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| Car of the Month - September 2002 | |
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Gael Brooks' 1978 Cobra II | ||
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I bought the car in January 2002 from Washington State for a total of
$2,500 for car and shipping (I live in Arizona.) We bought this to
replace the totaled ’76 Cobra II I used to drive. My dad, my brother, my
girlfriend, and I all worked on it nearly every weekend until the end of
April to finally get it completed. We completely rebuilt the 302,
finding it was bored .040 over, so we bored it .020 more to a total of
.060. The heads are from a ’66 289, and it’s running an Edelbrock Torker
II intake. We just put a brand new Holley 670 Street Avenger on it for
my graduation present. It has crane cams roller rockers, a 268 cam and
the RAD4 manual transmission; I’m planning at a future point to put a T5
in it. The exhaust is custom done, and will be routed out the back of
the car hopefully with a few weeks, its 2.25” exhaust with 2 Flowmaster
40 series original flow mufflers. I’m still in the process of breaking
the engine in, but hopefully by late summer I’ll run it in the ¼ mile to
see what kind of times it can run. The tires sizes are front:
P215/60SR14 and rear: P245/60R14.
After looking for a car for over a year to replace our totaled 1976 Mustang Cobra II, I came across a '78 Mustang Cobra II in Washington State. So after about a week of debating, we buy a non-running car, after seeing only about 5 pictures of it for $1,800 for the car, plus 700 to ship it. About a week later it gets to my house, and we push it into our backyard and get ready for the long task of getting it running and looking good. The first thing we did was completely swap interiors with our previous Mustang. So we completely stripped the interior of both cars, cleaned up the interior that would be going into the car, and threw the old interior out. So now the interior of my Mustang is brand new, except for the dash and the gauge panels. Now for the hard part, getting the car to run. The car didn't run because we didn't have a flywheel. So after about 2-3 weeks of searching for a flywheel, we found one in Kentucky, which we bought for $70, then spent $30ish to resurface it. After that, we assembled everything; put everything together to start it up for the first time. As we were putting the transmission on, we found a problem, it didn't line up. So we looked over the 3 transmissions we had, and the 1 in pieces, and compared them. We couldn't believe it, our transmission was in a broken Rubbermaid box, completely disassembled, and rusted. So off we go assembling the transmission for the car (which we've never done before in our lives.) Finally we get it done, mount it, put the driveshaft on, and start it up. That was probably the happiest moment of my life for a very long time. But my happiness soon ended, as I looked out the back, and saw the smoke coming out of it, and not going away. Out goes the engine, and gets completely disassembled and taken to a shop to be rebuilt and cleaned. While the engine was being done, it was time to do suspension work. We completely redid the suspension, cleaning it and painting it, along with the brakes, also putting the traction bars on. 2-3 weeks later, the engine is back, now its time to put it all back together, with the addition of some new performance parts, of course. We found out the engine was bored .040 over, so instead of honing it, we bored it .020 more to .060 over. The heads we found out were from a '66 289 which is good due to their butterfly shape which gives it a swirling motion. We bought a 268 cam, roller rockers, had the current Edelbrock Torker II intake beaded to clean it up, and a high volume oil pump. So after a few weeks, the engine was finally together, and back in it went to the car. Got everything hooked back up, and started it up again. Boy did it feel good to hear it after that 3+ weeks of silence. After everything was finished, it was time to get the car registered. First outing the oil pressure gauge tube bumped against the headers, burning a hole into it, which hit the headers and caused it to smoke everywhere. I pulled over, freaking out that I broke my car. My dad came, found the problem, we fixed it, then limped it home. Then we took it to emissions finally after it was fixed, and as I was about to test, the radiator starting spewing. I tested the car anyway, and then parked it and let it cool off immediately. The people were laughing as they gave me the paper, it passed emissions! Now to find overheating problem, thanks to help from people on stangnet.com forums, I found out it was that we didn't put a thermostat in, because we heard it runs cooler without it, we were wrong. Since then, its been running rather well, with the exception of a few problems, such as an old dirty carburetor, which we replaced with a Holley 670 street avenger, and the newest problem, oil leaking out through the breather and getting onto the headers causing lots of smoke. My newest modification to my car will be to run the exhaust out the back of the car, right now it's just running turndowns under the car, causing tons of dust to blow everywhere. To tell you the truth, all this work we've done is definitely worth it. I completely adore this car, and I hope I have it for many many years to come. | |
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