This car is indeed for sale

UPDATE (11/19/2021) The car is still available! My prospective buyer put down a non-refundable deposit, drove 2000+ miles from Utah with a trailer, inspected the car intently (he’s a former insurance appraiser), pronounced it very good, lowered himself in the driver’s seat for half an hour, discussed adjusting the pedals to get more leg room (can be done, I think!) agreed to meet at the bank this morning to consummate the deal, then called last night with misgivings: his hips hurt; he doesn’t fit comfortably in the driver’s seat. This morning he canceled the sale.

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Oil cooler added (and sway bar improvements)

Testing the Spyder on public roads brought new data: she was running too hot. Even on a cool morning, ambient temps 80F, driving easy (30-45mph) on flat roads, the oil temperature gauge crept up past 80, past 100 (i.e. 212F), up near 110C. That’s close to 230F, and at that temp VW gurus say you better shut ‘er down and investigate. Good modern oils like the Brad Penn we’re using don’t really mind those temps, and racers run long-term with oil over 260F.

But 230F in a Type 1 means the heads are probably too hot. Hot heads on a Type 1 engine are bad for longevity.

I ran the car for over an hour one morning, took video, and shut down when the gauge got up over 105C.

Assembly complete. Now the sorting

Last weekend I pressed my lovely wife into service once again and we set the engine cover back down on the car and pinned the hinges, completing the Final Assembly phase of this build.

The car starts, runs and drives and is ready for fettling and registration.

Captain Underpan, Deux

A word about COVID-19. Not long after I made my last post here the nation locked-down due to a global pandemic of a dangerous respiratory virus. Everyone knows that right now, of course, but if this blog persists more than a few years it won’t necessarily be obvious what was happening outside of the context of the build.

The pandemic and its response has crashed the stock market and the real economy, prompting a $2 trillion federal aid package. Something like 20 percent of everyone is out of work. I myself am still “working” from home but am functionally unable, as of yesterday, to do the state court visits my job normally requires. My wife is working from the dining room table and we’re both still being paid, at least for now, and remain healthy.

But currently 200,000 or so Americans are confirmed to have the virus and some 3,000 have died, as the epidemic’s trajectory continues relentlessly upward. The world is a very scary place and frivolities like this car project have largely taken a back seat, even as I knock off the last few dozen tasks on my punch list. The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration offices are closed, some reportedly converted into drive-through virus testing sites. So instead of getting the car on the road this month, it may be a while.

That said, here’s what happened through February as I (blissfully, ignorantly) worked to make the aluminum undertray.

First I had to make two “stub-out” bits to cover the exhaust pipes on each side just aft of the engine crossmember. These are simple U-shaped bits, mainly, about 8 inches long, reaching from where the pipes exit under the engine to just past the muffler flanges.

I got them in and screwed them to the main underpan piece with self-tapping sheet metal screws, then set about making transition pieces to get to the wider full muffler parts. Once there I knew I could just drape aluminum over the mufflers and the tunnels would be done.

Captain Underpan! Part 1

From the beginning of this build I planned on making a louvered aluminum tray to fit under the engine and surround the exhaust. The original cars had them (though most were reportedly thrown away in the ’50s), and they would appear to be functionally important: VW engines like their cooling air to be, well, cool—not pre-heated by the headers and heads. Bugs and buses have tin to keep the hot underside of the car isolated from the top where the fan and carbs are sucking, so it seems logical to do the same with the Spyder.

Here’s the look we’re going for, courtesy, once again, of The Spyder Factory:

Tonneau’s on, floor’s in, wipers work

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.

Punch list shrinking

Over the week I put another 8 or 10 hours in the car sorting my windshield wiper system and getting the area under the scuttle squared away. The windshield wipers are a PITA, I’ve got three full Bug setups disassembled to make one Spyder rig, and even then I’m going to need Trico universal wiper arms to make it go.

The reason for this is simple enough: these cars seldom came with wipers (one of the early ones—number 7 or 8, I believe—got the factory wiper treatment in its initial “Bucklewagon” design in 1954; a couple others may have had them added for rally use). The replicas have a sunken plinth system that is most often paired with a long, tall later model wiper bearing pivot and fairly thick mid ’70s wiper arms. It works but I hate the look….

Shifter bracket mod, part III

The shifter linkage wasn’t coming right and I finally decided that the gate bracket I made back in April wasn’t cutting the muster. The flex at the business end was very slight—maybe a quarter inch, probably a little less—but it was enough that, when I adjusted the shifter so reverse was available, that meant reverse was the only gear you could select. The rest were AWOL. Adjust for forward gears, reverse went away.

I needed another triangle.

Into the scrap bucket I dove. Found a bracket from the Subaru I dismantled a few years ago. I liked how the steel was pressed.

Punch list

There are 81 items on my Spyder punch list.

The list has actually grown over the past two weeks since I made it, even though I tackled several items already.

But the end is basically in sight. One of the items is “Go to MVA and get titled.”

Happy New Year!

Final assembly and fettling

It’s been a busy month. I got the engine back in but couldn’t get nuts on the motor mount bolts, so had to cut those off, pull them out and replace in the conventional manner, up from the bottom, thus ending my experiment in doing this operation more efficiently.

I salved my wounded pride by tackling the side scripts. I am happy to report they fit well and look shiny!