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I'm Michiel, I'm in Holland and I'm building a Sammio Spyder. In fact, I'm doing this for quite a while now (2,5 years). I'm #47 (just before Trevor). At the moment I have a roling chassis, and I'm in the progress of attaching the body to it.
With my postings I will get back in time, and catch up with my current build eventually.
Basically, the goal is to build a period car which doesn't remind of a kitcar or donor car in any way. The other goal is to make the car durable.
I enjoy this forum very much, and thought I should join and share some of my experiences. There are quite a few things I have done differently, or plan to do different. I suppose these are the most intresting things, because so much has allready been said on this forum.
And yes, I understand the picture thing. Give me some time to get the hang of it though.
Welcome to the forum Michiel. Looking very slick so far, can't wait to see some of your fresh ideas.
Does your workshop have a low ceiling, or are you actually 2.5 metres tall?
You are both right! (Allthough a haircut would take away half a metre!)
I tackled the garage thing the past months rebuilding it. And I'm working on the Spyder to accomodate myself comfortably. But that is not where my story started. Early 2011 I got in touch with gary, explaining my wish for a longer tail for the Spyder body. I thought the "bobtail" suits the German style front perfectly. But with the D24 nose, the Spyder took another way in design. It was my personal opinion that the car could use a longer tail to give it more balance.
I did some creative sketching to make myself clear to gary.
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Gary and Mike went to work with it, and I got this picture from them, showing the progress. You can see their approach. And maybe you have seen the result before, because my picture of the body stacked to a white Vitesse donor on a trailer, is above the getting starting page of the Sammio website.
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The standard frame was altered aswell. Because of the longer tail, the rear of the donor chassis, didn't need to be shortened. In fact, the rear outriggers could be used to accomodate some luggageroom.
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I'm very pleased with the result, but the job could have been executed beter because the left side is now a massive 8 cm more to the ground as the right side.
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But no worries, I will get into that later on. For now, this is the result seen from the side. I hope to shape it a little more to get some lumbness out of it, to get is just a little more sleek.
... maybe you have seen the result before, because my picture of the body stacked to a white Vitesse donor on a trailer, is above the getting starting page of the Sammio website...
Good to hear of your build Michiel. It's not how long a build takes but the fun you have creating your car.
It's interesting you opted for the tail extension. Here's as good a place as any to ask readers whether they feel it would make sense to extend the Pilot body to cover the Herald boot supports as a permanent feature when we fix, dehump and remould that shell this winter? Having a boot option sounds useful to me and it would mean less parts 'dropping off' on the way home from rebody inspection.
Thank you all for welcoming me. I hope to keep this thread intresting with choices and solutions I have been made so far.
My donor car had a registration which started with AGP. So it's not the same. Fortunatly it had the more powerful MKII engine. But in general it was a real tard/lemon (or how do you call this in England?). However there was one shiny piece, which was the gearbox (+OD) that had just been replaced by a rebuild. I bought the car from Gary, which was very convieneant for me logisticly seen.
The state of the chassis was poor too, which led to a chassis restauration. I took a different angle there. I will look into my photo archive to explain.
I'm curious aswell about the opions on a longer tail. Well basically I'm curious how it turns out when the car is finished!
Hi all,
I have found pictures of some of the work I have done to my chassis. My Vitesse chassis had corrosion troubles. The siderails, ouriggers and rear cross member, suffered from it. Strangely enough the mains were very good however.
The problem offcourse is the rear cross member. I thought it could only be replaced. For that particular part restauration was no option any more.
A spitfire chassis is quite common, cheap and easy to buy. I found out that the rear of both of the chassis' is practically the same. The mains are different. Not only in length, but also in shape. But if you cut a chassis just in the right place, the rears are interchangable.
So I bought a spitfire chassis for about 50 pounds, which had a perfect rear cross member. I made a mould to make two exactly the same cuts. On my chassis and on the salvage rear. After that I lined them out with a laser and welded them together. I bought the outriggers at the rear new and welded them to the rear cross member.
I have lined out the car when it was on his wheels, and found no troubles at all.
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For the outriggers and siderails, I took another approach. In Holland we also need to keep the chassis original to keep the original registration. First I bought the outriggers and siderails new to replace them. But these parts were so terrible thin and flimsy, that I decided to do it differently. Basically I boxed in the old ones with 2 mm steel sheet. The result is a very strong structure that carries originality within, so no issues there. For the side rails I used a strong U-profile. They went just over the original side rails.
I ended up with a strong and rigid chassis, that is original underneath. After this it is important to rustproven it because of the potential hazard of the inner outriggers suffer from corrosion that would infect the boxed metal. Later more about that.
another objective of this solution was to acquire a flat chassis surface (underneath), with gives new options for the bottomstructure under the seats.
Update. My alternative for the floors. I'm not too small, so I was a little concerned about the seating position. I also wanted to get the seats positioned as much to the middle of the car as possible (trying to get the hump in line with the middle of the seat).
After boxing the outriggers and ultimately having the chassis preserved and painted (chemacaly depainting, Hydrochloric acid bathing, zincphosphating, cathodic electrodeposition and powdercoating). I mounted 3mm aluminium plates on the underside of the chassis after I had them epoxy coated and given them a layer of underbody protection and black paint. I used strongbond to glue them in (extremely strong stuff) and added large stainless screws.
For the above I made some sills of the 3mm aluminium sheet. Took a lot of force bending them! The sides mounted to the siderails and the front over the middle outrigger, joining the footwell. I used stainless flat head bolts to connect the floors with the floor.
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After that the underside got a lot of bolt ends!
I got the result that I wanted, a low and flat surface, The main rails of the chassis remain vissible in the interior when finished.
Very neat solution to the lowered floorpan issue. I found the limiting factor for moving the seats inboard is the chassis flaring out towards the back. What seats are you using?
I have bought two Kirkey seats (Vintage). Are they called bomber seats as well?
Because they are made of aluminium, you can make some alterations. I have deformed the right side of the driversseat (LHD!) a little, to gain some extra movement towards the middle of the car. This is as much as you can get to the centre of the car as possible, because these seats have practically no extra with, exept your own bottom.
I made my own seat rails. Again, of the 3 mm aluminium sheet that I have plenty of. I had to make up for the angle of the floor.
I bought 1 seat cover, bearing in mind that I will have two of them made from leather. I looked for a sofa that had the color of leather that I want (green). The sofa was beautifully worn. I hope to get nice seats. They also support the 4 point harnesses that I have.
These american seats are not to hard to find. I googled and got lots of leads.
It seemed that we have a kirkey dealer in the Netherlands. I'm not sure if they do the Netherlands, or Europe. I contacted them and had to tell them where I lived. They pointed out some car related businesses at about 30 km's away. The thing is: the seats come in different sizes. But what size is your ass? And do you have to take a sqeeced size (because I recon my but cheeks will be when I'm driving this thing )
Anyway, they sent seats to them and I could fit them around my... well you get the picture. It was a good size match. So I bought them.
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