Building our AC Cobra 289 LeMan

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.

—

Why not share this:

We started today thinking it was about time we fitted the peddle box. As we had already cut the hole in the footwell ages ago, its a job we could now do as the body is back on. The bolts go through the floor and flat section of the chassis and it was just a case of lining it up, marking up and then drilling the holes through. As the end of these bolts are exposed under the car, Mark had bought some stainless steel M8 bolts for this job, so they won’t corrode when exposed to the weather. Due to its position it proved a bit awkward getting these in and getting them tight. Mark bumped his head on several occasions while he had his head stuck down the footwell trying to get the bolts in (Hopefully knocked some sense in). We had noticed before hand that the floor of the body wasn’t quite square so we had to use a small piece of fibreglass, that we saved from cutting the original hole, to pack the front edge, getting a good seal between the vertical edge and engine bay.

Next up was to negotiate the position of the throttle peddle. The throttle pedal is posted through a hole in the top of the peddle box with the throttle pedal housing mounted on top inside the engine bay. We read through the Hawk manual and it didn’t really give any hard and fast rules for the position, although when we had spoken to Gerry at the NEC he told us to aim to mount it about an inch from the front of the peddle box. So this is what we aimed for. We initially drilled a small hole posted the peddle through to get a rough position. We wanted the accelerator peddle slightly further forward than brake and clutch peddles but for all 3 peddle to be equally spaced apart. From there we marked up the holes, drilled and fitted. This was also a bit fiddly due to it being under the wing and had to use a 90degree drill bit for this job.

—

Why not share this:

Once we had got the body back on it was really late into the evening, but these are some pictures taken the next morning in proper daylight. We are delighted to finally have the body back on the chassis ready for further work over the winter months. We think the complete set of heat shields now fitted and polished up just look amazing! Thank you again to Dale and Phil and Slipstream design for the CAD work and production.





–

Why not share this:

After the final bits of painting and polishing, finally it was time to get the body back on the chassis. By this point we had been working on the body all day and was getting quite dark so had to work quickly. We thought the best way to do it was to wheel the rolling chassis out onto the street and get the body on where it was flat and where we had more room.

We acquired some help from a couple of the neighbours to lift it, one person on each corner, and very quickly on it went. It wasn’t quiet that straight forward getting it in the correct position though, as we quickly realised we had to cut away some of the floor to allow the prop shaft and safety loop to fit through the hole in the floor. We did this very quickly and we will go back and tidy the holes up at a later stage.

Once back in the garage we fix the body down with the 20 bolts we took out back in July 2010 when we detached the body. Seems a while and much work ago now. 4 bolts at the front in the engine bay, 10 in the cabin and 6 in the boot. They fitted very easily giving us confidence we had got the body on correctly. It actually looks like a car now, which is another real milestone. Still lots to do though.

We will probably be looking at doing the wiring and electrics next and getting the master cylinder fitted and connected up. Check out further posts coming soon.


–

Why not share this:

We fitted the remaining side panels heatshield next, which would also neatly fit over the top of the new well section panels. As we had with the other panels we used a metal folder to create a really neat edge on the bend where the panel would wrap around the corner of the wheel arches. We then fitted by drilling the holes through the fibre glass and riveting into place. As they were pre-made these panels fitted very quickly and easily.

Once all the panels were fitted we gave them a really good polish up to really bring out the shine. We are really happy with the results and completely glad we spent the extra time getting the CAD design done.

Why not share this:

We decided after a little discussion to make some extra aluminium panels for the well sections connecting the inner wings to the peddlebox and footwells inside the engine bay. Originally we had planned to leave these as a fibre glass finish, but as we had some extra aluminium sheet left over from the manufacture of the other heatshields, we thought this might really finish the engine bay off nicely. So as we did before, we made simple templates from a couple old cornflakes box to get the shape and size of the 2 well sections. The offside proved a little trickier than the nearside as we had to negotiate the gap for the peddlebox.

It was Marks idea to give ourselves enough overlap of metal to be able to fold the aluminium right over on its self on the edges which would give us a really neat finish. So this is exactly what we did.

We then used tin snips to cut the template out of the 1mm aluminium before using the metal folder to get the shape and the vice to fold the edges getting a really neat finish. Then finally fitting and riveting into place on the car.

I have to confess this was more Mark’s handy metal work than mine (in fact my first attempt was rubbish and we threw this away as a tester piece) but when Marks stepped in, his metal work skills got them both fitting beautifully. With a little polish, we both agreed that this little addition really added that little extra quality to the overall appearance of the engine bay and well worth our efforts. I hope you agree from the pictures.

Why not share this:

We managed to get another day set aside to do some kit car. Today we were determined to finally get the body back onto the chassis and in the garage before winter and the bad weather really kicks in.

First job to get out of the way was to getting the side vents fitted. We had cut the holes out some time ago (link to post). The standard way to do this is to make some aluminium brackets and to fibreglass them in place. Mark had spent a few hours the previous week making 4 brackets, 2 for each vent top and bottom. He drilled out holes in the brackets to allow the P40 fibreglass to grip the bracket better against the body. We lined the vent up to the hole then used masking tape to secure into position, then mixed up the P40 fibeglass and layered in over the bracket. As it was a cold day it took a little while to go off and harden but we did 2 layers of fibreglass in the end which seems to have set ready solidly. This is a really messy and fiddly job.

After doing the first one we realised we had put the vent in the wrong way around. Doh! so quickly unbolted it from the bracket then turned it round 180 degrees, we realised at this point we’d have to modify the bracket slightly by drilling 2 new holes for the bolts holding the vent in place.

Once both fitted, the final thing we did was to carefully mask up the inner wings areas and spray paint the area black to cover the newly fibreglassed area and also give a nice neat edge between the outer wing and the footwells painted white.

–

Why not share this:

We started fitting the heat shields today. We started with the bulk head panel, carefully positioning before marking up the holes, drilling and finally riveting into place. We used 4.8mm diameter rivets. The first 4 panels have gone in fairly easily with only a few minor tweaks. We had to file a few millimetres off a couple of edges to get them to fit absolutely perfectly. We are really pleased with the way they look and well worth getting the CAD design and laser cut out.

We just need to fit the front inner wing panels now, then polish out any small scratches.



—

Why not share this:

After the final computer drawings were complete, Dale sent them through to Mark to do final full size print outs to double check they all fitted perfectly. We had to make a small adjustment to the bulk head panel, but once this was done we were all good to get them sent to be manufactured and laser cut in 1.5 mm aluminium.

All we need to do now is get them fitted to the body and we’ll be ready to finally get the body reunited with the rolling chassis. We’ll hopefully be doing this very soon.

Why not share this:

As mentioned in the previous post, having seen Andy Gordons FIA Cobra at Silverstone, one thing we really liked with his car was the way he had fitted the metal cladding in the engine bay to wrap around the corner of the wheel arches. This was really tidy and helped the engine bay to really sparkle. So again using his example as inspiration we got to work making amended versions to the templates which we then sent through to Dale at Slipstream Design to modify the computer design specs.

These are the amended drawings

Why not share this: