View Single Post
  #1  
Old 2nd September 2013, 17:43
Mister Towed's Avatar
Mister Towed Mister Towed is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 5,328
Mister Towed is on a distinguished road
Default Mister Towed on the road...

So, after two years spent putting my Spyder together, my marathon build thread is now at an end and I'm at the stage of actually driving the thing.

I thought I'd start this new thread which will cover the experience of using the car and fettling it for the road.

Driving impressions so far are that it's really quite easy to drive. The steering is light but full of feel, the clutch and brakes (servoed) are no more difficult to use than those on my wife's Micra, and it handles better than the MX5 I had about five years ago. It's great fun and gets loads of attention everywhere I go in it.

On the negative side, the ride is rock hard and I've lowered it a bit too much as I have very little ground clearance (lighter/longer front springs on back order, rear lowering block on the list of things to modify).

First job today was to sort out an issue where hot oil fumes were getting into the cockpit. So I've removed the cheap filter from the breather and connected a hose into the air box instead, which seems to have done the trick -



I then drove it over to Wisbech and picked up an MSD multi-spark ignition system from WASP Speed shop -



That's now fitted and working (after the inevitable wiring faff) and provides five sparks at the plug on each firing below 3,000 rpm, and an adjustable rev limiter.



The result is that the engine idles smoothly at a much lower rpm and pulls much stronger at low revs. The rev limiter also means I've been able to explore the upper reaches of the rev range without worrying about over revving the motor (my tacho died a while ago and I haven't got round to replacing it). My 3.27:1 diff and 14" tyres actually give me a comfortable 60mph in second without hitting the 6,000rpm limit...

More later
Reply With Quote
Available from eBay