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Author Topic: Aaron's Cobra build blog  (Read 16634 times)

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aaronjb

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Aaron's Cobra build blog
« on: 24 December 2019, 10:09:00 »

I'm going to post slowly until I'm up to date here .. I'm copying this content from a thread on another forum, mostly :)

Everything began in .. 2011, maybe? With me sitting in a friend's office and looking at his model Cobra; he said to me "How expensive could it be?" and we downloaded the price list for Dax .. quick calculations later suggested £25k and I'd be on the road!

I can hear you all laughing uncontrollably now.. optimistic isn't the word! But I digress. A trip to Detling (RIP) where I sat in a Dax, a GD, looked at a Viper and looked at the AK was followed by a trip to a Dax open day and a test run in their demonstrator (not a test drive!) and a trip to Crendon to meet JK and sit in a Crendon.

At the time I wanted to build a 'modern' Cobra, but over time that has turned into wanting a more period correct Cobra and I probably should have bought a Crendon - but never mind, I committed to Dax… and so the story begins.

Early 2012 saw me road trip to deepest, darkest Wales to purchase an XJ40 donor off a man who declared "I hope you aren't going to break it for one of those kit cars, this car is too good for that!"



I can't even describe how optimistic he was! You could see daylight through the firewall, the pedal box was the only thing stopping the firewall from falling out in fact, the inner wings were completely rotten where the wiring looms passed through and so on! We ended up chopping the boot off with a plasma cutter so it would fit in the garage with the door shut, stripping it and waving goodbye to the rest - keeping the V5, of course! Amazingly, we only set light to it once with the plasma cutter.. and that was Kevin writing his initials in the rear wing, if memory serves! ;D

If I were doing it again I'd just buy a donor pack... there was a lot of swearing at rusty bits, but eventually all the required parts were liberated with no thanks to:

The front suspension arms on one side, which were stuck together and eventually liberated by drilling out a bolt:


The rear disc that the previous owner had put on in the wrong orientation, so you couldn't get to the handbrake adjuster. A 3-leg puller and lump hammer got the disc off eventually:


The swing bolts were well and truly recalcitrant, too, but finally the crusty diff was liberated:


Then, there was a break of a month or so while I waited for Dax to deliver the chassis and chassis packs, and I gathered other parts....
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Varche

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #1 on: 24 December 2019, 11:22:12 »

Oo goody am looking forward to this thread as well.

I have the utmost respect for anyone doing a simple task like building a kit car. Simple things like changing donor parts mid build......
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Andy B

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #2 on: 24 December 2019, 11:59:46 »

Also looking forward to this thread ..... I'm not at all jealous of your garage though ....  ;) ;)

and does a UK car not have a bulkhead rather than a US firewall?  :-*
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TheBoy

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #3 on: 24 December 2019, 12:03:38 »

and does a UK car not have a bulkhead rather than a US firewall?  :-*
Yes, but the OP works for the yanks, and thus loses the ability to speak English ;D
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STEMO

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #4 on: 24 December 2019, 12:06:13 »

You say £25K was optimistic to finish the build, but what would one of these cars sell for once completed?
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Migv6 le Frog Fan

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #5 on: 24 December 2019, 13:00:01 »

Christ ! was it really almost 8 years ago when you collected that Jag ? I can remember you posting about it and would have guessed it was two to three years ago !
Agree about the garage. I would hate to be lumbered with an inferior facility like that to work on my cars. A damp sloping driveway is a much nicer place to be.
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Andy B

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #6 on: 24 December 2019, 13:28:56 »

.... A damp sloping driveway is a much nicer place to be.

 ;D ;D I can get my Smart Roadster in my garage .... just!  :y
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aaronjb

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #7 on: 24 December 2019, 13:52:21 »

You say £25K was optimistic to finish the build, but what would one of these cars sell for once completed?

£45-50k for a well built, decent spec "normal" replica, £60-70k for a factory build of any of the regular marques, £90k for a factory build aluminium car, £120k for a Kirkham (which is identical to the aforementioned £90k car, but instead of coming from the Bloke in Stoke comes from Americaland) or £180k for a "real" continuation car.. £2-3m for an original ;D

That was the old garage - wait until you see the new one .. it's infinitely less damp! ;D


Anyway, moving onward in time:
Somewhere in here, I managed to pick up a few bits that I thought would come in useful for the build.. namely:

A fully running 390cuin Ford FE engine
A partially stripped 428cuin Ford FE engine block, crank and pistons
A pair of Edelbrock FE heads
A set of throttle bodies and EFI setup to suit
An Aston Martin fitment Tremec T-56 (long input shaft)
A QuickTime bell-housing

Some of that - one engine, the bell housing and the Tremec - were necessary because Dax didn't have any jigs to put the FE engine into their chassis. This should be your first clue that I was heading down uncharted territory! Not that I am the first person to put an FE in a Dax (although I might be the last?), but clearly they hadn't kept any jigs because who would be stupid enough to do that?! I believe their "big block Ford" option was the 460 series engines, FWIW.

Finally, in May 2012, Dax arrived with a chassis and associated chassis packs - everything that should be needed to build a rolling chassis. You can also see the two engines, one of which, plus gearbox, was just back from Dax:


It all took up a lot of space in the garage:



Not a lot happened, really; the following year was spent stripping the donor parts down to components for refurbishing, organising powder coating and/or refurb - Wards for the hubs, a local guy for blasting & powder coating the suspension arms, that kind of thing.

Stripping bits down, the front end went quite smoothly:


The rear end parts were considerably more crusty and resulted in at least one snapped bolt (apparently this is quite common, so Ed at Wards told me):


Then .. hiatus.
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Field Marshal Dr. Opti

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #8 on: 24 December 2019, 15:18:19 »

I want GTM 777F. Nothing less.

I have £45000.

I believe the word 'optimistic' has already been used.
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Viral_Jim

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #9 on: 24 December 2019, 15:32:49 »

Top stuff, thanks for this Aaron!  8)

Question, is the Jaaaag rear end really up to what you're going to be throwing at it?

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aaronjb

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #10 on: 24 December 2019, 15:39:27 »

You seem to be missing several zeros, Opti...

Question, is the Jaaaag rear end really up to what you're going to be throwing at it?

Yeah - they are pretty much bulletproof.. I'm not aware of anyone who has grenaded one, and there are people with superchargers and NOS who put out at least as much torque, if not more, than I will be  :y
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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #11 on: 24 December 2019, 16:19:33 »

Cool  :y

I knew they're used in pilgrim builds, but as we discussed before, they don't do big power.
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Varche

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #12 on: 24 December 2019, 16:49:39 »

If I am still alive when these projects get completed, you will have to give them an outing down to the sun. Few beers and a paella and do the return journey.
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aaronjb

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #13 on: 27 December 2019, 13:18:35 »

If I am still alive when these projects get completed, you will have to give them an outing down to the sun. Few beers and a paella and do the return journey.

I was reading the club mag over Christmas (that's one out of 12 read, then ;D) and there were two trip write-ups in there - one around north west France and one down to Spain.. the one around France involved a fuel pump failure, front wheel bearing failure and a leaking fuel tank (on three different cars) all fixed in France, and the one in Spain involved a self-destructing engine ;D so er.. I'll put that on the list! :)


The next episode:


2016 arrives, three years after I got properly started and .. well.

The hubs came back from refurb looking shiny and new, with new bearings and so on all nicely set up (except the fronts):


I surveyed the nut & bolt kits I'd taken delivery of several years prior and found that I was missing a boat-load of bushes and a few bolts and, rather importantly, about 50% of the front suspension. That was quickly sorted via Dax, and I got all OCD and sorted stuff into boxes and piles:


I tried to strip down the front suspension arms of their bushes and found that neither my 10tonne press, nor pullers, could extract the original bushes. The hacksaw did, however:


They were then blsated, powder coated and assembled with the new bushes:


Finally I started actually assembling things to the chassis like the ball joints into the De Dion beam, using sockets & threaded rod:


I assembled the shocks & springs. Due to time in a slightly damp garage the zinc plating had started to show some rust, so they got a coat of black paint:


And my first 'Dax' foible - when you are trying to insert the upper ball joint and caster shims into the upper suspension arms, they won't fit. The trick is to lean on the wide end (the chassis end) at the same time as shoving the shims & ball joint in:


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Varche

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Re: Aaron's Cobra build blog
« Reply #14 on: 27 December 2019, 18:21:23 »

I suspect ( but dont know) that those lightweights had failures due to lack of  attention to detail during build. That of course would not apply to OOF kit car fettllers.

Northern France? Thermostat wouldn’t even have opened.

When the group arrived and was well watered and rested, a 2000 metre assent of the Sierra Nevadas would be in order.
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