Projects DRAG SNAKE "Vintage Terror!"

I lost over 50 lbs just by cutting back to eating one meal a day. Biggest loss was about 4” in my waist size.

 

Well, so much for my prayers of those irritating weight loss resolution commercials not happening for a couple of weeks, I hate you Jenny Craig!

 

It has a 3.4 liter Chevy V6 with Tremec 5 Speed. Mild cam and Holley four barrel. Weighs in at about 1500 pounds.

 

I had a revelation this week in regards to the engine compartment panels. To begin with it has been a struggle to create something that looks original, clears every thing (ie roll cage, dash, headers, pedals, windshield mounts, door hinges, transmission tunnel, suspension, etc. etc. etc.) and is still FUNCTIONAL! I mean after all the ultimate goal of these panels is really to create a firewall.

After cutting up enough poster board to have served an entire Jr. High science fair I feel I have been thinking about this all wrong. You see I have been looking at original cars and trying to match my work fairly closely to what they looked like. That includes a lot of work in the engine compartment outside of the foot boxes and firewall. I have been trying to figure how to include the sides, front wheel wells and aft of the radiator etc. But to be honest, if this was a Cobra I was cutting up to race in the 60s (which don't kid yourself, that is exactly what racers did) the first thing I would do is cut all those stupid panels out. So I feel a bit of relief because no matter what I did in pattern form up front, I was not happy with the look, nor what it was going to take to install.

Now you will be able to see all of the headers and the killer front suspension...and just think of the weight saving. Why I bet we shaved at least 2.5 pounds of aluminum off this ride, maybe 3. ....LMAO!

 

See how quickly the weight comes off?! Get back on that bike.

 

Cut bread and pasta (carbs) and sugar out of my diet- lost 30lbs pretty easily... will lose another 10 when I finally stop drinking Coke.

 

That's gotta be rough for you boys from Georgia with Coke being based in Atlanta.
When I was a kid my mom put me on a diet, she replaced my whole milk with skim and instead of Coke I had to drink Tab, yuck, but, I lost a lot of weight.

 

DDDenny, it's not too bad- remember, I'm a displaced Yankee from Philly
Tried Diet Coke, but I had a bad reaction to the aspartame, so I'm slowly weaning myself off to the point where having a Coke is a once a week treat.

Next time I pop into Athens, I'll have to take a picture of the Pepsi distributor that has a nice, big Coke billboard next to it- there is no love lost between those two down here

 

When I was a ranger,my top sargent saidWe are the storm.And when we were about to do a really low level drop,he would say look around,we are a full can of whoopass.Made us feel invincible.

 

Be very careful.
There was a man from Boston
He bought himself an Austin
He had room for his ass
And a gallon of gas
The rest hung out and he LOST 'EM!

 

Well if the weight loss program doesn't work you could always adopt me. 5'10" 158 lbs soaking wet.

 

Both days this weekend I didn't go out to the shop until after lunch AND I seemed to have accomplished more in just a few hours each day than the normal morning and afternoon sessions combined. Regardless we are back to the foot boxes which have been holding me up. Originally, as shown in a couple of photos earlier, I had a couple of pieces of the 1/4" aluminum plate only on the lower sides of the foot box. I still had quite a bit of this material left. Certainly not enough to do the entire firewall but enough to do a few more key pieces.


So I made some MORE poster board patterns and cut them to fit as shown above. This pretty much takes care of any potential high impact zones if we have some kind of major catastrophe in the engine compartment. Happy with their fit I went about creating mounting tabs for the plates.


With the plates in place I held my mounting tabs exactly were they went touching both the cage and the plate. Then I marked the plate tracing the its bracket. Next I drilled mounting holes for the plate through every bracket and sat them in place on the back of the plate. I numbered each tab and placement on the plate and then marked through the hole in the tab.


Then with the correct tabs back in place we bolted them to the plate and slid the entire unit back in the car.


Since we had kept track of bolt holes and placements etc. the thing nearly popped into place with the tabs firmly against the roll cage ready to be welded.


After the tabs are welded in place we know we have perfect alignment on all the lower panels AND they can be removed should we ever need access to that area etc.

With the heavy duty side plates mounted it was simply fill in the blank around the 1" square tubing foot box frames with the thinner aluminum sheets.


As you can see I added a bit of my own flare on the upper firewall. I made it out of one piece of aluminum. But instead of being all squared off I allowed it to follow the contour of the hood all the way around. I had originally planned to place the heavy aluminum plate in the middle behind it but it was so tight under there I could not wrangle the full piece into place. So I had to cut it in the middle and install one side at a time. It did not look bad with a seem right down the middle but I figured what the heck just put the plate over the top of it and that is one less seem to deal with etc.


I was pretty happy with how we tied the top cap of the foot box and the upper firewall together. Above is the top cap in question. With everything in place I traced the curved line of the upper fire wall to both sides. Then I pop riveted tabs in place (similar style as the lower heavy plates). Then before reinstalling these top panels I gave them a 90 degree brake on the rear area (facing the dash) and in this photo the right edge. This gave these pieces some extra strength. Also leaving the flat area jutting out behind curved fire wall will be a very nice place to stow the wiring harness etc. to keep any extra lengths up and out of view from the cockpit.


Over all I am very happy with design, function and look of the foot boxes. It has been quite a bit of trial and error but I think it was worth it. The heavy aluminum sheet I used had been around for a while and had a lot of surface scratching. As you can see before I installed them I did a quick sander run on them to break it up. Personally I like it. Dad wants to take them off and polish them. We shall see.


All I have to do now is just finish the upper wings left and right. I already have them patterned out but just ran out of day light and motivation last night. This week we are going to sand the cage in that area, tape everything off and shoot it satin black. Then we are ready to drop the engine and trans back in and move on to the interior and truck sheet metal etc.

 

Man talk about total brain fade! So last night I start digging around for the AC and Shelby VIN tags etc. I can not find them anywhere. Dad says he has never seen them (and he is in charge of inventory). I have a very special "safe" place I keep stuff like that but all that is in that little tool box drawer are HAMB tags...also waiting to be applied to the Cobra.

The more I think about it I actually can not remember if I ever had one in my hand. SO! I take a quick look at my handy dandy "thread index" on page 48 (thank you very much) and sure enough, there they are or at lease photos of them on page 19.
I can tell from the photo they were not in my hand at the time of the posting or you would see my desk behind them or some other familiar location etc. So I did a quick search of my email looking for emblem, cobra, ac, VIN, tabs, etc. Several things show up but no confirmation of the missing items which according to my index would have been ordered in June. So my opinion on the subject, I started to order them but got distracted (it happens)....(a lot!). LOL!

So with no leads on the original intended supplier I searched this morning and found Finishline Products. They had all the pieces exactly as shown. So I placed an order and dinked my Paypal. I got an order confirmation from Paypal immediately and few minutes later from Finishline...standard procedure.

I sat here for a while and wondered what kind of delivery time we had or if the initial email even eluded to delivery etc. So I typed Finishline in my email search bar to have a look. What I saw was a bit confusing. I had several emails to and from Finishline and Paypal in that search....a couple this morning and then several more back in June! I opened up June Paypal email and it is a refund from Finishline. I open up the last email to Finishline and it says something like, "Taylor, I am not messing around with you anymore, expect a refund demand from Paypal!"

How in the wide world do you have a blow out with a company only 6 months earlier and then turn right around and order the exact same thing they couldn't deliver the first time. I am having some major brain fade over here!

 

So.........is this car making you crazy, or.............oh never mind.

 

at least you're not getting old, like some of us!

 

Cheer up! It will get worse.

 

Exactly. It is funny there are three other guys that I graduated high school with and we meet once a month for dinner. Last week I am sitting there looking at these guys. One guy's hair is totally white and he walks with a cane. A second one is bald and has a hard time getting around because of arthritis. The third has had a bunch of surgeries and is getting around slowly. They all have reading glasses on to read the menu. I am just laughing at how old they look and act. Personally I just don't feel anywhere near that old you know. But then I go off and do this little diddy! LMAO!

 

"DRIVING"......"Driving" me crazy! That is the phrase you are looking for James....followed by it was a very short drive anyway! You are welcome!

 

I just spent 5 minutes looking for the broom I had just used.

 

@saltflats Were you holding the broom while you were looking for it?
Yes, I've done it.

 

Care to explain your Easter Egg hunts.

Some times Salty celebrates his Birthday the Saturday before Easter Sunday, so he can hide his own eggs and have trouble finding them in the morning.

 

Speaking of lost and found (as it pertains to the Cobra). As you have seen, I started all over this past weekend on the foot box's designs etc. However those change actually transpired because I lost a custom cut and bent inner sheet metal piece. I had produced one for either side. They were about 18" long sort of an elongated isosceles triangle with the bottom and top edges broke at 90 degrees in opposite directions. Even though the shop looks like a Cessna has crashed in there, that shape should really stick out. But none-the-less there I am looking all over the place.

Dad stops working on the Windmill he is building for my Mom for Christmas (yard art but functional). We tear the shop apart looking for it but "poof" it is gone. After about 10 minutes of looking he says so what does this piece look like again. I reached over and picked up the left side piece and said just like this but bent opposite. Any guesses?




Oh well....what are you going to do?

 

Norb, I don't have to wait for the next day as you can see.

 

Worse when you are sitting at the bar, looking in the mirror at those "old guys" and suddenly realize that you are one of them.

 

Or looking in the mirror and thinking you just saw your father!

 

I think that you should tell us the location of your parts dumpster, you know just in case you forget.

 

Now that's funny.
I just came from there, fired up a 09 in a 62 SS 4 speed, even found my way home.

 

So as soon as I discovered the whole emblem/vin tag goof I emailed the guy from the earlier emails. I said heads up, I just placed an order with you (and I listed the order number from the email etc.). I said just for the record this is the exact same order that you guys totally screwed up in June and ended with PayPal informing you a payment revocation. Since that time several of my Cobra buddies (LMAO) have vouched for you and encouraged me to give you a second chance. I got a personal email from him almost immediately and this morning I received a tracking number. So maybe it all worked out for the best!

 

We spent some time in the shop over the holiday. Happy with the sheetmetal direction up front we decided to focus on the rear for change in venue. While surveying the area the first step was obviously get the fuel cell mounted. After playing around with a few ideas we decided to build an enclosure for the cell. This will clean up the look and at the same time offer us the opportunity to drop it below the floor level and find at least a small bit of trunk area.


I decided to just go ahead and assemble the fuel pump so we new exactly where everything ends up etc. So we broke out the Aeromotive stuff to have our first peak.


We played around the mounting ring and after a bit of debate decided to mount it in the middle area a few inches aft of center. Higher up in the same middle section as close as we could get to the front edge we marked for the fuel inlet neck assembly.


Then we drilled the holes being careful to keep everything aligned.


We were also careful to go back and trim the under side of all the drilled holes to make sure any plastic shavings are removed and the underside is as slick as the top. After we trimmed it I spent about 10 minutes carefully cleaning the inside with a water hose basically floating all the plastic shards out. When I was confident she was clean we air and towel dried the insides through the "relatively" and I use that term loosely....large holes.

Now the next step I would recommend finding a mechanically adept 6 year old to reach in these 3.25" holes and attempt to wrangle and push the interior mounting hubs and their studs up through the appropriate holes. If you can not find such a child then just curse and throw things like I did for about 20 minutes while you cut and scratch the holy hell of your hands and wrists...LOL!


Finally with all the mounting hardware in place we measured the tank depth, cut the supplied thick foam bladder and forced it in place. We took the same measurements and cut the spine on the fuel pump assembly, installed the pump and pickup filter, plugged it all in and dropped it in place.

I will share with you that crazy inlet neck above was a serious pain in the backside. As you can see it is opposite from the fuel system. Instead of having studs that came up through the cell it had bolts that went down through. Hind site 20/20 I would not have chosen this design except for at the time it was the only straight up 2" neck assembly I could find. First off, I could not reach it from the other hole so I after quite a bit of messing about I finally held the inner ring and rubber gasket in place (through its hole) and started a bolt in one hole with the entire neck assembly rotated off to the right. After I got that one finger tight, I carefully rotated the neck piece back around over the hole and realigned it etc. Then I carefully started a bolt on the other side now completely blind. Believe it or not, it started. As did the other bolts. The fuel cell is now totally ready to plug and play.

 

With the fuel cell and pump assembled we could now take really good measurements as far as trunk deck height etc. I decided to build the cell cage out of .75" square tubing. After confirming the tank size we double checked the area where we expected to place it. We decided to simply hang the cage and cell from the lower roll bar that circles in an inverted hoop from the main roll bar (basically outlining the trunk area). I cut two pieces of the square tubing and laid them in place from one side to the other.


We measured out approximately where they would go and sanded down the roll bars in preparation for a final weld.


After welding up the cage we placed the cross bars on it, front and rear, and marked them for center. You will notice on the side closest to you the upper cross bar is dropped down about an inch. The plan at the time was this is where the fuel lines would exit just under the trunk floor on their way north. However after test fitting the unit in place I decided having that cross bar lower limited the area to weld it to the mounting cross bar. So I cut it out and put it back at the top same as rear area.


Then we lifted the fuel cell cage up through the bottom, aligned it with the center marks on the cross bars and clamped them together. When we were happy with the alignment left to right on the cross bars we tacked it in place. This left the cage simply hanging in place sitting on the lower roll bar. We had quite a bit of play front to back and left to right for that matter. We made sure we had enough room to adjust the shocks, centered unit left to right and finally welded it in place.




We will put an aluminum floor under the fuel cell and then wrap the outside of the cage in the same aluminum sheet metal from the front. I am working on the straps across the top to secure it in place should the car get upside down. I also have a very cool two inch one way valve for the fuel neck.

And a one way valve for the vent line as well.