Which kit would you recommend?

[Paintwerks]

Originally Posted by Turnips

.... seriously what do you mean by the body needs lots of work?

The fibreglass bodies are made out of moulds. The amount of time and care put into making the mould, the method of manufacture, and the care in making the body all contribute to the quality of the body.

We do a fair number of fibreglass cars and bodyparts such as scoops, wings and bumpers. Without doubt, every single part always comes riddled with pinholes, ripples, voids and sometimes, delamination, among other issues.

In the case of the DRB we repaired and painted, it suffered from pinholes, ripples, depressions, high spots, join lines and panel gap issues. We spent about 40 hours on the body, filling/shaping/sanding to repair said issues. We also had to fill holes that had been made by the owner as the engineer wanted him to relocate mirrors etc.

Bodywork skill is something that is acquired through years of practice. It's as much technical ability as it is feel. The same is said for painting one of these beasts. The issue with the Cobra is that because it has no start and end points to panels, the trick is always maintaining a wet edge when painting. And painting curves is more difficult that flat panels.

I'm not suggesting you can't undertake your own bodywork and painting, for the very spirit of building a Cobra IS the DIY aspect. However, the difference between a poor job to a great job is large, so all I'm suggesting is that if you want your Cobra to look beautiful, consider allowing enough in your budget to have a professional who is experienced in this kind of work do the body and paint for you. You'll pay for it, but you'll be rewarded with the paint increasing both the value of the car and your satisfaction when you look at it.

Case in point...I was at the Victorian Hot Rod Expo a few weeks back, and there were many different cars there. Of the 100 or so cars on display, only about 3-4 were true (trailer queen) 100 point cars, about 5 were 90+ cars and pretty much all the rest all had various issues with the paint and body because they'd probably been done as a DIY by the owner (or some hack in a shop that he was mates with and got it done for a good price). They looked good from 20 feet away, but get up close and you could see the problems.