Progress Thread The next "big" project for my Cobra - T-top conversion coming soon!

More time in the garage this afternoon. Got the rear sway bar removed and pulled the trim from around the T top openings. The sway bar:



Someone broke a drill when they converted this one.



And this might be a reason that they all seemed to leak - there was only sealant at the front and rear, none in the center between the two glass panels. But you can see that the roof panel was spot welded to the inner brace.




I believe, after watching the video I shared in an earlier post, that the brace is welded at the A and B pillars. I took a pic of each for reference, hopefully they'll come in handy.



And I laid the trim out on my car using the fiberglass part of the targa band for reference. There are 2 holes in each of them that I'll need closed back up before I can use them on my car.



I may end up back out there later tonight, but today's been go go go since I woke up. A coworker called and asked if I could give him a hand troubleshooting his truck so I was away from all of this for a good part of the afternoon.

More teardown tonight. Got the rear seat, cargo panels, dash cap and bezels, all of the interior trim removed, and like 99% of the headliner out.



As bad as it looks, it's surprising that there's no mouse urine smell.

Here is the inner T top structure showing probably half of the rivets. The front and center are covered with foam. I'll have to dig along the front to locate all of those rivets.

extra_stout said:

I think thats a rear sway bar. That make me think, that I ask if the car has a 1 inch front sway bar?

Click to expand...

Yes, it's a rear sway bar and was one of the things that interested me about buying it. It's not a Mach 1 nor does it have the 1 inch front sway bar. It seems that all 78 cars had the rear sway bar from the limited research I've done. My car is actually a 78 and had one too way back when. Unfortunately I foolishly got rid of it when I tore the car down in 2001.

Looks like I'll finally get my car back on the road soon. I sent Bryant another email reminder last night and he responded this morning.



I responded that I'm good for tomorrow afternoon if that works. Hopefully we can get this squared away then!

But that means that the tear down of the T top car is put on hold. I've not done a lot of anything notable since my last post. I decided that pulling the engine and transmission will be the next thing, so I drained what was left in the radiator and started disconnecting connections as best I could to try to preserve the ~50 year old plastic - especially since this car runs as it should and appeared to be unmolested. But I believe I've found evidence of both a front end and possibly a rear end collision while looking at different things.

On a side note: I don't think it would really go anywhere but I had the hair brained idea of offering up everything needed for a V8/manual swap as a sort of kit. I mean I have everything and really doubt that I'll use any of it now. But I also had the other hair brained idea of finding a shell that's in fairly good shape and swapping everything into it to offer for sale that way too. I think I just need to concentrate on the task at hand and worry about it later.

Anyway, time to get the garage cleaned up for (hopefully) tomorrows session....

Noobz347 said:

Pics of 50 y/o plastic and/or tell me you posted them somewhere already.


I bring it up because there are a [lot] of places now that will take your "thing", make a mold of it an give you a brand new injection molded "thing" made of modern materials.

Click to expand...

Here's the distributor connection which broke and disintegrated around one of the pins




And any other connector in this engine compartment, though none were as bad as the distributor.



As luck would have it, I believe I have another distributor in my junk that I think the connector is still good. Not really a big deal at this point unless I put it up for sale in the future or do something else with it.

As for the Killshot tuning, I'm on the calender for tomorrow afternoon.


After getting everything picked up and swept, I went ahead and worked on the rear bumper a bit. When I got this car running again after it's body work and paint in the early 2000s, I had it at an angle in my garage since the garage wasn't set up for a car. When I went to back it out I had to kind of yeehaw it around to get it out of the overhead door. My first shot wasn't lined up and when I went to engage the clutch again the cable popped. When that happened I was maybe 6 - 12 inches from the door frame and I ended up ramming it with the passenger side of the rear bumper. The bumper reinforcement that's still on the car in this pic is Swiss cheese and it ended up bending at the mount and ripping the top and bottom of it. I've left it that way ever since with the old polyurethane cover to match. Now that I'm finally putting the fiberglass skin on it, I straightened it out as best I could and welded the tear. This fiberglass piece is just a skin, so to attach it the first time I used a combination of steel stick epoxy and body panel adhesive. The steel stick is what the main component and was and what let go. I only really did it to get it transported back to Iowa, so it was no big deal, but now that I'm in the middle of this T top conversion I foresee a new paint job in the relatively near future. So I've come up with a plan to get this skin mounted more permanently as well as having the ability to be transferred from this reinforcement to another should I eventually get one. The plan is to use panel adhesive again but this time bond it to "inserts" so it can be bolted on. Here is what I've come up with. they're 3/4 thick aluminum that I've drilled and tapped for 3/8 bolts. That's what I used since that's how the polyurethane bumper was held on. I also have a pair of 1/2" aluminum plates that will be on the ends that I'm going to drill and tap for 5/16 bolts. Again, as luck would have it, the web brace idea will use the same 5/16-18x1-3/4 bolts as they're just the right length to pass through both layers at the ends. The plan is to transfer the holes, then drill them oversized and use fender washers to allow for some adjustability.

Blackhawkxx said:

Is the top fan shroud in good condition and do you plan to use it? Mine broke years ago and I made a aluminum on but factory would be better.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the shroud is in pretty good shape and in one piece as far as I could tell. I didn't look at it real close when I pulled the radiator though.

I'll see about getting it cleaned up as well as the air cleaner and intake that @welder4956 asked about and let you guys know. Won't be this weekend though, I'll be out of town again, leaving Thursday.

This is what's in this car. It's no longer bolted in, hopefully you'll get the gist of it though.

On my way to the parts store now!

Baby steps.... We got the car running again. I guess I somehow unplugged the tach signal wire from the MSD to the ECU and the 3G alternator conversion harness was partially unplugged. I really have no idea how either of those things happened. I mean all I did was change battery cables and that mega fuse, and all of that is on the opposite side of the engine compartment. Bryant did his magic as best he could, but apparently the ECT sensor is bad. Again, not sure what the deal is there either, but aside from ensuring fueling adjustments the ECU also controls my cooling fan. So sitting at idle for an extended amount of time will cause the temperature to get a little too hot, but once I get it on the highway it eventually cools down to around 190. Another hiccup that's unrelated to tuning, I had a pretty big oil spray at the front of the engine. It appears that the dipstick seal is to blame. I've now placed an order with Summit for both the ECT sensor and a new dipstick, we'll see what next week brings!

Decided to get a start on the web braces. First thing was to get a rough measurement from the T top car from the torque box back to where the spot weld seam curves downward. Then another rough measurement from the rear to the rearmost part of the jog down. Once those were in place, I cut a 4 inch piece of tube and tried to get a decent angle out of those placements. It looked good, so I spot welded the bottom side.



I then pulled it down, foolishly closed the gaps and welded it up. Here's the result.



I should've tacked the back side near the top to hold the original position, but the car is only jacked up at the rear and I had a hard enough time cutting a section of the front seat brace. The extra wheel cribs I built are under a table to raise it for me to use my laptop for the tuning sessions. This should be infinitely easier once those are freed up and the car is sitting on them.