Kit rescheduled / Lending a hand

So yesterday was supposed to be the day that my body and chassis kit arrived from AK Sportscars.  However some weeks ago I realised that I was making slower than planned progress and made the decision to delay my kit delivery until early next year (Jan 11 2019 in fact).

So last Friday I helped Richard Chippendale (see Local Cobra Builders) take delivery of his AK chassis and body kit.  Richard and I have been exchanging WhatApp messages quite regularly sharing progress and advice on stripping down of axles (he is way ahead of me!) but this was the first time we had actually met!

When Noel from AK pulled up with the car trailer I think I was almost as excited as Richard was!  

First sight on arrival!

Second Generation AK Chassis

AK Body - even the bare shell looks fast!

Unloading went (relatively) to plan.  Richard has a nice big roof space in his garage and the idea was to place the body on a wooden frame to support the floor and then lift this up into the roof space with a couple of chain winches so he could work on the chassis below.  The first attempt was reasonably successful although body was hanging a bit lower than hoped (and yours truly managed to clout his head on hit - so yes it was too low!!) - so future adjustment is planned.

We then carried the chassis into the garage and then went and had a well earned beer and talked cars for a bit!. It was good to put a face to the name and hopefully that was the first of many beers!!

Seeing Richard's kit arrive made me regret putting back my delivery date - but to be honest, although I've stripped the front axle, I have only just started tearing down the rear axle and I haven't even started cleaning or painting any of the parts yet so am a while away from being ready to start building, even if my kit had arrived (plus it would make life in the garage a bit cramped while trying to finish off all the other stuff as well). So i think I have made the right decision.

However it did give me a bit of impetus and I managed to spend the next couple of days in the garage cracking on with the rear axle disassembly.

Front Axle Strip Down

OK so it took a bit longer than hoped - but I have finally managed to completely strip down the front subframe.  Life has been a bit busy with packing my eldest off to university, having to decorate the spare room and other small jobs that my better half deems more important than me 'playing in the garage'.....

Given that I'm a bit behind with the blog, I am not going to do a step by step strip down of the front end (there's plenty of info out there on other blogs) but thought I would share a couple of tips based on my experiences.

The first would be to invest in a heavy duty (and long) breaker bar.  I bought a 3/4" drive bar which was 600mm long from Machine Mart.  In hindsight I would have gone for the 900mm long model.  Some of the fastenings on the subframe, particularly the brake caliper carrier bolts and the ball joint nuts were particularly stubborn to remove, despite lashings of penetrating oil,  and needed some force on the breaker bar, combined with the ballast of a 14 year old boy standing on the subframe, to get them to shift.

600mm Breaker Bar compared to standard 3/4" Socket Wrench

The second would be not to bother wasting time buying a ball joint / remover separator of the type that consists of two hinged halves that work by trying to pry the ball joint out of the joint.  I found that the one I bought a) only fitted properly on the upper ball joint in any case and b) was not strong enough for the job anyhow - it only managed to release one joint and this was a joint that I had had to clamp back together in any case to allow removal of the nut without the ball joint stem just spinning uselessly!!

I would go straight for the ball joint splitter / pickle fork option.  Even this required some hefty blows from one of my largest adjusting hammers (combined with the aforementioned ballast) to finally split the joints.  This tool does destroy the rubber seal on the ball joints, but as they are being replaced this is not a problem for me!

Ball Joint remover at top - "Pickle Fork" below

The tear down of the front subframe was actually quite straightforward and without incident.  The order of events was as follows:

• Unbolt and remove brake caliper and pads
• Unbolt and remove brake caliper carrier
• Remove brake rotor
• Remove dust cover, undo stub axle bolt, remove front hub, bearings and oil seal
• Remove brake shield
• Undo upper and lower ball joints and remove stub axle
• Undo and remove upper and lower wishbones.

I have also drifted out the inner and outer bearing races from the front hubs.  I have bagged everything up, keeping left and right axles parts separate, ready for degreasing, cleaning and painting at a later date.

All parts from one side of front axle fully stripped down

Fully stripped front subframe

Now to get started on breaking down the rear axle!

Donor Parts have Arrived!

Bit of a catch-up needed on the blog front!

My donor parts from Simply Performance arrived back at the beginning of August.  

A very securely wrapped pallet was delivered all as arranged with Ben Thomson.  Having fought my way through the plastic wrap and undone the rope used to secure the spare wheels and parts to the pallet I could examine the axles and parts that will provide the running gear to our build.

Pallet unwrapped and slave wheels / tyres removed

I have a complete front and rear subframe assembly from the donor car from which Simply Performance had cut and removed the coil springs.  The differential unit has been removed from the rear subframe and refurbished; which has the slight advantage that the rear hub carriers and drive shafts are already partially disassembled.

Refurbished Differential - looks like new!

I have set up the front and rear parts on separate pallets ready to start stripping down fully.

Front Subframe

Rear Axle - minus differential unit

(A quick health and safety warning - as usual it's an obvious warning, but then most accidents are caused by overlooking the obvious.  The disk brake shields on both the front and rear axles do get severely corroded and this can leave them with extremely sharp edges.  When moving the heavy axle assemblies around you should wear a pair of heavy duty gloves.  I didn't and upon lifting the first rear axle assembly off the pallet by grabbing the disk brake shield I managed to sustain a particularly deep gash in the palm of my hand!  My son was quick to demonstrate his First Aid skills, learnt at the local ACF, and managed to patch me up and save me a trip to A&E!)

Now to spray everything liberally with penetrating oil and start stripping down the parts!

Donor Car

I am now the proud owner of a 1995 Jaguar XJ6 3.2 Auto in green!

The Tiger that will give birth to a Snake!

Well not quite.  Not wishing to go through the pain and hassle of locating a suitable donor vehicle, trying to remove the necessary parts and then trying to sell / dispose of the remaining vehicle shell, I have chosen to go with a far easier route.

Following my chat with Ben Thompson of Simply Performance at the Stoneleigh show back in May, I have gone with the option of buying a Cobra Donor package.  This means that Simply Performance will locate a suitable donor vehicle for me, remove the front and rear axles as complete units and deliver to my home, complete with the donor vehicle V5 logbook.  Completely hassle free for me!

The AK Generation III chassis is based on the Jaguar XJ40 (1986-1994) or X300 (1994-1997) front and rear axles - the XJ40/X300 has outboard rear disk brakes  mounted on the rear hubs rather than the earlier XJ6 versions which had inboard rear disks fitted between the drive shafts and the differential unit.

The AK front suspension utilises the bottom wishbones and uprights (both modified by AK), hubs, brake disks and callipers from the XJ40, while the rear suspension utilises the complete rear axle assembly (rear wishbones and drive shafts are modified by AK).

Ben is extremely knowledgeable about the various Jaguar models (which with all the different variants are confusing to say the least) and was very helping in selecting a suitable donor vehicle for me.  

Two essentials on my shopping list were getting the biggest possible brake disks, with vented disks both front and rear, and getting a 3.58 ratio PowerLok limited slip differential.  

Getting a Chevy powered beast to stop quickly and safely is, to me, an obvious necessity and so from the outset I wanted to get the best brakes that I could from the donor car rather than faff around trying to source larger disks and calipers later (I also wanted to try and avoid the expense at this stage of buying an aftermarket big brake kit).

Having driven two quite different rear wheel drive cars in the past, a 3.0 Ford Capri with an open differential and a 5.0 Trans Am with a limited slip rear differential, the difference between the two in getting the power safety onto the road and through corners (particularly in wet conditions) made getting the PowerLok Jaguar axle a no brainer for me despite having to pay a bit extra.

I also asked Simply Performance if they could do a full service / refurbishment of the rear differential unit just be sure it was all up to scratch.

Having given my shopping list to Ben just before I went on my summer holidays, I just had to sit back, relax and wait for my donor axles to arrive!

Order Placed!

So having mulled over the various options for a week or so, decisions were made and it was time to place our order.

So at the beginning of June I travelled back up to Peterborough to place my order in person.  I spent a very pleasant couple of hours with the guys, running through the order form, drinking tea and chatting about cars, bikes and sheds!

I have ordered the following:

• Gen III chassis - with mountings for Chevy LS3 engine and Tremec TKO500 gearbox
• Body in grey gel coat - standard bonnet scoop, single fuel filler on drivers side, standard style dashboard, standard transmission tunnel, external boot hinges
• Twin 3-legged Stainless Steel Roll Bars
• Stainless Steel Engine Bay cladding - fitted
• Factory fitted wishbone bushes
• LS Power Steering system
• Coil-over Shocks and Springs
• XJ40 handbrake cable
• Stainless Steel brake flexes
• Stainless Steel LS Fuel Tank

Delivery date will be end of October 2018 - excited!!!

So now we need to find and order donor parts and start refurbishing the necessary bits ready for the chassis arrival.

First though - I need to clear some space in the garage which means a new shed is in order...

Local Cobra Builders

So when I was placing my order, it turned out that another prospective builder with a similar postcode to mine was also planning his own AK project.

I asked Wendi to pass on my details, which she obviously did, as I got an email from Richard introducing himself!  He only lives 6 miles from me and his kit will arrive just before mine so we should be on similar build timescales.

He is slightly ahead of me at present as he has already ordered his donor parts and started stripping down the axles (he has plenty of room in his garage, unlike me...)

I have added a link to Richards build blog at the right.

AK Sportscars Open Day - May 20th 2018

A gloriously sunny Sunday morning saw Sam and I head up to Peterborough for the AK Sportscars Factory open day.

Spotting the factory as we approached was easy due to a number of Cobra's parked opposite and the sound of the side pipes from one of the AK demonstrators!

Carla was on hand greeting arrivals and co-ordinating test rides for the day and I was pleasantly surprised on arrival to be directed straight into the passenger seat of the latest AK demonstrator car, the candy green and aptly named "Apple" which is powered by a phenomenal 630hp LS7 engine.

AK Demonstrators - "Rufus" and "Apple" (Photo courtesy of AK Sportscars)

My driver for this experience was Trigger, one of the long standing members of the AK team.  As we drove sedately out of the Westwood Industrial Estate I already had a huge grin on my face.  But when we hit the dual carriageway sections on the outskirts of Peterborough and Trigger used a bit more throttle (within the speed limits of course!!) the grin gave way to an insane cackle.  The power and handling of that car were insane.  My stomach was somewhere in the boot!  

One of the many Carroll Shelby legends is that he used to place a $100 bill on the dashboard of a Shelby Cobra 427 and if the passenger could pick the money up when the car was under full acceleration then they could keep it.  I think if AK did that challenge then there would be very few, if any, winners!!!

I was grinning from ear to ear as we returned to the factory (and for several hours afterwards).  I have to say that I was very impressed that, without me even asking, Carla arranged for Trigger to take Sam out for a quick drive (I'm guessing even more within the speed limit than my trip) which I thought was a really good thing to do.  Sam didn't quite have the same grin when he returned; in typical teenager fashion he just summed the experience up as "that was loud".

I think he was impressed...

We then spent some time looking round the factory.  There was a rolling chassis which I took several photographs of for future reference, a bare body/chassis package ready for shipping out and some customer builds in progress as well as a couple of finished cars to look over.  We also had a look over some of the owners cars that had turned up for the event got some good feedback about their various AK experiences.  I met Mark Clayton again and spent some time looking over his car in a bit more detail (and asking him yet more questions about his build).

Rolling Chassis

Bare Gen II Chassis

Customer build in progress

Jon Freeman (owner of AK Sportscars) gave a factory tour, taking us through the build process including chassis construction (explaining the differences between the various AK options) and body manufacture as well as talking about some of the factory builds in progress.  

Factory Tour (photo courtesy of AK Sportscars)

Body in mould

Finished Body

Now before making the trip up to Peterborough I had warned my wife that I was very likely going to place an order at the open day.  But after talking to Jon and Wendi, and looking round the cars on show, there were a few final details / options that I decided I needed to mull over before taking the final plunge.  The decision to go with AK was clear, but i was now unsure as to whether to go for the Gen III chassis or the Gen II.  I had assumed I would go with the latest Gen III but in talking to Jon he suggested that the Gen III was only really needed for track days and the Gen II would be perfectly adequate for road use. 


So having filled up on the excellent selection of cakes that had laid on, we set off home pondering chassis options, number of fuel fillers, style and number of roll hoops, nudge bars or quick lifts..............the choices are endless!