HG's Dream Car Build - Shelby Cobra Kit

[hgs_notes]

Super alternative tinkering for a GM truck forum, but IDC. I'm familiar with how this forum works and I like how it's monitored. Much less BS than most other forums. I can get a bit long winded but I like telling my story, so dig in...

Like so many men of a certain age, the Cobra is my ultimate car. It was created a few years before I was born but even into the 70's and 80's it was iconic. Maybe more so now than ever. I've read piles of articles and books about the car and it's creator, Shelby. I've oggled the cars (kits and originals) at shows. Watched the videos and movies. Named my first born Shelby, you get the idea, I've been smitten since my Jr High days. I can remember the story I read in Hot Rod at the school library. I went every month to check out the newest issue. There was a shootout between a collection of various cars for a 0-100mph-0 competition. I believe there was some european exotic car and some built up muscle cars and a cobra, which was the clear winner, doing it in like 12.3 seconds IIRC.

It's always been the "someday" project I never let go of. So here we are some 40ish years later and making the dreams a reality. I actually bought the kit in 2017, after the fall out from a divorce and losing my job of all things! You might think that's bassackwards but here's how it happened, and it wasn't what you would call the mid-life crisis either. As I said, went through a divorce around 2014, and was already starting a relationship with wife #2, who is incredible BTW. Less than a year later I was laid off from work, right after buying a house and moving, but before the old house was sold. I was buried in debt but things had been improving after the divorce settlement except for making 2 house payments. I did get a severance package but it was a lump sum right at the end of 2015. My taxes were really going to be a mess for a couple years so planning ahead I put a big chunk of the severance
in the bank for when the taxman came knocking. A new job came reasonably quick, life moved on, the old house sold the next year, and I spent another pile of money and used virtually every penny of my credit fixing up the new place. So now I'm in early 2017, I'm on the email list from factory five, as I have been for years and they send out a promotion sale on their kits. A limited number of kits being sold for the price from like 20 years before, a huge savings. It was tax time again and this was the year when it would all get sorted out after 2 years of financial disaster. I literally laid in bed thinking about it for hours that night.

Wife #2 grew up in a family that owned a body shop and cars came and went on a continuous basis, so she didn't have any issues with my projects. But it was still a huge thing for me to approach her about doing this. I've never had the money to even bother before but at this moment, things were falling together. It came down to those damn taxes. The wife said, it's your money, do what you want with it. That next weekend I became a tax accountant and the final tally came out to be much less than I anticipated. I was earning a bonus from work also. The money was there!

For those of you interested in getting a kit car, here's a brief explanation of how it works with factory five. You order your kit, selecting the options you want and picking how you receive your kit. It can be shipped and they have a very good company set up to deliver your kit for a reasonable cost. Or you can pick it up yourself from the plant in Wareham, MA. You can choose the delivery date also, which was key for me. Having never spent this kind of money on a toy for myself before I was nervous, so I put my delivery date out to June, which gave me time to let it sink in and if I got too scared or some bad luck hit me in the wallet I could back out. When you put in your order you pay about 10% down payment. If you back out more than a few weeks before the delivery date you lose a couple hundred bucks and get refunded the rest. It was an acceptable risk for me and I placed my order.

Summer of 2017 comes and I'm planning the trip to get my car from MA to MN. I've never been to new England so it became my summer vacation road trip. My son was able to go with and we had a great time driving out east, stopping along the way to play tourist. Went to the rock n roll HOF, Niagara Falls, Indianapolis Raceway, National Motorcycle museum and through as many states as we could along the route. It was a great trip. We got home the day before my birthday. That's how you turn 50!

A couple weeks later the paperwork shows up from factory five with the ser# plate and and certificate for the kit and the build date was actually listed on it as my birthday! Kismet? Karma? Don't know, don't care. I was happy with all aspects of my life and that can be a rare thing.

So here we are almost 5 years later and I haven't touched my kit. Many people would be scratching their head at that. Waiting for so long to fulfill the fantasy and then... nothing. I had reasons. Several in fact but I can be a patient man. I was still doing major work to the new house, I had other existing project vehicles in various states of progress, the kit is just a part of the puzzle to building a complete car. A lot of things needed to happen to free up time, space, money for me to plunge in. I had waited this long I could wait a while longer.

Sometime around 2018 I found a donor car for some of the major parts needed. A 1998 mustang GT with a 5.3 LS and TH400 tranny a guy was using as a drag car. That isn't the drivetrain I had planned to use though. Neither was the stock 4.6 modular ford it would have had. I wanted the coyote 5.0.

A month or so ago I decided I was going to set some money aside to get the engine and transmission and the hunt was on. I'm not a rich guy, I couldn't afford the nice crate motor set ups. I need to piece stuff together, find deals, scrounge and scroll and google to find what I need for as little cost as possible. I'll do the dirty work and fix things if that's what it takes.

The engine. Since this is a GM related site not everyone is going to be familiar with the Ford products. They came out with the new 5.0 coyote in 2010 and it went into the 2011 model year Mustangs and F150's and probably a few other things. The 1st generation was a decent motor with the truck putting out 360 hp and the mustang around 415-420 I think. It has a slightly better intake cam, half a point higher compression, different intake and better tuning. The 2nd generation had more power for both platforms due to slightly larger valves and 1mm more valve lift, better flowing ports on the heads and a new intake. This is what I would have preferred to use but that's not what I found. The mustang engines run about twice as much as the truck engines. More power and less available to get. I got a 1st gen truck engine with what I was told was a cracked head.

I've been reading up on the performance options and let's just say that they are significantly limited compared to the LS platform. Not that they aren't a good motor, the OEM heads are actually really good. And with 4 valves/cylinder and quad cams it's expensive to make a cam swap. My engine needed to be tore down to see what damage there was, if any. Right now I'm thinking there isn't any but the machine shop will let me know this week. I can replace with a used head if needed. For about $300 I can buy the ford mustang intake cams which is far cheaper than the $1800 for a set of Comp Cams. I could also buy 2nd gen heads as an upgrade if there is indeed a crack found. Decisions decisions.

The transmission. Ford didn't use very many suitable manual transmissions. Just a fact. The earlier 80s-90's trannys were good but only rated up to about 360 ft-lbs because that's what the engines would produce. There was also the shifter placement to consider. The latest mustangs used a gertrag M-82 transmission which has mixed reviews. It can have issues that were bad enough that Ford has been sued about it and the shifter placement isn't ideal either. The best factory option was the TR-6060 used in the 2003-4 Mustang GT-500. But even that one is somewhat power limited. It was behind the 4.6 4 valve motor which was good but not as powerful as the newer coyote. It could be upgraded by replacing the 10 spline input shaft to a 26 spline for a reasonable cost. And the TR3650 tranny they used could also be upgraded but it basically would cost similar to buying a new tremec tkx, which replaced the earlier TKO500/600 a year or so ago. BTW, the package deal for the new TKX with bellhousing, clutch, flywheel etc would set me back over $4400.

Last week on ebay I found a couple used TR-6060s and one used TKO600. All around the $2500 mark plus or minus. The best deal was on the TKO because it was the best price and needed the least amount of work to fit and be strong enough. I made an offer and it was delivered today. Still need everything else to go between it and the engine so the scrounging continues.

The plan is to start building this spring/summer. I've got the space and the major components. I'm far enough along on the other projects that I can make time for this one. Sorry for the long read, well not really. Like my other build threads I use this like a blog or diary to track my progress and share the story as much as the actual tinkering. There's a few cobra kit car forums I could have used but I like the idea of being outside of that instead of just another one of the many doing the same thing.

I hope you enjoy this.