Thread: Project Sebring GT Spyder

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Thanks guys. I have to admit that it worked better right off the bat than I really thought it would. Everybody gets lucky sometime. The picture of the hooks is actually the finished version. They were much simpler at first because I was sure I would have to remake them at least a couple of times.

Yes, I made the rollers and the grooves were a little too tight in the beginning. That was what I had to tweak. I had to widen the grooves to get the rollers to reliably drop over the tracks.

After the initial test, I set about mounting everything more permanently. I used some rivet nuts that are made for composite materials.





They expand like a drywall plug, but are much heavier duty and really bite into the backside, as well as spread the load over a larger area. You can see the difference between a regular rivet nut for metal and the composite one. Lots of people use the metal nuts in fiberglass, but they have been known to strip and start turning if pushed too far.





Of course there was a hitch (isn't there always a hitch?). My rivet nut tool mandrel was too short to grab the threads in the longer nut. I scratched around in my scrap hardware, cut a piece of tubing and came up with an adapter. It worked great.

My celebration for how well the system worked got a little let down after I got the parts bolted down. The clecos had let the parts move around a little and when they were finally mounted solid, they didn't want to play nice together anymore. I had to tweak the rollers a little more and move the hinge brackets around a little, but eventually I argued it into submission. The hood dropped into it's recess and swung well out in front of the grille when open.

It was time to work on the latch and fix another screw up. Well, maybe not a screw up, just a case of running out of room. I'll try to get that up tomorrow evening. I still have to take a couple of pictures. I thought I had taken them during the build, but can't seem to locate them.