Today was a big day in the build: the installation of the engine. The day started off with a breakfast get together with some of the local Cobra guys at Skip’s in Chelmsford. (Ironic I lived five minutes from there for years never having gone and now I’ve been there twice in the last month or so…)
One of the local guys, Ray, who lives in Dracut came by in the morning and I rode down there with him. Breakfast was good, although the turnout was small this month. As we were leaving another one of the Cobra guys, John, asked to come up and was, of course, welcome. Jen also came over to lend a hand and take photos.
For a writeup and pictures, read the rest of this post.
It was a nice day — sunny and high 50’s. It was quite the site seeing two red Cobras sitting in the driveway. I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking.
After a quick pow-wow to figure out the steps, we split up and took care of some initial tasks. I removed the transmission frame from under the car. Although it was likely we could get it in with the transmission frame there, it was definitely easier to maneuver with it out. I’m not sure who did what because I was under the car, but Ray and John got the engine leveler bolted up to the engine using some brackets that Ray thankfully brought with him. One of them also removed the shifter from the transmission, so we’d have more clearance.
It didn’t take long to get the engine down into the car. Unfortunately we realized that the brackets bolting the chains to the engine were hitting the footbox sheet metal, so we had to pull it back out. I grabbed the sawzall and lopped part of them off and we got the engine back into the car. It took some finesse to get it aligned.
After making a couple of attempts to get the transmission mounts bolted up without any success I realized I needed to go to Lowes and get some different bolts, so the guys took off and Jen and I went and grabbed some lunch. After lunch I realized that I didn’t actually need more bolts — it turned out the mystery bolts we used to bolt the chains to the engine brackets were the ones used to bolt the transmission mount to the transmission. I’d bunged up the threads, but thankfully the mounts on the transmission are open from both sides, so threading the bolts in from the back cleaned up the threads.
I took advantage of having the transmission frame out of the car to get out the grinder and clean up part of it that was making it not quite fit right in the car. I’d sort of forced it in place before and it actually fits correctly now.
Once I got the transmission bolted up, I got the rest of the engine bolts torqued down.
Thats basically it for today. Tomorrow I may tackle getting the radiator in and getting the fuel lines installed. Its really coming along!
There are LOTS more photos that Jen took today, to see them check out the gallery itself: