After taking some measurements, Jim could see he would have his work cut out for him to get the wide mod motor twixt the fenders. Right away, he saw he would have to rethink the location of some of the accessories as well as redesign the air intake. As Jim salivated over the thought of driving a Cobra-equipped '40 while looking the car over and taking notes on the things that needed to be modified, he began to realize the original chassis and suspension just weren't going to let him take full advantage of the available power.
Following more careful measuring, Jim sat down, put pen to paper, and laid down the chassis design he had in mind. To translate the sketch into steel, Jim called up T.C. Carver, an experienced chassis builder who'd worked for Bill Elliot Racing. After all, who would be more appropriate to design the ultimate tripper car chassis than a NASCAR fabricator?
Starting with a custom set of rails ordered through Vision Rods and Customs in Cleveland, Georgia, T.C. bent up the rest and grafted in a Heidt's Superide independent front and rear suspension. Jim wanted to avoid buying a new crate engine, but Cobra engines aren't exactly easy to run across in salvage yards. A little digging around turned up a dealer that had one that was purportedly a Ford dyno test mule. Sounds like something we'd avoid like a bottle of ginger jake, but the deal was right and pickin's were slim, so Jim decided to chance it and had the engine shipped to T.C.
While T.C. tackled the chassis and drivetrain work, Jim pulled on his background as a wiring guy for AT&T and stayed busy making a stock Cobra wiring harness, a Ron Francis street rod harness, and a Baumann trans controller communicate with each other. When all the splicing was finished and the engine was fired for the first time, Jim and T.C. were surprised to find the dyno mule had two weak cylinders. Fortunately, the supplier stood behind the engine, and it was rebuilt to stock specs-well, internally anyway. While the engine was apart, Jim had the Eaton blower ported and a pulley from a Lightning installed to bump the output to 16 psi.
A traditional bootlegging tripper car would have had a stripped interior, but since he intended to drive the '40, Jim went the opposite way with plush leather and a full DVD and satellite radio system. "I have to confess to ya, though," Jim says, "I don't turn it on much because I'm just in love with the sound of the engine. That wail is good music. I could show it a lot more, but it's such a delight to drive. There's no telling how fast it will run, but there's comfort in knowing it responds as needed, stops quickly, and it handles the curves so well that it's hard to make it lean. The old moonshiners around here love it and really appreciate the honoring of the '40 Ford. They just wish they had something back then that accelerated and handled like this car." One thing's for sure, the revenuers woulda never seen it comin'.
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