Hi, nice forum you guys have got going here!
I live in Townsville, QLD and strongly considering buying a new kit car and building it up from the basic chassis/fibreglass body. Joined this site for a bit of help, advice, and to drool over all your beautiful finished cars!
A bit about me - I've always had a strong attachment to shiny things that go fast. My first car was an EA falcon that I spent far too much time trying to make faster for little gain, and I was a member of a falcon club back then. After that I got strongly into sports bikes, did a lot of club riding and still love riding very much! I used to compete in road racing on a 600cc, until work commitments and the prospect of loosing my job due to potential injury killed that. I'm planning to get back into it at some stage in the future though - it was so much fun! Currently I have a 2011 R1, which is certainly fast, but not as fun as my R6 was IMO.
I've always loved the concept of cars with light weight and high power much more than the idea of heavy cars with big motors - probably due to my bike background. I also love making stuff and working with metal, in fact I'm a fitter/turner by trade. I've wanted to build a kit car for years, the idea of driving around something beautiful that I built myself is extremely appealing! After a lot of looking around over the last year or two, I narrowed down the choice to a GT40 or a Cobra! I was going to build a GT40 from scratch, just the plans, but the difficulty in dealing with compliance engineering and my lack of experience with kit cars made that seem like an unwise choice. Then I was looking and planning to build a GT40 from a kit, but eventually gave the idea away after a few months - the main reasons being:
1. I'm 6'2, and after sitting in one with no seats in I realised that fitting comfortably in one was not going to happen. I could live with being a bit cramped, but also
2. I didn't like the fact that the gearboxes you had a realistic choice between seemed to be quite weak for a big V8. To me, 'this box is fine, so long as you baby it through first and second gear' is not an ideal box to use in a sports car.
3. The cost of doing the whole thing seemed to be somewhere in the order of 70k+... nice car, but very very pricey.
4. The wife didn't like the look of them at all. Yeah call me ***** whipped if you like but gotta keep the old ball and chain happy!
Cobra's on the other hand still look awesome, I love the concept, the missus fell in love with the looks of them at a young age (never hurts), they'll probably fit me better with a floor modification and I gather that they are something of a 'raw' car to drive. That suits me nicely, would probably be somewhat similar to being on a bike!
I came across a manufacturer called DRB down near Brisbane - they offer a kit car which looks high quality and also seems to accept a large number of parts and engine straight from a 2003+ XR8 5.4L DOHC, with suspension from a XJ6 series 3. They've widened the car slightly to fit the engine, I believe. I quite like the idea of using a modern engine that passes all the latest emmisions requirements, and being a yonger bloke carbies are a bit before my time! So I'm very strongly considering going with this, and just fitting it with the basic BOSS 260 kw engine. I realise that there are heaps of cobras pushing way way more power than this, however I can always modify it in the future. Besides, my bike is more than capable of giving me my outright speed and power fix!
So where I'm at now is trying to get more information about engineering requirements and ADR stuff, before I commit, put down some coin and order the basic kit. I'm getting the feeling trying to get the project past the QLD government is quite probably going to be one of the most painful parts of the whole build... reading through their website is extremely painful, and I'm starting to get the feeling that even they have no idea what they want to get a kit car registered.
I also had a chat to the closest supplier of the car, he seems like a nice bloke and was quite helpful. But apparently the engineer that he likes to use is over 2000km away from me - yes, I get that this engineer would have a lot of experience with this particular kit car but that distance is just not practical. Now I'm trying to chase down engineers who are much closer to me and are still good, people who wont stuff me around because they don't know kit cars!
So, sorry for the long winded introduction! Hopefully I'll be able to absorb some of the knowledge around here, and when I start whatever kit I decide on it'll be a much more enjoyable build because of it!
From Australia, new to Cobras
Linear Mode
