Wow, things are moving just great. Friday we installed the rest of the carpeting, minus the two side walls, weren't too sure how to set them up. Went quite well, the carpeting was cut very well and fit in place pretty darn good.

Saturday, 9 AM, the body went on for the final time. Install went just like any other install we had done.

Now we started on the Fuel cap. Cap install was easy, one heck of a reach though! Take your time and make sure the screw in top is in finally before marking it and drilling your holes. As you can see we went with a different cap, it fits nicely under the main cap, guess we will see how well if works on the first gas up. Next while I started the install of the lights, Dad worked on the front splash guards.  The lights went OK, wish I had installed the wiring to the lights before body install, would have been able to get the wiring alot closer to the correct length. The splash guards were a bit more difficult, alot of muscle was taken to get them in just right, bit they look great afterwards.

Lastly the body mounts were abit tough, alot of pulling to get the spacers just right, but looks great in the end.

January 23, 2000

Well, as you may have guessed the body install was pushed off, but for good reasons. We had a thought! Yes, I know, it's rare these days, but we try. We went back though our class notes from Mike Mack and we found he recommended we install the cabin aluminum and carpeting BEFORE installing the body. Didn't take us long to say, sounds great! Do it now and we won't have to worry about scratching the body and how much easier it would be with the body off, we were sold!

So Saturday we started at the ripe, early morning time of 11 (over slept), and started with the installing the rear wall, rear slash guards. Then moved up to the footbox transmission tunnel cover, then tunnel. The toughest part was getting the front transmission tunnel to footbox panel. Took a lot of muscle and colorful metaphors, but she hooked up just fine.

Sunday, the day I've dreaded since the beginnings of this project, Carpet day! Yes, carpet day. But without out too much of a hitch the trunk carpet went in rather easily, especially if you do it in small increments, rather then all at once. With the External battery posts removed (Remember, they are inside the truck), the carpeting went in in 4 steps. Gluing in small increments helped alot with control. Next we went up to the rear cockpit wall and did the center section, leaving the side carpeting for later, it didn't look quite right so we will sleep on it.

Other things we did included mounting the passenger seat, installed a new hidden starter switch, and Re-setup for the original mustang parking brake, which broke on the last test. The passenger seat was right from the book install and was quite easy, but was removed for carpeting. Parking brake was another story. We decided to go back with the original for safety sake, which, oddly enough, broke on last use. The cut of the brake to make it fit under the seat was too much and broke very easily, so back to Ford to get a new one and this time, cut less off.

So this being a busy week, Capitals wise, I guess not much will be done so, yes, we will be pushing the body install back another weekend, but hopefully when it does go on, we will be very, very close to being done.
 

January 17, 2000

It's final! We are going to put the body on this weekend. We ran her quite hard this weekend and had great luck with the new computer from Speed Brain. It helped already with idle and checking of calibration of RPM and other useful data. Nice thing was it told me the throttle was open 5%, explaining the fast idle. Adjusted the cable bracket and she idles great.

So what we have been working on is the driver side foot box. We closed it up and we are filling up the holes in the panel ends with caulking. We have friends scheduled for Saturday evening and with a little luck, the body should be on for the final time Saturday night!
 

January 12, 2000

Cobra run this weekend was quite interesting. After warming her up, I let  her go a bit. First I found how easy she let loose with all that HP! Of course that soon followed with a hard break check or two! Lock up was firm but controlled.

After about 20 minutes of playing she slightly hesitated. I though interesting and brought her back inside. I shut her off and checked her over.  I found nothing so I tried to restart her. But no, the battery was dead. Interesting. So we recharge the battery and low and behold another problem has been found!

Actually once we got the battery recharged, the fuel pressure finally stayed stable. See for a while the fuel pressure was bouncing around and we had no idea  what was causing it. Looks like it was lack of volts to the pump. Because now it's stable.

So what caused the battery dying? Wiring problem. I did the Ford manual check of the charging system. Seems the car was not telling the alternator to recharge the battery. And unfortunately it was the wiring I had gotten back from the person I had clean up my wiring harness. The problem was the resistor he had put into the harness. He had not run the warning light in series with the resistor, as plainly seen in the back of the stock dashboard. So with a little patience I ran the warning light to both sides of the resistor and low and behold the alternator is recharging the battery.

Lesson learned, watch out who you send your harness to. They can make it worse. But all things aside I sure learned alot this past weekend about the recharging system and the wiring involved in doing it.

This weekend, one more weekend of "tough love" and hopefully the body will be on!
 

January 2, 2000

Happy New Year!

Cobra is moving along great. We took her for a run around the block again, all gauges are working well. Well except the speedometer, it unfortunately had a run in with the header pipe. So back to Ford for a new one.

Brakes work great since the new lines. Our hopes are to run her next weekend, unless it's raining out. We plan on letter her open up a bit. You know give a real test of the brakes and get the engine RPM a bit above the so far max of 2800. It will be a tough, grueling time for all at the Shuffleton house hold and I think I'm willing to do the job!

We also hooked up the oil temp gauge, we hooked the sender to the back of the oil relocation kit on the block. We know it won't be the most accurate temp, but it should help in the long run.