Doing it all and driving it home: 1996 Cobra build, part 2

Okay, so now to 2018. Step 1 was getting myself together, and I did that. Step 2 was more tires. I had the old Nittos still on the back and managed to score a sweet deal on a set of 4 275/40/17 Falken Azenis Rt615K+'s that were taken off of a TT fox body. The best 2 then went on the rear to replace the worn out Nitto NT05's.

I changed the oil, washed the car, charged the battery, and headed out to the first autocross of the season, a local event (Bridge City Autosports) at PIR, where I had a new co-driver participating in her first autocross. She has some serious natural talent and decided to run all season with me! The car performed flawlessly and we placed 4th and 6th in CAM overall where the winner was the defending national champ! 

The next step was to swap out the crappy 1-piece headlights with more OEM-like 2-piece fogged Cobra lights. The 1-piece lights did not anchor correctly and moved, they had *terrible* light patterns, and they fit like crap on the fenders. The 2-piece ones fixed all of those.

Floating Doc said:

Nice photos, hope to see more updates.

Is that brake lockup? Doesn't it have antilock brakes?

Thanks! It has ABS, that's nonfunctional. I've replaced 3 of the ABS sensors and the fuse and can't get them to work. My scan tool doesn't do 1996 ABS code/diagnosis.

Looks like a blast.  Makes me miss my old Mach 1.

The next event was an SCCA autocross, their first of the season, where I promptly failed tech for a weeping power steering fitting (hydroboost). I managed to borrow enough tools to fix the issue and went on to win the class and do okay in PAX. The Cobra is a handful in the wet, especially on really small, tight courses, but we did alright.

After that I decided to finally do what I had been planning since buying the car, stripes! I always see stripes that are way too wide on this body style, and they look hideous. I went with a classic 4" wide double stripe in an electric blue metallic. I put them on by myself! There was a lot of measuring and marking.

Well it's a jump to the end of the season, but here's my intro video to the Cobra!

I finally got around to posting up a video of the first drifting event I did with the Cobra from back in April!

Love it!

Apexcarver said:

Love it!

 

 

Thanks!

I need to spend hours editing all of the footage I took that day into a cool montage. I got 20 sessions and put the camera on a different spot for each one.

Drags, auto cross, drifting, track days...Quite the Swiss army mustang you’ve got there.

I was cringing at the headlights. Glad you got them sorted. 

1SlowVW said:

Drags, auto cross, drifting, track days...Quite the Swiss army mustang you’ve got there.

You have no idea. It did a complete season (10 events) of autocross for TWO clubs with TWO drivers, a Track Night in America, 2 open drift days (including tandem!), 1/4 mile drag racing, and did it all driven to every track with car seats in the back. This car is a rock star for beatdowns.

10 years of autocross on mine and it took it like a trooper.

This is after 10 years of pounding and sitting otherwise. 

• Early days, lost a pinion seal and required new bearings in rear

• LSD gave up ghost, installed Auburn Roadracers diff, that gave up, reinstalled repacked stocker. 

• Rubber grommet/gasket where filler neck goes into tank started leaking (ethanol ate rubber), replaced without dropping tank with updated part that is ethanol resistant.

• Mild power steering leak (still need to fix).

• Bumper clips from conestrikes (about 8 cones at once)
• now has slight noise in 2 and 4 in the trans. 

Its being retired from primary autocross ride to fun street car and backup autocross.  Might acquiesce to the wife and reinstall the stock seats.  New ride to be revealed in spring  

In reply to Apexcarver :

Mine has 160K miles. I replaced the transmission when I bought it 3 years ago because 3rd gear was missing, installed an MGW shifter on the new T45 at that time. Over this season I broke the rear diff drag racing (literally the diff carrier itself, on a stock 8.8) then rebuilt the entire rear axle (all new Ford races, bearings, seals, carrier, spider gears, and Ford Racing upgraded LSD, aluminum diff cover with girdle) and then lunched that diff literally in the paddock moving the car to a different parking space. Took that rear end out and threw it in the shed and replaced with a complete disc-to-disc take out from a 30K mile Mach 1 that was drilled in the nose. So now I don't need rear spacers anymore and have 3.55's instead of 3.23's.

I need to install the adjustable clutch cable, fix the oil cooler, and wire up the stereo.

When I lived in the NW and was in the Navy I auotcrossed and drag raced a 97 myself.  It was almost all stock and did well all things considered.  I’m real tempted to try IRS in my 94 GT after the challenge, if I keep it.

In reply to Javelin :

Mine has 100k fewer miles.  (but a LOT of it is autocross)

Interesting that you actually blew up a carrier. I thought that was slicks and power adders failure territory. 

Next time I tear into the rear I might do the 3.55's.  The stock 3.27's have always felt long.  Also, would consider a tru-track or a torsen to get out of clutch rebuilds in the LSD. 

In reply to Apexcarver :

Turns out my rear axle housing was bent in the crash 2 years ago. It's not even 1 degree, but that's all you need apparently. 

In reply to Javelin :

That would put a lot of cyclical stress on stuff if you think about it. 

I filmed a little walkaround of the current state of the car.

It's baaaaaack!!!

I gave up on selling the Cobra and dug it out of the garage yesterday for the first time in months. It's staying and I'm going to start working on it, starting with the interior. It's going to be a track day car and do some drag racing. I want 12's!

Holy crap, it's been six months since I broke this piece of E36M3?!? After the last update the battery and starter simultaneously crapped out and I got frustrated and pushed it in the garage and made it a shelf for six months. I finally had a reason to get it moving again, there's some cool dead races coming up, so I fixed it up:

I love this car. I'm a SN95 fan in general, more than most people. But that DOHC high-revving V8 speaks to me.

Well success! I brought the Cobra to CorkSport and ran the dyno, made 276HP to the wheels at 6250 RPM (and it redlines at 7250, we let out early because I'm a nervous nelly).

Then I took it drag racing to an instant green list race:

Where that Dart handed me an instant loss, lol. It was all good though because I put the GF behind the wheel for her first drag racing and by the end of the night she was doing this:

I was proud of her for getting such a hard to drive car down the strip well and getting pretty decent at RT's.

I ran as well and ended up with my new PB in the car, a 13.399@103.4.

More drag racing is in store for it next month, so I'm going to try and pull some weight out.