My Most Embarrassing Cobra Moment .....

[conrod]

Oh the shame of it!

The story began a few months ago when I started getting some alarming pops and bangs from the RH sidepipe on the overrun. The prime candidate was an air leak, and after eliminating all other possibilities, I removed the exhaust manifold. Sure enough, there were black smudges on the gasket above and below the two centre ports, and a straight-edge confirmed the headers were warped.

I gave Dax a call, and Simon made the offer for me to take my car to Harlow, and they'd remove the headers and get them machined flat. I should add that over the winter I'd attempted to remove the sidepipes from the headers to get a bung welded on for an air-fuel ratio meter, but gave up! Simon reckons they should be able to get them off though, so I'll be taking him up on this offer.

However, that requires a couple of days dry weather for me to drive there and back - suffice it to say that Oxfordshire yesterday had an entire month's worth of rain in one day .....

So as an interim measure, I fitted a new gasket, and applied a liberal quantiity of high temp RTV silicone sealant. This seemed to effect a nice temporary cure - until I went to go out in it today. After a couple of miles, the gases managed to squeeze a path through the silicon, with very embarrassing results .....

You know the noise you get if you inflate a balloon, then stretch the neck apart to let the air out? Well, now imagine that screeching sound magnified so much it was louder than my sidepipes (and believe me they're loud!). It sounded like a cat being castrated - and I just couldn't get it to stop. So I had to drive it home with everyone turning to look at the legendary howling banshee of Oxfordshire .....

So I'll be re-fitting the gasket minus the silicone (there's no way I could bear driving it from Oxford to Harlow like this), and I hope we'll get some dry days next week so Dax can wield their magic on it.

It led me to thinking whether other people have suffered any similarly public embarrasssments in their Cobs.

Pray tell ......

[Sidecarbod]

Originally Posted by conrod

It led me to thinking whether other people have suffered any similarly public embarrasssments in their Cobs.

Pray tell ......

I crashed mine into a motorway barrier and smashed the front end in! Does that count?

Pete

[Noel]

Or Nobby dropping spinners at a busy set of traffic lights?

Could not believe how much noise it made

[TINKA]

Went on holiday in the Cobra down through France and into Italy, the problem was I had not dialled in the bell housing and it desperately needed doing. Well before we even left the country I discovered There was a problem selecting reverse then when getting off the ferry I dipped the clutch and selected first to be met with a dreadful noise coming from the G/box, bell housing area, It sounded like the noise you get when you spin something too fast and it starts to bind, But of course so much louder, well this continued the hole holiday but got worse until I could not select first or second gear and had to turn off the engine to get reverse but it would move backwards when the starter spun. It also boiled over due to an other problem if I had to stop for more than 5 mins. Got me home though, but had to get a new G/box

[Happy Jim]

...As I drove around the Nurburgring and rounded the famous carousel to cheers from the on lookers.....I dropped a spinner ping ping ping it went down the road (fortunately landed safely in the grass so no one else could hurt themselves).

Naturally I had a passenger in for his first trip in a "kit" car - Doh!

Jim

[Toddy]

While building the Dax I cut off the piece of wire they use to remove the boot from the mould Only to find it was the wire for the rear numberplate light running through the moulding DOH

[slogger]

I floored the throttle on mine with the wife behind me in my new company car. Almighty twang as the offside rear spinner got free bounced off the roof of my company car, shot across the road into a garden chopping down prize flowers as effectively as a petrol strimmer.............

a) Explain to the boss that something had fallen of a lorry on the motorway????

b) Asking for my spinner back from Victor Meldrew's twin brother holding a bunch of freashly cut flowers!

Bugger!

[spoonies]

Visited old friend who was desparate for a ride in my "new" cobra. He lives in a village where all of his neighbours know me and are always happy to see my next failed attempt at showing off.
Both of us got in, pulled our belts tight and I gave it a bootful of throttle thinking that I'd be OK laying a number 11 on the private road they live on.
Dropped the clutch at 4000 revs and got approx 10mSec of wheelspin followed by the back end dropping on the passenger side and the most horrendous clanking noise I've ever heard.
The car had moved less than 1 metre, but by now the whole street was outside looking at us sitting in a very broken looking Cobra! Photos were soon put on the village web site for all to see!

The N/S driveshaft had given up and turned itself into a pretzel , taking with it one of the rear shocks and upon investigation the diff was B.E.R!

Then had to wait for 1 hour for recovery truck to arrive and take the car and a very embarrassed me home to a wife who was 9 months and 1 week pregnant and having serious pains!!

[wilf]

Many years ago - before I met my current wife........

Took the Pilgrim that I had then down to Eastbourne, longest dry spell in ages it was, went to a party, took a young lady for a spin, very impressed she was, definitely "on a promise". Very excited she was.

On the way back to the party we were planning whose place to go back to - then the fuel filter blocked up, engine died. No mobile, miles from anywhere, no shelter.

Then the dry spell ended. With a mega thunderstorm and cloudburst. No roof.

Party girl not impressed as her new silk party dress got soaked through, as did her special party hair-do, her new shoes etc. etc. etc. Asked her if she fancied a roll in the mud...............by then I was just about to fall down laughing, the situation was so farcical. Not like we were going to dissolve, was it?

She never spoke to me again.

Moral of the story - Cobras do NOT improve your sex life.

[lutman]

Had a new engine installed and it was great, running in showed huge potential of the engine.
At that time we did not know the builder had installed the oil pressure relief valve in the oil filter housing the wrong way round, it did not allow enough by-pass at high pressure, not noted during running in revs.
First time I really put pedal to the floor it was wonderful, huge wheel spin lots of noise but after about 200yds I got the oil low pressure warnings so I shut off and pulled over only to slide into the kerb. I had split the oil filter and dumped oil all over the road and rear wheels.
Lots of spectators and lots of jeering/cheering. More embarassing was arguing with the owners of the two cars following me who had also hit my oil patch and collided into each other - a pick up truck and a 330D BMW. Got away with it ! But I think due to the same jeering/cheering crowd giving the " crash" victims huge abuse for being crap drivers.