My Cobra Build Site

Another good progress weekend and Wednesday night!

Dead Pedal and Throttle Panel Mods:

The mod is now complete, taped up and sealed on the outside, and painted. I’m not sealing the DS box until after all of the wiring is done, so the panels will be set aside. Pretty please overall with how it came out. The outside doesn’t have to be pretty, the body will cover it, and the inside is covered with carpet.

I also finished up pushing out the throttle side of the foot box. The panel is now riveted in place, and I made a patch panel to cover the open area around the 4″ tube and gap left by the bump. I will rivet it in after the floor goes in later.

Pics:

Brake Booster and Reservoirs:

Jeff at Whitby’s sent me a replacement booster, so I got it painted and put in. All the firewall cutting I did made it nice and easy to go in. The one issue I had was the boot around the push rod housing coming off as the rod went in and out. I ended up just taking a big pipe clamp and putting it around the boot at the mounting point, and it stays right where it’s supposed to.

I also used the Whitby-suggested mounting bracket and location for the reservoirs, just to the passenger side of the DS foot box. It looks funky now, but once the body is on, it should be a good spot. I left the lines long for now. Once the motor is in, and I’m buttoning stuff up, I’ll route them and mount them in the best configuration.

Passenger Foot Box Mod

I finally got the new top cut and installed, and managed to get the whole foot box installed as well and sealed and riveted in. It looks 100% better than it did. If I were really anal, I would have cut a new piece for the motor side of the box, but I think it looks pretty good the way that it turned out, and once the motor is in, it’ll be great.

I ended up needing some additional bracing to get rivets in place on the bottom of the foot box on the motor side. Not a big deal though.

Pics:

Before:

After: – You can also see the reservoirs.

Inside:

Firewall Brace:

The firewall is flimsy, and once the heater is in and everything else, it’ll be more so. You can buy a brace, but I had the scraps and it took me less than 10 minutes to make this little piece. It really helps keep things in place, and it just feels better.

Pics:

New Air Cleaner:

After reading all of the bad things about the cool Cobra Oval Air Cleaner, I sold it. I managed to find a used 14″ round one with chrome top and a brand-new 3″ K&N filter on it. It was a great deal, and looks awesome. Plus, it’ll breathe much better. I also no longer have any clearance issues with the E-Curve dizzy. It just clears the plug boot on the front of the cleaner.

Pic:

We’ll see what this weekend accomplishes. I’m waiting for lots of parts, so I’m working around the manual a bit.

Alright, before you even think it, I KNOW this isn’t the prettiest foot box in the world! ;-> I’ve deemed it the patchwork-quilt foot box mod. However, I did this knowingly and more or less on purpose.

Why aesthetics don’t matter in this case: I’m going to be adding heat-insulating material over both foot boxes and the firewall, so when it’s all buttoned up, you’ll never see the patches. With that in mind, it didn’t make sense to spend the extra money on aluminum making 4 new panels. My 2 main concerns were that it was bigger, and that it was structurally sound. Mission accomplished on both areas.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, especially considering I’ve never fabricated with aluminum before and I had to use a DIY bending brake setup to make a 4-bend box for the end piece.

Cost – about $20 worth of aluminum panels, same grade as FFR kit.

Thanks – to Ray for the initial pics of 4 into 4 headers so I could gauge if everything would clear. I feel pretty good that I’m good to go there.

Procedure:

Background/Step 1 – My situation was a little different because the kit I bought was already started, and the foot box was already assembled. That required me to drill out all of the rivets and cut through and wire wheel the black sealant off of the box. Not a big deal, the wire wheel in a drill does pretty quick work of that stuff, although it makes a huge mess.

Step 2 – After everything was cleaned up, I took my tin snips and cut the fold on the inner wall of the foot box so I could create an angled bend. I did so in a place that would ensure the largest header bend would still clear. I also bent out the original panel ends to make straight pieces out of them.

Step 3 – After measuring everything, I made a new bottom panel by using the original as a template and adding the new lengths that I needed. I originally used snips to cut the aluminum, but it makes a jagged mess of the panels, so I switched over to the jigsaw with a metal blade. It’s kind of difficult to get a true straight cut with a jigsaw, but it did the job well, and cut quickly.

Step 4 – I put the top panel back in place and made a “patch” to fill the gap created by the new inner panel bend. I was worried it wouldn’t be strong, but it actually turned out great.

Step 5 – The fun part…I wanted to basically make a “cap” that would fit over the other 4 panels on the end, so I had to create a sort of box as the end panel. The top 3 panel bends fit inside the others, and the bottom is under the bottom panel. This was pretty challenging, especially bending since my bending brake was basically a piece of angle aluminum and a board and rubber mallet. The most challenging part was getting the piece in place though with the 3/4″ down sloping tube and the large round 2″ tube in the foot box. Took some moving around, but it went in. I did scratch up the powder coat, so a little touch up was needed.

Step 6 – The end panel left a gap of about 3″ from just under the 3/4″ down sloping tube all the way around and down. I cut 2 separate pieces to fill this gap and it all worked pretty well.

Step 7 – Rivet everything in place – this hasn’t been done yet, but will be soon. It’s just screwed together right now, and it’s pretty darn tight.

I had my wife test it and I took a pic of my legs in there. I’m 6′ and size 11 shoes.

I took some pictures of the measurements, however, since every installation is likely to be different, your mileage may vary. If needed, I can take some better measurements of what I did.

Pics:

Passenger Side Box