thunderhorse

My 03 Cobra had developed the infamous "head tick", so a few weeks ago I took her down to Street Lethal Performance in Edinburg, PA. By far, the best shop I have ever dealt with, hands down. The guys are incredibly knowledgable, extremely thorough, and they do awesome work. A little history on my Cobra - I bought it a year ago from a guy in Wisconsin with 37,000 miles on it. It was modded, and proven good for 520rwhp with the dyno graphs in hand. Since then, it has been to hell in back. After the 500 mile trip home, things just began to go wrong. First it was the supercharger - I was told it was a stage 4 port from a reputable porting company, but after removing it, it seems like it was a home-job. The unit made absolutely horrible noises, and after taking the casing off, it seems like it was ran without oil at some point! So, I bought a stock eaton with 9,000 miles on it and did a pulley swap. The chip that was for the port was no longer good, so I had to reflash the ECU with a diablosport tuner. After running the car for maybe 200 or 300 miles, the cylinder heads began ticking pretty noticably. So I bought 04 heads off a guy in Chicago, which are the revised, non-ticking units. Since I was planning on having the heads swapped, I figured I'd have the cams done in the mean time too. I bought stage 2 supercharger cams from MMR to do the job. While all this was going on, I dealt with a few annoying incidents... one of which was a severed clutch cable - not fun. Anyways, I made the drive down to Edinburg, and this is the progress made so far! Street Lethal discovered a few issues - the intake manifold was cracked (they're rewelding it for free), one side of the IRS was installed in a really poor manner (I was in danger of a shock coming completely undone), and the input shaft in the transmission may be messed up (this is TBA, but the clutch is super heavy, even for a stage 3). Well, as you'll see below, a few other problems include snapped bolts, a vacuum hose issue, and a plastic tab in danger of falling into one of the ports on my heads - good thing that didn't happen! Anyways, I will update with more information as I find out. A dyno video will eventually be here as well


My mess before work


this is where I was having vacuum issues

snapped bolt on the lower manifold

the plastic tab - stranger danger!

PurpleIcedGT

Damn bro, what a freakin nightmare. Best of luck getting it all figured out. I'm sure once its tuned with those cams it will put down some very nice numbers!

Timspony

Nice write-up!

thunderhorse

Thanks Rob. This thing has been such a PIA Hopefully this will be the last thing it needs for a very long time!

Cheers!

thunderhorse

tranny problem was a warped pressure plate along with my input shaft resting in the transmission. new clutch on the way.. minus moar monies.

noevoforstevo

So I just bought a cobra with a very heavy clutch pedal. What other signs pointed toward the input shaft problem)

1SVTLVR

Now would be the perfect time to upgrade to a tubular K-member if you wanted, then again, you could upgrade almost anything at this point haha.

thunderhorse

it's all relative - a race clutch should be heavier, but admittedly, mine was VERY heavy. If you have trouble getting it into gear and so on, then you might have an issue. My clutch cable snapped and stuff like that.. pretty severe. you should be alright.

haha yeah I'm just fixing what's broken... which is a lot