Thunder Ranch build thread

Love the VROOM VROOM and then some VROOM VROOM 

I may not have actually said, "Vroom, vroom."

But I've sat in the garage, one hand on the wheel and one on the shift knob, and seen that special stretch of county road, where it crosses the creek and goes sharp left right after, requiring a well-timed four-three downshift, with just some light toe on the brake, when the morning light was low and filtering through the trees, and the air just cool enough that the motor was nearly as happy as I was.

Nicely written, Mitch.

Spent five hours today fabricating more details, though these may well alleviate a common problem with replicas. Anand will know what these are going to be. Anyone else?

edsnova posted:

...these may well alleviate a common problem with replicas...

Ah, those must be lightly galvanized soft steel rusting pucks, sometimes bolted to the inner rocker panels of fiberglass-bodied cars.

After a few years, they create surprisingly realistic rust streaks on the lower body work, often fooling PCA skeptics and even some Concours judges.

Nope. Remember, Spyders were all aluminum. 

Any other contestants? Hint: the thing I'm copying here is actually pictured on a previous post in this thread.

OK, bump stops for the rear clamshell.

And that's my final offer.

The judges will accept that. Congrats. 

They are more than bump stops though; there's long locating pins too! 

The best part: you can't really locate these properly without being under the clamshell right about where the engine should be.

Definitely havin' fun over here.

Clam pins made. These took me exactly two hours, including digging through the steel pile to find the former dishwasher valence I cut up and bent to fit. 

Also caught up on my blogging.

Those interested in the unabridged saga of how the seats got fit, the clutch and brake pedal fabrication, the steering shaft fitment and this project (up to yesterday's receivers) should fetch an appropriate beverage and click the link. Scintillating, I promise.

Nice Mcgyver stuff

Ed, I really like the touches you are adding. Keep it up!

Spent a couple hours today, ahem, adjusting my pins, and measuring the engine about 12 ways to see where the air cleaner tops and linkage ends are going to be, then socked in the pins with a couple screws...

...and closed the lid, hoisted the car up and took a look at how the receivers might fit. 

Yup. 

Now it's down to making the diagonal brace thingie that ties the lip of the tub to the firewall, trimming and attaching my receiver thingies, and riveting it all in.

Well, we've managed to establish that making the diagonal brace thingies is a pita.

Had to re-do part of the near one (above). I'd made it just a skosh too narrow for the puck. Since I now have a pattern it only took an hour or so. 

Still a bit of smoothing to do on them. Maybe paint? And final line-up and rivets. But they're otherwise done.

Here's what I'm shooting for:

Here's what I got:

Yeah, The Spyder Factory does 'em better but I don't know of anyone else.

Hey Ed,

You're doing some pretty cool stuff. Adding those could make getting the engine in & out a greater challenge. Clearance is difficult as is the carbs, fan shroud and alternator have to come off and then you still only have a quarter inch or so of clearance if you're just pulling the engine.  Just saying 😀

Pete

Thanks. The manual says to put the engine and transaxle in as a unit so that's probably what I'll do. Worst case scenario is I'll have to drill out 24 rivets.

I can't help you, my motor goes in from underneath, and I have no torsion tube.

Nice jobs on the pins/receivers!

Tried to put the pedals in last night and it was not possible, so today I cut the floor section out of the footwell.

I can see now I'll be re-doing the MC holes so the pedals are even. You can see I cut out the "tunnel" plate to make room for the single gas pedal. What was there was perfect to just bolt in a Bug pedal set but why do anything simple when it's just a few 10s of hours to cut it all up and build it by hand from scratch?

Put the car on the lift and put the lift WAY up, and at the last notch I heard a "pop" and about a half pint of hydraulic fluid puked out of the cylinder. So that was cool.

I called Direct Lift thinking I'm needing a whole new cylinder and the dude there was like: How high was it?

All the way.

How often do you put it up there?

First time in many months. Maybe ever for that top notch.

Ah. So maybe some fluid got past the rear seal and has been in there a long time. Happens a lot. When the lift is up that high there's nowhere for it to go, so there's a bleed-off valve for this. 

He tells me to get the car off it and cycle it up and down a few times all the way. Call him if significant fluid comes out after the second full lift. On the first one I got another half pint. After that, nothing much. 

So I pushed the car back on the lift and continued hacking at it.

Such is today's shop drama.

OK so the clutch and brake pedals are sort-of in now and sort-of level and that took all day.

Nice to see you’re staying off the streets......   

I like that you incorporated a toenail emery stone for when your stuck at a light.

What are you going to do for a floor?

HAR. 

I'll put the floor back in. I'll decide later whether to just do rivets or use threadcerts and buttonhead bolts. 

Buttonheads would look wicked awesome...   Jus' sayin.

Yes. The underside of the car will be unpainted aluminum and rivets. Probably allen screws in the driver's floor section, if only to facilitate my own sorting it out, since the dang pedals are all being cobbled together from detritus by yrs truly. I will post photos of it (the belly pan) when I'm done, because it's going to look like $4 million and, realistically, almost no one will ever see it again.

Pedals, today at 1 pm: 

That's how they gotta be for the brake pedal to have 8 inches of throw, which is what's needed for the dual circuit master cylinder to function in the event of a bad circuit.

Here's a shot of the situation at 4:30, as I was getting ready to knock off: 

Basically made the whole front unit of the accelerator pedal system today, though almost none of the welding's done yet. Since I'm working from (a very few) photos and no technical drawings, I spent much of the day setting or holding parts near each other and guestimating sizes and distances. I think this is gonna work and look about right. I'll bench test it tomorrow, tack it together and test it in the car. 

Livin' the goddamn dream over here!

edsnova posted:

 

...I spent much of the day setting or holding parts near each other and guestimating sizes and distances...

Geez, you're going to have the world's only 550 Spyder that's built like a Ferrari.

si fatto a la mano

You can call me Edsno.

edsnova posted:

You can call me Edsno.

Bam.

Productive day in the shop, and inches from being done with the pedals.... Dang, ran out of wire.

Almost though. Just a few more tweaks to the actual gas pedal thing that your right foot goes on. 

Moving the pivot point down. The hexbar only needs about an inch, inch-and-a-half of travel to get from idle to WOT. I was getting nearly 4 inches of pull with it like this.

Everything else is roughed-in: welded, ground smoove, holes drilled for mounting, etc. Now just needs a few nylocks and washers and maybe a cotter pin up top in place of the nut so it won't bind up or fall apart.

Oh, and of course a few more lightening holes.

It's bloody amazing what you are doing, at least to my mind. 

Here are a couple of shots of Henry's early-in-the-build-process pedal work in my car.

Notice the lack of a floor...as you found out, it's easier to do the pedals before the floor goes in.

Thanks, and yup: It's quite a bit more involved than I had reckoned, but mostly because I've never really even looked at a pedal set before, let alone built one.

I have about 35 hours in pedal fabrication so far, with a few—five, let's say—more to go. With material  expenses I'm way behind where I'd have been if I'd just sold off the stuff that came with my kit and bought the Fibersteel legit 550 pedal cluster for $900.

That said, if I ever have to make another set, it'll probably be a bit more than half the time. A third set would be quicker still and probably better. 

It's therapy.

And...thanks to everyone on this board for all the encouragement. Hugely inspiring as we pass this milestone of finally finishing one of the first things I asked about when I got the kit.

Ed, do you attach a Morse cable to that accelerator contraption thingie? Or just a regular pull cable?

Very realistic approximation of an original on the pedals. You're gonna fool a lot of folks. I'm thinking realistically 2019 though. You've got a lot of work to do. I know you won't rush it.

Decided my accelerator pedal, using the Empi pedal base, wasn't good enough. So I dug through the scrap pile, got out the sledge hammer and the cutoff wheel and the grinder and the welder, and five hours later I had

I'll save the boring details for a blog post, but suffice it to say I'm pretty chuffed about the way this came out, and basically dumbfounded that Porsche made these this way in the first place.

I really like your wood board "mock up" fixture ! I use wood mock ups nearly every time I'm making drastic changes. You would have laughed at the weird shapes of roll bars I made up and then used to roast chestnuts in my " Chiminea "on cool evenings.

 You do VERY good work Ed...............Bruce

Ed,  I've been following your build since day one....  It will truly be a hand built "Replica" Spyder....   Fantastic skills there man...  

To Danny's question: the lever is drilled small for Z-bent Bug cable. Obs I could go with a ball fitting later. TBD.

Great to see that photo of the pedal base mockup.

I finally found my missing 1/2" stubby  wrench.

Been at Frikkin Ed's all along!

When I lend something I put a reminder in my phone in two weeks if you can’t read a book in two weeks or use it in two weeks return It and borrow it later

wunderlist is a good tool too

So I modded that gas pedal one final time and here's the full saga.

belly pan.