Thread: Project Sebring GT Spyder

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Very good solutions as usual for you, practical as well.
You've already made your choice, so won't do you much good, but for the small profile "high tech" battery, if on road replacement is a concern they are frequently available at UTV/Motorcycle dealers as well as some mid size tractor dealers. Wouldn't be cheap, but an alternative.

I did something similar for my battery box only I have my hinge right on the battery box so it comes out at a pretty steep angle. The only down side it you'll need a floor jack to change the battery.

Very nice work! I really like the battery box and mount. I have been thinking of moving the one in my vette to behind a tire so I can try to make a compartment to put the t tops. I may have to see if a hinged mount will work on it.

Interesting solution for the battery mount. Not sure I would've ever come up with such an idea as that.

Pretty clever!

Thanks for the nice comments guys. I'm really enjoying working with the sheet metal. I wish I had got set up to work with it a long time ago.

Bob, I should have known that some of the bigger MC's would have had usable batteries but I would never have thought that a tractor would have one of the small batteries. I'll have to try and remember that.

Sorry, I made a double post. Deleted.

I also roughed out some aluminum side panels to dress up the engine compartment. I had made some patterns out of ¼” plywood way back in August, but just now got around to using them. My plan was to reuse the fiberglass inner fenders and make a simple “L” shaped flange out of aluminum that would fasten to the engine panels and to the fiberglass inner fender.



I did get those flanges made using the shrinker/stretcher combo that I picked up last year. The tools worked great and I was actually surprised by how much shape I could put in a piece fairly quickly. I actually over stretched the pieces in the beginning. The aluminum moved a lot easier than I thought it would.





The side panels will have to be modified the next time they come off. The way they are now, if I need to pull the upper control arm, I will have to either disassemble the UCA bushings on the car or pull the body and that ain't going to work.

BTW - I included this part just to show my thought process and how things have been progressing. I made some big changes to some of this a little later. Stay tuned.

I also made a pretty big change to the engine. I swapped out the front accessory drive for a new one. The one that was on the engine was wide at the top and it was hitting the aluminum side panels on both the AC compressor and the alternator. It was the only one I could find at the time that cleared everything around the lower part of the engine and steering rack. The trouble was that it was too wide at the top.

I started on some clearance bubbles for the side panels, but have to say I hit my welding skill limit. I could form the pieces OK, but when I welded them together, well, let’s say they were less than satisfactory. As a matter of fact, I’ll quote one welding guru on YouTube. They looked like “Fido’s Butt”. Seems my aluminum welding still needs some work. I guess I could have made a hammer form and tried that, but I wasn’t sure I could get them planished out nice and smooth.

So I bit the bullet and bought a new front drive setup. I got the fairly new Holley Mid Drive setup. It’s very narrow and compact. I think it’s loosely based on the new LT1 Vette drive system, but don’t quote me on that. Holley was able to get this thing so small by making just about everything custom in some way. I’m not sure I like having to get replacement parts only from Holley, but that’s how it is with this setup.





I will say that I think the system looks like a factory setup and fits like a factory setup. I wish all “bolt ons” went this smooth. It fit the first time right out of the box just as it should. There are other compact front drives, but they are all fancy billet and cost a lot more than this one did.

Time will tell if the Holley water pump and alternator hold up. The alternator is 6 phase, as opposed to older 3 phase parts that we are used to. It is said to be rated at 150 amps and reported to put out 100 amps at idle. I’m pretty sure the 6 phase internals are similar, if not the same, as new LT1 Vettes. The water pump is a cartridge style that looks just like the LT1 Vette part, but appears to be reverse rotation from GM’s installation.





I had to make a bolt to pull the new harmonic balancer on. I used part of the old balancer bolt since they can't be retorqued. They are torque to yield. I also borrowed a few pieces from my HF power steering pump pulley installer. It actually worked really well. I don't think that a commercial installer would have worked any better.

Once again, with the old drive system, I have something to add to the “to be sold” pile. Man, it keeps getting bigger and more expensive. I’ll soon have enough cast offs to build another car! Yeah, like that would actually work! Who knows, if I don’t move the old drive to someone else, I might be able to use it on a future project. One with a little more width in the engine bay. Maybe my 46.

I'm learning a lot more about working with metal just watching you guys. I don't think I seen that Holley kit when I did mine, I wish I did, I like the sanden compressor much better. It looks much more narrow than the holley kit I got.

Seth, I don't think the Mid system was out when you did your truck. I liked it the first time I saw it. Holley appears to have done their homework on it. I was very impressed with how it all went together. Not a single spacer!

Originally Posted by Hotrod46

Seth, I don't think the Mid system was out when you did your truck. I liked it the first time I saw it. Holley appears to have done their homework on it. I was very impressed with how it all went together. Not a single spacer!

Do you have the part number for the kit ? I really doubt that I'll change mine, just curious. I see they now make a conversion kit to go from the A4 to the Sanden for my setup. I like mine alright except I'm always wondering when my compressor is going to fail.

Holley part number on my kit is 20-185. There is another part number 20-180 that includes an SFI certified balancer. Mine is just stock a stock type balancer. The 20-180 kit also comes with several billet covers.

That is a very nice looking system, I may have gone with that instead of modifying my stock one if I had known about it.

I saw their kits and if I didn't have so many projects, I would have gotten them for my Camaro project. Did you have LS1/LS3 stuff on yours before?

The setup I had before was from LS Brackets.com. The stock GM drives I looked at wouldn't fit around the steering or were too high.

The LS Brackets parts I have are very similar in layout to some of the Holley setups, but are made of laser cut aluminum plates and lots of spacers. They would have worked fine if I had 2 or 3 more inches of width in the engine bay. Something like a muscle car, pickup or tri-five Chevy.