogger:

• iphone specific theme;
• support for pages and posts within my ecto blogging client;
• support for both categories and tags;
• more flexible uploads which I’ll need shortly.

I have tried to keep all URLs the same where possible. All feeds and links should still work as they did on Blogger. I had to sacrifice the ‘Followers’ widget and the ‘Profile details’ which are Blogger specific items. There’s some work left to cater for Internet Explorer users (although they should use a better browser anyway).

Work on the cobra has been a bit slow, partly due to the above. All donor parts are basically done and waiting for me to put them on to the chassis. For the front-end I assemble the uprights, at first a bit baffled why the ball joints did not fit.