At this point I decided it was time to finish the car once and for all, so I sent it over to Vancouver Island where a local hot rod painter worked his magic on the car.

Grinding out the seams where Factory Five bonded the various peices of the body together.

And block sanding the body. I wish I had the time to do the work myself, while messy, I would have really enjoyed doing the work.

And here is the final result! While over on the Island, I also had the wiring finished up by another FFR owner.

On the drive home, it was raining but I didn’t care. I apparently did over 200km/h in the rain with no wipers on the way home, I had no idea. I’m pretty sure I had that grin on my face for weeks.

Over the 3 years I drove the Cobra I put over 10,000 kms on it. Took a few road trips, and did half a dozen track days. I also did a few upgrades along the way.

I bent one of the VPM swaybar links but VPM sent me one straight away, and I think the bend was because of a really bad bottoming out on the street in the car.

FFR also changed the suspension they offered with the kits from the venerable Bilstein brand to Koni. Definitely not a knock against Bilstein, but look how beefy those Koni’s are in comparison! The Koni’s were also single adjustable which was nice.

Throughout my track experience with the Cobra, I experimented around with suspension settings quite a lot, coming up with a great set-up in the end.

Very little camber felt the best on the car with manual steering and wide front tires, and the ride height came down quite a lot, to 3.75″ in the front and 4″ in the rear in the end. Once corner weighted, this amounted to a 52 rear/48 front weight balance which worked amazingly. I also installed David Borden’s roll center mod for the front suspension which helped with steering feel and wheel geometry in the corners.

Braking performance on this car was up there with the Porsches, since there is more weight on the rear, you can rely on the rear brakes to do a larger share of the braking versus a front biased car.

But by far, the best modification I made to the FFR was this seat! Being held securely in a sportscar, especially at the race track, is essential!

The FFR proved to be extremely reliable over its 3 years of service to me. The only issue I ever had with it was a snapped oil pump driveshaft which was caused by a seized oil pump. Luckily I caught this quickly on the track, and pulled off with zero oil pressure.

I didn’t have the Tundra yet, so I had to have the car towed home on the flatbed, but it didn’t take long to replace the oil pump and driveshaft and was up and running in no time.

I still miss the car a lot, especially when the weather is perfect here in Vancouver, but it went to the perfect owner, who had always dreamed of having a Cobra someday.

- Carl

I picked up a T-5 from a local Mustang parts guy, and cleaned it up. The T-5 is good to about 330hp or thereabouts, so in a 2,000lb car with 250hp, should work just fine. I also installed a Pro 5.0 billet short shifter. Typically short shifters just make the shift action notchier and more annoying, but I was pretty surprised how well it worked with the stock T-5 shift action.

The elongated shift lever is normal on the classic 427 Cobra’s, to place the shift knob as close to the steering wheel as possible since the engine/transmission sits so far back.

From the start, I decided to go fairly mild on the power as I tuned the chassis and developed the car.

I picked up this engine, which came out of a ’91 Mustang GT Convertible with 110,000 kms. It looks pretty ragged here, but I will work my magic on it!

After some elbow grease way too many hours, this is how the engine turned out! Not bad for a tired old pushrod V8.

I started by stripping the engine down to the short block, cleaning it all out, and stripping off all the old scale, rust, and grime left on from many street miles.

I painted the block with hi-temperature black engine block paint, and all of the other parts with some hi-temp metallic silver paint.

Fel-Pro provided all the gaskets in a handy gasket kit that included just about everything needed.

Engine setup looks pretty badass with the headers installed, although I think I actually have them on backwards in this shot.

The biggest visual difference in the engine bay of the Cobra would be the valve covers. Replacing the stock stamped ones with these nice looking replicas of the original Shelby valve covers.

Here’s with the sidepipes held up to see what they would look like. This is when a car build becomes really exciting, when the go-fast parts start going together.

Since I didn’t go the donor route, I had to pick up a fuel tank from a local junker. I got it home, cleaned it up and painted it. Mounted the new fuel level sender and the fuel pump.

I went with a Ford Racing in-line fuel pump.

One of the great parts that FFR supplies with thier kits is a Moto-Lita steering wheel. Made in the same factory as the originals were. I chose a 14″ diameter versus the 15″ diameter to get more clearance for my knees.

I got a couple replica AC pedals from Whitby Motors, look perfect in the foot box of the Cobra.

I ended up installing the brake bias adjuster here, so it would be reachable through the louvers on the body of the car.

I think I did a pretty damn good job of bending the lines if I do say so myself!

Here you can see the routing of the rear brake lines, nice and tidy.

The front lines turned out pretty well also. The goal was to get them mounted as flush as possible and as far away from the engine and exhaust components as possible.

A good shot of the front suspension fully assembled and the brake lines in place. Earls braided lines bring the brake fluid to the calipers.

You can see the Flaming River universal joint and D shaft that complete the steering linkage from the factory Mustang collapsable steering column.

Check out those meats! On the MKII FFR chassis’, the largest rear tires you could fit were 285′s, so thats what I went with. Up front are 255′s which matched the 285′s pretty well. The wheels are courtesy of PS Engineering and are a 2 peice wheel with welded centers.

Check out the dish!

The wheels retain the 5 lugs but have a cool lug nut cover and screw on spinners like the originals, to retain the pin-drive look of the cars from the 60′s.

Time to mount the engine! Invited a few friends over to help out with this.

We quickly got to work installing the clutch and aligning it. We also had to remove the valve covers and upper intake manifold to get the car onto the hoist.

My buddy Dave came by to help out, wanted to take some pictures of his own. He’s been contemplating an FFR build for awhile now, just need to convince him to pull the trigger!

Pizza was on the menu for the day. I’m getting hungry right now just looking at that.

Another friend of mine, Manu, brought over his engine hoist which was a lot easier than the 5 of us just lifting it by hand!

Car and engine just about ready to meet for the first time.

I’ve got the fuel lines waiting to mate up with the fuel rails.

Next step is to mate the transmission to the engine.

Dave is busy here bolting up the tranny and the bellhousing to the engine.

Just about ready to go in now.

Jesse, Manu, Dave, and myself lowering the engine in and getting the transmission mount lined up. Manu and Jesse working really hard as you can tell.

There it is! Almost looking like a car now, almost.

Anthony was the first to take it for a test drive, brrrmmmmm brrrmmmmmM!!

Check out how much distance there is between the water pump and the front axle line!

Those beautiful headers poking out!

One of the stars of the day was Jesse’s 65 Goat, gorgeous car, sounded better than it looked.

And it looked pretty damn good.

Absolutely classic.

Manu brought his Bronco, big bruiser of a truck thats for sure. It now sees off-road duty down in Arizona.

Ready to do some big smoky burnouts… or just about.

Cooling system, intake, and plug wires all mounted up.

I used a fairly non-standard wrap for the accessory belt. Since I wasn’t running any accessories such as PS or aircon, this was the cleanest and simplest way to run it. Not a lot of wrap around the water pump, but is definitely enough.

Radiator is temporarily mounted so that the body can be temporarily mounted over top.

Harnesses in, gas pedal, and steering wheel. Everything but the wiring and paint then final assembly!

Finishing up the trunk aluminum. It’s almost a shame to cover up nice metal work with carpet!

Jason and Anthony take the car for its first roll… no burnouts just yet.

Jason and I got the roll hoop and trunk lid installed, ready for transport!

At this point, my friend sold the house and I lost custody of the garage, so it was time to move once again. I didn’t have any other garage to move it to, so it sat in my underground parkade where I was living at the time for a year.

- Carl

Back in 2002, through my adventures at EA on Need For Speed, I was doing a photoshoot with a continuation Cobra 427, of which I also got a proper ride in. Needless to say, the 535hp all-aluminum 427 combined with those gorgeous curves had me hooked from the second the engine turned over.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that car, and with my passion for working with my hands and building things, I decided I had to have a Cobra, even if I had to build my own. I learned about Factory Five Racing and thier component cars, both the Cobra and Daytona Coupe. By October of 2003, I had specced my Cobra component car, and placed my order!

There was quite a long waiting list at the time for Factory Five’s cars (and I don’t doubt there still is), so my kit wouldn’t arrive until early in the new year, talk about suspense!

Finally on April 13th 2004, my kit was delivered, but not without a few hiccups. The transport company called me the night before saying they couldn’t get across the border into Canada because of some restrictions, so I would have to come pick up the car myself, or wait another 2 weeks for another driver to bring it across the border. I decided to sleep on it, and figure out what I would do in the morning. That night, I actually had a dream, that I rented a U-Haul truck the next morning and picked up the car myself with the help of a friend. When I woke up, I picked up the phone and gave U-Haul a call right away, sure enough, they had a truck that would fit the Cobra, and the transport driver would wait for me just on the other side of the border.

A few hours later, I was through customs and back home with FFR 2975! I gave a few friends at work a call, and they came by and helped me lift the car out of the truck and into the garage!

It was a tight fit with the wheel tubs sticking out, but we made it work!

Regardless of the look on my face, I was genuinely giddy!

It’s actually mine!! Was very hard to believe. Pretty sure I slept in the garage that night.

The chassis comes delivered with a few of the aluminum panelling already in place.

I have to admit, at this point I was a bit overwhelmed, didn’t know where to start!

Was renting a house with a friend at the time, and we cleaned up the garage pretty well, although the lighting left something to be desired.

You can see all the FFR boxes stacked up in the back. I ordered my FFR with quite a few options:

- IRS rear suspension (apparently the last FFR to make it into Canada with IRS, as the DOT stopped allowing them to be imported)

- Autometer vintage gauges. These look just like the original Smiths gauges, but have Autometer reliability.

- Tubular lower control arms. Replacing the Mustang stamped steel control arms was a nice upgrade to the suspension.

- Chrome rollbar, and quick jacks, just had to have ‘em.

- Ceramic coated sidepipes and 4-into-4 headers. Cobra’s are meant to be loud, and the 4-into-4′s were the option for me. I won’t comment on passing local smog regulations.

- I also ordered the rear suspension arms with the pin drive width. This allows you to run wider rear wheels, which give the nice deep dish look the classics had.

I will never tire of those lines.

The FFR chassis is very well engineered, using a similar approach to the original Cobra’s. The FFR chassis is modernized, triangulated, and much stiffer because of modern chassis design knowledge that FFR employs.

I had FFR do the body cut-outs for me just to save a bit of time, and for how much they charge, it was a no brainer.

Unfortunately, the living situation didn’t work out, and I needed to find a new shop! My roommate William and my friend Anthony all worked hard one night to get the car rolling, so it could be moved. Moving a bare chassis was hard enough the first time, I didn’t want to do it again!

Fortunately, a friend of mine had a 3 bay garage fairly close by, and it was completely empty! This would be the home of my project for the next year or so.

I began working on the suspension once in the new shop. Here you can see I’ve got the non-stock swaybar mounts hitting the bellows on the steering rack. The swaybars were from VPM Racing and are really well designed for thier purpose. I however, decided to also use Levy Racing’s Competition Bump Steer Kit which gives almost zero bump steer! This is a huge improvement over the stock Mustang setup.

I ended up having to carve out the clearance on the sway bar brackets, and with some continual tweaking, I finally got the two to work together in perfect harmony.

You can see the bumpsteer kit offset kingpins where the steering rack usually connects to the spindles. This places the steering rack tie-rods almost exactly parallel to the lower A-arms.

I was able to quickly and easily get most of the suspension installed as well as the brakes as you see here.

Also a lot of time went into bonding and riveting the aluminum panels to the chassis which not only seals the cockpit, but adds a fair bit of rigidity to the structure.

For the brake system, I went with a Mustang Cobra setup which coincedentally had Cobra stamped right on the calipers! The system consisted of 2 piston calipers clamping 13″ Brembo rotors in the front with Hawk HP+ pads for street/track, and 11.98″ rotors in the rear with single piston calipers.

I also decided to go with a manual braking system which would provide the most feel. I wanted this car to be as pure and raw as possible, nothing added that didn’t make it accelerate faster, turn faster, or stop faster.

For the suspension I went with the Bilstien Coilovers on all 4 corners. These came with adjustable sleeves to be able to adjust the ride height to fine tune the handling on the car.

You can see more of the rear IRS here as well as the VPM rear swaybar setup. The front and rear swaybars from VPM are adjustable which is nice to have on a car that is known for being notoriously twitchy.

For the differential, I went with a Ford 8.8 setup, which takes the front section from a Thunderbird, and the rear section from the Lincoln MKVIII, which makes the whole differential case aluminum, saving quite a bit of weight.

The gears came from the Thunderbird as well, and had Trac-Loc already installed. I decided to go with the 3.27 gearing which would give me decent acceleration, but great driveability on the highway.

My friend Anthony and I built up the body buck, which would help hold the body for when the bodywork was to be completed.

Lookin mean!

One of the most enjoyable parts of the build was building out the brake line system. You can see the rear diff and suspension in this shot as well.

Another variation I did on the front suspension was the SN95 spindles, which offer slightly better geometry to the stock Mustang 5.0L spindles.

I began piecing together my fuel system as well, going with this 190LPH in-tank fuel pump to supply the fuel of the Cobra. This fuel pump is rated to up to 450hp, so the it would handle the stock requirements just fine.

In the front and rear suspension I used poly bushings, and mounting the differential, transmission, and engine, I used all solid aluminum mounts. The solid mounts transmit a lot more shock and vibration, but the direct, immediate feel you get is un-beatable!

Doing some final fitment on the VPM swaybar mounts as well as the Levy Racing Bumpsteer Kit. As mentioned before, the bumpsteer kit eliminates almost all of the bumpsteer the older Mustangs were prone to. The kit moves the steering rack from the FFR position, 2 inches in front, and about 2 inches downward.

I ended up ditching the factory Ford power steering rack in favor for a Flaming River 15:1 quick-ratio rack. A power steering rack without the power steering isn’t great, and the tired old Ford unit wouldn’t do the car justice like the FR rack would. The steering rack is also mounted on aluminum solid mounts, giving the most direct steering feel possible.

Another nice shot of the front suspension. The stock Mustangs are MacPherson Strut type, but the FFR uses a double A-Arm setup, converting the strut mount on the spindle to a ball joint.

One thing that FFR doesn’t design into its car is the 5th point mount for the submarine belts of the harness. The submarine belts make sure the lap belts don’t ride up when cinching the shoulder belts, and also make sure in the event of an accident, you don’t slip out underneath the belts.

I built a simple bracket out of steel and bolted it directly to the frame structure underneath the driver and passenger seats. Worked pretty well, and was simple enough.

If you notice where the engine mounts are, they sit significantly behind the front axle line. With the small block V8 installed, its closer to a mid-engine car than a front-engined car! Fantastic weight distribution for a front-engined V8 car.

Car is coming together! Steers, rolls, starting to get pretty exciting!

- Carl