Yesterday Stewart Transport showed up with my MK 4, and it's now found its place in my garage. So it's time to start my build thread.

I ordered a base kit with a few options.

- Sun visors and wind wings
- Front lower control arms
- Windshield wipers
- Passenger side roll bar/hoop
- 3-link rear
- Opted for 351W so I got the headers (although I'm going back and forth on this some more, whether to stay 351-based or go 302-based)
- Body cut-outs
- Aluminum radiator
- Powdercoated frame

I'd originally planned on painting the frame myself, but with the sale it made sense to buy the powdercoating as it got me to the next discount level and became free. Plus one less thing to do, not a bad thing.

I started inventory last night and noted a few missing things aside from what they told me wasn't ready to ship on the build manifest. They forgot to do the cutouts (but a phone call got them to agree to pay a body shop to do them for me), sent me a chromed right side hoop instead of the powdercoated one I'd ordered, forgot the lower control arms, and a couple other minor things. On the whole, though, I was very impressed with just how complete the kit is, far more than I expected (I realize they say "Buy the kit and a donor car and you have everything you need", but I'm always skeptical of such statements).

The main problem I found was that a number of parts weren't labeled with part numbers, and so that makes inventorying harder for the first time builder since I can't look at a bracket and say "Oh, right, that's the aft flux capacitor mount."

The months leading up to the build had a lot of garage work leading up to them. My garage is a 3-car and only has 6 outlets in it and 3 standard bulbs in the ceiling. Yeah, not going to work for anything serious. We've been here 3 years and I never had the motivation to turn it into the garage-ma-hal like I had at our previous house. This helped me at least get started on the necessary changes. So, a 125A subpanel, wiring from the main panel to the subpanel, added about 40 110V outlets (I'm around 50 total), added 220 for my infrared heaters and 60-gallon Ingersoll compressor, mounted the vice and bench grinder, etc. etc. I still have to improve the ceiling lighting but that's a lot easier than all the extra work. I also had to finish up my Ford 9N which was getting an overhauled engine. I wasn't fully successful in that, but I did manage to roll it out of the garage with the engine attached so I could put the Cobra directly into its new home. I also have to mount the lift, but figured since I hadn't put the anchors in yet I'd wait until the kit showed up so I could make the best decision on where to put said anchors.

I can say I was very pleased with Stewart and frankly don't understand the negative reviews I've read about them, but to each his own. I thought the price and service was very good and would use them again and recommend them to others.

Because my driveway is about 700 ft, I just took my trailer to the end of the driveway and let them unload the car onto it. That evening a few friends showed up and helped me get the body off the car and then the frame in the garage.

A lot of people spend the time waiting for the car doing tons of research on all the little details. I'm doing this more linearly on the whole as I know this won't be a particularly fast build and I had a lot of other projects going on. Mainly I've been looking for the big components and I'll need to go pick up some new tools soon (rivet gun, paint gun, drill bits).

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kids.jpg

The kids already have decided that it's their car.

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It's going to be stuck here for a while...