a little cobra TLC

had my camera phone actually "saved" when i pressed "save", you would be viewing an actual photo instead of a representative one....

i have been threatening to help my friend john with a little cobra tender loving care for a while now. get your minds out of the gutter...mechanical, automotive, vroom, vroom cobra TLC, such as an oil change and tune up. he doesn't get to drive this thing much, so it sits a lot.

i have a soft spot in my heart for ford V8's as you all well know, and what better place for a blue blood ford fan to spend a few hours than under the hood of a cobra??

351w bored and stroked to 408, genuine aluminum SVO heads, a wicked set of headers and side pipes, sans mufflers...vroom indeed. the oil change was not so straight forward, as it had an oil cooler mounted in the "grill" and twin filters inline. a little spillage (sorry john) that was taken care of by rags was the only problem. otherwise, with just a little coaxing, it WOOOPED to life, sounding every bit like a big block CAN AM car. a little gas leakage. tighten a few bolts. restart. a super lopey idle made worse by slow idle speed, easily remedied since it was a demon carb...a turn of the idle screw, another 150 rpm, and it purred like...scratch that...rumbled like it ought to.

driving the beast is a lot like you'd think. hard. whereas the steering is light and direct, the brake pedal is like pushing on wood and the clutch pedal is a leg press machine masquerading as a clutch pedal. get it in sync, though, and it's a rocket ship. cracking the throttle open with anger in 2nd gear is akin to activating a teleportation device that will instantly put you a block down the street from where you started. and the sound? loud, but not nearly as loud as you might think, and quite pleasing to those brought up on the V8. credit the side pipes for pushing the sound away from you and getting the harmonics just right. the ride quality is quite firm but really not the ox cart you'd think. it's a tube frame chassis with some stout running gear.

yep, life gets in the way. seriously in the way. i had all but forgotten about my former life as a grease monkey until i smelled that unburned fuel bellowing out of those pipes.

now i remember.