Projects DRAG SNAKE "Vintage Terror!"

So just to explain the roll bar a bit since it is hard when you are posting via phone app etc. But here is the deal. The roll cage hoop fits down through the body so if you want to take the body off, it has to be removable. So if you remember from earlier, we took a 12" tall 1.50" OD stubs and welded them in place on the chassis and then slid the 1.75" roll bar down over them. That should actually be pretty strong but just to make sure here is we finished it....


You can not see the roll bar now because we took a couple pieces of the heavy duty chassis rectangular tubing and cut one of the short sides out of it. We slid it in place over roll bar. We welded it in place and strengthened it left to right with a cross member. From the cross member right at the upright we placed the two down bars into the trunk and as seen above, the two down bars on the outsides of the cockpit.


As you can see, from the front side, the rectangular support pieces have holes in them. 4 each 3/8" from top to bottom.


Those holes go through the 3/8 thick upright support, the slip on roll bar and the internal roll cage stub. After the final assembly both sides will get grade 8 bolts all the way through. We have two more bars to ad on the rear that run from the upper portion of this support into the trunk. That gives us a 9 point roll cage, one more point than required by the NHRA to run down to 9.99....

 

Since she is now totally standing on her own we had planned to roll the Cobra out Sunday night and take some photos but Dad and I were just too tired to put the wheels back on....sad really. LOL!

However among the other exploits this past weekend we also got all the hinges: doors, hood and trunk lid welded together and ready to install.


Not sure why they didn't come complete in the first place, I guess not having those little three hole plates welded to the end of the hinges saved me a bunch of cash....! To make sure all of them including the dual style door sets (not shown) were welded on straight and true, we created a jig on the welding table and tried as neatly as possible to weld a less than 1/8" plate to a 1/4" wall tube with out warping it etc. Oh now I know why they didn't weld them. LOL!

 

It is funny looking through the last few photos of the cage and chassis etc. Before I started I looked at lots of photos of original and after market frames etc. I even told Dad they all look way to busy and bulky, surely we can clean that process up a bit. Now just look at what we have created. Some wild ass, bars and running all over the place chassis. LMAO! Oh well just goes to show no matter how hard you try to reinvent the wheel, it will still likely be round!

 

Is it looking like a snake pit?

 

That is an understatement James.

So I am pretty excited tonight as I believe I have solved my hardtop hinging issue. The issue being finding a hinge! I hate to say it by I have been fairly consumed with the process of hinging that roof since I first said it out loud. I have built several single prototype pieces but the bottom line was two downfalls. One, they would have to go on the outside and be readily seen. And two the way I was thinking there would only be one right in the middle of the rear deck area up against the top.

The whole visible aspect was not that big of a deal as even the rough home made hinges had a very clean look. The single hinge however became my real concern. Not so much the stability of the roof when it was up but more over after it was down, without some kind of fancy latch work back there, that single hinge would be the only roof mount point aft of the windshield.

I looked at about every hinge you can imagine over the past couple of weeks and then out of the blue it hit me. A good old fashion two point hood hinge is what I really need. That way I mount them not only on either side but on the inside of the cockpit. But they could not be huge and they could not have an assist spring as it would inevitably be too strong and fight trying to close it. So I Goggled hood hinges and chased a couple to have a close look. Both ended up being on Ebay. So while I was there I searched for hood hinges and it came back with about 1000 pages of them.

So I just started rolling through them. I didn't know exactly what I wanted but it was certainly easy to spot the ones I did not need! After about 10 pages worth of Honda Accord, Toyota Prius and about every import hinge set you can imagine between them, I spotted these:




They are very compact. They articulate up and back nicely and best yet, when I took a look at what car they were meant for it said FORD! Bing! .....alright so they are for a Fiesta, but that is still FOMOCO baby! LMAO!

So I am pretty excited as they will be here for the weekend endeavors. I think tucked in there in the rear pillar area and painted black no one will even know they are there until I pop the top! LOL This solve all the issues and I can't wait to get started on them.

 

I would have thought about the hinges that they use to make the doors open like a Lambo.
Price and size might not have been very user friendly.

 

When I was looking at the recent chassis pics, I was thinking that it was a good thing you had a glass body to keep the weight down.

 

She is kicking my ass today! But one of the doors is just about on and I am just about happy with it...lol

Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Don't let it hit you in the BUTT

 

You know it seems like a pretty straight forward process but like everything else on the ground up project it takes about half million small tweeks to get it right.

Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Fitting doors on a New glass body can be frustrating. Everything is adjustable. You can adjust the door to fit the opening or adjust the body to fit the door. You can cut things to make it fit. You can add more glass to make it fit. A lot of choices to make.

 

That NHRA tech sticker is as much about protecting the guy in the other lane as well as you. Think about that when your at the line.

 

So the guy in the other lane better have one too,

 

So it all ended badly yesterday...LOL. After fighting for several hours trimming and making tiny little adjustments left, right, up, down, out, in and some directions likely not even covered in graduate school geometry, the stupid passenger side inner door skin is in place and opens and closes as expected. After such a long bout with the crazy outfit there was no way we were taking on the driver's side (simply not enough patience nor tools left to throw in the shop! LOL). Soooooo......

We decided since we still had some daylight, to take on an easy one, the trunk lid. I mean it is pretty straight forward right. Just put the hoop hinges in place, mount and lift. Riiggghhttttt....

We did just that and bang, the trunk would not open. The back edge of the trunk inner skin would not clear the rear body/trunk drip rail or what ever you call it. We tried several adjustments that were all unsuccessful. So again with very little left laying around to throw, or at least something that would offer some real satisfaction when it hit the wall, we simply gave up left the shop with our tails tucked.

This is what makes this project such a pain in the backside. You see the body is identical to an original slab side car, as are the doors, trunk and hood etc. All I have available to me are "kit" car parts when it comes to the hinges and hardware etc. I have no idea where they mounted their hinges to the doors (whether it be wide spaced or narrow etc.). I have no idea how or where they mounted their hinges to the chassis. So all we did was weld the hinges and base plates together (as was obvious) and then we mounted the hoop style hinges to the trunk door in the area where it was obvious on my trunk they went. We dropped the trimmed out inner trunk skin in place and the hinges just naturally roll back and under the body. It all seems very straight forward. I welded yet another roll bar in place to span across from the roll cage drops that run into the trunk. We put it in a place where it would be easy to mount the hinges etc. We mounted the hinges and opened the trunk. Nope. It will not open. It is very difficult on the car to figure out exactly how or what changes are necessary as even the smallest change requires removing everything and re-tacking it or putting a spacer in etc. etc. etc.

So after giving up, going in and cooling down a bit. I took out the one tool that always seems to help....Photoshop! I recreated the hinges to scale and then placed them in a trunk situation as close as possible to the real world application. Then after confirming (in the top illustration/animation below) the Photoshop hinges would provide the same crappy results on screen as the set welded in the trunk of the Cobra, I began to play. I moved them around, tried different angles and placements etc. What I finally discovered was something very simple on the screen (looking directly across at them) but virtually impossible to see laying on your back in the shop staring up at them. The pivot point or circle on the hinge were it rotates, has to be pretty high. In fact for all things to clear, that rotation point has to be at least level with the plain it is moving or lifting in not higher.



I can also see from the animation that we will have to cut a couple of notches in the lip area of the body that drops down into the trunk for clearance.

 

In a faint voice, barely heard, he whispers........lift off trunk lid.

 

My mother always said if my head wasn't fastened on I would loose it. I can't even imagine what would happen to my trunk lid! LMAO. Trust me though...it is a conversation we had yesterday....and may have again very soon!

 

Before going too much farther on the roll cage... You should get a NHRA tech inspector to look at your design. Not too sure they are going to like the slip in main hoop. Best to find out now than when you have a finished car being inspected.

 

Tool that always seems to help. I thought you were going to say the BFH.

 

A lot of those sports cars had hinges mounted on the outside of the body with the pivot point right at the edge of the opening. Just a thought, but I think you would find that the closer to the edge of the opening you can mount the pivot the better it will work. Try it with your Photoshop trick and it should show the advantage.

 

I threw every BFH I could lay my hands on this weekend...they all made a BFH in the wall....LMAO!

 

I feel your pain Randall I to ran out wrenches to throw I was really beginning to hate my mighty hemi then I walked way took a break and boom it happened the planets aligned and all went together be patient and it will happen


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

You put a small block Chevy back in.....LMAO!.....still laughing!

 

No Randal I want to go fast so I am currently installing the all mighty mopar if I wanted to go slow I would have put a "gulp" a ford in it hell its almost sacrilege just saying the word lmao


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

LOL...Man that Cobra can launch...there is a You Tube video out there that the photo was taken from it was published by National No Prep Racing Association. Here is a quick clip from it of just the launch. Thanks @elroy, I get what you are saying.

 

A couple more for inspiration and motivation.

 

...by the way, the hood hinges for the roof as mentioned last week were a total bust. Back to the drawing board!

 

There were from a ford so naturally I assumed they wouldn't fit lmfao. Too soon ? Lol


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Would hinges like the ones you were using on the trunk also solve the hardtop problem?

 

I am considering something similar but coming off the top of the roll bar.

Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Can you just use some exploding bolt and a chute.