It has been quite a while since my last blog entry. There have been quite long periods of me being distracted by other projects, but I have still made a lot of progress.
The engine installation took about two hours and the fit was quite tight. We used a two-ton engine hoist from Harbor Freight and it worked well. We put the engine in with the transmission attached, as recomended by many on the forums. I think that three people are the minimum for installing the engine although I did raise the engine by myself to in order to add washers to the engine mount to raise the engine and oil pan. We decided to bring in the engine from the front and that required me to remove the radiator– not much of an issue because I used the Breeze radiator mount. The trickiest part was getting the transmission above the 4″ cross tube that is mid-chassis. Do do this, one person used climbing webbing to pull up on the back end of the transmission while we moved the engine aft and downward. Whew!
Below is a photo of my friend Dave demonstrating his ability to multitask.
The engine is Blueprint 347 with a Holly Sniper EFI.
An interesting note on the Cobra is that it is technically a front mid-engined car. As you can see in the above photo, the engine sits behind the front ‘axle’.
The transmission is a Tremec TKX. I’d originally set up the peddle box for a mechanical clutch, before I ordered the engine. I was planning on a Tremec TKO 600 but, in the intervening time, Blueprint changed the transmission to a TKX with a hydraulic clutch. As such, I took out the mechanical clutch mechanism and added a third master cylinder to the pedal box for the hydraulic clutch. I already had two fluid reservoirs for the brake fluid, seen in the center of the above photo on the frame rail above the ‘S’ curve of the fresh air vent tubes, and needed to add a third for the hydraulic fluid reservoir. Below is the new plumbing. The low pressure line comes from the reservoir (HCSpeed billet Al in black at the top of the photo) to the master cylinder., the high pressure line goes from the master cylinder output to the clutch.
The fuel lines are also in. I used the Earl’s Vapor Guard hose that came with the Holley Sniper EFI for the places where I wanted flexible routing and 6 AN NiCopp tubing for running along the 4” chassis tubes. I used stainless steel braided hose on my first build and like the look but I also like the understated look of the black hose and the Vapor Goard is an excellent product. I am using an Aeromotive 10 micron cartridge filter.
6 AN NiCopp tubing and Loadstone Billetworks hose clamps were used for routing the hard fuel lines:
The transition between the 6 AN NiCopp and Earl’s Vapor Guard.
Earl’s Vapor Guard plumbed into the Holley Sniper EFI.
