Its been a couple months since I’ve posted anything on here. As any of you who have looked at the live camera has likely seen, I took advantage of not having the body buck in the garage this winter to be able to move things around and park my Miata in there, too. The upside of that is that its immensely easier to snowblow my driveway, but the downside is that its harder to do work on the Cobra.

I’ve got a list of things to work on this winter, but I can’t leave my tools out and worktable up for very long, because its been snowing nearly every week this winter, so its hard to get more than a day with the Miata out of the garage.

I’ve spent a bunch of time researching body shops and trying to come up with a paint job I want for the car. I’ve had more luck eliminating local options than I have coming up with a list of local options. This is really turning into a pressing issue, as I doubt I can have the bodywork done and the car back together before late spring if I don’t get it into a shop by mid-February. It also doesn’t help that the company I work for has been in the process of being acquired, which has meant several months of late nights and weekend work.

I do have a new idea for a paint scheme, slightly different than the metallic gunmetal and red stripe I’d been planning. Conveniently I found a rendering on FFCobra which is close to what I was thinking:

The idea is the same dark gunmetal, with a lighter metallic gray stripe, with red accent stripes. I do think I want a double stripe in the lighter gray — the space between would be red, not gunmetal, and I’ll have the red wrap around the radiator opening in the front of the car.  I’m going to try to track down the guy who did these renderings and see if he can do one for me. He did one a couple years ago, which is the one in the header of this site.

I’m also working on interior planning. I have to fabricate the heater control panel still, which as I’ve said in the past will look very similar to the dash switch panel, only with two toggles for the seat heaters and two rotary knobs for the heat/vent. I’m also trying to work out what I want for a stereo in the car, if anything. That’s taken a good bit of work, including some investigatory software engineering around a “MID” computer — an Intel standard for a Mobile Internet Device. Imagine something that looks like a portable GPS but is a full PC.

I’ve got emergency brake issues, and I’m starting to futz around with getting the cables at a different angle in the transmission tunnel (they’re binding slightly right now, causing damage to them), as well as improving the leverage on the handle.

I’ve also spent a good bit of time debating the pros and cons of paying someone to recover the Street Performer seats, or buying something else, or sewing my own covers. I had been hoping to use Katzkin seat covers, as others have said they have patterns to fit the seats, but my attempts to get through their sales people who say “no” to someone actually at the company who would know has been a failure so far.

I am starting to think I may end up doing the covers myself, and I have a design together for them, but I haven’t taken any action on it yet. If I do, I need to remove the covers and make patterns. The bigger issue is finding appropriately UV-resistant materials to make the covers out of. That’s one of the problem with the existing seats — the seats fade VERY quickly.

I’m hoping to spend most of tomorrow working on the center console design, and maybe figure out a solution for the emergency brake.

That’s the winter so far. With any luck I can get these items done, get the car bodywork done and painted and back together by the time the weather turns nice again.