Building our AC Cobra 289 LeMan

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 planned to get some more time on the car this weekend. We have planned to get most of the little job under the bonnet out of the way today. First job was to fit the new braided fuel pipe that Mark got made a few weeks ago to replace the rubber one we originally had. We fitted the connecter to the fuel regulator and ran the pipe through to connect to the carb. Mark had made a new bracket that bolts to the top of the inlet manifold which will eventually serve as the attachment for the springs onto the throttle linkage, but is also perfect to attach a stainless steel P clip to hold the fuel pipe in the correct position and to prevent it rubbing on the plug leads.

The last job will be to polish up the bracket nice and shiny, which we’ll do later on. Onto the next job…


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Happy New Year to everyone. Just a quick update as the last post was a while ago now. The cobra build was put on hold over christmas as I was away in NYC and Mark had his Uni work to crack on with. Even so, we have ordered more bits, fuel tank, radiator, throttle linkage, that we are waiting to arrive. We’re hoping to get some stuff done this weekend so more posts coming soon.

Mark has spent a little time fitting the fuel pressure regulator to the nearside inner wing, see pic below. He then cut a piece of fuel pipe to length to fit from the carb to the fuel filter/regulator. Now that we have a piece of pipe to length, we have sent it to BGC Motor sport components to make a braided pipe with the banjo connectors to go from the carb.



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After the brake lines, we moved onto the fuel line installation. Again, we bought the fuel line kit from Gerry at Hawks Cars which included all of the pipes that are needed to go from the fuel tank through to the carb. We bought some insulated stainless steel P clips to mount the fuel line to the vertical face of the chassis tube, and as we did for the brake pipes, measured the position for the clips 7.5inches apart, drilled the holes and used galvanised self tapping screws to secure them. Also as before, feeding the pipe through the rubber grommets and ready made holes on the near side of the chassis. We used a stanley knife to cut a big enough hole in the grommet for the pipe to pass through.

The Fuel Pump

We weren’t happy with the mounting for the fuel pump, as there were no rubber anti vibration mounts. This, we thought, might cause trouble later on with vibration once the fuel pump was working. Also having read Stuart Clarkes experience on the 289 Register website about his build and installation of the the fuel pump, we decided to make a triangle bracket to mount the pump to the chassis using 3 anti vibration mounts (2 to be secured through the holes in the chassis, 1 lower down as extra support to keep the pump from flopping over). Fortunately Mark found a couple of brackets on a shelf in the shed that were almost perfect, so all we had to do it drill out the holes a little to get them to fit. We then sprayed them up black.
As for the anti vibration mounts, we just went down to a local car parts place and managed to get some rubber cotton reel type anti vibration mounts used for the vauxhall vectra. The threads were obviously different so Mark had to use his tap and die set to make a new thread for the screw hole in the chassis. Apart from that it fitted nicely.

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Once mounted using the rubber mountings the fuel pump is pretty solid although can wobble slightly due to the rubber mountings, so we cut a square piece of rubber and super glued that to the chassis directly underneath to protect the chassis should the pump vibrate too much and hit.

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At this stage we can’t do any more with the the lines as the fuel tank is situated within the boot. We’ll have to do the final fit once the body is back on. We hope very soon!

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