Spyder restoration - long time coming

[DARREN BETA. SPYDER]

my new canves hood was the same i was streching streching and stretching but bottom corners still sat up a bit , but it dont leak so all good

[peteracs]

Hi Frank

Yes, I did console myself with that thought....!

On another woo hoo day after just under 9 weeks Pilkington delivered my windscreen yesterday and offering it up against one of the old ones I have is a perfect fit both size and curvature wise which is a great relief.

Just need to polish up the surrounds and get someone in to fit it which will be the next nervous moment.

Peter

[mangocrazy]

That's very encouraging to know, Peter. So Spider owners can purchase new screens from Piilkington with confidence. Another step on the way...

[peteracs]

Hi Graham

They should be the same for the Coupe and HPE is my understanding.

Peter

[mangocrazy]

Hi Peter,

Excellent. That's very good to know. At some point my windscreen will need to come out (again) to repair corrosion in that area that wasn't properly dealt with the first time the windscreen was taken out. It's good to know that if Bad Things Happen that there is a viable Plan B.

Graham

[peteracs]

Hi

An eventful few months including a month in France which was work as we had not seen the house for 19 months and the spiders etc had taken hold with a vengeance + the garden had no tending in that time. Now 10 days quarantine…..

I have not done anything to the car other than regularly start it up and move it around on the drive.

I am hoping to have the screen fitted this coming Friday, nearly finished tidying up the stainless surround and will then polish it ready fir the fitter.

Hoping to make the August Beta meeting in her, however will need to put some miles in before I feel confident enough to undertake a long journey.

Peter

[peteracs]

Hi

Screen now being fitted next Thursday, a very busy man apparently.

Getting round to all those ‘I will sort that out later jobs’.

First up the doors not shutting/door seals to thick in places, cannot shut door without serious effort. I had hacked the door seals I had and made a right mess of them and the doors still did not close happily, however a bit of patience and I now have two closing doors which do not take a massive heave to close them, the seals are still however a mess and will need to be replaced, however I now have a good idea where they are too thick and need relieving.

I bought an under bonnet cover from Neil (supplied by Mark) a few years ago and finally have it fitted! Went in without any great drama and looks the part. Some of the pre made holes do not line up with the early bonnet, but that was simply resolved.

Lastly, installed a tracker, not a battery backed one, just a simple permanently powered one. I aim to pay the monthly cost when leaving it away from my home garage, but otherwise just leave it installed in the car. I know there has been discussions on here re which to use, but I was in two minds whether to even bother as although the car has significant meaning to me, not sure it classes as a most wanted as far as thieves are concerned. I think my neighbours TR6 is probably more interesting for them.

[peteracs]

Whist waiting fir the screen to go in on Thursday, I have been doing a few little tidying up jobs. The drivers door had caught the sill whilst no seal was in place, most annoying, so needed a bit of touch up. Not hugely happy with it, but will protect it and it is hidden with door shut. Also had a go at improving the rear hood fit. The hood now fits thanks to weeks of stretching, but there were and still is to a lesser extent, parts where the edge sticks out at the corners. Improved, but not yet 100%.

Today’s job was to resolve an annoying issue. The engine bay on the car has a light linked to the sidelights, however the boot has no interior light which is most annoying at night and so I decided to re-purpose a Coupe interior light which I had. It needed a rub down and repaint with silver paint, but otherwise is ok. End result is also ok and should help out when you need to go in the boot at night. Obviously it is a manual switch, but that is no big issue so long as you know where the switch is!

Peter

[peteracs]

Another job which has been kicking around for ages was mounting the fire extinguisher. I really did not want to drill the floor and finally decided to tie wrap (yes not my favourite method) to the two seat belt metal brackets between the seats. It is fairly solid and convenient to get in a hurry and allows two (small) rear seat passengers at a push.

Peter

[peteracs]

What appears to be a very small and insignificant job I have been putting off for a long time are the external screws which go into the the door cards. I have put off doing it because it meant drilling the doorcards which were freshly covered and I could not decide on what colour the screw heads and cups would look best. In the end I went for simple stainless ones with small cups and screws. Always seemed a bit of a bodge given the rest of the door cards have clips etc, but they are shown in the parts book and do make sense in securing the top corners of the door cards.

Another job ticked off.

Peter

[WestonE]

It looks tidy to me Peter and I completely understand the stress in these decisions as I have them all over my build.

Eric

[Neil-yaj396]

Did the same with my pre-facelift door cards back in the day. It was the only way to keep them reliably in place when the doors were slammed.

[squiglyzigly]

Looks mint to me. Factory look imo

[mangocrazy]

It looks like it could have rolled off the production line like that, and is fully functional as well. I'd go with that, in fact I'll probably copy what you've done when I get round to doing mine.

[peteracs]

Thanks for the vote of confidence! Happy with the result.

One point to note, the cups are solid stainless not the ones made from pressed sheet metal. They are significantly more expensive (still cheap), but the cheap ones will cut into the vinyl and make a right mess of it.

Peter

[peteracs]

Oh well, windscreen guy arrived, took one look and declared a no go…..

Fortunately he is someone who was around in the 80s and understood the issues re old versus new. The problem was the edge trim I had used is way too big and they need an 8mm width minimum to seal the screen and give it a guarantee of not leaking. This means I have to go back to the original small edge strip size I have which on first trying it does not really suit the width it needs to go on (approx 3-4mm with the headlining), but with some encouragement it does fit ok and will leave me with approx 8mm of metal for the sealant/adhesive.

Sadly I only have 3m of it and need just over that for the screen, so order placed and try again next week!

Peter

[peteracs]

Whilst waiting for the edging strip I started on the various jobs which have been on the to do list.

First up was the tonneau cover. This was very kindly ‘re-popperred’ by Eric when I lent it to him which was a great help, however as he noted to me there was a whole load of fine overspray, I think from when the previous owner had had the car resprayed. Eric suggested T Cut and I tried that and various other methods to get it off. The T Cut appeared to help where it was like a light wash, but the small individual spots remained stubborn. In the end I simply set to with a sharp Stanley knife and carefully scraped as many as I could off. There were hundreds and very small and took a few hours to complete. The cover was then washed inside and out with mild soapy water and rinsed to get rid of any T Cut etc. This resulted in a cover which was clean, free from little white specs, but the scraping had left a patchwork of dull spots, not very pleasing to the eye. The final act was to apply vinyl restorer which turned it into a very acceptable cover and one of those long winded jobs which turn out ok in the end despite great reservations.

Another job was the bonnet stay retaining bracket. This is only on the early cars and is a separate stay bar near the washer bag on the left hand side inner wing. It comprises of a bar fixed to the inner wing and an oblong bracket fixed to the bonnet which the bar rests into when the bonnet is open to prevent it falling back. The central clip mechanism on the early ones is not sufficient reliably keep the bonnet up as it lacks the ratchet mechanism of the later cars. This bracket I had and remember painting many moons ago and was ‘mislaid’ during moving house and finding one proved a go. I do not have a welder, so looked around for something suitable in my spares boxes. The most obvious thing was the back off a faulty clock. A couple of suitably placed holes, the height reduced and a lick of paint, a bit of foam padding at the back and it serves the purpose. I also added some of the small edging strip around the front sharp edge as well to finish it off. I also ordered a replacement rubber end for the rod as the original rubber one was not in great condition.

Lastly fitted the accelerator pedal rubber and the brake pedal rubber I ordered from Mark (I already had one for the clutch). Both fit very nicely unlike the brake/clutch pedal ones I bought a long time ago from an Ebay source which were too big and the retaining rubber at the rear too shallow.

Peter

[peteracs]

my new canves hood was the same i was streching streching and stretching but bottom corners still sat up a bit , but it dont leak so all good

Hi Darren

Sorry missed this post first time. I have found that patience and perseverance is the name of the game. Mine is still not 100% where I would like it, but it is very close now, but have spent a number of hours tweaking it and then leaving it to settle.

Peter

[peteracs]

Hi All

Smaller edging strip arrived and fitted and windscreen fitted yesterday by very helpful couple of guys who took their time to make sure a good job and did not charge as much as he had quoted which was already reasonable to my mind. So very happy. One of the issues that they have with the modern system and the old screens is that the area to bond to is very small and also having the stainless surround also complicates it. So his comment was that it was really difficult to stop the bonding material to push out over the edging strip slightly which is not ideal. Luckily it was reasonably small on mine so not a big issue.

Last thing was to fit the stainless wipers which fit snugly on to the adapters fitted to the original splines.

So big moment, out for the first drive, another woo hoo moment. 15 miles on the back roads around our house and apart from a clutch pedal which half retracts, then comes back fully in its own time and a washer bag motor which appears to have stopped pumping, all appears ok. Nothing fell off, it did not boil over and the oil pressure was up to a decent level. A great success. Need to sort the washer bag pump and there appears to be an issue with the rear LED side lights (see below) before I go for an MOT, which hopefully will be early next week.

I had a curious issue with the LED rear side lights which are of the normal dual filament type. If you put a positive to the brake light, then it feeds this positive to the side light connection, so on applying the brakes the side lights also come on, which is not ideal. A bit more investigation is required, but may just revert back to standard bulbs in the short term. Hopefully the solution will be a different led bulb.

Peter

[smithymc]

Well done Peter! Hopefully all of the swearing and bloodied knuckles look worthwhile now.

Enjoy it.

Mark