Malcolm's Teksid Cobra rebuild thread

[MalcolmV8]

Hey guys, been getting a few questions and curiosities on what I'm doing with the car so I figured I'll throw up a build thread, or at least some pics to keep things interesting. Car was running fine but I've been wanting to change things up for a while. Seems like I do every few years anyways.
Recently my kid, 14 years old, has been asking for a fox body to start working on and getting his hands dirty. He's dying to build a turbo 302 setup. Humm I know he loves cars but I don't know how far into that build he'll loose interest and then I have a mess to finish up and sell. So I made him a deal, rebuild my Cobra's engine from tear down to complete motor ready to go back in the car and we'll talk more on the fox. Deal he says.

I figured I'd do an aluminum teksid build with high CR and cams, exhaust and what ever else we figure along the way. Nothing to crazy but should be nice enough change to feel like a new car again.

OK so rounded up some friends and said lets get this sucker out.

First goes the hood and then all downhill from there

What an experience figuring out how to take it out the bottom. I've always done through the top but figured lets try something different.

And there we have it. The whole thing out.

Day 2 and the kiddo goes right to work.

His first blower pull

Looking cleaner

He found this all very interesting. He's been watching youtube videos on how all this works but to actually see it first hand and take it apart was amazing for him.

I thought for sure he was going to get stuck on head studs but with a big enough breaker bar he managed it.

That breaker bar is his best friend lol

and finally a bare block.

Then taking apart these monster heads

Cam follower and hydraulic lifter that sits under it.

Stock exhaust cam

More to follow.

 

[gabe1530]

very cool and awesome learning experience for your son!
98 saleen cobra and i pulled mine out through the top. kinda wish we dropped the whole thing as we had a little battle with the headers and the steering shaft.
what compression are you going for and which cams?

 

[01Jes]

Awesome thread Malcolm. Even better your son is doing all the work and you supervising

 

[03cobra#694]

I'll be following this one.

 

[Wallace7666]

Awesome thread so far, I may try to pull mine out the bottom. Any advice?

 

[MalcolmV8]

very cool and awesome learning experience for your son!
98 saleen cobra and i pulled mine out through the top. kinda wish we dropped the whole thing as we had a little battle with the headers and the steering shaft.
what compression are you going for and which cams?

Yes he's learning so much.

Well after reading way to many articles on piston design and combustion chamber characteristics and quench I decided I want flat top pistons. That should put CR around 10.7:1. I ordered a set of Comp stage 3 cams.

Awesome thread Malcolm. Even better your son is doing all the work and you supervising

It's actually hard for me to just sit back and watch him struggle and fumble his way through things but how else will he learn. He's actually improved drastically since we started the tear down. He was fumbling the basics like how to hold a wrench with good leverage etc. Now he's flying through parts so he's catching on.

Awesome thread so far, I may try to pull mine out the bottom. Any advice?

Don't leave the rear wheels on the ground like I did. We just barely couldn't get the nose up high enough to get the engine out and the tail pipes where touching the ground. We had to get two jacks on each side and jack the rear of the car up so we could lift the front more.

The other thing I goofed was not extending the boom out all the way on the engine hoist so then when we went to slide the motor out the side it was catching the feet of the hoist because it was to far forward.

Other than that just take your time and make sure everything is disconnected and free.

 

[my92gt]

Nice. My son six years old is always in the garage with me handing me the tools I ask him to hand me(He's never under the car). He enjoys every second of it. I recently bought a calypso 92 notchback and that's his favorite one(it was the 03 cobra). I hope one day he and I can wrench together and keep him in the hobby. Good parenting you've done Malcolm.

 

[b_dike]

Very cool Malcolm... Your son already has more experience working on these engines than I do lol

Awesome job man, can't wait to see the beast out on the streets this spring!

 

[intermatic]

If there was a dad-of-the-year award, I'd vote for you.

I bet you can't wait to have that higher compression after going with the ratio you did on your last build lol.

You've single handedly made me a believer in the capabilities of a proper meth set up, but I can't imagine you'll be tuning the car for pump/meth with this new set up?

 

[stangfreak]

best thread right here.

 

[SOVACobra03]

So what did your dynamic CR end up being?

 

[MalcolmV8]

Nice. My son six years old is always in the garage with me handing me the tools I ask him to hand me(He's never under the car). He enjoys every second of it. I recently bought a calypso 92 notchback and that's his favorite one(it was the 03 cobra). I hope one day he and I can wrench together and keep him in the hobby. Good parenting you've done Malcolm.

Very cool. My son was like that when he was younger too but then phased out of it. For a few years I thought he was going to like looking at cars only and not working on them but then all of a sudden he just got really into it within the last year or so.

Very cool Malcolm... Your son already has more experience working on these engines than I do lol

Awesome job man, can't wait to see the beast out on the streets this spring!

Yeah he's got an amazing opportunity here and I'm glad to see him fully appreciating it and wrenching and learning.

If there was a dad-of-the-year award, I'd vote for you.

I bet you can't wait to have that higher compression after going with the ratio you did on your last build lol.

You've single handedly made me a believer in the capabilities of a proper meth set up, but I can't imagine you'll be tuning the car for pump/meth with this new set up?

Lol thanks. The CR is going to be really high on this new build all the time so I'm going to remove the water/meth setup and probably sell it. This motor will no longer just need octane under high boost but all the time even in part throttle driving. It's going to be an E85 car now and if I ever move and don't have access to E85 it'll be race gas or pump with torco or some solution that has high octane all the time.

So what did your dynamic CR end up being?

I don't have that laptop in front of me right now but it was a tad on the high side for pump gas. At that point I decided it's an E85 car. It could still do pump but I'd need to throw some torco in there.

 

[stuntstere]

Maybe I missed it, but why did you select comp stage 3 cams over a custom grind for your setup? Also are you going to degree them to the cam card or a custom degree setup?

 

[MalcolmV8]

Maybe I missed it, but why did you select comp stage 3 cams over a custom grind for your setup? Also are you going to degree them to the cam card or a custom degree setup?

Well I just don't have an intricate enough understanding or experience with custom cams to know exactly what I'd want in a custom grind. Every shop you speak to has their own ideas and concepts and I have no way of validating or really fully understanding what I'm getting into.

The other issue is the cost of cams on these cars and the work involved in swapping them and degreeing them. Essentially the motor needs to be pulled to install them and degree properly (I'm sure someone's done it in the car but can you imagine the headache?). Not to mention by the time you buy the cams, matching valve springs, retainers I'm just shy of $2k and with timing gears, new chains, tensioners etc. I'm well over $2k. It's not really practical at all to experiment with different cams on these cars for the average guy.

So that's why I made the choice to go with a known grind from a big house shop. As for degreeing them. It's been suggested a custom degree setup over the card setup to maximize their benefits but I really need to find more people/articles that know this better than I and get more feed back on the subject.

 

[sn94cobra]

What pistons you going with?

 

[MG0h3]

I didn't know you could hit the boost levels you are at with upper only..or do you have a custom lower that kept the cage on there?

 

[stuntstere]

Well I just don't have an intricate enough understanding or experience with custom cams to know exactly what I'd want in a custom grind. Every shop you speak to has their own ideas and concepts and I have no way of validating or really fully understanding what I'm getting into.

The other issue is the cost of cams on these cars and the work involved in swapping them and degreeing them. Essentially the motor needs to be pulled to install them and degree properly (I'm sure someone's done it in the car but can you imagine the headache?). Not to mention by the time you buy the cams, matching valve springs, retainers I'm just shy of $2k and with timing gears, new chains, tensioners etc. I'm well over $2k. It's not really practical at all to experiment with different cams on these cars for the average guy.

So that's why I made the choice to go with a known grind from a big house shop. As for degreeing them. It's been suggested a custom degree setup over the card setup to maximize their benefits but I really need to find more people/articles that know this better than I and get more feed back on the subject.

Very understandable. I would hit up NASVT over on the corral forum. Maybe he's here on svt performance too. He seems to know his cam degreeing for proper valve events for a given setup.

 

[03cobra#694]

Very understandable. I would hit up NASVT over on the corral forum. Maybe he's here on svt performance too. He seems to know his cam degreeing for proper valve events for a given setup.

So does 03Steve and another guy that I can't remember, damn it. Both know their shit and post in here once in a while.

 

[MalcolmV8]

What pistons you going with?

From post #6

Well after reading way to many articles on piston design and combustion chamber characteristics and quench I decided I want flat top pistons. That should put CR around 10.7:1

I'll also add the machine shop is saying I need custom ordered pistons with thicker side skirts to prevent them from collapsing. I will also have to get some valve reliefs done due to the amount of lift on the Comp cams and the more than likely aggressive degreeing of the cams. More to follow on that as I figure out more.

I didn't know you could hit the boost levels you are at with upper only..or do you have a custom lower that kept the cage on there?

Stock lower. I believe the high boost levels are because of the full crusher intake sucking in so much more air (other crusher users have similar numbers). Also even though I had a fairly decent exhaust I was running stock manifolds. So the combo of crusher intake and stock manifolds is probably what caused such high numbers.

Very understandable. I would hit up NASVT over on the corral forum. Maybe he's here on svt performance too. He seems to know his cam degreeing for proper valve events for a given setup.

Thanks I'll do that.

So does 03Steve and another guy that I can't remember, damn it. Both know their shit and post in here once in a while.

Yes 03Steve has been very helpful and I'm sure I'll be bugging him some more

 

[MG0h3]

Damn I havent read about increases from the crusher inlet...may have to look into that.