Journal: March 2000

	Choose Your Month Pick a Month June, 99 July, 99 August, 99 September, 99 October, 99 November, 99 December, 99 January, 00 February, 00 March, 00 April, 00 May, 00 June, 00 July, 00 August 00 September 00 October 00 November 00 December 00 January 01 February 01 March 01 April 01 May 01 June 01 July 01 August 01 December 01 February 02 May 02 August 02 January 03 Final Entry

  Sunday 03/06/00, The passenger footbox went together very easily. Lots of drilling and riveting, but no surprises. The drivers footbox is taking a little more persuasion to line things up but it shouldn't be a problem. I also checked on the Cobra Forum today to see if it's OK to install the front of the transmission tunnel now. The manual has you install it after the engine and transmission are installed which has to make it much more difficult to adjust and rivet. Anyhow, my point is that I posted this question on the Cobra Forum on a Sunday morning and in an hour, I had an answer (from Factory Five no less) saying it was fine to install it now. With support like this you can't go wrong. So that's it for now. I'll be posting some more pictures when I get the drivers footbox and transmission tunnel done.

  Monday 03/13/00, Two hundred twenty nine holes and one hundred forty three rivets later, the drivers foot box and front of the transmission tunnel are done. Well at least as done as they can get until I get the engine, wiring and steering column installed. At that point the footbox can be buttoned up for the final time. I've noticed that my new rivet gun has pretty much doubled the density of rivets. I started out with 3" spacing on the firewall and F panels , went to 2" on the floor pans and now I'm down to 1 1/2" spacing on the foot boxes and 3/4" on the transmission tunnel. Probably overkill, but the trans tunnel is under quite a bit of pressure and I needed that spacing to pull the seems together. One nice thing is that I didn't have to do any trimming on any of the footbox components as many have suggested. It took a lot of pushing and pulling, but it really fit together pretty well, much better than it looked at first.
The assembly order in the manual needs a little revision in this area. Step 6 of the pedal assembly section has you bond and rivet the aluminum panel to the front of the pedal box. Two pages later they tell you to place the tabs from the side and top panels behind the front panel. I didn't have any problems with it thanks to a warning I read on the cobra forum. Well, that's all for tonight. I'll get some pictures posted soon. On to the steering shaft.....

  Thursday 03/16/00, I installed the steering shaft, wheel and pillow blocks last night. It all seems to fit together nicely and now it steers! I'll need to clean up the shaft, paint it then remove it so the engine can be installed later. I also added some pictures of the footboxes to the web page today.