While that may be true, for me, it’s only a temporary situation. I happened upon a deal I couldn’t pass up on a car that needed some restoration, so a couple of months ago (man, I can’t believe I haven’t posted in 3 months,) I brought home a Factory Five Mark 2 Roadster from SoCal.
For me, it represented a chance to get a little profit out of it, but also to pick up a bigger engine with some cool stuff on it. The car had a 347 Stroker (which is a 302 with a stroker crank in it, so the effective cylinder volume is increased.) More volume = more fuel and air = HOLY CRAP THAT’S FAST! ;-> The car dyno’d at about 420hp/tq, so about 100 more than the 302 that I had in my car. It also has a stacked injection system, which just looks cool, and while I’m somewhat terrified in getting it running correctly due to it’s complexity (it’s basically 8 EFI units controlled by a computer,) I’m confident that it’ll provide not only the juice needed by the car-show wow factor as well. The car also came with a hard top that I’m keeping, which is ironic since I’d been thinking about doing the hard top for quite some time, but never pulled the trigger.
I ended up going through every inch of the car, from securing brake lines to redoing carpet, adding trunk carpet, to all that’s involved in swapping out engines. I put the 302 and T5 from my Mark 3.1 in it, and it went in perfectly. After some rewiring of the car, it fired right up, and the test drive was a huge success.
I also added some Halibrand wheels to it, and had all of the metal rechromed. I rewired the lights, dash, and recovered the dash and transmission tranny cover. After all of that, and a good cleaning, the car is ready for it’s new owner.
Speaking of new owner, the car is already sold. I hooked up with a guy that had been looking for a good deal on a Cobra, and this one was perfect for him. He is choosing to tackle paint work himself, with the help of a friend, so I was able to just finish up the chassis part and hand it off to them. A good deal was made, and off she goes to the new owner! He’s going with a color change on it, so it’ll be made his own along the way, from gray to green I think.
I absolutely love building these cars, and hope to not only finish up my own car, but to continue to buy and sell some along the way. It’s fun, and a few bucks can be made along with it.
My Car:
The body is up on the ceiling, and chassis in the trailer. I’ll be putting it all back into “service” in the next couple of weeks, and I have a pretty big list of stuff to do to it, in addition to finishing up the body work and paint. Still leaning (I lean a little like those toys you press on the bottom, always back and forth) towards the red car with with stripes and meatballs, so we’ll see how that turns out.
First step I think is to get the 347 back to where it should be. I need to strip it down completely to check it. I need to get it cleaned, and repainted (it’s blue now, and I hate the paint). I’ve already gotten rid of all the bling stuff and bought new lower-key stuff (I want the stacks to be the only bling on it,) so that’s a step in the right direction. I also have the parts coming for the wiring of the harness, and replacement of the 2 injectors that got damaged. It should be a matter of taking it apart, clean, paint, reseal, test…famous last words. I’m hoping that I can get it tuned correctly, with any luck using the loaded tune and adapted from there.
From there, back to the chassis to start my mods, then on to the body work again. I’ll be also working on some auction cars for clients, so that may divert the timeline a bit, but it’s still the journey, right?
Some pics:
The valve covers will now be black, wires red, block will be silver, and all of the chrome pretty much gone.
The new Halibrands and new tires look pretty sweet!
Simple, understated, and almost 300ft/lbs of hold on for dear life of torque.
Newly recovered dash, new e-brake handle, new carpet, cool accents.
