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.

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It’s perfectly OK to leave the engine bay as it is, although the original Cobras had white footwells inside the engine bays. We are taking an educated guess this may have had something to do with combating and reflecting the heat coming from the engine in the original racing cars. We of course are keen to keep as much authenticity as we can on our build, so with that in mind the footwell simply had to be white. Firstly we keyed the gel coat to get a rough enough surface for the paint. We then wiped the the surface down with water and sponge to remove as much dust as possible before we started to carefully apply and cover with white spray paint. It pays to be patient with the coats and not spraying to readerly to avoid any drips. Annoyingly we got 1 or 2 drips which we had to then let dry before sanding down and spraying over again. 2 cans of white primer gave us approximately 4 coats. The pictures show the engine bay with only primer coats. We will be cladding most of the engine bay with sheet aluminium anyway but before that we will give the footwells a final few coats with a gloss white to finish it off nicely before fitting the claddling (heat shields) to the rest of the engine bay. More to come on that in later posts.

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