Here I was, thinking that I was crusing along on the Cobra: brakes-done, rear end-done, engine-in, etc. I was flying high! I ask a colleage of mine at work to come by and see the progress since he build a FFR Mark II Roadster (as you may recall, mine is a Mark III). He came over and we started looking into where and how to mount the seats. The assembly manual I believe literally says "mount seats." So we placed the seats in the cockpits on the driver and passenger side to test the fit out. That little idea spawned a chain of events that I am still getting out from under. Here is where the work for the past four months has come in....
Driver side: Since I am using the pedal mounting hardware from the donor mustang, some modifications need to be made before it will function on the cobra (news to me). Since my dad had already rivetted in the sheet metal to cover the pedal box, I believe that he thought he was done with the pedal mounting. Apparently not. The first issue that came up is when I tried to move my right foot from the acellerator pedal to the brake. I couldn't...the brake pedal was mounted so close to the right side firewall that it trapped my foot underneath brake pedal and I could not lift my foot over to the brake. Not good. Apparently, you need to shift the brake and clutch pedal over about 1.5-2" (or 35-50mm for my international readers) to center them in the footbox. So my friend and I did started that evening was to adjust the clutch and brake pedals... In order to do this, I had to tear apart the upper driver side foot box, which was more than just a little bit of work!
Shifting the pedals was the easy part. That was accomplished with a new sledge hammer from Christmas and a blow torch to heat the metal to make the bending easier. Yes, there was a bit of cusing involved too! After shifting the pedals so I can use the brake and cluth, I now had no room on the left side of the footbox. Anyone who drives a manual knows how nice it is to be able to rest your foot off the clutch on the side when you are just "cruisin." Well, no room for that anymore. To rememdy this problem, I searched the Cobra forum (both forums actually) for a solution. The one thing that was posted multipe times were to do conduct footbox modifications. Great...sheet metal work....OK. I found one solution that I liked, which being the ambitious person I am, tyring to create using a single sheet of Al and folded properly, would look awesome! I first made a cardboard template, just like they do on all those car shows on Discovery, Spike, History Channel, etc. (except I used real cardboard they use construction paper). Here is my template, measurements, mock up, and installation. Yeah!
So that was the easier side of car with respect to footboxes...Now for the real work...the passenger side!
Passenger Side: After the fiasco on the drive side, I was afraid to try and test fit the seat in the passeger side cockpit, with good cause. So we placed the seat in the passenger side to see roughly where it would be mounted. After sitting in the seat, I noticed that in order for me to fit, I was basically in a semi-fetal position. Well, me being my massive 5'11" and about 175 lbs (1.8 m and ~68 kg) this is BAD! I know I could not sit there comfortably for more than about....30 seconds! What is going on! My colleague took a seat and it was even worse! His Mark II is not like this! Well it turns out that FF decided to shorten and narrow the footbox on the passenger side so it was possible to place the newer wider 4.6L engines into their kits. Good for race car drivers, not good for passengers. Once again, my internet forum search revealed footbox modifications, again.
The modifications on the passenger side required me to basically redo the entire end of the box in order to widen and lengthen it. I kept thinking to myself, wow, this would be SOOOO easy if the engine was not there. Now I am really regretting putting the engine it so soon, or not so soon, or at least tried the seats, which of course I didn't know I should... Thus, the work is more difficult, but hey, let's get to it. I took the same approach, made a cardboard template based on my estimated measurements.
Now is the time to note that if you recall, I had already installed all of the emission, fuel lines, vapor canister which are all based on the passenger footbox. So guess what! All that work had to be undone and roughly started over once the footbox had been expanded. Great, doing work twice. Who knows, I may get lucky and have to do it again! So you can see the line I plan to cut (yes it is straight, its just optical perception making it seem curved).
After cutting out the end ofhte foot box and drilling out all of the rivets of the other panels, I made mocked up the new footbox using my cardboard template. See how much more room I am making for all of you who to get to go for a ride! How considerate of me...of course I am obligated to remind you that you would be riding in a car that I built, but the same is pretty much true of my 69 mustang too!
I believe I expanded the footbox, making it about 3 inches wider and about 4 inches longer (no metric this time, sorry). I made all three walls out of a single sheet of 6061 0.040" Al, which means, "sheet aluminum to pretty much everyone else."
The bottom and top panels were made from other sheets, where I had to entirely remake the top of the footbox. Twice.
WOW!!! Look at that shine!
Now that I have expanded footboxes for you, me, and the entire family....time to start the next chapter!
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