DuPuis Family Cobra Build

[Ted]

Spent a little more time in the garage this evening after the kids went to bed, and I got the last of the hard lines completed. So now I'm going through and riveting on the clamps to hold the lines in place. Once that's done, I'll need to go through and tighten all the fittings. So, hopefully get that done tomorrow, along with riveting some more panels. I'm at the point where there are a good number that I can do, and then the car will be prepped for the engine and transmission installation.

 

[UngaWunga]

I remember using a spray on gasket adhesive as well ... and my memory sounds like @Zeldman's ... something like 'copper tack' seems to jingle a little bell way back in the recesses ... might have been Permatex?

https://www.amazon.com/Permatex-80697-Gasket-Hi-Temp-Adhesive/dp/B000HBNUDQ

 

[Ted]

Spent a couple hours this afternoon in the garage. I got the clamps for the brake lines riveted on other than the line from the master cylinder to the front brakes. That needs a bit more tweaking and as it’s the shortest line I’m going to wait until the fittings show up.

Then I got the passenger foot box riveted together, which needs to be done before the drivetrain can go in.

Next was the firewall. I made a mistake there as that’s also when I rivet the box for the heater core and AC evaporator. There are two rows of rivets for the firewall and one of them gets used in the riveting of the box. I thought it was the top row but should have double checked - it was the bottom. Now I have a row of rivets to drill out, oops.

But “Rosie the Riveter” helped.

 

[tmyers]

Did you order the deep floor box for the pax side of the car?

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[EppyGA]

That's some assistant you have Ted.

 

[Ted]

Did you order the deep floor box for the pax side of the car?

I did not. Really anything hanging below the frame rails is just asking for damage in my opinion. The car is pretty low to the ground, wouldn’t want to hit a speed bump and scrape my floor pan.

 

[Fiveslide]

Have you broken it to the kids they may not even be able to ride in the Cobra until they are older, because of child safety seat laws? My son would scream his little head off and curse the IIHS and state legislature.

 

[tmyers]

I did not. Really anything hanging below the frame rails is just asking for damage in my opinion. The car is pretty low to the ground, wouldn’t want to hit a speed bump and scrape my floor pan.

I mistakenly thought it was deeper in the horizontal plane. I agree with the danger of the floor pan being below the protection of the frame.

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[Ted]

Have you broken it to the kids they may not even be able to ride in the Cobra until they are older, because of child safety seat laws? My son would scream his little head off and curse the IIHS and state legislature.

There are no airbags, so as long as we can put a car seat in the front (which we'll work out), they can ride. The girls will be a bit harder, but frankly at <5 I think the "wind in their hair" will be more scary and sensory overload than enjoyable, other than for a quick run down the block for which it doesn't matter so much.

But they are enjoying the build. I'm being careful not to push them to work on it when they don't want to, and trying to make sure I also am not being taken away from time with them to work on it. Yesterday they wanted to play games inside and so we did that in the morning, got some good quality dad/kiddo time. Then after we'd had a lot of good family time they wanted to play on iPads, which I thought was fine as we'd been active, so then I went to work on it, and Beatrix came in and wanted to help after a bit. Balance. Want to make sure their memories of this are all positive.

I mistakenly thought it was deeper in the horizontal plane. I agree with the danger of the floor pan being below the protection of the frame.

It's interesting to me how many people will buy those recessed floor pans given the likelihood of physical damage to them, but to each his own.

 

[tmyers]

Not to mention the potential for physical damage to the feet resting on them!

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[Ted]

Laurie gets back home tomorrow, and so my time working on the Cobra for this week is coming to a close. If I get some time in the garage tonight I might start playing around some with the fuel lines, or else try to finish up the intake manifold grinding. I also saw from looking at it that I probably am going to have to grind a bit off the top of the inner manifold studs as they stand just a bit too tall and will interfere.

Laurie is the one person in the family who hasn't actually done any work on the Cobra yet. Not intentionally, just how things have worked. While she's home we'll be ready to bleed the brakes and put the wheels on with the new lug nuts. I'll probably pull it off the jack stands as well. Exciting.

 

[tmyers]

Getting close to go kart stage

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[Ted]

Getting close to go kart stage

It's close to a roller, but go kart is still a little ways away. I think that by the end of the month I'll have the drivetrain installed. However to then make it a go kart from there will also require installation of the full electrical system, which I haven't even started and am not going to start on until after the drivetrain is installed and hooked up for fuel lines, etc. etc.

@TangoWhiskey asked on Facebook if I was going to live stream the first start, and I said I wasn't sure yet. Then continuing down the discussion chain I pointed out that the first start will have to be on a weekend since I'll have to let the thing run for about 20-30 minutes to break in the cam and also I'll have to push the thing out of the garage before, and when it doesn't start have time to curse at it and figure out why it's not working.

 

[tmyers]

I think your reaction would be the best part, but it is your car, and your you tube feed, and the rest of us will not pressure you either way. Did you all hear what I just said?

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[Ted]

I think your reaction would be the best part, but it is your car, and your you tube feed, and the rest of us will not pressure you either way. Did you all hear what I just said?

I am planning on recording it (or having someone present recording it, rather, as I plan on being in the car). I somewhat doubt I'll do the live stream, if nothing else because I fully don't expect it to start on the first try.

 

[Ted]

Today's video showing some of my updates:

 

[Ted]

I'm spending some more time thinking about the ignition system. At this point I'm pretty sure that I want to go with Ford EDIS for a few reasons:

- Technology wise, it matches what I'm doing with the engine and I think the "look" will be good - a blend of classic and modern - under the hood. EDIS came out nearly 30 years ago now so while it's newer than Cobra, it's not modern by any means
- MegaSquirt can control the timing fully, so then I don't have to mess around with weights or vacuum chambers on the distributor, and can easily change it around as I play with the motor and find out what works
- Much stronger spark allows for bigger plug gap and better firing

I'm pretty sure that I will have to make my own mounts, though, and am thinking through this some. The stock mount that Ford uses places the coil packs right in the vee, basically where the distributor would be. This is a very tall setup, which I'm worried would interfere with the hood on the Cobra. What the 4.6L engines with EDIS did (like my '92 Town Car) was have a bracket for each coil that attached at the head. Normally on a 302/351 I'd have brackets there for various engine-driven accessories, but since I'm not doing that, that's probably the best location for the coils. I'll need to think about this some more, and maybe see if I can find a local parts car to pull of what I need.

One thing I'll need to figure out, though, is the oil pump drive. Normally the distributor drives the oil pump. The 5.0s with EDIS had a "cam phaser sensor" that went in place of the distributor, but that won't work on a 351. I'll probably just need to get a distributor and put it in, and then maybe put a fake cap on so it hopefully doesn't look like what it is - a distributor that's doing nothing.

 

[Ted]

Brake master cylinder fittings arrived! I hadn’t expected this quick. So hopefully I can bench bleed the master cylinder and put it all together tonight, getting it ready to bleed.

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

Brake master cylinder fittings arrived! I hadn’t expected this quick. So hopefully I can bench bleed the master cylinder and put it all together tonight, getting it ready to bleed.

Your keyboard has to be an oily, greasy mess between your numerous projects and your play-by-play updates!

 

[Ted]

Your keyboard has to be an oily, greasy mess between your numerous projects and your play-by-play updates!

This is why I wear gloves.

Got the fittings on, master cylinder bled. Brake system is 100% assembled, just need to do the bleeding of the system. That will make the first system that can be called completed on the car! The suspension is assmebled, but I haven't (and can't) do a preliminary alignment.

 

[3393RP]

A hopefully helpful link for the EDIS conversion:

http://corner-carvers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19331&highlight=edis

 

[Hang 4]

I did a Megasquirt/EDIS conversion on my 911. Super reliable and with a slightly more aggressive cam, got better than stock results on the dyno with a 30 year old car. Best part was paying $35 for both the ignition module and a coil pack from the u-pick junkyard.

 

[Ted]

I did a Megasquirt/EDIS conversion on my 911. Super reliable and with a slightly more aggressive cam, got better than stock results on the dyno with a 30 year old car. Best part was paying $35 for both the ignition module and a coil pack from the u-pick junkyard.

I'm debating what I want to do there. Factory Motorcraft parts are the best and going to find some 4.6L V8 with EDIS-8 and pulling what I need off of it is probably the easiest way to go. I'm also generally trying to avoid used parts and there's always the "What's wrong with it now?" aspect.

 

[Hang 4]

I pulled 3 EDIS brains from a hodgepodge of Taurus and Ranger 6's. I went to an Oreilly's that had a tester and tested them. All tested good. I put the cleanest one in my car and ebay'ed the other two for a small profit. I did this about 10 years ago, sold the car about 8 years ago and am still in touch with the buyer. Still running flawlessly. I looked on Summit at coil paks and just couldn't get my head wrapped around spending 8 times as much for a "high performance" version, so junkyard for the coil too. Compared to the Bosch coil that is stock, the Ford part put out a hotter and longer spark and let me run a bigger gap. It also was a bit fun to post on the Porsche equivalent of POA and watch folks freak out about using non-Porsche parts and the horror of my Franken-car

Being able to tune it with a PC was huge. Went to a dyno shop and did a bunch of pulls with a guy who knew way more about mapping than I did and got to a fuel and ignition map that let me get great gas mileage tooling around on the highway and decent performance on the track when I laid into the happy pedal.

 

[Ted]

You have to be careful with the aftermarket coils. I put a pair of Accel coils on my Town Car for the hotter spark. The car did idle smoother than with the stock coils, at least at first. Around 6-12 months later the car developed an issue where it started fine, idled smoothly, drove fine at lower power, but it would fall on its face at any sort of higher power. Turned out the Accel coils were breaking down internally due to their poor design. MSD coils are supposedly better, but it's one of those things where Motorcraft did it best.

I'm sure there are local pick-n-pulls around, but taking the time to go grab that stuff is also low on my priority list. I'll figure it out.

 

[Ted]

Got my new timing cover from Speedmaster last night. At first glance it looked nice, but upon further inspection the machining on the mating surface to the block is pretty awful. Ridges you can feel with your finger that I’m pretty sure will cause a leak, and it’s worst around the water pump holes. I might tolerate it if it was just around the parts that seal the block. I’m going to complain and probably just get a Ford Performance one. Costs more but that whole get what you pay for thing.

 

[tmyers]

I agree that looks pretty rough.

 

[flyingbrit]

While she's home we'll be ready to bleed the brakes

After many years of begging wifey to help bleed brakes I finally got wise and bought a pressure bleeder:

https://www.motiveproducts.com/

Much quicker than pumping the brake pedal and stopping to refill the master cylinder, well worth the $100 or so. Just make sure you get the proper adapter for your master cylinder.

 

[Fiveslide]

After many years of begging wifey to help bleed brakes I finally got wise and bought a pressure bleeder:

https://www.motiveproducts.com/

Much quicker than pumping the brake pedal and stopping to refill the master cylinder, well worth the $100 or so. Just make sure you get the proper adapter for your master cylinder.

Yup. I had a late 90s Tahoe that I could not get bled properly without one of these.

 

[Ted]

After many years of begging wifey to help bleed brakes I finally got wise and bought a pressure bleeder:

https://www.motiveproducts.com/

Much quicker than pumping the brake pedal and stopping to refill the master cylinder, well worth the $100 or so. Just make sure you get the proper adapter for your master cylinder.

My wife actually enjoys helping. Pressure bleeders are nice and sometimes the only way to do the job, but not at all required in this situation. I’ll do it the old fashioned way.

 

[Ted]

My wife left for her shift today, so this evening will be back to work on the Cobra. This is also the end of summer vacation for our kids, starting their back to school period, making for earlier waking up in the morning and thus needing to go to bed earlier at night. Two weeknights will also include after school activities, which I have a feeling will make it harder to work on the Cobra those evenings. So, we'll see what that means for my progress and if that turns it into more of a weekend project rather than something I actually make progress on in the evenings.

On the positive side, as part of my home HVAC installation in my house (see my other thread) the garage now has a 15k BTU mini-split which will make working in there much, much more comfortable. See below.

I'm thinking about what I'd like to plan on doing for this week while Laurie is gone. My goal for while she was here was to bleed the brakes and put the wheels on, but we didn't get around to that. With the home air conditioning breaking and then the promise of garage air conditioning, it was hard to get motivated to do things in a hot, humid garage. When last left off I still need to grind away some material from the intake to make it fit. One more evening I think would get that completed. Also I need to put some stuff back on the shelves that I cleared off to allow for the mini-split install.

I'm at the point where I think the next bits to work on are finishing up the driver's side footbox, attaching the engine and transmission together, and putting the engine and transmission in the car. I do want to have the intake figured out before I put the engine and transmission in just because it's nice to have easier access around the engine to see and make sure it fits right. I'd really like to get the drivetrain in. That would give me a lot more floor space among other things, so maybe I'll aim for that this weekend.

One of the cool features of the mini-split is that it will use its motion sensing capabilities to figure out where I am, and point cold air specifically at my location. Its location is more or less in from of the left-most bay so it will obviously have limits on what it can do, but that will help make garage working more pleasant.

 

[tmyers]

We install hundreds of the mini split and vrf systems made by Mits, good customer support, and they made airplanes too

 

[Ted]

Spent a couple hours in the garage tonight. First thing was getting various items put back where they belonged from the mini-split installation, so now the garage is back to normal.

I figured next I'd put one of my oil pans onto the engine so that I could then get the engine off the stand, torque the flywheel on, and get the bellhousing on to get ready to measure the runout on it (should be under 0.005"). Of course, as I did that I then found something I should have already figured out - the 351W needs a different oil pan than the 302. This should've been a "Duh". The bolt pattern is identical between the two, just needs to be bigger to account for the bigger main caps and counterweights.

So, tomorrow I'll need to order the oil pan that I'm going to use. There's one that's highly recommended, fits within the frame perfectly without hanging underneath, and is baffled so that it'll handle road racing. But, need to order that.

I also need to order another timing cover since the first one I ordered was poorly machined and won't fit. They are being difficult about a return so I'm sure I'm going to have to file a complaint through PayPal/eBay/my credit card. Sigh.

I figure I can still do the other bits I'm talking about doing and get the engine and transmission in the car, but we'll see how my progress goes. The problem is that even if I order parts tomorrow, I may get them on Friday but Monday is more likely. So I'm probably just going to need to move forward on whatever other items I can move forward on. Not that there's a shortage of work, of course.

Then I was going to grind away at the intake, but my girls napped at preschool today. If they nap for even 5 minutes, they will not fall asleep until 10 PM, no way no how. So they came downstairs to help. Ok, now I can't use the angle grinder (especially to grind away at aluminum). So instead we went ahead and drilled out the rivets that I'd drilled mistakenly on the firewall and then riveted in the bird box for the HVAC, and added Dynamat to the one remaining side panel on the inside of the engine bay and riveted that in place. So some forward progress.

I'll have to think about what to work on tomorrow night. Really there's nothing that forces me to have the oil pan and timing cover on the engine prior to attaching the transmission and installing it in the car, it's just easier to put those things on with the engine out of the car. And really, it's not that much easier. So I may just keep moving forward with that with the goal of installation in the car over the weekend.

The mini split is a really wonderful addition to the garage and makes working much, much nicer. It would be ideal if the inside unit could've been installed in front of the main car bay, but I can direct it to have air blowing more or less my direction. The "following me around" feature doesn't seem to do a whole lot once you get far enough away that you couldn't feel the breeze anyway. But, I had it set at 77, set it to 72 when I got home (so it was cooling the garage more while I was making dinner and getting kids ready for bed), and it was very comfortable working in there. So I'm a happy camper there.

Here's the engine bay, now completely ready for an engine.

 

[Ted]

After last night's discovery about the oil pan I mentioned above as well as a genuine Ford Performance timing cover. So I know the products there will be good quality. The timing cover ought to arrive on Friday, but the oil pan probably won't be until sometime next week (theoretically after the engine and transmission are in the car).

I probably should've foregone the garage as it was after 9 by the time I got in there, but wanted to make some progress in hopes of getting the drivetrain in the car this weekend. Plus to my surprise I got return authorization on the low quality timing cover I received, so I had to package that up.

The girls weren't sleeping very soundly (although they were asleep) so I didn't want to run the grinder on the intake. That left the next option of getting started working on getting the engine off of the stand and starting on the flywheel and bellhousing to measure runout, so I did that.

Got the throwout bearing in, got the backing plate and flywheel on with the flywheel torqued down to spec (spec is 75-85 ft-lbs so I chose 80). Then I went to go put the bellhousing on and found that, oops, I don't have the bolts I thought I had. I also can't find the clutch bolts I thought I was supposed to have, either. Well great.

So tomorrow I need to make a visit to the hardware store to get those bolts, and then I can get the bellhousing on, confirm the runout, and then take it back off to install the clutch and the bellhousing for the final time. My guess is that I'll need to make visits both tomorrow and Friday, which is fine, so long as I have the bolts I need for the install over the weekend. I already have the transmission to bellhousing bolts, so just the clutch to flywheel bolts and the clutch bolts will do the job.

Really hoping I can get the drivetrain in this weekend...

 

[SCCutler]

This thread is critical to my mental health.

 

[tmyers]

I am with you on that Spike.

 

[Ted]

This thread is critical to my mental health.

I am with you on that Spike.

I'm glad you all are enjoying it so much.

This morning Genevieve asked if she could paint more panels for the Cobra when we got home. So, I think we'll probably do some of that along with doing more work on the engine. Once the drivetrain is in, I'll be able to start working on a lot of the interior panels.

 

[Ted]

Well, hit a snag for drivetrain install this weekend, but looks like it's taken care of. While looking up the clutch bolts I realized that I also didn't have dowel pins, and need those. The flywheel I bought is just a flywheel, no dowels pre-installed. So can't just buy the hardware store bolts, need to get the dowels.

Found the Ford Performance part number I need, but the dealership doesn't stock/can't get Ford Performance parts. Summit, of course, has them - wish I'd figured this out yesterday when I ordered my timing cover.

Amazon Prime to the rescue - order within 2.5 hours and they'll arrive tomorrow. Perfect, that'll work for the weekend. Since my wife has the Amazon Prime account she ordered them for me from FL430 on today's trans-con flying the Challenger. Isn't technology great?

 

[FormerHangie]

I am with you on that Spike.

So, after Ted is done with his car, which one of you is going to build a car to keep the rest of us same?

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

Amazon Prime to the rescue - order within 2.5 hours and they'll arrive tomorrow. Perfect, that'll work for the weekend. Since my wife has the Amazon Prime account she ordered them for me from FL430 on today's trans-con flying the Challenger. Isn't technology great?

Ted,

You really should pay very close attention while she types in her Amazon password next time.

Jeff