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End of 2022 and Crunch Time: Pt 1.
Happy New Year everyone! Among all the new year plans and work crunch I've been doing my best to get my car in shape for final assembly at Jeff's. Done quite a few things that I'm proud of. Now that I'm all cozy and warm with family on a trip to Chicago, let's catch up a bit.
Before going down to SoCal to see Jeff I made sure to squeeze in a few good days of driving. I got myself one of those cool 360 cameras on a stick to record myself driving.
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It looks down on the car from about a meter above the trunk. If you've ever played a third-person perspective racing game, that's exactly what it looks like!
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At the time I didn't have my high-back seats in yet so I wore my open-face helmet. In retrospect it was a bit overkill for a calm drive to work, but I think we all take a while to get comfortable with our machines :p Driving it to work was just a blast! People would turn their heads and smile. Kids in adjacent cars waved and passengers (even drivers at a stop light!) took pictures. I think the "obvious homemade car"-ness of the way it looked brought the inner kid out of them. It makes me happy.
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One weekend I took Olivia for a ride to a our favourite local coffee shop (Philz Coffee). About a year ago on one of our dates I rented a corvette stingray for a nice drive along the beach. She had never been in an open top car before. As we cruised down the PCH I remember telling her that "this feeling, the wind in your hair, and engine symphony, and the freedom of it all is what I'm chasing after. One day we'll drive around in a open-top car again, except it will be the car that I built myself." I never forgot that moment; and seeing her big smile (and some held back screams when I get on the gas) as the first passenger in my Mk4 made me the happiest man alive. She's been incredibly understanding and supportive of my build and I couldn't have asked for more.
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As for the seats, I eventually did put my high-back seats in. I had an issue where the shoulder section of the seats reached too far out and collided with the doors. I uncovered the seat covered, grounded down the part that was hitting the door and it fits in quite well now. I made a separate post on this topic earlier but here are some pictures in summary:
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The seat covers do a great job hiding the cut-outs I made in the seat. Eventually I plan to sculpt the seats more so they are symmetrical on both sides and then have a local upholstery shop fix-up the seat covers with brown leather. With both doors on the seat-covers lightly brush the doors. I can't imagine it doing any rubbing damage to the paint since it's such a soft cloth material.
On the first week of November SJDave and I drove to SoCal in torrential rain. California isn't used to getting much rain so I must have prayed to some rain god in my sleep. SJDave did a tremendous job wrapping the car in 3 layers of covers and just about used every bungee cord he had and we took off early in the morning. Perhaps it's due to the rain that the highways were relatively clear of any traffic. Other than 2 gas-station stops we were zooming down I-5 the whole time. By the time we arrived at Jeff's shop the covers on the car were soaked but the car itself was fine. I didn't have much time or dry-fingers to take pictures, but I did get one of Dave and Jeff in Jeff's shop. Within the few hours we were there we took the body off and Jeff got straight to it. You could tell that the man had it down to a science! Not a single wasted movement. I was really cool watching Jeff do his magic.
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We called it a day late in the afternoon and got some BBQ dinner at a local restaurant near our hotel. The next day Jeff had the chassis ready to be taken back. The rain didn't get any lighter, and our covers didn't look like they were going to be enough. The electrical components behind the dash also got rained on while we were loading the car onto the bed and that got me REALLY paranoid since none of that was done with water resistance in mind. Looking back I'm actually glad that happened because the car fired right up after a few days of drying back at home. No watermarks, no shorts, all good! If this didn't happen I'd probably be paranoid about it the first time I get caught in the rain, but now I have a bit more trust in my electrical work. Haha!
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End of 2022 and Crunch Time: Pt 2 - Colour and Glovebox
Remember how I spent forever deciding on the paint colour? Well I've both good and bad news on that. Although both lucky I suppose.
I found a guy at work who owned a BMW M4 Competition in that exact paint colour and asked if I could meet up with him to take a closer look. Had a fun talk with the guy and boy will I say the paint looks great... on an M4. We took the car onto the roof of our parking garage and the green turned from this deep hollow green into fantasy unicorn candy green. I just can't imagine painting my cobra in that colour. Again, it looks amazing on the M4, but imaging my cobra in that colour makes me... idk man I just can't do it. I cobra I want to build is a classic roadster on the exterior.
So back on the search I went. Dealership to dealership I asked to see their green cars and I ended up settling on the Mercedes Emerald Green Metallic. Some of the other colours on my shortlist were the Mini British Racing Green and Porsche Jet Green Metallic. Mini's BRG was a little too GREEN for me. Porsche's JGM was a bit too muted. The Mercedes EGM felt just right. That's the paint I asked Jeff to put on my cobra and I cannot wait to see it.
Now onto the glovebox. I'll admit I didn't really do much planning for the glove-box compartment. In the beginning I wasn't even planning to have a functioning glovebox... perhaps a door there but have it open to some wires or fuse panel for maintenance purposes. I finished all the vehicle electrical work without needing that area at all, so now I have a bunch of space to fill. I'm not planning to add a heater to the car, so glovebox it is.
The popular glovebox approach seems to be making a tub and then glue that tub to the dashboard. Since I have the entire underside of the dashboard supported by aluminum panel I decided to wall off a section behind the dashboard and use that as glovebox space instead. I transferred the cardboard mockup to an aluminum panel and used 2 1/8 screws and nuts to attach it to a hinge.
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I countersunk the screw-head side of the panel and after tightening the nut down with a dab of red loctite I ground down the screw head some more to make it flatter. I'm going to cover it with foam-backed upholstery fabric anyway. To cover the edges of the folded upholstery fabric I used sheets of plastic to sandwich the edges. It effectively forms a groove for the upholstery edges to fit into; invisible after it's covered up. It's finished off with black rustoleum spray-paint. I made sure to cover up the fabric parts so it doesn't get paint on it.
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You can still tell where the screw heads are on the fully covered side if you really try in the right lighting. I don't think anyone's gonna notice ;)
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End of 2022 and Crunch Time: Pt. 3 - Glovebox hinge
Next is the hinge. I thought it would be easy to find the hinge I'm looking for, but after scouring the internet I just couldn't find it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough? Anyway I decided to make my own. I took a left-over piece of aluminum and bent it into shape with my press-brakes. Some bending here some hammer there... eventually I got it down to the shape I wanted.
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This is the part of the hinge that reaches above the pivot point, through the opening to grab onto the lid. To make it swivel I cut up a piece of piano hinge and riveted it together. After spray painting the curvy part black of course. :p
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The hinge attaches to the dashboard using rivets through the dashboard. RIVETS THROUGH THE DASHBOARD!?!? Yes. By the time I had to make that decision I had already decided to re-cover my dashboard with brown leather material. Brown is pairs better with green, don'cha think? The idea is the cut X shapes where I'll rivet the hinge, peel back the black FFR provided dashboard material, rivet, and let the black dash material cover it up again. It only looks ugly but there will be no visible bumps in the material after I cover it with another layer of material.
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Looking back at the work I did I'm really impressed with how well the hinge worked. Haha.
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End of 2022 and Crunch Time: Pt. 4 - New(ish) Dash
At this moment I fully reflect John Ibele's sentiment that every virus known to man seems to be flying around everywhere you go. Unfortunately I caught one of the bigger ones and the past few days have been a living hell. Looks like my body's beating COVID pretty good now, so let's keep talking cars. I wish everyone else here good health and a strong immune system.
I started having this "new dash" idea very early on in my build when I saw JohnK's gorgeous dashboard. I really loved his comp-dash layout and dash material. The FFR provided material looked pretty good from 5 feet away but up close it looked like a sheet of plastic. Fast forward to the day I put the body onto the chassis I found myself not hating the street-dash layout that much. After driving it around in go-kart mode I did appreciate that the speedo was right in-front of me so I decided to keep it. However with the body on the rolled edge that sits above the dash was about 1/2" above the top of my actual dashboard. Wisdom from the forum said to let the body "cook" under the sun for a while and maybe it will fit on but after a few weeks it didn't fix it by much. Here's what it looked like when I had the body fitted at Jeff's shop, you can see the dash mounting tabs through the gap. Not a pretty sight.
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It was also at that point when I thought about matching the interior of the car with the exterior paint. Like I mentioned in previous posts, brown and green look so good together! Something like this:
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I had both the aesthetic and technical reasons to change my dash so I wasn't gonna pass up on this opportunity. I looked around and ordered a rich soft PU-leather upholstery material. Because there's already the FFR material on the dash I didn't have to buy the foam-lined material as I can just put it on top of what's already there. The lessons I learned from doing the dash for the first time were also carried over. I made sure to not cut the holes too big (cuz they curve into the dash) and use a sharper and finer crafting knife to do the work.
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I also attached a L-beam to the back of the dash to make it wobble less. The normal switches are not a problem but the push and pull motion of the light switch makes it look flimsy during operation. With the L-beam bracing the dash it's much more solid now.
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The trimmed boundaries of where the glovebox meets the dash to give it a recessed area. With the new material covering the top it looks well integrated.
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I borrowed SJDave's label maker and pressed out embossed labels for the switches. I know some of y'all are in the "less things on my dash" camp. I learned that I'm the opposite. I think they look neat. I had 2 switches left over from the FFR kit so I decided to add a bit of fun (and dare I say personality) to my cobra. To the right of the gauges I installed the switches without connecting them to anything and labeled them "airbags" and "trac. control". One day a passenger's gonna ask about them and I'll tell them "oh yeah sorry the airbags were an extra option so I didn't get it with the car". When Olivia plays around with the traction control button I'll tell her "Aww don't go around turning me on and off like that". :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
The results were much better than I expected. Honestly things turning out better than I expected seems to be a common trend. Maybe I just have low expectations?
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End of 2022 and Crunch Time: Pt. 5 - Carpet
It's time to say goodbye to the bare aluminum interior. Time for carpet!
My research into carpet gave me the following impressions:
1. FFR carpet is cheap and flimsy
2. Bound the edge of the carpet for a cool look.
To test this out I test fitted all the carpet pieces by sticking them onto the chassis with duct tape. I get what y'all mean by the carpet being really easy to rip and all but it wasn't as bad as I expected. If anything it made it really easy to cut when needed haha. Every piece of carpet was slightly oversized for me as expected, but they all bound quite well to the shape they're supposed to be. As for binding the edges I think the carpet does a good enough job hiding the seams. There will be places where carpet edges are exposed on outward corners and I'll put bindings there, but for inward corners I'll leave them as is.
I followed Jeff Kleiner's advice and sprayed all the corners where carpet will meet with black spray paint.
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For adhesive I tried 3M Super77 but it grabs way too fast. Many suggested to get something that lets the carpet wiggle and move around before curing. Silicone did that, but silicone does "grab" at all; especially when you work on vertical pieces. I ended up using the loctite powergrab construction adhesive instead. It grabs immediately but with enough force it lets the carpet slowly slide in the direction I need it to go. I also used a trick I learned from another build thread (sorry I forgot which one) where a beam was used to press in and hold the tight corners with small pieces.
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I bought a separate roll of black carpet to pad out the glove compartment.
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There's still some carpeting left to do, but I can't do those until I get the body on.
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Last few items before body install at Jeff's
Some misc updates. There aren't many TODO items on the "before body install" list now.
Here are some close up pictures of the glovebox and dash. I put the inertia switch inside to the right.
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I added some trunk lights to help me see in the dark (item from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084LDCWKZ):
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Last but not least I got some ARP bolts and tall brass nuts for my exhaust. The smaller 12-point head offers many more options during install/uninstall and the tall brass nuts are much easier to grab. This setup has more thread contact as well.
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At this point I'm looking through the build manuals and other build threads trying to see if there's anything else I can do. If anyone sees anything please let me know!
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Sneak in some work before the body goes back on?
Spoke with Jeff over the phone to confirm that my latest estimate for body pick-up is late Feb. Just a few weeks away! I'm also both sad and honoured that I'm one of Jeff's last 5 cobras as he will not be taking anymore work. To think that I'd be lucky enough to become a part of the MillerCustoms legacy is an honour. I'm sure I'll be telling stories about Jeff and his cobras decades from now.
Last week I hit the 200 mile mark on my odometer. Can't keep me out of this thing! While I still had my January temp permit I made sure to clock in a few good hours of driving so I can inspect the car to catch anything before the body goes back on. I put the car on jacks and inspected the entire vehicle from drivetrain to suspension to electrical connections. Only 2 things stood out. The jam nuts of my IRS UCA were a little loose on both driver and passenger sides. Luckily multiple jam nuts were in that assembly so nothing really moved. That jam nut is one of the few nuts I expected to come loose as I've yet to align the car. I plan to put loctite on it after I align the car at a good alignment shop. The lower radiator hose had a few drops of coolant leaking out. When I saw that I realized that I never further tightened the clamps after initial install. The heat-cycling probably moved a few things and sure enough the clamps were easily hand-tightened. Other than that all's good!
I had a few ideas for things to do before the body goes on but I shot most of them down. The first one was front-mounted pusher fans. I do love the look, but in the end I decided that I'd be adding it just for looks alone and that a clean radiator look isn't too bad either.
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JohnK's recent post showcased a remote-battery-terminal for easy charging which I thought was really smart. Right now there's a ton of room for me to reach down into the battery holder but when the body goes on that will get much harder. I wouldn't want to lean in and risk scratching the paint or something like that. Then I realized that I had my panel-mounted alternator fuse on my driver side firewall that was easily accessible and it had a big fat direct connection to the battery. I could just use one of the posts on the fuse instead.
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I've been reading up on radiator protection too. Some recommend the nomex honeycomb protecting while others recommend a screen at the nose opening instead. I can't seem to decide which one I prefer so I'll leave that for later. This isn't something I absolutely have to do before going back to Jeff.
There are two issues I do actually want to solve though. The first one is windshield rattles. Mike Forte's brackets allow quick and easy detachment of the windshield, but I do find the windshield posts rattling in the bracket when I go over a harsh bump. It sounds like the whole thing's gonna fall apart. I've checked with both JohnK and SJDave and the verdict seems to be that once I drill and install the release pin and have the windshield trim rest on the car body the rattles will be much less noticeable. On this matter I've decided to wait it out and see. If the rattles DO still bother me then I can tap and secure the windshield posts with half inch bolts, the same way FFR manual shows. Mike forte's brackets will still serve to hold the windshield in place while I secure it in place. It's function will not be annulled.
Last thing is foam on the side of the car. JohnK's build thread shows these large form blocks that were cut to shape for the body and I really like that idea. I'll be doing the same. I'm really happy to have a builder like John right in front of me in terms of build progress. Haha!
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Going to Jeff this weekend!
Got a text from Jeff this morning that pretty much killed all my productivity for the day:
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The plan is the pick it up this Saturday. Tow the chassis down on a flatbed and tow the whole shebang back the same way. Can't wrap the paint or anything because it's still fresh, but Jeff did make a good point that the car's gonna get rock chips one way or another, so that's ok.
Time to dig through my boxes to make sure I have all the exterior components. I haven't assembled the door latches yet, so I'll need to do that too. I remember seeing a post from somewhere about modding the door latches to make it smoother. I'll have to find that one again.
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Sealing the driver-side footbox.
Today I sealed up the driver-side footbox, the last piece of core chassis-aluminum to install. I spent a while looking through all the connections to ensure I didn't leave anything unfinished. I made sure that the fuse-box unbolts and moves out of the way enough to secure the windshield posts too. With the seats in place it's really hard to reach far into the footbox but with the seats removed it's not actually that hard.
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I won't be putting the seats back on until I get back from Jeff's. The seats will just get in the way of body mounting and I won't need to drive it anyway.
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Now that I'll have the body back by this weekend I called BAR today and scheduled my smog appointment for next Friday at the Livermore smog station. If time will allow it I'm gonna drive straight to the DMV after smog to pick up my license plates. I'm INCREDIBLY EXCITED.
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Long trip, sleep deprived, and loving every minute of it.
No rain this time! We towed the chassis down to Temecula without any coverings on it; a whole day's trip. We stopped by Willow Ranch just off of Highway 58 and I-5 for lunch. The food was delicious! Checked into our inn to prepare for an early Saturday morning at Jeff's but I couldn't sleep one bit! My mind was simply too excited to see the body in person.
Showed up at Jeff's at 7am to see the shop already open. The body was in the side shop waiting to be put on. Without direct light the body looks black, but walk around up close and you'll find the deep green revealing itself. It's magical.
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The paint wasn't the only exciting news though. I'm happy to report to everyone here that Jose's back at the shop! I was super happy to see him recovering well with cancer treatment. Jeff looked noticable more energetic too! The two got to work right away and the body was on in no time. I tried to help out but Jeff insisted that there wasn't much room for that. If you watch them do their thing you'll think the same. The whole process is down to a science and as efficient as it could be.
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We spent a lot of time on the new Mk4 door latches. It was Jeff's first time working with those and James' door striker extension plates were used on both sides. Would have taken much longer if it wasn't for those plates. We got the doors to close and latch correctly then called it at day. The strikers still needed work, but that's something I could do at home and we had to hit to road if we want to be home before midnight.
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We towed the car back on the same flatbed. We didn't have an enclosed trailer, but Jeff specifically cautioned against covering or wrapping the car since the paint was still relatively fresh. He said the car will get rock chips as I drive it around anyway so I might as well get the first one over with... I agreed to that. In the end we only had one tiny chip on the side of the rear fender!
