Factory Five Racing.

My only words of wisdom are use a modern cobra block vs the 5.0 block and a T-56. Depending on how nice you do them they start in the low 20's finished if you do the work by yourself and so on.

 

I keep in contact with the local snake club here, I have seen the gamut from needs better work to show car. to pull off the price FFR states your using a donor and the car will look decent and be a driver, but for the real nice example you're looking at 50k.

I'm in the same boat as you, I want to but I also know the level of commitment and money it would need to make me happy. I have neither at the moment so it waits. my prelim budget penciled out to about 75k, at that level there are alot of other cars to consider. Also CA is harsh on the 'kit' cars.

 

two words...

1. kirk
2. ham

!!!!

 

Superperformance makes a nice kit as well.

 

yes they do.

 

http://www.ffcobra.com everything you need to know.

I built a roadster and love it. Into it for about $25k.

 

It really depends on how you wanna do it. There's litarly a million cobra replica builders out there but nothing like a Factory Five Cobra. The more work you do by yourself is the less money you put out depending on the project. Iv'e seen kids my age build these cars as there first for under 20k and its more than capable of beating a C6 Z06 all day long.

My advise is to buy a donorcar in mint condition so that you don't have to reinvest more money to it. Do most of the work yourself and also start chatting up over on the kitcar forums, you never know they got great advise on those forums if you wanna build one. Its a pretty black and white kit since you'll be using a new chassis and body all you really need to do is add in the componants to the vehicle and your done.

Last but not least check your local DMV/Motorvehicle department for rules and regualtions before buying anything(unless you want a mustang for no apparent reason) it varys from state to state and maybe in your state they requre somethings to be built diffrent than others. Check with insurance companys as well because GEICO ain't gonna insure a replica or kitcar so you might wanna also take that into concideration.

Iv'e been thinking about doing a GTM in the next year or two but iam currently checking into a Fiero based kit perhaps by summertime to begin work.

 

I've also got the bug to build my own car someday. A question that comes up is how do you dispose of the donor car after all is said and done? Usually, you take the drivetrain and the suspension so it doesn't even roll at that point. Do you call a flat bed to take it to the auto scrapyard?

Just curious

 

If you don't know much about cars, then buy one already built, so you can enjoy it. Most kit cars and replicas on Ebay are 80% finished... people get fed up and give up, so they sell them. If you do build one, go with a 5.0 motor. No need for anything modern, just a straight up 302 with heads cam, etc... will be fine. Naturally Asparated 5.0's run 11's at the track all day long. The guy that bought mine is running 9's on my 120K+ mile stock bottom end motor. Plus parts are EVERYWHERE for 302's. If anything... buy a 5.0 Mustang and toy around with that for a while, learn about it and then strip it down to make your Cobra.

 

Exactly. Get your $75.00 for the steel at the scrap yard.

 

Or put it on ebay and some one will buy it as a shell to make a race car out of.

 

Pretty much how its done. Another thing you could do before calling a towing company to remove that rustang from your drive way is to put it on Ebay because you can get alittle more for putting it up for sale. Depending on the body plannels of the foxbody or whatever you can resell them to local body shops and they'll pay for them more than what a scrapyard would give you.

 

I wouldn't recomend buying a completed kit from a private seller.

If your gonna go for a completed car its best you buy a turnkey from the company but its gonna cost you some serious bucks. Some companys offer warrentes on there turnkey kits I know most of the lambo replica kits offer them usally 3 years.

 

Zero as far as I recall. The only thing I remember not being right was some of the aluminum interior trim but reworking it didn't cost anything. My "base" investment was $16500. Options and little crap got that up to $19500. Paint (I did it myself but it's still expensive), some engine work, koni SA coilovers, etc., brought me to $25k give or take. Honestly, I stopped paying attention to the details once it was on the road.

As you noted, I built a roadster though. The coupe guys clearly have to invest more effort. The kit isn't as thoroughly debugged.

 

What about a GT 40 kit instead? Aside from the trans the cost can't be crazy different.

 

I recall reading that the doors are a huge pain on the coupes.

PM me here if you have questions. i don't really read ffcobra. My build site is http://www.exit109.com/~mfennell/cobra

 

Hey, it was on the road in 6 months! While I was working 2 jobs!

It did take 2 years to get "done" AND red but I got run over by a car during that time. Slows ya way down and I hate bodywork to begin with.