West Coast Cobra Owner Build Chassis # 3299

[kitcarbp]

December 2014.

By mid December the mods I requested were done and the body entered a guide coat stage for a little bit and more sanding of course

[kitcarbp]

December 2014
Here are more pics of primer coat stage , now 10 years into my build, a long haul!

[kitcarbp]

While the body was being taken care of at JBL Automotove in Dulles, VA, I was busy building the custom dash. I started off with a billet sheet of aluminum. I was lucky to have machinist friends help me out in creating the CAD/CAM files for the dash. We used a multi axis Haas CNC machining center to build some magic. Here are the pics of how he did it

[kitcarbp]

September 2014

For my dash appearance, I wanted a flat black appearance and wanted to use something that was proven UV resistant and durable. I chose a 3M film product that is used on exterior signs with proven Pressure Sensitive Adhesive and UV stable that will not fade or delaminate from the sun loads. On a roadster its pretty important. I selected VDO Viewline gauges. To save real estate and keep the dash clean and simple I used a Speedo with telltales built into the unit. No need for individual light bulbs on the dash. I also installed dual heated seats and found a nice twin rotary control switch similar to the units used in the finest German cars. I drive my car into the Fall months with my hardtop, and the heated seats keep us comfortable when temps dip into the 40’s. Of course ya need USB ports to charge your devices too.

[kitcarbp]

December 2014

I decided on Silver with black stripe color combo. I picked a commonly available Silver that would be easy to match in the cars future. I picked PPG brand paint and selected Polar Silver Metallic from Mercedes code #761. The color has been in use well over 10 years. It has just a little fine metallic to make it pop in the sunshine. It took 3 months of body prep to get to this stage of basecoat. It was an exciting moment.

[kitcarbp]

Now that the body work was making good progress in 2014, I still did not have the traditional brake cooling inlet grills, oil cooler inlet grills or the main radiator grill. So after scouting ebay and this forum I was not successful. So with the help of a tool builder and expert machinist we designed them based on my body opening dimensions taken off the car. This is my point about feeling like a scratch build some days




Here they are fitted to the car after paint. Superb!

But after writing the program and surfacing the radiator grill we learned it will take 44 hours on the Haas machining center. So to this day that grill project is on hold. My friends were not able to free up hat kind of time without charging for that time. Who kmows maybe I will decide to AM the part from powdered aluminum metal ? We’ll see.

[kitcarbp]

December 2014

Here are pics of the stripes being painted. I used a straight gloss black from GM. Been used for decades.