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Heres another tip for you Toed, we use brown parcel tape over our gell repairs. This helps in two ways, firstly by excluding the air you get next to no surface by-product stickiness, so less need for wax additive.
Secondly, the tape keeps the gell from falling out of the repair whilst is sets.
For a large area you can use stiff plastic sheet like DPC.
So far so good on the advice front, but why does the repair need gel in it? What would happen if I just used body filler? Sorry if that's a dumb question but I'm new to this 'glassing lark.
Well you have a point. Gel coat is a little harder and more durable than polyester filler, and one usually repairs gel with gel if the finish is polished gel coat. You could just fill them, but still vee out the cracks to 30 degrees before filling. Also find the cause of the stress cracks, and maybe add more GRP behind to prevent it happening again.
Back to the housework.....can't wait for this eve......work on mine!
Clone, I don't think so , the different length in the front is very obvious, no more a clone than looking back at past 50s/ 60s specials which hold more than a passing resemblance..
Surely theres room for both out there.
Looks like a modified 1958 NICKRI to me
Front like a Cobra, rear like a Nickri, large bonnet, longer nose, doors, hump in line with driver, and fair bodywork.
How many Lotus 7 clones are there? Westfield, Caterham etc etc et
cProbably that design is out of patent from Nickri?
Astons look a bit like Jags....
There is no way anyone can say the origins of that weren't taken from a Sammio / Ribble mould! If Mick can produce the buck he built from scratch to make the moulds that that body was pulled from then I will gladly stand corrected......oh and amazed!
Slightly different in this case I would say bearing in mind Micks relationship with Sammio and his full knowledge that the project has just been sold on to new owners hoping to improve and market it. At the very worst a blatant ripoff and at the very best a very misjudged and mistimed venture.
Seanick is right if you follow Gary's early posts when he was getting Sammio off the ground he started with a Nickri and made the Spyder.
I dont think Mick has hid his cars origins either it's clear in his posts, has he done enough to say it's not a direct copy, I don't know show the two side by side then judge.
I still maintain that Micks launch of this product clearly based on a brand Gary, and I'm presuming Mick both profited from in some way so soon after the transfer is out of order, even if he has changed it so that he can say its a new design at the very very best it smacks of sharp practise.
Exactly, proof of the pudding is in the eating. Until either offering has a price tag and can be viewed and compared it makes no odds. One company may lose a few sales to the other, and visa versa. Those few lost sales will cost far less than legal action, were the only winners are the solicitors.
If the Migalia Speedster is moulded from that buck/plug then the finish may be good enough to have a gel coat finish.
Im of to work on my Tribute MX250. Im gonna lock the door in case Ferrari come knocking....
apart from the rear end looking quite similar, and that in itself came from an even older kit, from the back of the drivers seat forwards is different, similar, but different.
I don't think that Mike will deny that he started with bits of an original Sammio as inspiration and then went his own way from there.
Before people start jumping to conclusions (which is always too easy on the interweb) I think that we all need full details of the kit / donor etc and even then, as others have pointed out, this is more than different enough to the Ribble Spyder to be a product on its own. Just look at the minimal differences between 7 kits to see how they differentiate themselves.
The argument that someone could take a Spyder and turn it into this with a lot of reworking doesn't mean that the original Ribble (as delivered from the factory) is the same as this, as its not.
Andy, I can fully understand why you'd be 'irked' by this competitor coming onto the scene, but from a customer perspective, the more the merrier!
I just published our latest price tags on our web site this morning. Any model's shell comes complete at £999.00. The framework is now a separate item which the builder can choose to take or not.
Well, If you look at all the cobra kits and Lotus 7 kits out there, then a bit of competition is a healthy one for the consumer.
We can look at the quality of the kit, the customer service, price etc and make our own minds up, just as if we were building a cobra or the like.
Having seen Mike's new set up, and yes, it is the old workshop that Gary used to have, I have been impressed enough to order my own kit.
The finish is excellent, the door fit lovely, as does the bonnet, and the weeks of sanding down have gone, as the final finish out of the mould is excellent.
History tells of many competitions over products , MP3's - from Sony Walkmans to Apples, and many, many cars.
I think companies, that just fight through solicitors don't seem to get the fact it is the consumer that chooses.
Mike has many, many years of fibreglass moulding behind him, and whilst Gary had the original idea, Mike did the majority of the work in shaping and moulding the Sammio Spyder. His skill is more than evident in the quality of the Miglia Speedster kit.
For me, I put my money with someone that knows what they are doing, and I am sorry to say Andy that what I have seen so far from Ribble, I am not yet convinced you can deliver a quality product.
If I were you I would just concentrate on making a better product to beat the competition rather than just moaning that someone has copied the original sammio concept. How do you know someone who has bought an old Sammio spyder is not copying it in their workshop somewhere?
There is a slight twist here though in that Mike had a hand in the original idea so to some extent it is his design as well. He must have been gutted when it was sold out from under him.
He didn't profit in any way from the sale of the Sammio business as far as I am aware.
Remember:
Apple were not the first to the MP3 market
Google were not the first Internet search engine
Facebook was not the first social media site
The point here is that all the above companies did a very similar thing to an existing product but did it better.
The consumer made their choice.
