Cobra Update - Body is On (The Full Story)
SEATTLE -- By now most of you have seen the little email I sent about putting the body on the Cobra. If you haven't seen it, go read it now, I'll wait. You're back? Okay, good. That update got the point across, but there was more to the story, so I wanted to post a more complete update now that I've got a couple of minutes.Since the last update progress was made in a number of small, important, but not very noticeable areas. First, I needed to find some T6061 sheet aluminum for some fabrication I wanted to do. After looking looking around I finally found a place that satisfied my twin requirements of, a) having a complete website with full inventory and, b) close by so I could pick it up and not have to pay shipping (Seattle is, after all, a center of both aerospace and marine construction). The place I found is called OnLine Metals, they cut to order, and their will-call is near the Ballard bridge - perfect!
I wanted some .040" T6061 sheet to enlarge the trunk area. The Factory Five MK 3.1 Roadster is built to accommodate a fuel cell when racing. But when using the donor Mustang fuel tank, this leaves a lot of wasted space under the trunk. I started by building some cardboard templates:

We then cut out the aluminum to the right shape and fitted it one piece at a time. Finally, after mocking it up using various combinations of cardboard and aluminum, the entire box was in place, drilled, and clecko-ed:

The following weekend (this weekend), we got some beer and located and mounted the .125" reinforcing plate where the seats are going. It was a little tricky because I wanted to use the same holes in the .040" aluminum already mounted, so I needed to make a "hole finder". Rick & I ended up drilling out a bunch of rivets, marking their hole location on the new sheet, and drilling new hols in the new sheet. Here you can see the hole finder and about half the new holes drilled:

Then, after some more beer, we started thinking that there we no real reason NOT to mount the body. After all, it was just about a year ago, in the same kind of weather we pulled the body off and set on the body buck in the yard. Well, one reason - I wanted the body "bulb seal" to be on the aluminum edges, but that was easy enough to fix - you can see the seal on the firewall and the sides of the trunk here:

Okay, now (after yet more beer) there REALLY was no reason NOT to mount the body. But first we had to find it. This was a little more involved than it might sound at first. We had to get flashlights, gloves, shovels, and warm clothes. Here I'm moving the yard waste bin (really):

Then, once we found it, we had to brush the snow off and break it free of the body buck:

Finally, we were able to bring it into the garage and let the snow melt. Time for another beer, too:

Then it was a simple matter of picking it up and (carefully) setting it on the frame - 1) Lifting:

2) Placing it on the frame:


So the body's on, and a whole new world of work has just opened up. A world of sanding, filling, dust, and fairing. There are 12 bolts holding the body on, most of which are only finger-tight. The hood hits the intake manifold and needs trimming, the doors need to be mounted and trimmed, the seats need to be mounted, the trunk trimmed. We're going to be doing some work, pulling the body off, and doing a lot more body work on the buck in the garage.

A huge THANK YOU to Mike, Rick, Boris (the dog), Jasper (the dog), and Karen (the wife) for helping make this happen. I couldn't have done it without all of your help!
Thanks for reading,
--Joe
This Page:
http://garage.caropepe.com/home/ffr_cobra_project/FFR_Build_Diary/121608_the-body-is-on-the-full-story.html
All Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/caropepe/tags/mybuild
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