Becoming a CSX2000 owner and breathing 60's breath into an older racer

[shelbydoug]

Great story and there is so much I can relate to. I just need to convince the wife to sell the house and we can live in the Cobra. Congrats on a dream fulfilled!
Jeff

Probably not enough in the house sale and just a deposit on the car. 

[427heaven]

x2 

[2112]

" If you're a sucker for the USRRC/FIA look like me.."

Me to.

[Bill Collins]

Where am I now? Well let's see...the wiring was old and brittle if not cut and modified to support newer race devices. I have since acquired an OEM style concours harness. I was advised early on that it's a "early" Lucas wired cobra. Apparently less is known about these fewer Lucas wired with Ford generator cars. While 90% of the wiring is in place I'm still working on finishing up. Some devices like the horns I'm still working on how they attach to the chassis. If you have an early Lucas/Ford wired car I'd love to hear from you! Any help would be greatly appreciated in supporting this wiring getting completed and the car fired back up!

I owned CSX2188 for 36 years and back in the 1980's I worked with a company called Rhode Island Wiring. I loaned the harnesses out of it to them to make correct reproductions. They did a beautiful job and I installed their new harnesses into the car at restoration.

Their web site is http://www.riwire.com/ Go onto the site and click on "foreign vehicles" then "AC". It will give you a drop down to various AC models including Cobra. They list variations by chassis number, including the Lucas/Ford hybrid harness such as was in my car. They have the main harness plus five subharnesses available, so if you need only a lighting or other subharness you can buy that separately.

Good luck with CSX2177 and I hope this helps  you out!

[wcampbell]

Jeff - You're an amazing resource and true expert for the GT350 and you know I couldn't be here without the great help of your vast knowledge helping navigate the early GT350 world

Ned - Awesome pic of 2177 at the track! Jim Cowles tells me he had seen it many times at Elkhart Lake events (O'Connor lived in WI not far from there). I have a series of race event decals that where on a plaque accompanying the car - maybe one of these will help folks identify place and times for the later vintage events in which O'Connor ran. I suspect the bigger challenge will be west coast events from the 60's and 70's showing the car in it's early competition days.

Steven - I've already reached out to SVRA and they said they couldn't find anything looking through their event records, but they said pre-2000's material on record gets sketchy and doubtfully they'd have much west coast 60's/70's stuff on record.

Bill - You probably don't remember this, but I visited your shop in the early 2000's where you showed me 2188 as well as Brewbaker's 289. I recall both were in pieces and I expressed looking for a project "like this". Glad to see both got restored and definitely were beautiful when I saw 2188 years later with you driving it. I also have you to thank for the wiring harness! Rhode Island wire is the only place I could find a OEM concours correct pre-2200 harness scratch built for 2177. SO you paid it forward to me for 2020!

[mark p]

Great story - congrats on the purchase & thanks for sharing your story!

+1
It's also great to read of the help and encouragement from the SAAC folks

good luck with the project, it will will be fun to follow along.
Mark

[98SVT - was 06GT]

Good luck

Not meaning to hijack your thread and will seperate it if requested.

There are reproduction wiring harnesses made for CSX cars. The notes say CSX 2127 to 2702. These are OEM style and high quality US made reproductions. Great for a kit car too, not cheap at $3k, but a great option from the non OEM appearance wires

I saw on some TV show there is a company in England that is making wiring harnesses for English cars. They have all the old equipment that was originally made to produce the terminals etc. They can even do the old cloth wrapped wiring with the correct colors and patterns. I googled and found several here is one of them - https://www.autosparks.co.uk/finder - about $500.