the.greg
Well-Known Member
I’ve decided its time I made a build thread. My name is Greg, and I bought my 1996 Cobra when I lived in Marietta, GA from a guy in Kissimmee FL, back on October 30, 2011. My goal for this thread is to document my ownership of the Cobra, and explain my particular setup in detail. I previously owned a 1998 gt and I “outgrew†it very rapidly and decided not to mod it, but keep it mint and keep my eyes open. I take extremely good care of my cars and a friend of mine made me an offer on the gt that I could not refuse, so I started looking for a replacement. I had test driven a new 2011 mustang gt 5.0 and base 3.7 and I knew I wanted something that would rival the 5.0 in straight line acceleration!
My old gt next to my cobra
My price range excluded the cars that I wanted most, a 2001+ lightning and a 2005+ gto. I searched online when I came across a 1996 cobra with a 1.5 kenne bell setup. It was located in Kissimmee Florida, so after several phone conversations I decided to grab my brother and a mechanic friend and we made the roadtrip to Florida. After a thorough inspection, and test drive I wasn’t sold on it just yet; it honestly wasn’t as fast as the 5.0 that I had test driven. The car also was not as described, it had a leaky rear diff, a very erratic idle, its rear tires were shot, and its paint was in sad shape. I renegotiated the price and my mechanic friend drove it home because I hadn’t learned to drive a manual transmission yet!
How the engine bay looked when I picked it up
Driving it through a toll booth in Florida.
The ride home was uneventful, and my mechanic buddy drove it hard and enjoyed every minute of it! He actually told me if I hadn’t bought the car, he would have purchased it himself!
Got the car back home and learned how to drive it. At this point I will rattle off it’s entire list of mods that the car had prior to my ownership:
Clear Cobra headlights with clear side markers, HID kit in headlights and foglights, 18x10 and 18x9 Anthracite Fr500wheels, sequential taillight kit, OEM Export side view mirrors, 1.5 Kenne Bell Supercharger, Snow Performance stage II methanol injection kit, 03-04 COP conversion installed with brand new motorcraft coils, Mishimoto radiator, Moroso coolant reservoir, BBK cold air intake, Lightning 90mm maf, 42lb injectors, 255lpf fuel pump, Ram HDX clutch, Ford racing clutch quadrant, BBK offroad h pipe, flowmaster catback, Tokico Illumina adjustable front/rear shocks and struts, Steeda cc plates, Steeda progressive rate lowering springs, Steeda upper and lower control arms, freshly installed Moog balljoints w/new inner outer tie rods, and Aluminum driveshaft, black interior conversion, autometer guage cluster pod w boost gauge and coolant temp gauge, blue led interior light conversion, JVC head unit/cd player, ‘98 center console, mach 1 aluminum pedal kit, steeda tri ax short shifter, billet headlight knob, ‘01 cobra seats, ‘03 cobra shift knob. Bunch of little odds and ends…
Then we began troubleshooting it. First I cured the erratic idle with a new TPS sensor, easy fix. Then it needed new rear tires, it was terrifying to drive in the rain. A new set of sumitomo tires, helped a lot in the rain, but are admittedly lacking in the dry traction department. Oh well its pretty fun spinning tires into third gear anyway! We drained and filled the rear diff with fresh fluid and friction modifier as well.
Changing the diff fluid.
Also I removed the rear dogbone at this time.
New Tires
I could tell the car’s drivability was a bit lacking, and the power wasn’t as strong as I thought it should be. So I scheduled a dyno session at Kurgan Motorsports on 11-10-11. On the dyno, after some tuning, it put down 335rwhp at 5psi! Another thing that we noticed on the dyno was a huge meth leak, the line had been cut and leaked like crazy at WOT! Kurgan fixed the leaky line and retuned the meth injection. I went from using a gallon of meth a week, to maybe a gallon per 3-4 weeks! Kurgan and I determined that the missing boost was due to the underdrive crankshaft pulley, so I had him leave a conservative street tune at 5psi and went home that day determined to save up enough cash for a retune. Kurgan also told me I was getting some spark blowout above 5500rpms and suggested ngk tr6 spark plugs gapped at .030 for my setup. I went ahead and installed the spark plugs myself and saved up for a retune session. A couple months later I was back, Kurgan installed a oem crankshaft pulley on it and swapped the 11psi blower pulley for a 10psi pulley on my request. He also installed a oem ford lightning IAT sensor in the intake manifold in order to get accurate, post-blower IAT readings so that the computer pulls/adds timing to the tune as needed. This is extremely important in running a kenne bell on a b head 4v!! It prevents detonation even under heat-soaked conditions, or in the case of bad fuel, or any other reason. I told him I wanted a conservative, safe, street tune, I wasn’t worried with max numbers, I wanted a safe, reliable tune for my DD. With the meth and a full 10psi I hit 372rwhp/352tq on the third dyno pull of the day. I was more than pleased as it was so much of an improvement over my old npi gt. It now had a perfect AFR, nice straight, dyno-proven powerband. It is also worth noting that this is tuned for 93 octane, no cheap stuff, gotta pay to play! I keep an eye on my IAT by using a sct product that mounts to the windshield and displays live IAT, as well many other engine parameters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvTK_FqwkDg&feature=g-upl
This video is the initial dyno run, you can even see the massive meth leak if you view full screen!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCIU5FQ5VHs&feature=plcp
This video shows a short pull after I got it tuned the second time.
Ready to be dynoed.
After the first dyno, I started using boost juice.
First dyno sheet. 5psi!
Second dyno sheet, much smoother, no spark blowout. 9-10psi
My old gt next to my cobra
My price range excluded the cars that I wanted most, a 2001+ lightning and a 2005+ gto. I searched online when I came across a 1996 cobra with a 1.5 kenne bell setup. It was located in Kissimmee Florida, so after several phone conversations I decided to grab my brother and a mechanic friend and we made the roadtrip to Florida. After a thorough inspection, and test drive I wasn’t sold on it just yet; it honestly wasn’t as fast as the 5.0 that I had test driven. The car also was not as described, it had a leaky rear diff, a very erratic idle, its rear tires were shot, and its paint was in sad shape. I renegotiated the price and my mechanic friend drove it home because I hadn’t learned to drive a manual transmission yet!
How the engine bay looked when I picked it up
Driving it through a toll booth in Florida.
The ride home was uneventful, and my mechanic buddy drove it hard and enjoyed every minute of it! He actually told me if I hadn’t bought the car, he would have purchased it himself!
Got the car back home and learned how to drive it. At this point I will rattle off it’s entire list of mods that the car had prior to my ownership:
Clear Cobra headlights with clear side markers, HID kit in headlights and foglights, 18x10 and 18x9 Anthracite Fr500wheels, sequential taillight kit, OEM Export side view mirrors, 1.5 Kenne Bell Supercharger, Snow Performance stage II methanol injection kit, 03-04 COP conversion installed with brand new motorcraft coils, Mishimoto radiator, Moroso coolant reservoir, BBK cold air intake, Lightning 90mm maf, 42lb injectors, 255lpf fuel pump, Ram HDX clutch, Ford racing clutch quadrant, BBK offroad h pipe, flowmaster catback, Tokico Illumina adjustable front/rear shocks and struts, Steeda cc plates, Steeda progressive rate lowering springs, Steeda upper and lower control arms, freshly installed Moog balljoints w/new inner outer tie rods, and Aluminum driveshaft, black interior conversion, autometer guage cluster pod w boost gauge and coolant temp gauge, blue led interior light conversion, JVC head unit/cd player, ‘98 center console, mach 1 aluminum pedal kit, steeda tri ax short shifter, billet headlight knob, ‘01 cobra seats, ‘03 cobra shift knob. Bunch of little odds and ends…
Then we began troubleshooting it. First I cured the erratic idle with a new TPS sensor, easy fix. Then it needed new rear tires, it was terrifying to drive in the rain. A new set of sumitomo tires, helped a lot in the rain, but are admittedly lacking in the dry traction department. Oh well its pretty fun spinning tires into third gear anyway! We drained and filled the rear diff with fresh fluid and friction modifier as well.
Changing the diff fluid.
Also I removed the rear dogbone at this time.
New Tires
I could tell the car’s drivability was a bit lacking, and the power wasn’t as strong as I thought it should be. So I scheduled a dyno session at Kurgan Motorsports on 11-10-11. On the dyno, after some tuning, it put down 335rwhp at 5psi! Another thing that we noticed on the dyno was a huge meth leak, the line had been cut and leaked like crazy at WOT! Kurgan fixed the leaky line and retuned the meth injection. I went from using a gallon of meth a week, to maybe a gallon per 3-4 weeks! Kurgan and I determined that the missing boost was due to the underdrive crankshaft pulley, so I had him leave a conservative street tune at 5psi and went home that day determined to save up enough cash for a retune. Kurgan also told me I was getting some spark blowout above 5500rpms and suggested ngk tr6 spark plugs gapped at .030 for my setup. I went ahead and installed the spark plugs myself and saved up for a retune session. A couple months later I was back, Kurgan installed a oem crankshaft pulley on it and swapped the 11psi blower pulley for a 10psi pulley on my request. He also installed a oem ford lightning IAT sensor in the intake manifold in order to get accurate, post-blower IAT readings so that the computer pulls/adds timing to the tune as needed. This is extremely important in running a kenne bell on a b head 4v!! It prevents detonation even under heat-soaked conditions, or in the case of bad fuel, or any other reason. I told him I wanted a conservative, safe, street tune, I wasn’t worried with max numbers, I wanted a safe, reliable tune for my DD. With the meth and a full 10psi I hit 372rwhp/352tq on the third dyno pull of the day. I was more than pleased as it was so much of an improvement over my old npi gt. It now had a perfect AFR, nice straight, dyno-proven powerband. It is also worth noting that this is tuned for 93 octane, no cheap stuff, gotta pay to play! I keep an eye on my IAT by using a sct product that mounts to the windshield and displays live IAT, as well many other engine parameters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvTK_FqwkDg&feature=g-upl
This video is the initial dyno run, you can even see the massive meth leak if you view full screen!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCIU5FQ5VHs&feature=plcp
This video shows a short pull after I got it tuned the second time.
Ready to be dynoed.
After the first dyno, I started using boost juice.
First dyno sheet. 5psi!
Second dyno sheet, much smoother, no spark blowout. 9-10psi