If it seems like quite awhile since we have worked on the car, well... that's because I missed a week. The three hour round trip (and the cost of gas) isn't viable unless I can stay at least 5-6 hours. That means that even a half hour commitment at home negates any possibility of doing some work on the Cobra. There are things that Grant can do without me being there (example: I was on site for the installation of a brake caliper - if you've seen one, you've seen them all. More or less, anyway.
This week has been a bit more open. So far.
The plan for the day in this case sounded pretty easy: install the horn(s). Now, I do not know how many (if any) horns were included in the kit, but I do know that he had no less than six horns on hand. That is obviously (one would think) far more than enough to meet my needs. Fortunately, his Roadster also needs horn functionality, so the Cobra would only receive three of them.
That is still quite cacophonous. Trust me on this - I was "treated" to an extremely loud demonstration.
The trick for installing three horns is to 1) find an open enough piece of real estate under the hood, and 2) a fixture to mount them to.
Oh, there was also a bit of a leak in the clutch hydraulics to be fixed. Lupus lent a hand. Urr... paw.
He can be quite helpful, but he spends most of his shop time laying claim to a future seat in the car.
Back to the horns. Grant had no less than six of them on hand. I don't know how many (if any at all) horns were included with the kit, so it was decided to portion them out: three for his Roadster and three for the Cobra. All three were tested one at a time and all three at once.
They are louder than the air horns on a Mack truck. Made my ears ring. So... perfect!!
Not surprisingly, F5 did not foresee the need for room three horns, nor did they provide a mounting bracket. Fortunately for me, Grant is a Master Fabricator. He cut out three short lengths of metal plate.
I then drilled 1/4" mounting holes in each plate.
Each plate was then shaped into a nice looking yet quite functional mounting rack.
There wasn't much for me to do, so I spent some time trying to teach Lupus to stay off of my seats.
He laughed it off. He's a best friend of the owner of the shop, so I was forced to take any abuse dished out by Prince Lupus. He actually laughs in my face!!
He's far too cute for my own good.
This is the foundation of the three-horn mount.
This is just before the 3rd mount was welded on:
Sadly (but beneficially) enough, I don't typically get to do the fun stuff (anything that includes sparks) such as welding. Instead of moping around, I got to wondering how precise the hole locations (I paid F5 an extra $149 to do it, thinking they would be very good at it - long before we received the kit and found out that precision is in the eye of the cutter) so I grabbed one of the rollover hoops to test the fit.
About what I have come to expect.
That isn't very close at all. There wasn't a $199 version of the cutting, so I guess this is as good as it gets. Hopefully it will work out okay.
Work time for this step: 5 hours. Unproductive time: 1 hour of fighting Lupus for a place to sit.
Frustration Level: 3/10 for car, 6/10 with Lupus.
Total time of build: 127 hours.
Half of my car, my dog had some part of it in his mouth! As far as the roll bar, the legs tend to suck inward. Try the bar on the frame, it's probably pretty simular. Some adjustments required :)
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