Thunder Ranch build thread

Broke out the old-school spray gun for the primer and bed liner. Got it done but, in retrospect, a modern ultra-cheep HPLV gun from Harbor Freight or somewhere probably would have worked better. The #30 tip on the '60s-era Devilbiss seemed a bit miserly with the coverage.... 

But anyway.

It's hard to see the silver color of the bed liner in some of these pics, and the texture is very slight—it's a bit like 120-grit sandpaper.

My rough finish is very apparent in the driver's fender well, where these wheel marks look like hammer marks. You can't even see the silver in this shot, let alone the roughness of the coating, but my tastefully-sloppy body work shines right through!

(again, for reference, Spyder Factory's meticulous high-buck all-aluminum recreation):

As this product is a 2-part urethane, I believe it can be top-coated with my body-color paint directly, but will double-check before trying that. 

All-in-all a good learning day

Honestly, once you get a few miles on it, nobody will notice a dang thing. Road grime, tar, and rock chips will even it all out. Looks OK to me.

Updates.

Dropped off the seats at the upholsterer today after work. Getting after the last of the rocker boxes now.

Also:

Are those the 16's?

I don't think the Vintage 190s come in 16.

15s. 

There are no Vintage 203s as of yet.

I see what you did there!

edsnova posted:

15s. 

There are no Vintage 203s as of yet.

 Ed Ericson wins the Internet today.

This is going to be one fine piece of art.

I just gotta take a day, and drop in on Ol' Ed and get up close and personal with this build. Plus check out his cool but rusty lift.  Before it gets cold . . .

Still fettling those last couple of inner panels. Remade one of them today, testing to see if the clam latches can still be installed with them in place. drilling for wires and such to go through.

I also re-bent my middle fuel line to go inside the frame rail instead of outside. Turns out that's the correct routing on the original car.

These will be clamped to the tubing.

Kelly, come on by. I'll beer ya.

Wires now.

Gotta string them through the rocker boxes before riveting those in. Started with the grommets.

Got the passenger side—no wires—already done. This side will be all but hidden behind the Accusump, but I will touch it up before final assembly.

The dreaded wiring...................    

Should you run into wiring questions give me a call ...I am in my WV mountain campsite office this week.

I actually don't mind wiring in new stuff.

From figuring out what needs to be done electrically, through laying it out to be neat and unobtrusive, to the actual soldering and connecting, it can all be kind of satisfying and almost therapeutic in a way. Especially if it all lights up as intended when you finally throw the switch.

It's untangling and making sense of the mess that someone else has created that can bring tears to a grown man.

Hey Alan......   Looks like you left the garage door open....   

Ed....  I know you will have it wired up in no time......   I would like to suggest that you bond in extra ground points under the dash and paint over/seal them .....  The car is looking GOOOOD......

Ed, are you using cloth wire tape to wrap the wires .... it works great and is easy to peel off if you need to access the wires, provided of course you leave areas where the tape is cut.  

Thanks, guys. This is a complete wire harness from Thunder Ranch which came with the kit. It's supposedly tested good but also has some wonky switch gear I'll need to change out and of course the gauges I have are a little different and then there's the Accusump and some other details. So it's sort of half way between DIY and sorting-out the PO's mess. 

Ray I'm wrapping these with a nylon mesh loom that sort of snaps around the wire bundle and then stays put. Easily removable and similar to the OG stuff, though it's the wrong material and black instead of off-white—which I think will look better on my firewall and lashed to my frame rails anyway so I'm leaving it that color.

Also, zip ties. 

Once I get the back end roughed-in I'll get under the dash, and yeah, there will be redundant grounds and grounding lugs in the car. The - side of the battery is getting its own wire all the way back.

With the wires in I'll move on to final body work, placing the mirror, cinching up the windshield and testing the wipers, drilling for the emblems, block sanding, before taking it all apart for paint.

(There are one or two more WTF detail projects I'm planning to do before final-final reassembly, but both could as easily be done after paint, so...)

Sacto has nailed it wrt wiring.  Back in school us MEs had to take some EE classes and labs, and I was the only one on my team that could take the wiring sketches for the lab that we dreamed up, and actually hook the shyt up right.  As to the Speedster, I have lived the nightmare of having to deal with what JPS scrabbled together under my dash. Wires are either white or red, and that's about it. One time, Dealing with reworking my tach so it actually functioned like a tach, when putting all back, I switched the alternator light wire with the instrument illumination wire. Was a pretty big mystery for a while trying to figure out why the dashlights would dim and brighten when running at night and the battery would run down when driving during the day.  You figure it out.

Noticed just the slightest bit of slop in the homemade pedal action and the copper pipe bearing/bushings still had the tiny bit of swage on the end from the tubing cutter, which made me think they'd tend to get sloppier over time. So I bought these nylon bearings from McMaster-Carr and spent some of the weekend re-bushing my pedal set to make them better. 

Did some similar cleanup on the gas pedal action. Re-painted the left two, added a lil grease and popped the covers on, then installed them in the car. 

Ready for final adjustments.

Now they're smoove, baby! Back in the car so I can make the floating floor pattern and knock that chore off my to-do list.

Nice!

Love that rats' nest in upper left of pic.  Some more serious problems await you . . .

Hope those plastic bushings hold up.  Keep 'em greased, lithium based is the ticket, I think.

Floating floor pattern #1.

Looking good!

Thanks! It's close. Might need to shift the pattern about 3/8 to the left.

Frazoo (re the plastic bushing/bearings) These are McMaster-Carr PN 1281N19 rated at 110 pounds at 40 rpm "dynamic radial load capacity," which I have no idea what that means, but 110 pounds sounded like enough for this application.

I bought them to fill the very small gap between the ID of my copper pipe bush and the OD of the bolt/shaft that the pedal rides on, and they do that very nicely. They look a lot like the ones I pulled out of my '67 Nova's pedal set when I changed over from the Powerglide to a manual transmission, and those were vintage 1967 when I looked at them in 1982 and put them back (with a little grease), and they were still working fine in the car when I sold it in 2003.

The EMPI pedal set I scavenged to make these features a steel-on-steel pivot hinge—no bearing or bushing and no grease fitting. I thought my copper idea (plus grease) was an improvement on that, and the new nylon bushings would improve it still more.

And that's about all I know about that.... so:

If you or anyone here knows something relevant to this install and application about the forces a driver puts on brake and clutch pedals, please chime in publicly or privately. I'm keen to learn new things, and  if it's necessary, I'd much rather re-do this now than hear gripes two years from now from some dude who paid me a lot of money.

Re "rats nest:" That's a fresh wire harness with most (not all) of the wires already labeled. But you're right, it's still going to be a pita.

Well, my first thought was “Why not bronze bushings, drilled for grease fittings?  They would last Fo-Evah! 

But then you wrote that Chevy used Nylon bushings on their pedal pivots and those worked OK, so what the hey?  I remember some REALLY beefy clutch pedal effort in a lot of those old Chebys and if they survived, then your Spyder (oops....Can I call it that?) should be just fine.

Rave On, Spydah Man!

Oh, and don’t listen to ALB’s potential advice on that floating floor thingie-jingie.   He’ll try tah get’cha tah drill it fullah holes, fah sure.

(Sorry, Al...)

Gordon Nichols posted:

Well, my first thought was “Why not bronze bushings, drilled for grease fittings?  They would last Fo-Evah! 

That was my first thought as well. 

But then I thought, “you know, he’s out there building a car, and I struggle to wax mine”, so I let it pass. 

Floating floor.

Nicely done, Ed! Isn't it great having access to nice equipment?

And @Gordon Nichols- if you can- why not drill it full of holes?

Stan wrote:    But then I thought, “you know, he’s out there building a car, and I struggle to wax mine”, so I let it pass.    ...and that made me laugh, in a good way:~)

Upholsterer says the seats are coming along.

Meanwhile I've got the floating floor mostly assembled. That's just 1/4-inch birch ply so I stained it, painted the edges then sealed it on all sides with Pelucid

before gluing and screwing the purlins to it. They're seasoned, treated pine so all done shrinking. They got a coat of Pelucid as well, and then one of Minwax Helmsman's spar urethane. I also put a reinforcement "plate" of additional 1/4-inch plywood under the driver's heel. 

Hey!  

Where’d ya get the rubber floor mat material?

Looks superb!

Nicely done on the floating floor!

I made some mats for my car with that same ribbed rubber flooring. I got mine from Lowes.

Amazon. 

Rubber-Cal 03_167_W_FR_04 Fine Rib Corrugated Rubber Floor Mats, 1/8" Thick x 3' x 4' Runners, Black

(I know it's not exactly correct; the original cars had vinyl down there, basically the same as the barber pole stuff on most of the seats. But this is pretty close and it's made to have feet and shoes on it alla time so).

Installed. I still gotta rivet in a couple of little tabs on the front firewall for this to slide under, and I plan to drill a couple holes through the rear corners, tap through the floor with rivet-nuts and use black, allen-head furniture bolts to cinch it down. But...later.

It's not a perfect replica, but not a bad likeness—if I do say so my own self—for an amateur making stuff out of junk. Here's 550-0056's pedals (courtesy Type 550.com)

And mine:

Very nice. 

Ed your pedals look awesome compared to the others

Looks excellent Ed!

Wonderful work, Ed.