Front Harness

Brandon came over to work on the car for a couple of hours this afternoon. I didn't have much time because I need to get some work done, but we got some good stuff done in a short time. First we got the speedometer sending unit off/out of the transmission and stored away safely. It's a pretty neat looking gizmo, but I haven't taken a picture yet. I'll probably forget, but if I don't I'll post it up here.

After that we removed the clutch cable, throttle cable, and cruise control cables. Then we removed the front harness. I have had a pretty good time removing all the wiring so far. I just hope I'm able to figure out what I need to keep and what I don't, and get all that crap sorted out. Here is a shot of all the wiring hanging up. There isn't much left. Engine wiring and transmission wiring is about all.

Little stuff

I had about 4 or 5 hours of cobra time today. I was hoping Diana could work with me but she took allergy medicine and fell asleep :-/ Anyhow, I got the speakers pulled, the rear bumper off, the tail lights off, rear seat-belts out, the entire rear harness labeled and removed, and made an attempt at getting the convertible top off.

Here is the rear harness hanging up in the garage. I had to loop it over the hook 3 times to keep it from draping onto the garage floor. Now that the dash and rear harnesses are out, there are (almost) no wires behind the firewall. The exceptions to that all under the car - transmission, O2 sensors, gas tank, etc. So everything was going great and I had come to a point where I had to decide on what to do next. It was either front wiring harness or convertible top.

Tom had mentioned an interest in working on removing some wiring harnesses with me, although I expect he was mostly interested in the dash and rear harnesses which are now done (sorry), but that let me to work on the convertible top. I broke loose all the huge bolts and undid all of them. After working through some tool failure (ahem, the socket wrench) all the bolts were off and I decided to try to lift it out. The canvas top is connected to the car by the most retardulous design. You can't lift it up because the canvas is connected, and you can't undo the canvas because the thing is all sitting on top of it. Even after I pulled it up and rested it on the little back windows O_o I discovered another inconvenience - ford used crap nuts (yes folks, crap nuts) to hold the canvas on. They are something like 16mm 20 point nuts made of extremely soft plastic. Diana put it best when she said they might be made out of chocolate. I don't have anything that can get them off and I pretty much ruined one with a pair of pliers. It's irritating anyway because you can't expose the second one until the first one is off and you lift the top up more. Look at the picture of this crap nut.

One thing I do have going for me, is that I don't *NEED* the convertible top. So if I really can't get it off, I can just rip it out of there and throw it away - which is far more satisfying than just leaving it on there to get scrapped. Plus then I would have revenge on it for pissing me off.

So although I only got to check off 2 items for the donor list (fuel inertia cutoff switch and rear wiring harness) almost all the sellable items are off the car. Pretty much the only things left are the side skirts and the convertible top. The rear quarter panels are welded on unfortunately so I don't think I'll be getting them off. Now I just need a genius way to sell all this crap off...

Great news for Cobra buyers!

Last August, Factory Five announced that they were going to raise their prices since material costs had gone up. Gotta pass that cost on to the ol' customer. All September long it was posted on their site that prices were about to go up. I recently read a post from their president that says they are not going to raise prices due to the economic situation. They want to make the cars as affordable as possible.

This is obviously good news for me! As long as I can get my order in before prices do go up. They only require a $1000 deposit to start building, but you have to pay in full before they deliver. I might shoot them an email and find out how long it will take to build.

Panels & Interior dwindle

I was having so much fun pulling all the panels off that I deviated from the book a bit and yanked off the doors and front quarter panels. Once I have all the panels off, I will try to sell them on Craig's list as a package deal. If that doesn't work out, I'm going to be offering a deal to all you guys - anyone who sells one of the body panels gets a 50% cut of whatever they sell it for. You can't hardly beat that! I really hate selling stuff so it's a good deal for everyone - plus it frees up precious space in my garage.

Speaking of freeing up space; Josh Minorics, a guy that works with Diana whom I recently met, and has a Cobra, and will soon be starting a 68 Stang project, came over yesterday to pick up some parts. We struck up a deal: parts for paint. He used to work in a body-shop and though I haven't seen his work yet, I'm sure it will be a much better paint job that I would have done! So he picked up the seats and A/C parts as well as some other bits and pieces like the console and dash. They were really just taking up space in my garage and as aforementioned, I hate selling stuff, so this works out great for both of us. So he came over, brought his torx 50 bit for the removing seat-belts and we hung out and had a brewski. He's a cool guy and seems very knowledgeable about such things.

The Dash

Tonight Diana and I finished disconnecting the dash and got that sucker out! It was tricky trying to disconnect the wires while it's still on, but they aren't really long enough to remove the dash first - so you have to 'work the nessie' - if you will...
Here is my helper disconnecting a bolt that she could get to better with her small hands.

Mid-Term Pics

So I'm not quite HALF way done yet, but I feel like half the car is off. So I'm calling this the mid-term.

And here is a shot of some of the stuff piled up in the garage - I need to get rid of some of this stuff asap.

Pedal Box, Steering Column, Random prep

Working under the dash is quite a bit more painful now with the carpeting and seating out - there are some 2 inch studs sticking out where the seats attached that can really do a number on your back while you are working under there. Just the same, victory was attained against the pedals yesterday (once we abandoned trying to interpret the archaic factory five manual in favor of just figuring it out ourselves).

We also pulled the steering column out and removed the gauge cluster. After that we started the next step of removing the computer, but it can't be gotten to until we remove the A/C ducts and fan motor - so we started pulling off the dash to get to all that stuff. While Brandon removed dash bits, I worked on disconnecting the A/C lines in the engine bay. Those little spring lock connectors are a REAL pain when you don't have much room to work.

So a lot was done yesterday, but out of all those steps, I still need to pull the computer and still need to get the steering wheel off the steering column. It seems like it's pressed on there and I'm having some real trouble getting it off.

Lots of stuff getting done! I'll upload some pictures tonight.

Interior & Fuel Lines

The next step is cleaning out the interior - I've really been looking forward to this step! While I waited for Tom to come over to help me with the fuel lines left over from the last step, I started unbolting the seats. The rear bolts go through to the underside of the car and were extremely rusty. I had a very very hard time breaking these loose and unscrewing them. When I finally finished, I set the seats down in the garage facing the driveway and sat down in one to drink a beer. Right about then, Tom showed up. Tom had the idea of relieving the fuel pressure at the fuel pump; instead of by cutting the lines, we would just disconnect them. Sounded like a good idea, and Tom volunteered to take this task on. It went quite well, very anticlimactically actually. The manual is very unclear about which parts of the fuel line we need to reuse, so we decided not to cut anything at this time.

With the fuel lines dealt with, it was time to get the back seat out of the car. After hurting my back trying to brute force the seat out, we resorted to the Chilton's manual for instructions. This guide has already proved itself extremely valuable. Here is a picture Diana took of Tom and I disconnecting the center console.

After we finished with that, we pulled the carpet out. One word: NASTY. It was pretty disgusting, smelly, and just plain out gross. Tom even ran into a wet bit of carpet - I can't even begin to imagine what the heck that was.

Once we finished with the carpet, console, and seats, we pulled out the aftermarket stereo cables and had another beer while relaxing on the front seats. I gotta tell you, these seats are actually very very comfortable. Like little mini couches.

Uh Oh

Last night Diana and I tackled a few smaller tasks in the engine bay; disconnecting sensors and cables, labelling connectors, etc. We pulled the horns out too - unfortunately one of the connectors broke, but I'll worry about that later. Everything was going great until we got to *dun dun dun* cut the fuel lines. Well, we paused on that step because the fuel lines are still pressurized. Tom is going to come over on Wednesday, that way there will be someone to put the flames out and drive me to the hospital when my face catches on fire.

Steering Rack

Brandon came over today to help me remove the steering rack. I showed Brandon where the bolt was to disconnect the rack from the steering column itself and he popped that one off pretty quick. Next we had to remove the tie rods. It seemed like it would be a pretty easy job until we got the dust boots off and saw the size of the tie rod itself. I didn't even have a wrench big enough to fit around it! Off to the auto-parts store (I remembered to buy some gojo while I was there - finally!)

Well, one really big wrench later, we had one of the inner tie rod disconnected from the steering rack. While I worked on the 2nd one, Brandon started working on popping the outer tie rod out of the spindle on the wheel. You do this by hitting it real hard with a hammer - there just isn't much room under there. The instructions specifically say to use a dead blow hammer but since I don't have one, we just started whacking it with a metal hammer. Well, I got the other tie rod off with no trouble and we decided to remove some body panels to give us more swinging room with the hammer. No avail. Before we bent the tie rod bolt up too bad, we decided to go buy a dead blow hammer; trip #2 to the store :-( Every time I spend money on something unexpected, I feel the cobra kit purchase getting further and further away. Sadness.

Anyhow, when we got back, we took the front wheels off and could really get a solid whack on it. unfortunately, the deadblow hammer was too soft and started breaking apart. So I took the metal hammer to it one last time and with a huge 'this sucker is coming off one way or another' swing, broke it loose. Victory! We got everything pulled off and out with no problems from there. Another successful step toward finishing the donor teardown. I really need to stop at some point and clean all these parts up. But that probably wont really happen until I'm waiting for the kit to arrive with nothing else to do.

Anyhow, here is a picture of the front of the car as it is now. The big pieces removed are: radiator, master cylinder, hydrobooster, condensor, steering rack, body panels, wheel wells, and wheels.

Step 3: ABS

When I got home from work today, I mowed the yard and double checked my diagrams for the Antilock Brake System. I decided it would be easiest to remove if I pulled a few of the A/C lines. So I mapped out the Engine bay portion of the A/C and then discovered that you need a special tool to disconnect those lines...I'll worry about that later. So instead I decided to pull the Intake off. It was REALLY dirty, I doubt that is as been cleaned in 20,000 miles. There were leaves and tape wrapped around it haha!

So after I finished that, Diana got home and helped me to get the ABS unit out. I cut the brake lines while Diana unscrewed the mounting bracket. We drained it out and lowered it down without much fuss. Well...I turned the steering wheel so we could get better access to the unit and a good bit of brake fluid pumped out onto the floor. No prob I threw the 'nasty towel'* on it - should be soaked up in no time. We labeled the ABS unit and then cleaned up. Now it's time to eat!


* The nasty towel is what I have used to cleanup all the spilled radiator coolant/power steering fluid/brake fluid etc. It has this weird attribute of never drying out. It keeps absorbing, but never gets drippy. It stinks pretty bad though :-P