Thread: Project Sebring GT Spyder

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These pictures are from a local British car show.







Here are a few shots of an original AC Ace. Carroll Shelby eventually turned these into the Cobra. Not many left in original condition. A lot had V8's swapped into them after the Cobra came out. You can see the family history of the Cobra in this car, but there were a lot of body mods made to get to the final shape that we know and love.







A few more from the British show.

This is the only picture I have from Cruizin' the Coast. That's Joe and Amanda Martin from the Iron Resurrection show on Velocity. The other one is just some random old fat guy. I went in my daily truck this year, mostly for the swap meet, but did manage to catch up with some friends every night we were there. Had some good food, sat by highway 90 and watched a seemingly endless stream of mostly cool cars go by. There were over 8500 registered cars this year. No telling how many more were there unregistered. Except for Thursday, when it was hot, the weather was perfect the days we were there, with a cool breeze blowing in from the Gulf.

I do have something I wish someone would answer, though. Why would anybody go to the expense of owning a cool convertible and then drive around in such beautiful weather with the dang top up? I saw that everywhere I went. Put the !!!!!$^&(*#@! top down and enjoy the car for what it is!!!

Oh well, enough of this goofing off. Back to work on my car so maybe I can go topless cruizin' in it next year! Well, on second thought, maybe no one would want to see THAT!

I do have something I wish someone would answer, though. Why would anybody go to the expense of owning a cool convertible and then drive around in such beautiful weather with the dang top up? I saw that everywhere I went. Put the !!!!!$^&(*#@! top down and enjoy the car for what it is!!!

Another I don't understand is the top down and side windows up. If I owned a convertible, maybe I would understand.

I've been making some progress on the car, but as usual, ran into a few things I wasn't counting on. These led me off on a tangent to what I really wanted to get done, but in the end it was necessary.

If you recall my goal is to get all the chassis fab work complete and ready ready to paint. I thought it would be a good time to assemble the body completely to make sure there would be no surprises later. I've had it together a couple of times before, but if you've been reading along for awhile, you will remember that I straightened out the rear body mounts, built adjustable front mounts, and moved the door posts to match the assembly drawings. I was fairly confident that nothing had moved too far to be corrected with regular adjustment, but as it turns out, it's a good thing that I decided to check. I thought that this would be a quick check, a few simple tweaks, and then go back to work on finishing the chassis. It turned into several days, spread over a few weeks, of fitting and modification to get everything to work and look right.

The door adjustment on this car is 2 slots that overlap each other. One vertical and the other horizontal. This setup gives infinite adjustment within it's range of movement, but is more than a little frustrating in use. Every time you loosen to make an adjustment in one direction, the door can slip down or move in some way you didn't intend.



I had to make a couple of special bolts with a tail so that I wouldn't have to hold a backup wrench. I just didn't have enough hands for all that. These will be replaced one at a time during final assembly.

I finally had to resort to clamping a set of Vice grip pliers on one section to make a stop so that the door couldn't slip down while I was moving it horizontally. The best way I found to make all this work was to leave one bolt lightly tightened while loosening the other bolt up to move either the top or bottom. By alternately tightening the top and bottom bolts, I could slowly "walk" the door to where it needed to be. Also, with the front body/fender section being one piece, every adjustment you make to one side affects the other side.

It didn't take long to figure out that with the mods I had made to the mounts and door posts, there wasn't enough adjustment in the right places on the door hinges to get enough clearance for the doors to fit. This resulted in having to rework the hinges. This was actually not a bad thing since the 2 piece hinges would sometimes bind up and not allow the door to move when I was trying to adjust it or cause it to move in a direction I didn't want. Instead of the separate bent flat bar parts that Classic Roadsters used, I redid the hinges with a single long piece of 3" x 3" angle iron. Tying the upper and lower hinges together this way actually helped with the adjusting process since I could have a reasonable chance to predict how the door would move.


This is a hinge before my mods.



This is after my one piece conversion.

I also had to modify a couple of hardware store turnbuckles to adjust the upper part of the front cap. Without the supporting shape of the original fiberglass firewall, the center of cowl area would droop down and flatten out. This pushed the tops of the fenders out where they met the doors and made the front cap too wide. This also made the cowl not fit the contoured part that I cut out of the original firewall. After pulling the body sides in with the turnbuckles, everything fits as it should.

While I was attempting to adjust the doors, I noticed that there was still some flex in the door posts. I decided to add a brace from the dash bar down to the transmission tunnel. This was something I had already planned to do and it seemed like the right time. It was made of bent 18 gauge steel and bolted to piece of angle iron that was welded to the trans tunnel.



There are more braces planned that will tie the dash bar into the new bar I put in behind the firewall. This will eventually form a truss like structure that should be very ridged. This brace helped a bunch, though and it will be hidden behind the console. It looks like it might be a good place to mount the relay and fuse block, too. Should make it easy to access.

That extra bracing should take care of a good part of the cowl shake when going over woopies.

Your fuse box can never be too easy to access. I wouldn't criticize an installation on drawer slides, that pulled out for inspection. Hmm.. that was sarcasm, but it sounds like a good idea.

Very cool on the show pics! I'd love to hear that hemi too! How were Joe and Amanda to meet? I like watching their show. They put out some sweet rides. Nice work on your car too!

That thing is going to be rock solid when your finished.

Thanks guys.

40, I wish that I had more time to spend talking with them, but there was a long line. I like their show, too.

Firebird, I've seen street rods that had the fuse block on a drop down drawer of sorts. I totally agree with stuff being easy to get to. When I wired my 46, I was 20 years younger and I hid the fuse block way up under the dash. I won't make that mistake again.

Bob, I hope all this extra metal helps with the cowl shake. This car had it bad.

After spending a couple of days reworking hinges and tweaking the body and doors, I thought I had everything fitting pretty good. Then I tried to put the hood back on and, of course, it wouldn't fit. When I built the hood hinge system, I took careful measurements and built it to fit with little to no adjustment. That was a mistake and I should have known better. On any project like this, adjustment capability is your friend. I spent another couple of days adding some adjustment into my design.



Most of it went fine, but I ran into one hitch. The original lower hood latch mount didn't have any way to add enough adjustment without a major rework. It was easier just to pitch that old part and remake the whole thing. Like many things, the second time around resulted in a much better part. It's stronger and simpler. I had noticed some flex in the hood hinge mounts when the hood was open and I improved that by using thicker material. As before, all of this will eventually get covered by an aluminum trim panel, but this one actually looks good enough to just be painted.

Since the cowl was where it needed to be, it would be a good time to glue in the fiberglass section from the original firewall just to keep everything shaped right. I looked around at different epoxies that were recommended for fiberglass and found one called Lord Fusor that was made for SMC (Corvette panels) and fiberglass. It came in one of those twin tube applicators that mixes the glue in a special tip and applies it like caulk.







The twin tubes needed a special gun and it turns out that it was pretty expensive for something that I might not use but once or twice. What I found was a twin tube gun at a pawn shop that was made for another type of construction epoxy, but it looked like it could be made to work. I think I paid $15 for it and was able to turn down one of the pistons and redrill a few guide rod holes to fit the Lord Fusor tubes. It worked like a champ!



After roughing up the 2 pieces and cleaning them with acetone, I applied the epoxy and stuck the brace in place with a few wooden wedges. When the epoxy set up, I drilled a some holes through the fiberglass and the aluminum firewall. A few bolts hold the 2 parts together and the metal firewall is now attached to the fiberglass body. Sure stiffened things up and I could take the turnbuckles off.

The front fenders were still a little low and there was not enough clearance for the hood latch to work , so I had to raise the front fenders and start completely over on the whole alignment process. At least this time, I had all my adjustment mods in place and it went a little smoother and quicker.

I think it's safe to say that the doors and fenders align better now than they have since this car was built. The front and rear halves of the body were originally mounted with the door openings too short to fit the doors. Now there is a decent gap and the contours line up reasonably well. The hood opens and closes exactly as it did before, too.



That's not to say that everything is perfect, though. The door gaps are a little bigger than I would like, but any tighter and the door hits the body. Also, there are some things that will have to be corrected with body work, but that's not unusual on any fiberglass body. The curve on the front of the hood is not quite the same as the curve it's supposed to match on the fender. There's no way to adjust that out, so the fenders will have to be built up to match the hood. That's the worst spot, but there are a few minor areas on the doors, too. All that can wait until I get the car assembled for the final time and do the body work.

BTW - In case anyone that's following along on this build missed it, here is a link to a separate thread I started about the new 2x4 intake I put on the engine. I spent a couple of days tinkering with this before it all fit under the hood.

Dual Quad Sequential EFI

You are a very resourceful guy. Your air cleaner is really something.