Cobra

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Cobra

Carroll Shelby's living legacy.

Last Updated 6 / 28 / 2003 at 11:26 A.M.

A road racer that got retired too early in life and still wanted to be in the race car game. That was Carroll Shelby. A bad heart had put him on the side lines, but never killed the urge to compete.

The Shelby-Ford-AC was a partnership of unlikely members. One of the world largest auto makers, Ford. AC , a almost defunk English automobile maker that had a car, but no engines and a Texan with a scream. A match made in heaven for the Ford racers. If you owned or raced a Chevrolet Corvette or one of Enzo's Red Ferrari's you were sure it was a match made in hell!

Here we will first talk about the little known Cobra Acceleration Package, AKA the "Dragon Snake".

Chevrolet got a surprise in 1963, when their sacred cow, the Corvette got blown off the race tracks of the world. The cause of this was a little cross breed Ford/AC roadster called the "Cobra". The Cobra drag cars were called "Dragon Snakes", they were very bad little snakes.

This was the only 427 Cobra raced by the Shelby factory team.

The Cobra pictures on this page were barrowed from Dennis Begley. Dennis has a nice Cobra site. Click Here to go visit!

The Dragon Snakes were available with four different stages of engine tune:

Stage 1-D: Standard 271 horse power 289 cubic inch hi-po engine.
Stage II-D: The 289 hi-po was fitted with Dual four barrel carbs and rated at 300 horse power.>
Stage III-D: This version of the 289 hi-po had four Weber 48 mm IDA Carburetors. It got a horse power rating of 325.
Stage IV-D: This was the full house race engine. They had a pair of reworked heads, Weber carbs and a HOT camshaft. A horse power rating of 380 was given to this one. This version was only allowed to race on the American Hot Rod Association tracks. The A/Sports Production was the class for this one in the AHRA. The National Hot Rod Association did not allow this version in a production class due to low production figures

All Dragon Snakes had engines that were fully balanced and "blue printed". Belanger built the special headers that exited from under the doors. The Dragon Snakes came standard with other goodies such as a "COBRA" scatter shield, "COBRA" valve covers and a "COBRA" upside down "T" shaped aluminum oil pan. Shelby chose the Borg-Warner T-10 four speed as the transmission and this one used the aluminum case. The standard rear gear ratio was 4.89 to 1, although any of the available gear ratios could be had. The "Dragon Snake" could use what ever wheels the buyer chose.

The front and rear geometry was modified by dearching and lengthening the front spring 5/17 inch and reforming it 2 1/2 inches down. The rear was just lengthened .350 of and inch. The purpose was to make the rear axles sit square and not go to negative camber no acceleration. When a stock (?, Imagine that, a hand built race car being called "stock". ) the body will shift backwards on launch and cause the rear end to squat and the rear tires will lean in at the top. When this happens the tire runs on it's edge and will lose traction. The reason for these modifications is to allow the rear tires to remain flat on the road surface allowing good traction. Cure Ride shocks were also added with 50/50 up lock and down lock shocks in front and 90/10 down lock shocks in the rear.

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