The Cruft Of My Brain

Last night I reached what I consider a major milestone with the Cobra.  I plugged the wiring harness’ back in after finishing the trimming.  It didn’t start on the first try but it did on the second!  Idled kind of rough but I suspect that’s because I didn’t tighten things down, like the battery terminals, and/or because I have a ground that I know I need to re-attach.  The important thing is that I didn’t remove anything I absolutely needed!

The wiring was a bit of a mental hurdle and I’m glad I’ve crested the hill with it.  I’m not done by any stretch, but I feel like I understand what most of the wiring is doing now.  At least from a fundamental sense.

Next up is hooking up the lights and making them work properly.  I’d like to verify that before I start tying the wiring into the car.  Easier to fix things while they’re draped over the frame.  I expect to have issues with the lights.

I’m excited about the possibility of actually having this thing on the road in a month or two.  It’s been a long time and I’m ready to drive it.

I’m almost done with the wire diet.  I’ve trimmed out everything except about half of the dash harness.  That one’s taking a bit longer as I’m trying to be careful not to cut something important.  All of the harness were pretty simple with the exception of the dash.  The dash hasn’t been bad so far, just more questionable items.  It’s important to not cut wires that are actually bridged inside the plug!  I’ve already found one in the dash harness that I needed to remove and retain rather than chop it.

I hope to finish up the dash harness some time in the next couple of nights.  After that I’ll move the body back to the buck, lay in the harness and make sure everything starts.  At that point the fun begins as I can start routing everything and putting it in it’s final place.  I’ll also start on the dash at that point.

Working on the car again feels good.  Although parts of the wire diet have been challenging I can see my way through it.  I feel like it’s more in my repertoire.  I can see the light at the end of the tunnel…it’s still kinda dim but it’s there!

Amazingly enough, this is not a post about how I plan on working on the cobra soon.  I’ve actually worked on it this time!  Over the weekend I tagged and removed all of the wiring, moved the body back onto the frame, set up a 4×8 sheet of plywood as a table and started stripping the front harness.

Also drove down to Stephen’s to pick up some wiring diagrams he had.  I’m not completely oriented yet, but I’m starting to understand it better.

This seems like a part I can really wrap my head around.  I’m looking forward to stripping out what I don’t need and cleaning it up real nice.  I’ll have to be careful to be methodical, but the end result should be a much cleaner, more straight forward harness.

Just with the front headlight harness I’ll be removing the fog lamps.  I was considering reusing that wire for the fan but I think I’m going to get a thermostat instead.  I’m all about eliminating failure points, such as me forgetting to flip the fan switch on because I didn’t notice the gauge reading hot!

I’ve got a lot of little things to figure out, such as where to put the battery cut off, but I’m looking forward to it.

With the weather the way it is, I’m excited about getting this thing done.  Nothing like a couple of 70+ days to make it painful to look at it sitting in the garage.

Yeah…not much to report.  The garage has been far too cold to want to work out there.  Wiring is on my short list.  About another month or two of around the house work and I hope to dig into it.

Anyway…things aren’t dead here.  Just slow moving as they’ve always been.

It’s been a while since the last post but that’s not because I haven’t been doing anything. I got the Jeep M/C and installed it. Also installed the Wilwood proportioning valve for the rear line. I had to adjust the valve once but now the brakes are much better. The fronts lock first. I think it still needs some adjustment but it’s a huge improvement.

I also got more aluminum in. I’ve had a lot of trouble with the trans tunnel side walls but it’s in. Not the prettiest thing but it should be covered up by carpet anyway.

Got some new Stewart Warner gauges with some birthday money. I’ll try to take a pic and post those soon.

Next up is diving into the wiring. Ugh.

I bled the brakes again today, and again, it feels mushy. Seems to get more so after a couple of trips up and down the driveway. I hesitant to take into into the street until I can get this resolved. Bummer.

There’s certainly other stuff I can work on, such as aluminum, wiring dash/gauges, more aluminum…

I’ve made a number of changes since last year.

I decided to go with power steering. I was a little concerned about the difficulty of turning the stock de-powered rack. I had been considering getting a remanufactured rack from Autozone. I just decided that I would try the power pump first as I still had it from the donor. Hopefully it won’t be too loud in the long run.

I mounted the Odyssey battery over the passenger footbox. I still need to trim down the rather tall posts, but it seems to fit in there nicely. I’m thinking about figuring out a way to mount the computer to the underside and tie it into the bolts from the battery tray. The passenger footbox is a little tight to begin with so it’ll be nice to get a couple of extra inches there.

I partially installed the heater. I think I’m going to take it out and weld some pipe holes in. I’d like to be able to get some heat over to me, not just the passenger.

I picked up some Street Performer seats from Rob Burton in CACC. My backside’s a bit tight but I kind of like the idea of not sliding around at all. From what I’ve read it’s going to take some tweaking to get them to fit.

After go-karting for the first time, some things have cropped up as a problem. Probably the most important thing is that the brakes felt mushy and got more mushy after just a little bit of use. I’ll have to go back and bleed them again and see if I can get them to tighten up.

The other issue is that the right front wheel is rubbing on the lower A-arm. I actually ground off a little bit of the wheel weight! I’ve been reading on ffcobra.com that some folks have had problems with this. The solutions seems to either be to install different lowers arms or to insert some sort of stop into the steering rack. I think I’ll look into the stop first but I don’t want to limit my turning radius too much.

Other than that, things ran smoothly. Engine seems to work great. Power steering is a little loud but sure is easy to turn. It wanted to run…I can’t wait to get it out and thrash it.

I’m finally building again! As of May 8th, 2005 (Mothers Day) the car is a go-kart! Woohoo!

The last year has kept me quite busy and I’ve had little time to work on it. About a year ago I had some guys come over to help try to get it on the road so I could drive it to the new house. I underestimated the time involved in moving your life, even just 10 miles down the road.

Now we’re in the new house and things are sort of starting to settle down so I’m back to working on it. Frankly, I’m sick of not being able to drive it in the nice weather. So, my hope is to have it on the road and legal in the coming months.

Oh, and Angie’s pregnant so I really need it done before September.