96dreamer's Never Ending Build Thread

96dreamer

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I have been wanting to start a build thread for my 96 cobra for a while now. I bought this thing 12 years ago in 2007 as a dumb high school senior. At the time I was stoked, it had ~130k miles, a built motor, what I thought at the time was a nice custom paint job but a bad trans. I got it cheaper than the going rate for a clean stock one not realizing I picked up someones unfinished project. To top it all off the car didn't move so we had to trailer it, had a few buddies help push it up and smashed the front bumper straight into the trailer and cracked the bumper on both sides. Still haven't replaced the damn thing despite having a spare for about 10 years.

Ill continue updating this over the next few weeks hopefully.

Oldest pictures I could find
You can tell how old they are by how shitty they are lol
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The car was originally white and was painted nissan 350z daytona blue which I fell in love with the first time I saw it. The color change was done about 90%. Door jambs were done, door locks, spoiler, and antenna were all filled but they didn't do the engine bay or trunk. They also didn't wet sand it after painting and the orange peel was terrible.
I think the very first thing I did which I don't have any picture of was put in a used t45 which resulted me with a blown up rear end the very first time I blew it up. I replaced the rear with a new housing with 4.10s and a rebuilt track loc, pretty sure I also put in some cheap lowering springs in at this time as well. Again no pictures of this in the digital camera age.

First round of mods was offroad x and IMRC deletes. I made the deletes from the factory aluminum ones and epoxied the holes shut.
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Newer picture from when I sold them.
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I did some minor cleaning up stuff on the car then dug deep into it for the first time to take care of the hideous engine bay situation. It was still white with terrible wire management. I had before picture somewhere but think I lost them when photobucket went batshit crazy.

Edit found the original engine picture.
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Everything pulled and prepped at this point I believe.
Did all this on my parents carport the summer before college. God help them for putting up with me.
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New post ran out of picture space
 
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96dreamer

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Had the bay shot black and some stuff custom powder coated to match the car. Also did long tubes/off road h, under drive pullies, caster camber plates, overflow tank and some other misc stuff at this time too. Kept it this way for a while.
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A short time after this I did the v1 wire tuck and engine bay clean up.
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96dreamer

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Spring break my first year of college I lost my mind and decided to wet sand the whole car. @02Toner was nice enough to give me a ton of help that week.
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Wet sanded the whole thing on the carport/ driveway
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Took it to a body shop and buffed the whole thing, first time using a buffer as well.
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96dreamer

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Shortly after wet sanding the car I traded the godawful cowl hood for a factory black hood and picked up some machined finish 03 cobra wheels in 17x9/17x10.5
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Sometime after this i put a 150 wetshot on the car. It ran awesome but i only ever managed a best of 12.0@l around 118. Then I decided it would be a good idea to take it to the track on some spare jeep wheels and junk m/t et streets.
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On a pass that I wasn't even spraying on I did some carnage. Spun an axle tube which trashed both tires, put the driver side into the front of the wheel well and passenger into the rear. Trashed both the upper control arms that I had put on at some point previously. Put the driveshaft into the floor and ruined the aluminum driveshaft I had on it. Ripped the nitrous line off the bottom of the car, luckily the bottle was closed.
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96dreamer

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More damage..
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I replaced the rear end with another 8.8, 3rd one since owning it for those keeping track. I didn't want to go through this again so I threw some money at it. Welded housing, 9" ends, 31 spline mosers, 31 spline trac loc, solid upper bushings and new upper BMR adjustable control arms and powdercoated housing. I had a picture of it before going into the car at some point but it is mia at the moment. Also did strange shocks and struts/coilovers, powdercoated the calipers and brackets and some new meats.
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96dreamer

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Missed something in the timeline right after getting the nitrous on the car I raced a friend in a bolt on 6.0 GTO. It was the first time I had the 175 jets in the car.
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Found out the hard way that the clutch I was told was an 03 cobra clutch was in fact not.
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It exploded on the hit, I was luckily able to limp it home rev matching and taking back roads.
Replaced that clutch with a new 03 cobra from ford racing and an aluminum 03 cobra flywheel. No pictures of the repair process pretty standard stuff.
 

96dreamer

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Next big project I got into was a cop swap purely because I got bored with the car. Wired in an oem harness from a continental and had some valve covers from a continental powder coated to match, again.
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Wrapped some stock coil covers in carbon fiber vinyl
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Also delete the EGR,SAI and ABS block at this time and tucked a few more wires
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I think I threw this custom steering wheel cover on around this time as well.
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96dreamer

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Next step was getting rid of the wimpy t45 for the gobs of torque my bolt on b head car was making.
I think this was early in 2011 when I got my first engineering internship and was burning money like it was free.
Picked up a t56 out of an 03/04 with 26 spline shaft, mgw shifter, harness, driveshaft, clutch cable and mounting bracket for I think around $1300 which was a pretty good deal at the time. I couldn't find a single picture from when I bought it but it sat for a while before going in. Like 2-3 years lol.
When it finally did I paired it with an RXT and did a head cooling mod while the trans was out.
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Turned down the factory pivot ball for proper engagement. Worked perfect, wish I had recorded how much I actually took off.
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Shot looking in showing clutch to throw out bearing clearance with pedal at rest.
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Other miscellaneous things done to this point include a Borla cat back, march dampener, custom tune, custom sub frame connectors, drop in hid headlights and fog lights, tinted headlights and fog lights, tinted windows, N2MB wot box, alpine head-unit and swapped the h pipe for an offroad x.

That's where I'm going to end it for tonight but the car starts to get fun and really take my money from here.
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CobraBob

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Congrats on putting together a really nice build, albeit with more than a few bumps along the way. That's a great looking '96 Cobra. You've really transformed it. I like the black engine bay (thank God you didn't leave it white) and the hood swap. Paint color is awesome!
 

Tabres

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It's been so enjoyable watching this car morph over the years! I can remember when you first got it, loved the color!

Keep it coming, man!
 

96dreamer

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So I think the t56 went in around august 2013, at this point I had just graduated college and was still living with my parents to save for house so the car wasn't getting much love other than being driven. My first job out of school was at Sunnen as a tooling designer, those of you who know that name know they make some of the best engine refinishing equipment in the buisness.

A c head swap was the next goal I had for the car due to having some leaking valve seals causing smoking on startup and decel. So I pulled the whole motor from a continental at the junkyard. After scraping a bunch of the aluminum parts and block plus selling some things I was positive ~$100 on a set of c heads. I tore the block down and pulled the heads in my parents shed and stored the parts for a little while till I decided to do the swap.
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Tore the heads down in my parents basement.
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And cleaned the heads in the parts washer at work
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Pulled all the valve guides to replace with bronze ones, glad I did because a few of them were cracked.
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At this point its around April 2014 and I just put the heads back in the basement unit they were needed.

Fast forward to August 2014 one week before I was supposed to close on my house and while driving to work the motor started making some pretty bad noises. The car had always had a noisy motor but knowing it was built I always chalked it up to piston slap. This noise was similar but louder, however I still had solid oil pressure so I babied it to work and ended up trailering it back to my parents house. It sat for a while since I was busy moving in and doing a few things in the garage I wanted to tackle before parking in it. Car didn't get put in the garage until November 2014 after I finished epoxying my floor.
First time my car was in my garage, pretty humbling feeling.
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And I promptly put the car cover on it and pushed it to the side still in disgust lol.
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Got around to pulling the motor a few weeks later. Had a few buddies over and pulled it in a night.
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Had it on the engine stand later that night, anxious to see what started making the noise
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Pulled the heads first expecting a cracked piston or damage to a cylinder wall but everything looked great.
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96dreamer

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Continued.

Cylinder walls all looked great, very little glazing and hardly galling or scratches.
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So I kept tearing down. Didn't take long to find something though. Pulled the pan to find this.
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That is a large chunk of piston skirt from the forged Ross pistons that were in the car when I bought it. Immedietly pulled that piston/rod to inspect more. Rod bearings looked great so I had that going for me.
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Some how the piece was 95% intact in the pan, just a little bent up from smashing into the crank i'm assuming.
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Manley h beams were fine, crank was fine, all the bearing surfaces looked perfect and the cylinder of the piston that broke had a very minor scuff of aluminum that you a fingernail wouldn't even catch so I lucked out and all the expensive bits looked great. While tearing down and inspecting all the other pistons I found 7 of the 8 pistons had developed cracks in the same spot as the one that broke. So these had all been developing cracks and would have went eventually. So all things considered I got super lucky only one did in a situation where I was able to get it back home safe.
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Stopped when I had a bare block on the stand.
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After finding the culprit of the marble in a tin can noise I let everything sit for a while so I could make a game plan on what I was going to do next.
 

02Toner

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Great write up! It's been quite the journey that's a fact. Can't wait for you to finish the next step.
 

96dreamer

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It's been so enjoyable watching this car morph over the years! I can remember when you first got it, loved the color!

Keep it coming, man!
Thanks, the color was a big reason why I originally got the car. It's since became a double edged sword because the prep for the paint wasn't very good. A lot of issues with paint chipping around edges over the years. Btw, I made some changes to the current state of my car after talking with you about your tune situation. I'm pretty excited for how it should turn out.

Great write up! It's been quite the journey that's a fact. Can't wait for you to finish the next step.
We'll see if I get the build thread up to date or finish the car first. Either way you already know where it's headed.
 

96S/Cobra

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Keep the updates coming! I love seeing these "through the years" changes that we all endure if we end up keeping our cars long enough. I love seeing where it's been, and let's all hear about where it's going!
 

96dreamer

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I noticed I had some of the pictures out of order. I was going to go back and fix it but it would have been to much of a pain in the ass. I wet-sanded before I took the motor out and painted it black so use your imagination.

Back to the motor situation. January following the motor tear down I started the process of getting things ready for the rebuild. I previously mentioned that I had an engineering job at Sunnen and the equipment and knowledge I had access to was invaluable.
I started by measuring the h beams to make sure they were in good shape. They are eagle H beams that should live at 800-1000 hp without issue.
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Everything looked great so I planned on reusing the rods.
Brought the heads into work to start working on them. They were already torn down and cleaned from about a year earlier so the first thing I did was install new bronze valve guides and hone them to match each valve. I didn't get any pictures of this. I did learn the hard way to setup everything the correct way after honing the first guide about .040 to big. Had to press that one out and get some spares to finish the job.

Threw the head in the vs-20 and opened up the id's of the intake and exhaust bowls.
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One of the honing lab techs that held my hand along the way convinced me to clean up the ports while I had it all apart.
I made up some stands so I could rotate the heads on my work bench and lock them in place.
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He let me borrow his full porting setup which worked awesome. It consisted of a makita long neck grinder, variable voltage adjuster, and a large assortment of burrs, sanding drums and flap wheels.
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First ports and bowls cleaned up. I wasn't after hogging the ports out or doing anything drastic. Main focus was knife edging the intake divider, blending the short side radius on the intake and removing the casting marks.
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I marked all the gaskets not with the intention of matching them but just to make sure I didn't remove to much material anywhere.
 
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