Building our AC Cobra 289 LeMan

Mark had bought a new polishing set from the internet and decided to put it to work by polishing up the newly wielded throttle linkage bracket and header tank. They look amazing and now ready to fit. Hopefully we’ll get another weekend soon to get the build moving forward again. Watch this space.

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Once we had done the final fit of the throttle linkage, we looked at it once again and thought to ourselves that there might be a problem with the lower bracket once the engine was running . As its only fixed to the inlet manifold at one end, we thought this may allow it to flex (a bit like a diving board) and over time may cause it to snap. So Mark set about once again to make a few improvements. His solution was simply to make a new piece of bracket that could be wielded onto the existing bracket, allowing the other end to be bolted to the the back of the engine head, making the whole unit even more solid.

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Shelby Rolls Out the First AC Cobra

This is an article from 289 Register about this car. The very first Cobra Shelby produced based on the AC Ace chassis and body. 50 years on. worth a read.

At the New York Auto Show the veteran celebrates 50 years of car production.

http://www.carbuzz.com/news/2012/4/6/Shelby-Roles-Out-the-First-AC-Cobra-7708232/



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We had now got to a stage where we could start thinking about the wiring up the Cobra. So we got the wiring loom out of the box in the shed that it had been sitting in for months. We made the decision a while ago, upon fitting a standard Hawk loom to avoid any major issues at the IVA test. It includes all switches, fuses, relays, an immobiliser kit and battery connections. The complete loom actually contains three looms, one that goes through the engine Bay, one that sits behind the dash and one that feeds the back end. These will all eventually plug together to make a complete loom.

While I was away over Christmas, Mark decided to get ahead of the game and had already spent a couple of hours marking all the connection points using masking tape to make it easier with the installation. I’m sure this will save hours of frustration in the future.

Firstly we laid the three looms out on the grass to see what we were up against. We then moved them inside and laid them over the body to get a rough idea for the route for the wires.

Having read about Stuart Clarkes experiences with his wiring loom we decided, as he had done, to do things a bit differently with the fuses and relays. Like Stuart, we didn’t like the idea of these being fitted on the driver’s footwell inside the engine bay and decided to follow his example and mount them inside the cabin above the steering column (Stewart actually decided to mount below the steering column). You can read about Stewarts experience here.

We just needed to feed the front loom through the bulkhead into the engine bay through a hole right in the corner of the bulkhead. Mark conveniently had a 40mm gommet lying spare in his tool box that would be just the job for fitting to the engine bay side of the bulkhead so the loom could easily pass through. We decided to drill a 40mm hole before carefully feeding all the loom wiring through the gomment to the position where the loom would enter the engine bay. The grommet sat in the recess quite nicely.

Next up was to decide how to mount the relay and fuse box. We sat and had a cuppa while we had a good think about it. We knew we had to mount some sort of bracket to the rear side of the bulk head, but we didn’t want extra bolts to be seen on the engine bay side, so thought it would be a good idea to use the same holes used to rivet the metal heat shields to also secure the brackets for this job.

We found an old piece of right angled aluminium in the shed that we thought might just work a treat, so we measured up and cut to fit. We provisionally fitted the steering column to make sure the bracket had enough clearance (we still need to recon the steering column and fit properly…more to come on this later). We then drilled out 4 of the rivets in the bulkhead panel to then re-rivet with the bracket attached on the rear side. We thought to mount it in this position would be better for the SVA regarding potential dangers with catching bracket edges. Although this will make the relays slight more tricky to access, we didn’t see this as a big issue as modern day relays don’t fail as often as older ones.

Last was to mount the relay unit to the bracket which we did with 2 small screws, We also used self adessive foam padding to protect the wire from potential chaffing against the bracket and rivets. We made an extra bracket to mount the fuse box next to the relays – More to come on this in part 2

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We ordered the specially made seat belt framework from Gerry at Hawks that fits above the transmission tunnel so that they are high enough to comply with the SVA regulations. As well as the seat belts this framework will also support the roll bar, which we’ll install later.

The framework bolts to the chassis in 4 places. The main legs are attached at the bottom by bolts passing from underneath the car. We had to get underneath and drill holes through the fibre glass which proved a bit tricky to get to, so we struggled with an extended hand drill to make pilot holes, before drilling full size from above. Once the holes where drilled the bolts went in quiet easily.

The other 2 bolts pass through either arm and the rear bulkhead and attach to brace bars in the boot which also bolt through the boot floor using the chassis bolts we put in previously.

Once in we fitted the stainless steel belt guides to the framework, making sure the shorter shorter arm is to the outside to eventually allow the belt to angle towards the driver/passenger shoulders.


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Next job on the list for today was fitting the heater box that arrived from Gerry a while ago. This is mounted to the rear side of the bulk head behind the dash. We decided the best way to mount it was to rivet the brackets in place through the bulkhead panel from the engine bay and use the same 5mm rivets we used to fix the heatshields in place.

We wanted to mount the heater unit dead centre so all the rivet heads lines up, but we had to ascertain the locations to drill the holes for the 2 heater matrix pipes that poke through into the engine bay. So we made a card template of the rear of the heater before lining it up dead centre then marking and drilling the holes. We fixed the heater unit in place using 2 rivets either side. We also added some foam sheeting behind the unit for extra padding.

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We both arrange to get another day together to get on with the build. The last weekend we both had free was end of February where we had respraying the footwells. We were keen to get cracking again. The first job of the day was to refit all the bits we striped off in order to do the painting. This included putting back the peddle box, battery shelf and brake reservoir bracket and reconnect the throttle linkage.

Mark had spent a few more hours over previous weeks polishing up the rods and blades getting them extra shiny in preparation for the final fit. We decided as a little extra that we would make some extra plastic washers for the rose joints to try to prevent any potential rattles between the joint and the bracket.




Once altogether and everything fully tightened up, we then spent over an hour tinkering to getting the leverage of the peddle between idle and full throttle absolutely perfect. I’m glad to say we finally got there. Considering Mark designed our mechanism (based on photos of Andy Gordan’s Car) we are really happy and think it look great.

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We took delivery of the fuel tank today. More to follow on this once we get around to fitting it.

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We decided we’d like to repaint the white on the footwells as while we were fitting the throttle linkage and accelerator pedal we had managed to scratch it in a few places. So we striped everything down including battery tray, reservoir bracket, throttle linkage, accelerator peddle housing and peddle box, before masking the whole area and respraying. We can then reassemble it all over again.

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The final job for today was to fit the radiator into the front on the engine bay. This proved to be a fiddly job due to its position and we jacked up the front end to get better access. We got the radiator kit from Gerry, which has a large capacity and made from copper which should give better cooling quality. It came with 2 angled brackets to bolt into either side of the body.

Firstly we posted the radiator in from underneath to work out the position for the brackets. Its a very snug fit which is good but meant we had to carefully manoeuvre the radiator in and out a few times while drilling and fitting, careful not to damage the fins in the process. We haven’t got the fans yet but we’ll measure up for them soon and get them fitted.



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