Happy Thanksgiving, Jack.

Vicenc! Good to see you on here. How’s Montse doing?

Sent the pics to Rare Car Network magazine (fka ReInCarNation fka Kit Car Builder) which may or may not still do a print edition.

They ran ’em.

Most of our VW-based cars have mounted tank mounted too high for this to work.  It’s feasible only if the tank is way down low on the floor, as in the Duchess, which has a custom fuel tank.

Spyder debuted in public over the weekend at cars & coffee in Hunt Valley on Saturday morning and Annapolis on Sunday.

People seem to be interested…

You can set camber by loosening the nut on the ball joint and turning the eccentric with a channel lock. You also need to set camber first, then toe. Changing the camber will change the toe-in, but changing the toe will not affect camber.

Oh! All this only after ride height is set. The ride height affects camber and toe!

Crash’s advice is spot-on. I run about .5 degrees negative camber on my car (spec is 0) and it’s good. I also have one set of caster shims in place, so the caster is about 3-4 degrees. Stock Bugs came with less than that, to keep low speed steering easy, and it gets worse: typically, any VW whose front end is lower then the rear will lose enough…[Read more]

It’s really fun to drive, Dale. You should come up and I’ll let you take a spin.

Been sorting the Spyder for a few months now. It’s running strong and tracking straight, stopping short and sounding delightfully loud. On Tuesday I revved the engine to 6000 rpm on a highway entrance ramp, and it seemed to like that. The dyno slips with these engines (I have one for a sister build, not this engine per-se) indicate they made peak…[Read more]

Given the way they’re made—with the divot for the grub screw on the edge of the large leaves only—the small ones should slide out. But they probably won’t until you loosen the center grub screw. I just rebuilt the beam on my Spyder and it was a real adventure sorting out how the height adjusters worked on this one: the grub screw was buried ins…[Read more]

If it hasn’t been run in a while, maybe pull the coil wire and turn the engine over with the starter for 10-20 seconds to get the oil flowing first before trying to fire it.

It looks like a Fiberfab. The headlight brackets are custom made.

Red flags are the same as any with a 30+-year-old homebuilt car: look at the floors and frame head. Check all the rubber bits (tires especially) for dry rot. Assume the gas tank is full of rust and scale. Examine body and engine carefully. Assess your own true willingness to work…[Read more]

You probably know that the period correct outlet looks like two RCA style speaker plugs as found on the back of a stereo amplifier. As in

But since these work well with only my period correct brass “trouble light”

and Happy Jack’s hilarious portable tea kettle (which is hands-down the absolute best TDr accessory I have ever, or will ever, run…[Read more]

My blinkers don’t work about every other year. It’s my reminder to go clean and re-do the ground connections.

You should be able to line everything up by loosening the steering box mounting bolts and clocking it slightly. As I recall, there is a “stop” of some sort on the beam or mounting frame that should have (probably had to be!) been cut off during the kit’s assembly, allowing the steering box to spin more fully on the top tube. That’s what makes it…[Read more]

A word on “clips” being on your clutch cable:

Nearly all these cars all use a shortened clutch cable, owing to the pedal set having been moved rearward a foot or 14 inches. On my car, the PO made a loop in the cable over the transaxle and then clamped that with a U-shaped cable clamp. It worked perfectly well like that for probably 25…[Read more]

It’s a right of passage.

How did you get the rod out? If you removed it through the front port, you’ll have to fish it back through that way. Feed a wire through and tie it off then pull it very gently (there’s a lot of stuff in the tunnel to get hung up on).

If the rod is laying on the floor or the tunnel you have to loop something under it and lift it up. A coat hanger…[Read more]

Been a while since I updated the Spyder project here. We had a setback involving the front suspension, the fixing of which may be relevant to owners of VW-based TDrs.

Short story: the inner bushings were mostly missing from my torsion beam.

Completely rebuilt it with Delrin bushings.

Since then I’ve put about 60 miles on the car in testing,…[Read more]