44-Year-old Cobra Wins Street Car Challenge

[Cobra #3170]

Originally Posted by Anthony

HOLY MOL---DEX !!!!

Where else have you taken your car ?

Where else do you plan to take your car ?

Tell us a little about your co-driver.

You should take your car to Run-n-Gun and have some fun there.

The car just started to come around this last summer with the switch to 18" wheels. My suspension changes did not really improve the car that much until I went to 18 " rubber. I spent June, July and August tuning it up on autox courses and Oct. getting a set up for road race courses then developed a compromise for both. The first big event for the car was the Optima Challenge. This year I will probably track it at Buttonwillow (near Bakersfield Ca) and maybe Sears Point for SAAC if I can get the noise level down and I'll also run a bunch of local autox's.

Jim is the finest Autox driver I have ever seen, he is smooth and always fast no matter what vehicle he is in. He had not driven my car since 2004 when it was quite evil. With no practice at all he managed to blow everybody away in three laps on the autox at the Optima challenge. His first run would have won, then he just got faster on every run. The throttle had a little glitch in it off idle that I could not detect but he found it showing how sensitive he is. He did say that the handling was so good that he did not find anything that needed to be changed. The car is very easy to change now and we were prepared to move the rear bar up for the autox but left it alone, all we did was soften the front bar. Initially we were going to change the shocks for the 0-60-0 but the brake bias was so far off we did not have time to fix the shocks too.

Jim started the McKamey autox school and has won numerous national autox titles. We have been friends for 29 years after meeting when we were running against each other at a hill climb. Jim was almost killed there when he hit a tree on his last run trying to beat my time (I was faster in those days) his car was cut in half right behind his shoulders but all he got was a sore arm. We became good friends after that and have worked together on a number of autox car design ideas. He had many unorthodox ideas that lots of people laughed at including me but it turned out that he was right and all of us were wrong because they worked.

I really don't like towing it long distances anymore because it is a pain to do at my age and the only other person I would trust driving the tow vehicle is Jim Mckamey. Jim lives in Indiana and has plenty on his plate for this summer already, lots of the Optima guys want his help now,so run and gun is out of the question this year.

[Wayne Maybury]

#3170

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with us.

Congratulations on seriously kicking butt. It was a joy to watch.

Wayne

[xlr8tr]

Love this story!! Can you explain what it was about the 18" rubber that made such a big difference?

Originally Posted by Cobra #3170

The car just started to come around this last summer with the switch to 18" wheels. My suspension changes did not really improve the car that much until I went to 18 " rubber. I spent June, July and August tuning it up on autox courses and Oct. getting a set up for road race courses then developed a compromise for both. The first big event for the car was the Optima Challenge. This year I will probably track it at Buttonwillow (near Bakersfield Ca) and maybe Sears Point for SAAC if I can get the noise level down and I'll also run a bunch of local autox's.

Jim is the finest Autox driver I have ever seen, he is smooth and always fast no matter what vehicle he is in. He had not driven my car since 2004 when it was quite evil. With no practice at all he managed to blow everybody away in three laps on the autox at the Optima challenge. His first run would have won, then he just got faster on every run. The throttle had a little glitch in it off idle that I could not detect but he found it showing how sensitive he is. He did say that the handling was so good that he did not find anything that needed to be changed. The car is very easy to change now and we were prepared to move the rear bar up for the autox but left it alone, all we did was soften the front bar. Initially we were going to change the shocks for the 0-60-0 but the brake bias was so far off we did not have time to fix the shocks too.

Jim started the McKamey autox school and has won numerous national autox titles. We have been friends for 29 years after meeting when we were running against each other at a hill climb. Jim was almost killed there when he hit a tree on his last run trying to beat my time (I was faster in those days) his car was cut in half right behind his shoulders but all he got was a sore arm. We became good friends after that and have worked together on a number of autox car design ideas. He had many unorthodox ideas that lots of people laughed at including me but it turned out that he was right and all of us were wrong because they worked.

I really don't like towing it long distances anymore because it is a pain to do at my age and the only other person I would trust driving the tow vehicle is Jim Mckamey. Jim lives in Indiana and has plenty on his plate for this summer already, lots of the Optima guys want his help now,so run and gun is out of the question this year.

[Silverback51]

Less flex in the tire sidewalls.

[Cobra #3170]

Originally Posted by xlr8tr

Love this story!! Can you explain what it was about the 18" rubber that made such a big difference?

The 18" tires are radials with modern construction that matched my camber curves much better than the 16" bias ply racing tires I had been using. I had some limited success with Hoosier 16" bias plys and Goodyear 16" radial racing tires on concrete but they were not good at all an smooth asphalt surfaces. The compounding of 18" tires is also far superior to the old racing rubber because that is where all the tire development is being done. Since almost all the racing tires for closed wheel vehicles are 17,18, 19 or even 20" the competition yields superior tires. The diameters of the new rubber also helped since I was running 23.5x11x16 fronts and they did not offer much of a contact patch for braking vs a 25" or 26" front tire. I am in the process of redoing the car for next year and plan on going to 315x30x18 fronts, upgrading the shocks, going to larger front rotors and 6 piston calipers, replacing the clutch and flywheel, reducing exhaust noise by a substantial amount (so I won't get banned at certain autox events) and installing a scatter shield after my Infineon adventure with a cracked flywheel.

[gsharapa]

Your car is awesome now so be interesting to see how your enhancements will improve it more. I should be getting my engine in a couple weeks and can't wait to get back into playing with a Cobra. Took your advise and having KC build me a big 496 alumumin FE, stage 3 heads, big solid roller, Victor intake and lots of other goodies...

[cdnus]

"and installing a scatter shield after my Infineon adventure with a cracked flywheel"

This statement is is probably one of the more notable for Cobra owners!

There have been a number of posters here Pooh Poohing the need for scatter shields. They seem to think that modern technology has overcome the problem of exploding flywheels.

"When was the last time you saw one explode---60's?" is the usual justification.

Here we have a gentleman who appears to spare no expense & engineering to develop one of the best Cobra's ever, yet suffers a flywheel failure.

Nuff said

Craig