Cobra Lads - building a JBL ford 427 shelby cobra kitcar

The Lost 427 Cobra Pics Found!

The Lost 427 Cobra Pics Found!
Recently I decided to send all my old-school paper photographs out to get digitized or scanned. I think we had something like 2000 or 3000 photos and all were hand-scanned and tossed onto CDs and DVDs. In those pictures were 20 or 30 JBL Cobra build pictures from 2000 and 2001. It seems like 100 years ago. Some of the pictures are just when I started to build, and then all the red pics were right near the finish when I had my dad helping me wet-sand the paintjob that I did myself! Our wet sanding skills were not as developed as they could of been so eventually I took the car to a professional painter who helped bring out maximum shine.

It feels like this adventure was 100 years ago! This cobra is now in Europe, hopefully racing up and down the Autobahn. If you would like to see some of these long lost pics, please click here.

The Butcher and The Engines

How many engines has the butcher melted? The correct answer is "three". Hee hee. Here is the story. My very first engine was a CHP 427w crate engine. It was years ago and at the time I think it cost right around $6k. If I had to guess, I would estimate it at the 435hp range. I had a lot to learn back then and accidentally reversed the lines to my remote oil cooler. It's amazing how long an engine will run without oil! I always had great oil pressure, but none was circulating in the engine cavities. My first engine blew on the back stretch of the big track at Willow Springs. Tears in my eyes as I limped in, one piston missing. Dean Woodruff from House Of Cobras was always very kind to me and had the engine torn apart at the track less than two hours later! The Trickflow Twisted Wedge Heads were fine...I basically needed a new block.

Cobra Lads Redesigned

It's been at least a couple of years since I posted to Cobra Lads and I wanted to give the site a new look and move it from my home server to TypePad. I'm hoping the new look is a little more professional and modern. The old site was me blogging by hand kind of before blog software existed. lol There are some pros and cons that come with the move but overall I think the new layout should work out well. Some of the old links will not function and my 50 old Butcher story pages will not have active links in them so the stories won't make as much sense, but all the pictures are in the photo albums. There are now over 50 videos posted too! Sadly I can't put them into a nice category or they disappear...seems to be a beta bug with Video Egg and TypePad.

I hope all your cobra builds are going well and I hope you enjoy some of my stories and adventures on this site. I was the first person to build a JBL stage one. I think I built it around the years 1999 to 2001 and I sold my cobra around 2002. I really enjoyed the learning and testing and engineering aspects of such a project.

427w Test Starts

Checking out the engine bay and letting the engine run. American horsepower with a deep lope!

Now that's Nascar Sounding!

The Butcher's Ford 383w Stroker with Trickflow Twisted Wedge heads sounds mean!

Westech Slowly Increases the RPMs

Dyno day takes time and preparation. John takes the 383w CHP stroker up in stages.

Westech John starts to test

John easy the Butcher's JBL into the testing. This is my second engine I believe, the 383w stroker rebuild. I had a bad habit of reversing oil lines as old time readers may recall. hehehe. More on that in a future post.

The HOC Powerplant Sings

The Robnell gets revved high on this test run and the House Of Cobra powerplant performs flawlessly.

The Big Fans Keep the Robnell Cool

Ryo's Robnell is being put through the paces.

Ryo's Robnell at Westech

Ryo and I used to live at Westech. It was always an education taking the cobras to the dyno.