Chipping away at the punch list. Two weeks and 17 hours later we’re down to a couple dozen tasks to finish before trailering the car to meet the state police.
I started by riv-nutting the holes for the two different windshields, to make the changeover as painless as possible. I bought a package of deep-grip 6-32 rivet nuts and a lot more shallow grip kind, to use later for the underpan in back. On the scuttle, the deep rivet-nuts went in easy and tight.
There were just a couple spots where the holes were too close together (because they don’t quite line up between the two styles of windshield). On those spots I subbed-in the narrow grip inserts—not because the fiberglass is thinner there, but because the barrel width of these is smaller:
By grinding the edges of the flange a bit I could get them to sort of “lock” together, so they won’t likely twist. By installing them with a gentle pull of the installation tool, they seemed to set right. I installed the windshield base molding loosely…
Then went back and put a fender welt under it to take up the tiny gap.
Grabbed the windscreen from the basement and cleaned it up. Installation went fine. Cinch them up slowly and evenly, and stop before there’s much pressure.
This should get us by inspection.
While I was at it, I bought a full top and frame made for a Beck. It’s on the way and we’ll see about fitting it up maybe in the next episode.
Meanwhile, I also set the alignment straight enough to drive the car. I used the same two-bedframe-rail technique as last time, measuring off the already-set front tires.
I checked the toe-in in back and it was pretty good, then checked the distance between the front and rear tires on each side and they were off about 3/8 of an inch. So, seeing as the toe was good I endeavored to add 3/16 to one side and subtract the same from the other. Ended up just like before, with the passenger side a little longer.
The driver’s side, measured from the front of the front tire to the rear of the rear (with the angle iron pushed up against it, was 98 and 1/16.
The passenger side was an eighth longer:
I’d been messing with it, carefully, for an hour and a half by this time so I finally just decided to check the toe again. It was good.
So I called it “close enough.” We’ll see how this drives….
The next chore was to plug in and test the seat heaters. They worked, though they did not warm the seats as much as I had expected.
I zip-tied the wires and bolted the seats up from the bottom.
—then finished cleaning the floors and such under the dashboard, found (finally!) the gas pedal cover and got that back on, and buttoned-up the floorpan.
Somewhere in there I also got the grab handle sorted, and put in the final Tenax fasteners in both the dashboard and the now expertly-shortened tonneau cover.
There are still over 50 individual things to be done on this car before it’s “finished” but less than half that many before I can take it for inspection.
Along Came A Spyder 