Budget Cobra Build

I built a Mk2 in '02/03.  Got it on the road unpainted for a bit under $20k.   http://www.exit109.com/~mfennell/cobra_cost.html.  I'm probably into it for $26k now.  I put adjustable Konis on at some point.  I painted it myself but bought a turbine system to do it and paint supplies are expensive.

I don't really drive it too often but it sure looks nice in the garage!  I've never been able to tune out the bumpsteer.  IIRC, the narrower track of the FFR vs the Fox means you can't really get rid of it.  

CLynn85 said:

That's awesome. My original goal was pretty much aligned with this. I was going to build the cheapest cobra I possibly could, just to spite all of the "you can't build a cobra under $20,000!!!!1111one" people. It's gotten to the point that when I see a 4 lug cobra instead of looking at it with disdain I look at it (and the owner) with respect in that they were able to build a nice little car on a budget. Have any photos of the car before he sold it?

Had to dig into the archives for this, turns out that dad sold his Cobra way back in 2014ish. I only drove it once, shortly before it sold, and I hated it. Its ergonomics were just terrible, and I found it awkward getting in and out of it when I was in my mid 40s, no idea how dad was OK with that in his 70s. Also, the synchros in his transmission were all shot, so every shift had to be s l o w and d e l i b e r a t e or it would graunch. It was pretty good once I got going and cruising but geez, it's a Cobra kit, I wanted to do a few 0-60 romps and make me regret buying Miatas. But that was a no-go.

Anyway, found a couple pics. First one was from 2011. A couple years afterwards he did the body over, filling in the brake ducts on the nose and reshaping the taillight mounting areas, then putting on another coat of black and adding red stripes. Dad's paint jobs usually turned out pretty good for shooting in his garage using Harbor Freight guns. He had a local upholstery shop make him that tonneau cover since the Cobra didn't rate being kept in the garage.

Dad reports putting 22,000 miles on the car total. No idea where it is now.

mfennell said:

I built a Mk2 in '02/03.  Got it on the road unpainted for a bit under $20k.   http://www.exit109.com/~mfennell/cobra_cost.html.  I'm probably into it for $26k now.  I put adjustable Konis on at some point.  I painted it myself but bought a turbine system to do it and paint supplies are expensive.

I don't really drive it too often but it sure looks nice in the garage!  I've never been able to tune out the bumpsteer.  IIRC, the narrower track of the FFR vs the Fox means you can't really get rid of it.  

Nice! I used to want one in red, but now that the bodies come in a bright red gelcoat, I want to paint it something completely different. It seems like budget builds were far more prevalent in the earlier generations before the complete kits, now everyone just wants to build a complete kit with the best of everything.

In reply to Claff :

I love the brushed aluminum treatment on the turbines. I think they look really good on these cars as they kind of mimic the "sunburst" wheels or whatever they called them that the street 427 cobras wore.

In reply to Flynlow (FS) :

Dude!!! I'm glad you're back in town. Definitely need to get back down to RVA as soon as it warms up.

dlmater said:

CLynn85 said:

Unfortunately, our bureaucracy is CRAWLING and despite buying a car that was already titled in Ohio, I've hit a roadblock in VA. My in person DMV trip was a mega fail and I've been forced to mail my documentation in to Richmond. They've had it 3 weeks now with zero feedback or updates. 

I'm in the Richmond, VA area.  When I completed mine a couple years ago (although new, not previously titled in another State, and before Covid) I used the information in post 1 of the following Link Here  No issues and the process was very smooth.  Every State seems to look at replicas differently. Not sure how the previous Ohio title affects this or not.  

And of course, a gratuitous shot of my budget FFR cobra build.  I debated endlessly about the body and paint work.  In the end, wanted a driver without fear of road rash, etc.  Given the quotes I received and being on a budget, I chose to paint it myself.  First complete car I've ever painted.  The learning experience alone was worth the effort. Could be better, but satisfied with the result.  

 Again, I'm in Richmond.  If you have any questions or need for any help, let me know.

 

Awesome. I like the Black on Black, Satin Black is one of my paint options as well. Mine will definitely be getting a driver-quality paint job and not a show car job, and likely painting it myself. 

It's funny, last spring I titled my T-Bucket that was built from scratch, took 3 weeks start to finish including the agent coming and installing the VIN. This car was already titled and on the road and including my wait time for my original appointment back in december, I'm now at almost 2 months of waiting.

Do you ever get out to the Richmond C&C events (in good weather that is)? Would love to see this in person some time.

Man, I really want to do one of these one day. I practiced by doing a monster Miata (5.0) swap, but that still doesn't scratch the Cobra itch. I keep checking the net for someone's abandoned project, but the right one hasn't come along yet.  

Here's my little hairdresser car.

MX_Brad said:

Man, I really want to do one of these one day. I practiced by doing a monster Miata (5.0) swap, but that still doesn't scratch the Cobra itch. I keep checking the net for someone's abandoned project, but the right one hasn't come along yet.  

Here's my little hairdresser car.

 

I  miata's, especially miatas with V8s in them! Such a cool little car! It's probably a totally different experience, but may be a better driving car overall.

One of the enabling things for this build was a) finishing up the new grosh, and b) getting my lift up. I'd been dragging my feet on the lift a little bit, so putting it on the critical path for the transmission swap forced me to get to it.

Why? Well, 5 or so years ago, my uncle and cousin each bought one of these Rotary 9k's from a local Ford dealer that was moving. My cousin put his up immediately, but my uncle let his sit. When I started on my dream garage I mentioned to him that I was going to be on the hunt, and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse on the lift. The bad part was the entire thing had been sitting outside for the last 5 years, except for the power unit. 

Getting it home on my trailer and blasting the initial layer of funk of.

Man this thing was crusty, I spent weeks cleaning and de-rusting as much as feasible. I wanted to make it serviceable, but not go too far in the event that it turned out to be completely trashed. 

This latch assembly was rusted SOLID. I had to pound the pin out and clean each piece before greasing and reassembling.

In the end it was worth it. All the pieces were there and it went up flawlessly.

At this point I was eager to get the AOD out, which was pretty straightforward, aside from the crazy angle you have to tilt it at to get it to clear the nonremovable crossmember, resulting in it almost leaping off the trans jack and releasing fluid from some remote recess of the tranny that had not been drained out yet...

Next up - "New" T5. I went through a whole can of gunk degreasing this poor thing, and that's when I started noticing weird stuff. Hmm, is that RTV on the top cover? Hey! There's an ear broken off the case! No worries - I have a welder buddy that can build this back up and I can redrill it.

"Before I do that I should probably open it up and inspect the gears...............BERKLEY!!!!"

So much for my cheap/free T5 with all the trimmings... What do I do now, buy another dubious T5, buy a NEW T5, rebuild with new gearset, just go all out and buy a TKO? Well, how about none of those!

That sucks.  I'm curious where you go regarding the transmission.

Cool project! I've always loved the ff cobras and daytona. One day I may scratch that itch but a e-type replica or a locust are more likely. Anyways, if you haven't already decided on the trans corvette t56s and lt1 fbody t56s still seem to be able to be had on the cheap as no one wants to put in the effort to convert them. Also a t3650 or Ar5 might be decent options.

Look around, you can get the gears to swap, even used.

My thoughts are to spend money on the straight cut set for another project.  Though, this is expensive as the whole gear set is $2500.

Those are all logical answers. Honestly, I was really close to just saying "screw it" and buying a brand new TKO from Forte's Parts, I got a quote and everything, but a couple things happened, 1 - I remembered how cheap I am and chickened out, and 2 - one of my Mustang buddies suggested a 99+ V6 T5.

I initially blew this off as either a sarcastic joke or the nonsensical ramblings of a madman, but then I started researching and went WAY down the T5 rabbit hole. Turns out, that aside from like 20 *minor* differences, it's basically the same as a Fox 5.0-era world class T5. This seemed like good enough of a justification to at least *try* it, so I hit marketplace. As luck would have it, there was a clown nearby parting out a 2000 V6 to do an LS swap in, what a loser. I messaged him and a day or two later went and picked up my new to me transmission for the pricey sum of $250 complete from blockoff plate to tailshaft. 

I didn't take many photos at this point, but I did make another video.

In reply to MX_Brad :

That is really cool. 

I initially just installed the bell housing to test fit. It looked like everything *should* work, but I'd have to trim the bell a little to clear one of the braces in the tunnel. Not a big deal, there's a lot of meat around the starter mount area and I had to sculpt one of the starter bosses a bit. 

Also - FFR builds these cars as donors, so they're meant to accept the Ford cable clutch. Our hero, the OP, originally built the car with a TKO, so he opted for a hydraulic master/slave setup. Rather than completely reconfigure the pedal box to revert back to the cable setup, I opted to utilize the hydraulic master. This did, however, require me to get creative with a slave cylinder mount for the trans. There are companies that sell bolt-on setups for T5s, but these are for the Mustang 5.0 Variant. The V6 variant, of course, moves the shift fork and I saw no off-the-shelf setup that would fit. This is what I came up with. Cardboard - CAD - cutout of steel. 

Test fitting, that's a 86 CJ7 slave cylinder, I figured that ought to be pretty easy to source in the future should this one fail.

Hey that came out really nice, I'm having trouble visualizing the bend. Does the slave point outward toward the end of the clutch fork?

Shavarsh said:

Hey that came out really nice, I'm having trouble visualizing the bend. Does the slave point outward toward the end of the clutch fork?

Yeah it just kind of flares that corner out so that the slave cylinder pushrod pretty much makes a straight line to the clutch fork. I had to play with that a bit to get the right angle, seems close enough though. The thing I still need to do is make a semi-circular bushing to go on the rod, right now it's just a nut engaging the fork. I also had to rotate the hole pattern to get the bleed screw up top as well, oops.

What bore size is the clutch master?

In reply to gumby (Forum Supporter) :

1" master, .875 slave, not sure what the pedal ratio is, but travel/pedal force feel pretty good. 

Thanks.

FWIW, the clocked location of the clutch fork you are dealing with is an SN95 vs Fox thing. The 94-5 5.0 cars used a T5 with the longer input, deeper bellhousing, and revised fork location, similar to the 3.8 unit you have. The 94-5 5.0 cars did retain the 157T flywheel, if for any reason somebody feels a need for that instead of the 164T parts.

The thing I still need to do is make a semi-circular bushing to go on the rod, right now it's just a nut engaging the fork. 

In the V8 Miata world, most folks use a rocker arm pivot ball with a locking nut behind it, on a length of all-thread (or a bolt with the head cut off). Easy and adjustable. I drilled a small hole through my rod so I could easily grab it with an awl to adjust the lock nut. Just an idea for you.

Boy does time fly when you're having fun. I've put about almost 1000 miles on the Cobra this summer, more than double what the PO put on it the entire time he owned it, he sure did miss out on a ton of fun! Not much to report - the transmission is working great! Super excited with how that came out.

I got tired of having a really ugly hole where the tunnel cover was butchered and having hot air come up through, so I made a quick block-off plate so I could install the shifter boot. 

Before - eh, can't find that pic right now

After

I wanted to find a way to secure the tunnel cover but still have it easily removable, so I printed up some clips that will catch the square tubing and attached them with some plastic weld. After about 200 miles they're holding strong.

I'm going to have to use that trick for a hydraulic clutch for Susie.  Nice.

Mr_Asa said:

I'm going to have to use that trick for a hydraulic clutch for Susie.  Nice.

. Who, or what, is Susie?

If you end up using a V6 T5 I'd be happy to send you the files I made.