Ever since I traded my ’93 Fox Mustang coupe for my current ’94 Cobra (Probably my first mistake. LOL), I’ve had several tune-up issues. The car never would accelerate smoothly, and when the gas gauge came anywhere near empty, the problem was even more prevalent. The Cobra would cut out as if it was out of gas, then like magic the engine would recover and accelerate again. It was very weird. We made an appointment with Real Street Performance’s Jay Meagher to have him go over the car and fix its issues, and the photo at left displays the source of our Cobra’s problems.

However, I didn’t know that was at the heart of the matter so I wanted to make sure I covered the bases from a tune-up standpoint so I had with me the usual plugs, cap, rotor, wires, and fuel filter. Real Street Performance provided a new 255lph fuel pump, and I also brought with me a new ATI Performance harmonic balancer since the one on my Cobra looked to be the original. The rubber insulator was starting to come apart so I knew it had to be replaced. That was the first order of business, followed up by Jay installing the ignition module over on the passenger side inner apron, and the coolant temperature sensors.

Once those issues were handled, Jay took care of the usual tune-up items like the spark plugs, distributor cap, rotor, and spark plug wires. The ignition module, coolant temperature sensors, and the tune-up items came from Joe Charles, who will be starting his new gig at Gene Evans Ford on Thursday May 1st.

Next up was the fuel pump and filter. This is when Jay discovered the problem with the Cobra’s fuel pump. The feed hose that’s supposed to be attached to the fuel pump itself wasn’t attached. It was just hanging there. No wonder my Cobra was a gutless wonder. Jay installed the new fuel pump, changed out the filter, and the car was up and running better than ever.

Not for long, though. After tuning up the car we had planned to add a JLT Performance cold air kit. However, my car was on empty so I ran to the gas station right around the corner from Jay’s shop. On the way back from the store (Good thing it was not even a mile away) I started to smell gas fumes, and they were really strong. The fumes were so strong I knew something major was wrong. Once back at Jay’s he discovered the passenger side rear fuel rail bolt had come out. Evidently, whoever performed the fuel pump swap couldn’t figure out why the Cobra didn’t have any fuel pressure so he jacked it up to 65 pounds in order to make the car run. However, someone had also stripped the passenger side rear fuel rail bolt. To fix it, the person epoxied the hole, and drove in a wood screw to hold it. With the fuel pump feed hose not attached the wood screw/epoxy set-up worked fine, but with 65 pounds of fuel pressure the set-up totally came apart.

I was extremely happy this didn’t happen on the way home, but Jay wasn’t happy because he had to Tig-weld a new provision for the fuel rail bolt. So, instead of bolting on the JLT cold air kit, Jay spent the next few hours taking the intake off my Cobra, fixing the fuel rail bolt provision, and then bolting it back together. I finally left Jay’s shop at 10:30 PM, much to both of our shagrin. My Cobra does run a million times better, but I haven’t had a chance to go back to Jay’s shop for a baseline dyno, and to have the JLT cold air intake installed. We’ll be doing that soon. Stay tuned.