Jesse L. Scores Autocross Top Time of Day in Mk4!
Like so many of us, Jesse L. has been thinking of owning a AC Cobra since he was young. His dream became a reality in February 2025 when he purchased his Factory Five Mk4 Roadster kit to start building with his daughter, Claire. They recently shared the exciting news that they have reached the go-kart stage and decided to take it to their local autocross. Jesse tells the story better than we could, so we’ll let him take it from here:
“This idea of getting an AC Cobra started, like I am sure many people do, with an adolescent idea,” said Jesse, “a pipe dream or beer talk with buddies. “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”. Problem is that, for me, once I get an idea I tend to obsess and follow through (much to my wife’s disdain). I started building kits online and dreaming about it. As a former automotive mechanic and now a mechanical engineer, I did not want to just buy everything new and assemble. I wanted to get a donor car, strip it, and build the kit. I started looking at auction sales for wrecked cars, and the pivotal moment came in 2023 when I got a deal on a crashed 2021 Mustang GT with the performance pack and only 9,000 miles on it that I simply couldn’t turn down. We drove 870 miles to pick up the car and bring it home.”
“On our way home with this crashed Mustang, a friend of mine planted another rather nasty seed of an idea: “If the car isn’t in that bad of shape, why don’t we fix it up and race it?”…well… we did just that. The repairs took one winter, and we were ready to hit the track in spring 2024. We put about 3,000 miles of track time on the Mustang from 2024 to 2025. We even got my 16 year old daughter, Claire, to do a performance driving school with Mustang. BUT, now that we have the donor car, it was time to put my cobra order in!
“Our Factory FIve Mk4 Roadster order was processed in February 2025. I can’t say enough good things about all of the folks I talked to through the process. I had the kit shipped to Seattle, and drove the 870 miles again to go pick it up. Claire came with me, and we made a great road trip out of it.”
“We stripped down the Mustang starting in October 2025. We held a bit of a funeral for him. Lots of trauma bonding happened at the various track events so we were all a bit sad to see him go, but his spirit would live on. We took the complete drivetrain (engine, trans, rear diff), front brakes, steering rack, and various other bits. We then sold the remaining parts and recouped some of the cost.”
The kit build started around the same time. This thing is a true garage build. No lift, average shop, and a guy with a dream in his garage. The first challenge was a tough one though. Mrs. Logeman quite likes parking her SUV in the garage, especially in the winter when we get a ton of snow and the temperature dips below -40. I had to make some rather lofty promises to ensure her car was warmed and cleared off every morning… not awesome, but sacrifices had to be made for the greater good. Having the kit in the garage was great. If I had a spare 20 minutes here and there I would rivet on another panel, or install another bit. I really just followed the instructions and picked away at it. Little by little and before you know it, it all comes together.”
“Now that I am addicted to road course track driving, brakes are critical. We took the front brakes from the Mustang (15″ rotors, 6 piston Brembo calipers) and worked with some of my machine shop friends to fit them up. Pretty sure Factory Five prototyped this a while back, and there are some guys that make this work as an upgrade on SN95 Mustangs. It wasn’t an easy task, and it required extensive prototyping, but in the end we nailed it. The rear brakes were a tough challenge. We could use the S550 mustang rear spindles and upgrade the brakes to something like the GT350 or GT500, but the problem there is I didn’t want a cable park brake and I didn’t want aftermarket stuff. I figure it would be easier in 10-15 years to get Ford parts vs some aftermarket parts. So, what about the newer S650 Mustang? Well, the spindles are not the same…bummer…or? I thought they were close-ish. I bought one rear spindle used off Ebay and started to see what I could do with it. Working with my machine shop buddies again we were able to carefully re-shape and shave to make them fit. BAM! Now the rear has S650 Dark Horse rear brakes! (14″ rotors, 4 piston Brembo Calipers) And electric park brake controlled via a Wilwood e-park brake kit. The only downside to all of this is the smallest rims I can run are 18″ Flow Formed wheels.”
“I also wanted to utilize the MT82 transmission, and it performed great for us during our track ventures. So keep it we did from the donor. I had to order a shortened shifter from MGW. Great products and support from those folks. The driveshaft was a bit of a doozy though. Kept the rubber coupling and rear CV. Back and forth to my machine shop buddies (who are basically best friends at this point). The driveshaft had to be within 1/8” tolerance to fit. Took a few tries but we got it right with no vibration issues. We also had to build a custom rear mount.
“We also installed Mustang electric powersteering in the Roadster. I had to make a custom bracket to mount the rack, and shave some length off of the tie rods, but it fit. I found a company out of the UK that makes a GPS adjustable unit for a Ford Fiesta…Its still a Ford so maybe the CANBus language will be the same. Well, all plugged in and it seems to work.”
“At this point we had a go-kart! Corner balance was almost spot on just by measuring spring heights. Well done on the chassis fabrication guys! You really nailed it.”
“We did some go-kart test drives up and down the road and around the parking lot, but I wanted some better testing,” said Jesse. “In addition to road tracks, we also got into autocross. I reached out to our local club to see if they would let me run the go-kart and they had no problem. Now, autocross is a bit of a different beast, with lots of go-stop-go and turning. It’s really tailored for small FWD or AWD cars. The top times we see are AWD Toyota Corolla GRs or Suburus or Audis. I didn’t know what to expect with my huge HP RWD tiny car. Well, turns out this thing is a champ! We had the top time of the day overall, and had 4 seconds on the second place RWD car (race spec Miata). I couldn’t have hoped for a better result. The car looks like a go-kart and handles like one… ON RAILS! Almost no understeer and easily controllable oversteer.”
“Anyway, thats where we are at. This summer we are working on fitting the body and then its going to paint this winter – Ford frozen white with Ford anti-matter blue stripes.”
Specs:
2025 FFR MK4 kit
2021 Ford Gen 3 5.0L Coyote
2021 Ford MT82 transmission
2021 Ford e-steering rack
2021 Mustang 15″ front brakes w. 6 piston Brembo calipers
2024 Mustang Dark Horse 14″ rear brakes w. 4 piston Brembo calipers
IRS
Stainless Steel Side Exhaust
Metric GPS Gauges
Diamond Stitch Seats
Chrome Rollbars
Wood Steering Wheel
Vinyl Dash with Glovebox
Front and Rear Swaybars
Congratulations Jesse and Claire on reaching the go-kart stage and your success autocrossing the Mk4! We look forward to your official graduation post soon.
