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My cure for boredom, Mk5 build : small update, harness install
So, here I am, at the age of 56 about to start a very challenging project. I've always had many hobbies, most involving something motorized. I started snowmobiling in the 80's, had muscle cars, got into the street racing scene, then go fast boats, dirt bikes, ATV's and some other things to take up my time and burn through my money. Around 7 years ago, I found I was losing interest in many of the things I loved to do...for no reason, it kind of bummed me out. Then we moved during covid, and for the next couple of years we spent time dialing in the house. After that...I found myself bored a lot of the time. I was missing something fulfilling and challenging to do...and I'm done with house stuff, no more remodeling things, I just never found any kind of enjoyment in that stuff.
So, a couple of years ago I ran across some Youtube videos of some RCR GT40's and some Factory Five build videos. During the summer , I enjoy attending cars and coffee events in my '91 GMC Syclone, and saw a few Cobra replicas in person. Then I found out about the Great Lakes Cobra club and met up with them a couple of times and asked a lot of questions and met some individuals that have their build threads on this site, and then countless hours researching here, and then I made the decision to build one myself. It took some time, I had to sell my snowmobiles, finish up some house projects, etc....which ended up working in my favor. In that time period, the Mk5 was released.
I pulled the trigger in December and the kit was delivered Tuesday. Nothing good comes without a challenge and we gave Mark from Cunningham quiet the challenge for this delivery. The day of he calls me and says that he is at the entrance to my subdivision and he doesn't really want to enter it. When I say subdivision, its not the typical type....we are all on 2 to 5 acre lots, the road is hilly and winds through, with ditches on each side, and it was snow covered. Luckily I'm close to the entrance, which is still an 1/8th of a mile or so. So, after some discussion we get him to do a three point turn on a two lane main road and back into the sub as far as he would comfortably. We had a couple of pickups to load all the boxes in, and I used my quad to pull the car/chassis through the snow and up my 220' long driveway. At least it was a sunny day, and it was a balmy 10 degrees out.
So now for the fun part. I went with a complete kit, IRS, Wilwoods, manual brakes, power steering, carbon fiber dash, vintage gauges, over riders, visors, wind wings, and dual roll bars. The plan is to go with a complete engine package from Prestige, 500hp 347, Holley Terminator, multi port injection, TKX, midshift kit, with GasN headers with 1 3/4" tubes, thinking about sending them to Header Shield to get wrapped. -20 AN fittings and coolant hoses. No heat or A/C , heated seats, black Alcantara interior with dark brown leather seats , shift boot, parking brake boot, black Alcantara door cards with dark brown leather pockets, maybe carbon fiber inserts , if they match the dash. I might have the roll bar bezels, shifter, parking brake, front aluminum splitter and side louvers hydrodipped to look like carbon fiber, again, if they somewhat match the dash. I'm going with the Tilton MC's right off, hydraulic twin disk clutch, and I'm really leaning towards AN fittings for the brake lines. Breeze fan shroud, with larger fan. Howe ball joints, Moog tie rod ends. Aeromotive fuel pump, hanger and regulator, with PTFE lines.
The exterior, I went through a few different phases, a couple I've shared the renderings here. First one was Aston Martin sage green, with brown interior, single full with roll bar, carbon fiber hood scoop, and offset stripe in grigio silverstone. Then changed it to Cadillac CTS-V blaze orange, black interior, and the rest the same as the green one.
Now, I've decided to go with Ferrari grigio silverstone, no stripe, no hood scoop, dual roll bars (undecided on color) , dark brown and black interior. All aluminum panels (many additions from forum member Snakebite) will be powder coated Prismatic powders "hilltop silver", misc brackets "black chrome II", Lizard Skin sound and heat on the entire underside of body, and misc panels that make sense. Wheels will be non traditional custom billet 18" from VFC Performance, polished lips, machined centers with Falken Azenis RT660 tires.
Sorry, that was long and I'm sure I missed some stuff. I don't plan on rushing through this build, and am planning on around two years. Feel free to provide some feedback, it is always welcomed.
