Mopar Muscle Association UK

Enjoying watching this, great work. Wish I could do this kind of stuff!

bit more mocking up.
bulk-head double plated over the heater blower aperture.

yes the master cylinder is close to the engine but don't forget i'll be centralizing the engine and i'll also change to banjo unions for the brake pipes.

and yes i'm robbing all the bits off the Gold Barracuda. I'll keep all the LHD bits just in case i decide i can't be arsed to do another conversion. All the steering off the Gold Barracuda went years ago so i'll keep all the steering parts off the Blue Barracuda to go with the Gold Barracuda.

before and after

extra hole is for the handbrake cable.

Coming along nicely now! looking at that floor pan it reminded me of the badly fitted inner wing my car came out of the factory with, I had to drill out all the spot welds to align it correctly.

Badly fitted factory panels shouldn't affect body strength. I remember seeing what you did to the inner panel on your thread and quite a commitment to put it right.

What shocked me most about the poor repair on my Barracuda and really hit home is when i had the door off, the screen out and both barely fitted floor pans removed it showed there is not a lot metal holding these cars together. In a minor crash the cabin area would have folded around the occupants with no effort at all with the front and rear sections being pretty much intact.

That's another reason for fitting heavy gauge box section frame connectors. Hold the rear part of the car away from the front part in a head on or being rear ended and hopefully lessen the crush in the center section.

Yes there's no surplus metal holding these cars together and I do think subframe connectors are a worthwhile addition to any car.

Tidy.

Still in the mocking up stage to see whats required, what i need to do and don't need to do.



the K frame is now 1/4 inch further forward, the sump notched and the rack is in what i'm sure will be its permanent resting place.


i know what you're thinking. 'the rack is too low and too far forward which'll cause severe to dangerous bump steer. also you are going to lose a lot of turning radius because the A body steering arm is quite long and steering racks have limited movement'

you are right and iv'e had a bit of a think on that.

it turns out that a B body steering arm ball joint will fit the A body lower arm. The B body steering arm is much shorter and angled a lot lower than an A body one so it'll take care of a lot of the problems.

'they don't fit A body uprites though''

i'm ahead of you on that one, they will once iv'e finished modifying the uprites to take the B body lower ball joint/steering arms.

just need to build up a suspension unit, without the hubs and brakes, to set the geometry so i can finalize the position of the steering arms to eliminate bump steer. I'm not too fussed about ackerman. there will be some still but it isn't as important as you think.

robbed these pictures from the internet.

as found a few years ago

well it's been nearly a year since the last post.

i haven't done much recently as iv'e been quite busy at work on a 427 Cobra that spent the best part of 40 years in Beaulieu Motor Museum

But i did get to drive it at the Revival in the Shelby Tribute Parade (it's the Dark Blue Cobra with no stripes)

it is a Competition 427 with Dry Sump oiling once owned by John Wolfe. raced in period by Ed Freutel and Tony Settember


anyway, a couple of mods on the Barracuda

K Frame now fully welded to take a Jaguar steering rack

and i did another little mod on the standard gear selector. It's too easy to drop into 1st from 3rd when only 2nd is required so i added a small step (at the purple mark) to catch the lever so it cannot go into first without letting go of the button, it'll then just catch the first gear ramp where the lever can then be puled back to first if required.
should be back on the project soon.

This is what the Beaulieu Cobra looks like now

It's been a while


as you know i like to do things slightly differently, so in my head iv'e had an idea for a while on lower suspension bushes, and how i don't like them. Yes poly bushes are available but they have their issues.

so i have deleted the lower bushes completely.
(the outer sleeve is still to be pressed into place to hold the tight fitting spherical joint then a seal will go in there.)


for the strut rod it is a ball joint with an adjustable sleeve with a adapter bolted in place on the K frame, and for the lower arm it is a heavy duty spherical joint. As i have QA1 upper arms with quite solid bushes the lowers had to be uprated anyway. It all bolts together and isn't dependent on the torsion bar holding it in place. As my K frame will be 1/4 inch further forward anyway it means i can have extra caster without having the upper arm on full adjustment straining the nylon bushes.

so now the lower arm is adjustable, moves freely and smoothly plus it will not bind up. it's been together to test and it moves through the whole range easily. plus it can be left for years and not deteriorate like rubber. I'm not worried about road noise.


as far as I'm aware no one else has done this.



oh and the Cobra looks like this now

Lovely work as ever, Barry - I always love your posts.

Please can you put up more detail about the LCA modification?

Also - the Cobra, What is it? An Original CSX? I love it.

Unusual to see the "correct" Roll bar these days as everyone goes for the twin shiny loops.

Again, more details would be great, thank you.

Very nice work! Not seen a lower arm converted to spherical bush before, roller bearing is the way I’ve seen it done before.