hi everyone and advice needed !

[dolphinboy400]

ok here goes!

i've been building a classic replica's cobra for about 4 years with my dad, with the last year and a bit off for the usual stuff , ya know , getting married having a baby, moving house hehe! i'm in the process of building my new garage to house our project when a customer i was working for this week had a cobra replica in his garage! Naturally i got excited and asked him about it, then he turns round and said he's looking to sell it!

ok the help bit, ( bear with me ), my current kit is upto the body stage, engine in all running , wiring ready for connecting. body needs prepping for spraying , dash needs fitting, wiper system bought but not fitted yet, custom seats ready for fitting ( gutted i bought them now) , and all the brightwork to fit. on top of that it will need to go through SVA and mot and all that. The engine is only a pinto (sierra running gear ) that has been rebuilt and a granada 3 ltr carb mounted, ( ok you can stop laughing now :P , money was tight !).

The other cobra im told is an L and R chassis, Ram cobra kit with jag XJS running gear, rover 3.5 V8 engine and rover gearbox (5 speed), its got hallibrand wheels with spinners , le-mans style fuel filler cap, no roll over bar fitted, ( which is a shame cos i like the look , dunno how hard it would be to fit after ? ). The car is an '85 kit whith this space frame chassis ( i cant remember the name of the bloke who desighned it but apparently he left dax to build his own, if that helps), it was finnished in '97 , he has done 160 miles total in it but the v8 was second hand with semi-racing cams, lightened pistons . the car has sat in his garage for 3 years, the clutch is solid so probably stuck, the disks are stuck but other than a few blemishes on the chromework to clean up and a smaller steering wheel, i can't see anything obviously wrong with it.

my questions are, what other things should i be looking for before putting an offer down.

what sort of money do theese go for normally, ( the only ones ive seen were pristine condition and this guys name Adrian Reynard for the chassis going for 16k +)

the price this guy has hinted at was 4k figure, i know the kit cost 7k in '85. So do i walk away, carry on with my 'figure it out as you go along kit' (long story ) or do i calmly and politley snap his hand off for getting my dream car earlier than expected?

sorry to waffle on for my first post but i wanted to give you guys as many facts as i can think of

if you made it to the end of this post well done

any help would be appreciated .

thanks

[Happy Jim]

Hello Flippper,

If it's correctly registered then snap his hand off, if the running gear is shot..allow £1K for a full refurb (substantially less if some of it is OK), engine?? budget another £1K if it's seriously dead, allow another £1K for some bling (roll hoops and a tidy up) and you've got a lot of motor for £7K - a nice Rover engined RAM would be £12-15K (ish).

Rgds

Jim

[mylesdw]

Sounds like a good buy at 4K. Roll-over bar is easy to fit since the mounting points are already on the chassis. As mentioned above, the description on the log book is important because it will decide whether you will need to go through SVA at some point in the future. If it says Ram or LR Roadsters it's fine but if it says Jaguar or Rover there may be problems ahead.

[viperjim]

option 1 / snap the blokes hand off and drive away in your dream car . option 2 / finish the viper , and drive away in everybodies dream car knowing you have achieved something special

[robinj66]

If you're not going to snap his hand off then PM me the guy's details as I know someone who will be interested

[dolphinboy400]

cool thanks for the advice, when i go and look at it ,i'll check the paperwork. I did ask about SVA and he told me he phoned it through DVLA or something similar and they sent a copper round who looked over it and said all ok go drive ! he's still got the paperwork for that i believe. I just wanted a 'heads up' from you guys before i go getting my bank manager worried again

thanks again for the advice

[wilf]

This would be a pre-SVA car. So long as it is correctly regisitered (look on the V5) that's OK. If it is not, then it most likely will have to go through SVA, and will need modifying to do that.

At that price tho', it is worth doing, so long as it is not a total shed thrown together by an idiot.

[dolphinboy400]

Originally Posted by wilf

This would be a pre-SVA car. So long as it is correctly regisitered (look on the V5) that's OK. If it is not, then it most likely will have to go through SVA, and will need modifying to do that.

At that price tho', it is worth doing, so long as it is not a total shed thrown together by an idiot.

ok thanks for the info , i'm going to have a closer look next weekend, i'll keep you posted

[dolphinboy400]

update : me and my dad went and looked at the ram again today in daylight It's official, were gonna be buying it, i was led to believe it had been stood still for 3 years but found out today it's more like 8 years! Gonna go buy some dolly's just incase the clutch is stuck on, so we can get it loaded on the trailer. as far as the engine goes it looks like it's been modified somewhat, lightened pistons and semi-racing cam, it used to belong to a gt40 owner that used it on track days occasionaly . gonna be carefull with it , might end up stripping it and rebuilding . the brightwork is pitted with rusty bits like chrome gets when its been negleted but as its only superficial im not gonna worry too much about that. the car was registered as a ram kit or ram cobra kit, so thats good i think, only that he notified that it was S.O.R.N. in the first year but never recieved any reminders and didnt re-register the s.o.r.n. after that, ill have to look into that. but on the whole very excited , maybe 6 months of work then i can come show it off to ya'll

the other thing now is , i need to sell my half finnished viper which i will be posting the details in the correct section, with pics to follow.

Thanks for all your advice and dont stop giving it out either as im sure ill need some help depening on what i find when i get it home

Danny

[Deck]

This might be cynical Danny but why has the guy only done 160miles in the car? Personally, something doesn't add... why spend 13 years building a car to only drive it 160miles? has it got some serious setup problem?

I'd say better the devil you know! And as a CR Viper builder I'm quite intimately aquainted with your particular devil. Sounds like you've got the back broken in it though.

The fact that you have to weigh up is, If you need to do a total rebuild of any or all components, engine, runing gear, gearbox, prop/drive shafts etc, possibly rewire it, replace a few guages, fault find issues, replace the poor chrome etc you're still left with a 22 year old car...

I drive a 85 mercedes and I've spent a lot of time repairing rust and replacing anything rubber and its never been off the road. From my experience every single bit of rubber on this car will have perished from the CV joint boots to the water/fuel/brake hoses to mounting bushes.

You're also going to take a serious hit on the Viper sale and even then only if you hoodwink some absolute novice (like me )!

And to clinch it, the guy has already lied to you about how long its been off the road.

Just my humble, poorly informed opinion of course.
Best of luck
Declan