The last thing you did.

[RoyBatty]

I decided to make some ergonomic changes to my Spiders driving position.
I have two things that are in need of tweaking to make the car fit me better.
One is the position of the accelerator pedal. Especially in the cruise mode on the highway.
The pedal sits too high for my liking. I'm not at all a tall person, and yet I find myself in a near kneeling position with my right leg when sitting in the drivers seat. This is an adjustment I have not yet worked out.

The one I addressed today is the position of the steering wheel.
Again for my situation, the wheel sits a little to high off my knees.
So I went to the local Ace Hardware and picked up the needed longer bolts and four 1/2" spacers.
I removed all but one bolt which left the upper section of the steering column wiggling around as I positioned the spacers and bolts in the other three locations. Once I had those three started, I then inserted the fourth spacer and bolt.
I did notice that during this process, the harness to the ignition switch seemed to be a bit taut and so I thought to my own self, I need to keep an eye on that.
I then finished tightening the steering column bolts and went to start up for a test drive.
As soon as I turned the key to the run position, I noticed a slight warning buzzer sound that persisted until the engine started. I also noticed that the engine needed to crank quite a bit longer before it started up. Hmmmm odd. Maybe I flooded it?
So I go out and head down the road to pick up a few other little parts at the local hardware store. Car runs fine.
Then I hit the key to start up to leave the hardware store and get a repeat of the last start up at home. OK, more than weird. Now I'm thinking I have weak spark at start up or some other ignition issue.
On the drive home it hit me that I had seen the wires to the ignition switch loose all their slack when I did my steering column relocation.
So once back in the driveway, I get a flashlight and slide the rubber boot forward off the switch, exposing the connections.
Guess what I found.
A single wire connector at the 7:00 o'clock position had pulled loose from it's terminal.
Immediately tried the start process and the engine hit in the first couple of seconds. As it has done on further testing in the last couple hours, and had been doing since I started driving it last September.
So as I have learned from many years of wrenching in general aviation. When a problem pops up right after performing any other repair/maintenance procedure. Go back and look at THE LAST THING YOU DID.
I don't care how much you think they aren't related, check anyway.

[Zippy]

I couldn't agree more. I almost always screw something up when I'm trying to fix something on the car. The other thing I find is that when I am trying to assemble something, if it doesn't go together right and I feel like I am forcing the situation, if I stop and look at what I am doing, I have left off a washer or forgotten a fitting or something else is wrong. It's like my subconcious knows I messed up and is stopping me from proceeding until I look at the situation again to see what I mesed up. Wierd!

[kmead]

On my coupe I unbolted the pedal from the rod an cut about two inches off. This moved the pedal back and up, it is still perfectly placed for heal and toe action with the brake. When you unbolt the pedal you can slide it up the rod to decide how much you want to cut off.

Another thing you can do is buy longer bolts (grade 8 ) to hold the steering column and some washers to space the wheel end of the column bracket down to make the wheel more vertical. A friend of mine took the upper end of a Super Brava adjustable column and put it into his coupe which was nicer still.

[mdrburchette]

Another thing you can do is buy longer bolts (grade 8 ) to hold the steering column and some washers to space the wheel end of the column bracket down to make the wheel more vertical. A friend of mine took the upper end of a Super Brava adjustable column and put it into his coupe which was nicer still.

We did this on the Lemons racer so I would have a comfortable driving position. We taped the washers together so it would be easy to install or uninstall them during a pit stop.