Projects DRAG SNAKE "Vintage Terror!"

Wow just Wow! Thanks for the update.

 

It is a good question. Over the past several days I have had a few laughs at how much effort we have put into something that has absolutely no performance value. And if we were just building a "race car" there would be no question as it is always about horsepower to weight ratio. However we are not simply building a race car. We are building a tribute to a vintage race car. Not only that...but a tribute to a fairly rare race car. Not a lot of people had the opportunity to see one in action and I am looking forward to giving folks that experience.

Now I know we have already taken a few liberties with our chassis, rear suspension and induction etc. but all of those things are extremely well hidden. And to be honest, the rear end and rear suspension is nothing that could not have been found in 1964 and probably a logical step for these cars had they stayed around in the drag racing arena more than just a couple of seasons. For the few of the Cobras that I have seen that "really" took the next step up in the sports car drag racing world (AA/SP) the rear end would have been the first issue addressed.

But the goal from the beginning was to replicate the look as close as possible. To create a tribute that could transport you back to 1964. I completely understand that there are only a handful of folks out there that will look at all the work this week and appreciate the effort. In fact, the way the spring is actually mounted above the shock it will make a few of that handful do a double take. LOL! However 95% plus will simply look at it and have to ask. But that is an opportunity to educate them on the originals and that is all part of the experience.

Besides all that, this is more than a race car. Don't get me wrong, it is going to run! I think it will more than do justice to its ground breaking counterparts. But after racing hit hard, it could and will hit the highway. It is as much a show car as a drag car and will do its share of custom car shows and cruise-ins etc.

 

Just thinking out loud, I wouldn't weld the spring bracket in. Don't want to weld yourself into a corner.
Looks like it could make working on it or removing the engine a pain in the back side.

 

Oh trust me it is not welded. The only mounting bolts on that thing are the original looking U-bolts up top. It is funny, normally they would be mounting the spring to the chassis. However in this case, they are only mounting that small "chassis" addition to the spring. It is cut and trimmed perfectly to simply sit on the actual chassis. If you pull the two bolts in the spring ends (which slide in and out like butter) the entire package just lifts right up and out, spring, triangular apparatus and all!

 

So we are getting closer. We have a couple of "WTF" moments to correct and then we are finally back on track for the front end alignment and first drive. First off, WAY BACK when we were assembling the front end for whatever reason at the time (maybe no reason at all) we slid the lower "A" arm mounting bolt in from the rear, leaving the nut and left over bolt etc. hanging out of the front of the car. Now, those nuts and bolts are simply all up in the boots from the rack and pinion unit. If it was just the bolt heads there I don't think they would even touch them. But because those are big ass nuts, they will soon destroy the boots sliding back and forth across them.

AND what should be a simple knock the bolts out and spin them around procedure is complicated because the radiator is in the way. So we have to cut lower radiator mount area off, swap out the bolts and then weld it back in place. Since we are cutting it anyway, I have decided to drop the radiator a half inch or so. This will give us even more clearance up top for the new expansion tank which fits, but is very tight.

 

So the radiator mount would need to be cut any time the bolts are removed?

 

Good call. We are going to make the lower portion of the radiator bracket bolt in place this time. So just in case...knock on wood...it will be much easier to remove the lower "A" arm bolts. However, hopefully this will be the last time we have to lay hands on those stupid things! LOL

 

Probably not going to get much done this weekend. We have the Hot Rod Holidays Car Show this weekend including the 6th Annual Drag Racers Reunion Hall of Fame Inductions this weekend. Usually a pretty good car show and then Saturday night is the Reunion. All happening in the Expo at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds in Springfield, MO. If you are in the area, drop in say hello. We will be hanging with Dad's coupe somewhere in the mix.

 

With the advent of the new (and more correct) style of expansion tank, the upper hose will now run directly from the thermostat housing to the upper radiator inlet. If you remember I built the current housing because I could not find a straight one that would work. But now that thing is simply going to cause me an extra 90 in the radiator hose. So I searched around and found this 90 degree housing.

It is a FOMOCO part so that is cool. Hopefully this will relegate the radiator hose to simply one with one 90 it and straight on both ends etc. Plus if I want I can run a thermostat in it. I was not sure if the one I built would work with one, I simply had a flow reducer in there. At least now I have some options.

 

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Friday morning we hit the shop, still fighting off the Tryptophan effects from the day before. LOL I put the car on stands, removed the front wheels, took the rack and pinion off, slipped the radiator out and took a saws-all to its lower mount. Then I took the nuts off the lower "A" arm bolts. I placed the floor jack under one of the lower shock mounts and gave it a pump or two. I was testing the bolt, tapping it with a hammer, looking for a position with the least amount of resistance on the bolt. After finding it, I took a steel rod just about the same diameter as the bolt and used it to carefully drive the bolt out. When I had it out and the rod in its place, I took the bolt and drove the rod out. We made quick work of reversing both the bolts in question and turned our attention to the radiator mount.


I laid under the front for a while staring up at the chopped off mount deciding how to create some way of bolting the bottom half back to it. I created four angle pieces by cutting down some square tubing with the plasma cutter. We drilled two holes in the bottom pieces and then welded them to the mount. We held the upper piece in place, marked it, drilled it and bolted it to the lower etc. Then slid the whole thing back in place to test fit. The plan was to weld the upper angle piece to the bracket.


If you remember, we had also decided to drop the radiator .75" or so as well. After we had clamped it back in, leveled and sure of our fitment, we marked it and removed it again to clean it up etc.


Early on in the build, I toyed with the idea of running a valance and shoveling a bit more air up towards the radiator. At the time I was wondering if the rather small mouth grill opening would generate enough air flow etc. However at the time, we had already fabricated the radiator mount and had it in place. Now with the thing sitting on the work table it seemed a perfect opportunity to address it again.

The material we used is a 3/8" thick black PVC that came out of a new bass boat fishing well. They use them as dividers but most guys do not like them as they are more of a pain than anything else. However they seem to make handy aerodynamic features for Cobras! LOL


The PVC was fairly easy to shape so I cut it to fit and rounded the corners, basically for aesthetics. Then we painted it all and clamped it back in place ready for final welds etc.


Since we had it off and the hinges exposed we decided to see if we could put some finishing adjustments to the hood. After placing a washer under the rear of the mounts we dropped it back in place and poof, it fit nearly perfectly.


We are headed back out Saturday with the goals of getting the fan installed, the upper radiator mount adapted to the new lower location, the expansion tank installed and all the hose ran.

 

I like the valence idea, and it looks like an air dam, which cobras can benefit from aerodynamically.

Cobras often have a problem with getting the hot air out of the engine bay, this is why the later cars had gills and some had vents on the hood. Someone did a test on an FFR and determined that air gets pushed out of the hood scoop at speed. They taped a piece of string to the underside of the scoop and at a certain speed it got pushed out.


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This morning I reinstalled the rack and we set about figuring out a way to mount our new expansion tank. After several ideas that actually went well past the contemplation stages before finding their way to the garage floor we finally came upon a plan that actually worked. We removed our "vintage look" spring and chassis aparatus and attached the tank mounting bracket. Then we cleaned it all up and painted it. The spring got the satin black and the aparatus got the undercoat to match the rest of the real chassis etc.


Looks pretty good for a 60 year old spring! That is the tank bracket there sticking up behind it.


In the close up above you can see it is sort of a "T" shaped bracket. The cross bar is split for the bead in the tank. After the paint dries both sides of the "T" get a 1/2" ID rubber hose. The tank will sit on them and also rest on the rubber bumpers below on the spring shackle mount. It will be strapped down right there.


And below, there she sets all strapped in place.


If you were looking close above you might have notice my new thermostat cover is MIA. Well it arrived and as advertised it was a 90 degree unit. Something I failed to notice on it was the placement of the bypass tube in conjunction with the neck direction. Had I been paying attention I would have known before I ordered it that stupid thing was 90 degrees alright, but pointing straight up! LMAO!

I sent that crazy thing back today and hit the autoparts store looking for a correct sized hose with a 90 degree in it to splice in place.


That hose is a real beauty "ain't" she...but this was actually the second attempt today. As I mentioned above I spent some time in the back room of the auto parts store looking for just the right hose. After checking everyone of them I narrowed it down to two and took the one that, although it was not a perfect 90, it had the length I needed to get to the radiator. I came back to the shop, laid in place and marked it at the radiator with a sharpie. I then snagged the tin snips and cut the line. However, after installing it on the radiator inlet, I found it was now too short (more than an inch)! You know the old adage, I cut it twice and it's still too short!!!

Anyway I went over and picked up the piece I cut off and sure enough there was my mark still on the throw away section. But I know I cut it on the line. I think it already had a mark on it from someone else and I cut there line instead of mine. At least that is my story and I am sticking to it!

Needless to say it is now laying in pile of parts on the shelf marked unuseable and unreturnable etc. LMAO! I kicked around a few other ideas for a bit including doing a hard line with a 90 etc. But in the end opted to go back and get my second choice of hoses at the store. However when I went to the back to snag it, the one pictured above was just hanging there in the middle all by itself. I have no idea how I could have missed it the first time around. Suffice to say it was dead nuts perfect. I didn't even cut either end. I simply installed it as shown. Oh well...happy accidents I suppose!


I am very happy with how it went back together. Tomorrow I am going to work on getting it all plumbed correctly and ready to roll. I am looking for cool hose clamps. Not having much luck around here though.


We also got the fan reinstalled on the radiator so maybe tomorrow I can figure out how to wire it back up!

 

I was wondering how that housing was going to work......that is a FI housing, designed to clear the huge front accessory drive brackets. My 5.0 uses the same housing, hose goes straight up......figured it would go straight up into your hood!

 

Well I went out after work tonight and removed the transverse spring and aparatus. We changed out the upper "A" arm bolts as planned several weeks ago.



Basically we removed anything that might get in the way of the alignment shop. We are finally headed there first thing in the a.m.

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Well here is something you don't see around here very often.


The Cobra rolling out of the trailer for someone else to work on it.


I think I am at the right place though. Anyone with an awning like this must be into fast Fords!


Speaking of fast Fords there is one of shop owner Don Irwin's wheel standing ponies right there. I figure if anyone can make a Ford go straight, Don is the man!





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That Mustang look like a bank robbers car, " It was red with white stripes or was it white with red stripes "

 

I know! That is sort of his signature. Super cool! AND FAST!

 

Randall, I saw somewhere here on the hamb, where a guy put black heat shrink on the regular hose clamps and turned the screws down under the hose where they weren’t noticeable! He had pics, looked real kool. Didn’t know it you caught that thread. Might try that? Excellent work, by the way!










Bones

 

Don Erwin's shop... cool.

I grew up between Willard and Walnut Grove, and Don and his Mustang is a big part of my hot rodding memory from that time. He's probably forgotten more about setting up drag cars than I'll ever know. Good choice for an alignment shop!

 

A few updates from the weekend so far. We have a lot loose ends to try and complete. The first one is getting the side exhaust pieces off and the crankcase evac system hardware welded in place.




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Also we had to do a bit of a rework on the remote oil filter. If you remember the lines came straight out of the adapter, wrapped around the frame rail...


...and back under the car to the filter plate.


I was not exactly excited about the wrap over but we were very limited with where we could mount the thing under the car.

Yesterday we were getting ready to install a filter on it and refill the car with another round of fresh Pengrade break-in oil. I was making sure all the fittings were tight when I noticed the adapter on the engine block was loose. It only needed a slight turn to be snug but the length of the lines would not allow it. As soon as I released the adapter the stress on the lines simply unscrewed it again! What a pain in the backside!

The only issue is all the AN fittings and the braided lines were from the recycle shelf. After throwing a temper fit for a bit I finally settled down to analyze the issue. If we even had an chance of using these lines we would need a set of 90 degree fittings.

I opened the top drawer of the old tool box (which is sort of like a big kitchen junk drawer) and believe it or not, there were two brand new 90 degree fittings buried in there!



With them in place we simply flipped the filter holder north and south and the lines fit as though they were custom made for the application!


And the cool part...no more wrapping around the frame et .

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What, You thought we keep all that junk in the tool boxes for nothin??? lol Larry

 

Dad got the valve covers back down tight.


We got the car back up in the air ready to bleed the brakes and clutch. We also got the 9 inch lubed up finally.


We got the transverse spring and apparatus back in place. Check out @Bones suggestion of heat wrap on the hose clamps.


I think I like it!

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You can buy heat shrink clamps for the hose as well and it’s eliminates the screw clamp all together gates makes them and they are available in all kinds of sizes I wouldn’t use them on both ends but for the spot in the middle it would be real nice


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I'm sure this has been covered awhile back, but what body manufacturer did you acquire yours from? I appreciate your faithfulness to the hot rod ingenuity that was necessary for these cars to be the best.

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Body came from a HAMB member. He only builds a couple per year. Very accurate body from molds he cast off an original slab side car. He does not advertise. However if you are interested I can get you hooked up with him. Shoot me a private message.

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Thank you. I will.

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So I have been playing around this week with color combinations on the blue. I really love the blue metallic these photos really do not do the color justice. But anyway I have been playing around with the Drag Snake Text on the graphic (rear quarters) and the large Cobra Text down the sides. Trying to get a color for them that looks good on the blue etc.

Bronze

Dark Blue

Gray (same color as the snake's hood)

Dark Yellow (probably the closest to what the original cars were...just a bit darker)

Orange - good complimentary color according to my color wheel...LOL

Purple (Not a fan but it doesn't look bad just not very period looking etc.)

Silver Leaf

Gold Leaf (florentine) ...very traditional

Engine Turn (not a fan in this particular application)

Honestly, I was not even thinking about it when I started, but after seeing the Gold Leaf (and of course the graphic does not do it justice) I am really kind of leaning the way! Thought? Anyone, anyone, Bueller! LOL

 

I really like both the bronze and the gold leaf!