A couple more weeks of work on the 1936 Cord engine finds us nearly ready to fire it up for the first time. The photos below show many of the multitude of little details we’ve attended to as the engine is readied to run. Eric has completely rebuilt the water pump, constructed a set of vintage plug wires, fitted the engine and stand with mufflers, and is nearly ready to connect the engine to the radiator. It is going to be really fun to fire this up for the first time!
The Lotus arrived with a pair of mirrors designed and built by Mark Brandt of Luftkraft Fabricating in Colorado. Mark did an excellent job of fabricating the mirrors and they look great on the Exige.
But… The actual glass surface on the Luftkraft mirrors is about 1/2 the size of the original equipment set. The visibility out the rear of an Exige is already extremely limited because the intercooler completely any view from inside the car. The small sized Luftkraft mirrors make it very difficult to see what is going on behind the car as you zoom down the road.
Mark sent the original mirrors along with the car. I decided to put them back on the Exige to see whether or not they provide better rear visibility. The Luftkraft mirrors were attached using rivet nuts. Re-attaching the original mirrors required drilling out the nuts and adding a larger diameter washers under the bolt inside the door. Neither of these tasks were simple or easy… but after a lot of hand wringing and only one washer lost inside the door it is done!
The original mirrors extend much further out and the additional glass makes for a vastly improved view out the back. While it could be argued Mark’s mirrors are sleeker and more stylish I cannot imagine going back to them after driving with these!
