Front axle sub assembly.

With all the bits of the front axle either cleaned and painted or new parts purchased I started to assembly the upper wishbones.

The new powerflex bushes went in first and all the parts were laid out ready to go. That's new nuts, bolts, washers, camber shimms and ball joints.

Following the jag workshop manual I put it all together and wound up with:

Now as it says in all the best manuals, LHS shown, RHS similar. So repeat the operation for the other side!

The lower wishbones were much easier with just the bushes to press in place.

The upright assembly started by installing the lower ball joints, don't do as I did and shear off one of the bolts, Much swearing later Id drilled out the bolt and obtained a new one, luckily it all went together OK.

The stub axles went back in OK and finished off with the water defector.

The old workbench is a bit untidy there, must tidy up a bit.

New wheel studs went into the hubs next, after battling with them in my vice I bit the bullet and purchased a press. Id resisted doing this earlier in the project to save money but wished I had no as the studs went in in moments. The press also came into place when fitting the bearings and I'm sure it will find many other uses.

With the hubs now fitted with new bearings I assembled the new EBC vented, dimpled brake discs to the hubs.

Next the hubs were dropped onto the stub axles and the retaining nut put place to keep everything where it should be. The hubs were then filled with grease before the brake calipers were fitted with new bolts and washers.


To complete the assembly the new GD steering arms were fitted with the modified brake pipe brackets. Job done!

Publish

GD visit June 2006.

On the 1st June 2006 my wife and I visited GD to have a look round and take a test ride. For me the day was really just to confirm that I was making the right decision, check that I could fit into the GD and of course to actually place the order.

We arrived as Andy was having his lunch but we were made immediately welcome and offered a cup of coffee (don’t go to GD just for the coffee not saying its bad, Im not saying its good either!). We had a good look around the workshop at the various chassis in different stages of construction and also I had a good look over a GD427 MKIV that had just been completed.


This sorted one of the questions I had, a MKIV its going to be.

After this Andy took me out for a test ride, well what can I say, it was an experience I shall not forget in a while. The car appeared to handle incredibly well, I say appeared because you can only judge so much from the passengers seat. At no point during the drive did the car feel out of shape, and it wasn’t because it was being driven slowly! Andy obviously knows his car and knows what it can do, and is not afraid to show it off. I can honestly say I’ve never been more scared or felt more secure in a vehicle.

Going up to GD had another unexpected benefit, my wife has always struggled to understand the whole Cobra thing. Quite understandably to her its just a car and she couldn’t get excited about it.

Anyway after the test ride I managed to persuade my wife to take a ride as well, all the way up to GD she had said she wasn’t interested in going out for a drive. But with a little bit of persuasion she agreed.

Its here that Andy shows he’s a salesman as well as an engineer, on my test drive it was raw power and lots of acceleration, the conversation was technical, all about power and handling etc. On my wifes drive he drove a bit more sedate and there was talk about days out, going for picnics etc. Well whatever he did it worked and she came back not only smiling but professing to finally get what it was all about. More importantly she agreed to hand over the cheque book, which had been given to her before our arrival as a kind of safe guard against impulsive buying!

So after a bit more chat I committed to an order of GD427 Jag based chassis. Delivery chosen by me to be the beginning of September.

We drove away with me a very happy man.

Engine part 5. Rotating assembly.

Engine balancing.
I neglected to mention that whilst the block was away at South Cerney I also had the rotating assembly balanced at Bassett Down Balancing. Again this company came to me by recommendation.

The crank, rods, flywheel, flywheel bolts, pistons, balancer and one each of the main and rod bearings all went off to Bassett Down. Here I again felt the pain of not buying bits in the correct manner. The crank turned out to be for a 50oz balance whereas the flywheel and balancer were for 28oz. So to sum up a lot of machining work was done to bring it all to 50oz balance, lots of work unfortunately meant lots of money. I now really wish I had purchased a complete rotating assembly as a kit.

Back to engine assembly.

I turned my attention to completing the rotating assembly. The rods I had purchased were for press fit pins, a money saving tip would have been to buy floating pin rods so that I could have fitted the pistons myself. Instead I paid South Cerney to fit the pistons onto the rods for me.

Rings
The rings required gapping so I shelled out for a ring grinder from Summit.

Well worth the money but now surplus to requirements. May go on ebay once the motors up and running!

A good tip here is to get a ring board setup, basically 16 screws in a piece of board number 1 – 8 twice. The top and second rings then go on these once gapped correctly. This way, as each ring is gapped to a particular cylinder, it is easy to keep them organised. However don’t do what I did and get confused as to which cylinder is #1!

Each ring was placed into its cylinder and the gap measured, the KB115 piston’s are Hypereutectic and as such run a higher temperature in the cylinder. This causes the top ring to expand and, if not gapped correctly they will but up against each other causing the top ring land to break.

KB state the top ring gap should be 0.0065” for each 1” of bore so 4.030x0.0065 gave me 0.026” of gap, which looks like this:

With the rings gapped and hung on the board I was ready to start fitting them to the pistons. Again each piston was numbered 1-8 and the associated ring set applied for that piston.

The oil rings went on first, first the lower oil ring then the expander and then the top oil ring, the expander has two small pieces of coloured plastic in the end sections to prevent the ring from overlapping itself, when fitted correctly it should look like this.

Next comes the 2nd rings and then the top rings, each of the top rings was identified by a chamfer to the inner edge of the ring and must be placed on the piston the correct way up, a helpful dot etched into the ring tells you which way up.

With all eight pistons ready to install it was time to go for it and fill the cylinders up. Here again I thought it best to get the best tool for the job so I purchased a 4.030 diameter fixed ring compressor from Real Steel. This tool is sized exactly to the bore and has a reducing inner diameter from top to bottom. As the tool is flat bottomed it fits flush to the deck surface, so as long as you keep the tool pressed down the piston should just slide right in, in theory!

Well the theory was good and actually in practice not much different, the only issue I found was that the slope of the engine on the stand caused the rod to slide on the piston pin to the back face of the piston. This then caused the big end to foul on the crank as the piston was tapped home. Not a problem if you are working as a pair but with only two hands it was not possible to hold the rod away from the crank counterweight at the same time as tapping the piston and holding the compressor against the block.

I solved the problem by lifting the rear of the engine stand up so it was level, the rods no long slid and all was well.

Each piston was loaded and the cap loosely fitted, within a relatively short space of time the last piston was going in.

Engine Part 4 - Stick with me!

Now I was ready to start building up, with the block off of the stand and stood up on its rear face I readied the cam for installation. After wiping the cam bearings down with brake cleaner and paper towel, use paper as other materials will leave fibres that won’t break down in the oil, I also wiped over the cam bearings and the cam lobes. I installed the timing gear to help with the install and applied a liberal coating of Edelbrocks supplied cam lube.

The cam was then easily lowered into the block and the thrust plate bolted down using the correct short headed bolts and Locktite thread locker.

After the cam the engine went back on the stand and it was time to get the main bearing in. Again much cleaning of the block and new bearings and in they went.

After the bearings the crank was cleaned down and trial fitted to check main bearing clearances. Using Plastigauge I obtained clearance within the range I was looking for.

With clearances confirmed I could lube up the crank and rest it in for the final time, main caps on and the new ARP main bolts torqued down to the required value. This was a bit of a job as each bolt was taken to torque and released 4 times before finally torquing up.

More to follow.....

Engine Part 3.

Continuing the history. so far we are still in 2005!

The block came back from the machine shop looking like new.

I could start work on getting it clean. Here I set aside a morning and armed with air powered degreaser spray, hot pressure washer and a set of engine cleaning brushes I carried out the dreaded cleaning job. It amazing how much muck there was in there from the machining process.

With the block cleaned it was time to start putting in the bits that had to go back before painting it. These were the core plugs, oil gallery plugs and cam plug, all of which went in easily with a little Permatex black.

Now to paint it, I had decided to use POR15 engine enamel but to be perfectly honest the amount of work involved in using the complete system made me opt for VHT engine enamel in a spray can.

I masked up the decks, front cover area and sump area...

and applied 4 coats of enamel.

I also did the front cover and water pump which all in all required 2 cans, thanks to US Automotive for sending out can No.2 so quickly! The finished results I am very happy with.

Well thats a mamoth entry, thats all for tonight!

Engine Part 2.

Did I mention that whilst this was going on I was also managing the build of a brand new purpose built garage designed to build the car in, nothing like doing things the easy way!

The engine now sat for 6 agonising months whilst the garage and surrounding works were finished and I made what I consider to be my next hasty decision. I got itchy feet and went out and brought a Jag rear axle from John Gordon’s in Accrington. Logic would have said concentrate on the engine but I had no direction with that yet and 6 months had allowed some cash to build up and start burning a hole in my bank account! Back to the engine!

Finally with the garage completed and kitted out I was able to get the engine up on the stand and begin stripping away the years so to speak. First off were all the rocker arms and out with the pushrods, the first and then the second head came away.

Things looked a bit ugly but I was happy to see the bores in good condition measuring out at standard 4.00, with only one showing a strange mark on the side.

I continued stripping stuff out until finally the bare block was left albeit with a hefty coating of sludge and old gaskets. Nothing for it but to get a set of gasket scrappers and start cleaning.

The block was now ready for machining so off to South Cerney Engineering Ltd in South Cerney we went, South Cerney chemically cleaned, decked to 8.2”, bored/honed to suit my 0.30” over KB115s and installed my new cam bearings. This was not cheap but their work is worth paying for, also every other shop I phoned locally to me said “a Ford what, is that a Pinto?” When delivering my block there were 3 302’s, 2 289’s and a couple of 351’s sat waiting to be collected, all of which were for a single customer who builds race engines, therefore I got the impression that Cerney knew what they were doing with the Ford block.

Running Gear - Front Axles.

My front axles were sourced from The Jag Shed in Swindon, I started by removing the road springs to get to this stage.


From here it didn't take too long to take them all apart although copious use of WD40, a breaker bar and the impact wrench were required. I'm really glad I got a compressor with a 50L tank.

Unfortunately at this time I was more interested in taking things apart than I was in documenting the process, so virtually no photographs exist of the destruction.

I can show a brake caliper though.

But that's about it!!

Needless to say I wound up with lots of bits and an equally large box of scrap that wasn't needed.

What you end up with is a shelf of bits like this.


All the good bits were thoroughly degreased in my wife parents old bath (handy them renovating at this exact time!) gave the wife a laugh!


And then they were sent to a local firm in Chiseldon for shot blasting.

Once cleaned I painted the bits with POR15, this involves 4 stages.

1) Degrease and clean with POR15 Marine Clean.
2) Surface etch the metal with POR15 Marine Clean.
3) Paint POR15 in Silver.
4) Paint with POR15 Engine Enamel in Red.

Stage 4 is optional but the POR15 is not UV stable unless covered in and top coat, I chose red to be different from everyone else who has black or silver. Plus I like red!

Heres the first batch of parts after stage 4.

All ready to start putting the front axles together, thats for another night!!

The engine Part1

Well I decided to build the engine first as it was something I could get on with whilst I saved up for the chassis.

What to fit, well it had to be a V8, when it comes to a Cobra you just have to ask WHY? when faced with 4, 6 or 12 pot power plants, like strawberry jam in an omelette,(see Gary Rohdes) ITS NOT RIGHT!!! So with that cleared up I looked at the usual suspects of Rover and the Yank V8’s, I started off small deciding on 3.5 RV8 with a stock rebuild and possible LPG conversion but this time I managed to control my desire for power and decided eventually on the Ford 302.

With the engine type sorted I researched many options for the rebuild including buying a turnkey, but thanks to a big mortgage my entire Cobra build is being completed on a £200 a month budget allocation, so I either waited a couple of years to buy a turnkey or I got stuck in and learnt how to do it myself. I went for DIY. Step one, buy a copy of Tom Monroes “How to rebuild small block Fords”. Here comes my first potential howler, I purchased my crank and rods before I had a block finalised! I ordered a CAT crank and Eagle SIR5090FP rods from www.fastengineparts.com. Now although this may have been hasty I got the crank, rods, ARP head bolts plus a full gasket kit for less than I could have purchased the rods for in the UK so I figured I did OK.

Next I set about sourcing the base block for the rebuild I approached, so after a few conversations to Brian at Henwick garage in Worcester I was the happy owner of a 1971 302 long block on standard bores.