Low Grip Cobras, What Gives?

[Zenmervolt]

@ Zenmervolt, Great info ! I didn't know the wheelbase is that short. Do we have this spec in the garage page? (The text size on the screen is just too damn small, I'm struggling in reading them all the time. I must have missed a lot of things.)

I don't think GT5 or GT6 have the wheelbase. I've just been around enough of them at vintage rallies to know that they're tiny cars so I looked up the wheelbase through old road test spec sheets.

 

[Johnnypenso]

All I know is, in GT5 Hybriding, you could drop a Cobra Body onto an Elise chassis and crank out 550 hp with ease...good Lord was that fun!

 

[MustangManiac]

All I know is, in GT5 Hybriding, you could drop a Cobra Body onto an Elise chassis and crank out 550 hp with ease...good Lord was that fun!

Why in the 🤬 would you want to do that?

 

[Johnnypenso]

Why in the 🤬 would you want to do that?

If you had driven it you'd know the answer

 

[Newland]

If you had driven it you'd know the answer

Masochism in motorsports is understandable, but that is like walking into a Taliban camp eating a cheeseburger and waving an American flag.

 

[SmileyOr]

In the right hands the 427 Cobras were beating the Corvettes across America when they came out.

 

[LS Chiou]

Ah, it seems I'm not the right hands

Not to mention across America, I can only maintain 2 or 3 clean laps. After that, the more severe rear tire wearing makes it too slippery and I can't catch each and every slide well enough.

In the 10 laps Ascari event, it needs 1 pit stop, so it's two 5-lap groups. I'm pretty much OK in lap 1-3 & 6-8, but struggling in lap 4-5 & 9-10. When the rear tire drop to 5, there's still 7 or even 8 in front. So the unbalance in handling is enlarged. In such situation, there're only 2 possibilies for me: either largely slowing down, or spinning off.

I feel the most tricky bit is when it's approaching a slow corner. Right after the braking zone, there're 3 things happening:

1. Easing off the brake
2. Turning
3. Applying throttle

They're almost simultaneously, sometimes in a very tight sequence, sometimes overlapping.

I feel the Cobra tends to step out its tail when I'm doing 1&2, it's almost as touchy as those difficult MR/RR cars in this regard. It'd better be early in all these actions. And I feel it needs some overlapping to stablize the tail before some corners.

However I still can't do them well enough and consistently enough, especially when the rear tires are worn (and when the opponents are pushing me).

The ballast at the rear helps on grip (when the rear tires are fresh), but maybe it's no good in wearing. I'd need more trial & error...

 

[LS Chiou]

All I know is, in GT5 Hybriding, you could drop a Cobra Body onto an Elise chassis and crank out 550 hp with ease...good Lord was that fun!

What on earth is that? Another game?

 

[Johnnypenso]

What on earth is that? Another game?

Felt like it...but no. Just hacking into the GT5 game save and swapping chassis, engine, drivetrains etc.

Masochism in motorsports is understandable, but that is like walking into a Taliban camp eating a cheeseburger and waving an American flag.

With a big fat pork chop in the other hand and singing God Bless America

 

[TexRex]

With a big fat pork chop in the other hand and singing God Bless America

While adorned with a handlebar moustache, a Stetson, snake-skin boots and a bolo tie...and nothing else. (It's a look that's easy to put on but hard to pull off.)

 

[Wide Boy]

Ha the car that was a major factor in the introduction of speed limits in the UK.
The factory was on the M1 our first motorway so they used it for testing.
For some reason it was decided 190 odd mph on public roads was a wee bit excessive, even for the 60s

 

[SmileyOr]

Ha the car that was a major factor in the introduction of speed limits in the UK.
The factory was on the M1 our first motorway so they used it for testing.
For some reason it was decided 190 odd mph on public roads was a wee bit excessive, even for the 60s

I have a photo of and watched an original racing in a Historic race. The owner had a sign posted in front of his car trailer stating a few racing facts about the car he owned. It was raced at a 24 hour race and was clocked at 198.something mph. This was speed for the Daytona Coupe, not normally the open cockpit Cobras, even with 427 engines tuned to close to 600 hp.

 

[MustangManiac]

I have a photo of and watched an original racing in a Historic race. The owner had a sign posted in front of his car trailer stating a few racing facts about the car he owned. It was raced at a 24 hour race and was clocked at 198.something mph. This was speed for the Daytona Coupe, not normally the open cockpit Cobras, even with 427 engines tuned to close to 600 hp.

The production 427 S/C rated at 485bhp did 186mph, I am sure a race tuned car at 600hp+ would have no problems seeing 200mph+.

 

[Wide Boy]

Actually I think smiley might be right, it was a Coupe & not the Cobra, either way bet it shocked a few people on the way past.
Wonder what the average top speed was for a 1960s car & people would not have been traveling at that.
It was probably going about 3 times there speed.

 

[disinfected]

I would go as far as to say it was equally as slippery in GT5.

 

[SmileyOr]

My father was a driving/racing instructor in the late 50's into the early 60's and had the chance to drive an AC Bristol. With the Bristol motor the Ace reached 140 mph on track. My parents both raced a 1958 Alfa Romeo Gulietta Spyder Veloce and it had a top speed of 130 mph. What the cars could do in a top speed run may not be known. Their top speeds were measured on tracks with limited straights.

Having developed the AC Cobra/Shelby Cobra into a successful GT race car, he realized that the weakness of the open-cockpit sports cars at Le Mans was the aerodynamic drag which limited top speed on the 3 miles (4.8 km) long Mulsanne straight to around 157 miles per hour (253 km/h), nearly 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) less than the Ferrari 250 GTO, which itself could hold speeds of circa 186 miles per hour (299 km/h).

If I remember correctly there was a run on the Bonneville Salt Flats by the prototype Cobra Daytona Couple that did something between 221-226 mph. I don't remember if they built the 289 engine any more than they would for the Le Mans race though.

 

[LS Chiou]

Thanks for sharing these stories. It's indeed a very special car.

Back to the game, I've tried moving the ballast around. It's indeed beneficial to tire wear by making the distribution approaching 50:50. Front and rear tires would be consumed more evenly this way, if still not perfect. The rear is still eaten faster as expected and would be dropping more severely under 4 as it was.

But I feel some loss in agility with such setting. Quite obvious under at turn-in. And can't put down the power as soon as the case with ballast at rear. So, even with more even tire wear in a race, it still doesn't get a fast enough overall pace. I can only get a 2nd in 10-lap Ascari (It's enough to win this event by a steady lap time around 2:20. Cobra with SM tire can do better than this in free run practice without problem, but I just can't maintain the consistency throughout the race in this car.)

Many times, I thought I could close the gap of 15 sec. or so by more careful driving and less minor mistakes, but I found myself struggling every time. And it's getting worse when I try harder. (I don't want to tune up the power anymore in a platform like this in this track. The reason is obvious.)

Everything has its limitation. Maybe this is it, for me, in this car. Or maybe I'd better take a rest and come back later.

(Switch to modern FR sport cars, and it's suddenly so much easier. M4, SLR. etc.)

 

[Wide Boy]

Seem to remember suspension is very soft, try stiffening it a bit or at least roll bars. Soft suspension will help transfer what weight there is to the rear under acceleration.

 

[LS Chiou]

Did that already. I've been driving it with my own tuning in post #29. In my last post (#47), it's mainly the ballast position being changed, with other factors remained (almost, IIRC).

 

[Sander 001]

Car was not fun in GT5 so I avoided it but I was in a lobby where host changed regulations to FR US and the Shelby 427 came up. Put on a soft race suspension among other things and it was a joy. Not hard to handle and fast at 500pp. Was faster than the Series 1's I was fighting with for 1st place.
Tried the Chrome Line version and it was good too.

 

[Sick Cylinder]

I love the driving experience and feel of the Cobra in GT6 so much that I'm running a championship for it v the Art Morrison Corvette! Picture below from last Sunday's race.

In GT6 the Cobra is fine with race soft suspension. I set the LSD to 10 / 25 / 15 and the brake bias to 7 / 4.

There is quite a bit of misinformation in this thread:

Bill Cosby's Cobra was one of two special 427's built by Shelby - it was fitted with street mufflers and twin Paxton superchargers - one for each bank of cylinders - so that may have contributed to the difficulties that he and the subsequent owner had with car control!

The Mark 1 and 2 Cobras used a development of the chassis designed by John Tojeiro for the six cylinder AC Ace. This chassis lacked rigidity and featured a transverse rear leaf spring. The Mark 1 had worm and sector steering which functioned very poorly over bumps. The Mark 2's were fitted with MGB steering racks and VW steering columns which fixed the steering problems. The Marks 1 and 2 were fitted with 289 engines (apart from the earliest Mark 1's which had a 260).

The 427 Cobra had, for the time, a state of the art chassis in four inch tube designed by Ford and fitted with coil spring suspension following contemporary racing practice. The 427 was not related to the earlier models except by body shape. Many 427 Cobras sold for street use were actually fitted with the much cheaper and less powerful Ford 428 rather than the very expensive FE side oiler Nascar based 427 motor.

Following release of the 427 AC adopted its 4 inch tube chassis for use in all subsequent 289 Cobra models and these handle much better than the early cars fitted with the AC Ace based chassis

I agree with the comments about the short chassis of 90 inches - at the time 100 inches was reckoned to be ideal for a FR sportscar.

If you reduce the power of the car in the game slightly and add ballast - try around 450 bhp and 1240kg, with race soft suspension it should handle ok.

Please support the threads in the Car suggestions section for the AC Ace Bristol - father of the Shelby Cobra and also the Shelby Cobra Mark 1.