Those oval-holed rocker boxes the original Spyders had are quite a project on a replica.
Turns out not only do you need the three holes under the doors, plus the forward extensions to the front fender wells (oval holed on the passenger side, solid to mount the fuel pumps on the driver’s)—they also extend to the rear latches behind the firewall. Two more ovals.
Plus there’s a second stiffening piece above them.
Here’s the passenger side in a Spyder Factory copy of 550-0090:
You can see how the oval lines up with the torsion bar port, and there’s another slot to allow some access to the lower clam latch. The upper piece has an interesting compound radius curve that’s basically negated by the way the replica body is made. The slotted thing is for the key locks that we don’t have.
And on that side we’ll be running an Accusump roughly where that box is.
Ah well, on with it then!
This came about by the usual CAD process. I started with the passenger side because it’s more open and should be easier.
Before getting into the aluminum I sanded the ‘glass, cleaned it with acetone, smoothed it with filler, sanded again (and again, and again), primed and painted it silver, the idea being that whatever shows through those holes ought to look metal.
I’m pondering leaving this area unpainted along with the back of the firewall.
What we have here is a rough fit, and you can see it’s not really like the original car.
Because of the way the latch is installed on this, the bottom box piece wants to be a little wider than the originals. And the shape of the tub above the latch means the top part of the aluminum wants to be wider as well.
I could cut the glass down to make it more legit looking, but I worry about losing some of the structural integrity the fiberglass imparts. So I think I’ll just install these parts as is, maybe shape them a little more with the mallet before calling it done.
Before I did these, I painted up my “oil tank”/breather and made a base and some proper Spyder-style hold-downs for it.
These are steel muffler hanger banding plus half-inch steel tubing cut to 1-inch lengths, drilled and tapped for little metric bolts and inserted into riveted loops I made in the banding.
Yeah, painted them too, because they’re plain steel.
These ratchet bands also hold down the gas tank and the battery on the original cars. The Accusump is already affixed with something very similar.
I need to get some cotton weave belt material now to run under the bands to keep them from marring the finish. Like
Re-shot the shifter with the hammertone silver—not as bright as that bright aluminum paint I put on it first; more correct. Still working on a way to extend the shift lever neatly so it looks right.
I also painted my binnacle plate—though not sure I’m going to use this one.
Other stuff got done too but I really can’t remember what. The license plate light holder is ready to get the actual lights installed in it. I ordered a set of Vintage 190s aluminum wheels.
Gotta take the seats to KDI next week for the upholstery job.
Bit by bit.
Along Came A Spyder 