1997 Cobra (New Owner Questions)

dykzeul

New Member
Jun 7, 2017
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Good afternoon, yesterday I picked up a clean 1997 Cobra, car has 90k on odometer, supposedly a TR3650 trans in a lakewood bell housing and a stock tail 01 cobra tailshaft (per previous owner). He wasnt very helpful..and could have been full of it.

Noticed a few issues on the 5 hour drive home.. and hopefully you guys can give me an idea of where to start..

TR3650 - Speedo/ ODO are not functioning.. what are my options to make this work? 4th gear does grind going in...assume a synchro is done or on its way. I get a driveline vibration at 60+ while letting off throttle or coasting in gear, once I apply power.. driveline vibration is gone. Car has 4.10 gears...

Crank trigger...I have never seen one of these on a car, only heard of them a handful of times.. what needs to happen to return this to stock and is there a benefit to leaving it on? Would the car have to be tuned for this to work?

Fuel pressure regulator, aeromotive brand, and I would assume an upgraded fuel pump with blue injectors which I thought were stock. I am having a hard time starting it, sometimes it fires immediately, sometimes I need to flutter the gas pedal for about 10 seconds while cranking. I do notice a fuel smell while this is happening, but dont know jack about the FPR and if it could be an issue, or maybe an evap issue.

Coilovers...SVE brand, they rode nice, but even adjusted all the way up, they sit entirely too low. What is a good option to provide a .5 (or around) drop, while retaining a good ride and handle quality?

Thanks for any help. New to the 4.6 beasts and trying to learn along the way.
 
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Pics of the crank trigger and FPR, and the car alongside my 18 F-150

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First thing i would do is get the odometer fixed. The SN95 was notorious for having bad odometer gears. LMR.com and americanmuscle.com have repair kits that are easy to install. Go ahead and change out the lights for LED's while you are at it. It is very likely that your engine has way more than 70k miles on it which means you will have to do a complete inspection of all the parts including the timing chains. Just my two cents. The good news is that the car is easy to maintain and fairly inexpensive to change out parts. I've had mine for 24 years and it still runs great.
 
My guess is that they never hooked the VSS up to the transmission for some reason. The story about a T-3650 with a 01 cobra tailshaft seems suspect. I would plan to get the car up on jackstands and take a peek under the car. The speedo output should be at the rear of the trans on the driver's side.

Is this engine stock? I'm wondering why they installed an aftermarket crank wheel and trigger? Is it running the stock ECU? Or did someone swap ina microsquirt? I would investigate why it's there before making a plan to remove it. Where do the wires for the crank sensor run?

As for suspension mods, i'd probably run a set of H&R springs and bilstien shocks/struts. You may want to speak with Maximum motorsports on their recommendation.