Exhaust and Lights and Exhausts

27th March 2002

Well it's been 6 months since I last touched the Cobra, all this time the exhausts have been sat under my bed. With the advance of spring and the lighter nights I thought I'd better get onwith things.

As a gentle start I ordered the headlight and small light kit from DAX, these duely arrived. I fitted the headlamps and indicators and they quite transform the look of the car.

I used the headlamp bowls from DAX and I should give you a note of warning, the screw that holds the rim on the headlamps does NOT go at the bottom!

28th March 2002

After the success of the lights I turned my attention to the radiator hoses. I had purchased a number of hoses from my local scrap yard for £1.

Here are two picture, the first is an old Montego hose which oneday will be connected to the header tank. I'm not sure where the other hose came from but I had to cut it about to fit. I have now put a peice of copper pip to join the two. Looks quite good really :-)

	Does the expanion bottle have to be the highest point in the system?

The bottom hose is more of a problem as I cannot find any 45mm hose to fit the radiator!

Next I tried to fit the exhaust, but soon ran into trouble as the pipes for cylinders 7 & 8 foul on the aluminium engine lining. Now what do I do?

The bottom stud for this downpipe is not done up yet, there is about 4mm gap between exhaust and cylinder head!

8th April 2002

The word from DAX is that the downpipes on the Rover engines only have about 5mm clearence to the body without the aluminium linings. So once the linings are fitted you have almost no clearence. The work-around is to cut a hole in the fibre-glass behind the aluminium lining, then used a ball-pain hammer to form the ali into the hole making space for the exhaust!

	It just feels wrong to be doing this! But I couldn't think of anything else to do. I'll need to cover this over with fibre-glass one day.
The ali doesn't look that good either, but most of it is covered by the exhaust. Couldn't swing the hammer as the engine was in the way.
	Once the pipes are in it looks OK (and taking the picture at this angle helps!), there is about 5mm clearence between the exhaust and aluminium lining. I hope that will be enough!

Now all I need to do is the driver's side. I'm hoping this won't be so bad. The body shell has a rounded corner but the lining is at 90 deg. I'm hoping that just crushing the 90 deg of the lining onto the radius of the body shell will give enough clearence on the driver's side.

13th April 2002

Today I was determined to fit the side pipes, I'd got everything out of the way and I had a clear run at it.

The first job was to hammer the engine lining on the off-side out of the way to clear the exhaust. This required far less modification than the near side. Once this was done I fitted the downpipes. I think I need some more practice at panel beating, mind you body work is not my favorite part of this build.

At this point I noticed the top steering joints fouled on the exhaust. I wasn't too worried as the manual suggests leaving final fixing of the lower steering coloum bush until the exhaust is fitted. Getting this link right was not straight forward! Notice the brake pipe for the rear brakes, this is not the "ideal" route for this to take, I need to read the manual a little more thoroughly next time... next time?

The bolt in the bottom joint fouled on the engine lining and I had to cut a bit away to give clearence. I was speaking to Martin Bowden at the Exeter kit-car show last year and he mentioned he had to do a similar thing. Now the steering is properly secured, it makes steering the car in and out of the garge much easier! You can just see the top of the spindle that drives the steering coloumn (and the rusty old oil filter).

Here's the latest engine bay picture. It finally seems to be coming together :-) Still need to sort out the bottom hose and find a header tank. You will notice the washer bottle is still in it's old location, this will need to be moved else it will melt due to the heat of the exhaust. You may also have noticed the fan belt tensioner need some attension!

Before packing away I cleaned out the car and tried to fit the speedo cable, unfortunately the barcket that holds it into the gearbox is missing, what's the chance of finding one of these!

17th April 2002

Had a free evening today, so I thought it was time to fit those sidepipes :-)

I had to go to the scrap yard today to get a horn for my Land Rover as it failed the MOT cos it didn't work. Whilst I was there I picked up some 'bullet' conectors for the lights. If you use the crimp type you cannot get the rubber boot over the connectors, nor will th light then fit throught the hole in the body. But I thought I'd leave this more mundane jod until later.

	First job was to cut a big hole in the body work, this I was not looking forward too! I stuck an envelope address lable on the inside of the shell then used a felt pen to mark on the label the center of the hole.
	I drilled a pilot hole from the inside then used a big hole cutter from the outside to cut the main hole.

This is when it all started to go wrong! I fished out the sidepipes from under the bed, worked out which was the n/s one and unwrapped it, then fitted it up against the car. The downpipes were a bit of a fiddle to fit but they were ok, but something didn't look right!

	If you look closely you will notice the rear port of the exhaust is pointing upward, won't this fill with water when it rains?
	Even worse, when I came to check the fit of the rear bracket, there was no way it was going to line up! If you know much about DAX exhausts you will know how much they cost and after laying out all that cash I really did expect them to fit!!!!

I did wonder if I had put the wrong exhaust on, so I checked some photos of a cobra I had seen at the Exeter kit-car shown and tried the other one.

NO, this is even worse!

Then I had an idea....

I lay both sidepipes on the kitchen floor and look what I noticed... They are set at DIFFERENT angles, surely this can't be right? Can it??

Just to be sure I fitted the offside exhaust...

This was better, but even then it doesn't seem to be set at the right angle! I know these are hand built cars and everyone will be slightly different, but what can be wrong here? The chassis is built for the Rover V8 (and it fits very well), then the exhausts bolt on, there are only three components, Chassis, Engine and Exhaust. Two of these are supplied by DAX the other is a standard production part!

I am really upset, I have had so much trouble with body shell, bits that don't fit and you should see what's happening to my bonnet... I Need to phone DAX!

18th April 2002

I've calmed down a bit now.... plenty of deep breaths.....

I put a message on one of the kit car newsgroups today and William (who is building a DAX Rush http://www.v8rush.co.uk) replied to say the exhausts looked to be the same as the Rush and if they were the nozzle would rotate! I had tried to move the nozzle but it was pretty solid and I didn't want to break anything, but it would make sense.

I spoke to DAX late today and Peter confirmed the nozzle should move. He also pointed out that the nozzle section must stick out of the main pipe by 5mm to pass the SVA (no sharp corners). He also told me what the two self tappers supplied with the sidepipes are for. One is to stop the nozzle moving and the other is to hold the sideipe onto the downpipes. What I want to know is where is all this written down? How is the average builder supposed to know all this? Do we have to ask how to fit every part we buy?

Came home early from work today as I needed to try rotating the nozzle. I started with the nearside exhaust and sure enough with a few hard thumps using a rubber hammer the nozzle moved :-)) An hour and a half later the exhaust was fitted. Another hour and the offside was fitted, this nozzle was much looser than the nearside and I could almost rotate it by hand, shame I didn't ty this one first yesterday!

I held the exhaust bracket to the chasis using a bolt into the support for the seat runner and a big self tapper into the box section of the chassis. I also had to cut down the top bolt of the rubber mount to stop it fouling on the body shell. The position of the inner bolt is a little worrying as I don't want it to foul the seat runners, but we'll face that one later!

The only thing I forgot to ask DAX was the gap to leave between the sidepipe and the body shell, I've got about 20mm, hope that's OK?

So now I have both exhausts fitted, phew! I still need to finish the hole where the exhast exits throught the body shell and I shalln't fit the self tappers to lock it all into place until I've fitted the exhaust manifold gasket!

My next big problem is that lower radiator pipe, I need to find a pipe with and inside diameter of 45mm, time to visit Autoquip!

I've also heard of some secondhand 15" wheels and tyres for sale, so I must chase them up.