Yes, not the spiffiest of titles, but it is what it is. I spent about five hours today working on the car. I’d still be working on it, but my back really started to kill me so I’ve stopped for the day and will pick it back up tomorrow.

I got a lot done today. With some attention to the rear end and the cockpit, its nice to end a day of work feeling like some real work got done. Read the rest of the post for pictures of the things I did …

The first thing I decided to tackle today was putting the rear quad-shocks on the car. For those who don’t know what a quad-shock is (I didn’t before I started this process, so its okay!), a quad shock is a small shock absorber that works without a spring to control movement in the suspension in an axis other than the axis the suspension should be moving on. In the case of the Cobra, they control the rear independent suspension bits from moving back and forth rather than up and down.  It’d totally forgotten to put them on.

First things first I had to get the rear wheels off. I’d forgotten how heavy the wheel/tire combination is. Lift with your knees, not your back. Whoops.

You can see in this picture of the drivers side, the quad shock bolts between a flange on the upper arm of the IRS to a fixed point on the frame. Honestly, I don’t really get it, but whatever. Its there.

The passenger side looks pretty much the same.

The other thing I decided to do while I was back there was run the rear brake lines. I can’t run them completely to the front of the car because I don’t have the firewall back from the powdercoater yet, but I figured I’d run the rear bits and do the line to the front next weekend.

The first step was mounting the flange to hold the end of the hard-line. The drivers side you can see above. The flex line then got run to the caliper.

Here you can see the line ending at the banjo bolt.  The passenger side looks pretty much the same. I’m not sure yet if I’m entirely happy with the routing of the brake lines, so the banjo bolts aren’t torqued yet, and I may end up getting lines that are a couple inches longer. Its hard to tell the total range of motion in the suspension. Where the lines are now clear the suspension and wheels, but they may rub on the upper arm of the IRS if the suspension can move higher than I think it can.

I started to look at bending the rear brake lines and realized I couldn’t find the brass T-fitting I had bought six months ago. I’ll have to go buy another one, so I stopped working on the brakes.

As my post a few days ago said, I’d drilled the passenger and drivers cockpit floor. I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and start drilling the steel and getting panels really mounted on the car. While there are things that need to go into the transmission tunnel, putting the floors in wasn’t going to impact my accessibility, so I figured the next step was to drill the drivers side steel and caulk/rivet the driver side cockpit floor.

About 6000 rivets later, I had the floor in. I am continuing to fight with my air riveter (it jams all the time), so these were essentially all done with a hand riveter. By the time I finish this car I’m going to look like Popeye.

The transmission tunnel cover is just fit into place — it will be one of the last panels I’ll put on the car.

More to come tomorrow! Hopefully I can get the fitting and do the rear brake lines, as well as do the passenger side floor.

For now, its me, the cats, a diet coke and the TV. Nap time.