Original Cobra coolant tank?

[grybrd123]

Thanks for your comments! Here’s some of the story. This 55 Aceca was completely gutted long ago and abandoned, probably in Southern California, and we are installing a fuel injected Ford 302 and a TKO 5-speed. Someone (probably in the early 1970s, we guess from some of the stuff that came with the car) grafted what appears to be an entire genuine leaf spring Cobra rear end, differential, suspension, and brakes (four wheel disks) onto it, so it’s a real “Cobraized” Aceca. Before you ask, there are no numbers or anything on the Cobra parts that could lead to identifying the car the parts are from. We looked very hard and thoroughly, but there is nothing. Our guess is that someone totaled a Cobra in the 60s and the Aceca owner scavenged the usable parts from it for this project, which was never completed. We’ve been working on it for more than a year.

Those original modifiers/builders did a very poor job, so we redid everything they did. For instance, they did not realize (or care?) that the Cobra diff housing was significantly thicker than the Aceca housing, so when they added the Cobra diff it lengthened the wheelbase by more than an inch! We removed the bad graft, moved the diff housing forward to make the wheelbase 90 inches as it was originally, and among other things, strengthened the frame by sleeving the main frame tubes and adding frame braces where necessary to stiffen it up. There were some badly corroded (electrolysis) lower frame tubes and also some broken joints, which we have replaced and repaired.

In addition, the aluminum body was pretty banged up (mostly in the nose) and had lots of bondo in it, which we couldn’t see until the car was soda blasted to remove the paint. Then we had to cut the body to be able to remove it so we could work on it and the frame. The body is about done now after more than 200 hours fabricating and replacing panels, straightening and smoothing, etc. It’s a beautiful job.

Original Acecas were very light cars (less than 2200 lbs), and of course were built to have an inline 6 cylinder motor of no more than 150 hp. I’ve attached a few photos (some from when it was purchased) showing the Cobra parts and some of the frame stiffening. Comments and questions from Cobra folks are more than welcome. I have lots of photos of its past and present state, but can only post 5 at a time here.