yeah for sure...i have been in a really nice 200sx owned by my friend's colleague at the wesley...you could feel the G's pull at each gear change...it was a pretty sweet ride...but its no cobra...

is that your donk craig? its sweet...glowing exhaust pipes and all :) i love it! where can i get one? :P

ps. your website's pics are broken :(

Yep..understand what your saying about the Rice burners.

The problem with the cobras is that they are light and bluddy short at 90" long. And dont have the advantages of traction control etc etc ....healthy HP over 450 requires shares in a tyre company.

Put em up against most ex showroom exotic machines tho and the bang for the buck cant be beaten......plus...they sure are a sexy looking thing.

I've seen folks at car shows walk past some pretty fancy european exotics just to stare in awe at a cobra.

yeah i know what you mean...cobras have always been real head turners for me...you dont see too many which adds to the mystique...

ofcourse the big european sportscar names will also turn my head...the likes of lamborghini and ferrari...although ferrari has lost its way of late...that scaglietti sure fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down...

Hi Inazuma_x,

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

The Classic Revival kit has in my opinion has the most accurate shaped (to the 427SC) body currently available in Australia.

Their design also allows you to build a very light weight car.I'm expecting my LS1 powered version to come in at under 1000KG. Light weight combined with an honest 400HP should make for some spirited performance that will leave most cars on the road in it's dust.

The body is made from Quad directional stiched mat which is exceptionally strong compared to conventional fiberglass materials. It's hand laid using vinylester resin which has a much hight heat deflection tem than the polyester resin that most bodies use. The body and tub are glassed together as on unit and honecomb and sandwich construction tecniques are used in strength critical areas. When the body is bolted down to the chassis it significantly increases the rigidity of the chassis. The chassis blitzed the torsion and beaming requirements @ almost 15,000NM/degree. The standards require 6,000NM/degree and these test were done without the body on the chassis.

There are lots of ways to build a Cobra as you'll find here. Before you settle on a kit you have to decide is what's important to you in the finished car. It's going to be a compromise in many ways unless you've just hit the jackpot on lotto.

Maybe you should make a list of the things you want your car to do and list the features in it that are important to you. Go through the list and give each of them a priority.

It's no good spending $50 on a 700HP monster motor and having only 20 grand left to build a chassis and body to wrap around it. At best you will end up with a very scary billy cart.

It's a good idea to chose components that you can build on in the future. Start with a good building blocks since you may find down the track that cutting a corner early on makes later development less efective.

Fortunately there are heaps of people here who have already built there cars that'll help you avoid any pitfalls and let you spend your $$$ wisely.

Cheers

Hey Mike,

At 23 where do the young men get the $50,000 from in the first place.

I'm 42 and its just in the last couple of years I have been able to venture down this particular route (and I have a bloody good job - ask Les).

Notwithstanding the above, young blood is good blood especially when he uses my Cobra as a screensaver!

Hi Pete,

I'm 35 and I'm paying for this thing as I go. The project gets a bit of a kick along when a tax return comes in :p

$50K was just an example. Inazuma mentioned earlier that he planned on $70K over 5 years. I was pointing out that you need to balance things out a bit to get a decent finished product.

Young blood... any blood I say! The more Cobra enthusiasts out there the better.:D

Cheers

my father is scotish and i am well known for my stinginess :)

basically i save and save every cent i have towards a goal...and this has been a goal of mine for a while...with minor detours along the way ;) hehehe

there is some really useful info in this post :) thanks very much :)

for some reason i still have a hangup about fibreglass...unless the kit was absolutely beautifully dimensioned i would have a preference to stick it out and source an aluminium body...i also dont like rust haha...who does...but plastic and rust are my 2 most hated things about any car :P unfortunately aluminium is pretty reactive so i am stuck between a rock and a hard place...haha

here it is...this is only 480x360 original is 1600x1200...but still nice :)

Suspension pretty low back then. Now rising into the sky.

Check out the customers - pretty hot chick with the Cobra man!

low ride = better handling...or atleast it does with minis...but they have sh!t hot handling anyway :P why did you raise the rear?

how does a cobra handle? as i said...never actually driven one...yet ;)

Too low (3 inch clearance) not practical on Ozzie roads.

Plus the look is not "a Cobra look".

Back end up - front end to be lifted.

Handling - straight line **** hot, corners - again hot, but only if its setup right. That's why my next mini-project is to get it setup.

Refer to "front end drift thread for further info"

Fiberglass has some serious advantages over aluminium for a road car. If you drop a spanner on a fiberglass panel the worst you are going to get is probably a paint chip. Drop one on an aluminium body and you will probably have a dent to go with the paint chip.

Fiberglass bodies in relation to aluminium bodies are imensly strong. They will take a lot of abuse without showing hardly any damage (See if Craig still has the pics of his Cobra that took out a telephone pole). Laurie Bongalas slammed his car backwards into the freeway armco at 100Ks and then had a light pole fall down across it. He patched it up and was going again in no time. He left the bonet as is and it still shows the scars but it's not much of a mark where the pole landed.

People will talk about aluminium "memory" when it comes to dent repairs etc but I still think it's much easier to repair a glass body with the tools and skills in a home workshop. Glass would definitely be my preference for a car that's driven regularly.

If I were to have an aluminium body the only way I'd present it would be in bare aluminium, either pollished or buffed with scotch brite. Once you put some paint on it no one will be able to tell it from a fiberglass one unless they start crawling round under it.

Glass Cobra bodies and general fiberglas tecghnology have come a long eay in recent years. There are some very high tech materials used in some of the kits on the market out there. For example the body on the Robnel is available in a Kevlar composite and is pretty tough. It's well worth doing some research into how each manufacturer lays up their body.

Cheers

i must admit that the scoop on your cobra's bonnet is massive...i prefer the smaller ones like on the superformance kits...maybe not as practical as your's in terms of airflow into the engine bay...but meh...

the thing is that i really need to know what to look for...or what is good and why...s i said i was and am still into minis...and have spent many a school holiday (uni days) driving around looking for forgotten mini shells in people's back yards...with great success mostly...i guess i am just used to the idea of rolling round in a ball of metal :P the idea of fibreglass kinda scares me...i am sure i could get over that fear if i saw one i really liked that was fibre...

Now ya in trouble Pete.:CRY:

That lady in the pic doesn't look like the one I saw you with last we met. :rolleyes:

Think ya can get over the west side of Brissy and not be spotted heh?? :D :D

Having said that..lining Park Road, Milton, with Cobras would sure change the charactor of the place. :LOL: :LOL:

sure would make a welcome difference to having it lined with ferraris...i have a pic of that somewhere too...some nice dino's in there...but mostly this new-school sporty crud...nothing with any real guts...

the more i look at them the more i like the body/chassis combos offered by Classic Revival...what does everyone have to say about them? good? bad? why?

Hi again inazuma_x I am just staring with my build of a Classic Revival car and the body is very straight & strong.

I checked out alot of the kits available over the past 3-4 years and decided that the Classic Revival kit had everything I wanted.

I wanted a car with independant rear suspension and I am partial to the holden/gm engines (holden technical background for the past 11 years).

Here is a link to there website http://www.classicrevival.com.au/

If you want to see some being built check out Aussie Mikes, Leeroys and my picture galleries (I dont have many pics yet)
To see the pics click on the little cameras next to the names.