Nice rack!
So after a few weeks?months of inactivity and abuse from family and friends, it was high time to get back into the garage and do some more work on the Cobra. I’d left it so long that I’d completely forgotten that I’d ordered a steering rack when I bought the kit and I ordered a new rack. After fitting the rack, I then found the rack I’d ordered buried under other boxes. DOH! (#1). Fitted very easily using the custom aluminium mountings from Breeze Automotive and looks great.
It was then time to tighten up the spindle adapters. A dry fit was tough, but I persevered. When it came to tighten them up, it was clear that something was definitely wrong – the adapter on the passenger side just didn’t fit properly. A few pictures and a post to ‘the’ forum revealed my mistake. I ordered pin drive suspension and hadn’t realised that they’d sent me the original parts AS WELL as the upgraded parts. I’d inadvertently fitted the non-pin drive components. 10 minutes of rummaging in boxes revealed the correct adapters. Then I realised that I’d also fitted the wrong lower control arms! DOH! (#2)
So, it then became apparent that I was going to have to completely disassemble almost everything I’d put together. That in itself was annoying enough, but to remove a component that was put on with 110 lbft of force is not going to submit easily. One spindle adapter came right out, the other … not so much. Much swearing, pondering, and … more swearing. It’s now sat in the vice waiting for a ‘pickle fork’ to arrive from Summit Racing to try to remove it. Short of that I’ll have to take it to a machine shop and have them try to remove it.
The upside to all of this, if there is one, is that I’m now left with a set of Factory Five LCAs that go for over $400 and a new steering rack that sells for $200, so potentially I might be able to offload them to pay for new parts! The ‘nursery’ is also starting to look less like a garage with the 2 pictures Sue got me for Christmas:
I’ve 2 more prints coming too that are being framed.
So – lessons learned?
- I really should have gone through ALL the boxes when it arrived and not stopped after 5
- 110 lbft of torque is a lot more when it comes to getting things OFF
- I’ve found a new favourite tool (online they call it a BFH) – it’s the orange thing
