Soft top pt. 2

So part 2 started on Saturday morning. I was installing the lift-the-dot snaps when Brandon and Allison came out to pick up some stuff they left over Friday night. The snaps are a pain to install: you have to punch a hole through the fabric for the stud, then you have to cut 4 little slots around the hole. Then you feed the grommet spikes through the 4 slots and slide them into the grommet backing on the other side of the fabric. Then you bend the spikes over to grip the fabric. They work really well once installed, but my fingertips are worn off from the process. Brandon and I broke one of the studs installing it in the body, so I'm going with 11 snaps instead of 13. No big deal. All the snaps are in place - thank goodness.

During soft top part 1 we noticed that the rear brace was too short. It's final position should be just behind the roll-bars, but we couldn't get it to fit there properly without it smashing up against the roll-bars. So Brandon and I came up with the idea to build what we entitled an 'extend-o-bracket'. We worked together to come up with a design that would keep it from lowering the brace further than we wanted. I'll take some pics of the 'extend-o-bracket' later and post 'em up.

Later on Saturday, Diana helped me to glue the windshield brackets to the fabric top. It wasn't pretty - or easy. We stretched the top tight and put a piece of tape on the corner where it laid over the windshield. Then we rolled it back and put some glue on one side of the bracket. We tried to position it as best as we could, using guestimation way more than I was comfortable with. We did a test fit and made some adjustments, then we glued that sucker together with contact cement. That stuff is really messy and I'm not too good at it so the glue is pretty much everywhere. Once it all dries completely, I'll spray paint all the over-glue black and it should be pretty unnoticeable...relatively unnoticeable...passable.

Anyhow we got everything glued in place and it's clamped down right now. It takes 7 days to fully cure. Luckily for me - rain in the forecast for the next 7 days so ugh.

Oh I almost forgot, the door windows mount in by 2 posts that slot into 2 holes in the door. I measured very carefully and did a visual verification that the door posts line up. Unfortunately, it's such a tight fit that the slightest variation causes it not to fall in place. I used the grinder on the posts and got the passenger side to fall in. It's still not very pretty though, there is a gap between the window and the canvas on the backside, and it's too close to the window. I might have to summon on Joshes welding skills once again to place the posts in a slightly different position on the window. The door posts aren't really movable.

Once the glue is dry I'm supposed to drive a few hundred miles before I place the braces back in.

Soft Top

After watching Shelbatoast get poured on in the parking lot for about an hour during work yesterday, I realized the time to install the soft-top is definitely past due. Luring a few willing friends with steaks and beer, Josh and Tom came out to help with the process. This was a good thing since I was pretty nervous about drilling into the finished fiberglass.

We had to make an emergency run to Ace hardware to get a special tool. Even in the Cobra we only got there with 5 minutes to spare. But we found what we needed and came back to get started. After setting the windshield at a 53 degree angle and cranking it down, we got started drilling some of the holes and installing the ferrules. After that we pulled out the hardware and assembled it on the body. We draped the soft top over just to get a feel for how much clearance there will be. Honestly, there is a lot more room inside than I expected. And although this little paragraph doesn't make it sound like there was a lot - quite a bit of work was involved in all this. Plus, the engine was hot from driving to Ace hardware :-)

Left to do is install a couple of snaps on the body, drill 2 post holes per door, install the snap grommets on the soft top, stretch & fit the top, contact cement it to the boughs and install the bough snaps. I'll probably have folks come over and help with this too because if the contact cement portion goes anything like the dashboard cement, I'll need all the help I can get!

Graduation from FFR

Here is my graduation post for the Factory Five Racing Forum. It's a pretty long read and there are follow up posted further down.
http://www.ffcobra.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1974377#post1974377

Paint Pics

I took this picture after the final paint had been completed. The ghost stripes are very subdued with the heavy reflection of the sky in the paint.




The stripes are a little more apparent in this picture. Also, you can see the wind wings attached to the sides of the windscreen, and the brake vent covers at the bottom.




In this pic you can see all the 'new bits', the rock guards on the back fender well, the wind wings, and the brake vents.



I have new tires on the way, a new license plate, and plans to get the soft top mounted. Stay tuned for more pics!

Finished paint

Well, last night Josh and Brandamonium came over last night and we corrected the ride height, and mounted the rollbars. I also did some touchup on the rollbars and cleaned up the engine bay. We sprayed the quickjacks with a silver paint since they were starting to rust.

It's really almost done now - only things left for 'completion' are mounting the windscreen, wind wings, rock guard, brake vent screens, lubricating the suspension and mounting the soft top.

It looks great - Josh did a super job w/ the paint, I'll post up some pics the next day the sun comes out.

Late night painting the roadster.

It's been a tough week - being crunch time at work and crunch time on the cobra. Earlier this week Josh and I built a make-shift paint booth for proper ventilation. A sweet 2x4 frame with painters plastic stapled to the wood. It's so big that it takes 2 people to close the garage door. One person to bend back the main 2x4 so the door will clear and one person to close it.

Also earlier this week we sanded back the clear coat and removed all the 'trim' from the cobra. Removing the rollbars was especially fun...Last night we taped it and cleaned it up and Josh painted it. We laid on the stripes - Josh painted them - then we pulled the tape and sprayed the clear.

I took a few pics of the process last night with my camera but didn't get home until well after 1am so I took one with my phone so I could post it up today. Consider it a teaser pic - you can see the ghost stripes if you look very closely between the picture's grain. Hopefully next week we'll cut & polish it and reassemble everything. At that point it will be 'done' and anything else I do to it will be enhancements to a final product.

Mountain Trip

Diana and I took a trip to the mountains with Brandon and Allison last weekend. Brandon and I went up a few hours before the girls so we could drive the mountains. We (read: I) had a few car problems I had to work out, and the weather stopped us once so we got there later than we would have liked. We did get in one really good ride even though it started raining on the way back.


Following Brandon on the dirt road wasn't the best. When we first got to it, it was dry and extremely dusty. Then my side pipe fell most of the way off and was dragging the ground occasionally. I didn't realize it had fallen most of the way off so I was just driving REALLY slow thinking that the dinging sound was rocks being kicked up. After we fixed that problem, we made pretty good time up the mountains, but I still breathed in a LOT of dust and dirt.

The scenery was AWESOME and we had a great time. We'll be heading up there again soon. I would have enjoyed some cruising along the blue ridge pkwy.