MadaboutKitcars

So, after two years spent putting my Spyder together, my marathon build thread is now at an end and I'm at the stage of actually driving the thing.

I thought I'd start this new thread which will cover the experience of using the car and fettling it for the road.

Driving impressions so far are that it's really quite easy to drive. The steering is light but full of feel, the clutch and brakes (servoed) are no more difficult to use than those on my wife's Micra, and it handles better than the MX5 I had about five years ago. It's great fun and gets loads of attention everywhere I go in it.

On the negative side, the ride is rock hard and I've lowered it a bit too much as I have very little ground clearance (lighter/longer front springs on back order, rear lowering block on the list of things to modify).

First job today was to sort out an issue where hot oil fumes were getting into the cockpit. So I've removed the cheap filter from the breather and connected a hose into the air box instead, which seems to have done the trick -



I then drove it over to Wisbech and picked up an MSD multi-spark ignition system from WASP Speed shop -



That's now fitted and working (after the inevitable wiring faff) and provides five sparks at the plug on each firing below 3,000 rpm, and an adjustable rev limiter.



The result is that the engine idles smoothly at a much lower rpm and pulls much stronger at low revs. The rev limiter also means I've been able to explore the upper reaches of the rev range without worrying about over revving the motor (my tacho died a while ago and I haven't got round to replacing it). My 3.27:1 diff and 14" tyres actually give me a comfortable 60mph in second without hitting the 6,000rpm limit...

More later

pressure cap

Great photos Mr towed,
I think your car will never be truely finished!
It will just continue to evolve with constant refinements like the porsche 911.

So to steal an idea, I like the location for the water pressure cap in the hoseline rathe than by the thermostat.
I need to relocated the expasion bottle on the G46 and thought your solution very neat.
Is the pressure cap housing a truimph part or sourced elsewhere?
Cheers
HM

My in line radiator filler cap came from Car Builder Solutions -

http://www.cbsonline.co.uk/product/In-Line_Radiator_Filler_Neck_38mm_INF38

Wouldn't you know it, Just when I thought everything was going so well I went to the wine rack a and, to my utter dismay, I was completely out of champagne.

So, what's a chap with a thirst to do? Aha! Spyder to the rescue!



Now safely home from Tesco's car park the bubbly is chilling and that's my plan for the evening too.

Received my insurance renewal a couple of days ago, I can't believe it's a year next week that I towed my Spyder to DVLA Peterborough for the rebody inspection, which is when I took out the policy.

I paid £99 and a few pence last year. This year I expected a modest inflationary rise. To my surprise it's actually gone down!

OK, it's only gone down by about £2.50, to £96.84, but that's still a saving of 2.5%

Good old A-Plan insurance brokers, they'll be getting my business for the foreseeable

The Tesco shot really gives the sense of scale to the car. I had forgotton how small and low they are compared to that hulking great Corsa parked next to it

Looks even better next to a load of anonymous tin-tops.

It is interesting to see that most of your car sits no more than six inches above the tops of the wheels. Just look how much sits above the Corsa arches. Yours makes a GT40 look positively lofty. Brilliant.

I also love the Tesco's car park photo.

I'm guessing Mr T will now be offering to "nip out to the shops" on a regular basis.

Great stuff, Paul.

Funny you should say that, but I had a couple of items reserved for pick up at Argos this morning.

Trouble is, my Smart ForFour doesn't have the biggest boot in the world and I was worried that the 6"x4" box and A4 envelope sized packet might just not fit. Hmm, problem.

Aha! My Spyder has unlimited head room, so I could always strap the box to the passenger seat and leave it sticking out the top. Problem solved -



Sadly, the sun was shining straight at me over the top of Argos which would've ruined the shot so I had to take the picture the other way, towards Pizza Hut, but you get the idea

Interesting comments about the height of my Spyder compared to the modern motors in Tesco's car park.

Funnily enough I drew up alongside a Boxster at a roundabout this afternoon and it looked huge by comparison with mine. I'll have to park next to one and get a photo...

Towed

I thought that you were not allowed to display race numbers on a road going car? Do you have special dispensation?

The down side of the height above the wheels is when you are along side a HGV, scary but probably no less dangerous than being in a Corsa!

Wasn't aware of any issues about displaying race numbers on a road car myself. Funnily enough I've just been looking at the configurator for the Fiat 500 and they offer a bonnet roundel with '5' in it as a factory fit option.

Anyway, they're not race numbers, they just help me pick my car out of the hundreds of similar repmobiles in the car park when I forget where I've parked it...

As for coming alongside bigger vehicles, it's not as intimidating as you'd think. There's a big roundabout on the A10 at King's Lynn (The Hardwick), where the lanes aren't marked too well so people tend to change lanes without indicating. Or looking. I admit that I'm a bit wary when there's a truck, van or cyclist alongside me there, but I just keep my wits about me and hover a hand over the horn button.

Rain is forecast for today so it's back to the tin top I'm afraid

Dyno time is booked again for Monday though, so should have a few interesting facts 'n 'figures then.

When we used to race, the belief was that the MSA stated that you should not take your race car (with competition numbers) on the road, i.e. if you were driving to or from the event you should remove or else cover them. The potential penalty was to lose your competition licence.

Whether or not this is true........

Race numbers

Interesting comments from Towed and Oxford perhaps it is a race rule rather than a road use rule.

Towed, secret to using the car in the rain is to go faster and the rain goes above your head, havn't got a cure for sitting in the traffic in the rain though. Also the other problem is that you need windscreen wipers on the inside of the screen as well (if you had one)

I've already driven it through a light shower. I didn't get too wet but the raindrops didn't half sting my face at anything over 50mph. That wasn't enough to wipe the silly grin off my face though.

Racing Numbers:

My understanding is that race numbers on road cars are fine.

E.g. In London, Foxtons the estate agents have a fleet of minis with numbers on the sides.



I think the black line through the numbers relates to road legal racing cars on the road.
But this is their own "in house" rules trying to encourage a better public image.
E.g. Rally cars driving between stages.

But as always, what do I know?

Cheers, Paul.

PS
Mr T - Do you come back to find a crowd around the car?

I don't know what the penalty is but it's definitely still an MSA "blue book" regulation: "Competition numbers must be covered at all times whilst driving on the public highway."

I don't think it's a road car regulation though - the beetle has been available with 53 numbers (from the factory) for years?

Sounds like it's a good job I've no intention of taking mine racing if the MSA doesn't allow roundels on the road. Killjoys

I reckon my car could be pretty competitive on the track though, the handling is excellent, even with the weight of the six pot out front, and it pulls like a train from low revs in any gear. The Vitesse motor has plenty enough power and torque to make it quite exhilarating.

Paul, these cars do draw a crowd. I parked mine in my local leisure centre car park while I used the gym during the week. It's attached to the High School and I could see it from the cross trainer I was using. At lunchtime, crowds of sixth formers started gathering and taking photos of themselves with it on their i-phones. I guess it's all over face-crowd on the interweb by now.

It also gets lots of positive comments from people when I'm out and about in it, ranging from old gents to young dudes, everyone seems to love it! Gary J really did get the styling right with this one.

Oh, and mention of Gary isn't an invitation to start a slag-fest about his business skills or lack thereof. Please.

First go at a Spyder movie today, sorry about the camera placement, memory card running out of space two minutes and forty six seconds into the drive, and the jet turbine on reheat sound effects, but you get the idea (click on pic) -

very nice towed. Look like the car is accelarating very easily and drives relaxed. Indeed the suspension looked a bit stiff when you got your car in reverse and left your house. On the other hand, this should also be fun, making the car some sort of cart.
michiel

They could be Fangio's forearms.

Looking very stable, and the steering looks good and positive - no "old car" sawing at the wheel.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Yes, it drives very much like a new car. It picks up and sheds speed quickly, stays straight under braking and has nice, positive steering (reconditioned Spitfire rack, £35 exchange from Canley's).

The suspension is too stiff for the road at the moment though. Although it does handle like a go-kart there are a couple of sunken 'A' roads across the fens round here where I have to back off to about 50mph or risk going into a low orbit because the suspension isn't able to absorb the dips and crests.

I plan to soften and raise it over the winter to give me a bit more confidence at speed and stop the exhaust fouling the speed bumps outside Argos (those stupid black rubber wedges that even some conventional cars grind over).

I have a pair of 150lb Spitfire front springs on back order (must ring Canley's Monday), which I'll probably cut down by about 50mm (currently on 200lb Vitesse springs cut down by 95mm), and fit the heavy duty front arb to compensate for the reduction in roll stiffness at the front.

For the rear suspension I've considered going down the swing-spring route as one or two people have commented that it improves the ride, but what I might try first is to take out the 75mm lowering block and remove one, or perhaps two more of the leaf springs from the stack.

That'll need a couple of the clamps cutting from the stack of springs, but I'll make some new ones to hold the remaining leaves together. From the picture below you can see that the inner clamps hold three upper leaves together and I might just take out the top two first and see what happens...



The final suspension mod will be to replace the 175/70/14 tyres with 175/80/14's. These should fit without fouling once the front suspension is raised a couple of inches, and should soften the ride slightly due to the taller side-walls while also filling the arches better. They'll also raise the gearing a tad, giving me a potential top speed of...

137mph.

Very nice. All of your hard work has paid off. Have a lot of fun.

Took my car to have the engine set up properly on the dyno this morning.

When it was new, the mk1 Vitesse engine was supposed to have 95bhp at 5,000rpm and 117lb/ft of torque at 3,000rpm, and I was hoping for something close to that...

First power run with the settings where I've had them for the last couple of months gave a figure of... 65bhp

The man with the spanners, well, a wireless keyboard actually, then made some adjustments, setting the ignition advance to 13 degrees btdc and leaning off the mixture a little.

Result? The best we could get was 79bhp at 4,455rpm and 106lb/ft of torque at 2,975rpm. Much better, but not quite what Triumph intended.

The chap who runs the dyno says the Strombergs aren't supplying enough fuel to make any more power above 4,500rpm, and it would benefit from a head skim to raise the compression ratio.

Bearing in mind that it's supposed to have had a lower compression, unleaded cylinder head fitted, that's not a bad result. To put it into perspective, the mk2 Triumph 2000, which effectively ran the Vitesse engine with lower compression, produced 84bhp and 100lb/ft when it was new.

My options now are:

Leave it as it is;

Have the head skimmed;

Fit a pair of 175 Strombergs;

Switch to fuel injection.

To be honest, 79bhp on the road feels plenty in a car that only weighs around 600kg's. Now it's set up properly it picks up speed much more easily and there's enough torque for it to storm away from less than 30mph in top. I think I'll leave things alone for a while as it's really nice to drive as it is, but I do have a spare engine in the garage that I might just rebuild over winter with a few modifications...

Mr T, if I were you I would run it round this year and early part of next year, and enjoy it.
Look out for parts at Exeter and other shows - maybe even go for Weber 40's and a new manifold from Jigsaw racing.
As you say, the power is fine for everyday use on the UK's roads, and any more power will start to throw up more issues!
The joy in these cars is the ability to pootle around with a big grin and lots of attention wherever you go.
Take a break from tinkering and enjoy!

T

Sounds like a plan