Anyone ever build a Cobra kit car? (1 Viewer)

[Todd Hochard]

It is just a long ass rod and the angle is pretty wacked.

Actually, the longer the rod, the better. It's the shorter rods, combined with long strokes, that get you into trouble. To use your 305 example- going .030" over and stuffing a 400 crank (3.75" stroke) into the 305 (normally a 3.48" stroke- the same as a 350), will give you around 331cu in (from memory- I might be off). The engine would live longer, and rev better, if you went up from the stock 400 5.565" rods, to the 5.7" rods (from a 350) or, better yet, to 6.0" rods. The max rod angle(when the crank is perpendicular to the bore) is reduced by the longer rod. Also, the increased dwell time of the piston at TDC with the longer rod builds peak cylinder pressure better, actually creating a bit more horsepower. The trouble with using really long rods is interfering with the bottom of the bore, and finding the right pistons with high piston pin points.
But, that's what you meant.
The object of my next engine will be to concentrate on lightening the reciprocating mass. The engine will rev faster, and that gives it a more snappy/explosive feel. Plus, higher RPM capability. It may end up in my Z28 (see my web page), if I can't find the $$$/time for the Cobra.
Todd

 

[Jeff Savage]

Ok ok I suppose I should have said that in a conventional 302 based 347 motor the longer than stock rods combined with the offset ground 351 crank produce rod angles that require notching the cylinder wall and will wear out your rings and bearings much quicker than a stock combination
That is all I have to say about that

 

[Todd Hochard]

Just so long as you understand that longer rods reduce rod angles, not raise it.
The Ford Windsor motors have very short rods, anyway. IIRC, the 302s are only 5.19". That's produces a pretty steep rod angle, stock.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
How about my lack of sidepipes idea?

 

[Bill Catherall]

I like the look of the sidepipes. Is there really that much danger in getting burned? Isn't there some kind of insulated sheet around the pipes (or an air gap created by a sheet) to prevent that from happening?

 

[Matt Stryker]

The sidepipes also put a tremendous amount of noise on either side of the car, causing envy and eventually causing others to build Cobra kit cars.

I've been next to a real 427 Cobra twice, and the sound is nothing short of wonderful. I had a friend in HS who had a CJ5 with side pipes, and never had much of a problem; you just have to be mindful when wearing shorts.

What were you thinking for paint? The classic blue/white racing stripes is hard to beat.

 

[Todd Hochard]

Is there really that much danger in getting burned?

In my experience, yes. I don't worry about me (sort of a- I put them there, if I forget, I'm an idiot), I'm mainly concerned for wife and/or kid(s). That's why I think I might skip them.
The 289 Cobras had pipes out the back, so for safety, I may go with that.
AND- horror of horrors- I was thinking of going with emissions, too (including cats). It's no longer cool to drive the "Pig Pen" of cars. My '80Z28 is devoid of emissions controls, and it has always bugged me. Going back to them is basically out, without re-doing the entire engine and exhaust (I bought the car like this 12 years ago). With a fuel-injected, later-model engine, it would be easy to do. In fact, Everett-Morrison sells sidepipes with cats built in!
For color, I also thought the basic blue/white stripe combo is the best. Combined with 17" Halibrand wheels, it would be a sweet road car.
Also, the EM car with Vette suspension pulled 1.01g!! on the skidpad, so the thing will handle, as well.
I'm beginning to get the urge to take a trip to their factory this weekend.
Todd

 

[Jeff Savage]

Humm side pipes....well if you are concerned about the saftey then go with the 289 look. You can still make it plenty loud enough. Maybe even use dumps if you can fit them in with the CATS. Personally for the amount of time I would drive the car and that I know I could get it registered as a 1967 car (please don't ask) I am not woried about emissions. I figure 4 hours of driving time every couple of weeks will not kill the
Some other classic cobra colors would be BRG/white stripes, yellow/black stripes, or silver/black stripes. Being a chevy guy you would probably like chevy orange with black stripes

 

[Bill Catherall]

What suffers when you install emissions, cats? Is it the horsepower, the sound?
For colors I like this paint job. Or even this one.

 

[Todd Hochard]

I suppose you could say that horsepower suffers a bit, but late model cats have so little restriction, that the loss is negligible. We're talking

 

[Brad_V]

The guy I know with the Superformance Cobra I think wears earplugs on long drives. It's just too freakin' loud. Heck, I blew out the muffler on my Eagle Talon, and the 3" exhaust on that gets to me after 20 minutes. Loud exhaust can be fun for a weekend car, but it gets tiresome.

For engines, "true to original" be damned, I think a stock-ish-size small-block would be great for most applications. Going extreme with the stroker kit makes for early wear and not that much extra power. Shouldn't need forced-induction with something as light as a Cobra kit (unless you're a power freak). My next project is looking to be a 500hp Porsche 944 or 911 for a sunny-weather daily-driver, and the hp goal should be accomplished just fine with a worked-over Chevy LS1 engine or similar. And a Cobra kit will certainly weigh less than a Porsche.

 

[Brad_V]

The guy I know with the Superformance Cobra I think wears earplugs on long drives. It's just too freakin' loud. Heck, I blew out the muffler on my Eagle Talon, and the 3" exhaust on that gets to me after 20 minutes. Loud exhaust can be fun for a weekend car, but it gets tiresome.

For engines, "true to original" be damned, I think a stock-ish-size small-block would be great for most applications. Going extreme with the stroker kit makes for early wear and not that much extra power. Shouldn't need forced-induction with something as light as a Cobra kit (unless you're a power freak). My next project is looking to be a 500hp Porsche 944 or 911 for a sunny-weather daily-driver, and the hp goal should be accomplished just fine with a worked-over Chevy LS1 engine or similar. And a Cobra kit will certainly weigh less than a Porsche.

 

[Shawn Shultzaberger]

The sidepipes also put a tremendous amount of noise on either side of the car, causing envy and eventually causing others to build Cobra kit cars.

Yup. That's what got me started.
This past Wednesday I was on my way to work in the morning and caught a glimpse of a red Cobra about 10 cars in front of me. I open up all my windows and start the climb to the front of the pack just so I can hear him. I'm about 4 cars away and then he jumps on it, takes off like a rocket and shoots to the offramp. I was so, so mad. I really wanted to hear one again.
As I do more research I think that a 351 pumping 400hp would be just fine in this light of a car. Figuring on a weight of 2200lbs that equates to somewhere near 5.5lbs per hp. Not bad at all. You won't need a ton of torque to get it rolling so you can move the peaks up the RPM band just a bit to get more HP and TQ. And 400hp shouldn't cost more than $5k of off the shelf parts.

 

[Mary M S]

Dear Shawn,

Coast High Performance makes a 347 stroker kit where the piston pin and oil ring do not interfere with each other and the rod angle aspect ratio is supposed to be superior.
You still need to notch the block for the connecting rod bolt to clear.

Better oil control and touted to be a 100K mile daily motor.

 

[AjayM]

I'm not big on the Ferrari kit cars, although that one and the older 365GTS kits look pretty damn good. But one of the biggest thrills in driving a Ferrari is the sound it makes, silly as that sounds, but having a car that looks almost identical to a Ferrari, but sounds like a small block V8 just wouldn't cut it for me.

Anyone know what the rules are on badging? I assume that as an owner, I could badge it like the real thing if I wanted, so long as I wasn't trying to commit some sort of fraud. Can the builder badge it for me?

Ferrari has shut down every kit builder, and I'm actually suprised those guys are still in business (I've seen that same ad for a couple of years now). As to badging, I doubt the company will officially badge it for you, meaning it's probably not on the option sheet anywhere. Now I'm sure if you bought the badges and sent them to the company along with some money, they'd be happy to do it.

As to Cobra thing, go with the sidepipes, the car just doesn't look right without them. As to performance, in a car that light I wouldn't worry to much about the differences between a 302 and a 347/350/351. They will be very small, the Factory Five test car with a fairly stock Mustang 5.0 engine still ran 0-60 in under 5 seconds I believe and is plenty fast through the rest for any kind of street driving (may not be as impressive on the 1/4 track).

Going to a big block 427/428 would be killer though, but just about everybody that drives them is scared of them, way to much hp/torque to be truly fun to drive, but if you can get used to the power I would worry about any weight penalties of the big block. The suspension used in most of the kits is fairly old-school type stuff (especially when you have a big torque monster motor), so the handling won't be the best around, but on a race track with a big block you'll make up far more ground by being a rocket car when leaving the corners and down the straights rather than being the car that can go an extra 15% faster around a corner. Also if you have a big budget, you can drop some of the weight penalty by going to an aluminum block and heads (or just the heads), plus you can get back to a good weight distribution if you put a little ballast at the back of the car (the couple hundred pounds of extra weight will be easily offset by the additional power).

Just my thoughts....

Andrew

 

[Jeremy Illingworth]

How about non Cobra kit cars? I've been thinking about upgrading the POS Ford I drive to something newer but then thought why not just build a kit car with a modern drive train? Classic looks with modern reliability. I'm relatively capable (I've done motor swaping, painting) and would probably go with a small crate engine. Any ULRs that sell repro bodies and frames?

jeremy

 

[Todd Hochard]

The trouble with driving a kit car like the Cobra everyday is the safety. These things are essentially death traps, and don't require anything like rollover protection via the A-frame, no rollbars required, no sidebar reinforcement in the doors, etc.
So, while it will be fun to drive, and I will drive it more than most, as a commuter, I don't know. I'm not concerned with my driving skill- just the goofball in the 6000lb Excursion, talking on his cellphone, who ran the red light, with me in the intersection. (I saw that happen just last week- poor little Sentra.)
As to Buzz's question- I would NEVER put factory badging on a kit car (that wasn't sanctioned/tolerated by the original, like the Cobra replicas are by Shelby). Like Ajay said, Ferrari is about the looks- it's about the sound. And THAT can't be duplicated, leaving you looking like a poseur of the highest order. Just my opinion, of course.
Todd

 

[AjayM]

That doesn't bother me too much with a $50k price tag and performance that outdoes the original car. I'm sure anyone who knows anything about the cars would spot right away that it's a fake...starting with the fact that the real vehicle would cost in excess of a million. If people didn't know, oh well. I wouldn't be buying / driving for them, but for me. As far as buying the real thing...perhaps I'll win that Powerball someday, but even at an upper middle-class income level, I couldn't spend what would be required for a real Ferarri and the maintenance, nor could I drive it to work each day. Well, I could, but I'd have to move the family into a cardboard box to afford it.

It's funny how people have accepted Cobra kit cars for the most part, yet most people don't like the Ferrari/Lambo kits. I think it's mostly due to how bad most of the kits look, on the Ferrari side I can only think of about 3 different kits that actually look good (the link above, the 365GTS-Daytonas, and some older Dino's), with Lambo's there are good kits and bad ones, pretty much any kit that is built on it's own chassis and maintains correct dimensions usually looks pretty good.

Anyways, the idea of Ferrari costs is usually far overblown and not really well understood. You can pick up the highly popular 308 cars (Magnum PI) for price's ranging from as low as $20k to the lower/mid $30's if you look around enough, and that buys you a decent car that has records, etc. You can pick up Mondial coupes and some convertibles for the same price range, 308GT4's are very attractive price wise I've seen them in the high teens and very rarely over $30k. Cost of service isn't horrible (well compared to modern everyday cars it is), the 308's were very popular if you are a DIY type guy you can do a lot of the service yourself on the car. But the 15k and 30k services are the biggies, a 15k service should cost around $2000 if you just need the service. If you don't drive the car everywhere you go you could drag those costs out a couple/three years.

It's certainly not cheap, but it's not something for the ultra-wealthy either. As to performance, well the older cars don't compare to even modern cheaper muscle cars, a 70's to 82/83 308 will get outrun by a well driven new Mustang GT, throw some turns into the mix though and things turn around pretty quickly. The 84/85 cars are much better and a bit quicker (but will still get shown up by a Camaro/Firebird).

Andrew

 

[Shawn Shultzaberger]

Coast High Performance makes a 347 stroker kit where the piston pin and oil ring do not interfere with each other and the rod angle aspect ratio is supposed to be superior.

Thanks Mary. I was originally going to do that very same thing but had heard somewhere that there was oiling or overheating problems with a 347 kit. Therefore I quickly gave up that plan. But if someone has these problems solved then I might look back into it. One thing that is key to me is having a car that handles well. The less weight I have in the front the better. Do you think the 347 would weigh more or less than a properly built 351?

 

[Mary M S]

Shawn,
I HAVE to fess up, these answers are coming from my husband, Trent, - who has spent a few hours looking up Cobra Kit cars, He can't decide what he wants yet. (We are thinking on a new C5 for him or a major redo of something great and old, or a Kit...)
I learned a bit, having to visit him (if I want his company) when he decides to live in the 'shop'. But this is beyond me. He says..
"The 347 has an oil ring & piston pin in the same location, CHP moves the oil ring above the wrist pin, so theres no conflict with oiling. As far as overheating I have seen several around here and no one's had the overheating problem.
A well-built 347 will spank a 351 any day. For example look at all the 5HO mustangs. The 302 based motor is set up for roller cam, which gives you a better performing motor with less friction and higher revs.
You can get a brand new 302 block out of the box for $299.
Not to mention the lower pricing on all the other parts for a 302 based motor, which are easy to find.
The weight is almost negligible, the 351 has a taller deck height, (which means a little more weight on a bare block).
We built a 302 for a 68 Mustang, with a B cam, the air gap intake, the Demon carburetor, total seal piston rings and a windage tray. Mildly ported the heads which gave us a combo that will beat most 5H0's. We did look into a 347 for it, but after building this up there was no need for any more power."
typed by herself,...his secretary