Rhode Island Spyder Project

Mine as well. Just had them off to un-stick a rear caliper.

You should have enough cable on the other end, i.e. at the e-brake handle/adjustment.

Not Finished, but running.  I was able to take the Spyder out for a lap around the neighborhood yesterday.  Still a ton of things to do, but it was nice to fire up the engine.  I'm glad to ran the engine in my other car last year,  Being able to have it fire right up was nice.  non of the stress of starting a green engine.  The Magaflow exhaust sounds great too.

I'm trying to arrange insurance so I can start the registration process.  My local guy has a couple of quotes.  They need to see some pictures before the firm up the coverage (Front, Rear, Engine and Trunk).  Haggerty came in at $700/year.  I was told they will only offer coverage including collision.  I put the value of the car at $40K.  Any guidance you can offer is welcome.  I'm working on the local insurance guy to drop the works "Kit Car" from his vocabulary. 

Superb, Tom. Looking great!

Nice!!!!!!!

@Tom Gilchrist Great job on getting your Spyder on the road! Let the good times roll.

Nice job, Tom. That's a big step!

@Tom Gilchrist posted:

Not Finished, but running.  I was able to take the Spyder out for a lap around the neighborhood yesterday.  Still a ton of things to do, but it was nice to fire up the engine.  I'm glad to ran the engine in my other car last year,  Being able to have it fire right up was nice.  non of the stress of starting a green engine.  The Magaflow exhaust sounds great too.

I'm trying to arrange insurance so I can start the registration process.  My local guy has a couple of quotes.  They need to see some pictures before the firm up the coverage (Front, Rear, Engine and Trunk).  Haggerty came in at $700/year.  I was told they will only offer coverage including collision.  I put the value of the car at $40K.  Any guidance you can offer is welcome.  I'm working on the local insurance guy to drop the works "Kit Car" from his vocabulary.

Try American Modern and ask for an Agreed Value policy.

@Tom Gilchrist  The last that I heard, RI RMV had adopted “Replica” as a category of special interest cars, along with Hot Rod and Custom.  It often takes a while for the insurance companies to catch up.   They may be more familiar with a Factory Five Cobra replica so maybe play that angle to get them to pay attention to it as a replica?  I don’t know how the RI RMV handles emissions testing on a replica so I can’t offer anything for that.

I had Liberty Mutual on my car when I lived in Tiverton, but it was registered as a ‘69 VW Beetle Convertible.  Also had Liberty Mutual when we came back to Mass. (still as a ‘69 Bug) but when I changed my registration to  ‘57 Porsche Speedster replica they freaked out and dropped me.  I ended up with Hagerty with an agreed value policy and have been happy, so far.

Hagerty knows full well what the cars are, it's the local agents that usually don't know.

I don't know if RI is more expensive than NY but I have Hagerty and added my Cayman to the policy along with my Spyder. Both cars is $900 a year, not bad I think for Agreed Value coverage for both, flatbed towing and zero deductible. Spyder only was about $550(LOL!) or $600.

Thanks for the information and support.  I'll talk to the agent about an "Agreed Value" policy.

The lap around the neighborhood was fun, but it really had to be a lap since I didn't have reverse.  The guys at Special Editions tell me that they very often have to trim a pall to get the shift fork to fully move into the reverse position.  Looks like I'll be spending the afternoon on my back doing some sculpting. 

"Very often" is every single time. It's in the PBS shifter instructions. The reverse fork must be trimmed, best done with a cutoff wheel. The nosecone(tailcone in our case) must be removed to get to the fork. I put a plastic bag over my trans and poked the reverse fork through. A Sharpie mark is a good guide for where to cut. It isn't much to cut, but it must be done.

Temporarily stick a drill bit into the tapped hole at the bottom of the diagram and rest a straight edge against the drill bit, make your mark and cut. Easy peasy.

That picture is all I can find, the PBS website is down.

I usually use two hands to get reverse, the lockout spring is STRONG.

Thanks for the info on the PBS shifter.  I didn't receive any literature with my shifter, just put it together and put it in the car.  I should have run it through the gears before I put it in the car.  In any event, armed with the info Danny provided above and some insight from Special Editions I got it sorted out yesterday.  I was not enthusiastic about loping off a portion of the reverse shift fork with out understand what the real source of interference is.  I played with the pieces for a while and found that the shift pall sticks further into the reverse fork than the other two.  So much further that the round portion of the pall is sticking into the fork so there were four points of contact between the pall and fork.  The two points on the pall that should contact the fork and two points on the pall shaft, essential pining the fork so the pall would not rotate.  I dressed the pall shaft a little to get some motion started but could not get enough without weakening the pall shaft.  I put a radius on the inboard leading edge of the reverse shift fork to get the rest of the motion I needed.  Works smooth now.

Doing this while installed in the car was not as bad as I thought it would be.  Getting the rear mount off with the engine installed was a bit tricky.  Before I put it back together I drilled through the rear mount so the shift housing bolt that is captured by the rear mount can be removed with the rear mount installed.  It made getting it back together much easier.

Now onto my alignment and brakes.

Glad you got it sorted, Tom. These things happen when you change the workings of the shift action from an arc to a straight line...

But the function of this shifter is just snick-snick superb. You'll love it. It's definitely better than any rod shifter I've used or adjusted in a Spyder. I've worked on a few different Becks and Vintages besides my own. The PBS is #1.

Carey sent me a beautiful round and polished aluminum shift rod to replace the squared-off PBS dune-buggy looking one. I immediately shortened it(it was pretty long) to the original PBS length and I absolutely love it.

I bought a custom knob from Twisted Shifterz and that came out very nice. They can make MANY sizes, styles, colors, shift patterns, and threads. I did black with white pattern routed into the knob. They really weren't expensive either.

https://www.twistedshifterz.co...lections/shift-knobs

This would help the Speedster guys too, if you like custom stuff.

I originally took this pic to show my Bluetooth receiver, so it isn't the greatest one of the shift knob itself. It is a decent shot of my Jim Dubois e-brake though. 

Good to hear about how happy you are with the PBS shifter.  I'll look forward to enjoying it myself.  I think the arc versus straight line movement of the shift pall is the source to transmission mod requirement.  I think the angle of the pall slide is a little off.  As in all things, when you did into the details you probably would find that they did the best they could considering all the constraints.

Thanks for the info on the shift knob.  I have one on back order from Special Editions.  The threads on the shift shaft were wearing a hole in my palm so I stopped by Auto Zone to a knob to at least cover the raw threads.  I plan to use it on my lawn mower when I get the real one.  Have a good week end.   

PBS...Click-click...clunk...$ 600 + with cables vs.(0) for Randy's rod

ReV

I'm curious what your purpose is here, Rev?

I would have commented earlier, but I'm getting ready for Carlisle tomorrow. Car is loaded in the trailer.

You mean the New Canaan C&C…it’s a fun, low key event

ReV

I've got a question about ride height.  Over the weekend I set the rear wheels perpendicular to the ground with no passenger weight.  I then adjusted the front beam to get the floor level.  I used a string system to complete the alignment.  I was pretty happy with the alignment setup, it checked out within a string width when I rotated the wheel boards 180, and gave me good access to make the adjustments.

My concern is that after I drove the car into the garage and my wife and I got out, the rear wheels showed a fair amount of negative camber.  I rolled the car back a forth a bit with no passenger weight and the wheels came back to neutral camber.  I expected this and thought about placing bags of cement in the seats during my alignment, but did not think I needed to go to that trouble.  Now I'm wondering.  If I set it up so the wheels are neutral with passenger weight onboard, it will have more positive camber than I care for while parked.  What is the right compromise?

What's "right" can be different for everybody.

You've got to get the front high enough to not rub the tires when two-up, but not high enough to look too high.

You've got to get the rear to sit not too high(into positive camber) or too low(bottoming out). I initially ran my Spyder pretty low all around, but raised it after I bottomed on speed bumps going into Lime Rock Park.

I have the rear set around 2.5 to 3.5 degrees negative camber(depending on weight in the seats), and the front to be level with the rear height or slightly lower. Slight front-lower rake helps high speed handling(110+). The front is about 1.5 degrees negative camber.

I run 1/16" toe-in, both front and rear. These settings have served me well over the years on the street, Auto-X, and DE laps.