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Seeing as i've had the car on the road for a few weeks now i thought it worth while posting my "on the road" experiences in case they help shape anyone else's build or help to persuade any to start building. They may also give you a chuckle as i've not got the best of luck!
Panel cracking.
The top of the panel on the back on my cockpit has cracked the paint at the one edge, which hints that either i may not have bonded this on enough, or that flex during driving means that i should have over engineered this a bit more?
You can see it as a fine white line about 10mm in and running inbound from the corner to just over the top of the seat
Tyre scrub.
With the 165's fitted everything had been fine until a friend of mine took it out for a spin and there were two of us in the car.
The extra weight meant that over a few bumps the syres scrubbed the inner top edge of the arch (which can be seen as the grey inner edge on the left edge in the below pic).
I think that when i next have the wheels off the easy fix to this is to trim the top lip to be just 10mm rather than the 20/30mm it is atm.
Getting in and out
We don't have doors (at least us older Spyder types don't) unlike you new fangled Cordite types and for me the leap in and out adds to the whole experience, but just beware how and where you fit your interior panels.
I now realise that mine need to be about 10/20mm lower as i occasionally keep catching my foot on them when i get in.
OR I could do with some sort of wrap-over panel that would also keep the top of the paint from constantly getting scuffed!
Another thing you can spot in the below pic is that the drivers seat WILL take a hammering with all the walking on it, there's not much you can do unless you take the Pat route of seat choice, but it's worth mentioning
Dave, it couldn't be flex of the shell with your body weight in the seat causing the shell to flex as your weight moves against the rear edge of the shell during acceleration? (neck snapping) Does that make sense? read it twice!
You need one of my power restrictor kits as per the last photo in my another one thread,
Rather than fitting one of those new fangled "heater" thingamajigs, just leave the gaiter off of your gear stick and the nice warm air that comes up from the exhaust and engine actually warms the interior up a treat! I was diving around the top of the Mendips at about 7degrees and i was nice and toasty!
Bilge pumps
If it rains, water gets in (funny ol thing!) but even the most basic of floor covering manages to keep the majority of water contained, and even the "sloshing" as you drive is quite amusing
My current flooring is only basic and based on 66 as i like the look and it was meant to be temporary, but it's growing on me and has proved to be surprisingly practical! although i did talk to someone at the Bath&West who has fitted a small bilge pump from an RC car to sort out any unwanted ingres on their classic! Personally I'd just drill a hole in the floor, but each to their own
Reflectors
I didn't like most of the after-market reflectors you can buy from the large spares shops, but i had to fit some so i stuck some round ones on there temporarily. But.... When i bought the donor mobility scooter for my boys' Toylander, it had the most Ideal rear reflectors on it, which have now found their way onto the Spyder and I'm very happy with how they look!
Interesting bit about the unexpected heater - Phil J mentioned this to me as his cockpit gets 'king hot so I've bought ten metres of exhaust heat wrap for mine. Not sure if it'll be enough/too much but it should stop me scorching my butt.
YES - SECONDED ....Good idea Dave ....people can see what pitfalls to avoid or alter before they put theirs on the road.
The body cracking , I would guess , is where you cut your corners off ...unless you fully glass that from behind , it will do that......I'm not sure if it has altered the strength that a curved corner gives ....
tyre clearance , wheel arch rubbing is always going to be interesting as people experiment with different combo's...
interior heating - great isn't it ? Lots of Hot Rods are the same ....my old Cortina based cars used to suffer with 'HOT FOOT SYNDROME' where your left foot used to get really hot due to the exhaust being next to it !
I was watching a video the other night about racing cars from the early 50's and one of the teams ...might have been Connaught or BRM , had to retire some cars from a race due to drivers getting hot feet ....so we are in good company and proves just how true to the 50's realism these cars can be !!
seriously though - some decent insulation or wrap will make things more comfortable...
dave ive drove mine, today for the first time, and it feels very light and bouncy,on the rear end.is this something yours feels like too.
Congrats on getting to the 1st drive stage! So is it on the road "properly" now?
I experienced the same as you after coming from a "modern" car, it does feel very light and skittish until you get used to it lane: Although pot holes still scare me
I slightly get over this by keeping the fuel tank as full as I can I also found that the steering, as well as squeaking on mine, is also very precise.
The thing i'm not used to yet is un-servo'd brakes! And i admit that there there have been a few squeeky-bum-time moments
Is it time for a video soon, Dave... If you do, can you take someone to get out of car so we can see it go past with a Roar! Maybe over a bridge in the countryside? Show us some 'air'
An interesting one the other night. I've just replaced a load of the rubber cooling pipes and i thought i'd pop out for a quick run to test things.
On the way i started to hear a squeak from the rear nearside wheel and when i pulled over i found that the splined hub adapter nuts on that side were starting to come loose!
Luckily i had all the tools i needed (plus a big ammer) on board to whip the wheel off and tighten things up and once i got home i removed the nuts and added locktite. Has anyone encountered this sort of thing before? Do others apply locktite to wheel nuts? Am i just unlucky?
You are supposed to put the nuts on and then use a centre punch to punch fours small dents between the thread and the nut to keep them from coming loose....
Another quick update with an interesting find for anyone currently fitting their bonnet.
As I'd heard it was going to be a nice day today i was toying with the idea of bringing the Sammio into work. I chickened out. But i did take it for a run last night to rebuild my confidence and for the first time i took it on the motorway!!! lane:
I only got up to 68 (that was more than fast enough on a 4:11.1 ratio diff and a rich running engine!), but it did show me that i need to address my previous joke about the active aerodynamics as above 60 the bonnet does raise due to the reduced air pressure caused by the airflow and it takes up slack in the bonnet straps.
I think that this highlights what Gary and Mike had mentioned to me previously, which is that leather bonnet straps are pretty, but not the best! This also isn't helped as at the moment I don't have any additional bracing/re-enforcing under the bonnet.
Luckily...... another thread has already provided me with a solution that i like the look of, and i shall be having a dig around for some of these:
Based on my experiences of driving my Spyder so-far, I decided to make a few running modifications in order to make things a bit nicer to live with.
1)
I've now changed the 4.11:1 diff to a 3.63:1 diff, so hopefully it won't be quite so Diesel-ish to drive and it'll cruise better on the motorway.
Depending on how this goes i may still change to a 3.27:1 or fit an overdrive conversion in the future, but for the time being and after talking to a lot of men with beards who know about Triumphs , apparently 3.63:1 is the way to start!
So after taking my son for a drive and him sitting there with his fingers in his ears for the entire trip , i've relented and decided to do something about it
I know it's tempting to go with a [SIZE="6"]LOUD [/SIZE]exhaust, loads of auxilliary gauges, banks of illuminated switches etc, but, sometimes, less is more, particularly when the basic design of the Sammio is so striking anyway. It really doesn't need loads of bling and blare to make it stand out. A standard stainless exhaust on an old engine sounds pretty fruity and better than just about any modern car to my ears, while I think the overdone dashboard has been, well, overdone by all the squadrons of sevens and cohorts of cobra clones anyway.
Still, each to their own but I think you've made the right decision in quieting down the exhaust.
Whoo Hoo!! Used the Spyder for the daily commute and nothing broke, fell off or blew up
I did a slightly altered route and rather than just M5 all the way it turned out to be 36 miles either way on mainly A and B roads with a 10 mile stretch of the M5 at Bristol.
The car was SUPERB! I'm still not fully used to it, so the M5 was a bit interesting (Squeeky-bum-time in rush hour traffic!) and i admit to hiding in the slipstream of a friendly Tesco lorry while i got used to how it felt in "big boy traffic" on the way in this morning
What was a nice warm breeze from the exhaust in the winter did make things quite..... toasty on the way home in the 24 degree sunshine.
I also stopped on the way back to meet up with Lee (a prospective Sammio owner) and it was nice to see an un-Sammio'd Herald roll in
Next trip i think should be southbound to see if i can find and other Sammios "in the wild"
lane: Although pot holes still scare me 
, apparently 3.63:1 is the way to start!
