afghanibob's 1995 Cobra build up---(2021) - things got out of hand

[NXcoupe]

Looking good! enjoy that time home man. I envy you. I'm in KAF this week and some of next, over 110 in the shade. I will be glad to get back to my mountain paradise.

 

[tater302]

such a great build, you truly make building a car an art. Great job.

 

[AfghaniBob]

I got some work done today.


Intercooler is mounted and I am actually proud of my brackets, no welding just rivets and bolts

I cut the inner fender on the pass side to flip the turbo boost side outlet so it now comes out the fender.

I just saw that I don't have an after pic.

Here is the best I have

I got the cold side pretty much all wrapped up too, just needs to be welded.

What is the rule of thumb for rubber couplers near exhaust crossover? The only way for me to avoid the coupler would mean that the car would have to be on a lift in order to get the coild side for the intercooler to the throttle body on or off.

 

[AfghaniBob]

I ran the clutch cable between the cylinder head and powersteering pump then down the block next to the oil pressure sending unit and under the oil filter adapter then through the K-Member to the trans.

For the wirring harness I extended the alternator harness and moved it down futher to the k-member area away from the header and crossover.

I also rerouted the power steering return hose from the pump to get it out of the way also. Now I just need to figure out a mounting for the power steering cooler.

 

[AfghaniBob]

Looking good! enjoy that time home man. I envy you. I'm in KAF this week and some of next, over 110 in the shade. I will be glad to get back to my mountain paradise.

KAF sucks. I was in Iraq for two months and hated every minute of it. 140* is just not livable. I have been home for about a month now. BUT I will be back in Afghanistan (BAF) in a few weeks. I got a new employer while I have been home so I can never have to go back to Iraq again.

 

[duh09]

God this car makes me drool.

Just curious, why are you running the throttle body to the front? Can't you turn those to face either direction? Seems like it'd be easier to run the cold-side pipe with less bends if the throttle was pointed towards the drivers side. I'm sure you've got a good reason because you're def on top of this build, I'm just curious.

 

[AfghaniBob]

God this car makes me drool.

Just curious, why are you running the throttle body to the front? Can't you turn those to face either direction? Seems like it'd be easier to run the cold-side pipe with less bends if the throttle was pointed towards the drivers side. I'm sure you've got a good reason because you're def on top of this build, I'm just curious.

One of my main goals was to stuff it all under the factory hood without major mods such as k-member to frame spacers. I also wanted to go LQ9 coil on plug and needed a place to mount them. The simplest place to put the coils was on the valve covers that are alread to tall to run a fuel injected manifold with the stock hood as it is. I know because at one stage in the build I had a factory style 95 Cobra upper and lower but it took all kinds of crazy work and a 1/2" spacer. Turning the T/B to the front kept it from going over the coils and valve covers requiring way more hood height than I already didn't have.

I still had to make mods to fit it mounted front feed. The manifold itself was machined at the carb base, .3750" (3/8"). I also had to grind down the top of the t/b mount on the face of the elbow to gain hood clearance.

 

[duh09]

That makes sense, I wasn't really thinking about hood clearance at all.

 

[JDwhite98gt]

Nice build. In reference to your issue concerning the turbo piping couper being so close to the exhaust, can you fab up a heat shield? Weld two brackets to that exhaust pipe, bend a sheet of metal and bolt it on. Could be an easy way of deflecting heat away from the rubber coupling.

 

[AfghaniBob]

Nice build. In reference to your issue concerning the turbo piping couper being so close to the exhaust, can you fab up a heat shield? Weld two brackets to that exhaust pipe, bend a sheet of metal and bolt it on. Could be an easy way of deflecting heat away from the rubber coupling.

I have considered a "shield" of some sort. Time to search the DEI catalog.

 

[ryeguy2006a]

Build looks really good. That will be pretty quick when its up and running!!

 

[AfghaniBob]

NXcoupe - Looks like I will be back in BAF in a week or two.

 

[AfghaniBob]

Well I have been away from the car for a few months and figured I could pass some time putting an update together.

When I was home last I worked on the cold side and got it all mocked up. Now it just needs to be welded and have the BOV flange cut in and mounted.

Here is the cold side from the cooler to the front mount T/B.

another angle, all that pipe and only one couple for a joint in the middle. I would love to have made it work without though.

Snaking through

It runs nice and tight to the fan but still clears.
Intercooler is mounted ROCK SOLID. I used little brackets back to back and rivited together for bracing. Came out pretty nice actually

I would actually like to have a same side inlet and outlet cooler to run a shorter length of cold side to the t/b. It would be tight to get the two pipes one on top the other right here though but it could be done.

I pulled the drivers header and ground down the flange to clear the AFR heads. The second bold on the number 5 cylinder is quiet tight, even more so when I switched to 1" header bolts. I figured the easiest way to get that header in and out was to just pull the A/C and powesteering pump completely out. It actually worked in my favor so I could route the other lines away from the header with everything out of the way..

You can see how tight that bolt is the black cable running down the at the head stud right there in front is the clutch cable. Nice and far away from the rest of the header. It was about the only place to put the damn thing. Otherwise at some point the cable will have to cross around the header and make its way to the tranny. (Maybe I should consider a killer overdrive automatic:shut up voices in my head)

The power steering line is now tucked out of the way but still may need to be covered.

Another angle..........the two black braideds that are running together are the oil filter lines

I installed the main EFI harness to the ECU that I worked on while I was in Afg. I had to make just a few adjustments but all in all it went in like a champ. Luckily I had a few more harness laying around to cut and solder in some longer connectors branching off. I ended up using painless wirring split loom, it works great. Throw in a couple adel (cushion) clamps and everything is nice and secure.

No good pics here though. Parden the steel dust from the dremel cuts

I pulled the dash out once again to redo the Injector harness, I am still not happy with it so I get to buy some more wire and a few more connectors and start over. I hope I can reuse a lot of it, hopefully. I am getting to proficient at pulling the damn dash that is for sure.


Front end all buttoned up

 

[AfghaniBob]

Here is the driveside buttoned up and back together.

Fuel lines ran to the body from the Y-block.

Relation of the merge and the coldside

The pass header just above the waste gate needs to be cut turned and rewelded to make the W/G clear the abs block.

 

[JDwhite98gt]

Looks great! Top quality work there. Last picture is kind of dark, but have you found a soluttion to your hot side collector being so close to the cold side piping?

 

[AfghaniBob]

Looks great! Top quality work there. Last picture is kind of dark, but have you found a soluttion to your hot side collector being so close to the cold side piping?

I am going to have to coat the crap out of both. The v-band clamp keeps the two seperated a little bit. I might cut that corner bend a little higher maybe use two 45* instead of a 90* if I have the room around the fan. I had also planned on getting some of the thickets turbo blanket material and wrapping the cross over merge pipe to keep the heat in too.

 

[hndaklr]

Right on man, one of the coolest builds to read, took me
A couple hours but well worth it !!!

 

[Mrstangerbanger]

One of the best built sn95 I have ever seen amazing work bro keep it coming ...

I love to see your building a Vert

 

[AfghaniBob]

Wow, I have not updated this thread in ages. The short and simple. The car ran and ran great. Made 642rwhp on E85 with only 14 pounds of boost. Drove great. Got the A/C ironed out after building my own lines from scratch and using a LSX condensor. Real trick shit actually. We even took it on a leg of the Hot Rod Power Tour last summer, even used the A/C in the Texas/OK heat..

However, the day after I got back the battery was dead and in the charging process I smoked somthing in the electrical and it doesn't get any timing at all under the slightest load. So it is down, again!

I will get some pics and updates pulled from my other threads and put them in. You will enjoy them.

 

[AfghaniBob]

Finished A/C work. Took a lot of learning but I was not happy with the factory lines, plus they really wouldn't work with the turbo parts.
Driver side and compressor

Other angles

Liquid line with orfice tube running to condenser.

Finished product