75 Spider West Coast Tour - DIY Spider Bits

[joelittel]

Thanks!

[nelsonj]

Do you have an itinerary yet? I'm in Ventura county and would love to meet up and drive a leg with with you if schedules permit.

Once you have details you should post to see if other Spiders can escort you along the way. Sounds like fun and good luck!

[Andyblahblah]

That'd be great!
We should have a schedule later this week. Would love to have some mini-caravans along the way.

Meanwhile, does anyone have the dimensions for the grills of a 75? I'll do a post in another thread, but I'm waterjetting some custom ones and will gladly share the files when they're done.

[Andyblahblah]

Here's the mock up of the grill so far.

[lglade]

The new grille looks pretty cool, but keep an eye on your coolant temperature for a while after you install it. If you reduce airflow vis-à-vis the original grille, you may impact the radiator's ability to keep things cool under the hood.

[Andyblahblah]

Thanks lglade,
I've opened up the mesh quite a bit - will be cutting them tomorrow and posting pix. Just finished about 20 hours of sanding/bodyfill/sanding/wetsanding hell and will be buffing tomorrow. I'll be so glad when I don't have blue fingernails anymore.

Talked to Joshua from 123D Circuits today, he's helping out with the turn signals and showed me the prototype. Very cool.

[Andyblahblah]

The turn signals will be 3 concentric rings of LEDs (called NeoPixels) mounted to a custom-created circuit board - it's got a USB that will let me convert the existing signals to a cigarette lighter! I'll be using a cigarette lighter, a USB charger and these tricky bits. More to come.

[Andyblahblah]

Update on the grills: had the chance to water jet out the lower grill this week. I think it looks great. Won't be able to do the upper for a couple of weeks, but after looking at the opening again, I may need to tweak the design anyway.


I won't be Abarth-ing it out, but I liked the idea of having a little nod somewhere on the car.



And I let the buffer beat me up for a while and polished the paint. Sorry for the terrible pic, will have some better ones after the rest of the trim gets cleaned up.

[Andyblahblah]

Do you have an itinerary yet? I'm in Ventura county and would love to meet up and drive a leg with with you if schedules permit.

Once you have details you should post to see if other Spiders can escort you along the way. Sounds like fun and good luck!

OKAY - much progress this week on the schedule. Here is the itinerary, based on workshops that we're doing for Tinkercad, 123D Circuits and Fusion 360.

Tuesday 19th - San Diego Fab Lab
Wednesday 20th - San Diego AM - Pasadena PM
Thursday 21st - Long Beach Public Library
Friday 22nd - Orange County-ish area ? Disneyland? Jay Leno's Garage visit?
Saturday 23/Sunday 24 - making our way to San Francisco, then to Boise, ID
Monday 25th - Boise, ID Public library (sounds like it's going to be a big event, the Governors office is organizing)
Tuesday 26th - Bend, OR @ DIY Cave
Wednesday 27th - Portland, OR
Thursday 28th - Portland, OR / Seattle, WA
Friday 29th - Seattle, WA

That's a lot of travel, just typing it is making me tired. We'd love to meet some fellow vintage car guys along the way for milkshakes. I'll have a more definite timeline in the next week or so.

[Andyblahblah]

Got the console model from the Fusion 360 guys and getting ready to make the cardboard mold. Here are some versions, seen in MeshMixer.


Also, I went ahead and 3D printed a small version to get a sense of what it'll look like when finished.



I think we may just do it in carbon fiber - for another $75, why not..?

[Andyblahblah]

Got the custom lights installed yesterday. They're actually kinda cool. I wouldn't say they were easy to make - though my friend seemingly did them with relatively little difficulty - they are simple, though. The circuits are printed and the components are just soldered in place. The cool part is that they're set up to be soldered to a bayonet fitting, so they fit into the existing sockets.



Here they are in action:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BHz5r8WgA1w ... dyblahblah
Sorry, can't figure out how to embed video.

[joelittel]

They look great. Nice job.

[RRoller123]

VERY clever!

[Andyblahblah]

First day out of the shop, so I figured I'd make the test drive to Alice's for a cup of coffee. It ran so well, I just kept going south.

Made it to San Diego last night with no issue, except some wooly steering when I got off the highway. I sprayed lubricant on everything this morning - from throttle cable to steering linkages - and it seemed to appreciate that. We're here another day and head up to Pasadena tomorrow late afternoon, will probably stop at the San Diego Auto Museum.

In LA for 3 days, then headed back up to SF Friday evening/Saturday morning. Then it's northeast on Sunday morning through Reno all the way to Boise, where we'll be for a couple nights before Bend on Tuesday, Portland Wednesday and rolling into Seattle Thursday.

Long way to go yet...

by Jeremy Borkat

by Jeremy Borkat

by Jeremy Borkat

[calvinconrad]

your spider is looking pretty sharp.