First Engine Start; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eWwLiC6uYE
Second Engine Start; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PteNzGCchg
For best effect, turn your volume up loud enough to rattle the stuff off your desk, it won’t be close to the feel, but it is the best a speaker system can do.
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The wind in my hair, the breeze in my face.
The speed was terrifying and I couldn’t wipe the stupid grin off, I think I was laughing too. It was embarrassing; we were only in the driveway…
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Cobra, what else?
Horror of horrors! I BROKE the Cobra yesterday.
Snapped the clutch pedal off at the mounting plate. How? Don’t know, the thing is all metal, I would have said it was impossible to break such a thick metal thing, but it isn’t.
Car-Man wasn’t ballistic, as I thought he should be, seeing as he has actually assembled the Cobra by hand, from little boxes. Nope, Car-Man just mulled it over for a minute and then declared it was better to find t
his out, safe in the driveway, up on jacks, then to have the clutch pedal snap-off while driving. Car-Man is a god.
Last June the kit arrived. Really, it comes in boxes! About 3 skids of large white boxes, which when opened, expose more, smaller white boxes. You’re probably drinking your coffee out of a recycled paper cup, courtesy of us – we recycled all those hundreds of little white boxes which I would guess would make a huge number of little coffee cups.
Car-Man spent a large number of man-hours opening the boxes, taking inventory of the contents, sorting the contents, then doing the sub-assembly. 
Sub-assembly? Yeah, I though the brake would come out of a box all in one piece but it doesn’t. Boxes, lots of little pieces; for example, the pedal, comes in one box, the mounting plate in another, the screws, bolts, wires, itty-bitty things, and sticky stuff all in other boxes. And, everything needs inspection and modification (threads cleaned up, holes drilled, and such technical stuff as any Car-Man knows).
My Car-Man created his Cobra from all these little parts. From June to Now, he’s spent every spare moment with the Cobra. To be fair, he has tried very hard to include me, but it’s just not something I seem to like all that much. It’s dirty. The parts are heavy and hurt. He comes in with cuts all over from the metal edges. He does not even notice the cuts, only if the blood drips onto, or into what he’s working on – apparently blood isn’t as good a sealer as gasket-goo, or as good a lubricant as lithium-grease. However, it is honest to say that this Cobra does indeed have his blood, sweat and (my) tears in it. That’s probably why it was so horrifying to me to BREAK it.
So, Car-Man is quietly fixing the Cobra. To repair the broken pedal (and adjust the clutch) he will have to remove the body from the car, put it back on the body buck (thank you to the web-guy who posted the instructions for that piece of work!). He’s going to remove the engine (rent that engine hoist again) to get at the clutch, repair the clutch, replace the engine, reattach all the little engine pieces that had to come off for the removal, replace the clutch pedal, reattach the body. How long? Another 2, perhaps 3 weekends of work. And, yet, he still claims to be fond of me…
Lastly, here’s a picture of the broken Cobra on jacks, I can only hope that one day soon, it will be able to feel the road under its tires again. To that end, I will try and stay away from it.
